Hiring choices

If you client experience is the most important element in construction marketing -- and for most of us, it is, because of the vital importance of repeat and referral business -- your front-line administration and reception employees are indeed among your most important marketing representatives.

So choosing who you hire for this work is vitally important, but never easy.

Of course, many more people "qualify" to be receptionists/administrators than competent sales representatives, designers, or tradespeople. The "entry level office position" is akin to the construction labourer -- yes, you need some important skills, but this isn't an area where you normally think of "labour shortage".

Indeed, with the recession still impacting the economy, a single posting on the Canadian government's free Internet job bank resulted in more than 100 resumes, within a couple of days.

We've developed some systems to manage the process.

First, everyone who sends a resume (unless they are obviously unqualified), is sent a questionnaire with math and grammatical puzzlers. The prospective employee is also asked whether all references from immediate previous supervisors can be verified, and if not, why.

Many don't bother completing the questionnaire. We had a laugh when one candidate sent an email with spelling and grammatical errors saying, effectively, "Why are you asking these questions -- they aren't necessary for the job." Well if you can't understand basic grammar and arithmetic, how are you going to add up the daily deposit, or send a client a letter reflecting well on the business?

We simply scan the questionnaires, and throw out all the applications who answer incorrectly.
Then we review the resumes for inconsistencies with the questionnaires. I only read the resumes AFTER the questionnaire -- we ask candidates to resend their resumes with the questionnaire responses so we don't have to fish through the big pile of initial inquiries.

Here is where things get trickier, however, and here is where I had a tough decision last night.

After a screening phone interview, we invite finalists in for a few hours of paid work. This is real work, reflecting operations, but varies day to day.

As its, I stopped reviewing resumes and sending out questionnaires after three days; we had three finalists in for work. The first candidate worked well through the day, but my "sixth sense" had real doubts. The second person showed up, looked at our messy offices, and told me that he doesn't think he would like working for us, and left. (Frankly, that rejection was painful.) The third person arrived yesterday but unfortunately I had to leave the office before the outgoing administrator and the prospective new employee could actually do any work.

At 4:30 p.m., my departing employee recommended the first candidate. But in my heart I sensed the third would be best. Nevertheless, I needed to make a decision.

I called the two candidates (rare evening phone calls) for final interviews and talked with a key employee who is staying. In the end, I decided to invite the first candidate in for a few days temporary work (she is available now) and possible on-call support later, but went with the third candidate, subject to reference verification.

What weighed my decision?

Recommendations from departing employees always carry much less weight than current and new employees
People leave an organization for a variety of reasons; maybe they have a much better offer, but maybe they simply don't fit into the culture. Their recommendations then carry the weight of their values. Sometimes they are angry and they want you to work with someone who will make things worse (I don't think that is the case here).

If I am wrong, what are the consequences?
We will have some business/operational disruption, but there is no shortage of administrative employees now. By offering the first candidate temporary work, I can fill some immediate needs and create a back-up should the second candidate not pan out. But a wrong decision here won't be a disaster.

Has the candidate met all the essential qualifications?
Bending the rules on references is never wise, equally hiring someone just because they look good or say the right things is dangerous. Here, I had a yellow flag as the outgoing employee said the person I thought best didn't understand some basic job-related requirements. But again I looked through the assessments, and concluded in my final interview that these problems would not weigh heavily on my decision.

What does my "gut" tell me?
Yes, intuition counts -- and when things are in doubt, can be the most important tie breaker.
Note that wise and selective hiring is never easy -- and you need systems to handle the process. I hope I have it right this time.

Older workers, younger workers

Chase, delegated the challenging task of recruiting and screening potential sales employees for our business, has observed that many older candidates are reluctant to answer our questionnaires or complete the full pre-employment evaluation process.

Conversely, younger candidates, in their early to mid-20s, may complete the evaluations, score well, start out great, and then have a tendency to flame out much more rapidly than older employees.

Does this mean that either younger or older people should not work for us? No -- in fact they can be ideal employees, with enthusiasm, skill, and talent.

But what can we do to minimize hiring stress/waste and keep the younger or older employees engaged? This is a question all businesses must answer, of course.

Chase notes in his blog posting:

The process which I can not divulge in complete details is set up to allow people to demonstrate their true knowledge of what we do and produce measurable results.

The purpose is to weed out the candidates that are great fictional writers with resumes and find a truly great sales person.

I am finding that candidates under the age of 40 are happy to take up the challenge and demonstrate their skills. The other side of the coin is I am finding sales professionals over 40 take offence to our process and have heard the term "Jumping through hoops!" used several times.

How do I encourage these potentially great employees to play the game and take a leap of faith and do what they may think is below them? Most could probably pull out a Rolodex of business cards and demonstrate their ability to sell rather quickly, however like a fine wine they expect to be appreciated based on the vintage of their grapes or really in this case their experience.

The publisher and the owner of the company always ask the same question when these great candidates come along, "Why are they no longer there?" I am guessing in most cases performance slipped either based on the changes to environment or industry where they came from or more likely you can remove a higher ranking individual and with the savings in salary hire two people to replace them.

I posted the question to my publisher about how we could handle these candidates differently. I proposed he take them on and coax them to demonstrate their skills. I think there may be an opportunity for establishing rapport better based on the amount of grey hairs on their heads as well as overall career experience.

I answered Chase in my own publisher's viewpoint with these observations about older workers:

I don't have an easy answer to this question. I think the person who likely would be a great sales representative in our organization has extremely strong self-reliance and entrepreneurial characteristics. Most of the time, by the time people have reached middle age or older and have these traits, they have started their own business. If they are responding to an employment advertisement offering a salary, they either haven't succeeded, or perhaps crave much more security than a good salesperson should ever need.

This doesn't mean that we cannot modify our approaches but know of no better way to evaluate potential than to ask the potential sales representative to do some useful work before we offer permanent employment. Our lead/sales cycle isn't that long and someone who is motivated and understand the basics should be able to find results reasonably quickly. Since we pay for this work, we are not unfair to the potential employee. If they insist on job security before they truly prove their ability, I think they are putting the cart way before the horse.

For younger employees, I think the key is to make the connection between their real circumstances and passions, and allow for more intrinsic instability and self-discovery.

In one case, a young employee started out really well, then flamed out in a "firing" offence. After re-establishing communication with him, I confirmed that his problems at work had much to do with emotional confusion relating to his personal relationships. He has matured and discovered more clearly his entrepreneurial character.

So we discussed putting together a new working arrangement that will serve the business's interests, while allowing him to grow independently. (I'm a firm believer in allowing second chances for employees unless their failure relates to fundamental integrity weaknesses. Of course we don't go beyond this, to a third chance because if the problems repeat twice, you can virtually be certain they will not go away anytime soon.

So, hire young, hire old. You can respect the age differences without giving up your core standards.

The bell curve: Incompetence and genius

Our company needs a new bookkeeper/accounting support person. This work, of course, involves specialized skills and experience, and much precision and attention to detail. The latter two qualities are not my strongest points.

Of course, we could go to a headhunter, or temp agency, or even our own general accountant and pay for someone to do the job. But I prefer to have a close and immediate working relationship with the person handling our books. So we advertised, using the Canadian government's free Job Bank service. (In Canada, the employment service is provided on a national, rather than the state level in the U.S.)

Within days, we had more than 120 resumes. How could we sort through all of these potential candidates and weed out the less-than-effective ones?

I decided to use some online resources. First, I found a free "competency test" from the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers with a Google search. Since our business has some U.S. elements, our ideal candidate will know U.S. as well as Canadian accounting and bookkeeping rules (there are a few differences) and how to integrate accounting reports to produce consolidated financial statements. This is therefore not work for someone who has taken a two month basic bookkeeping course.

With test in hand, I loaded it on free publishing software provided by yudu.com (we are paying $200 per year extra for the enhanced version to allow us to edit pages and upload video files for the new Design and Construction Report.)

Then I took the email addresses from the people who applied, set up a Constant Contact list, and emailed everyone a brief job description, along with a request they complete the test, answer a brief questionnaire, and send in another copy of their resume.

By the deadline Thursday, we had about 40 responses.

Now the fun began. Before I even looked at the questionnaires, I started marking the multiple-choice tests tests using the answer keys provided by the association. Shockingly, most candidates got five or more questions wrong, some failed to answer half the questions on the multiple-choice test correctly. (Sheesh... this is an open book exam, unsupervised, and I invited the candidates to look up the answers if they weren't sure.)

We've now narrowed the list down to three names. They got one or at most two answers wrong. We'll interview the finalists, check references, and then set up a final interview with the company's general accountant who can lob real competency questions at the candidates. (This covers the remote possibility that someone would actually fake their way through the test and truly not know anything.)

But what about the more than 100 candidates who either decided not to complete the test, or completed it with many errors?

Of course, the explanation is that the really good and competent bookkeepers are currently employed, and employers are generally loathe to give up on great employees. In the current economy, many partially competent bookkeepers may also be looking for work, they can 'sort of' do the job, but really are not shining lights. A few good ones are around, of course; the challenge is to sift through the less-than-perfect ones to find someone who is truly right for the work.

Note we use a modified version of this hiring approach for all of our employees. Everyone who applies gets a chance; we only screen resumes after a prequalification test that indicates their fundamental competence and interest in the work.

I obtained this image from istockphoto.com; a great resource for inexpensive royalty-free (but copyright valid) graphics.

This intriguing and important blog posting by Bruce Lynch at the PSMJ Resources Blog, Solid Hiring Advice in Any Industry, raises some important yet complex questions. I'll stretch copyright here and repeat the post for clarity:

For the past 20 years, my wife has worked for a firm that provides financial software products to the structured finance industry. It’s a great story – a couple of MIT guys working out of modest digs in 1985 are in 2008 the undisputed leaders in the cashflow modeling industry – managing a firm of over 100 people on three continents.

So what’s their secret? I’ll let a long-time employee tell it:

When we hire people, we try to bring in candidates that have some connection to the company – a friend, former co-worker, colleague in a client firm, etc. – and see if they are what we are looking for. A few years ago, I had a friend-of-a-friend who was an assistant to a fixed income money manager before he was laid off so I had him come in for an interview. Our hiring manager told me that he totally bombed on the problem solving questions so they didn't bring him back for a second round. The candidate called me a couple weeks later for a postmortem but was completely baffled about why the fact that he couldn't answer a question about how to efficiently weight 9 pennies had anything to do with whether he was a good bond analyst or not. I tried to explain that our philosophy in hiring is that we're looking for good generic problem solvers and finance knowledge coming in the door isn't important. I knew that he still didn't get it when we hung up and the next couple times I talked to our mutual friend, she pressed me on it and couldn't get her to understand that one of the keys to our long-term success over the years has been our hiring process. We haven't hired that much dead wood and while we've probably passed on a lot of people who ultimately would have turned into great employees, we've minimized the number of people on board who are useless. She didn't get it and still doesn't.

Makes sense to me, what do you think?

Intriguing, indeed, because this hiring policy seems to have two apparently contradictory elements: You need to know someone in the organization to 'get in' -- but your pass or fail will depend less on your technical knowledge than on your ability to answer a seemingly irrelevant (to the job) question (and I would expect they have more than one of that sort of problem-solving question to get around the problem of interview prepping.

Nevertheless, I can see the approach working well here for businesses with a critical mass and size of employees -- if you have a hundred or so people, the network is large enough that good employees will know others who are potentially suitable; and the base of candidates worthy of consideration is large enough that enough people will present themselves ready to work for the business (knowing it is viable, profitable and a good place to work). And a person working at a healthy organization will generally only recommend people who would seem good at first sight, because you wouldn't want to bring in deadwood or irritating people to work with you just because they are friends or family.

I've spent much of my mental energy in the past couple of years developing and 'tweaking' our own hiring system because effective and successful hiring is, I believe, your most effective marketing resource. With the right people, the business will operate in harmony, and current clients will be served well -- creating the ambiance and spirit that attracts new business and high quality relationships.

We'll certainly invite current employees to suggest people for opportunities and will give referred candidates a plus on the evaluation matrix. For other considerations, we rely on a combination of evaluation tests, the most important being the short-term working assignment, perhaps more accurately described as the working interview. We want to see how well people handle the work -- and the relationships within the organization -- before we rush to hire anyone.

For salespeople, we've relied on salestestonline.com for our preliminary screening. A poor score on this test meant you were 'out' even if other indicators suggested you should be given a chance. Last week, I changed the policy (actually in line with the test organizer's own recommendations) and decided that while the test is important, it should be seen in context of other variables. For example, if a person has an exceptional track record of experience, or specific qualifications relevant to our business, or a highly qualified recommendation from someone within the company, we can proceed to the (paid) working evaluation regardless of the test results. But if the person lacks experience, or we aren't sure of the relevance of the individual's experience, a good score on the test is essential. But we won't hire anyone, no matter how well they score on the test, or how eager they are to work with us, unless they complete the working assignment satisfactorily.

I continue to believe that a systematic, fair, and disciplined hiring policy is essential for any business which wishes to grow to greatness. But we must constantly review, revise, and adapt the policy -- it is a working process, not a static structure.

A truly great day

This image from the page "How to Change the Corporate Culture" at http://www.beyondlean.com is on a site dedicated to lean manufacturing, which may have different requirements than most AEC businesses. But the observations are still useful.

Some days in business, things work just the way they should. And, as I prepare to turn the computer off tonight, I sense that dynamic in our organization and truly am grateful. Tim Klabunde, in an excellent posting in his CofeBuz blog, describes Four Steps to Changing Corporate Culture. His approach is much better than what I went through as this business contracted through three painful years of decline and dissension -- and hit bottom in November 2006, about eight months after we began implementing the necessary cultural changes with the guidance of consultant Bill Caswell.

The reason I'm really happy today is the amazing idea generation and initiative shown by our employees, along with co-operation, sharing, and respect. Best of all, new people want to join the business and are ready to go through our rather stringent pre-hiring procedures to qualify to join the team. All of this, of course, is translating to respect for our clients and this is creating the marketer's dream -- repeat inquiries and business.

I realize now that a great business needs some key structures and controls, but the biggest thing you can give employees is freedom. Therefore, in our case, the most important operating system is our hiring policies. The employees who join this organization must have the ability to thrive in an environment of limited supervision -- and that includes respecting and working well with each other. (This is why it is so important for prospective employees to work with us long enough for the current employees to decide and 'vote' on whether the potential employee fits in.)
I've noted several times in this blog -- and cannot understate it -- that your employees are your marketing department. Yes, in some cases, especially where there is a skills shortage, you may have to hire less-than-perfect people to get the job done. In these cases, you need to find a way to keep these employees away from your clients! But I would argue your business will be stronger in the long run if you slow down your hiring, and only accept people who really are great at what they do, and great at working with each other.

I can't share all the good news today -- no one in their right mind broadcasts every internal business development in a public blog! But I'm truly impressed with the quality of the emerging corporate culture.

Resumes, tests, interviews, references, and hiring

Increasingly, I'm a firm believer in the importance of systematic and rational approaches to hiring. Brad Smart's approach to Topgrading holds real resonance here -- by focusing our efforts to hire people within the top 10 per cent of ability and commitment, we are much more likely to be a successful business than if we just hire 'okay' people to fill vacant positions.

In one of his papers, Smart reiterates his opinion that "Most Personality Tests are Shams" and answers the objections of his recommendation for lengthy, tandem, interviews, that "Topgrading Interviews Take Too Much Time".

Smart and I agree that the quick and conventional interview provide far too much opportunity for 'faking' and dressing up your personality/competence for the work. I am not sure about whether tests are absolutely useless, however. Since the test we use for sales employees is relatively inexpensive, (http://www.salestestonline.com/) I wanted to see how much results would change if a candidate retook the test shortly after the original testing.

In the first case, the prospective candidate scored modestly well, but below our arbitrary thresholds. Without my consent or permission -- but without knowing the test costs about $35 to administer -- he went ahead and retook the test himself, and passed. In the second situation, a candidate for a writers' job phoned me this week to see if we were going to give her application further consideration. As we are in the final stages of evaluating candidates for this work, I said that we wouldn't take it further, but then engaged with her the idea of testing for the sales job. (Our sales positions are highly compatible with writing skills, and anyone who is looking for a writing job willing to 'sell' herself on it, might be an ideal candidate for our business.

In any case, she quickly took the test, but the test's validity algorithms kicked in, and the test results came out inconclusive, with the observation that she might be undergoing exceptional stress.

I invited her to explain; and said she could take the test again; but this time, answer as she really is, not as she wants to appear. This time around, her results scored truly low. (But she emailed me later in the day to say she had just been awarded a satisfying career and she had noticed she was receiving several offers out of the blue-- suggesting to me that her job-finding radar in fact was in high gear.)

These results might scare a validity expert -- how can one obtain very different results from the same test within days? Does this degrade the test's utility in the hiring process? To use a very bad pun, I think Smart (or anyone else) would be dumb to use this type of test as a key or final determining resource about who to hire. We simply put it in the middle of our screening process for public candidates, and as a first stage 'review' for people we have some interest in, but wish to evaluate quickly before going further. (These can include referred candidates, call-ins, and the like.)

In one case, for example, a very long-standing employee from our major competitor called us with tales of woe at his organization. He wanted to work with us. The conventional "do you understand the job" screening process is obviously unnecessary here (the competitor uses many of the same business models and practices as us -- in fact, the competitor's company founder is one of my former employees). My phone interview with this person took some interesting turns, as I gathered competitive intelligence, validated observations, and tried to figure out what to do if we hired the person -- who would come from a totally different culture. Not sure about what to do, we administered the test, and he scored less than the hiring threshold. I now had a third-party justification to not hire him.

In the second instance, the marketing representative at one of our major clients referred a relative. You really can't brush off someone like this -- so, after we followed the preliminary steps, we offered the online test. The candidate fared poorly. We could extricate ourselves from the awkwardness of not hiring the relative of a major client by sending our good client the test results.

Finally, the test is really useful and powerful in motivating potential candidates who do well to move forward to the final stages -- the working evaluation.

But what about interviews? Short and sweet phone interviews have value, I agree, in narrowing things down, but I wouldn't ever want to make a final hiring decision based primarily on an interview. You can miscue and misunderstand potential far too easily. But I agree with Smart's critics that complex and lengthy interviews are a pain for everyone -- both for the managers and colleagues doing the interviewing, and the job-seekers themselves.

Our solution, one that I think is practiced by just a few businesses, is to forget the full-scale interview cycle, and invite candidates to do some paid work for us.

We're going through that process with candidates for the editor right now. Our normal approach is to offer a freelance assignment to people who send in interesting writing samples and hire the best of the lot -- but this time around I took things a step further. I divided our editorial salary budget up, and offered one month freelance contracts to the two finalists. We can really see who works best, both in objective talent, and in ability to work with the team. And everyone is treated fairly -- the 'loser' still gets a decent cheque for the writing work.

In our system, frankly, up to now, the weak spot has been the reference checking process. Candidates who have fared well through all the tests and evaluations are truly tempting to hire without 'bothering' with the reference evaluations, but I now can see that I could have avoided virtually all of our mis-hires with proper reference checking. (Notably the mishires weren't that bad, objectively; while they worked with us they worked quite effectively -- and left without too much of a fuss when their problems became apparent.) We do our best to get around reference problems now by really focusing in the pre-screening that reference checking will happen at the final stages; this helps to cut some of the candidates who dress things up, but we need to have more discipline in the reference evaluations.

Why is this stuff so important to your business and marketing? Consider the cost to your company of bad employees; ones who don't get along with each other and the clients on an interpersonal level or who are simply incompetent or lazy at work. If you are a client, either current or potential, do you really like doing business with organizations full of second-rate people? If you are building a truly effective marketing plan, you really need to focus on finding really good employees.

In conclusion:

Hire carefully. Use a pre-screening questionnaire before even really looking at resumes;

• Use personality/sales tests carefully -- these should never be your final tool but I believe they can be effective in screening or evaluating 'special' candidates, or as part of a systematic hiring process.


• If possible, create a realistic (paid) working assignment in place of multiple interviews. You won't be frustrated with lengthy and tedious interviews, and your employee candidate will be happy to go through the process.


• Don't skimp or avoid reference checking. Even organizations that have a policy for legal reasons not to provide references will always give a positive reference to a truly good former employee. You need to ask, or have the employee set up the call for you, however.

Meaningful evaluation -- fast results are important

This image is from the website of eskill.com, which offers a pre-employment screening test package for many positions. I haven't tested it myself, but will try their sample evaluation. We use salestestonline.com for our potential sales employees as a key screening resource. This type of testing gets you part of the way beyond the resume and somewhat staged interview; the challenge is however, to see how the potential employee really works on the job. And I've found no better, nor faster, solution than to put the employee on the payroll for a few days working evaluation. This is more helpful than multiple interviews and other expensive testing because the working evaluation performs these functions simultaneously -- you see the person at work, and how he or she interacts with other employees and clients, and you know the person well enough to get somewhat beyond the superficial mask. You still need to check references carefully, however, and that is our final evaluation stage.

One of our fundamental evaluation resources in assessing potential new salespeople is whether they actually sell anything during the one to four day working test. (We break the assignment into two components: One, a prospecting test to see if the candidates can assess and discover relevant potential leads, and the second, a "list working" challenge where the representative is given a somewhat qualified list of names for a specific project or theme, and is expected to convert some of that list to actual orders.)

If they don't sell anything during the test -- if they just claim they are "close" or "I'll get results with a little more time", we pay them for the few days work, and say goodbye. The reason is simple: Surely, if you are truly a salesperson, and want to prove yourself, you'll be able to show your stuff with a real demonstration order. If you can't you are possibly breathing the air of "maybe tomorrow", and the story will go on and on, with no results.

This evaluation stage, like others in our system, is not perfect. We may weed out good representatives with standards that some say are ridiculously high. Theoretically, with a little additional product knowledge; maybe some extra resources and training, the sales representatives can achieve their true potential. But are we better off declining that risk, and just working extra hard to find someone who really qualifies?

One thing we don't do is harp on this minimum standard because the last thing I want is a desperate salesperson growing even more anxious and forceful as he or she tries to meet the "sell anything, now" target. The reason is this goal is not likely to be achieved through desperate effort -- it requires a little smarts, thinking, and reasoning. I'll provide clues; and the potential employee is given the numbers and invited to communicate with our other salespeople for potential answers, but we want to see if the representative "gets it" without making a big fuss. So I deliberately lower the pressure ("You can have another day if you wish") and stay out of the potential employee's hair/space.

Effective selling, ironically, works on this principal: The harder you need to try to succeed, the less likely you are to succeed. But if you don't work hard, you will fail. In other words, blind, forceful effort, and repetitive rote thinking and behavior, is likely to result in a painful disillusionment. A little smarts will go a long way. But you have to work at it. Things 'fall in your lap' only when you set the stage with either enough laps for which things can fall, or you have a very big one to work with.

Linked to this is an intriguing observation that someone can be absolutely brilliant at one place, and totally dumb at another. I've seen enough examples of this quality-- including in my own experience. In business we should respect that the real abilities and talents lie in a variety of places and circumstances. I certainly respect that someone who fails the test here could very well succeed elsewhere.

Freedom and systems

So, what do you find when you search for a Google Image for "freedom and systems"? I came across Freedom AC-Heat-Metal in Santa Fe, Texas. I don't know them well, of course, but their website suggests they combine the right mix of employee freedom and business systems to thrive as a local contractor.

I have always perceived that the best and most satisfying business is one where employees and contractors are free to be themselves, to use their own imagination and skills with minimum direction and supervision. This freedom, I postulated, would coincide with higher levels of achievement and greater work satisfaction, more satisfied clients, and overall a much healthier and more sustainable enterprise.

Through several long years of agonizing business decline, however, I realized that freedom has its limits and that a business built entirely on free agent spirit will crash under the weight of, for want of a better phrase, unenlightened self interest. We had writers doing the bare minimum with us to maintain their freelance income compensation; administrative employees picking when and where to work, regardless of operational requirements for someone to be in the office during regular business hours, and salespeople effectively piling up the orders, while building fiefdoms of power and (sadly) alienating the marketplace because they were 'efficiently' doing nothing but selling, forgetting that non-selling personal relationships are equally important.

Add to this, I made business decisions under the pull of employees personal self-determination, rather than the best interests of the business (and I am one of the people who stand accused of this failing). So we expanded to markets where we had no business being, and I engaged in diversions which, while emotionally satisfying at the time, proved costly in managing the business operations.

I learned my lesson. We now have a few rules which are clearly articulated in our processes and systems.

New employees are hired through a careful, work-focused evaluation process.

We want to see initiative, self-responsibility, and talent -- and the ability to work with others in the team -- before hiring anyone. So candidates are invited to prove their abilities through defined processes. These vary depending on the position; our guidelines are different for administrative, sales and editorial employees, but everyone within the category must follow the procedures to be hired.

Everyone must attend the weekly meeting; and our bi-annual 'deep' meetings, except in the most exceptional circumstances.

This is not an onerous burden, of course -- the weekly meeting never lasts more than an hour and if you are out of town or exceptionally busy, you can attend by teleconference. The bi-annual meeting is a free all expenses paid trip for out-of-town employees. The meetings allow us all to connect and update ourselves on progress -- and hold ourselves accountable for commitments -- and I can use the meetings to gage the mood of the business, and the work of individual employees. (I caught a major problem with one former employee just a few weeks ago by noticing a subtle inconsistency in his behavior at the meeting.)

I will act decisively -- and quickly -- if our basic business guidelines are not met.

If an employee is not performing, doing the work required, then time is not wasted in addressing the problem and seeking out causes and solutions. This is not an arbitrary or brutal process; under performance issues are handled with respect and sensitivity, and everyone is given more than one chance to improve.

Freedom is respected, and rules are kept to the minimum.

With these ground rules in place, I revert to my 'old' values of encouraging independence, respecting freedom and allowing innovation. Successful businesses thrive when processes work smoothly, but administrative and management bureaucracies and empires are kept to the minimum. You need discipline, accountability, and mutual respect, of course, but you don't achieve this by forcing everyone into the same corporate straight-jacket.

Eight guidelines for business/marketing success (or eight lessons learned the hard way)

The rowing together image is from the Caswell Corporate Coaching Company home page. We learned our meeting system and policies from CCCC's Bil Caswell.

This blog's launch (you can see the early entries deep in the archives) co-incides with the inflection point in late 2006 when my business hit bottom after a painful three year decline. From 20 employees and publications in five Canadian and U.S. cities, we were briefly down to one part-time employee. The painful failure and surprising resurgence have taught me some important lessons about business. The school of hard knocks can, indeed, teach us some important lessons.

1.You need to have a staff meeting at least once weekly, no more than an hour.

I used to hate meetings and ran the business without them except in exceptional or special circumstances, considering them to be a waste of productive work time. Bad mistake. Meetings serve some important purposes including managing work flow, setting priorities, and ensuring alignment amongst everyone. Our meetings have an agenda (there is always room for 'new business' and late additions), and are co-ordinated with "Action Items" so we can track on work progress. All salaried staff are expected to attend and independent contractors closely associated with the business are invited. Notably, a sign of the meetings' success is that the independent contractors -- who don't need to come -- generally show up! (We have several out-of-town employees who attend by teleconference; local employees are encouraged to be in the office but can join in by phone if it is inconvenient to get to the office.)

There are other good meeting formats -- some businesses find the Daily Huddle to be very effective -- here everyone in the work group gets together for no more than 10 minutes for a quick update and progress report. People who use this methodology say it saves time as back and forth discussions one on one are reduced during the day and all issues are addressed quickly. We will probably go to the huddle format when we are a little larger.

We learned our meeting approach from Bill Caswell of Caswell Corporate Coaching Company (CCC).

2. You need a full scale planning meeting once a year, and probably a six month secondary evaluation/co-ordination meeting.

These are major events -- "the management retreat" -- and in our business, involve all employees and contractors. The cost is high --- I need to fly in several people from out of town locations, and hire professional facilitators, but I realize now these meetings are where the company sets its course and where people who can't see each other routinely have some important face-time with peers. For a small business (presently) we are spending a truly significant amount of money on these meetings but I realize they are a cornerstone of our growth.

3.You need to connect face-to-face with your community and market

For years, some of our salespeople insisted on doing everything by phone -- or, in the rare cases when they would meet someone, the meeting had a sales purpose in mind. Our editor would go out to some events but in the latter stages, as cutbacks intensified and demoralization set in, he started relying as well on the phone and press releases! Bad move. Face-to-face contact without worrying about or forcing the actual sale is really important in business, especially these days when so much is conducted online and by email. When you see people, you get feedback, interaction, mutual respect, and new ideas. Get out there.

4. You need to adapt and introduce the new technologies but (unless you are in the technology business), you don't want thinking about these things to overtake you.

I'm wary of "simple" systems integration and CRM (Client Relationship Management) programs, at least the formal kind that are centralized . In the prefect world, these tools should allow you to seamlessly communicate with clients adapting the product and message to them, and allowing great teamwork. The reality is that many of these things just don't work very well, and force sales people and administrative staff into straight jackets of process rather than substance. We patch our IT systems together to get the job done -- yes, we will need to refine and revise things as we evolve and grow, but I'll always as CEO keep the "efficiency+effectiveness/cost" ratio in mind when evaluating projects.

5. Your employees need a mixture of freedom and accountability (with the emphasis on freedom)

Pure unbridled freedom invites abuse and abuse by one employee can spread to others, resulting in a breakdown of order and priorities. Equally, employees are adults and should be treated that way -- I respect the people who work in our organization to be able to think for themselves, solve problems without running to the boss, and respond swiftly when something isn't right. In exchange they don't need me breathing down their backs.

6. Hire carefully, slowly, and with clear guidelines

Our hiring system is elegantly effective. We (initially) don't read resumes. Instead we send all candidates a questionnaire with a brief job description. If you don't answer the questionnaire, you don't get the job! (Duh). If you do, we then compare the questionnaire responses to the resume to check for inconsistencies -- and people who pass the initial screen (about 1/5 of the people who send us resumes in the first place) receive a phone call.

Then, depending on the job, we either use an online test or go directly to a paid freelance or working assignment for finalists. This serves as the "interview".

Our hiring system works because I realize people spend too much time faking up resumes and "dressing up" for interviews -- two things which mean very little in the real working environment. We want to know instead: "Do you really want the job? Are you capable of the work? Would you work well with us?" and we don't want to spend hours 'sifting resumes'. The system works.

7. Have systems but remember people, ideas, and clients make the business work

We obviously have systems, but are not bound in knots by policy rules and directives. Take for example our travel policy. You can stay where you like, eat what you want, and do what you like -- just use common sense and think about it as if you are spending your own money. Once, for fun, I bought a full fare business class ticket for a key employee so we could go to the airline lounge and sip on a few drinks. We then refunded the ticket, and hopped on another flight with a discount airline. We won't do that every trip, but I shudder to think about how that would fit within any 'travel policy'.

8. Have fun

When business becomes (mostly) unpleasant work, change things so that you can enjoy yourself again. I can't see anything worse than being stuck in a dead-end and demoralizing space because you need the money to survive. I realize that not everyone has this freedom, but I think we can all take at least small steps to gain control and have some satisfaction in our work. As an employer, I want to be sure that this company's employees, most of the time, really enjoy what they are doing. This is common business -- and marketing -- sense, because if the employees are happy they will interact with current and potential clients with the same level of enthusiasm and, indeed, that is the best way to find new business and grow the current one.

What skills are you seeking in your employees?
Seth Godin's blog posting "What are you hiring for?" resonates with me. Great cover letters, interviewing skills, resumes, and all that stuff are absolutely useless when it comes down to the skills and traits we are looking for in employees. What really matters is, can the prospective employee do the work required excellently, with good integrity, and in a manner that supports rather than destroys the overall enterprise.
Of course, it is never easy to find truly great employees. We've been advertising for some time now, and have received hundreds of initial applications, but even now we haven't committed to hiring anyone (though there are a few serious candidates). Our hiring system is challenging but fair.

1. We don't read nor screen resumes at the initial stage. Virtually everyone who applies is sent a questionnaire. It describes the work, and asks a few questions that give us an idea of whether the candidate is suitable for the work.
2. We only review resumes for people who answer the questionnaire. At that point, we compare the resume with the answers; and look for understanding and comprehension, and (if appropriate) relevant experience and proof of qualifications. We also review our "are there any skeletons in your closet" question -- we aren't checking references at this stage, but invite candidates to tell us if there will be any problems when we do.
3. Then we have a phone interview. This is brief, allows us to probe a bit deeper, and then determine whether the matter should be reviewed further.
4. For sales candidates we administer an online sales aptitude test. This tells us a lot; failure on the test is a yellow flag -- we won't say 'no' necessarily, but certainly will not pay any money for the candidate to prove him or herself.
5. Next stage is the working assignment. Usually a couple of days or maybe a freelance task, this is compensated, and is our way of sizing up the prospective employee -- and allows the candidate to size us up as well.
6. Finally, we check references, thoroughly, before preparing the written job offer/employment contract.

So, what counts is whether the prospective employee can prove he or she can do the job, not whether the candidate can write a nice resume and cover letter; or 'interview well'. In fact, we don't even bother with interviews -- we'll meet local candidates for the work assignment, and out-of-town candidates, if they pass all the tests and are ready for a contract offer, we might have a visit or informal meeting. But why bother with the phony show-and-tell exercises. They don't help us find the people we are really seeking.