Subject: January Hire Score Newsletter
Happy New Year! Welcome to a new year of the Hire Score Newsletter. This year, like the last two, I am going to challenge your thinking about recruiting, hiring, staffing and any other subject that has to do with growing your company from the people point of view.
Before we jump into this month's material, I just want to remind you that the special Combat Training Workshop with Tim Larkin in Las Vegas is just about sold out. There are only a few spots left so don't wait. Sign up now at www.selectingwinners.com/vegascombat.html.
OK, it's a brand new year and you're probably wondering what you should do first when it comes to strategic staffing plans for the year. The first thing you need to do is get a handle on where you are today. NOT JUST HEADCOUNT! You need to know a lot more than just how many people you have on staff.
You need to assess the strengths, weaknesses and styles of your people. You need to know how they think. You need to know how they behave in a variety of situations. You need to know how they learn. And, you need to know how they will react in a variety of situations. This is the kind of information that provides you with a real competitive edge.
How to start? Here are two things you can do to get rolling. Take a few minutes for each employee you have to answer the questions I just posed. Be honest. If you don't know the answer, why not. This is information you should have. Find out. Spend some time with the person, ask other people and look at past performance reviews. If you manage a large organization, perform this task for your immediate team and instruct them to perform the task on their teams. Roll up the information and you start to get a pretty good picture of your organizational capabilities.
The second method is to get this information using quantitative assessment tools. There are some very good tools available that quickly and accurately test for learning styles, interests and behavioral tendencies. We use The Profile from Effective Selection Systems as our tool of choice. By using The Profile you use the information you gain to build benchmarks for hiring, promotion, coaching, teambuilding and career management decisions. For more information, check out www.effectiveselection.com.
Now that you have a solid read on your current capabilities, you start your planning process. You can set goals and determine targets for this year. I am not going to spend a whole lot of time on the business planning process here but you should just know that without knowing your current capabilities, you would be picking targets in the blind.
I know a lot of you are still paralyzed by the unknown. You don't know which way the market is going to go. You aren't sure what your customers are going to do. You don't know which way your competitors will turn. That all may be true, but if you want to come out the back end of the situation a winner, start by getting a handle on your existing organization.
An article appeared in the USA Today newspaper a couple of weeks ago that was very interesting. It said that some companies were choosing a no layoff policy. It used the example of Southwest Airlines, which I have discussed in the past. These companies are using all kinds of innovative strategies to keep their employees during these difficult times because they know that it is not just people that walk out the front door. It is your knowledge, it is your customer relations, and it is your way of doing business that has walked out the door. I have always felt that letting people go should be the last option not the first.
Finally, I want to share an interesting story with you about the value of experts and emotions. My wife and I recently decided that we would rent our home in Hawaii selectively during the times when we are not there (more on this later). This was not an easy decision and was certainly emotionally charged.
I have a good friend on Kauai who has been in the real estate market for 20 + years and manages a number of high-end vacation rental properties. I asked him to manage this effort for us. He came over to the house and walked around with us and told us the changes we would need to make. I almost came unglued as he said change this, add this, and get rid of this. You see this is my home and it is perfect.
But then it dawned on me that my friend is an expert on high-end vacation rentals. To him this was an exercise in making good business decisions based on knowledge of the process and customers. Once I set my emotions aside I realized that his judgment was outstanding. So, what does this have to do with recruiting and hiring?
I have always said that it is difficult to make good hiring decisions because you are emotionally involved in the outcome. I don' care how objective you think you are, the decision of who to hire is going to have a profound impact on your life and that is emotional. There are two things you can do to gain some objectivity. First, use a proven system (like Selecting Winners). Go through the necessary steps no matter how much you love or hate the person. This will help make the process more objective.
Second, use resources that don't have an emotional stake in the outcome. Have an expert third party interview your candidates. I provide this service for my clients and the professional, objective data always helps them make a quality decision. Also, you can use an assessment tool to get information that is objective. A quality assessment tool has no emotion and provides you with pure data.
Don't fall into the trap of believing you can be objective about hiring. I have always said that the more data you have, the better your decisions. Use as many sources as you can to help you make quality hiring decisions.
Announcements
I am trying to double the size of my newsletter subscription list in the first quarter of this year and I need your help. Please pass this along to anyone you think would benefit from the information. They can sign-up for their own copy at www.selectingwinners.com. Also, there are a lot of changes going on with corporate and major ISP (ATT) mail systems. Please make certain you have a working email address with us in case yours changes.
As I mentioned earlier, we are selectively making our home in Hawaii available for vacation rentals. Those of you that have not been to the North Shore of Kauai can't imagine what you are missing. Anyway, if you are interested in vacationing on Kauai I am offering subscribers a 10% discount for all bookings made in the next 30 days. You can learn all about the property at www.barryshamis.com/hawaiihouse. Send your email to the address on the site (mailto:hokulelekauai@aol.com) and mention that you are a subscriber to the Hire Score Newsletter and you will receive the 10% discount for all bookings made in the next 30 days.
Finally, don't forget to register for the Vegas Combat Workshop right now because we absolutely not allow more than 40 people in the room. Go to www.selectingwinners.com/vegascombat.html now to register.
Hear what a recent attendee had to say:
"Tim Larkin's class was time well spent and extremely valuable on many different levels. The first level and most important is the knowledge and skill I acquired during the class. The information and techniques demonstrated by Tim have empowered me to protect myself and my family. Many of the techniques can be shown to your wife or children to help keep them out of harm's way. The second level was establishing trust with your practice buddy and later on with the rest of the class. When I think about all of the "touchy feely" corporate team building exercises I've been through, NOTHING compares to this class. By the end of the class you've established trust and camaraderie with the other class members and everybody wins from learning life long skills."
John Coleman
Microsoft Corporation
Have a great month recruiting!
Barry Shamis
PS. If there is a subject you want me to cover or a question you have, forward it to info@selectingwinners.com, thanks!