The Starbucks sticker also made me think of another point that someone along the line made to me once…your customers aren’t always good employees.  The example the person gave was a liquor store.  They found that while their customers loved the idea of working their, a liquor store’s best customers didn’t really make the best employees for some obvious reasons.  So they stopped hanging a Help Wanted sign in their store and started looking in other places. 

 

Would your customers make good employees for you?  What about your vendors or competitors?  Are you doing anything to reach out to those people?

 

We encourage our clients to have a career section of their website to explain the benefits of their company as a place to work, not just the benefits of being a customer.  Since business owners often don’t have internal resources to develop and maintain a career section, we developed a tool to make that process easier.  You can learn more about TargetPort and take a quick demo here.

Where do you start?  Typically when people look to make their first hire they start by telling their network that they are looking to hire.  This is an important step, but not the place to start! 

Take an honest evaluation of your company.  This is especially important if you are hiring your first employee.  What do you really need?  I know, you want another you.  We all do, but that is pretty much the one thing that I guarantee you aren’t going to find.  Luckily, it probably isn’t really what you need either.  Go into the evaluation stage with an open mind.  Maybe you don’t need to hire anyone.  Maybe the solution is to hire a few experts as consultants.  Maybe you need an intern, or a part time employee.  The time to figure that out is before you start looking for help.  This is not something that can be done by trial and error.  Ok, it can, but it is not pretty.  Not only are you bringing a huge amount of unnecessary stress into your life, but you are changing someone else’s.  And you are potentially hurting the reputation that you have worked so hard to build. 

Not enough money?  Not enough work?  Not enough stability?  Not enough resources for them to be productive?  These are things that you need to think about before you bring someone else on board.  So that is the first step.  Get your house in order.  You won’t keep anyone, good or bad, if the company isn’t ready for them.