When You Find Passion, Don’t Let It Go!
The process of hiring employees is one of the biggest challenges any leader faces. When you send out a job description resumes flood in from candidates of all walks of life. You will likely find interest from those who are “lifers” in your industry to those in a completely different field looking for a career change as well as some rookies with no experience at all. As you peruse these credentials you are generally looking for some level of common ground the candidate has with the availability and any resume that does not posses this is tossed.
For a moment, I ask you to think more about the way a resume is written and compiled and viewing that as more important than where the person has been or what they already know. I seek out resumes that discuss past accomplishments and how they developed new ideas or protocol and/or how they raised the bar for their past teams and organizations. Regardless of what industry they are coming from or what roles they have previously held, these are the folks I want to get to know better.
When I meet prospective employees, I am looking for a few things. I want to see that they are intelligent, articulate, personable, respectful, but most importantly I am searching for that fire in their eye that shows me they WILL succeed. Obviously, the most accomplished candidates who talk a good game and look ideal on paper seem like a logical talent pool but how do you know if they have long-term motivation or the perseverance to be successful? This is why you meet people face-to-face in an interview. You can measure experience and communication skills over the phone. You cannot however look into somebody’s eyes and see the sincerity with which they will work tirelessly to succeed.
An industry may be taught or learned but perseverance and passion cannot.
In my experiences, approximately 1 out of every 10 employees that you hire will have this high level of passion. There are many intelligent interviewees out there and business skills can be taught but passion and perseverance are very challenging to find and replace. If you are lucky enough to have a passionate employee working for you and they come into your office and say that they found other work and are looking to leave, do whatever is necessary to retain that individual, regardless of the cost. Replacing one intelligent or skilled employee with another will hurt your bottom line in the short term but over time they should be able to replicate the production of a previous employee. If you must replace a passionate employee you can never be certain the new employee will measure up (or come even close). Whatever additional investment is necessary will be paid back to you, and then some.
The cream always rises to the top.
All employees face challenges and even the most intellectual employees get stumped now and again. Those who use terms such as “I can’t”, “it’s not worth my time” or “it’s impossible” will not succeed whenever things don’t go as planned, which happens often in business. The employees with the motivation to fight through challenges almost always come out a winner. These are the folks who are the lifeline of you business and are the determinating factor of how successful YOU become.
