Be careful of who you hire: Every new employee brought to a small business and how they are brought in determines whether your business will succeed or, ultimately, fail. Not having sufficient recruitment practices in place can cost you revenue, reputation, and, evidently, your business.
Being in small business requires a lot of vigilance on behalf of the owner(s). A lot of the time, everything is performed by these people, ranging from finance to management to sales. One thing in common here is the need to recognize whether you need additional service. This usually comes in the form of hiring an additional hand, be it to man the cash register or field sales. In reality, these people, no matter how big or small your business is, determine the success rate of your business. How is that measured? Well, think of it this way. If given the same situation, would you hire yourself using your current recruitment practices, if any?
Take for example a client of mine with whom I'm working at the moment. The business is serving a unique yet growing niche: Hydronics. He purchased the business five years ago for $10G, acquired a $50G debt and has since turned it into a profitable venture. Seems like a good deal, right? Read further.
During the cycle of his business, he's had to hire new help to sustain the customer demand. This involved hiring a sales rep to do the sales, installers to install the product and an administrative assistant to handle the finances and other administrative functions of the business.
Over the past year, he's had to rehire for those same positions 3 times, That's twelve people in one year, due to poor recruitment practices. He's openly told me during our initial consultation that he does not know how to hire. One of this former employees fabricated everything on his resume, and, without doing any reference checks or a fullfledged interview, hired this fellow. It didn't take long to realize that this new installer was not the person he said he was. Merely going on word alone will not do any good to you or the image of your business.
Currently, three of his former employees were let go; two of them quit in protest of the one who got fired. It was basically his entire installation staff who were let go, the key to the survival of his business.
They were overheard last week in a restaurant, with the administrative assistant who still was employed with the company, slandering and conspiring to shut down this business and start up their own operation, and were going to call the business owners' suppliers and tell them to "hold his account due to the fact that his business is going bankrupt". That's not very nice is it?
The girl who was his administrative assistant was apparently sending vital company information to these fired people to aid in their apparent venture of destroying the business of their former employer. She also cut herself cheques to the tune of $900 from the petty cash account and had them cleared before the business owner could put a block on them.
We was called in to put a stop to this. After terminating the administrative assistant for just cause due to theft, insubordination, among others, we worked with the client to completely install a fully functional recruitment process. This guy did not even have any employment contracts put in place to protect his business!
We created and implemented an Internet Usage Policy, a Non-Disclosure Agreement and a Non-Competition Contract to be applied to every new employee, as well as a comprehensive recruitment process, to be performed by us at BlacktalonSolutions. Immediate actions were put in place to find suitable replacements for the dismissed employees.
AT the moment the business is doing well. He's got his feet on the ground again and things are looking up, thanks to the interventions performed by us.
In summary, even though you might be a one- or two-person operation, having suitable recruitment practices in place will save your business from the scenario above. The people you recruit are the people who represent your business. Here are some tips to consider when expanding your business's representation:
Review the Job Description
Always be certain of the duties they will perform. Ask yourself, "How will this position benefit the business? And how can I allocate some of my duties to the nature of this role?"
Always apply screening criteria to résumés beforehand
This cuts down on time spent on contacting each and every candidate who applies for the position. But putting into place a series of criteria, usually based on the requirements to perform the job to a minimum, you cut down a lot of work and only the apparent "best" get through.
Ask questions that are relevant to the function of the job, and probe experience
If you were to hire a plumber to fix a leak, would you ask for qualifications and past experience? Absolutely. You don't want someone proclaiming to be a plumber when all they did was make a sprinkler system work. Evidently the same is applied to small business. Always probe your candidates on their qualifications. Listen to their answers. If they talk a lot, truth is they are fabricating the story. The shorter the answer, the more genuine they are.
Perform reference checks
What you get out of an interview may be somewhat accurate, but this validates their answers. Always ask for three or more professional references before moving to the next step. Judging from the reactions, tone, and the formation of responses to your questions, you can get a general idea as to how this person performed on the actual job.
All the above are safe ways to protect you, your business, and your clients when expanding your operations. Putting in extra vigilance to who and how you hire new employees saves you an adventure of adversity.
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