New Rainmaker Hires -- Covering the Bases

When you hire your next sales Rainmaker, you want to be sure you've covered all the legal bases. Here's a great article to help you do just that. Seen in Jean Sifleet's SmartFast newsletter:

There's an old curse "may you have many employees."

For many business owners, handling employee matters is at the top of their list for problems. So, what's a small business owner, who is already wearing too many hats, supposed to do to avoid employee problems?

Employees are supposed to help you get more accomplished, not drain your energy. In fact, employee innovations (inventions and process improvements) are the source of competitive advantage and profitability - your success depends on leveraging them.

How you handle new hires sets the stage for employees to become high performers and contribute to the success of your business.

The first step is to select the right person for the job.

It's almost always better to "hire for attitude" and "train for skills." You can't fix a bad attitude, but you can fix a skill deficiency. You want to hire the person with the good attitude.

Don't hire in haste. It's much better to spend time on the front end and hire carefully, than have to spend time and money dealing with an employee who wasn't a good fit. Termination and/or turnover are draining for all involved.

Interviewing DOs

Communicate clearly what is expected in the job.

Strive to have the candidate talk 80% of the time.

Ask open-ended questions. For example:
What was your most/least successful assignment?
What kind of obstacles did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

Listen carefully. Is there a 'Good Fit'?
Is there a match between the company's job expectations and work environment, and the candidate's interests and abilities?
Interviewing DON'Ts

Don't ask questions about age, gender, family status, race, religion, ancestry or health.
The next step is to make an offer of employment.

The offer of employment should be in writing, specifying the job title, responsibilities and compensation (in hourly or monthly terms). The offer should specify any other requirements (such as background or reference check, physical exam). It should also specify whether you require the employee to sign other documents such as: confidentiality, non-compete, non-solicitation, and invention assignment agreements. The offer letter should state that employment is "at will" and should include a date by which the offer must be accepted.

Bringing the new hire into the workplace.

On the new employee's first day, provide an orientation that includes completing the employment paperwork, setting workplace expectations and outlining job duties.

Covering the legal bases

The legal requirements for handling employees are incredibly complex and the penalties are severe for noncompliance.

To reduce your risks:

Use a payroll service - a good payroll service can help you stay in compliance with the payroll tax requirements and make sure those withholdings and payroll tax returns are filed on time.

Have worker's comp insurance - it's required by law. If an employee is injured on the job, it's their sole remedy. If you don't have worker's comp, your liability is open ended.

Set up an organized file for each employee.
The file should include:
* Employment Application
* Offer Letter
* Reference Check
* Confidentiality/Non-Complete/Non-Solicitation/Assignment of Rights Agreements
* Orientation Checklist
* Employee Handbook (acknowledgement of receipt)
* Sexual Harassment Policy
* Employment eligibility (Form I-9 and copy of documentation)
* Federal and State tax withholding forms
* Job Description
* Benefit information (medical information should be filed in a separate confidential file)
Eventually, the file should also include Performance Reviews and any other relevant documents related to the employee, such as promotions, transfer, discipline, resignation or termination.

The paperwork is only the beginning of successfully bringing a new employee on-board. The informal dynamics of the workplace are extremely important -- you'll want to make sure the new person quickly grasps what's appropriate and not appropriate in your workplace.

Workplace expectations

It's important to explain the "unwritten rules" or "norms" of your business. Don't assume that anything is "obvious." If it's important that employees arrive "on time" and "dressed appropriately," specify what that means.

Training, both formal and informal, helps the new hire become productive quickly. Don't just send the person to their workstation. Assign a mentor, someone who will show the new person around, introduce the person around and take him or her to lunch.

Many companies rely on informal "on the job" training. This doesn't just happen; it has to be planned and scheduled.

Performance Feedback

The sooner you give a new hire feedback on their performance, the better. Constructive feedback is critical. Is the person catching on quickly? Are there any problems?

What if the new hire isn't working out?

Many times, it's apparent quickly that the employee is having problems. It's better to deal with the situation sooner rather than later.

If the problem is a skill deficiency, figure out what training is needed. For example, if the person needs to improve their writing skills, encourage the person to take a class. If the deficiencies are severe, you have to deal with the situation promptly. Allowing unproductive or disruptive employee behavior will poison the atmosphere of the workplace and drain everyone's productivity.

In conclusion, many problems can be avoided if employers are clear and consistent about what is expected. Remember that being "overly generous" can backfire. For example, when an employee asks for time off "on the fly" - it's easy to say yes and then find yourself with a problem on your hands because you gave time off to one employee and then refused another employee's time off request. The same kind of problem can arise when one employee wants to "work from home" and you agree - what's the precedent that you're setting? If your Employee Handbook spells out your policy for "time off" and "work from home," it's much easier to be consistent.

To avoid the old curse, "may you have many employees," you need to have a systematic approach. Start by covering the bases with new hires - both the "legal bases" and the "workplace bases." Of course, you'll need to weed out the weak performers and recognize and reward the high performers if your company is going to leverage the creative talents of your employees.

Jean D. Sifleet, Esq., CPA
Business Attorney
www.smartfast.com

Sales Job Ads That Don't Work

There are plenty of reasons why sales Rainmakers aren't beating down your door to work for you. The wrong job ad is high on the list. Enjoy this article by Peter Weddle!

Job Ads That Don't Work

This past fall, the Advertising Research Foundation delivered some very bad news to companies: they are wasting one-out-of-every-five dollars they spend on advertising. That’s right; a study by the Foundation found that the cost of ads that fail to communicate their message effectively now equals $50 billion per year.

What’s behind such lousy performance? The study concludes that two factors cause much of the miscommunication:

Many ads simply deliver the wrong message, and

Companies continue to invest in ads beyond the point of diminishing returns. How do these factors impact on recruitment advertising? Let’s take a look.

Ads that deliver the wrong message.

Sadly, many if not most job postings today deliver the wrong message. In many cases, that message is conveyed by using a print classified or, worse, a position description as the content for the online ad. As a result, these ads have little information, very little appeal or both. When that occurs, the message the job seeker receives is loud and clear: here’s a company that is too lazy, too arrogant or too incompetent to use the online medium to its full advantage. Said another way, here’s a place you don’t want to work.

Job seekers, in general, and the best talent, in particular, expect much more. They know the Internet doesn’t have the space constraints of the printed page, so they want employers to provide job postings that are both informative and compelling. They want ads that answer their questions before they even have a chance to ask them. They want enough detail to be able to evaluate an opportunity carefully and make an informed career decision. And, they want to be wooed. They want an ad with enough selling power to sway them into considering a new position, even when they aren’t looking for one.

Such ads transform the job posting from a print classified ad listed on the Internet to an electronic sales brochure. Ironically, this “alternative advertisement” is more akin to an old fashioned, full page print display ad, but one on steroids and at one-tenth the cost. It not only sells the opening the organization has to fill, but it makes a powerful statement about the organization’s employment brand, as well. Explicitly and subliminally, it transmits the right message: here is a company that understands the importance of hiring the best and brightest and of helping them to succeed in its employ. In short, here’s a place where you do want to work.

Companies that continue to invest in ads beyond the point of diminishing returns.

Print ads grow weary over time, and thus fail to motivate buyers as they once did. Job postings lose their effectiveness in a different way. Although they typically remain visible for 30 days or more and could conceivably suffer the same exposure fatigue, their poor performance is actually driven by their location. In other words, the ads continue to be posted at certain sites even though the quantity and/or quality of their yield is insufficient to meet recruiting requirements. The results aren’t diminishing; they’re diminished. The net effect, however, is the same: the advertiser achieves a sub-par return on its investment.

Why do ads continue to be posted at sites that generate “diminished returns”? There are at least several reasons:

Habit. Recruiters can get into ruts and continue to use sites long after the results warrant a change. More often than not, these “behavior locks” occur when an organization lacks a process by which it evaluates the performance of its ad spending at each online source and makes timely adjustments to that spending, as appropriate. Without such continuous assessment and adjustment, organizations inevitably perpetuate mistakes and guarantee disappointing results.

Finances. In some, perhaps many organizations today, the CFO negotiates a special deal with a job board and then requires all recruiters to use that site regardless of the kind of opening they are trying to fill. While this forced level of usage may justify the deal in financial terms, it all but eliminates the value of the resulting advertising in recruiting terms. Limited sourcing inevitably limits recruiters’ reach into the candidate population and that, in turn, limits the quantity and quality of their yield.

Awareness. There are, today, at least 40,000 job boards and career portals on the Internet. You can write a job posting with the right message, but if you place it on the wrong site, its yield will be just as disappointing as the yield you achieve from an ad with the wrong message. Recruiters who fail to acquire the information necessary to identify and evaluate all of the relevant job boards for any given requirement are, in effect, advertising by guesswork. And, the odds are against they’re being successful.

Online recruitment advertising can be extraordinarily effective. In the survey of recruiters that we at WEDDLE’s conducted earlier this year, over half of the respondents said they were filling a quarter or more of their vacancies with candidates sourced from the Internet. That’s proof positive that online ads do work and that online ads with the right message and at the right site work best.

About Author

Peter Weddle is a recruiter, HR consultant and business CEO turned author and commentator. Described by The Washington Post as "... a man filled with ingenious ideas," he has earned an international reputation, pioneering such concepts as Human Capital, Career Fitness and the Internet as a resource for recruiting and HR management. He has authored seven books, edited six others and published dozens of articles in professional and trade magazines. He writes a weekly column about online recruiting for CareerJournal.com from The Wall Street Journal and a monthly newsletter that is distributed worldwide. In addition, he oversees WEDDLE's Publications, the leading print publisher of newsletters, guides and directories about employment resources on the Internet.

Article seen in the March 23rd issue of Recruiting News from Recruiters Network.