ON HIRING || Working on This One Entrepreneur Trait Will Help You Make Better Hiring Decisions

I've spent nearly two decades recruiting for my businesses and still need help getting it right.

There is no formula. Using scorecards, designing the interview with open-ended and closed-ended questions, involving all the stakeholders, and even having in-person meetings will still result in something falling through the cracks.

As a small business, it's hard to hire ahead or to have redundancy for every position because there's not enough work to go around. So, you'll find your hiring activity going on in spurts; likely when someone rings the alarm for their resignation.

A classic trait of entrepreneurs, who mostly like to tinker with their business, work on the big picture, or dream up new ideas, is impatience. I've probably been told more than a thousand times that I need to be more patient. Of course, my rebuttal would be, what are we sitting around waiting for? The answer to magically falling out of the sky? Every minute not spent "in action"— whether I'm thinking about a problem or physically getting around to solving it—is time wasted.

“What are we sitting around waiting for? The answer to magically falling out of the sky?”

That's why I surprised myself during our latest recruitment rounds by walking away from a few seemingly promising candidates. When you're hiring, you don't want to be rushed; this concept will seem contradictory to my impatience expressed above, but when you're hiring, you don't want to rush. You need to hire slowly and fire fast. Take your time to do as much as you can, given your recruitment deadline, to test whether someone is a fit. Then, you have the probationary period, where you get to witness all the things you missed. During probation, you will kick yourself for missing the candidate's flaws and observe a few strengths you could build on. At the end of the probationary period, you must decide whether you need to fire fast.

No one enjoys letting someone go from their role. Most of the time, the issue is that the candidate would be great elsewhere, in another role or with another company, just not here. Every time you want to rush a hiring decision, please remind yourself of how you felt the last time you had to fire someone; that feeling should immediately put on the brakes. Know that a critical entrepreneurial flaw is that we mostly hold the view that 'things will work out,' and we tend to see the positives and wish away the negatives. You need this trait to be fearless in the face of challenges, but when hiring, please get a second opinion. Involve your devil's advocate in the hiring process to save yourself from many future headaches. 

So, why did I walk away from promising candidates? I based my decision on the very basic principle that people will tell you who they are, and you need to believe them. The positive entrepreneur in me tried to wish away these red flags, but I'm glad I stopped myself.

The candidates showed me who they were and their essential traits; upon further consideration, after my initial excitement for each of them died down, it was clear that bringing either on board would exacerbate existing issues on the team or create new ones. I didn't want to sign my team up for that. 

After reviewing our interview notes and interactions, one candidate showed many signs of being a narcissist. They wouldn't have any issues driving things forward, and the energy was there to bring about change, but it would be at the expense of team harmony because the world clearly revolves around them. 

Another candidate had the hard skills to execute but somehow lacked creativity and had trouble grasping conceptual questions. Without perfect information, that candidate couldn't exercise their skills or make a call. I could picture them circling the same issue until they died of analysis paralysis. Other team members downstream from them would be waiting for instructions for a while. 

Finally, the last person had great names on a resume and understood the workings of the industry and a boutique agency like ours, but displayed a tendency to dance around issues and not provide an informative answer in the interview. How people act during the interview is how they will carry on in your company if you bring them on, and I couldn't deal with someone who can't give our clients a straight answer. 

When you hire, don't simply consider the skills you need on board for the next round of growth; as the owner, you need to see how it would impact the rest of the existing team and other stakeholders. Note that when I described the dealbreaker traits above, it centers on how such characteristics would affect the rest of the team, not how it impacts me. The teammates working with the new hire daily will bear the grunt of the addition. My priority is keeping my current team in flow, not throwing a wrench and seeing what happens.

The one thing you can do to improve your hiring process and make better hires is to exercise some patience. Going about it slowly and thoroughly will avoid many headaches. You may feel the extra crunch of getting more hands-on because you'll be short-staffed, but it's better than dealing with foreseeable HR issues.