Momentum Podcast: 345

Don't Make a Desperate Hiring Decision

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

All too often I speak to business owners who are trying to dig themselves out of a series of decisions that were made when times were tough. Tough times can cloud your judgment and cause you to make choices out of desperation. If you're an entrepreneur who is in a place of desperation for any reason this is a time to stop trying to use your intuition and lean on a solid foundation of processes and systems to get you where you need to go.

Full Audio Transcript

Alex Charfen: As entrepreneurs we can run into tough times. Life can conspire against us, our business can conspire against us. We can have challenges in our family, challenges with our health, challenges with what's going on with us. Sometimes we hit a point of desperation, but when you are desperate that is when you have to be most careful about who you're hiring.

One of the challenges when we get desperate as entrepreneurs is we want to do everything we can to fix the situation we're in. When we have a life challenge, a health challenge, a family crisis, whatever it is, we want to get out of that feeling as fast as we possibly can. We want to fix it. We want to move forward. We want to change something and we want to do it at a speed that gets us out of that feeling of constraint and back into momentum that makes us comfortable.

The challenge with that is that oftentimes when we're in a place of desperation we'll make decisions in a way that we normally wouldn't. We'll make decisions based on "intuition". We'll make decisions based on referrals or recommendation. One of those decisions, one of the types of decisions we need to be especially careful of, and this is for you if you're feeling any desperation in your business or any struggle or frustration, we have to be careful about hiring out of desperation.

I talked to an experienced business owner today, a company that we were going to work with and then we decided not to. The reason I made the decision not to was I spoke to one of the new executives in the business and I've actually spoken to him several times and each time I spoke to him he's made me more and more uncomfortable.

I don't want to get into details, but let's just say he lacks a certain sense of humility. The first time we ever sat down within five minutes he said something to me that was an alpha male I'm going to be one up on you, but it was rather insulting and really unnecessary. I thought to myself, "I've been around a long time," and when my gut tells me to do something I look at data, I look at metrics, I look at everything else and then I make the decision but I let my gut guide me. I let data tell me what to actually do.

When my gut tells me not to do something I let it make the decision because near 100% of the time in my life when I've been, when my gut said no and I've insisted on saying yes it's backfired on me. Every time I've talked to this person they made me uncomfortable so I decided not to move forward.

One of the challenges today when I talked to the owner of the company was I was told that the decision they made was made out of desperation. They've had some tough times, they've had some challenges, and they've been making hiring decisions out of desperation and bringing people into their company out of desperation. I don't know if this was one of those people, but here's what I can tell just by having talked to the person who owned the company, having talked to the people working in the business, having heard some of the stories of what's going on, is that they've made a lot of decisions out of desperation and not based on a process or a system or a structure.

If you're an entrepreneur who's in a place of desperation for any reason, if you're having a tough time with money, if you're having a tough time with your business, if you're having a hard time growing it, scaling it, and doing the right things, then that is a time where you have to stop trying to use your intuition, stop trying to use instinct, and lean on a solid foundational process and system to get you to where you need to go because altogether too often I talk to business owners who are trying to dig their way out of a series of decisions that they made when times were tough, when things weren't going their way, when they did feel desperate, when they did feel frustrated.

When we make a series of decisions in that place, when we make a series of decisions when we're stuck in that type of thinking, it becomes near impossible to make the right decision unless we follow a process, a structure, a system instead of following our gut or a referral or what somebody else tells us to do. When you're desperate in business that is a time to slow things down in making any decision. When you're desperate in business and it comes to hiring that is a time to use a clear process and to make sure that the hiring decision is hard.

See, when we're desperate, when we're frustrated, when things are not going our way, when we're in constraint, we want to do anything we can to get out of that feeling as fast as possible. Oftentimes what business owners will do is they will find something that looks good, they'll find a person that looks like they might work out or a person who looks like they check all the boxes and they'll rush and bring them in so that they can get themselves out of that feeling of desperation.

Here's the problem. If you're hiring without it being difficult, if you're hiring the first person that comes along, if you're hiring someone who just looks good, you are leaving your success up to chance. If you're in a desperate situation, if things aren't going well, if things aren't where you want them to be, that is the time to follow a clear process and structure like the one that we train our clients.

You build a solid description of who you want. You decide in advance what you're looking for because here's what happens. If you're desperate and you don't decide in advance what you're looking for, if someone shows up and they look good or decent or like they might workout chances are you'll hire them even if you don't know or even if you're not clear on exactly what you want, you'll convince yourself that they're going to solve your problem.

First, a solid description of what it is you're looking for so that when you meet that person you know.

Second, when you're going through the hiring process make sure you qualify and you go and you look at enough people that you can actually drive to the point where there are three solid candidates to choose from, not one, not two, but three solid candidates where you're struggling to pick one of the three, where you're having a hard time picking which one should actually move forward because they're all three that good.

Third, if you're having a tough time, if you're struggling, if you're challenged and you're in a hiring process, test every candidate you think of hiring. It doesn't matter if it's an executive position, an assistant, a designer, a writer, whatever it is, whoever you're bringing in to help you through that hard situation, have them, if it's an executive, have them come in and work with you for a day. Have them meet other people in your company. Get the opinion of the people around you. Have your team talk to them. Have them come in and talk to people like they would if they were an executive. If they're a designer have them design for you. If they're a writer have them write for you. Whatever the position is make certain that you have that person show you who they are and what they're capable of before you bring them in and especially when you feel desperate.

As entrepreneurs constraint will make us do things that we normally wouldn't do. Constraint will move us in a direction where we make decisions we normally wouldn't make, and rarely do decisions made out of desperation, without a process, work out well for people like us. In fact, those are the decisions that we tend to end up trying to undo, take apart, and try to move back in another direction.

If you're feeling any pressure in your business whatsoever, if you're in a place where you're desperate or frustrated or irritated or confused, that is the time where you need to slow down, use a process, and especially if you're hiring, make sure that you don't make desperate hiring decisions because rarely do they ever work out.

If you're ready to start growing your business and you're in a tough place, or your business is growing so fast that everything looks like an opportunity and you're ready to get clarity as to how to move forward, let us show you how to strategically plan forward so that everyone in your company knows where you're going, create a communication's cadence so that you can communicate to your entire team what your plan is and how you're going to move forward, and then build the infrastructure around you so you can grow your business fast.

If you're ready to scale faster than you ever thought possible go to billionairecode.com, fill out our short survey and we'll give you exactly where you are on the billionaire code, the nine levels that lead to entrepreneurial success. Let us show you where you are, what you should be focusing on now, and what you should be doing next to scale. If you're ready to you can setup a call with a member of my team. Go to billionairecode.com, fill out our survey and we look forward to talking to you.

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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