How To Get The Hiring Process Right In Your Business (Saving You Time and Money)
It’s a brand new year and you’ve decided that it is time to get some more hired help in your business. Perhaps it’s been a while since your last hire, or maybe this is going to be your first. Either way it’s a great step forward in being able to scale and eventually free yourself from the day-to-day.
In a recent study done in Australia, 10% of employee turnover is the result of poor hiring decisions with over two-thirds (65%) admitting that they have hired an employee who did not meet their expectations. Over a third of small business owners have lost money as a result of a bad hire.
Hiring new staff is not just about being able to have the occasionally holiday in some tropical location with your phone switched off. It is more about you as the business owner being able to focus on the highest value activities you could be doing within your business, allowing you to scale sustainably.
Remember in the early days before you had a whole bunch of customers and even probably any real team, you spent a lot of time thinking, planning out exactly how you wanted your business to look. You spent hours mapping out exactly how it was going to run and how perfect it was all going to be.
Then things started going well and you started taking on more customers and potentially more people and somewhere in all of that the wheels started falling off and you spent less and less time thinking and planning and a lot more time doing. There are days you wish you could go back to the simplicity of the early days when it was just you in your office taking it all for yourself.
But we all know that our businesses can't run without people and can’t grow without adding more people. Hiring is a necessity in the growing business. I mean, you just can't do it all yourself. But it is challenging! It’s pretty well known that the number one problem faced by the majority of business owners is people related.
Ask any business owner with a team bigger than two people and they’ll tell you their long list of frustrations when it comes to staff - keeping them motivated, keeping them engaged, keeping them focused, keeping them happy, keeping them thinking like you… or keeping them full stop!
Now, don't worry, you're not alone. I know what it's like. You spend hours and hours trying to win new contracts and win new business and then suddenly you find yourself needing more resources to do the work, it's a never-ending cycle of problems.
But these problems are exacerbated by a significant lack of planning.
Too many business owners simply focus on the top line and then worry about the rest later, rather than planning the two concurrently.
Now, Jack Daley says hiring is a process, not an event. Which means that our focus on building out our most valuable resource - our people - should be an ongoing process and not something that we treat as a once off randomly throughout the year when you feel overwhelmed.
I am sure you have had mixed experiences using external recruitment agencies to help locate human resources for our businesses. I have too. But we can't simply blame an external agency for all of our people problems. That's just not fair.
You need to take some accountability because most business owners fail to plan appropriately for their human resource requirements.
From the beginning of our lives when we start as newborns, humans thrive on structure. Our days are structured, our eating habits are structured. As parents, we try to keep the best routine possible for our children in order to provide an environment where they can thrive and become the best people that they can be.
That doesn't change when we become adults. Humans still requires structure, routine, and process.
The most important steps that you can take when thinking about the human resources that you require or would like within your business occur way before you sit down to the first interview.
If you're sitting down in an interview with a potential new candidate, without absolute clarity on what success looks like for that person, then expect substandard results from that person in your organization. Because if you don't know what success looks like for them and you aren't clear on exactly how that's going to be measured, then there's no hope for them whatsoever.
So, what do you need to do before you even set foot into an interview for your next hire?
1. Are you hiring for the right position?
I can't tell you how many times a business owner has said to me that they need a business development manager or a salesperson to help them within their business, when I know full well that this particular business owner or company can't even service properly the existing customers that they have already acquired.
2. What are the key processes within your business you require this person to complete?
Make a list of the exact tasks that you require this person to complete on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
3. Define what success looks like in this role.
For you to say that this individual has exceeded your expectations in their role in six months time, what would have to be true? Be as specific as you can about the outputs, the actions, and the successes that have occurred in your business as a result of this person being involved in your business.
4. Download our Success Zone workbook.
If you're not sure of who your next hire should be, but you know you're short of time in your business, this workbook will allow you to define clearly the most important areas where you are struggling to scale out yourself within your business and allow you to focus more on your success zone or the highest value actions that you can complete within your business.
Click HERE to download and get started.
Understand Where Your Best Time Is Spent In Your Business
YOUR SUCCESS ZONE
Once you know where your best spent time is for maximum efficiency within your business, this will then give you clarity around who you should be hiring and the tasks, or clients, you should be saying 'no' to.
