| Friend,
We've talked about staffing pros and cons, and I've shared horror stories regarding what can happen when you hire the wrong person for your dojo...
Now, it's time to talk about how to hire the right person.
You might think that all you have to do is find someone who can teach, or who has an outgoing personality... then you just make sure they'll work for peanuts, and BAM! you have your new employee. Right?
I hate to break this to you, but it's not that simple. So, I'm going to take it step-by-step and walk you through the process of how to hire the right person, starting with...
Step #1 In Hiring The Right Person For Your Dojo: "Know EXACTLY What You're Looking For!"
The very first person I hired to help me out in my first dojo was also one of my very first black belts. Now, I'd come up through the ranks being the right-hand person in the dojo, and I thought that any black belt should be able to fill that role.
I didn't know how wrong I was. Oh, this young man was good enough with the kid's classes, but he was a lot more immature than I realized. And, he had a difficult time with responsibility... a fact I was to find out shortly.
This happened to be the first year of marriage for my wife and I, so we left the young man in charge while we took our first vacation together. And oh, how we needed a vacation.
See, we had another "first" that year - our first summer karate camp. And, somehow, my wife and I had the silly idea that we'd run the entire camp ourselves (another of my early staffing blunders). So by midsummer, we were nearly ready to divorce.
"HE DID WHAT?"
Eager for some R&R and with a wife who was just about ready to leave me, I left my young assistant in charge for the week. Then we left for our cruise, which was to be 7 blissful days of being pampered with (back then at least) no phone, no internet, and no communication to distract us from enjoying a much needed vacation.
A week later on our return, I turned on my phone and checked my messages. To my surprise, my inbox was full of messages from my morning class students, asking why no one was there to open up the school and teach class.
As it turned out, all week long the kid had decided to sleep in and skip teaching the morning classes... without notifying a single person. Not a sign on the door, nothing. As you can imagine, I ended up losing quite a few clients over that clusterhump.
THE CURSE OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS...
My mistake was not necessarily in hiring the wrong person, it was in expecting too much of him. This kid did great as an assistant instructor teaching my kid's classes, and that's all I should have expected of him.
Later, I discovered that he didn't feel confident in his ability to teach my morning classes (they were fitness classes), so rather than looking like a fool he decided to avoid the situation entirely.
Foolish? Yes. Irresponsible? Absolutely. Understandable? Completely, considering that I was expecting this kid to run my entire operation in my absence.
YOUR WANTS AND NEEDS ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS
My mistake was this: I projected my own abilities and capabilities on him, which in hindsight was unfair and silly of me. Had I started out knowing exactly what I needed from my first employee, I would have been much better off and I could have used him more efficiently, leaving everyone happier in the end.
So, when you set out to hire a new employee, the first step you need to take is to make certain you know what you need. Because, what you want in a new employee and what you need are two entirely different things.
What you want is someone who will work at a reasonable wage, who can do everything you do just as well as you do it, with a smile on their face and a spring in their step.
Good luck with that. You're an entrepreneur, for heaven's sake. That makes you a very unique person, someone who has either been gifted with or who has acquired a wide variety of skills.
Accept this fact right now: you might be able to make the donuts while juggling cats and switching hats on command, but people like you are few and far between. Finding an employee who can do what you do and who will work for what you can afford to pay is like winning the lottery - it ain't gonna happen.
START BY SETTING THE BAR LOW
So, before you start the employee selection and hiring process, you need to set a very NARROW set of parameters for what you are looking for in a new hire. That means picking a specific, closely related cluster of tasks that you want this new hire to fulfill in your dojo.
Write them down. Look them over carefully, and consider whether or not it is reasonable to expect the average person who will be attracted by your ads (and who will accept the pay you're offering) to handle those tasks.
If so, then that list of tasks will be known as the JOB DESCRIPTION for this new position you are creating.
It is vitally important that you get this right, because the job description is going to be crucial from this point on. I should also mention that it's better to expect too little of your new hire, and be pleasantly surprised, that it is to expect too much and be disappointed. So keep it simple.
WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY, BUT...
It should also be noted that with less responsibility comes lower pay. This is why teenagers and unskilled laborers commonly get paid minimum wage or something close to it.*
Now, I don't think you should start any employee off at minimum wage, and I'm going to talk about compensation and raises later in this series. But for now, just be aware that by setting your employee expectations lower you can spend less on hiring that employee.
That's enough on this topic for now. I'll be back Monday with the next email in this series... stay tuned.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
P.S. - *If you're a social justice warrior, please don't bore me with your Bernie-isms about the evils of the minimum wage and your explanations about why everyone should be paid $15 an hour. The fact is, in business you pay people what they're worth, and no employer can afford to pay an employee more money than they're worth... not for long, anyway.
P.S.S. - You are not Costco. You are a small business owner with very limited resources who has to make a living and feed your family. If you can't square that with the fact that some people will be more than happy to make a few extra bucks working for you doing while something they love, find another career or keep on teaching for peanuts at the Y.
P.S.S.S. - The bottom line is that entrepreneurs take the risks, and that's why they get the rewards. If the kid you hired for just over minimum wage wants to get paid more for teaching martial arts, then he can risk his own money and start his own damned dojo. | 