A Hire Without a Plan is a Business Planning to Fail

Leaders create a compelling vision. The transformation of your nascent thought into a business is remarkable when you really stop to think about it. R & D requires countless hours of sculpting, refining, sorting, wrestling and questioning your idea against the mirror of your own mind. And that’s the easy part. The price of this entrepreneurial pilgrimage requires further sacrifice, a willingness to stand by your convictions and proof of concept. It’s often a lonely journey. Family and friends will doubt you, you’ll question yourself and the free market is eager to dash your dream to pieces and make you the next statistic of businesses failing to grow to maturity.

The majority of businesses do not survive after five years, let alone thrive. But you’re a survivor. You put your heart and soul into your business: you learn, get better, clearer and become more strategic as you gain experience over time. The parts of your fledgling business start to emerge, you develop a basic marketing plan, clarify your customer avatar, build your sales funnel and put some basic processes in place for your operations. You’re succeeding as a solopreneur and raving fans spur more growth. You’re doing it! Soon you have more business than you can handle, the vision is becoming a reality, time to grow this thing and find some leverage.

You’re #hiring and as luck would have it your cousin’s sister’s best friend Emily is looking for exactly the kind of job you’re offering. What a happy coincidence, you say, but you’re a professional and you operate a serious business. After all, look at all this growth. You send her an email asking for her resume. Her resume is great, she’s more than qualified. Emily checks all the boxes: college degree, corporate background, Six Sigma Black Belt, even the ability to lift over 50lbs. Wow, smart and strong! You book a meeting for an “interview” over coffee. Emily looks and sounds great as she discusses her views on change management, strategic alignment, integration and ideation. You have no idea what most of that means but it sounds important and maybe she knows more than you do. After all, your beginnings and background were a lot more humble. After the meeting you go back to the office with a mountain of work waiting for you. There are no longer enough hours in your day to service your business. Things are starting to slip through the cracks just as your business is taking off. You decide not to think about it and instead put your head down because that’s who you are, what brings you success and what you know how to do. 

After finishing a 60+ hour workweek you receive a follow up email from Emily thanking you for the coffee last week. How nice, caring and professional. “That’s the kind of care and service you provide to your clients,” you say. But another voice in your head says this is too good to be true, it feels like a big risk and this is unchartered territory for your business. It’s time to make a decision; execution forged your business, not ambiguity. Your tasks are piling up, you’re exhausted and you’re starting to lose momentum. What happens next is typical when the “right” candidate emerges at just the “right” time. Emily is hired and it’s not hard to imagine the next part of this story. Emily will be back on the job market in less than six months since there’s little chance for success when success isn’t defined. 

As Lewis Carrol might say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” While the above might seem like a silly story, I have had a version of this conversation thousands of times with clients seeking my hiring advice. One of my favorite parts of my job is learning from entrepreneurs and the courage they summon to face the challenges ahead of them. When asking some basic questions of entrepreneurs, our dialogue usually runs something like:

✅ Mission, Vision, Values – YES!
✅ Marketing Strategy – annual marketing plan, touch plan, KPIs, etc. – YES!
✅ Sales Strategy – customer avatar, prospecting pipeline, KPIs, etc. – YES!
✅ Operations Strategy – CRM, service standards, quality controls, KPIs, etc. – YES!
✅ Financial Strategy – Revenue target, budget, margin goal, KPIs, etc. – YES!
 ❓  Hiring/Recruitment Strategy – employee avatar, hiring process, KPIs by role, – huh?

Why is it acceptable to have a strategic vision for all parts of your business except when it comes to leverage, hiring or recruitment, to clearly define your customer avatar but lack a basic understanding for your employee avatar and the kind of people you want to attract? A hire without a plan is a business planning to fail. The business momentum described above will quickly grind to a halt when you bring the wrong teammate on board. Your “coffee interview” or failure to build a successful hiring process is costing your business three times that employee’s annual salary when you onboard the wrong person, relationships over time worth millions of dollars as either gained or lost revenue based on that one choice. 

Hiring is both an art and a science but most hiring managers are relying way too much on what feels right. Feelings change and while intuition plays a vital role in recruitment, you can significantly increase your chances of success through building a hiring strategy. If you can do it for your marketing, sales, operations and financial processes, I can show you how to do it in hiring.  Next time I will begin to show you how to build your employee avatar, look at the proper ways to source talent,  screen candidates out who are the wrong fit, create an interview scorecard, learn how to use assessments, check references and so much more.