Hiring employees can be a love/hate relationship.
At least I use to feel that way about it. All entrepreneurs go through this, and as you can see by its definition, it can be an adventure. If you have been in business for any length of time, you know exactly what I mean.
If you are experiencing hiring pains, feel free to get your copy of Seven Steps to Hiring Great Staff Click here for the 7-Steps
Before Hiring Don’t Forget the Basics
Of course, there are the Administrative Basics to consider:
1) Have your records & system for reporting to IRS, State and local agencies as applicable. This would include I-9 forms, payroll method, workplace posters, etc.
2) Running a background check which seems to be becoming more common these days.
An Often-Missed Pre-Hiring Step
Now that you are set with the paperwork, you can turn your attention to who you are looking for to do what. This can be more important than you think. I well recall writing an ad for a receptionist many years ago. I expected it would pull in many good candidates; I had had good success doing this already, so naturally, the only attention required of me was simply writing the ad and getting it run in the local paper, right?
Wrong. I did get about eight responders to my ad, but to my shocking surprise, not one of them was remotely qualified. It was a head-scratcher until I examined my actions leading up to running my ad. I discovered that in the past, I had always started my ad writing process by naming out precisely who I was looking for; I guess these days, they call that an avatar, but whatever you call it, it is essential.
Literally Describe Who You Are Looking For
What I mean by that is to spell out who you are looking for. For a receptionist, it might go something like this:
"My receptionist is relatively young mid 20's to early '30s. He/she loves to multitask and is a "people person." They love helping others, are great with kids, are punctual, and getting the job done completely is important to them."
In my incredibly time-wasting flop, I had utterly skipped this step. My ad was good; I knew it was good. What I had written before worked, and the ad that bombed was very similar to my earlier ads. So my failure pulled down to the lack of naming an avatar.
I went back to the drawing board, listed out precisely who I was looking for to do what, wrote and placed the ad, and pow, qualified applicants again began coming in.
This might strike you as, "right, no way, voodoo..." I don't know, but whatever it is, it works, so skip doing this at your peril!
How Important is getting it right?
There’s nothing like a good story to get the point across, and luckily I have many of them to draw upon. This one on hiring starts off rather alarmingly, but I promise you it does end well.
It was all going so well!
The names have been changed to… well, just because.
My phone rang, “Hello, this is Dr. Prescott.” “Hi, Dr. Prescott, this is Nancy; we have a call scheduled for today.” “Hi Nancy, I was just about to call you, but it looks like you beat me to it. Yes, and I think you have questions on hiring staff, right?” Oh God, it’s more than that, but yes, definitely how to hire staff and also how to let staff go that just aren’t doing their job! I don’t have an employee handbook, and frankly, a friend of mine put the fear of God into me on that subject. I can’t afford to have my practice shuttered, it’s my livelihood, and I am afraid of losing it!
“Whoa, take a deep breath, and let’s start at the start. I bet it’s going to be easier and less stressful than you think. So, tell me how you got into this situation, so that I can get a full understanding.”
She continued, “Only six months ago, I was a new chiropractor right out of school, boards passed and ready to get started. I had set aside enough money over the years to rent a space for a few months so I could get on my feet and be independent. I had known I would do this since I was twelve.
“My friend, Susan, had been a part of the plan for a good while. She was a natural as a Receptionist and Office Manager and agreed to work with me for a small amount as we grew and then begin earning more as we became more successful.
“It was going great; we were acquiring patients, and they loved my adjustments. We got friends and family, then word of mouth, and Susan, being a natural talker, talked it up everywhere she went; dinner, school, the gym, you name it. In two months, we were seeing 100 patient visits; in six months, they hit 235 with just the two of us. It was my dream come true.
“But then, did I mention that Susan’s husband was in the Army? Well, he is, and you guessed it, he got transferred. They had to pack and leave in two weeks; she was excited as it meant advancement for her husband and I was excited and happy for the both of them while at the same time being sad because I knew what I was losing.
“No problem, we thought. We had done the hard part establishing and growing a successful practice. We would simply find a great qualified replacement for Susan, and all would be right, right?
Hiring the wrong person can have a recoil effect
“We began looking for a replacement right away. Neither of us had ever had to do hiring before, but it was an employer’s market, so we figured how hard could it be? We put an ad on Craig’s List and were flooded by resumes in only a couple of days.
“We sorted the resumes and set aside the three-best based on education, experience & work record. You know, like getting three bids from different contractors when you are having fixtures put in your office. We called them in one by one for interviews. All three showed up for their interviews at their appointed times, Jade, Frank, and Molly. We thought that meant they weren’t flakes. All three said the right things, looked good and presented themselves well—you know, “I’m a people person that loves helping people, I am very trainable and have nothing but good things to say about my last job, believe in being punctual and staying till the job is done, etc.
“It was a tough decision, but we ended up hiring Frank; it boiled down to the fact that he had more experience in a chiropractic office. Susan had four days left before leaving town and spent those days showing Frank what to do and how to do it. Frank's first day alone in the position was a Friday; all seemed to go pretty well.
She Should have used the 7 steps
“The next week a couple of patients mentioned how the office felt different with Susan gone. Well, of course, but wasn’t that natural? Then a couple of weeks later, I got complaints about Frank not doing reminder calls. Various other complaints followed that; the most alarming was telling a patient they could not reschedule their visit for any reason. I can assure you Susan never taught him that! Then there was the steady decline of patient visits, not to mention new patients. Frank couldn’t get a new patient if they threw themselves at him!
“So I called a meeting with Frank to right the ship. Wow, what an eye-opener! What the heck happened to the Frank we interviewed? I’m telling you he has turned into a completely different person in a few months. I can’t afford to keep him, and I can’t afford to fire him, not because I can’t handle the work by myself at this point, I mean my patient visits are so low; what am I going to do?”
Hiring Questions get asked
An aside here: Nothing had happened to Frank. It was just now she had the “Real Frank”, not the “Friendly Frank” façade he put on for the interview. With a bit of questioning, it was clear that Frank had undisclosed baggage. He “knew” how to run a chiropractic office. Sure the last office he was at had gone out of business, but that had nothing to do with him, right?
So, what did we do? I helped her let Frank go without getting herself into any kind of wrongful termination trouble and then helped her find the correct replacement for Susan. How we did it is contained in my publication “Seven Steps to Hiring Great Staff”. You can click here to get a copy of that.