How do you hire the perfect fit?
By Chelsea Stebner
Right People. Right Bus. Right seat? We hear so much about making sure we’re all hiring the right people to join our teams. When it comes right down to it, how do we really know?
I bet that none of us are HR experts or have specialized training in that area and can read body language and eyes so well that we’ve got it cased! Most of us are busy wearing lots of hats; owner, manager, customer service rep, delivery driver, detailer, etc. That HR person is another line on the usual job description.
Many times, hiring happens under fire. “Shoot—we need someone and someone fast”, and what ends up occurring is the hiring of the first warm body that walks in the door. That’s happened, more than once and it hurts. Hiring takes time and patience, which many of us are famous for not having! Ideally though, we all have a dream to have a perfect team who knows what they need to do and have the skills and ability to make it happen in each of their areas.
In the years to come, we will continue learning about adding the right people to the bus, but more importantly, making sure that we’re hiring the right people into the right positions on that bus so that we can glean their skills to best serve our team and our business. Small businesses often hire people and add tasks to job descriptions that might not actually match a role, but because there are few people, it gets lopped on! That creates strange holes to fill if that person moves onto another role or another job.
When looking for the right spot for the right person, I’ve been blinded by the fact that what I think I want and need from them is simply something out of their wheelhouse. I’ve spent countless hours trying to figure out why someone has not responded or engaged the way I expect them to, when in all reality it’s because they simply don’t get my expectations.
As I grow, I realize this is sometimes more about me than about them. What am I doing to help my team learn and grow? Am I the one causing the problem? Have I communicated clearly? This is often where personality assessments come in handy. If you can learn and understand some of that stuff, it can give you such insight into how to have clear communication with others. Sometimes people are content in their role. Often, they simply haven’t had the opportunity to learn and engage and understand how they can affect change within their own organization. This is quite often the case, and an opportunity for you as a leader to share knowledge and engage a teammate.
Another challenge is that maybe the level of emotional intelligence simply isn’t there. They don’t recognize how they can bring value to the team and ego gets in the way.
I am learning—always more slowly than I wish—to really understand and figure out the talents and abilities of teammates and how they can best serve our business. It’s certainly not only fixing cars, it’s learning and growing people along the way.
Chelsea Stebner is the CEO and managing partner of Parr Auto Body in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and a member of the CCIF Steering Committee. She can be reached at chelsea@parrautobody.com.
