Herman: John L. Herman Jr., Author

Hiring and Firing...

Let’s talk about how you find your next great employee. There is a simple problem that owners make almost every time the need to add someone to the ranks of their small business arises. The problem is that the owner forgets why the employee came for the job.

Owners think like owners instead of thinking like employees when they hire someone. People go to work for the money. Forget how much the employee would “love” to work in your gift shop, at your ad agency, in your restaurant…or how much they love the hours, your location or the chance to get in your industry. Work starts and sometimes ends with the money. The person you are hiring wants and needs a job and at the interview they are “yes” puppets. Yes, I want to work those hours, yes I want to do that assignment and yes I can stay late, come early and work weekends.

As the owner you make a huge mistake by talking to the worker about his or her wants, needs and desires. You can assume they want to work…they came for the interview. And they surely are not going to confide that they bowl on the night you need to stay late, or that three days a week they have to drive their kids to school and with traffic will be late every time. Stop asking workers to describe themselves…they like themselves and sell themselves very well. Usually they recommend themselves very highly. Big surprise huh.

The interview should be set more to discourage someone from taking the job if they aren’t going to do the job. Tell the person at the interview every aspect of the job. All of the nitty gritty details that you expect to happen. Do not sugar coat the position or make it sound wonderful, when you know the tough part is a turn-off. Better to turn them off at the interview than to face firing them a week later. You know what people do when they get a job and then find out the bad stuff about it? They start doing other tasks at work hoping that will cover the fact that they aren’t doing what you actually hired them for. They invent other tasks and you get a worker who is bossing you around instead you running the show.

By telling the person at the interview what you really are hiring them to do…and by admitting the hard part about it…you will usually get positive head nods that they can and want to do that (yes puppets) or you will scare them away. If you have a yes puppet then ask them what their last job was and what did they like and not like about it. Tell them you want to call that owner and see how the worker did the job relative to the tasks expected. I bluntly told people in job interviews I didn’t need someone who was going to try to redefine the job…I just needed someone to actually do the job they were being hired to do.

If it is too late and you have already hired a yes puppet who now avoids the tasks you need accomplished do yourself a favor. Sit down with the employee and offer them a choice to either immediately start doing only the tasks you need done or they will be fired and it won’t look good on their resume. The alternative is that they could just quit. Most of them will to avoid the resume black eye. And you won’t ding your unemployment record.

• Posted: 2 September 2008
• Comments: 0
• Category: Business success

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