BATANAI KAMUNYARU
“DON’T SEND YOUR DUCKS TO EAGLE SCHOOL! Why? Because it won’t work. All you will get are unhappy ducks. They would not soar like eagles. They will just quack, quack, quack,” said Jim Rohn in one of his famous teachings. When it comes to employees, it is very difficult to teach someone who does not know being nice, to be nice! Simply hire nice people.
Not to disregard the importance of training in organisations, training ‘on the job’ yields far much better results than classroom training. Classroom training will never compensate for something that the employee lacks in the inside, therefore, the employees that an organisation hires play a significant role when it comes to the growth and successes that the business will experience in the future. With good employees, the business will be successful and with bad employees the business will suffer.
It is employees who deal with the customer on a regular basis and are also the drivers of machines that produce goods and relevant services that are delivered to the customer. This therefore means that without an essential team of quality and effective employees, it is difficult for the business to be outstanding, build a good and strong brand, and develop an extraordinary customer experience. It is of utmost importance, therefore, for the organisation to dedicate time to the hiring process – towards filling positions with employees who are dedicated to the long-term success of the business. When it comes to the hiring process, it is not just a matter of filling the position immediately, especially with friends and relatives who might not meet all the requirements, but to ensure that you do not send ducks to the eagle school!
Employees are becoming valuable assets of a business – even though they are not recorded on the balance sheet. Without good employees, it is impossible for a business to continue to operate efficiently and successfully. Whenever the business will be looking for an employee, it is important to seek out those with the best qualities, because making a bad decision in the hiring process can lead to issues that hinder the development of the business. A poor performing employee will negatively affect other employees, could lead to lost sales, could cost the business unnecessary expenditure and could cost the nation tax revenue. On another note, hiring the right person leads the business in the right direction towards the achievement of its set targets and objectives, and the business will become successful in the future.
However, the hiring of the right person does start with having a reliable person doing the hiring, who is well informed of the needs of the business and its future objectives. Before engaging on the hiring process, business owners and management need to be aware of the impact that the person coming to fill the position should have and consider such an impact throughout the hiring process. Being aware of the qualities needed on the position makes it a straightforward process to hire the right employee.
Businesses that report poor performance year in and year out reflect the quality of the people who are running such a business, regardless of all other excuses that maybe reported. Instead of focusing on the performance of the business and productivity, bad employees play cheap organisational politics to protect their positions. It is also a bad business leader who concentrates more on cheap politics and not look at the big picture, of how the organisation will be like tomorrow.
What is the risk of making a bad hire? It is not a wise move to hire ‘bad’ employees because they come cheap and hope to train them to be good employees later. Cheap is expensive! Yes, their salaries might be very low, but they will cost the organisation in productivity and other expenses including training. Also, with a bad employee, training is likely to have minimal impact. Training works well with good employees as their attitude is already that of service delivery and their skills and experience support. When you hire people, who have poor customer service, the service will not simply improve because you took them through customer service training. Customer service mainly comes with the attitude of individuals towards dealing with other people. If you want good customer service, hire the right people.
The impact of bad hires is worse when the bad employee becomes the manager. These kinds of people do not become managers because of merit, they do so by politics or other ways which are contrary to good organisational behavior. With such managers, employee turnover maybe very high, as these managers cannot corporate well with other employees – therefore they use their power to fire! Interestingly, it is not possible for a bad manager to hire a good employee. They attract like minded people, and everything in such an organisation becomes ‘political’! And, once an organisation gains the reputation of hiring bad employees, it will start to have problems attracting top talent. Likewise, when an organisation performs badly, before the blame is put on the economy, first check the caliber of people working for such an organisation – especially management. You will note that the economy is an escape goat!
Sadly, the crop of bad people even gets to the board room. Once an organisation has bad directors and management, then it is finished – the reason several Zimbabwean firms collapsed, and some are struggling for survival. You cannot hope to turn around an organisation with bad employees inside, they even fight order for they benefit in chaos. When order comes, bad employees will be so much afraid that their weaknesses will be exposed, so they gang up against the good employees and ensure that they leave the organisation.
In short, good employees are found, and they are not changed! You will not hire a bad employee and change them for the better – such cases are very rare. You get what you hire! If you hire good, you get good and if you hire bad, you get bad. Can bad hires be avoided? Sure, they can be avoided, through exercising due diligence when hiring. The hiring teams need to be very thorough on investigating what the candidates claim to be on their cover letters and resumes – candidates have a habit of misrepresenting what they are and what they can do on their resumes!
Due diligence must include a comprehensive pre-employment screening. It is better to have a detailed background check on the candidate, as these tend to expose the misrepresentations and exaggerations that bad employees normally use to fool the hiring teams. The job to hire should not start and end with the resumes, even if the resumes come from the best employment agencies, the process still needs to be thorough. When you screen the candidates well, you maybe be saved from the negatives of a bad hire.
It is notable that good employees tend to have the worst of the resumes. One might not even have time to look at their resumes because of the way they are presented! Therefore, as you screen the resumes, see beyond the resume – for there are other details that are not easily seen from the resume. Also, desist from the hand me down list of interview questions, downloaded from the internet. Bad employees have mastered such kinds of questions, and when they speak you will think you have found a gold coin in the ocean. Be concerned more about character than eloquence of speech and resume presentation. Nevertheless, presentation should not be ignored.
Resumes alone maybe very deceiving. Look at this resume: The guy never finished college, and he has no any meaningful school certificate. He hops from one company to another a bit and goes on a break to India for one year. He is also reported to have dyslexia. Would you honestly hire this guy by simply looking at the resume? Well, this guy is called Steve Jobs! Would you hire him now? Of course – his abilities are unique. Now, what should you be looking for when you are hiring? Tailor your hiring process to be able to give you the best of the candidates both in performance and intelligence, and not in resume alone – for there are many hidden things that you cannot easily pick with the standard hiring process of selecting the best resume, interview for fifteen minutes with a list of questions downloaded from the internet and picking the one who is demanding a low pay. Sometimes, the demanded pay reflects the confidence that the candidate has in his or her abilities and what they can deliver!
When hiring, do not hire the best candidate but hire the best hire! Best candidates do not always become the best hires. The best candidate may have excellent first impressions, good interview skills and reasonable wants, but lack team skills, the ability to perform the job and management skills.
Bill Gates once said, “If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company.” To be a great company, find the good employees and do not hire the bad and the cheap hoping to change them – for a duck will always be a duck. It’s not expensive to hire a professional who knows and understands his or her work, compared to hiring an amateur.
Batanai Kamunyaru is a business writer, speaker and coach. He can be contacted on bat.kamunyaru@gmail.com or +263 718 852 489.
