Momentum Podcast: 355

Can I Hire A Friend Or Family Member?

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Can you hire a friend or family member? Yes! Put them through all the same testing and processes you normally would with any other applicant and if they qualify as the best person for the job, definitely hire them. 

I think working with friends and family is one of the biggest privileges we can have as entrepreneurs. If this is something you're considering here's my advice, no matter who the person is, go through the process because it's the most fair thing you can do for them. Be open and transparent to avoid challenges down the track.

Full Audio Transcript

Alex Charfen: One of the questions I get all the time when I go out and speak is, can I hire my friends or someone I know to work in my company? My answer always is, you absolutely can. But, follow a process so that you know you've made the right decision.

As entrepreneurs, one of the hardest things that we do is go out and build a team. We have to assemble a group of people that is going to get together and go out and make a massive contribution with us. And expand what we do, amplify what we do, make what we do even more powerful and more strong.

And if you're hearing some noise in the background, I'm actually on vacation, in Sedona with my family. My wife's at WholeFoods which is a normal stop for us on a vacation. So you might hear some cars, you might hear some other noises behind me but I wanted to make sure I got a podcast to you today, because this is a question that actually came up a couple of times this week while I was speaking for Russell Brunson, here in Arizona.

It's a question that i get often, can I hire my friends? Can I hire my family? Can I hire someone that I know? Heres how you can do that confidently. Is you should go through a full hiring process first. Now heres the reason why. Hiring friends, hiring family, hiring someone that just shows up, is one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face and one of the biggest causes of failure in hiring people.

Heres why. If you just hire the next person who shows up, or somebody that you know, or a friend or a family member without actually going through a hiring process of collecting the data in the company of who you need. Then, creating a good 4R document, role, responsibility, results and requirements for what you want in the role. Then, going out and gathering applicants and interviewing them and making sure that you have enough people that you can actually talk to and then going through a culture interview, then a one hour interview, then a field test, and then having three candidates that are sitting in front of you, that all three of them are so strong you would take any one of the three.

That is when you can hire a friend or a family member. Go through the process, and go through everything that I just mentioned and then, if one of those candidates is a friend or a family member and they win, hire them. But if you don't go through the process, heres the challenge you're going to face if you bring in somebody you know, or if you bring in somebody who you are related to, and you don't go through the process.

With 100 percent of people that work for you, or with you, you are going to go through a challenge in the first 90 days of employment. There's no time that you're not going to have some type of an issue, some type of a challenge, some type of frustration, with somebody that you bring into your company. Sooner or later, something is going to happen where you have frustration, or irritation, or you meet what you might think is an impasse, or something isn't happening how you want it to, and heres why you want to go through the process that I just mentioned. If you follow all the steps, and you qualify someone, by going through the interview process, and by going through the recruiting process, and then you decide, hey this is the best candidate, heres the most important result that you're going to get.

You will be committed to that person. You will believe in that person and you will know that you went through a hiring process and you brought in the right person. Here's the challenge, if you don't do this. When you inevitably hit that time, where you encounter challenge or frustration, or irritation, and things slow down for you, and you are wondering if you hired the right person, if you didn't follow a process, heres why its so unfair to your friend or family member to hire them without going through the full process.

You will immediately start to have doubts. Those doubts, will get exacerbated because you didn't go through a process. You will start to ask yourself questions like, did I do the right thing, did I hire the right person, should I have hired my brother, my sister, my friend, my friend from high school, my college roommate, whatever it is. And if you start having those doubts about that person, it is radically unfair to them in an employment situation, to have a CEO, to have someone that they report to, doubting them because there wasn't a process followed.

Now heres the other side of that coin. If you follow the process, and you go through the interviews and you go through the field test and you decide that they're the right person, when you hit that impasse, heres what will happen. You're going to think back and say, you know what, I went through a process. I interviewed enough people, I talked to enough candidates, I know this was the right decision and it will increase the level of commitment you have to the person that you want to hire.

So, heres my advise. If you want to hire a friend, if you want to hire a family member, go through the process because it is the most fair thing you can do for them. And you should let them know your going through the process so that they understand exactly what's going on. Be transparent with them and let them know you're comparing them against other candidates.

And if you happen to decide to go with someone else, go back to them and say, hey, I realized that it wasn't fair to bring you in, because once I interviewed people, I realized that this position needed a lot more then what I was going to be able to expect from you and I didn't want to put you in a position where the two of us would have challenges and we would have frustration.

And if that sounds harsh or mean or blunt or any of those things, I want you to think through this scenario. You don't go through the hiring process. You just bring in a friend or a family member and 90 days in or 35 days in, or 47 days in, you start wondering, should I have done this. And that wonder becomes doubt, that doubt becomes frustration, that frustration gets even worse, and then you have to fire them.

See, I want to save you from that outcome. I think working with friends and family members is one of the biggest privileges we can have, as entrepreneurs, because we are the only people in the world that play a game where we make up all the rules. So make it as fun as you possibly can for yourself. But go through a process, because its the most fair thing you can possibly do for the person that you're hiring.

If you're ready to start revamping your processes, growing your business, and exploding your numbers, we want to help you, not just hiring the right team, but in growing your business as far as a strategic planning system, a communications infrastructure, and bringing in the right people and the right processes so that you can grow fast.

If your ready too start growing your business, like crazy, go to billionairecode.com/apply. We have an application there that will teach you enough, teach you a ton about your business, just by going through the application process. And you will then be given a presentation about our billionaire code accelerator program that I do with a small private group, and you will see exactly how we're helping entrepreneurs grow businesses from six to seven figures, from seven to multiple seven figures, and from multiple sevens to eight figures and beyond. We can help you, too. Billionairecode.com/apply. And when it comes to hiring, make sure you go through the process, you will be confident in whoever you bring in to your company.

Thank You For Listening!

I am truly grateful that you have chosen to spend your time listening to me and my podcast.

Please feel free to reach out if you have a question or feedback via our Contact Us page.

Please leave me a review on iTunes and share my podcast with your friends and family.

With gratitude,

Alex

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