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As businessmen are R.H. Grant once said:

So hiring people smarter than you are is actually smart. In most organizations managers are specialists, and leaders are generalist. Let me give you a hospital example. I am sure that the chief of surgery is not necessarily the best surgeon in the hospital or the best specialist however he or she may be the best leader. By the same token, I'm sure Mary Kay never actually manufactured make-up or a clinically tested it in a laboratory, but she led a great organization for years. What we have to realize is that the work is not done by the leader, the work is done by the team. So here is the point, if we hire the best team we get the best results.

One area that the leaders need to overcome is their own sense of ego or even arrogance. This prevents them from thinking about the possibility of hiring someone who is smarter than they are in their specific area of expertise. That is the wrong way to think about it. If you're hiring someone for finance, you may not be the ultimate expert in finance yourself. So the goal is to find the “best of the best” in the world of finance. The fact is that when a leader is surrounded by a smart team then the leader looks smarter by reflection.

Tips for hiring smarter

Here are eight tips for ensuring that you hire and keep the smartest and the best:

1. Make it your goal to find the best: I see leaders in many industries who settle for a candidate who seems OK, but is not the best of the best. Don't settle! If you do that, you will pay for it later. Be the tortoise not the hare. Take your time, be patient and make sure that you're hiring the best of the best and when you do you will get great results.

2. Always be looking for new talent: As you attend industry conferences meetings and network, always be on the lookout for new talent. Sometimes when we least expect it, we come across the talent we will someday want to be part of the team. Talk to them and get to know them professionally and even ask them to send you a resume, and put it in your file of future talent. Keep in touch with this talent on a regular basis and one day when you are ready to make a move you now have a very strong “best of the best” candidate.

3. Become an interviewing artist: Really strive to become a master interviewer. This is a skill and not a science. Identify people in your organization who are known as being great interviewers and ask them if you could sit in on one of their interviews. Be the proverbial fly on wall and observe their techniques and approaches. I learned all of my best interviewing skills from a gentleman named Filemon Lopez (a former boss). He taught me the subtleties of effective interviewing approaches and techniques. If internal training on effective interviewing is available, take advantage of it. Secondly, read and study books and online courses on effective interviewing; you will find you will learn a lot.

4. Have multiple interviews with multiple people: I have found that interviews that incorporate multiple people and the candidate coming back for several interviews are much more effective. Why does this work so well? The reason that this is so effective is each time the candidate comes back for an interview they become more relaxed and comfortable. This allows you to get beyond the techniques that they've learned in their interviewing books and classes and to try to get to the real person beyond the techniques. Additionally, if multiple people are interviewing the candidate there may be areas identified by one person that was not identified by another. The reason for this is simple; some people feel comfortable with one interviewer and not another. It really is about chemistry between two people.

I once had a very strong candidate who I interviewed two times and was practically ready to make them a job offer. That is when it got a very interesting. I took the candidate to lunch for a third interview, and over lunch she revealed some ethical problems that she had in her last job, which clearly told me that she was not appropriate for our team. I passionately believe that this would not have been revealed if we had only done two interviews, and she had not been interviewed by multiple people. By the way, you'll notice the classic technique mentioned above; the infamous lunch technique (which works like a charm). If you want to find out more about the real person, get them to go to dinner, breakfast or lunch and “break bread.” The candidate will disappear, and a real person will emerge.

5. Look for hidden assets: I find often in corporations and organizations there is hidden talent waiting to emerge, just waiting to be discovered. I was once a Vice President of Training and Development for a large company. I received a resume from an internal candidate who wanted to fill the position of trainer. I called the Human Resources Department and asked them why they sent me her resume. They patiently explained that even though this candidate worked in the Accounts Payable Department, she had developed and designed a significant amount of training on her own to train Accounts Payable people around the country. “Besides” the H.R. person said, “You have to interview her. She has passion!” Of course we interviewed her, and after several interviews and a live training audition, she was hired as a trainer. So we discovered a talented trainer who is buried in another department in the organization; a truly a hidden asset. Take the time to look around your organization for talented people who are waiting for an opportunity to be recognized and to apply their talents. Also look within your own team. Are there people on your team, that with the given proper development and the desire and passion could move into a new role or responsibility?

6. Hire for diversity: I find that the great leaders are always looking for diversity. Yes I know it's the right thing to do and it adds greatly to the company's PR reputation. The fact that they are sensitive to and addressing diversity issues in terms of hiring has great value. But I think there's a more important reason; the real reason why you should hire for diversity. You should hire for diversity to find people who think differently. My definition of hiring for diversity means you get people on your team who are completely different than you. You get diversity in race, creed, color, religion geography and culture. The advantage of having this kind of diversity on your team is that each person brings a unique perspective to the work. That way you get a much broader perspective of opinions. So hire people who are completely different than you, in fact the opposite of your own image- hire people radically crazily different than you!

7. Don't hire in your own image: This sounds like a repeat of the one above, but it certainly is not. What I'm talking about here is hiring people who have your same personality style or very similar ways of thinking. For example, I noticed that leaders who are a dominant style often hire other dominant people in terms of behavioral style. Each leader will hire people that match their own style. Make sure that your team doesn't reflect your image, but reflects a wide variety of styles.

8. Make sure new hires get orientation: This is one of the most overlooked and abused areas in the hiring process. In most companies, orientation sounds something like this “Welcome to our team. I want you to follow Kwon around for awhile, and well, you'll get the hang of it." This is not to an orientation. In fact, it's an invitation to have employees learn the wrong habits from the wrong team members at the wrong time. The other mythology that I have issues with is that people think orientation is a one day or two- day class where people welcome them to the company and are given policies, procedures and training about the company itself. This is not orientation; it is a 1-2 day class.

Here is what I believe orientation should actually look like. Orientation should actually begin during the second and third interview where you layout what is expected of them before they start. So the actual orientation process of educating the employee as to what is expected and what is not expected, what is allowed and what is not allowed, does not begin after they are hired. It should actually begin in the interview process. The second aspect of orientation is I believe that every employee should have a specific developed eight week orientation process. Often when I say this in training, managers get very nervous because they are imagining an employee sitting in training for eight weeks ,which is a crazy waste of time. That is not what I'm talking about. What I am talking about is (beyond the official company orientation day) there should be a specific calendar created for each new team member. This calendar basically lays out what an employee should expect in the first eight weeks of employment. On the simple calendar, it basically lays out for them the activities that they will be doing each week. There are several compelling reasons why this should be done using this approach. First of all, if you hand a new associate an eight week calendar they will be very impressed that the organization has actually prepared for their arrival. This means that they count, they are important and they have value. Secondly, every associate has decided to take the job but it does not necessarily mean that they have decided to keep it. So in essence when new employee starts, it is up to you as the leader to provide an orientation process which allows them to get excited about the organization that they work for and still feel valued appreciated on Day one and Day 91. Don't let orientation be an accident; let it be a deliberate act that is designed to ramp someone up quickly.

So how smart are you? I bet you are smart enough to hire people smarter than you.

Not Taking Hiring Seriously Enough

Arguably, the single most important thing an owner of a residential cleaning service can do is make quality hiring decisions. This requires “more than a gut feeling” interviewing skills and recruiting techniques. Again, the difference between breaking through the $500,000 Revenue Wall is one's ability to stabilize their workforce in such a way that the operation is able to grow over time. Without this stability, quality will suffer, customer retention will suffer, and employee satisfaction will suffer—a vicious cycle that keeps a company from growing, if it doesn't kill the company altogether. Steven offers proven recruiting and hiring strategies including building job profiles with behavioral based interviewing techniques so you have a better chance of knowing who you are hiring.



Believing Your Own Beliefs about Hiring

Companies, no matter what size or what industry, are the result of their owners or CEO's, or both. They take on the values of the very top person. Don't believe me? Ask yourself this question. Why do my employees walk around with their shirts un-tucked all the time? Answer. Because you let them. Because it's not a priority to the organization. Because they can. It's a natural law that employees will automatically do the least that they are allowed to do. Your job is to raise the bar and redefine the “least acceptable.” In hiring, check your beliefs, your biases, your assumptions about your marketplace, your town, your unemployment rate and so on. Trust me, if you believe “there are no good employees out there,” you are right. If you believe “there are a few good employees out there,” you are right. However here's the secret, “Is your ‘right' a reality or just your own belief?” Push yourself to stop doing same-old, same-old, especially with hiring.



Being Afraid or Unwilling to Offer Sign-On Bonuses and Retention Bonuses

It's a fact. Scarcity thinking takes you down the path, “I pay what I pay and people should be grateful for it.” Abundance thinking says, “If we build it together and we're both successful, why not share some of the profits with the people who got us here.” Here's the formula, if you offer a sign-on bonus make the dollar amount large enough and the time frame for having to wait for it reasonable and compelling for prospects to respond. Offering a “$100 bonus after 6 months” unfortunately in this day and age is too little money, after way too long a time period. So here are some suggestions. $300 Sign On Bonus Package--$100 immediately, $100 after 30 days, $100 after 90 days. Or 3 2 Sign On Bonus Package—Receive $300 just as mentioned before, plus receive $200 in gift certificates, gift cards and vouchers after 90 days as well. You go to local merchants and ask for free dinner vouchers, gift certificates, promos etc. and build your own envelopes of $200 worth of free services or gifts.


Read Part One http://franchiseprofs.com/Steve_Rowell/blog/three-...


Steven Rowell, Your IDEA Doctor, helps franchisees and business owners double their sales, triple their net profit, and retire in 2 to 3 years, by building the business of their dreams in record time. 800-268-8170 www.retiremenowsteven.com/neweconomy-replay2

Although you may not find it hard to fill job openings in this economy, attracting and recruiting great employees will make a difference in your operations' performance. Follow these 10 tips to enhance your hiring process and business success.

Identify your UEP (Unique Employment Proposition)

What do you offer that your competitors don't? Make a list of the top 10 reasons why a great crew member should work for you. The easiest way to get started is to ask your best employees why they joined your team; what makes them stay; and what they like most about their jobs and the company.

Ask sources if they are offering a referral or a recommendation

This will confirm if they know the person and are willing to put their own name and reputation on the line.

Do not help your competition

When you are asked for a reference on an outstanding former employee, you've just been put on notice that he or she is looking for a new job. In response, tell the person that is inquiring you have to contact their applicant for permission to release the information. Ask for the former employee's current telephone number and reach out to them, soliciting their return to your organization. If their answer is no, you have made the person feel good and he or she may think of your company next time they're ready for a change.

To change the results, change the sign

The same headline, same message and same location will continue to attract the same types of applicants. If you want more and/or different kinds of candidates, change your approach. For example, if you mainly hire men, take your ad out of the newspaper's employment section and run it on the sports page. For part-time jobs, try a headline that states "Be Home When Your Kids Are Home."

Think inside the box

Before you look outside your organization, consider the people you already have on board to determine if anyone can do the job or be trained to grow into it. Promoting from within motivates your entire staff and it's nice to discover the person you need for the new position is someone you are already grooming.

Divvy up recruiting responsibilities

If you have more than one manager at a location, divide the recruiting responsibilities between them. Have one address referrals, while another manager focuses on outside organizations (schools, church groups, state employment agencies), and another reviews Internet postings (Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media and job boards).

Get rid of "Help Wanted" signs

Help wanted isn't a good reason for anyone to want to work for you. If you desire great applicants, you need to tell them why they want to apply. Instead of posting that you are "Now Hiring," how about saying "Our growth is your opportunity" or "Come for the job, stay for the career."

Frustration is good as long as it is the other company's employee who is frustrated

Somebody else's frustrated employee may be one of your best prospects. Research shows that over 20% of employees are frustrated by their jobs. The same research reveals that these workers, in most cases, are trying to do a great job but they have not been given the tools, training and respect they need to excel. Why not run an ad with a headline that reads, "Are you frustrated and looking for a change?"

Never stop looking for your next employee

Today's employees do not believe it is disloyal to look for a job while they are working for you, and the same needs to hold true for hiring managers. Recruiting is a proactive function and a key component of building your business.

Sell the sizzle, not the steak

No one really wants a job; they want the benefits the job gives them: security, growth opportunities, challenges, recognition, respect, relationships, etc. Ask candidates what they want or expect from their job and address their specific desires.



Content excerpted from Mel Kleiman's book "100 1 Top Tips, Tools, and Techniques to Attract and Recruit Top Talent."

Bio:

Mel Kleiman, CSP, is an internationally recognized consultant, author and speaker on strategies for hiring and retaining the best employees. He is president of Humetrics, a leading developer of systems, training, processes and tools for recruiting, selection and retention of the best hourly workforce. Mel is the author of four books, including the best-selling "Hire Tough Manage Easy." For more information, contact 713-771-4401 or mel@melkleiman.com.