I don’t get it.

When you KNOW that you have someone in your company that has to be let go – do it today.  Stop being such a chicken shit poor leader.

Do it with empathy.

But do it today.

The data says, that the cost of keeping the wrong person is 15x their annual salary.  It costs you WAY too much money to keep them.

ALL the reasons you give for not letting them go, are likely a sign that you’re simply nervous about doing it.  But do it you must.  Today.

If you want more info on how to fire people properly – these DVDs on Culture & Leadership both cover it.  As does the sections on People in Double Double.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned from interviewing is that everyone lies, or they at least exaggerate a little bit.

When you’re interviewing people, you must make sure that candidates actually have experience doing what they say they do. You’re not looking to see if they know how to do it.  There are lots of great books out there for people to read to learn how they might do something.  You want to find people that have proven past performance.

You want someone who has the practice and has perfected their craft. Your business deserves nothing less than that.

Don’t be afraid of grilling people hard in a one-on-one interview.

So, you want to be an expert recruiter ?  You want to get strong at interviewing ?

In all likelihood, this will never happen.  MOST CEOs and Entrepreneurs have far too many things on their plate to get good at this.  I’m not talking about being competent, I’m talking about being awesome at it.

As Malcom Gladwell says in his book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.  Let’s say he’s exaggerating, let’s say it only takes you 1,000 hours, or even 100 hours, are you really prepared to put that much effort into getting great at interviewing & recruiting, if you’re not – then it’s easy – outsource it to the professionals.  Especially when it comes to key hires.

I’ve personally spent close to a thousand hours interviewing and working on my interview skills.  I can stack up with the top 2%.  That’s why I finally decided that instead of simply training CEOs on how to recruit and interview their key hires, I’d source 2 TOP Recruiting companies who could do it for them- for the key hires at least.

I’ve found two:

-one focuses only on C-Level roles where the total comp is $300,000 or higher.

-the second focuses on VP, Director, and C-Level where the comp is $150-$250k.

It you’re interested in having them do retained searches for you, drop me an email, let me know what you’re hiring, comp etc., and I’ll happily intro you.

OR, spend a thousand hours, and perfect your recruiting & interviewing skills, and do it yourself…

I once traveled to Boston with a colleague to hire for a position. After three intense days of back-to-back interviews, we ended up flying home empty-handed. We interviewed sixteen candidates, in multiple interview rounds. We combed through close to 150 resumes. Still, we walked away because we just didn’t find the right person.

There are 300 million people living in the United States and 35 million in Canada.  The right people exist for every role. You just have to keep looking. Trust your gut, too.  When your gut says, ‘no’ don’t let yourself keep trying to make it say ‘yes.’

Patience is a virtue when you’re hiring. Be willing to wait for the right person.

Most “A” players aren’t out there looking either, so you might just have to shake the tree a few more times…

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

The old adage of, ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’ doesn’t work anymore.  A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills, and when you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need the people that will get the job done right away.

What should you do? I coach and mentor CEOs to go attract those who have proven skills and a personality.

Brad and Geoff Smart wrote an awesome book called Topgrading It’s one of the best systems for interviewing candidates and determining why you should bring someone into your organization. Topgrading recommends ‘leaning out’ two years into the future with every prospective candidate and determining what they have to achieve for you to be happy that you hired them at the end of those two years. Once you’ve started this ‘scorecard’ for the role, construct your job description around the milestones your candidate needs to have achieved after two years.

Once you have a tight job description, then you can interview against it to make sure that candidates have what it takes.

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.