Where Do You Find Good Qualified Staff?

If you drop your standards and hire “anyone with pulse” they’ll send you broke and ruin your health. If you hang out hoping the ideal staff member will turn up, you end up trying to do too much work, and you ruin your health.

So what is the answer? How do you find a steady supply of good, qualified people with whom to grow your business?

The answer is surprisingly simple.

In fact there are a series of answers, any one of which will work.

Here’s the first in a series, the short version of which is, “They are hiding amongst your Customers“.  The longer version follows:

2 Birds 1 Stone

1. Take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle to form two columns.
2. Head the left column “Attributes” (they’re the things your new staff member was either born with or had beaten into them by loving parents); head the right column “Skills, Experience, Qualifications” (they’re the things they’ve picked up along the way.
3. Starting with the most important items first, fill in your wishlist of attributes and skills for your ideal newest team member.
4. Shuffle your list around until you are satisfied with the order in which you have your items, then go down each column and mark the point at which you would take someone with all of the items above it and none of the ones below it.
5. Write a letter to a typical customer, describing your perfect new staff member candidate and ask them if they know of someone like this who is looking for an excellent business that is committed to providing only the best service to its customers.
6. Now distribute the letter to every past and present customer on your database.

What do you think will happen?

What will all of those people think of you and your business if you are THAT fussy about the staff you bring into it?

What might happen that you had not originally intended to happen?

What is this strategy likely to cost you?

Write down four good reasons not to do this.

Bottom Line

If you think the process outlined above is too elaborate for your business, please write the annual pay packet value of the person whom you are seeking, then multiply that by four (eg, $55,000 x 4 = $220,000).  The number you end up with is the cost to you of hiring the wrong person and taking a year to get rid of them.

On the other hand, put in the time and effort to get it right, and the right person could add that same number to your business value each year.

For more answers of this calibre, buy “Solving the People Puzzle” and get the lot!