SalesScore

It’s Tuesday afternoon and your best salesperson just submitted her two week notice because she’s moving to Arizona.  Why didn’t she warn you? Doesn’t she know you’re in the middle of your busiest quarter in three years?

You haven’t needed to hire someone for at least six months and it took you months to train them but you don’t have time to do that now. Plus, you don’t have a hiring process anyway. You were blessed last time with a referral from a fellow business owner.

Panic sets in and you begin to ask yourself, “Who do I know?” but you come up blank and start asking current employees who they know.  You find the three year old job description in the back of your desk drawer and post it on the fridge in the break room.

Great news! Your office manager’s brother in law might is between jobs (his unemployment is about to run out) and he sold knives and magazine subscriptions in college (12 years ago.)  You meet with him and spend 40 minutes talking about his last four jobs, his goal to make $100K next year, and the recent high school football game where his kid plays cornerback.  “It’s better than someone unknown,” you think.  You can train him! He’s a nice guy!

This, my friend, is the WRONG person for the job! And you know it.  You just don’t have the extra time, energy, and possibly money needed to find Mr. or Ms. Right.  In a nutshell, you’re doomed until you can stop, gather information and put together a plan.

So where do you start?  You need sage advice and possibly some help – but from where? An experienced business coach or business mentor can provide objectivity, a fresh perspective and possibly referrals to resources. Ideally, you need someone who specializes in RPO (recruitment, process, outsourcing.)  In the meantime, put together a list of key skills and behaviors required for the job, think about the ideal kind of person to fill it, and look over your budget to see what level of employee you can afford. This at least provides some guidelines and a starting point.  Hiring the wrong person even with the right intentions will usually come back to bite you.