When business owner Barry Lehrer hit a time of need for his small software business, he brought in a salesperson to help close some deals.
“Technology selling is not easy at the best of times, and I brought him in because he had that sort of salesman sort of attitude,” Barry recounts.
Unfortunately, the new hire turned out to be a bad one. Whenever Barry would check in on the employee’s progress, the man was clearly not doing the work he had been hired to do. But Barry didn’t have the time to deal with the unproductive employee, and it was only when an efficiency consultant intervened that he felt able to confront the problem.
“I had a consultant who was helping us further develop our customer success process,” Barry recalls. “After she met him, she said, ‘Fire him’.”
Five minutes later – and three weeks into his tenure – the unproductive employee was fired, and Barry was left feeling “too nice” and “too trusting”.
“I had so many other things to do,” he says. “I [provided] the opportunity for this person to do nothing.”
Barry has long-since changed careers, and now works as a business coach. But the experience was a valuable lesson: Bringing the wrong people into your business can waste your time, money and energy, and is to be avoided at all costs.
On the other hand, the best people can supercharge your success.
“Someone who’s been fantastic for me is a lady who started with me when we first created the business. She was my business and customer success manager,” Barry says. “She and I would fight dog and bone with each other, but we had such mutual respect for each other.”
How do you get someone like this on your side – someone who is excellent for your business and for you? How do you avoid people who won’t meet your needs? That’s what this article is about.
Step one: Understand what you need
The first thing you absolutely need to grasp before you can start attracting the best people is what you need and want in your business. This doesn’t just mean understanding what skills you need, but which personalities you need, too.
“A lot of people go straight to, ‘What’s the role that I need?’,” HR expert Ilona Charles says. “They say, ‘OK, I need to put a salesperson in.’ I think what is probably more useful is sitting down and saying, ‘OK, what is the problem I’m actually trying to solve here? What’s the outcome I’m trying to drive?’ ”
Ilona runs her own HR consultancy, Shilo People. She recognises that it’s easy to rush into a decision when you need someone in your corner ASAP. But this is exactly what you shouldn’t do.
“Take a little bit of time to sit down and think, ‘OK, what’s really important to me? How do I like to work?’ ” she says.
Barry’s situation with the unproductive salesperson is a perfect example of what can go wrong when you rush into business relationships.
“My desperation took over from my needs,” he admits. “I should have considered my [sales] methodology, and probably said to myself, ‘Do I really need a salesperson? What are the other mechanics in the marketplace?’…I think I would have looked for somebody who came with ideas. The guy didn’t come with ideas.”
Barry explains that his best employees not only had a high level of expertise, but were eager to make their own mark on the business. He recounts a time in a meeting when two of his employees told him to “shut up and let us do what you’ve paid us to do”. When he reflects on what he should have done differently, he realises that he should have considered this when bringing someone new on board.
Moral of the story? Take a step back before you bring in someone. Think about what you want, rather than just who’s out there.
How do you know what you want (and need)?
Sometimes, it can be hard to know what you want until you’ve done some trial and error, Ilona says.
“And, if you’ve never had to do the work around yourself and know what you really need or want, you might not intuitively know that,” she adds. “And that’s OK.”
Ilona gives some examples of questions you might ask yourself to identify what you need.
- “What is the problem I’m actually trying to solve here?”
- “What outcome am I trying to achieve?”
- “What relationship do I want to have with a new person (such as mentor, employee or peer)?”
- “How do I like to work?”
- “What sort of personality would benefit my business?”
You might also like to think about what you definitely don’t want, like behaviours you find impossible to deal with, your ethical boundaries, personalities you don’t get on with, etc. An AI model like ChatGPT, or a trusted friend or adviser, might be able to come up with questions to help you identify your unique needs.
Small-business owner Christian Klopfer, who runs the furniture design venture OzTables, likes to think about his values visually.
“I have a mindmap of our values, which helps map out whether someone potentially aligns well,” he explains.
Christian shared a copy of the mindmap, which is included below.
He’s identified characteristics like openness to feedback and communication, positivity, and attention to detail as values he’d like his employees to have. These sit alongside technical skills and the expected product outcomes that a would-be employee should deliver.
Another small-business owner, Sharné Lategan, told us that she brings people on board only when she knows they work in the same way that she does.
“I have learned that I can’t change anyone to do it ‘my way’, so I have to find people who are already naturally doing it ‘my way’,” she says. “I follow them online for a month or so whilst original discussions unfold, to make sure everything matches up and so far I haven’t been disappointed.”
Recently, Sharné had success hiring four consultants who do things her way after going into the hiring process with this requirement in mind.
“I do research far and wide online,” she says. “When having original conversations, I ask them for examples of their work and what their processes and procedures are.”
You can also pay someone to come in and look at what you need in your business, if you have some funds to invest.
“There are business advisory services as well that can help you do that – business strategy, growth strategy, gap analysis,” Ilona says. “I think sometimes having a slightly external view to just your own is helpful.”
How do you find the best people?
Regardless of where you choose to look for your best people, the search generally requires some investment of either time or money.
Ilona says: “I think, probably, start with your networks. That sort of referral is a really good way to get people in, because they usually come from a trusted source. There are other networks, of course. You’ve got LinkedIn, you can do your normal sort of searches on there. There are meetups for tech companies. They happen all the time. There are lots of organisations, associations that you can probably tap into.”
Networking expert Daniel Hakim recommends tapping into social-media platforms.
“Simply posting callouts, even to those you don’t directly know, on social-media platforms like Boa, LinkedIn, and Instagram can speed up the process and reap real results in surprisingly swift time,” he says.
Daniel has founded two business networking organisations – Boa and Club of United Business – and has seen networking forge connections of all types for small and large business owners.
“While large companies pour big budgets into marketing, savvy small-business owners show up at networking events, building real relationships,” he says. “The key is to nurture your connections after establishing them because many may prove their worth in the long run, if not immediately.”
For instance, even if you don’t think you need someone right now, it’s a good idea to start nurturing valuable connections anyway.
“The worst time to look for investors is when you need them,” Daniel says. “Start networking long before you raise capital because trust and credibility take time to build.”
Christian, the furniture business owner, says he finds new people on industry job boards and among those who enter his shop.
“I find staff among people who have registered interest in what we do, or walked in,” he explains. “I find apprentices through apprentice connect provider MEGT.”
If your network isn’t yet developed, you can also do your own recruitment. However, Ilona says this is usually the most time-consuming option.
“You’ve got to write your job descriptions…filter the 400 applications that come through…it’s really time consuming,” she points out. “There are other platforms that you can go to, like Expert360, where you can put in your brief and it’ll match either contractors or permanent people.”
Let’s say you’re in a position where you just need people on the ground now, but you still want to hire employees who are a good match for your business. In this case, money can speed up the process. There are plenty of recruitment services out there at many different price points, some of which may be more appropriate for small businesses than others.
| ‘I want a mentor!’ Daniel Hakim has a few tips for people who are looking for an adviser or mentor. – Mentors invest time in people when they see potential in them – not those who just ask for favours. – Instead of requesting mentorship outright, focus on showing up, sharing your vision, and demonstrating your success. – Find places where these connections naturally happen, like industry-specific networking events. |
How to weed out the wrong people
We’ve talked about how to find the right people for your business. What about keeping the wrong people away?
If you already have an idea of what you want and need, this step will be easier; theoretically, you’ll be less likely to select a candidate who isn’t the right fit for you and your business.
However, the normal precautions of interviewing and reference checking still apply.
“Make sure you do your reference checking,” Ilona says. “A lot of people see it as a bit of ticking the box. [At Shilo People], we do what we call 360-degree references. So we ask for a manager, a peer and a direct report, if they’ve had one.”
If you’ve found someone you want to involve in your business, always seek up-to-date references: Speak to people who have worked with them recently.
When it comes to interviewing, Ilona recommends doing a behavioural interview, which involves asking about someone’s previous experience to help predict their future performance. This one’s a bit of an HR classic, but for good reason – it works.
“When you are very clear about the sort of competencies, capabilities that you’re looking for in your business, you can gear your questions around that,” Ilona explains. “And a behavioural interview doesn’t need to be rocket science. I’m sure ChatGPT can spew out a few questions for you.”
Barry’s top tip from his years as a small-business owner: When it comes to prospective business connections, always listen more than you speak.
“The easiest way to get a job as a prospective employee is to not say anything during the interview,” he says. “In other words, let the interviewer talk the whole time and then they’ll think you’re fantastic, because all they’ve done is listen to themselves.”
Consider small business-specific expectations
Lastly, HR expert Ilona says something you should always consider as a small-business owner is whether the person you’re bringing on has experience working with a small enterprise.
If you’re bringing on an employee, mentor or contractor who isn’t used to the small-business ‘way of doing’, consider (and make clear) how your expectations for them might differ from the large companies with which they’ve previously worked.
“Sometimes, people will come out of corporates and not be used to actually ‘doing the doing’,” Ilona explains. “If you’ve worked in really large organisations, you often have resources that you can tap into. [In small business] you’ve also got to be able to do the operation and move up and down the value chain.”
The HR specialist adds that small businesses often require more nimble thinking than large companies.
“Thinking a bit about my own profession here: Sometimes, when we put HR consultants into smaller businesses, they find they can’t hold their way of doing things too tightly, because those businesses morph and move,” she explains. “You need to be as nimble as they are.”
This article first appeared in issue 48 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
