033: Important Hiring Lessons For Small Businesses
Dec 07, 2023Episode 33
Shannon Stone
Hiring support in your business is equally the best and possibly scariest step forward for business owners - and when you’re hiring there are a couple of key areas that will set you up for success.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
Why you shouldn't hire purely on trust or recommendation and what to focus on instead
Hiring support in your business is equally the best and possibly scariest step forward for business owners - and when you’re hiring there are a couple of key areas that will set you up for success.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
Why you shouldn't hire purely on trust or recommendation and what to focus on instead
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
Shannon Stone:
H ey guys. Welcome to the podcast. Super excited to jump into this episode today.
Shannon Stone:
Today we are talking about important hiring lessons for small businesses. So whether you have team members at the moment or you are planning on hiring in the near future, or whatever that kind of looks like for you, even if you're using subcontractors, virtual assistants or employees, all of this is really relevant and they're quite timeless lessons as well. Now, I call them lessons, but like any good lesson, it's built, it's being built on the pathway of things going wrong, so I think often they are the greatest lessons or the greatest parts of wisdom to share with people, and I think this is a great one that is going to really help people when it comes to hiring team members. So let's jump straight in. So the first one is hiring based on trust or recommendation, not on tasks. So the mistake and we can put mistakes in inverted commas, but the mistake here that people often make around their hiring is hiring based on just purely trust and recommendation. So a lot often small business owners will talk amongst each other that they're looking for this type of person, even if you are advertising for a particular role, but going based on trust or recommendation alone, rather than what are the tasks that actually need doing and finding the person who is capable of doing those tasks and they're two different things. You obviously want both. You want someone who is capable of doing the task and the role or the project that you're working on, that you're hiring for, and you also do want that trust as well. But quite often people will hire just based on the trust and the recommendation from other people, which can be a big stumbling block and a lot of things can go downhill from there if that person doesn't know how to do the task in that business. And this is very personalized to you and your business and your ability to train people and how much time you have available to train them. Again, depending on what the hire is, depending on what the task is.
Shannon Stone:
But hiring based on trust and recommendation alone is a recipe I don't want to say a recipe for disaster, because it sounds so catastrophic, but it kind of it can be. Honestly, it can really be quite a recipe for disaster when you you're not hiring based on the task that you need done in your business. So that is number one for people to really keep in mind. It's something that it's a great lesson being built on the stumbling blocks of many, I guess, mistakes. But hiring based on tasks is where we really need to focus our attention versus just hiring based on trust and recommendation alone. So that is number one.
Shannon Stone:
Number two this is one that a few people have asked me recently and I just see it all the time it's making someone fit into your business rather than looking at what does your business need and fitting that person into those business needs. So it's like trying to fit a triangle into a square hole. It's just not going to work and if it does, it's going to be pretty damaged by the time it gets through. So if you have someone in your business at the moment and maybe they've just got you're committed to giving them a certain number of hours, whether they're a employee, a contractor, a virtual assistant. You've hired them based on a project or retain a type thing, whatever the situation is.
Shannon Stone:
But if you've got someone who is available to you and you're just trying to think of, oh, what are some things I can give to that person to keep them busy because I'm paying them either way, it's just the wrong way to look at it. The best way to look at it is what is it that my business actually needs? What are the goals of my business? What are the requirements of my business? What's the direction my business is going in? So, looking at that in isolation, without looking at all the people surrounding you, the team members or whatever that might be, look at your business and the direction and the goals it's heading in. What are your requirements, what are your capacity? And then, based on all of that, who is it that you actually need to support you on that mission, on that direction that you're going? And if the people that you've got around you are able to work into that, then amazing. But don't try to do it the other way around, because I think this is when we can be. It's not to say you're going to get rid of the person, but we're almost capping the potential of what that person can help us with because we're looking at it the wrong way.
Shannon Stone:
So look at what is it that your business needs and then see if that person can fit your business needs, not the other way around. And I think that way you can accomplish so much more in your business and I think it also creates a lot of certainty for that team member as well and a lot of relationship with the goals and the drive of your business that they are contributing to that. You haven't just kind of plucked something out of out of thin air just to keep them busy. Because people know people know if you're just flicking them things that are, you know, not really required and you're just doing it to keep them busy and that's going to affect anyone's morale, that's going to affect anyone's productivity or the way they approach a task, I think you probably hire really good humans, whether they are employees or contractors or whoever it might be, wherever in the world that they are, and I think most people have that positive mission, where they want to support you to achieve your goals, and that you're not just flicking them something to keep them busy. So point number two here is to make sure that you are working out what your business needs are and you're using the support the team around you to support you with that, doing it the right way around. Okay, that is lesson number two, and lesson number three Our final one, for today, is vetting someone's initiative and resourcefulness.
Shannon Stone:
So, of any of the people that I've personally hired or my clients have hired in their businesses, initiative and resourcefulness have to be the top qualities that I see in the best team members in the A players. So if you don't know initiative and resourcefulness, it's having that drive to figure things out before they come to you. Do people come to you, as the business owner, with solutions or are they coming to you with questions? And that's a really Easy way to tell someone's initiative and resourcefulness and you know you can definitely train these things, but it's something to be aware of. And If you do have someone in your business and they're always coming to you with questions, a great system to integrate into the business on a team level is this very thing. I need you to make sure, before you ask me any questions, you've gone looking for the answers first yourself, and if you can't find the answers, maybe after three times you know three researchers or Talking to three people picking up the phone, whatever it might be. Maybe they've got three instances to figure out the solution without you and then they can come to you asking questions or they come to you with the final solution.
Shannon Stone:
So vetting someone's initiative and resourcefulness is an imperative Skill for anyone to have, but particularly for your team, because most small businesses will hire a team member to alleviate their workload, to alleviate the time that they're spending in the business Wearing all the hats and doing everything they're having to do, and so, having a team member even feel free to do this with any contractors you have as well. Just anyone that you work with in your business, feel free to educate them or train them or give some guidance around having this initiative and having this resourcefulness. But if you are in that hiring stage, it's a great question to ask in that interview process or to find out what they would do in certain situations, and even to find out if they're trainable when it comes to developing their initiative and resourcefulness skills. So that is point number three, or lesson number three. So action steps.
Shannon Stone:
Action step number one is to get clear on what your business needs and, based on that, where do you need to create a role for someone? So creating a job description for someone. So get clear on what your business needs actually are. And a lot of this can come down to what your goals are, how you want to be approaching your business, how much you want to be working in your business. It's all very personalized. You just remember that. You don't have to build a business like anyone else's. If you only want to work Twenty hours a week, that's perfectly okay. And if you just look at your business requirements first and foremost and then you work out what it is that you'll be doing in your business, what is left for someone else to be doing in your business? So action step number one is to get clear on what your business needs and create a role or job description based on you know those areas that you're not going to do or you need some support with.
Shannon Stone:
Action step number two is when finding someone. Do they match the tasks? So, when you get to hiring, or even if you've got a team at the moment or a team member? Do they match the tasks that you need them to do? Or have you been trying to fit a triangle into a square hole and it's just not working? It's just not working out. So action step number two is to make sure that, if you have someone, or when you are hiring someone, do they match the task, because that's the most important thing. And coming back to what it is that your business needs, that's where action step one and two can kind of join forces if you're finding that maybe the person you have at the moment doesn't match the needs of the business, and if so, you need to come back to work out what is it that your business needs and can that person fit into your requirements, not the other way around? And action step number three is to test or train someone's initiative and resourcefulness. So, whether you're hiring or you've got people at the moment, getting them to be resourceful, helping them develop their initiative really important skills and even skills for you to work on as well I think we can all continuously develop these skills for ourselves and, honestly, with the evolution that is AI, I think we can all be incredibly resourceful. Now it's just you know what are the questions we need to be asking, and AI is a great tool to help with that. But testing and training someone's initiative and resourcefulness is action step number three and that is whether you are in the hiring process or you've got a team at the moment, or even it is yourself. It's like you know what I really do need to have more initiative, I need to be more proactive, I need to equip myself with the resources that I need to get my business to where I want it to go. So that is action step number three.
Shannon Stone:
Last little thing I wanted to leave us with here today is if you have someone in your business now and you're not sure if they're a fit, you've gone through and you've done step number one, or action step number one, where you've gotten clear on what your business needs. Then you want to ask yourself, based on that team member or that person, do I see potential in this person being an asset for my business? So once you work out what is it again, what your business needs, then you see that you've got this team member that hasn't quite been fulfilling the business needs up until now, or you've just gone about it the wrong type of way. I always ask myself or my clients. Do you see potential in this person being an asset to your business and if so, then you want to start to close the gap. So you see potential in them, maybe you need to create a new job description or move them on to a different project or work out something, but you need to work out what is the plan so that they are fulfilling the needs of your business. And if you feel like there is no potential, you don't see them as being an asset for your business for whatever reason then maybe it's time to see if you start to let them go or work out what that process might look like. So here's a few important lessons I wanted to share with you for small businesses. Number one was hiring based on trust and recommendation, not on tasks. So we want to make sure we're hiring based on the tasks and having the trust and recommendation, not just one or the other. Number two is making a person fit your business rather than what your business needs. So we need to shift that into finding out what is it that your business needs and, based on that, we get the support or we utilize the support to drive the business where you want it to go, and lesson number three is vetting their initiative and resourcefulness. Whether you need to test that with someone or train that into someone, that's something for you to decide on Now.
Shannon Stone:
I hope you found this episode useful. If you have any questions and any specific podcast recommendations, definitely send them my way. I hope you found this useful and I will talk to you very, very soon.