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Ideas & Infographs: The Effects Your Small Business Can Have By Hiring Just One Person

December 8, 2011 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

Guest Post
by Adria Saracino

It is hard to imagine a small business hiring one person having any lasting effect on unemployment in the UK. After all, the rates are now at a 17-year high. However, new data suggests this is the case; that small businesses can in fact reduce unemployment.

Simply Business. a company that provides insurance for small businesses, conducted some marketing research after new unemployment data was released by the British government. Of the small businesses surveyed, 27% said they plan to hire at least one employee in the next twelve months. And all of the sudden, that “one person” quickly turns into over 300,00 new jobs across the market.

Simply Business created the following UK unemployment infographic to display the effect small business owners have on the economy.

Click this link to see the full-size infographic.

Jason Stockwood, CEO of Simply Business, said:

“The optimistic picture these small businesses paint is heartening in these tough times. When you consider that SMEs account for 99.9 per cent of the total enterprises in the UK and provide over 59 per cent of the jobs in the private sector their continued success and growth is key to our economic recovery.”

With such a large number of new employment, there would be an estimated decrease in over 190,000 people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, resulting in the government saving over £10,000,000 each week.

Are you the owner of a small business? And if so, do you plan on hiring anyone in the next twelve months? If so, you just might end up being part of a large decrease in unemployment rates.

————————————

Adria Saracino is the Head of Outreach at Distilled, a creative Internet marketing agency. When not connecting with interesting people on the web you can find her talking about style at her personal fashion blog. Follow her on twitter @adriasaracino to stay in touch.

Thanks, Adria!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Hiring, LinkedIn, small business strategy

Get Your Leadership ON … Before You Get Folks “on the Bus”

April 5, 2011 by Liz Leave a Comment

10-Point Plan: Building a Team

Bringing Irresistible High Performers Into Your Brand

cooltext443794242_influence

Whether you’re a solopreneur in Ladd, Illinois or a C-suite executive at a Fortune 100 corporation, leadership — building a business — means you aren’t doing what you’re doing alone. It’s tried, true, and almost tired wisdom that getting the right folks on the bus is the first step in the process of building a great business. Every advocate of Jim Collins knows that you need the right team to take a business from good to great.

Seems simple. Enlist a great team and win.

Yet when the time comes to get other folks to board the bus, we can so get busy filling seats, much that we could consider about who joins us is left back on the curb long after the bus has already taken off.

In a strange way, we sometimes don’t let our leadership kick in fully until we see a team in front of us and at best that’s a little late. You see at the moment we need someone to help with our business, our brand, or our quest, we often get focused on the task we need with and lose sight of the person who will be doing the task.

Here’s how the process often works.

  • We have a job that needs doing. Someone has left the team or the business is growing and it’s time to add another someone to the group.
  • We determine the nature and scope of the tasks, the level of work, and the skills and time required to fill that gap.
  • We find an old job description. We edit that to construct a new one.
  • We share that new job notice with people who know great people and in places where appropriate candidates will see it and respond. Then we review submissions for experience and expertise.
  • We invite people to interview for the position and select the candidate we feel most likely to be qualified, committed to the work, and a good fit for the team.

Yet, a few months later we often find that we have a whiner, slacker, complainer, an under-performer, or a person who’s personality doesn’t fit the work or the people with whom that person regularly interacts. .

Somewhere between process and performance we’ve left a leadership gap.

Get Your Leadership On … Before You Build the Team

When I worked in publishing, I watched and worried over the variation in performance in freelancers and employees and from employee to employee. With some serious thinking and calculated tweaking, I found the process by which a person was enlisted could get the right people to stay with it to “get on the bus” and the bad fits to decide to pass on that opportunity. What it took was a willingness to go a little deeper – and to leave the “driver’s seat.”

It starts by shifting priorities from those of a boss or a manager to those of a leader building a team.

  • A great boss hires great employees who can get the work done.
  • A manager enlists great people who have the individual expertise and team skills to execute collaborative projects to successful outcome.
  • A leader attracts and chooses other great leaders who have the abilities, motivation, and complementary skills to become a team that can build something outstanding and lasting that no single member could build alone.

A leader spends more reflection on what’s missing and what’s needed to fill out the team — focusing strategically on a longer view and stronger growth rather than on the tactical response to a present need. A leader sets the standards higher. Leaders expand the thinking from not just what we need — someone to do a job — to what will attract true leaders who will grow with the company and even more than that fill in the gaps of the team.

With our leadership ON our priority becomes “all good people” to build the strongest team possible. And we apply that standard to every role that interacts with our team — employee, volunteer, vendor, partner, customer, friend. The key to “all good people” is to develop a process that attracts the kind of people we want and is such that the people who don’t want to be outstanding employees and volunteers just don’t come.

As I describe this leadership matrix, you’ll see how the process can do just that for you.

The Leadership Matrix for Choosing Outstanding Employees and Volunteers

Strauss Leadership Matriix for Choosing Winning Employees and Volunteers
Strauss Leadership Matriix for Choosing Winning Employees and Volunteers

Here’s how the process changes when we have our leadership on before we build the team:

  • We have a job that needs doing. Someone has left the team or the business is growing and it’s time to add another someone to the group.
  • Not just the job. We analyze the situation, conditions, and opportunities. We look first at the people currently doing those tasks. We ask those people what they could be doing more of and should be doing less of in order to be bringing their best game to the business.
  • Not just the expertise. We look for the expertise to that’s missing from the team. Some of what the current team could be doing less of to perform higher are tasks that they’ve outgrown. Some of what they could be doing less of are skills that aren’t their strengths. If we build a job description to the team, rather to the immediate set of tasks, we’ll gain new skill sets that aren’t currently available. For example, if the team is great at people skills, but weak on data skills, we can look for someone who also brings that.
  • We share that new job notice with people who know great people and in places where appropriate candidates will see it and respond.
  • Not just the desire or potential. We build a short-answer values and potential survey rather than a submission form. Each question might allow only 100 words. The questions might be …
    • What led you to apply for this position?
    • How do your values align with the values of our business?
    • How do you see your contribution in helping the business grow?
    • What in your life or work experience proves to you that we’d be successful working together?
    • How would you describe the optimal working relationship we might have now and moving forward?
  • We invite people to interview for the position and select the candidate we feel most likely to be qualified, committed to the work, and a good fit for the team.
  • During the interview, we introduce the candidate to the business, to members of the team, and to the employee or volunteer who last joined the business.
  • Not just a fit. We ask the newest employee or volunteer to assign the candidate a small task. The task might be writing a blog post or a proposal for a new idea. The task is chosen to fit the skills needed by the team. The newest team member is asked to give the candidate this slightly ambiguous guidance.
    • This is not a test. It’s so that we have something of a project nature to talk about.
    • It’s not expected that it will be a final, executable idea.
    • When you (the candidate) are ready, please call to set up a meeting to discuss what you bring.
  • Not just leadership. The candidates who set up meetings show up with a project and ready to share their thinking. . The meetings allow you and the team to discuss how the candidate makes decisions and what he or she valued in developing the meeting project.

The task sorts the candidates with leadership qualities, initiative, and motivation. Those who set up a return date are the ones can deal with ambiguity and have the ego strength to bring their ideas with clients and colleagues with confidence. The people who don’t want to invest or risk in that way sort themselves out of the process.

The meeting itself allows everyone — candidate and the team — to try on the fit and by discussing “real work.” The team can see the candidate’s ability to trust in him- or herself, the work, and the group comes out. The candidate can experience how the team discusses ideas and relates to each other as a group.

I used this process for 18+ years and only once did a candidate make who set up the meeting turn out to be one who didn’t belong on the bus. All of the others were high-performers who fit the team.

How do you get your leadership ON before you build a team?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Filed Under: Community, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Hiring, LinkedIn, management, team-building

How to Hire a Star

October 21, 2010 by patty Leave a Comment

by Patty Azzarello

cooltext466496263_leadership
how-to-hire-a-star

You’ll make a lot of decent hires, (and some bad ones)  but if you want to hire real stars here is how to find them.

Experience vs. Everything Else

Experience is the first thing we tend to look for but is never the primary indicator of  stardom.

Experience is only one factor in making a hiring choice, and in fact is one of the least important in gauging whether or not someone is a star — it can sometimes even be a red flag.

Experience matters, but be cautious to not be overly impressed if someone has a lot of experience in the area you are looking – and don’t make the experience the primary factor for your choice.

I learned this lesson very early in my career when I hired a guy for a telemarketing position which was a new function we were starting in the company.  I had no experience in telemarketing.  He had 20 years of experience in telemarketing.  I was impressed.

The problem was that the reason he spent 20 years in telemarketing is that he was not very good!  So he never advanced.

Stars don’t stay in the same role for decades.

Stars are talented and hungry.  They are on the move.

Hire based on potential not experience

Here are some of the important clues:

1. Advancement

If a star has been working for 20 years, they have held progressively bigger roles.  There are some big leaps and weird transitions on their resume.

When you look at their resume, you’ve just got to hear the story about how they went from working on a manufacturing line, to managing the procurement department, and then to running the customer service organization.

If you are interviewing a new-hire out of school, they have run the events program at their college, contributed articles to New York magazine, built a non-profit organization from scratch, or produced a radio show,  you get the point –They have a track record of doing things that were bigger than their job and more than their peers.

2. Mastery

If someone has spent 20 years in the same type of role, they can still be a star if they are a Master.  Look for proof.  If someone is a Master at PR, they will bring you many examples of how they created a market, got remarkable headlines, or drove web traffic exponentially.

If they are in engineering, they will be known for building or pioneering something important.  If they are in sales they will have a spotless track record.  All will have third party validation on their expertise, you will hear about them from others.

If someone is just telling you about their years of experience in the same role, and have nothing extraordinary to show you about their results, and no one else is talking about them, they may still be a good hire, but they are not a star.

Stars either move up or become a Master.

3. Ambition

Stars are ambitious.  They are going somewhere.  They don’t need you, they need a vehicle to get them to their next bigger or more interesting role.  (This is a good thing).

You don’t get to keep a star forever.

They will move mountains for you, and then they will move on.  Don’t be afraid of, or threatened by rising stars.   Stars are self-motivated to achieve great things for you.  Enjoy it while you can and then support them to move up and onward. 

If you hire with the assumption that you want an experienced person who will stay in this job forever, that is what you will get.  But you won’t get a star.

4. Really Smart

There is no substitute for raw intelligence.  Sure you need emotional and people skills too, but stars typically have both.  Raw IQ points count for a lot.

Stars are motivated by learning, and have a track record of learning on the job (fast) and advancing beyond peers.  One year of experience for a star can equate to many years of experience for someone else, because stars learn so much faster, and just go faster than everybody else.

5. They have a life.

It has always been interesting to note that every star I know and have worked with has had a life outside of their job.  People who are fully consumed by their work are usually not the stars.
This is true of both big executives and gifted contributors.

Stars find the technique to contain the job and get in done in less time so they make room to do more. They use some of the time to enjoy their life, and some of the time to do a bigger job – which is one of the things that makes them a star.

This topic of making room, and not getting fully consumed by your job is a critical factor for success.

Stars are not easy hires

When I’ve had the opportunity to hire stars,  they have always had less direct experience in the job than their competition. But they had at least a few of the traits describe above.

It is tough to get them on board because stars always have other choices and multiple offers, AND your hiring committee will think you are taking a big risk.  So no one is helping you get them in the boat.

The star is saying “I don’t need you”,  and your stakeholders are saying “we don’t want him”. You need to sell both parties, to get the person in the door.

It is very important that you are prepared to fight for them.

Eyebrows will raise when you choose  the less “experienced” individual, but if you choose a star, they will come up to speed very quickly and everyone will quickly and ultimately be impressed and appreciative at what a good hire you have made.

Stars are not easy to find

It is not realistic to think that you can hire 100% stars.  There are just not enough of them.  There are lots of talented people out there who will do good work, and you will need them on your team too.

Stars are hiding either because they are already working, or they don’t realize that they are stars.  You need to seek them out.  Sometimes you need to convince them that they can do more than they think.

The best way to find stars is to never stop looking.  Don’t wait for a position to open up.  Keep your eyes open for them, build relationships with them (you can’t have too many stars in your network at any level), and recruit them whenever you get the chance.

How have you found and kept stars in your team?

Please add your ideas to the comment box below.

—–
Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Filed Under: management, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Hiring, LinkedIn, Patty Azzarello

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