SEO Video 58

Cory Minter: Hi, my name is Cory Minter and I’m the president of Trinity Employment Specialists. Trinity is a staffing company. We specialize in staffing in the medical industries as well as in accounting and finance and banking and something that we’ve done for years and years. Not this month but last month, we were actually featured in Ink Magazine’s Top 5,000 fastest-growing companies in America. Something we’re really proud of and something that we’ve worked very hard to try to achieve. Tulsa Staffing I want to try to talk with or share a story with you about a new thing that I’ve started looking at as a business owner. I think this is something that a lot of small business owners really need to look at and it’s something that I’ve known to make sure and know these numbers and know these metrics but it’s kind of gone to the backside of — because of projects, whatever but anyway, here’s kind of the gist of the story. I was sitting down with my CFO the other day and we were going over the amount of money that it costs to onboard an employee. And we were trying to come up with a scenario of when most employees become profitable for the company, and creating metrics so that we know exactly when each employee should be profitable for us. And if they’re not at that point in time, that’s when we need to start looking at changing some things, having some talks, having some serious talks maybe in some cases but you know we’re — in this particular case, and you can do this for any kind of employee that you have, but in this particular case we were trying to figure out about how long does it take a typical salesperson within Trinity Employment Specialists to become break even and then begin to become profitable. And then once you get someone profitable, keep in mind you’ve invested for three, four, five months depending on the position, you’ve invested time training them and money training them just to get them to broken even. So once you get them profitable, then it might take six, seven, eight months to make up the amount of money that you’ve invested. So it’s really easy for a lot of positions for it to be almost a year before someone starts making you money and that is just way too long to not be really careful at who you’re hiring, and go through some really great measures, run personality tests, do multiple interviews and make sure that this is the right person for each position. I really want to encourage any of our customers out there or anyone even just listening to this to make sure that you put some effort into your hiring process and know what it is that you’re looking for. I strongly recommend personality tests, making sure that you can see what this individual is going to be good at, what they’re not going to be good at and you can even compare your personal personality test or the manager’s personality test with this new individual to see if they’re going to be able to mesh and work well together. And if you get the right personality test, we use the DISC analysis, Hogan Taylor has one, there are different types of tests that are out there, Myers-Briggs is one, they get remarkably close to who the individual is. Even if you were to take one of their cheaper or even in some cases free versions of a personality test you’ll get at least an indication of what type of person that individual is, what their strengths are, what their mental strengths are, what their weaknesses are, really helps you to make a good decision, but I’m going too far into personality tests. Tulsa Staffing The main point, it’s really important to make sure that you have a good solid hiring process. So what does that consist of? Well, you need to know the interview questions that you want to ask. You want to have a process of making sure that you’re checking their references and asking around town. You know, in Oklahoma there’s not one town that’s not a small town if you know some people. Asking around to see if you know of people outside of their references that they’ve listed. You need to make sure that you run that personality test and then bring them in for a second interview and let them meet with your team. But whatever it is that you think works, make sure that you have a real, well thought-out process to hiring someone before you bring them in, have to spend five, 10 grand just to train them and in some cases, you know, 20, 30 grand just to get them to break even point, depending on the position and then trying to start to make your money back. If you’re going to — if us as business owners are going to invest that much money, we need to be careful at who we’re hiring. The next thing is, once you bring them on you need to have a really good onboarding process for them and know how you’re going to train them. At least, at the very minimum spend an entire full week concentrated with a concentrated scheduled to get that person up to speed and introduce them into the different facets of your company so that they know how to begin their journey and to begin their position. But what happens often times, especially in smaller businesses, is you have somebody start and people are just — they just carry on doing their own things, “Okay, well we’ll train you here and, you know.” and, “Oh Tommy, can you do 10? And Susie, you do, you do 11 and then you’ll just work on your own for a while I guess. Or no, we can have-” I’ve seen this happen in companies before, I’ve been there before where someone was doing this to me and I was going along with it but it’s really frustrating to A players. If you’re going to try to hire and maintain A players when you bring them in and they see utter confusion and just a little bit of chaos in the training process, you don’t want to get started on the wrong foot. Tulsa Staffing The next thing is, know your metrics. Know what you need to hold this person accountable to. And this kind of ties into what I was talking about earlier in knowing also when you anticipate this person to become break even and profitable. But you have to have a system for them to follow and if they do follow that system, you hold them accountable to it and they don’t meet the timeline or they’re not even close to your timeline on when they should be breaking even and becoming profitable for the company, you need to know when to start having conversations and you need to know when to have an alert in your head and start dealing with the situation. I personally have just had the wrong person on the bus and let it go for way too long and I just wasted money while we were doing that and so I’ve learned this lesson but I’ve learned it at the expense of having to pay someone’s salary for probably about six or eight months too long because I didn’t know my metrics on when they needed to break even. And I was just seeing the possibility and hope in the individual and that’s just a big mistake. You’ve got to make sure and know your metrics. Hold them accountable to the metrics and if they do follow your metrics and they don’t become profitable when you know that they need to be, that’s when — it’s a numbers thing and it helps it to be black and white for business owners to where you know, now’s the time to start having a conversation and putting some pressure on. And if they don’t meet those standards by this point in time, we really need to be looking at whether or not this is the right individual for us. Tulsa Staffing So the thing is, start making decisions early on. You want to terminate early if it’s possible. As early as possible when it’s the wrong fit and when you know it. But if you can follow these metrics, have a good solid hiring system, so hopefully you don’t have to get to the termination period, and have a good onboarding system, it’s going to change the ballgame when you’re bringing new employees into your company. Don’t be average. Tulsa Staffing Cory: Be exceptional. You’ll get what you tolerate and if you tolerate sub-par performance for too long, it’s going to cost your money, your company a whole lot of money. I hope this helps you and I hope you have a great week. Thank you for listening. If Trinity can help you to staff your organization, we would love to, please visit us online at trinityemployment.com or you can give us a call at +9186222588. Thank you. Tulsa Staffing