Employees – some business owners love them, some say they will never have them. Why is that? My Colorado Springs business coaching clients tell me that hiring is the hardest and yet most important thing a business owner/manager can do to affect their business. Hiring the right employees can allow your business to grow and keep on growing. Hiring the wrong ones can be VERY expensive, especially if you need to let them go and start the process over again. Often you have good employees, but just in the wrong “seats” in your business. So how do you work to ensure you have the right people in the right seat of the bus of your business? Part of it is art and part of it is science. Part of it is understanding the person you are interviewing, understanding your own company, and understanding the role of this new person. So often, bad hiring decisions are made because we really don’t know the job we want them to do, the characteristics of the job, and the characteristics of the individual. For example, to hire an individual who doesn’t like to talk on the phone to be a telemarketer is a mistake. However, this type of mistake happens constantly.
ActionCOACH has a very powerful interviewing process. Although there is never a 100% guarantee on hiring, it does take the normal hiring process, which at best is a 50/50 chance, and makes it about 75%. Most people would take those odds to the casino and be very happy. One of the tools we use is a DISC analysis. DISC does a great job at assessing (in about 20 minutes) who you are. There isn’t a right or wrong, but it does show your natural vs. adaptive tendencies. For example, if you are hiring a new bookkeeper and the DISC profile shows they don’t really like to be detail oriented, but are outgoing, like to organize, and interact with people. They might not be a great bookkeeper, but they might be a great office manager.
I can’t tell you how many times I have talked to business owners and they have stated – I used to have employees and it was a total pain. I am never doing that again! Well, ok – then you are slated to doing all the work yourself for the rest of your business life, there will be limited growth, limited return on your time investment and just remember that premise when you try to retire. Instead – maybe look to yourself and determine, were the hires the right ones, did I provide the leadership required and why can the competitor down the street hire, keep staff, and grow when they are in the same business? We have a saying of “isn’t that interesting” for topics like this. It should cause us to look within ourselves.
Now I agree employees can be troublesome. I have hired many, fired many (usually my mistake in hiring) and wondered how to make the process less of an art and more of a science. I have learned much over the last 25 years and especially the last few years in coaching. Part of what I do in coaching is look at the organization. What is truly needed to achieve the goals and what are the personalities. In many cases, you need to look for attitude far more than what their skills are. Yes, if you need a scientist they must have the basic skills. However, I would rather train someone not as qualified but who has the right attitude, then one very qualified with a negative or neutral attitude. The affect on the business is tremendous. One of my clients was in the process of hiring someone to help in the office. They really wanted someone with experience in their industry; however, what they found is someone with a take-charge positive attitude who is willing to think out of the box, but with little industry experience. That has proven to be a wonderful hire. Yes, learning the industry has taken a few weeks longer, BUT everything else is providing them what they needed.
If you are interesting in the DISC profile, contact me at jannahoiberg@actioncoach.com