The Shocking Harsh Reality.

A working relationship is like any other relationship after all you are with this person for at least 40 hours per week, there are not many relationships where you spend so much time with another person. What would the impact be on you if you thought you were in the wrong job, in the wrong sporting team or in the wrong personal relationship?

Would you be less happy, less motivated and potentially less productive? Would your mind be elsewhere? Would you be looking for other job opportunities, other sports to play and other relationships to get into? Potentially yes!

This is called disengagement and it causes a drop in productivity, it damages team harmony and it increases internal conflict. Additionally clients are lost and finally there is a drop in your bank balance.

A recent survey conducted by the Gallup organisation looked at employee attitudes and the impact on business outcomes. They found that businesses where employees had high job satisfaction also had:

• 22% higher productivity, and
• 27% higher profits!

Do you want 27% higher profits?

Are your staff working against you?

Steven Covey Author of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The Leadership Principle and The Eighth Habit suggests that out of every 11 employees only 2 are actively building your business and moving you towards your goals. This is the shocking harsh reality that business owner’s often don’t believe or ignore. According to Chet Holmes leading business author 96 percent of companies fail within ten years and so ignorance might be bliss but it’s not good for the bank balance.

How to hire staff who actually want the job you are offering!

Organizations must always be on the lookout for talent, and have successful recruiting and hiring strategies in place to stay ahead of the game. DoubleStar (2002) states that great hiring begins and ends with great hiring practices, and well-trained recruiters.

I have found that many managers and those asked to recruit employees, do not know what to ask, and what is a really an effective way to organise the recruitment process.

The highest risk recruitment process is to vet the resume and then invite the applicant in for an interview.

This recruitment methodology gives the confident charming and most attractive candidate a great advantage but doesn’t assist you to really find out if they are truly competent, committed and compatible.

 

Your recruitment process should be:

1. Systematic
2. Simple
3. Effective
4. Stress free
5. Objective 

Growing profits is about selecting the right people to assist you in your business.

“If you pick the right people, give them the opportunity to spread their wings, and put compensation as a carrier behind it, you almost don’t have to manage them”.

Jack Welch

CEO of General Electric 1981 and 2001

 

1. DoubleStar, Inc. (2002). Great Recruiting Practices—not the Web—Make Great

2. Recruiting.Retrieved on March 11, 2007, from DoubleStar Web site:

 

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign.

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

And there is an epidemic of lame and lazy people who think your business would be a great place to tread water whilst they plan their next holiday or party.

The Toxic Taker Employee’s always have some sort of trauma occurring to them, they are victims of circumstance. When you hear someone talk about the “issues” in their life then you can guarantee they will create similar issues in your business. These people are comfortable in a world of drama, problems, and crisis all wrapped up in negative language.

They attract drama, they see issues everywhere and they create trauma – Don’t Hire Them!

The Toxic Taker Employee’s always have an excuse why something doesn’t work out the way it should do, rather than an example of how they made something work.

Ask your future employee this question “What results have you achieved in your life?” If they sit there with a stunned look on their face searching their brain ….then you know you have discovered a toxic taker.  Some candidates will drag out a “let’s give it a go result” and see if the interviewer is impressed, for example “I finished year 12” or “I got an award for being employee of the month three years ago”.

But let’s be honest Australia is not exactly war torn. To go to school and do what the teacher tells you to do is hardly ground breaking. To be awarded employee of the month once in the last three years reveals a track record of obscurity and the award probably occurred because you were the next in line for the obligatory recognition.

These are real results!

Case One: I hired a receptionist / leasing manager for a company who was 21 she had spent the last three years looking after a leading clothing shop and had successfully managed 22 teenagers including managing their roster, training then and disciplining them.

Case Two: I hired a young lady for a shopping centre manager position. The young lady had raised her brothers and sisters whilst looking after her parents who were terminally ill. She was currently also completing a masters degree in business administration.

These are star employees and they make good businesses great.

The Toxic Taker always use language like that’s not my job, or that can’t be done, or she / he is away and they are the only people who can deal with it. Their language reeks of laziness, and a can’t be damned attitude. It is this type of stinking thinking that meets you at the reception in many businesses or seems to be the required DNA for some, not all, public “servants”.

So how do we reveal the Toxic Taker in this situation? Ask them what issues occurred regularly in their past jobs and how did they resolved them. If they moved the client on RATHER than resolved the issue so that the client was pleased with the result, then once again you have uncovered a Toxic Taker. My advice is to put them back where you found them.

It is every employee’s obligation to ensure that the customer walks away pleased with the interaction and the result.

“Achieving customer satisfaction would be impossible without a well defined process for focusing the entire organisation on the customer”

Robert Schrandt

Vice President customer Relations

Toyota Motor

Sales USA

The Toxic Taker Employee’s always focus on the process and not the end result. When you go into business you have a vision in your mind of how you want the business to look and how it will improve the quality of your life. Toxic Takers see all the hard work and talk about what has to be done to achieve the goal rather than focus on the goal and what benefits the goal will bring.

Here is how to spot the Taker. At an interview talk about some of your goals and aspirations for your business and ask the candidate what they think. If the candidate mainly focuses on the hurdles you will have to overcome and can see the difficulties, you have a taker.

You are looking for someone who is inspired by your vision and has been in a similar situation before. They need to have been in a team that has had to overcome all sorts of hurdles to achieve something significant.

You want the employee who:

• Loves to achieve
• Has lots of clear goals and is driven.
• They smile when they talk about their goals.
• They understand that there are always hurdles but they love to master the situation.
• Speaks with energy
• Talks with passion about things
• Makes you think “I might have to lift my game to keep up with them”.

After many years of selecting people for companies I would categorically say that there is one star employee in every thirty applicants. Too often businesses over look the clear signs of the Toxic Taker because they are desperate and think it will be alright or “I will be able to train them to do things my way”, get realistic or just get real.

Australian HR Institute suggests:

52% of Managers experienced the greatest difficulty in managing poorly performing staff effectively

“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.”

Oprah Winfrey

Don’t be fooled you can’t retrain personalities when you are a busy business owner and nor should you have too. Find and hire great staff, and let toxic takers and Tyre kickers move on to their next drama, issue or trauma.

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign.

 

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

And Who Benefits From The Practice.

I whole heartedly agree that we should not discriminate against anyone based on race religion culture gender political persuasion sexual persuasion age physical and intellectual ability, however we all do. Like it or not if you make any decision you are potentially subtly discriminating.

Firstly I must state that it appears that the people who most often are up in arms about discrimination are those people who have never run a successful business. The complainers seem to rarely come from the ranks of those who are business owners where the wrong hiring decision could have a catastrophic impact on their cash flow and the ability to keep their staff gainfully employed. 

Example

A business owner needing to have someone to work four hours a day can-not discriminate against applicants who live 50 kilometers away over and above applicants who live 10 kilometers away, even though they have enough employee data revealing the further an employee travels to work the shorter the retention period.

I believe that in this case the decision should be made on the business need and that is to do whatever they know will obtain the best result to assist their enterprise to safely and ethically prosper.

Decisions should be based on sound data

This is a business decision based on sound data and the knowledge that candidates who live further away are retained for far shorter periods. When employees are not retained this leads to increased recruitment costs, training costs, and administration costs. The business may also loose customer loyalty and clients because there is a constant change of staff. Most people have their favorite doctor or dentist, how would you feel if every time you went to the doctors or the dentist if you had a different practitioner? Inherently people don’t like or distrust change.

I am not advocating going back to the days where for example certain races could not go into bars and cafés, society’s values have changed and thank God and all the political activists for this. However I am advocating that business owners should be able to feel comfortable to make decisions that will grow their business without a public servant or a candidate with a chip on their shoulder being able to cry discrimination and put them under increasing stress.

Let’s face it

Without the business owner nothing gets sold, no one gets paid and there are no taxes to harvest to pay the administrators. In really simple terms the business owner drives the economy and they are under increasing pressure and stress just to survive and employ staff.

Let’s get real

Every decision could potentially be described as a discriminatory decision. However if the decision is based on sound business data then why can’t a business owner be able to be more explicit in what they want? For example “Looking for part time staff would prefer to hire someone local”. What is wrong with this? This sentence tells all the applicants what the business owner’s preference is and allows candidates who live a long way away from wasting their time applying for the position. 

Currently business owners can-not be really honest why someone didn’t obtain a job. They can-not honestly say an applicant lives too far away or they prefer to employ mature aged older people because they have a reputation for being more loyal. This inability to be able to make open business decisions means candidates waste their time applying for positions they are not going to obtain. It also ensures candidates do not get to know the true reasons why they didn’t obtain the position, so they repeat the activity time and time again and it creates a society that relies on covert discrimination and subtle dishonesty when making hiring decisions.

My recommendations for business owners

Know exactly the type of person you want. Have a profiling methodology that indentifies exactly what will work for you based on sound business data. This has to be the very first thing you do before you hire anyone. Then and only then be subtle about attracting and selecting the perfect candidate, but ensure you hire the perfect candidate to grow your business. Do not hire someone who you are obliged to hire because a public servant who has absolutely no idea how to run a business thinks they know how you should staff your enterprise.     

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this:

To decide what you want.”

Ben Stein

 

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign.

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

 

 And how to reveal the truth from even the most charming candidates.

In a recent interview with a managerial consultant who was on a working visa I asked why she wanted to stay in Australia and in particular Western Australia. She said “Perth is safe and she wanted her piece of land and four walls, it was time to settle down, Perth is the perfect place to do this”.

That’s a reasonable response and this lady had been a top business consultant working in some of the best consultancy firms in Australia, so she should be reasonably in touch with her own wants and needs.

However

At 24 she had not stayed in any particular location for more than six months.

Additionally when asked about the potential for her to stay and become a permanent resident in Australia she used the words “I am sure……………”

The lessons here

A person’s track record of behavior is a very good predictor of future behaviour and an area where you need to ask probing questions.

The words “I am sure……………” do not indicate she has actually done anything to secure a permanent resident visa. Her words indicate that she has not moved towards what she says she wants and that is to settle in Perth, Western Australia.

This is a red flag

What we wanted to know at this point was if this candidate was sincere and truly wanted to stay in Perth.

The issue of being committed to obtaining permanent residency and being sure you can obtain it was one of the critical issues in the interview. The best technique to uncover the truth is ask a correlated question, which is a questioning technique that subtly leads you to the answer.

The first question was “Why Perth over and above all the other cities in Australia?’ You are looking for the candidate to have at least five really good and valid reasons here. If they don’t then this would suggest they haven’t reflected enough about staying in Perth and it is more a wish than a mission.

The second question was “What have you done to obtain your permanent residency?” She had in fact done nothing to apply for her permanent residency or to find out how to obtain it, even though she had been in Perth long enough to decide that it was the city she was going to settle in.

The third question was “What would you do if you couldn’t obtain your permanent residency visa?” Her answer was “I would have to go home but at least I would have been able to work with you for three months and help you out”.

We made it really clear that we were not looking for someone to work for three months and then leave and it was at this point the candidate actually flinched. This is because most candidates can-not avoid subtly physically revealing when their true desires are squashed. 

                                              “90 % of all communication is subconscious”

                                                                       Patricia Durovy

                                             American Society for Training and Development                                       

The Facts

The candidate had not taken any action to obtain the permanent resident visa they suggested they wanted.

The sentence “I would have to go home but at least I would have been able to work with you for three months and help you out” doesn’t indicate any remorse for not being able to stay. It doesn’t indicate any belief and commitment to the suggested goal and that is to stay in Australia. The sentence reveals what is often the truth, the key want “I would have been able to work with you for three months”.

Lastly when you articulate what I call a reflection statement, a statement to make the candidate crystal clear about something you actually physically see the candidate realise that their story is not going to be brought by the interviewers. 

The candidate wasn’t offered the position and I later rang her to find out if we had been correct in our assumptions about her only wanting three months of work, and we were.

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”

                                                                    Winston Churchill

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign!

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

 

Interviewing lessons all managers with a strong ego should read.

I recently attended an interview where I cringed at the behaviour of one of the people on the interviewing panel, they were egotistical arrogant patronising and hedonistic. It was one of the most uncomfortable interview experiences I have ever had. But all experiences are learning lessons and I would like to share this lesson with you.

Normally on one of my panels each of the interviewers have a task to undertake for example a task for one of the panel members may be asked questions to ensure there is a cultural and behavioural fit. All of the questions are constructed and evaluated prior to the interview so there is an interview format to follow.

On this occasion the company accountant wished to sit in on the panel and observe the proceedings. Not long into the interview the accountant wanted to ask some questions and he started with “Deep breath, stay calm”, “I am going to ask you a few questions, you need to be truthful because I will know if you are lying to me”. Personally I believe this to be rude arrogant egotistical and patronising, and if he had said this to me I may well have terminated the interview. It is critical to remember that an interview is a two way street, candidates are also evaluating you and you should be respectful to every candidate.

The accountant continued with questions like “if you hadn’t been trained in this procedure what would you do?” This was the start of a barrage of hypothetical questions that made the candidate start to consider what training the company actually provided.

Very important lesson

Using hypothetical questions to base your decisions upon is very risky. Hypothetical questions give you hypothetical answers, there is absolutely no real evidence here to indicate that what the candidate says they will actually do in the future, it just gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling. For example if the candidate said something that you are looking for like, “in three years time I see myself working for you but in a managerial role”. That’s great, you feel warm and fuzzy but there is a very high chance you have just been had. This type of answer is often said by seasoned employees who are savvy and sophisticated in the art of manipulative conversation.

Try asking hypothetical questions to a politician or a hardened criminal. I am sure they will give you very convincing answers, but will they be honest answers? Probably not! Will they be insightful answers? Probably not1 Here’s the kicker as they say, how many of us believed the current Australian Labor government when they promised to do something about Japan illegally whaling in Australian waters? A fair number I would suggest, and what has actually been done?

How many parole boards around the world have released prisoners who said all the right things and then reoffended a short time later? Hypothetical questions give you hypothetical answers

Back to the accountant

After the barrage of hypothetical questions that were punctuated with “Deep breath, stay calm”, he then proceeded to give the candidate lessons in personal perception. For example “How many people do you think work in this business unit. The candidate didn’t know and their answer then lead to the accountant’s lesson on personal perception. Trying to teach candidates lessons in perception or any other lesson is arrogant, egotistical, grandstanding and showmanship.

When the candidate asked some questions, the accountant responded with answers that were vague and wishy washy. For example “what training will I be given” asked the candidate and  the response was “We give you social, psychological, life skills training” Giving evasive explanations and not fully clarifying and ensuring the candidate understands the answer indicates an interviewer who is totally self absorbed with their own needs..

At this point I wanted to freeze frame the interview, take the accountant to the closest window and drop him. But it was too late this candidate was already disengaged and ready to go.

The general purpose of an interview is

1. To ensure the candidate has fully reflected and understood the position they have applied for

2. To ensure the candidate has the technical skills you require

3. To ensure the candidate has the behavioural skills you require

4. To ensure the candidate has the experience you require

5. To ensure the risks in hiring this individual have been fully examined

6. To ensure they will fit in with your business culture and strive for your vision

The Lessons Are:

Lesson One: Plan your interviews, select your panel wisely and construct a template of questions for panel members to follow or to use to construct useful probing questions. 

Lesson Two: Past behaviour will nine times out of ten predict future behaviour and so the questions should be what DID you do in this situation, not what WOULD you do in this situation.

Lesson Two: The objective of any interview is to find enough evidence (BASED ON THEIR PREVIOUS PERFORMANCE) to predict future performance.

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign!

 

 

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

 

And how takers cripple your business

Robert Kennedy a former president of America once said: 

“Ask not what the country can do for you but what you can do for your country”.  

The reason why this is an important quote is because there are many candidates looking for work who think purely about their own needs. They are selfishly absorbed in what they want in everything they do. Their whole mindset is “what’s in it for me” and this doesn’t change when they are employed by you.

To get takers to strive for reasonable performance you have to worry and stress over incentives and bonuses. With some of your business procedures takers have to be repeatedly told what to do because they are not thinking about your needs and building your business, they are obsessed with what’s in it for them. But why should you put up with this? It is certainly not making you happy, profitable and wealthy.

What do I mean by a taker?

Takers:

• Work to time not to the achievement of outcomes.
• Need more and more incentives and bonuses to be productive.
• Do not see and share your vision although told on a number of times.
• Have to be asked to do things more than once.
• Do not follow procedures that are the basic requirements of the job even when told.
• Seek security rather than rewards based performance.
• Are not flexible.
• Do not understand that some days and weeks much more work is needed than others to ensure the company achieves its goals.
• Are not willing to go the extra mile unless rewards are offered first.
• Take their sick leave even when they are not sick.
• Take sick leave after the weekend or on your busiest days.
• Are always looking for ways to get other people to do things for them.
• Are always looking for ways to get other people to pay for them.

Takers would certainly not embrace the thought “Ask not what the company can do for you but what you can do for your company”. If you said this to them I am sure you would get a “why should I” response.

It is critical to spot the “Why should I” brigade before you invite them into your company and this is how you do it.

Look and Listen to the language and actions of all the candidates in what they write in the selection criteria and the way they talk in a phone screen.

Takers will say:

• “I have done this and rarely talk about “we” the team achieved this”
• “I am looking for at least xxx thousand to undertake this role”.
• “I want”

Takers are not good team players they are not about the benefit of others just about themselves. Givers however will talk about we and will be willing keen and eager to work on a trial basis to prove themselves. Givers are far happier and enthusiastic which attracts staff and customers to want to work and do business with them. Givers are profitable personnel. Takers provide the bare minimum performance and show no loyalty to anyone but themselves, frequently talking about their needs above all else.

“Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness — great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.” 

                                                                         Jim Rohn

                                                         Writer lecturer and speaker.

 A highly profitable and unified team achieve results that are far larger than the sum of the results achieved by the individuals because they create synergy.

Therefore 1+1+1+1 can =10

When you have a team of givers you see:

• Tasks are not just undertaken, but they are undertaken happily.
• The tasks are undertaken more quickly
• The team members start discus non-work related topics.
• The standard of workmanship is higher
• More creative ideas are generated.
• Colleagues can instruct / delegate /allocate work to employees in your chain of command without it causing you inconvenience and offence.
• The team undertakes tasks more energetically and with “fun”.
• Laughter becomes more frequent along with “making fun of each other”
• The team member’s start asking each other’s opinions on matters out of each other’s area of expertise (i.e. a miner asking a geologist about a mining  type issue)
• The level of trust built up in the relationship, collaboration and reliance steadily grows.
•  When disagreements occur, they do not become “personal attacks” and the disagreement does not produce hard feelings.
• The team members begin spending some of their spare time together away from work (e.g. fishing, sports, drinking)  

                                         “No tree has branches that fight amongst themselves”

                                                                      Indian Proverb

Four Very Important Learning Lessons

Lesson One: Have selection criteria where the applicant has to write sentences and you can pick up on the “I did” language.

Lesson Two: Have a phone conversation with the candidate and ask them:

• How they ensured they got on with their team members?
• What results did this team achieve?
• Can I talk to the business owner or your immediate manager to find out more about your team working skills?
• What do you hope to achieve for this company?

Takers will struggle to find good answers for these types of questions particularly because they were probably not liked by their team or their boss.

Lesson Three: Listen to their language in the interview.  If you asked them, what salary package they are looking for and they say well I am worth this, or I would not start for anything less than X, then be very careful. All highly profitable personnel really want the positions they applied for and would do anything to prove their worth before requesting a high salary.

Lesson Four: If you have got one of these people in your work place I can guarantee you and your team are not as profitable and productive as they could be.

“Ask not what the company must pay for you, but prove what you can do for your company and great rewards will follow, for both you and the business” 

 Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign!

 

 

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

 

Especially when there is an attractive woman involved.

This year I worked on the classic recruitment campaign where the male business owner made one of the biggest recruitment mistakes that can be made. It cost him a lot of time and money. It was all because he didn’t follow some basic recruitment rules and in short his ego, ignorance and his appendage took over.

Personally I don’t sell people into positions they must prove they are competent, committed and compatible for the role before I take them to an interview. Additionally they must also prove to me that they fully understand the role they have applied for. They must also show me they have reflected sufficiently enough to really understand the role entails and how their personal career goals fit with the business goals.

Now you might say “Don’t most people know what they are applying for?”

No they don’t, they pepper the market place with their resumes on the whim that the position might be suitable. Most people apply for a position based on the advertisement not on any additional information they have requested from the company about the role.

“People seldom do what they believe in.

They do what is convenient then repent”.

Bob Dylan

 Songwriter

The classic story 

The position that was being recruited for was a sales manager role. One of the resumes received was from a lady who had been an international model for eight years and had been a successful sales manager promoting various alcoholic brands.

In the first two steps of my selection process I get applicants to fill out a selection criteria to prove to me they are committed to the role and that they have started to reflect about the job they have applied for. The second step is that I have the applicant undertake an on line suitability assessment, and then and only then if they meet the requirements I pick up the phone and talk to them.

In this role one of the main duties was analysing online marketing processes and so the sales person was going to have to be conversant, comfortable and committed to this type of activity. Previously the candidate had been promoting alcohol brands and modeling. Analysing online marketing procedures is a million miles away from strutting the cat walk or walking into a liquor outlet to increase the purchasing of an alcoholic beverage.

So I asked the candidate about their interest in the internet and the process that they would use to analysis an online sales procedure. The purpose of this was to ensure that they really understood the position they had applied for. They didn’t need to be conversant with the technicalities of the online sales process, but just be committed to this type of sales and have the analytical skills to improve a basic online sales process.

After this type of conversation I ask the candidate to reflect if this is really the role that they are looking for. Several days later this candidate admitted that this wasn’t really the role that she was looking for and pulled out of the running for the position.

On hearing that this candidate had pulled out of the running for this position the business owner who had seen the applicant’s photo and resume picked up the phone and asked the candidate to have coffee with him to talk over the role. The candidate had coffee with the business owner and I received a scathing letter for from the entrepreneur for “putting off a good candidate”.

Remember: “What the eye admires the heart desires”.

The business owner sold the job to the candidate over a cup of coffee and invited her to a formal interview. At the formal interview I brought another candidate who had been the number one sales person for yellow pages on line advertising in Australia.

Guess what? This business owner awarded the position to the candidate who he had taken to coffee, and I let a really successful on line sales person go to find another job.

Then guess what happened next? 

The candidate who was chosen for the role went on holiday for three weeks and on her return she decided the role wasn’t really suitable for her.

The result was that the business owner had lost a brilliant highly competent, committed, compatible, and suitable candidate, the number one sales person for yellow pages on line advertising in Australia.

“The average man’s judgment is so poor he runs a risk every time he uses it”. 

Edgar Watson Howe

He had interfered with a well defined process that has been designed to ensure that the candidate fully reflects about the position they are applying for.

The business owner also lost valuable time and money spent on the campaign. I resolved never to work with entrepreneurs who do not fully understand the need to follow a selection process. Especially a selection process that has a history of finding companies “Business builders” and really talented and committed employees who are in it for the long haul.

Very important lessons:

Lesson One: Do not base your opinions of a candidate purely on their photo (Looks) and their resume.

Lesson Two: Ensure candidates thoroughly reflect on the role they are applying for.

Lesson Three: Do not sell a position to a candidate until you have seen all the other applicants and investigated all the data that has been collected on them.

Lesson Four: Don’t interfere with a professional process it is like waking from a knee operation to correct the surgeon.

 

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,

 but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”

Winston Churchill

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign!

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

And how to attract the right people the first time round.

I agree with Donald Trump’s views on hiring and firing staff because running a business is challenging enough, the last thing you need is lame and lazy staff who think they are doing you a favour by turning up. I have always been of the view that if you want to achieve great things you need to surround yourself with the very best people and expect high standards from all of your team.

“It is a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.”

W. Somerset Maugham

So what makes Donald Trump want to sack someone?

“When an employee told me, “I think it’s good enough” in reference to an unfinished project, I fired him. Good enough?” ………..”I want people who want more than good enough. I want employees who want great and will go the extra mile for the very best. I don’t want to have to tell them, I want them to do it on their own” says Donald Trump. (1)

How Donald attracts the right people

“Management becomes much easier if you are careful when choosing your employees and partners” (2) “Set the example and you will be a magnet for the right people. That’s the best way to work with people you like” (3) says Donald Trump.

When referring to successful candidates in his series The Apprentice Donald says “The key to success was experience, not education. Experience comes from action or doing, and entails taking risks. Knowledge is essential, but knowledge alone isn’t enough. You must act on your knowledge, put it to work, because doing is how you learn and ultimately prove yourself” (4)

How Donald deals with the wrong people

Step One: “Don’t ignore employee performance problems. The sooner you can talk with the employee, the more likely you can get him or her back on track. Getting great work from employees is a sign of a strong leader”.

Step Two: “See if an underperforming employee could improve with additional training, equipment, or switching tasks”.

Step Three: “Since firings can be emotional, it often helps to discuss the situation with an objective advisor before you actually dismiss an employee”

Step Four: “If you believe improvement is possible, meet with the employee, and give him or her a fixed period to deliver measurable results. Be clear about your requirements and state exactly what you expect, and specify that if what you need is not satisfactorily provided, he or she will be fired. Then follow through”. (5)

Trump, D (2007) “Trump 101 The Way to Success” John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey  p83

Trump, D (2007) “Trump 101 The Way to Success” John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey  p71

Trump, D (2007) “Trump 101 The Way to Success” John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey  p73

Trump, D (2007) “Trump 101 The Way to Success” John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey  p37

Trump, D (2007) “Trump 101 The Way to Success” John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey  p35

 

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign!

 

 

David Osborne

www.profitablepersonnel.com

 

www.profitablepersonnel.com

 

 

 

And how some employers are paying the price of being too lazy.

One of the most common questions asked by business owners is “How do I motivate my staff?” There are two reasons why you do not have motivated staff and they are you either hired staff that lack motivation or YOU disengaged them (made them unmotivated).

This article will give you four rules to ensure you hire a motivated staff member.

Firstly a person’s past behaviour will be a great indicator of their future behaviour. In fact behavioural scientists believe 88% of anyone’s behaviour is locked in place by the time they are 20.

So here are the golden rules for selecting motivated employees.

Rule One: When someone applies for your vacant position you tell them who you want to contact for their reference. Do not be lead by the candidate to contacting someone who is their friend, associate or fan. Remember they are marketing to you, so you need to cut through the smoke and mirrors and get some real facts.

Rule Two: Only contact references of someone who owned the business or managed the business, the candidate worked in, anyone else is not in a position to reliably give you feedback on the candidate’s workplace behaviour.

Rule Three: When you ring a reference you must ask precise behavioural questions and the one you want to use is: Did this employee consistently show they were motivated to achieve their daily goals? The word consistently is vital because you need to emphasise that you are looking for an answer based on a behaviour that is seen every day, not a behaviour that comes and goes like the seasons.

Rule Four: You must ring three reliable references, because time and time again, the third reference will reveal something that you really needed to know about the candidate. Three references are far more reliable than two and I my experience a real behavioural trend is only confirmed when you have rung three highly valid contacts.

You might ask, “But what about someone who is new to the workplace?” New employees will still have shown a track record or behaviour in the places they have undertaken work experience, in their studies, in their sport or in the other groups that they socialised in. It is perfectly fine to ask a sports coach or lecturer for a reference.  

Anything less is negligent

When investing in a new staff member you are investing in a relationship. If you do anything less than follow these four golden rules, in my experience, you are either lazy or being negligent. Picking up the phone to ask precise behavioural questions will save you all the emotional pain and energy of having to deal with unmotivated employees, unless of course you are the cause of their disengagement. 

Committed to hiring the right person the first time round and recovering all the costs of the campaign! 

www.profitablepersonnel.com