Recruiting Employees: Need Your Advice

Any advice to share?

I cannot give you advice on who and how to hire. The only advice I can give is that you must be very careful. In early 2007, our full-time web designer resigned suddenly. This was one of the precipitating factors that led to the closure of our PDA accessories shop.

What surprised me was that she had resigned without having found another job. Later, I found out on the computer that she was using a number of disquieting things. For one, she had opened accounts at almost all the media companies I was using. It seems that she was able to copy some of my business model for her own use. Because of this, I am now very reluctant to employ another person or outsource my work.

Derek

Hello Rose,
I don't have any experience with a in person hiring. Agents of Value is a good site if who are looking to outsource because the management makes sure that the person they assign meets your requirements.

my best advice is to take it as seriuosly as someone would in an offline business.
talk to them by phone, take time to see if they are a good fit

the reality is it still can be a diaster and problems do happen
but the converse is also true and true growth cna only start to happen when we start to employ others

good luck!

I would look on freelance websites such as rent-a-coder. Before hiring someone to work for you, make sure to review samples first. Just in case something goes wrong, I'd also hire a backup person or two to fill in when your main employee is not available.

I also might consider hiring senior citizens who are retired but looking for extra money to supplement their income. You could contact AARP or your local senior citizen's advisory council to find people who fit into this description. I live in Florida where there are a lot of retired people and if I expand, I am DEFINITELy considering doing that.

Among the benefits: I feel chances are good that I'd get more mature, responsible, and experienced employees, and I somehow feel that they'd be less likely to try to copy an internet marketing business model and run off with it.

Although a non-compete/nondisclosure agreement is important too.

Recruiting and managing employees... Where to start...

1) You WILL be both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised, so expect it and plan accordingly. People that seem to be great can fall apart and people that don't seem to have it together can step up and become amazing. It happens.

2) I have found that, more often than not, my initial assessment of someone is accurate in the long-view.. and it's the long term that counts. Most employees shoot out of the gate like racehorses. Many however do not complete the racing season intact.

3) University career offices are a fantastic place to recruit young, eager (and cheap) employees. Some can become superstars in your organization. Some can bail when you need them most as soon as they graduate or shortly thereafter. So, take that into consideration.

Now, all of the above is more generic employee stuff than specifically PPC.

Let's talk about PPC for a second...

Your PPC is some of your most INTIMATE business IP. With an online company, it's often the schematic of your business' engine.

What you want is someone who possesses both mastery of the medium as well as a core understanding of your business objectives in using it -- and that's not nearly as easy as say hiring a new web designer.

You may wish to consider working with a local PPC consultant who can help you refine and improve your PPC spend thereby getting you to your desired outcome without the added aggravation of managing "human resources".

I'm not offering my services, but if you'd like to discuss how to do that further, get in touch.

Hope this helps,

Brian McLeod
Miami, Florida

LoudMac, what do you think of hiring older workers? My experience so far with really young, college graduate employees/temps has not been great. And honestly I became a far better employee after a few years in the workforce - just in terms of self confidence, experience, trusting my judgement, organizational skills, etc.

My problems with young college graduate types was that I found them - the ones I hired anyway - to be fairly unreliable and to have no concept of the fact that if they showed up late or didn't show up, that really hurt me and my business.

Hi,
Create a job profile which lists the main activities of the job. Then, redefine those as competencies. Also, create an overall set of goals for your work, with dates assigned. Get references from anybody you are looking seriously at.

Consider a 'probationary' period as well. Bottom lime, treat this as one of your most critical decisions this year and do your due diligence.

Jim