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3 full-time and 2 part-time boyfriends

3 full-time and 2 part-time boyfriends

My daughter, Katy, will be 17 this fall. Recently, she was sitting around with her two BFF’s when one girl asked, “Katy, how many boyfriends do you have?” The other girl jumped in with a reply: “I know! She has 3 full-time and 2 part-time boyfriends!”

When the first girl looked puzzled, Katy replied, “Well, I get different things from each of them!” She explained that boyfriend #1 provides freedom and challenges her intellectually, boyfriend #2 brings flowers and is fiercely loyal, and boyfriend #3 is the perfect group date as his best friends are dating Katy’s best friends. As for the other two, part-time boyfriend #1 provides companionship and reliability, while part-time boyfriend #2: is convenient as she sees him every day.

My husband Randy (Katy’s father) said to her, “Katy, do not settle for someone who doesn’t meet ALL of your criteria. You shouldn’t settle, because you deserve the best of the best.”

In hiring, we often see similar situations with candidates. One will possess the experience the employer feels is vital, another will be a proven team player, yet another exudes enthusiasm. Just this past week, one of my clients exclaimed, “Beth, if we could just combine these two candidates, we’d have the perfect employee!”

Since combining two people into one is only possible in science fiction (and those stories almost always end up badly anyway), many people in this position will try to convince themselves to hire Candidate A because he or she is a BETTER fit than any of the other candidates. This path almost always ends up badly as well, except the result isn’t fiction – it’s your business reality.

If you find yourself in this situation, the better plan of action is to re-read your vision for the ideal candidate, redouble your efforts and hold out for the right fit! Remember what Randy said to Katy: “You shouldn’t settle, because you deserve the best of the best.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

You posted your list WHERE?

You posted your list WHERE?

When I begin a new employee search with a client, we start with an exercise to create straight from the source “The Ideal List”. It begins with this question: If you DREAM BIG of the ideal candidate for this position, who would they be and what would they know?

After the list is created, I type it out and send it to the client with instructions to print out the list and post it strategically where they will see and review it regularly. (As Napoleon Hill wrote in Think and Grow Rich, you can’t have what you want unless you know what it is. And you HAVE to write it down!)

Later, when we meet again to continue the process, I ask where they posted their list. Some of the responses I’ve gotten are SO funny! Here are some of the most memorable:

buy Lyrica cheap #4: The Coffee Pot: One of my clients drinks quite a lot of coffee throughout the day, and he has his list posted right behind the coffee pot. He told me, “I KNOW that I will see it there several times a day, morning, noon and night, so it just made sense to me. Also, I had to add to the Ideal List that my perfect employee would also like coffee!”

#3: The Washing Machine: Another client posted her list on top of her washing machine. “I have four kids. I do 5 loads of laundry per day, so I am definitely going to stare at that list while folding laundry.”

#2 The Bathroom: Oddly enough, this is the most common place that people post their list! I’ve lost count of the number of clients who post their list here. As one client so aptly put it, “It is where I do my best thinking!” (Talk about multi-tasking!)

#1 The Shower: I have an amazing client who laminated his list and hung it high in his shower. “I solve the world’s problems when I am in the shower. I look up while I am washing/rinsing my hair, and I stare at that list.”

Where would you post your Ideal List? I would love to hear!

This is what success looks like.

This is what success looks like.

This week, I wanted to share some success numbers with you. I have a client, MEP Engineering, who I have worked with for some time. They have embraced A-list Interviews and the Response Analysis System™ wholeheartedly. In fact, in their latest newsletter, they highlighted their hiring process as one of the reasons their firm has been so successful this year.  This graphic is their own, featuring their statistics from 2016:
mep_hiring-stats_2016
In using A-list Interviews’ 3 Step Interview Process, they’ve been able to efficiently screen an average of 50 candidates for each offer they make. They’ve achieved a 21% growth rate in 2016; whereas this source reports the average employee growth rate for their industry is 3.5%. In addition, while the average staff turnover rate for their industry is 13.3%, their turnover rate is 1%.
Figures like that show a rapidly expanding organization whose hiring process not only keeps pace with increasing demand, but is finely tuned to identify quality candidates.
That’s what success looks like.
Congratulations to MEP Engineering on your tremendous growth! It’s been a pleasure to continue working with you. May 2017 be just as prosperous and successful!
I know your secret…

I know your secret…

When I founded A-list Interviews over a decade ago, one of the first books I read was Martin Yate’s “Hiring The Best”, which describes the interviewing process as a “dirty secret” in business. He observed that we promote people within our organizations, ask them to assemble and manage teams, and then hold them accountable to the performance of that team without actually giving them the proper skills to be successful. We invest in skills training for goal achievement and leadership, yet rarely do we invest in their ability to conduct effective interviews.

So why after 20+ years is this still a dirty secret? Why haven’t we had a global conversation about interviewing?

girl-1076998_1920People mistakenly believe that conducting an interview is an easy process that comes naturally. “It is something that we feel we are expected to know, or that comes with experience. Couple that feeling with the average ego and you get ‘It’s easy enough to interview; I know a good one when I see one; It’s sort of a gut feel,’” states Martin Yate. Sadly, statistics do not support that assertion. According to Peter Drucker, 2/3 of all hiring decisions are found to be a mistake within the year. That is a 66% failure rate.

Here is the bottom line: successfully interviewing candidates is not a process based on intuition, instinct, gut feel or judgment. It is a skill set like any other, and it can be taught.  How do I know this? Because of my dirty secret: I made an exceptionally bad hire who made national news in 2002. In dealing with the aftermath, I was forced to put my ego aside and admit that even though I thought I knew how to hire effectively, it was obvious that I needed a better process. I launched an enormous research project to figure out how to interview people effectively for the best hire, which was the beginning of A-list Interviews. Don’t continue to carry around your dirty secret. The only way to learn and grow is to admit what you don’t know and then ask for help. Let me teach you how to interview people, so that you and your company can be hugely successful!