Stop Gambling when you Hire

On Tuesday, I told you that I used to absolutely hate hiring. All the time and effort and it was still just a crap shoot. It was such a crap shoot that we would keep under performing employees because the chances of getting a better one we’re less than playing craps. That all changed about 15 years ago when I meet Grant Robinson and started using him to hire properly.

I asked Grant to share some on his expertise on hiring with you. Here is his third of four articles.

In addition to reading this article and getting his free gift at the end I suggest you follow this link and watch Grant’s one minute video. www.HiringBestPractices.com.

The Final ½ a Secret (of 3 ½) to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals

I hope you’ve read the past three articles and if so, here is a review of what you’ve learned:

Article 1 – Why you continue to recruit and hire poor performers even after all the things you have implemented into your selection process.

Article 2 – The #1 “talent” of the most productive individuals, teams & organizations… the talent of developing clear, written goals and objectives for not only your business and departments, but every position.

Article 3 – The advantage that virtually every small and large market leader shares (and is keeping a secret from you)… the secret of Job Matching that quadruples your odds of hiring a TOP Performer the first time.

And now, I’m going to help you discover…

Exactly What to Do if Your Employees are Currently Holding You Back

But first, let’s look at the ways that employees hold us back. At People Values, we’ve designated them into three categories: Unreliable, Unmotivated and Unproductive.

Your unreliable people are those that have attendance issues and are always tardy. Their lack of reliability leads to other members of their team having to fill in for them or work their shift.

Your unmotivated people are the lazy employees, who always seem to be complaining about something or someone. Their lack of motivation hinders their team from accomplishing goals.

Your unproductive people are the ones you spend your days micro-managing, continue to train and re-train and have to adjust their job responsibilities just to get some sort of benefit of having them on your payroll.

But here’s the thing: When you retain these unreliable, unmotivated and unproductive people and allow them to hold back your business… THEY ARE NOT the ones that are holding you back.

You are the one who has settled for the mediocrity that they bring to your business. You are the one who has continued to pay their salary robbing from your revenue and profitability.

Which leads me to…

The Final ½ a Secret of Hiring & Developing a TOP Performing Team (& Why it’s Only ½ a Secret):

When something is holding your business back and you know what it is, you must do something about it.

“Taking Action” is the final secret of TOP Performance. But you already know this and this is why it’s only ½ a secret…

The leaders of the most successful and profitable businesses continually Take Action and this is how they’ve become and how they’ll remain their market’s leader.

Making any excuse and blaming the economy, changes in your industry, the high expectations of your clients, your vendor’s quality control, the IRS and the government, your pricing, etc. is only going to detract from taking the action you must to improve. And these are all excuses the owners of struggling businesses have given me in the last week (I actually make a list and have heard 22 of them).

And these same owners have ALL also blamed their employees for their lack of success too. Even though they are the ones who fail to lead by example. They are the ones who haven’t established clear, written performance standards that their employees must meet. They are the ones who have settled for mediocrity in their business without taking action.

What is Going to Happen to Your Business (& You) if You Don’t Take Action ASAP…

You’ve had these problems for a while. They are not going to magically disappear. They never do… and usually only get worse.

Here are some of the things that will happen if you continue on with “business as usual”…

  • You’ll only find more excuses on what is holding your business back
  • Being surrounded by unreliable, unmotivated and unproductive people, your TOP Performers will eventually lose their desire to fill in for others, deal with the conflict surrounding them and stop performing too
  • Your best people will eventually lose the remaining faith they have in you, quit and go to work for your competitor
  • You’ll have to scramble and recruit / hire an employee… but without an effective recruiting or selection system, you’ll probably just pick another non-producer
  • Without the systems to develop your leaders or employees, you’ll become even less profitable
  • You’re going to lose the will to continue on and accomplish the dreams you once had (whether 2 or 20 years ago) when you started your business

If any of the trends have already started, today is the day to take action. In 17-years of helping good (and even bad) businesses become great, I’ve learned it’s never too late to take action.

I know… Sometimes You Don’t Even Know Where to Start, Right?

96% of the clients we partner with have come to us through referrals from industry experts, business coaches and our clients (though our clients never tell their direct competitors about us). Job Matching is their secret weapon.

Most of these new partners never knew there was a step-by-step, do it yourself service like ours to create a “People System” to recruit, hire, train, develop and retain TOP Performers.

But it’s exactly what they needed. And by developing one process at a time, they’ve become market leaders… and so can you. Even though right now, there are so many things you need to implement you don’t even know where to start.

If after reading these articles the past two weeks you believe that your business has more potential and it’s time to take action, let us provide some guidance on what to start with.

We usually charge $149 for our TOP Performance Consultation (up to an hour-long phone conversation) where we help you develop a three-step action plan to start moving in the right direction.

The Gift for Reading this Entire Article…

As I promised Keith, I’d give a gift just for reading each article to the end.

The gift this time is for a complimentary TOP Performance Consultation where we can talk about anything that you’d like. Whether that is how to improve your “people system” or any other aspect holding your business back from reaching it’s potential.

Here is where you can schedule your consultation right now: https://peoplevalues.com/tpconsultation/.

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Keith Lee
Keith@KeithLee.com

Hiring the Right Person Doesn’t Need to Feel Like Playing Craps

I used to absolutely hate hiring. All the time and effort and it was still just a crap shoot. It was such a crap shoot that we would keep under performing employees because the chances of getting a better one we’re less than playing craps. That all changed about 15 years ago when I meet Grant Robinson and started using him to hire properly.

The first hire we needed to make after I decided to use Grant was in sales. Our sales manager, Gerri, didn’t like the idea of using Grant at all. She thought she could “read” people well, and compared to others playing hiring craps maybe she was better, but the odds still sucked! This was one of the rare instances that I told her she needed to do something she didn’t want to do.

Gerri went through the process with Grant, made her hire and she was sold. Since then we’ve used Grant for every hire we make in every business I own.

With this in mind, I asked Grant to write a series on articles on hiring for you. I suggest you read the first article below and then come back here, follow this link and watch Grant’s 1 minute video. www.HiringBestPractices.com.

3 ½ Secrets to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals

If you haven’t realized it yet… the year is more than half over. So, have you accomplished half of your personal and business goals yet?

If not, you’re lucky to be a subscriber to this newsletter. Over the next two weeks, you’ll get a 4-part series of articles full of strategies to help you recruit, hire and improve the performance of your team and business.

Here is what you’ll discover over the next couple weeks:

Article 1 – Why you continue to recruit and hire poor performers even after all thing things you have implemented into your selection process

Article 2 – The #1 “talent” of the most productive individuals, teams & organizations (that you need to develop)

Article 3 – The advantage that virtually every small and large market leader shares… and is keeping it a secret from you

Article 4 – Exactly what to do if your employees are currently holding you back

When Keith requested these articles from me, he asked that they were educational. He also asked me to give something away to his readers.

So here’s a head’s up: just for reading each article, you’ll get a very valuable gift at the end that will help you improve your recruiting and hiring process.

The Main Reason A Lot of Organizations are Not Accomplishing Their Goals

In working with Market Leaders in all industries for the past 17+ years, we’ve learned that many of these companies are not much different than their counterparts. This is true whether they are in manufacturing, retail, construction or any other industry.

Many times, they are selling the same exact products or services, have access to the same marketing material and have similar sales processes. Also, in many cases, the market leaders we work with don’t even have a competitive advantage in their location, their websites are not the best in their industry and many don’t have the longevity or years in business that many of their counterparts have.

But what they do have are two things. The first is the “talent” you’ll learn about in the next article of this series.

The second is, they always have the most reliable, motivated and productive employees in their market. And this doesn’t happen by chance.

There is no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that really want to serve your customers the way they expect to be served.

There is no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that actually enjoy selling and will continually improve their performance to meet quota month after month.

And there’s no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that are effective in training new employees and coaching team members to become (& remain) productive.

But it takes much more than posting an ad online and interviewing people to recruit and hire the people your business needs. With the internet and websites like Indeed, Craigslist and Zip Recruiter, it’s become simple and anyone in any organization can recruit and gather a stack of resumes.

But not everyone can pick the right candidate out of this stack of resumes. Here’s how I know this…

Odds of Hiring a TOP Performer (the 1st time)

Studies have shown that 84% of employees will disappoint in their first year on the job. This doesn’t mean that they will quit and you’ll be hiring for the same position because many times they just stay with a company continuing to hold them back.

So why do they stay?

Well, because many are just too lazy to search for a new job and they need the salary to pay their bills. And the other reason they stay is because you’ve allowed them to.

Perhaps you’ve done so because it takes a lot of time, effort and money to recruit, review resumes, interview, complete new hire paperwork, train, etc.

And then there is no guarantee (especially with 84% of employees disappointing) that the new hire will be any better.

So What Can You Do?

There are many things you can do. That’s the good news.

Here are just some of them:

  • Phone screen candidates
  • Email questionnaires
  • Reference Checks
  • Hire an expensive recruiter or headhunter
  • Drug Test
  • Behavioral interview questions
  • Background Check
  • Group interviews
  • Personality Tests
  • Skills Assessments
  • Consult a Psychic (yes… one of our clients did this before partnering with us)
  • And many, many more things…

But here’s the bad news: You can use ALL OF THESE STRATEGIES together and odds are (shown by even more studies) that still more than 50% of the people you hire are going to disappoint in the first year on the job.

And That Right There is the 1st Secret

What you just read is the first of the 3 ½ Secrets to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals…

Everything you’ve been taught to do to assure that you hire the right people is giving you no better odds than shuffling all of the resumes you receive, randomly pulling two out of the pile and flipping a coin to make a hiring decision.

Here’s why: The traditional hiring process used by most companies and combining all of the strategies listed above do not help you determine whether the candidate has “Job Fit.” Even by using all of these strategies, you still don’t know:

  1. Competency Fit and whether the candidate can be trained quickly, be accurate in their work, process new information to increase their current skill, etc.
  2. Behavior Fit and whether they fit the team, are coachable, have critical thinking abilities to manage themselves, can multi-task, etc.
  3. Interest Fit and whether they (even though they say they are in their interview) are really motivated by serving people, leading others or doing the other important aspects of the job without external motivation from a manager.

Besides the “Culture Fit” (integrity, reliably, work-ethic, etc.) issues that lead to an employee disappointing, the three areas above are usually the issues that lead to failure in a position. And even by using all of the strategies you’ve been told will work to hire the right people, you still don’t know these things before hiring right now.

Now hopefully you have a better than 50% “Hiring Success Rate” and the majority of your employees are reliable, internally motivated and continually improve their performance. But if not, you’re lucky you are a subscriber to this newsletter. Here are three reason why:

Reason 1 – The next article is going to teach you the #1 “talent” of TOP Performing Individuals, Teams and Businesses and the quickest way to start improving the performance of your organization.

Reason 2 – In the 3rd article, you’ll discover the little-known secret of “Job Matching”.

& Reason 3 – Here’s the gift I promised for reading this entire article… Since your odds of hiring the right people increase when you recruit and attract more of the right candidates to apply, here is where you can immediately download my book “The 50 Best Strategies to Recruit TOP Performing Employees”

By reading this book, here’s what you’ll discover:

  • Exactly why you are having trouble finding qualified, quality people and how to build a “bullpen” of candidates for the next time you are hiring
  • How to write ads that attract TOP Performers… and detract incompetent, lazy people from even applying​ and wasting your time
  • The 50 Best Strategies to recruit quality, qualified candidates (without depending on websites and expensive headhunters or temporary agencies)

Here is where you can get a FREE copy of my book right now: https://peoplevalues.com/recruitingbook-kl/

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Keith Lee
Keith@KeithLee.com