How to Hire Effectively
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/VrWALz6JiVg?hd=1[/youtube]
Today’s video strategy is how to hire effectively. I want to be really transparent with you on this topic. We hired our first full time, in-person employee three years ago and she’s still with us, which is so great. However, a lot of the people that we hired afterward are no longer working for our company. That’s because we hired very ineffectively. They were all lovely people, they just weren’t the right people.
If you want to leverage your business and multiply, you have got to get some help. You cannot do it on your own anymore. We all have that ICF, the Inner Control Freak. Yes, you have to have it to be an entrepreneur, otherwise you wouldn’t get stuff done, but there gets to be a point at which you can’t do everything by yourself. Instead, you must delegate so you can make more money and serve more clients and do more good work in the world.
“The key to a fantastic team is hiring people who are naturally good at what you’re not.” (Click here to tweet this.)
At Client Attraction, we’ve become so much better in our hiring effectiveness. Whether you’re thinking about hiring your very first virtual assistant (at one point, I had nine virtual assistants) or your very first in-person employee, I’ve got 4 important tips to share with you in this week’s video.
1. Identify everything you’re still doing yourself that is outside of your genius work—your unique brilliance. Write it all down. Are you still doing your own scheduling or order processing? Are you still doing your own filing and making copies? Identify everything that you’re still doing in your business that really doesn’t generate revenue for your business.
2. Identify what type of person you need to do those things. Let me explain what I mean by that. This has happened to me and then it happened to one of my clients very recently. She was growing her business with our help, pretty rapidly. She decided she needed an administrative assistant. So she wrote an ad—but here’s the mistake. The ad she wrote sounded like she was looking for another one of her. We all make that mistake. You are not looking to hire another you. Instead, you are looking to hire somebody who complements you—someone who is good at what you’re not necessarily good at.
Let’s say you are somebody who’s really into working with clients. You’re enthusiastic and outgoing and you come up with lots of new ideas, some of which you don’t always finish. You’re somebody who likes to start things, but not necessarily finish them. You get pulled in different directions by bright shiny objects. You do NOT want to hire someone like that—someone who’s just like you.
The key to hiring and having a fantastic team is to hire people who are good at the stuff you are not good at. If you look at your list and it’s a lot of stuff that’s routine, follow-through stuff where you have to do research or lots of minutiae you don’t want to hire somebody who’s like you—great at starting things but not finishing things.
I work with lots and lots of people, clients who are leveraging their business and this is where they make a mistake. They hire another one of themselves. The key is to figure out what kind of person you need and it’s usually not another you.
3. Create an ad. You’re growing to create an ad that you’ll post on Craigslist or other favorite job posting site but you’re going to use words that that type of person would respond to. You might respond to, “This is an exciting opportunity. We’re looking for enthusiastic, outgoing people.” But you will then attract just more people like you.
On the other hand, if you’re writing an ad for somebody who’s going to help you with operations or systems, then the ad should say something like, “You are an organized, systematic person who likes processes and checklists and you love everything to be in its place,” because that wording is going to excite them in a way that it would never excite you and me. The people inclined to respond to that ad will be the right type of person.
4. Once you have hired the right person, have them do some assessments. Our entire team here at ClientAttraction.com has taken two or three assessments that let’s us find out exactly how they’re wired. Right now, we’re in the process of transitioning somebody so that she does even more of what she’s wired to do. She’s loving it and we’re loving it and it’s great.
When you have assessments, (choose one of the many that will work for you), you get to learn how everybody on your team is wired as opposed to how you’re wired and then you can complement each other. Do them, not just on yourself, but on the team so that you create a team that works really well together and you all get stuff done as opposed to two people talking about great ideas and nothing gets done.
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Start putting these tips into place right away because it doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out, or looking to leverage or really creating a legacy empire, you need to hire effectively.
