Long ago in days of yore, a young baker wanted more out of life than flour and dead fruit.

She consulted Craigslist, and noticed an ad looking to hire an Entrepreneur’s Assistant.

Could this be it? She wondered. Could this be an opportunity to use that third of a business degree, and sadly untapped creativity?

It turned out that it was! That was the first time I’d ever seen any mention of Danny Iny – and none at all yet of Mirasee. Little did I know then that two and a half years later I’d still be on his team, helping to create this Fireside Chat series.

Almost every business needs to go through the process of hiring at some point and it’s exciting because it means you’re growing. But, knowing exactly how and when to go about it – that can be a challenge.

So today’s topic is all about hiring strategies, and what it’s been like for us to grow from one to two to four, how to tell if you’re ready to expand your staff, as well as the best way to go about it.

Click on the link to listen to the podcast:

Hiring for Excellence: How Danny Iny Built the Mirasee Team

Distilled Wisdom

• The more information you can gather about potential hires, the better.
• Hire for qualities that you need in your business – not just for chemistry, or people you think you’d have fun hanging out with.
• Hire in advance of your needs – getting a new person up to speed takes time, and the worst time to hire someone is when you need them desperately.
• Give plenty of details in your advertisement – they need to know about you as much as you need to know about them.
• Ask them to complete a short task before you interview them. This will weed out many imperfect candidates.
• Asking them to complete a task that simulates some of the demands of the job can go a long way to giving you an insight into how well they’ll be able to do the job.
• Using assessments to get a sense of personal strengths, skills and attitude can give you information about an applicant that is very hard to get otherwise.
• Use your time talking with references to try and learn the things that “you don’t know you don’t know.” Remember that the reference will be likely to speak well of the candidates, so make sure to frame your questions openly – a yes or a no doesn’t really tell you want you want to know.

Resources Mentioned

• Strengthsfinder 2.0
• Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

What have your hiring (or being hired!) experiences been like? Was it similar to the process we’ve outline here? If not, what were the differences?