Every Company Must Have A Proven
Hiring Process In Place And Ready

"Hiring Quality People Is Not An Accident"

Remember the Clairol television commercial that asked the million dollar question: "Does she or doesn’t she?" The casual or discerning observer wouldn’t be able to determine if her hair color was natural.

Whether you are a novice or a seasoned interviewer, during the interview, it is sometimes difficult to see someone’s true nature. Therefore, it is possible for someone to color or disguise certain personality traits by giving the "right" answers but not necessarily the true answer.

Employers need to have hiring systems in place. Regina Brown, who holds an M.S. in Industrial Organizational Psychology says, "It’s a prudent business practice. Every company should have a hiring process. Of course, larger companies are exposed to greater liability just because of their sheer numbers, but smaller companies benefit by not wasting time needlessly."

These systems should encompass all hiring phases. Brown states the hiring process should include receiving data on a resume or application, background and reference checks, personality, aptitude, or skill evaluations and the interview.

All too often real estate brokerages hire anyone just to bulk-up the numbers with the idea that everybody is good for at least one sale a year. However, through proper selection, the salespeople one hires may be worth 10-15 sales per year.

HIRE BY DESIGN

Hiring better quality people is not an accident. Those firms that post the highest per person production numbers do so by design, although many people are not aware of the conscientious preparation required.

Most interviewers believe that by using a series of specialized questions, they have attained the optimum level of professionalism. While effective questioning has merit, it is not the beginning and the end.

"First a company must do a job analysis to determine the needs of the position," states Brown. "The analysis must not be based solely on the manager’s opinion of the position but on the actual skills and components necessary to accomplish the goals."

This is the discovery phase and must be completed at the beginning of the process. Ideally this should be done before the job exists, during the development of the position. If the position has been in place, this analysis remains valuable. Once that is complete, determine which skills are learned and which are innate. If someone does not possess the fundamental qualities to succeed in the position, management will exhaust its resources trying to develop that person before finally deciding to remove the individual.

Hiring new personnel is very expensive. The cost of hiring the wrong person is directly expressed in dollars and cents. It is logical, therefore, to invest those same resources or a portion of them to develop effective hiring methods. Brown recommends following standard procedures for any size firm and says, "Smaller companies often have fewer financial resources, so by using a process with evaluators, they are able to sift through candidates quickly, thus saving hours of labor. The smaller company can then only interview candidates who have the qualities needed. Also, lawsuits are expensive. For a large company with greater exposure, having a verifiable system in place can save lots of litigation dollars if a disgruntled candidate should challenge why they were not selected for the position."

There is also a cost attached to morale. Hiring the wrong person takes an emotional energy toll on all of those who must interact with the hire. Co-workers will repeatedly teach the same skills, some may just do their job for them and management may be reluctant to admit their misjudgment in hiring the wrong person. All of these factors affect morale, which is a lot more difficult to convey into dollars, but it too will make a direct adverse financial impact on the bottom line.

— Lynn Kaiser Conrad

Leaders Who Are Believed, Survive

"Honesty: The Pearl Of Great Price"

Delivering on promises. Being on time. Carrying out instructions by their intent, not just their letter. Being trustworthy. Refraining from destructive gossip. Taking the extra effort to do things the right way. These often unnoticed qualities add up to the highly significant issue of credibility.

Whether you're delivering a presentation to a somewhat skeptical homeowner who plans to list her home, or before the head of a firm's relocation department, or advising your own personal staff, your credibility as a communicator -- or lack of it -- will decide your eventual success or failure.

Napoleon said, "In war, three-quarters turns on personal character." Charles Reade echoed those sentiments, "Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny."

Nowhere is credibility more crucial than in business where decisions must be made confidently, people must be trusted completely, and work must be done correctly. What you say and how you say it, what you do and how you do it will determine your credibility which in turn will determine your tactics and your future.

Credibility is a characteristic of your choosing and it can't be handed down, bartered, or bought. It must be developed day by day, decision by decision, action after action.

FIVE NECESSARY STEPS

Here are some steps for the development of meaningful credibility.

1.) Be Concerned

People tend to trust people who show concern for them. When they bleed, they want to know others bleed with them. Even companies and sales agents to be successful have to project concern over self-interest in troubled times.

During times of corporate crisis, be it mismanagement, personality conflicts, product defects, or outside concerns, companies and professionals with credibility are those who not only solve the problems fully and honestly but comfort those affected.

2.) Be Competent

While compassion is admirable, leaders also have to get their facts right. That's why people flock to experts, top producers, wise decision-makers, and winners. People don't intentionally invest their money in poorly performing stocks; neither do they put their trust in people they doubt can deliver the goods.

Followers need to have faith in the competence and performance of those they look up to. They want to know those they put their trust in can, for instance, get a property sold, or turn the company around.

3.) Be Correct

Few people set out to be incorrect; it's just that when they have missing, incomplete, or unreliable information, they tend to make false assumptions or reason incorrectly.

Because we test validity on important matters by considering the source, a track record of accuracy and reliability is critical.

It should be the guiding principle of all trainers or business managers to first focus on getting the facts straight, giving current statistics, and providing complete information.

4.) Be Consistent

We communicate by actions as well as words -- by what we say and don't say, by which policies we enforce and don't enforce, and by behavior we reward and punish.

To be credible, our words must match our policies, performance, principles, and plans over a sustained period of time.

5.) Be Clear

Sometimes the better we understand something the worse job we do of explaining it; our familiarity makes us careless in describing it.

Meanings depend on context, tone, timing, personal experience, and reference points. Any imbalance or ambiguity can turn even the most innocent communication into a major misunderstanding.

A common culprit is exaggeration. Was the score a "blowout" or 28 to 24? Did you have to wait "forever" or half an hour? Was the caller "out of control" or defensive? Exaggeration makes great humor but destroys credibility.

Credibility is that unseen element that permeates your every action, word, and attitude. Leaders who have it gain loyal followers. Leaders who lack it will always be second-guessed ... and second rate.

– Dianna Booher

Fighting The Status Quo

"A Rolling Stone Gathers The Complacent"

If we want to succeed in business, the best place to begin is by getting tough on ourselves. No matter what business you are in, the demands and expectations are increasing, and there’s less time and patience for getting the job done. More hours, more responsibility and more knowledge are the ingredients for success. The work ethic is changingto meet new demands. No longer does hard work alone count. We’re in a performance-based business world that requires more than long hours. To become oriented in the new direction, here are several concepts for success in a career or in running a business. In order to get to the top, get tough with yourself.

If you think you’re doing your job, you’re obsolete.

“Only The Paranoid Survive,” is the provocative title of Intel chairman Andrew S. Grove’s book. It’s easy to spot those who believe they have mastered their craft; they are oblivious to what’s going on around them and have become functionally obsolete. What they do, they may do well. Unfortunately, it is not enough.

If you think you fully understand what’s happening, you will never get up to speed.

Any business that depends on a fax machine, for example, is out of the mainstream. It’s easy to understand yesterday’s technology and issues. If you do, you’re behind the curve. The best strategy is to get on the front of a curve by embracing new technology, anticipating trends and seeking new information -- and stay in front of that curve.

If you talk about what you’ve accomplished, you’re useless.

Humans seem to enjoy the past, but past accomplishments are today’s unwanted baggage. If you talk about past successes, you can be sure you’ve stopped learning and that renders you unnecessary. “If an organization stops improving,” says Gene C. Wright of Andersen Consulting, “it quickly loses competitive advantage.” This applies to individuals, too.

If you feel you’ve paid your dues, your career (or your business) is bankrupt.

The idea that you can earn a permanent place at the table is gone. The dues are never paid in full. Anyone who has been in the work force for more than 15 years must undergo what can be called “work concept reversal.” The old thinking held that the longer you were in a career, the easier it should become. Work concept reversal holds that we should expect demands to increase over time and there’s no room for “stepping back.” If the time comes when you start losing responsibilities, you are on the way out.

If you’re glad you have a job with little stress, you won’t have it for long.

While there are those who hold that stress is the current workplace enemy, the real culprit may be the notion that stress is abnormal. What may be harmful is the inner turmoil that develops when we act as if pressure or stress is inappropriate. The issue is learning how to cope with business life: only those who can survive in this environment will flourish.

If you’re not taking risks, you have nothing to contribute that’s of value.

There’s no advancement for those who play it safe. Risk taking is the mental attitude that cuts costs, provides better and more timely service and finds solutions where there are obstacles. If you’re not coming up with new solutions, new ideas and new answers, you’re not needed. The way to get ahead is to be a resource for your company, whether you own it or work for it.

If you’re not focused on the present, there is no future.

The people who are most valuable to business organizations have an ability to separate themselves from both what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow, and focus totally on the now. If they are in sales, they listen to the customer instead of trying to get the customer to listen to them. If they are in management, they tune out themselves so they can hear the message.

If you’re not willing to put yourself on the line, you’ll hang on it.

Taking responsibility is perhaps the most necessary quality in running a business or working in one. Yet, most people spend time avoiding it in a futile effort to protect themselves from possible criticism. Respect for responsibility is the missing ingredient in too many organizations. We live in a “no excuses” environment.

If you believe this is just the Information Age, you’re out of touch.

The idea of the Information Age, with its incredible emphasis on the availability of data, tends to obscure the need for concepts. This is the Age of Information Organization. Simply having more information at our fingertips is irrelevant unless you know how to process that information in productive ways. The ability to link and interpret information in meaningful ways is the key.

If you’re not wired, you’re no longer connected.

And if you’re not connected, you’re nowhere. The key is being connected and this runs counter to those who want to go on vacation so they can “be away from the telephone.” That’s past. If you’re out of the loop for even short periods, someone else has filled the gap. There’s no time for a pause.

Only those who are relentless in making sure they are ahead of the curve are valuable both to themselves and their companies.

-- John R. Graham

Ad Writing: Do's And Don'ts

"Great ads keep the wolf from your door"

As I’ve written many times before, advertising is “talking to strangers and getting them to talk back to you.” Before you advertise you've probably tried all possible contacts but without success. If so, it’s now time to throw out a wider net -- it’s time to advertise.

When you advertise in a major media -- widely circulated homes magazine, daily or weekly newspaper, radio or TV, the Internet -- you are going beyond your personal coterie. You are trying to strike up a conversation with strangers who, in all likelihood, don’t know you and are reading your ad solely because they want to compare and contrast what you have to offer with other offers.

All your honors, awards and multi-million dollar years are as nothing. The strangers reading your ad are the original “to heck with what you have done before -- what can you do for me now?” folks. That said, you must first attract and hold their attention with a solid, convincing ad before they look to see who you are. To accomplish this, first learn the secrets of the pros.

FOUR NEGATIVES TO AVOID

To help you attract these tough hombres -- and they are the plus business you need to survive -- there are four major areas you must avoid if you want these strangers to go beyond the listing and find out about you.

1.) Never leave out the asking price. You may think you’re smart doing so and that you will force a call. Nonsense. You’ll be lucky to get any calls at all.

2.) Never leave out the address. Once again, a “leave-out” angers the buyers by defying a time-honored buyer method of evaluating a home’s real appearance and location, which is ascertained by a “drive-by.” Your ad will have to be awfully provocative and the picture exceptionally clear to force a call. You only frustrate would-be buyers.

3.) Never confuse the word “house” for “home” -- in or outside of an ad. Take a leaf from the new homebuilders. They long ago banished the word “house” from their lexicons. They know they don’t sell bricks, mortar and floor plans. They sell dreams. So do you.

4.) Never use abbreviations beyond the standard, well-understood br and ba. Readers hate a tangle of abbreviations and will skip over your tortured lines, shortcut words in a wink. If you are loading your lines with abbreviations, you are trying to tell too much -- the details are your “on-the-site” job. A good ad whets the appetite for the home, hits the high points and invites a look-see.

FOUR POSITIVES TO USE

Now that you’ve eliminated the four negatives, let’s turn to four positives.

First: Write strong, compelling headlines. No ad must ever be without a headline. From the earliest days of Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues and newspaper ads, the headline has been a must. Now, with ever-increasing evidence from cognitive psychology, it is clear that the trigger to any action is emotion -- which you may read as a headline -- that can be provocative or focused or metaphorical, or all of the above. If the right brain doesn’t kick in, nothing ... nothing ... happens. Simple. True.

Second: The emotional headline has garnered the attention of the prospective buyer. But he needs concrete facts to sell his banker. A “View Almost to China” may grab the buyer but won’t cut it with a banker. So, in the ad copy, set forth quickly outstanding bankable features of the home; positives that if push comes to shove enable the banker to feel secure; he knows he has something solid, something of measurable value, a home that is worth more than the mortgage.

Tell them (the buyer and his banker) about the brick exterior, the 3-car garage, the easy access to I-35, yet secluded and quiet location. Remember, it’s a two-way sale: the buyer and his banker. Sell both.

Third: Come back with violin music. It’s the dream that comes first and third. Stress the benefits, pleasures, lifestyle potential. Target the right buyer, be he/she a Winner, an Authentic, a Heartlander. They all have buttons that can be pushed. It is truly different strokes for different folks ... all for the very same home. What the Winner sees as great walls for his trophies, the Authentic sees as a backdrop for his paintings, and the Heartlander sees as walls with moldings to display his commemorative plates.

Fourth: End with an invitation for them to act, to call you, now. End with your phone number. Be sure to answer the call or return the call pronto. Plus, keep track of where the calls came from; which ads drew best; which media made the phone ring most. Build your ad call book, and spend your money where it does you the most good.

-- Hal Douthit