It’s hard to believe I’ve operated my own commercial cleaning business for over ten years now.
During this time I’ve learned quite a few lessons. Some were painless, while others were painful.
One of the most important lessons had to do with the hiring process, which incidentally was one of the “painful” lessons I just alluded to. While I certainly did a lot of things right when starting out, hiring the best person for the job was not my strength in the beginning.
Now why was that?
In my experience one of the most common mistakes is overlooking the applicants “attitude”. At the end of the day, you can train just about any task associated with a particular job. But the ONE thing that drives the ENTIRE process is attitude, and unfortunately you have no control over that part.
I think people overlook attitude when hiring because of two main reasons. One is because they simply don’t know any better. This is especially true for beginners who may never have had to hire anyone in their life before.
Secondly, small business owners are busy. When you are busy you just want the hiring process to get over with so you can focus on whatever the next issue is in your business. So this leads you to rush the process, and when you rush any process, mistakes will occur.
This topic is a “big deal” because when you operate a small business, you can’t afford to keep “guessing” at who is the best candidate. Hiring people takes a lot of time and money to pull off. You need to maximize your success rate somehow, and the only way is to look at the hiring process differently. For me, It goes like this:
1 – Attitude
2 – Work history
3 – Skills for the job they are considered for
4 – Possible conflicts that may interfere with employment
As you can see attitude is the foundation of the whole process. Look for happy people that are a pleasure to be with. Remember this is your business and you will be spending quite a bit of time with them in the beginning. Also keep in mind that business is much more fun when you surround yourself with a good group of quality folks.
Couple that with the fact that your customers will be running into your staff regularly. Having a happy positive person as your “representative” is key to your success. This alone will yield more testimonials than just about anything else you do. I’ll touch on the other parts of the hiring process in a later post, but for now just remember “attitude” rules the day.
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