Hiring is Marketing - Commitment

Commitment
If you’ve been successful in determining whether your candidate has the skills that make a person of action by this point you’ve been though a lot already. And as you’ve noticed, you’ve learned a lot about these people already. Next you’ll want to determine what commitments they’ve made and kept in their life.

Commitment is an essential skill if you are looking for someone who can make an impact on your business and on your customers. Lets explore what commitment is for a moment so I can impress upon you how important this skill is.

Commitment is having a sound set of beliefs and faithfully adhering to them with ones actions or behaviors. Inquire about the commitments your interviewee has had in their life. For example, if you want to know about their feeling on self-improvement, ask questions that show how they have improved themselves or their actions. You can start by finding out what their commitment is to self-improvement. Ask questions such as the following:

1. How do you improve your skills?
2. What are some of the most important commitments you have made in your life?
3. How do these commitments effect your daily decisions?
4. What do you do in the community?
5. What are some of your passions? How do you pursue them?

As you can imagine, the answers you get to these types of questions will show a lot about the persons commitments or lack their of. Never the less, such answers will give you confidence in this person or not.

My point here is for you to develop questions to ask your interviewees that will reveal commitments made in their life so you can see the strength of their character.

Hiring is Marketing - Integrity

Integrity
You will be able to tell the integrity of most people by the way they describe the things they do or have done. As explored in those whose allegiance is to good they have experiences that have helped them develop more character; making them better candidates.

Inquire as to the character of the person you are interviewing. Ask what they would do in certain situation? Ask for examples where they have done such.

Ask questions to determine if they are flexible, positive and have a can-do attitude. Do they make excuses for mistakes made? Do they do a great job every time? And do they genuinely try not to make mistakes?

Do they, and how do they, ensure that they remember every detail of what they are supposed to do? One way to help your employees with this is to provide a detailed job description—a living document that can be added to by you and the employee.

Will they be part of the solution, not the problem? Are they a team worker and will they be on time ready to work every day? You need to let them know these things are required of them. And find out what their stand on gossip is! This is a no-no and must not be tolerated in any form.

As you can see, there is a lot to consider. The consequences are expensive if you make a wrong decision. Spend the time needed to develop documentation that you can give to your potential employees before they come in for an interview. This will help you get more qualified candidates.

The Top 10 Employee Essentials
1. Attitude of Gratitude 6. Ask Engaging Questions
2. Service 7. Build Value
3. Eye Contact 8. Schmooze
4. Communicate 9. Adopt a Positive Attitude
5. Be a Good Listener 10. Never Gossip About Others

Commitment is a byproduct of the person who has the right allegiance and shows integrity.

Hiring is Marketing - Allegiance

Allegiance
This is an intriguing topic, yet essential to your overall success and reputation. Without careful consideration you can open your business to devastating effects from an uncaring employee.

There are only four allegiances. They are:
• To self
• To others
• To evil and
• To good

Each of these four allegiances say a lot about the person you interview. Are they honest? Are they going to steal from you? Are they going to support the values of your business? Are they going to help attract new customers and build relationships with current customers? Are they an asset or a liability?

Are they open to learning or afraid of change? Are they a smooth talker or a character of record? Will they come to work in rain or shine or will they call in sick whenever they want to go to the lake? Will they run through wall for you to solve a problem a customer faces?

Questions we all wonder about and even worry about. Delve into the allegiances of your potential employees, you will never regret when you have chosen one who’s allegiance is to good over any of the others.


To Self
You need to expose those selfish people as quickly as possible. The first tactic is to weed them out before they come in for an interview. This is accomplished in the way you advertise the positions you have available.

Describe the person you want to attract in your ads and you will see a marked improvement in those who apply. Better yet, post on your website or attach to all resumes some basic criteria gleaned from this report. Talk about the values and goals of your business. Let it be known your standards and expectations and those who know they don’t adhere to your view of the best employee will not apply.

Things to look for is the person who has an allegiance to self:
• Are they a good listener? The person who isn’t a good listener will more than likely worry about making sure their point is made rather than one who listens to make sure they understand what is being said.
• Do they have convictions? A selfish person usually looks for consensus before they can make a decision. If you notice it you can easily make your decision. I recommend that you teach them a quick lesson on what you need in an employee and move on.
• Are they worried about what others think or say about them? Look for signs of self-consciousness and indecision. Note that everyone is self-conscious to some degree, but those who cannot make a decision without reassurance from others is not likely to be a fit.


To Others
You’ve seen this type of person, they worry more about pleasing their friends or looking good to the correct people than anything else. They won’t easily fit into an organization that is customer focused. In fact, they will detract from it. This type of person is focused on self and can’t easily step aside from their problems let alone help one of your customers solve theirs.

Things to look out for in the person who has an allegiance to others:
• Try to find out where their loyalties lie. This will help you discover what they may do in a given scenario.
• Find out what they do in their free time-on their vacations, on the weekends, at night, and at lunch. When you are hiring young singles this make it more difficult. You will have to train yourself to read between the lines.

What you want to look for are times when they do things for selfish reasons as compared to unselfish reasons. Do they ever volunteer? Do they do activities with family? Do they ever do things that they might not want to do but feel are important to do nevertheless? If they never do any of these things you might get the indications you need to see their allegiance.


To Evil
I won’t say much about this other than you may come across someone with such tendencies. You’ll have to teach yourself to read this type of person. They will show their allegiance.


To Good
Those people whose allegiance is to good will stand out. They will care about other people—a skill you want—someone who will be willing to help your customers and build relationships.

Their experience will involve working with others. They may be helping in the community or simply be willing to stay to get the job done when it is needed. Another good sign is volunteering. Whether when asked or using their initiative to seek volunteer opportunities this is a good candidate.

Things to look for in the person who has an allegiance to good:
• Someone who has had a lot of experience working in or with large groups of people. This may indicate that the person has been exposed to the needs of the group and has first hand knowledge in stepping up to fill a need.
• Willingness. This indicates that this person is open to changes and can go with the flow. If extra effort is need, here and there, they may be willing to step up and help carry the load.
• How are their communication skills? Reading, writing, speaking, listening and non-verbal communication all tell how they will be able to perform on the job. Look for candidates who are the best at as many of these as you can. These skills will prove invaluable in the end.

Stress on these skills should also be placed on all job descriptions, but much more than stating that they are needed. Give specific examples of how you expect them to hone their communication skills.

Let them know that you expect them to work on their reading, writing, speaking, listening and non-verbal communication skills by reading, writing, speaking, listening and practicing these skills. Then give them assignments and resources to accomplish this. If you don’t, they will know that you are only giving lip service to the subject.

Some questions you can ask to help determine the allegiance of your interviewee are:
1. How have you been a mentor towards someone else? Tell me what you did?
2. How often do you set goals? And how often do you review your goals?
3. Discuss the last book you read. What impact did it have on your life?
4. How have you worked on your speaking &/or presentation skills? Share a few examples of each.
5. Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond to get a job done.
6. What have you done to improve your leadership skills?
7. What was the last thing you wrote? Why did you write it?

Hiring is Marketing - Ingenuity

Ingenuity
Inventive or resourceful employees are worth their weight in gold. They are clever and imaginative and will work at a problem until they can solve it. Work is where this skill is needed at all times.

If your employees deal with your customers — every customer needs a problem solved — they need ingenuity. What happens when an employee doesn’t have this skill? You will most likely loose the customer. And lost customers will cost you your business. And loosing customers in this way is unacceptable.

Consider the following:
1. High Concept – The capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new.

2. High Touch – The ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch the quotidian [daily routine] in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

These are the skills of those with ingenuity. These are the skills you need your employees to have! These are the skills you really need to be looking for in an employee. You can teach an employee to do just about anything you need them to do, but, without, these skills it is useless….

Ask questions like the following to help find employees with ingenuity.
1. Share with me an example where you have used your abilities on the job to define a problem that you saw. And how did you solve it?
2. Tell me of a time where you challenged prevailing assumptions and asked hard questions to facilitate change.
3. Describe a time where you worked by yourself to accomplish a project—a project where you took full responsibility for its completion.
4. Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond to get a job done.
5. What was a major obstacle you faced at work that you were able to overcome in the past year?

Prize the employee with ingenuity, they provide the passion that keep customers coming back. Treat them as the #1 asset they are and they will rarely disappoint.


This text is taken from an upcoming report called Hiring is Marketing by Daniel C. Felsted. Send an email to request the full report. danielbbq@gmail.com

Hiring is Marketing - Initiative

Initiative
If you’ve ever hired an employee without initiative, you know that most of the money you paid that employee was wasted. You spent all too much time telling those employees what to do when they are doing nothing. “Why can’t they just do their job and be productive?” you say to yourself over and over again.

All too many employers underestimate the power initiative has in an average days work until they’ve gone through this scenario.

There are many reasons why employees don’t step up and do the work that is needed. The biggest, however, is that they have not been taught how to take the initiative and therefore can’t. If you want your employees to take initiative you’ll either have to teach it or hire those with it.

One way to overcome it in your current employees is to create a detailed job description, which lays out in clear details what is expected of them on an ongoing basis. I clearly remember my second job in high school. My boss told me that the most important thing to do was to never let the customers wait to pay. So I hovered by the cash register.

He never told me his second most important job function…. So, after two weeks, he wanted to fire me because I was just standing by the cash register. Even though I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was wrong. I didn’t know that I was supposed to use my initiative.

After we had a talk, another employee told me “Don’t just stand there, look busy. Sweep, dust, arrange, clean and/or organize.” Oh, then I got the big picture. I learned his system. It would have been much easier if he had it documented.

As you talk to potential employees, listen for instances where the interviewee showed his/her initiative. Ask questions that will bring this out.

Some examples are:
1. Tell me of a time when you used your initiative and worked independently to either create a plan or make something positive happen?
2. Discuss a situation where you have shown your ability to conceptualize an idea[s] and reorganize information into new patterns.
3. In your last job, what kind of things did you do when you were slow? What kind of things were you supposed to do?
4. When you see that something isn’t getting done, that is supposed to, what do you do?
5. Share with me a time where you went out of your way to complete a project because it needed to be done.

I’d suggest you also create/give a scenario and ask what they would do in that situation. The scenario that I like to build off is: "If you see the problem you have to see it fixed!" In fact, this should be the first line on all job descriptions! Leaving no question as to what the employee’s responsibilities are.

Initiative is the first skill to look for in a successful employee. All of the other skills that you might find important hinge on the initiative of a person.

How To Get Your Employees To Run Through Walls For You

Since I was 16 I have never been trained to do the job I was hired for! Since then every employer has relied on the training of a previous employer! Do you give your employees special training per your business’ needs and your unique customers?

My experience poses a fundamental flaw in the system of employee training. Inadequate training leads to excessive employee turnover and directly affects your customer base, which erodes your profits substantially.

Without effective screening, and selecting and daily coaching, training, mentoring and teaching you cannot reach the profits you wish you had, and, in fact, believe you should have.

Too many employers hire on the premise of “lack of noticeable weakness” instead of proven strengths! This report is designed to help you find the strengths your potential hires have and must have.


This report identifies the 7 characteristics possessed by a leader—you are looking for leaders in your hires aren’t you? Consider these characteristics as you interview. You will find that each section has a number of questions that will help you discover if your interviewee has these characteristics.

The potential employee that has the most of these characteristics will have the skills needed to make an impact on your business. The dirty little secret in corporate America is that they don’t have the depth of knowledge they need to move them forward and really grow their business*1.

Character Traits*2 To Look For In Potential Employee
1. Initiative
2. Ingenuity
3. Allegiance
4. Integrity
5. Commitment
6. Passion
7. Impact

Over the next couple of weeks I share my thoughts on each of these points. Do you see the power if each of these traits? What standards do you hire to?


*1 - Aneil Menon, IBM
*2 - Character Traits – take from Oliver DeMille keynote address at the 4th annual Thomas Jefferson Education

How to Get Someone Qualified Who Will Run Through Wall For You!

I've been working on Special Report #4 — Hiring Is Marketing: How to Get Someone Qualified Who Will Run Through Wall For You!

My objective are:
First, help you separate the exceptional potential employee from the average warm body.

Second, it should be used to let future potential employees to know of the standards and values of your company—what you expect, at a minimum, from your employees.

Third, it is designed to convince you that your employees are your #1 asset. If you wish to have great customer service you must start with who you hire and how you train them, on a daily basis, to become great employees and then great customer service providers.

Fourth, I wish to show how vital hiring is to the success your marketing plan.

Over the next several weeks I'll share my thoughts in their entirety. Remember:



“Your Employees Are Your #1 Asset!
What are you doing to make and keep them that way?”
—DCF

What do you consider the basic of your marketing plan?