Hiring Disfunction - Amateur Hour

My father was an amateur entrepreneur who always hoped to discover a business 'goldmine' but never did. It was always an emotional rollercoaster: he would get excited about something and then slowly come to realize that there wasn't any gold at the end of the rainbow.

A series of bad ventures eventually split our family apart.

In his newsletter this month, marketer and Google adwords guru Perry Marshall (www.Perrymarshall.com) talks about why some entrepreneurs succeed in business while others go through a predictable failure cycle, one I recognized immediately from my youth and my own first entreprenuerial attempts:

* Idealization of some concept that seems like a simple path to riches.
* Demoralization when the idea won't work.
* Frustration that ideas don't seem to work out like they should...until the next concept comes along that 'really is the one.'

People who experience this cycle are missing two major elements to make money and succeed at business - a concrete dedication to the business of success (not the feelings, but the business), and a process by which to test and determine whether an idea is going to pay off.

Without these tools, the entrepreneur is left with only an emotional merry-go-round of hope and despair. They pour themselves into ideas that aren't ever going to work, or not without significantly more (or different) work than they're prepared to do.

A successful entrepreneur breaks the cycle with an action-oriented process that gives them the ability to:

* Investigate concepts to see if there is a track record of sales and profit in a business.
* Quickly and cheaply test specific marketing and sales avenues to see if they can consistently drive interest and convert sales.
* Commit or abandon quickly based on the facts they've gathered.

Often I see business owners fall into the same entrepreneurial cycle when hiring. Absent a solid process they fall into:

* Idealization of some individual based on referral, charisma or availability.
* Demoralization when it turns out the person wasn't a match for one or more reasons.
* Frustration over their inability to find profitable employees...until the next one comes along and convinces them that they 'really are the one.'

This is the cycle of the amateur hiring manager or owner, and it can lead to performance nightmares, financial or operational
difficulties that only get worse as time wears on. Fortunately, you can break out of this cycle with the right mental preparation and some basic tools.

Ask yourself a few questions:

* Have you been able to successfully investigate whether the person has been in your kind of job and wants to remain in
it for a long time?

* Have you been successful at testing them with very difficult, no-nonsense interviews to see if they have already consistently succeeded at the tasks and deliverables you've got lined up for
a new employee?
* Do you have the time, candidates and chutzpah to commit or abandon...either someone meets your tough standards and you turn immediately toward hiring and managing them toward success, or you abandon them and keep looking without a
backward glance?

If you find yourself on an emotional rollercoaster of becoming infatuated with people, hoping they work out, and then being
disappointed when they don't, you may need help to evaluate your hiring process and break the ruinous cycle of amateur hiring.

If you don't, it will eventually ruin the credibility and stability of your team.

In case you're wondering, that's what we do - give you the tools to build relationships that will produce margin and stand the test of time.

Like These Articles? Get Weekly Delivery

Sign Up!