Last week I talked about how to fire someone. Today I will cover my thoughts on hiring someone. A good prerequisite for this post is this one on hire people for jobs not jobs for people.
The last few times we have found people we placed ads in the University of Nebraska student paper and also craigslist. Now the Omaha section of craigslist is not very busy but we still get great responses.
I also have placed ads in print newspapers and got a lot of response from that aswell.
Usually I just put a number to a answering machine then 1 day go through them all… write down phone numbers and names and start the interview process. I am always amazed at how people start of the call with “I am probably not qualified” or “I don’t have the skills you marked as required” and they just want to ask you questions like what should they goto school for… I mean seriously…
When I hired dillsmack the first time I had sworn never to hire another out of state contractor. I had been flaked out on so much…. but he was just like give me a shot and let see how it goes. He was confident in his skills and was willing to sacrifice money for a few jobs here and there for a shot at something bigger. So I took him up on his offer years ago. I think the deal was 10$ a hour if I remember correctly.. anyway in the first week he had accomplished more then what I had been paying 80-120$ a hour for in the previous 5 months.
I have not hired many people. Probably less then 15 in the last 3 years. The last person I hired was a hooters girl from the Omaha Hooters to come to Las Vegas affiliate summit to hand out limited edition shoemoney shirts. I don’t really pay people based on what they do so much has how they do it. I mean to some extent anyway…. For instance someone I can count on and trust is worth a ton… period because if I cant do that then that means not only did I waste money on them but now I have to do the job myself or find someone else which creates a whole monkey cluster flux.
So now when I hire someone I pay them as little as possible until I get to know them. Like I mean minimum wage. If they are willing to do the work and show me how valuable they are they will VERY QUICKLY raise up through the ranks. I am not a big company where we have caps on how much more a person can earn then previous years. Like when I worked at wells fargo I think the max increase you could get was like 5% + inflation and that SUCKED. I always felt like wtf is the point.
Anyway we have been interviewing people lately for AuctionAds and I just had this on my mind so I thought I would share.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been debating hiring some writers, is there a particular route you recommend? You mentioned craigslist, local paper, school boards/papers, etc; but not which one had the best ratio of # response to qualified responses. While I’m sure certain avenues can get you more responses, it also means you have to sift through junk to find potential gems. I’m very interested in hearing your take on the various methods. Thanks
best quality has always come by word of mouth for me… so far…
Great tips, thank you. To be honest, Craigslist never even crossed my mind. What do you think about commission incentives?
I’ve hired from Criagslist before and it’s great. Commission only does not work, I’ve tried and you never get quality or consistent work. Make sure there is some base salary with commission, or just a flat rate for a job.
I’ve always found that this is one of those areas where personal and professional networking comes in handy. When you have a large network, it’s easier to find someone that you are willing to hire. The thing is- you have to set expectations very clearly right from the get-go. The new employee can’t expect to get any consideration because they are a friend of someone. As a matter of fact, I always make it clear to these folks that they will be under a more intense microscope than the other folks.
Shoe,
We have interviewed and hired a variety of people over the years and tried a variety of techniques. If you are placing an ad to attract talent I am not a fan of having the initial compensation be too low. The quality of inquiries you get is much lower if the compensation is low. We had one job where we started people at $10/hr. We thought we could start people at $8/hr and then quickly promote them if they worked out well. Unfortunately, the quality of people applying decreased dramatically, but we did get one great applicant. Unfortunately, she turned down our offer because she found another one that was paying $10/hr.
If potential employees know of your company and are willing to make some sacrifices to work for you that is great. You have the ideal situation. But if you don’t have the luxury of people knowing about your company then it takes a different approach to attract the talent.
I have run across a handful of potential employees that think they are entitled to the position. This drives me nuts… new employees need to be humble until they earn the respect of their peers and not come in with this greater than thou attitude.
It was $15/hr!!!!!!!!!
That’s probably true for any sort of referrals; what if word of mouth doesn’t get you a skillset that you need? Or has that not happened yet?
I suppose that’s why Jeremy goes the route of paying minimum wage until you “prove” yourself; it’s hard to feel entitled when you’re making min wage and can get cut loose.
I hope he is getting more then $10 an hour now
It’s definitely about attitude. I, too, have placed ads for content writers and other positions on Craig’s list and had people respond via email rather than by phone. But, I’m amazed by the responses like you’re suggesting–I, too get “I’m not qualified” or “I don’t have the skillset”. Phoooey! People just need to talk about their strong points and don’t even mention what they think their weak points are–most often a potential employer will overlook that stuff. If you go pointing it out then they’ll definitely notice those factors.
Jeremy, you’re lucky with the ‘word of mouth’ part…I’ve had both good and bad luck with word of mouth referrals.
I have to say the recruitment process is my least favourite part of business. Shoe, do your employees work from home, or at your office? We use salesforce and because of the way we have our system set up, we could have employees working from home, but I haven’t tried it before (aside from using elance, which is different, as they are paid per job). Does it work out just as well as having office based staff, and can homeworkers be just as productive, or is it a huge risk?
Those guys had an article on how to find writers:
http://selfmademinds.com/200704/finding-paid-writers/
I hope it helps.
Confidence is an admirable trait, especially in someone you are considering to hire. Too much of it can be ugly though — I don’t think I’d want someone more arrogant than I am to work for me.
Shoemoney: your oscommerce url in this post has the session id in it. You should probably fix that.
Referrals of trusted people are definitely the best.
Hooters Girls…
great point of view , firing someone is very difficult , especially if you’re close to that person
Ive hired thousands over the years. I spent 20 years managing restaurants. I can tell you, many people are not what they seem at first. But sometimes you get lucky. Those are the people you reward with money and loyalty.
I was also thinking about hiring someone to do some scripting but I still see that I could do it myself so the work is slower
I agree with Joey above, Finding the right people is harder then ever, and now with “becoming your own boss” so easy , it gets even harder……..
Instead of puting up a “we’re hiring” sign of some sort I prefer scouting and recruiting for the people I hire. Knowing where to look, and what to look for, is the trick. It’s also much easier to impose performance clauses when you’re on the pro-active end.