Hiring well is…Funny thing…
Hiring well is…well, actually hard
Hiring well has always been tough and with today’s high employment situation, it’s harder than ever. But the same booming economy that’s created a tight hiring market, has also driven a level of growth that for many of us makes adding that new set of hands (and brains) essential. So, like it or not, we’re faced with a necessity to do just that and at the same time do it right!
Hiring in a slap dash fashion inevitably leads to a lot of wasted training time, lost credibility introducing new faces to customers and potentially losing some of that hard fought for business if it all goes south.
Beginning with the basics, we need to recruit acceptable candidates and probably the best places to do that is by talking to your team members and your customers. While there are any number of places to look, those two sources are most likely to deliver a candidate who’ll fit in and who will most likely possess most of the can-do qualities the job requires.
Assuming you’re able to identify candidates with the requisite can-do’s (like mechanical aptitude, basic intelligence, good communication skills and physical ability), you need to focus on the will-do’s to find that candidate who will do what the job requires (like honesty, stability, and most of all energy level).
By focusing on those two separate sets of qualities, we can hire team members who’ll not only add that much needed extra set of hands but will add value. Who knows, done well maybe one day soon there’ll be enough growth to create the need for yet another new face!
Funny thing …about the truth
There’s a very successful business that has a sign on its’ lobby wall simply reading: “Honesty without hesitation”. Truth’s a funny thing when it comes to some businesses. Those are the ones who regard it as dangerous – or at a minimum something that’s best avoided lest either their customers or employees learn it and not like what they see.
On the other hand, the most successful enterprises tend to regard it as empowering and powerful. Think of the server who took and then apparently lost your dinner order. You’re sitting there fuming as others who came after you are served. So, you complain to the manager. If he delivers the truth that it was simply lost and offers complimentary appetizers, you’ll probably be even happier that if there’d been no problem! But if he comes up with some BS reason all bets are off.
When customers are truthfully and tactfully told what can and can’t be done, they tend to understand and accept those honestly presented facts. And when we screw up and come clean, the tendency is for the person damaged by that snafu is to understand and eventually even respect us for that candor. Ditto employees who’re told the truth of challenges and problems the business faces – who then tend to work even harder to deal with them.
Truth may be the most powerful of all business principals and the most underutilized employee/ customer loyalty building tool ever. And even if there’s no immediate payoff to practicing honesty, one thing’s clear – if you tell the truth, you don’t need a great memory to recall what you said last time!