If There’s Not Much to Feast On…opening a business in post-Silicon Valley America Part 1
When I first started my company in 2005, companies were still paying top level (and sometimes mid-level) sales professionals (discipline I started with) $100,000 and up. For me, this meant that even though in my ramp-up period my business volume was low, my revenue wasn’t, as there is somewhat of a direct relationship between employee compensation and recruiter compensation for finding that individual.
Those days are gone. My company receives over twenty times the amount of hiring inquires compared to when I started the firm, but we get about the same total number of high-paying sales positions.
As long as you don’t count sanity as a requisite for survival, I survived and I guess one could say thrived. Here are six tips based on the mentality that built an employment-related company when I’m sure many thought it could not be done.
1) If There’s Not Much to Feast On, Many Are Going to Suffer Famine but it doesn’t have to be you.
What I’ve learned is that many who are not happy with the performance of their business are used to an old economy in which they could cut basic corners and still do well. That is no longer the way of the world.
The only way to remain intact these days is to have a rule that every piece of work you have to do can be nothing short of better than your last and better than what you thought you could do.
Stick to this rule and you may often be frustrated, but rarely will you be disappointed in the results….
I never grew up telling myself that I would own my own business. As a matter of fact, until my last semester at college, I thought that I was there to chase girls around…until I did meet my wife who cancelled that activity.
I cared less about school.
I did okay – 3.49 I believe was my final GPA from Fordham, but the possibility of entrepreneurship never really dawned on me. What did I know about business? Also, I didn’t have the confidence in myself to buck the trend. I needed a job that was open with a stable company.
That is instead of having to create a job that didn’t exist from a company that I would have to start from scratch with real, viable business ideas…
The following are effective, intelligent questions that job applicants should be asking on their first interview:
1. Let’s Say I Execute All the Set Duties of My Position For A Long Time….?
You should always find out where the job is taking you in the next few years, however you must phrase this question properly.
If you come out and say that you want to know exactly where you’ll be in 3 years, the interviewer is going to perceive that you are not into this job and feel as if you are above it. Once this happens, all hopes of obtaining an offer letter are over.
On the other hand, you can ask the interviewer that if you plan to do exceptionally well in the position, after you really prove yourself (the “really prove” must be stressed), what potential is there for you to grow both personally and professionally?
Again, you have to make the interviewer aware that you are 110% dedicated to the position that is currently being discussed and not put too much emphasis on this point, but finding out is important.
Pull this off correctly, and you’ll get the person on the other end of the table or on the other phone line to show his or her cards and tell you whether there is truly a future within the company.
2. What Is The Average Turnover Rate of the Corporation?
This may make the interviewer a tad uneasy, but it is a valid question and can be phrased as such:
“I want a career and not just a job, do you mind me asking how happy the people at the company are and, in a rough estimate, is the turnover rate towards the higher or lower end?”
Prior to interviewing with the company, you should have done your best to do the proper research to determine a rough estimate for yourself, but you should always hear this directly from the interviewer.
This way, they can either confirm what you have deciphered from your research or whether they have a rational, different spin…
1. Let’s Say I Execute All the Set Duties of My Position For A Long Time….?
You should always find out where the job is taking you in the next few years, however you must phrase this question properly. If you come out and say that you want to know exactly where you’ll be in 3 years, the interviewer is going to perceive that you are not into this job and feel as if you are above it. Once this happens, all hopes of obtaining an offer letter are over.
On the other hand, you can ask the interviewer that if you plan to do exceptionally well in the position, after you really prove yourself (the “really prove” must be stressed), what potential is there for you to grow both personally and professionally? Again, you have to make the interviewer aware that you are 110% dedicated to the position that is currently being discussed and not put too much emphasis on this point, but finding out is important.
Pull this off correctly, and you’ll get the person on the other end of the table or on the other phone line to show his or her cards and tell you whether there is truly a future within the company.
2. What Is The Average Turnover Rate of the Corporation?
This may make the interviewer a tad uneasy, but it is a valid question and can be phrased as such:
“I want a career and not just a job, do you mind me asking how happy the people at the company are and, in a rough estimate, is the turnover rate towards the higher or lower end?”
Prior to interviewing with the company, you should have done your best to do the proper research to determine a rough estimate for yourself, but you should always hear this directly from the interviewer. This way, they can either confirm what you have deciphered from your research or whether they have a rational, different spin.
3. What Is An Average Day Like? When Does It Begin?
Two seconds after asking this question, make sure the interview knows that you understand that this is not a 9 – 5 job. Tell him or her in a direct manner that a “9 – 5 job” is not what you are after. However, what time the day begins will, if you’re commuting to the job from out of town, help you determine whether you can take the position in the first place.
When it comes to obtaining an answer to the first question, “What is the average day like?” listen contently to the interviewer’s answer/description and see if these tasks are going to challenge you and interest you on a daily basis. You don’t want to start a job expecting to do “x” all day only to find out that you will be doing “y” and you don’t particularly care for doing “y.” You might as well ask; there’s no harm.
4. What Is The Travel Like? Where Would I Be Traveling?
Remember, just like any other “eggshell” question (meaning a question that can be taken wrong way and ruin an entire interview), tread lightly and make sure that the interviewer knows that you are inquiring to make an informed decision and that you have an open mind when it comes to the topic of travel. If the interviewer shoots right back at you asking if travel is a problem, simply state:
“For the right position, not one bit.”
After saying this, the person on the other end of the table will most likely give you an idea of the amount of travel. Always remember, many companies tend to inflate travel as a way to test if the potential employee can handle the max workload. Therefore, as a rule, I would deduct around 15% from the travel number you are given.
A different hiring process is going to unfold each time you need to bring a new employee on board. One of the most crucial things to consider is the personality type you can manage best. As someone who is 30 years old and owns a fast-growing business, I have had only one other job out of college in which I was not a manager of some form. Therefore, I’ve learned by mistake and still do every day.
While many simply associate the job of a manager or leader with a bigger paycheck and a job that is more mentally engaging, those who do so are (just like I was at 25), very off base. I don’t think there is a certain personality type that fits everybody. Entrepreneurs and managers alike have to understand that an employee, regardless of what you’re paying him or her, is a foundation that with the manager’s help can either become a skyscraper or an undeveloped lot. The hiring manager has to determine what personality foundation best suits him or her for building on. What background and personality type can that manager leverage to build a “skyscraper”.
Over the years, my biggest internal hiring mistake was hiring people solely based on their background and educational credentials. As a kid from Fordham University with an okay GPA, I thought it was cool to have employees from Columbia, UVA and NYU who graduated with honors. For a small business, that policy turned out to be a bust. As a manager, you want people who are willing. I will take someone half as effortlessly talented and turn them into three times the producer if they care, are engaged and want to learn.
I just don’t have time for people who fight growth and fight learning, whether because they believe there is only one way to grow (such as academically), or because they feel they have already finished with their learning, or for any other reason. You want to find people who are going to respect your work and your authority as a boss. The secret to successful management is staying away from the Sirens when recruiting. These are the people too concerned with themselves to ever make a true impact by giving 110%. Unfortunately for many these are too hard to spot until you’re in mid-dive off of the boat. Time, patience and consistent learning will help any manager spot these individuals from a mile away. Despite the fact that you will have to figure out (probably through trial and error) the personality type and background that you manage best, and whom you can best help progress in a career, there are definitely a handful of tried-and-true rules to apply across the board when hiring.
Don’t Hire Someone Who Is Passive In Nature
Think A-type personalities. Anything less will drive you nuts when attempting to achieve goals, regardless of the person’s position in your company or your team.
That is not to say that every hire you make must be a metaphorical pitbull: not everyone comes across as relentless, and that’s a good thing. But thoughtful, introverted hard workers come across very differently in an interview process to people who will be content putting in an average-level effort and just going with the flow, rather than ever contributing above and beyond.
Hire Someone Who Is Interested In Your Company and Industry
I used to hire theatre graduates as interns years ago. They drove me up the wall. We were a recruiting firm and it sucked the air out of the room (we worked out of an apartment) when there was audition talk. Complainers are very difficult to deal with as well. I tell my clients to stay away. The best way to spot these individuals is that these are job seekers who will negotiate the smallest, most trivial aspects of their offer. Even if they are good, hard negotiation prior to coming on to a job (unless you are at the C-level) shows that they are your typical complainer and fail to have empathy for the plight of a leader or manager.
Recent College Graduates for Marketing Jobs 