From the President: HELP WANTED

– Don Capman

Imagine the following ad appearing in the Sunday Newspaper in the “Sales Help Wanted” section:

High-end ladies boutique has an immediate opening for a sales associate. The ideal candidate must possess the following characteristics:

• An aversion to work
• An affinity for talking on the cell phone constantly
• A high absentee record at previous jobs
• A strong desire to talk with co-workers rather than customers
• A complete lack of product knowledge
• A strong desire to steal from the owner
• A willingness to report the owner to the Department of Labor

Great benefits, good salary, and employee discounts will be offered to anyone possessing these characteristics. Apply in person at any time that is convenient for you.

Get the picture? Of course you wouldn’t put an ad like that in the newspaper, but you wonder if you might have written that ad after a few weeks of working with the new sales associate you hired who just happens to have most of the above characteristics. We all make mistakes in hiring and retaining good people, but we should learn to make fewer of them because they are extremely costly to our businesses.

Over the course of my varied careers, including years in retail, I have literally hired thousands of people and made many good choices but also made more than my share of bad choices. My first mistake was to hire bad employees to begin with. My second mistake was keeping them too long.

Why did I hire bad employees to begin with?

• The interview process was not in-depth enough. I just didn’t find out enough about their past work experiences, their interests or ask the right questions. (Please be aware that there are many questions that you cannot ask that might be interpreted as discriminatory and put you in serious legal jeopardy).
  
  There is a great article with some guidelines on the All Business website that could help. [Click here to read the article]
  
• I didn’t ask them why they changed jobs so frequently or why there were significant gaps in employment.
  
• I didn’t have a clear job description and subsequently found out that they didn’t have the skills necessary for the position.
  
• I didn’t check out their references properly.

Why did I keep them so long instead of terminating them as soon as I found out they weren’t what I was looking for?

• I felt that eventually they would come around. (That’s the social worker in me.)
  
• I felt that it was my fault that they weren’t working out since I hired them.
  
• I felt responsible for their well-being (again, the social worker syndrome).
  
• I felt intimidated by them.
  
• I needed a “warm body” to fill the vacant position.
  
• I just didn’t like to terminate people.

Those are all pretty understandable points but not one of them is doing us or the failed employee any favors.

Making a bad hire can end up costing you many thousands of dollars.

1. Recruiting costs are substantial.
   
2. Training the new person costs time and money.
   
3. Then, of course, there are the obvious costs of salary and benefits.
   
4. How many sales and customers could you lose because of a bad hire? It takes a great deal of effort to retain customers. One bad experience with a sales associate can lose you not only that customer but also new customers through negative “word of mouth.”
   
5. Then there’s the morale of your other staff if you keep the bad hire too long. Your good staff will become disillusioned with you and may even decide to quit. Why should they work so hard, putting up with a bad co-worker, when you won’t do anything about it?

One short interview is usually not enough to avoid the pitfalls. Yes, sometimes we get lucky, but luck is just that. Hiring the right person requires time and effort but is far less costly than making a bad mistake. The next time you are recruiting, pull out the job description at the beginning of this article and ask yourself if you are about to make the same mistakes all over again.