Never select staff out of desperation.
Poor staff selection or poor staff retention reflects nothing but a careless attitude towards your business and that’s not a healthy practice. Many times, out of desperation when their business is booming and producing massive profits business owners pick up the first person they find interesting without even considering others and this causes their downfall. Picking up friends and family because you don’t know how to find the right people is really unprofessional and it can create some serious troubles because business incorporates hard decisions and you can never let emotions or sentiments compromise with your feelings, for it will adversely affect your business development.
Never hire a staff out of emotions
This thing happened to me a lot of time, especially when my business was going well. Being into SEO services, I thought link building is something that does not require high skills so I thought I should hire guys at low salaries. Though this alone was a wrong decision, the worst decision was when I hired only those who seem to be in super need of a job and was desperate to get one. This decision was based on total emotions as many of them failed to pass my very basic entry test for these low-skilled peoples.
This hiring resulted in a huge loss in the coming years, it was a clear downfall every month. These guys failed to bring quality backlinks, the links brought could easily be marked as spam. Even with the submissions (like directory submissions, article syndicate, press releases, bookmarks, etc.), the quality was missing, the effect of these links was so ineffective that several clients got dissatisfied; and what is worse than this for any business. Those guys who were hired out of emotions failed to even learn the skills of link building and the thing with which their mind was occupied was their own family problems, their poor finance, and their killing life i.e. all negatives. I understand that such people need more mental help than financial, but within limits. No business can afford a personality development program for all day-whole years without any results by the staff. After all, it’s a business; the business has to earn profits. But not in my case, I continued all that mess for more than 2 years until I was thrown in the bin by the industry. You know… nature’s law always works- Survival of the fittest; and probably, I was the weakest.
Recruitment companies produce massive gains
Initially, I was a bit skeptical too about the working mechanism of the recruitment companies but gradually I realized that it is an effective way to succeed in business. They are in contact with the best of the best people and they are driven to give you a productive staff. You can even consider the recommendations of A-players, for they are likely to recommend A-players only. And never ever in your entire professional career, seek suggestions from a C-player, because they’ve got the problem for every solution.
Besides recruitment companies, we should use our successful friends to find new talent through their references and recommendations. Before the existence of the Internet, this could be a very challenging task, but the internet made it really easy. The social networking websites like LinkedIn and few Job portals (like Naukri.com in India) made this concept easy. In LinkedIn, there is a recommendation column where connected people are allowed to leave recommendations for other people. When a company recommends an employee on LinkedIn, then, it means then the employee is a good performer.
Another reliable source of honest references is those companies that verify the credentials and references of employees. When an employee joins a new company then the new company wants to verify the credentials of the employee and credentials includes education declarations, performance as recorded by previous 3-4 companies, salaries claimed in previous 3-4 companies, promotions, achievements, awards, references and recommendations of past 3-4 years. The verification report is a highly valuable document and should be taken seriously.
Business development necessitates dynamic changes
When you’re progressing as a business owner, it’s time to let go of loose ends and change your ways of selecting staff. You give incentives, and in return, you expect their hard work, skills, and loyalty. It is better to find someone who is suitable for your business, the one who sees downsides as challenges and opportunities to grow.
When a business is in the rapid growth stage then a typical scenario is observed where the business gets a continuously higher volume of orders than it can handle. No business can deny coming orders, hence there is tons of pressure to hire a new workforce as quickly as possible. This situation obliges the business to make its recruitment process lenient and that results in numerous bad hirings. Bad hirings produce bad results and hence leave dissatisfied customers in the market who are open to defame the business. Which usually results in a bad name and hence reverse progress (sliding down). Sometimes, business is left in a worse situation than the position from where it started making rapid growth.
Create a culture and train your staff accordingly.
Develop a happy culture, where everyone is happy, a culture that is built on mutual trust and respect. An environment where hard workers are rewarded and there’s always scope for betterment. Train your staff to perform to their maximum potential.
A second pro tip – training your staff is never a waste of money, it will always pay you and will ensure a high return on investment. As the progress will their training, they will improve their standards, marketing ability, and eventually your business will prosper.
When the CEO of Virgin Group, Mr. Richard Branson was asked…”What is that ONE thing which made you such a successful businessman?“, then his reply was…”The real secret is lying in my people. It is all about hiring real skilled people, give them a mission, take care of all their needs and wants, and sit back to see your business flourishing”.
The human resource is the most important asset of any business. The success, failure, growth, or declining rate, and the name of a business depends on its human resource. When this resource could be the most important asset, then the same resource could be the worst liability. Always deal with extreme care when it comes to manpower.