Every serious entrepreneur desires an employee that does more than he is paid to do. As business expands, even a solo-entrepreneur will be forced to engage at least an extra hand to cope with the demands of the business. Often time, this task is not as easy as it seems. If you understand the fact that an organization is only as good as its employees, then you will be careful who you engage to help you run your business.
Who is an ideal Employee?
The question is best answer with an illustration. I will use a story I got from a friend sometime ago. I can’t remember the actual source so I don’t know who to give the credit. If you know the original author, I will be glad to append the credit in an update.
THE RESULTS OF INITIATIVES
Some years ago, three brothers left he farm to work in the city. They were all hired by the same company at the same pay. Three years later, Jim was being paid $500 a month, Frank was receiving $1,000, but George was now making $1,500.
Their father decided to visit the employer and find out the basis for the difference in pay. The employer listened to the confused father and said, “I will let the boys explain for themselves”.
Jim was summoned to the supervisor’s office and told, “Jim, I understand that Far East Importers has just brought in a large transport plane loaded with Japanese imported goods. Will you please go over to the airport and get a cargo inventory?”
Three minutes later, Jim returned to the office. “The cargo was one thousand bolts of Japanese silk”, Jim reported. “I got the information over the telephone from a member of the crew.”
When Jim left, Frank, the $1,000-a-month brother, was called. “Frank,” said the supervisor, “I wish you’d go out to the airport and get an inventory of the cargo plan which was just brought in by Far East Importers.”
An hour later, Frank was back in the office with a list showing that the plane carried 1,000 bolts of Japanese silk, 500 transistor radios, and 1,000 hand-painted bamboo trays.
George, the $1,500-a-month brother, was given identical instructions. Working hours were over and he finally returned. “The transport plane carried 1,000 bolts of Japanese silk,” he began. “It was on sale at $60 a bolt, so I took a two-day option on the whole lot. I have wired a designer in New York offering the silk at $75 a bolt. I expect to have the order tomorrow. I also found 500 transistor radios, which I sold over the telephone at a profit of $2.30 each. There are 1,000 bamboo trays, but they were of poor quality, so I didn’t try to do anything with them.”
When George left the office, the employer smiled. “You probably noticed,” he said, “that Jim doesn’t do what he’s told, Frank does only what he’s told, but George does more than he is told.
So, George is the ideal employee that any serious entrepreneur will like to hire. He generates business revenue that is more than sufficient to cover the salary he is being paid. Unfortunately, too many entrepreneur are struggling with employees that are like Jim. Such employee are always looking for how to earn income without doing any job. Remember in the story, Jim was asked to go to the airport, but he quickly used the telephone to get second-hand information because he can’t be bothered!
Well, there is no fool-proof method of ensuring that you don’t hire employees like Jim, but there are few tips that can help reduce the risk of recruiting such parasite into your business.
7 Tips For Hiring The Ideal Employee
- You must determine precisely the jobs you need done and the skills required to get it done. If you don’t have a very clear picture of this, what makes you think someone else will have it?
- Write it down, taking care to spell out in an un-ambiguous way the job descriptions, duties and skills required. There should be no room for assumptions.
- Make enquiries about the prevailing amount being paid as salary for such kind of employee in your industry. Don’t assume that you can pay peanut as salary just because the labor market is overflowing with applicants, if you make up your mind to pay peanut as salary, then be rest assured you will receive poor service from half-baked employees. Good employees don’t come cheap.
- Put your offer in writing, spelling out the job description, working hours, salary, benefits, vacation and sick time and other pertinent details.
- Use the summary of the offer to write a Job Advert which you will place in appropriate media. You may not include the remuneration in the advert.
- Oftentimes, you will get several applications in response to your advert. Go through the applications carefully without sentiment. Select those you consider the best and then invite such for interview. In some cases, there may be need for written test, practical demonstrations or presentation. Don’t be shy in going all length to ensure you get the ideal employee. It is advisable you don’t conduct the interview alone. Get some other people who are knowledgeable in the field to sit with you to interview the applicants.
- Do not fail to cross-check and confirm that the references provided by the applicant are genuine. In some cases, you may need to contact former employers to verify that the applicant does not have a bad record of engaging in illegal activities.
When you get an ideal employee like George, ensure you keep them by improving their remuneration as the business grows. Show genuine interest in their welfare and don’t shy away from investing in staff-training for such employee. It will pay your business huge dividend on the long run.
What kind of employee do you have in your business? Will you classify them as the ideal employee? I will love to get your feedback on this. Kindly drop a comment. For future updates to this article How to hire the ideal employee please subscribe to my RSS feed.
Share this:
Tags: Business, Dividend, Employment, Human resources, Salary
I am thinking of hiring someone luckily that I found this blog post.
Paul us last blog post..How to choose an affiliate program for your site?
this is quite helpful. I have a staff that’s just like JIM in your illustration. You can be sure next time am hiring, I’ll be a lot more careful.
I just found out that most Nigerian graduates are half-baked and worst of all they are lazy. Always dreaming to make money from where God knows. I have been recruiting staff for over 7years now and that is my observation and sincere opinion. So pardon me. In fact, most of them are getting on my nerves. Some think that work proficiency is synonymous with speaking big grammar.
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an really long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say excellent blog!