Lesson from a Do-It-Yourselfer

Marcianne Kuethen

April 17, 2013

Have you ever met a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none? I’ve known several, and they’ve left me with a vague, lukewarm feeling, especially when their projects turned out to have unexpected defects with unpleasant impacts. As do-it-yourselfers who’ve managed many projects in our own backyard, we’ve unfortunately seen many examples of this! We’ve had numerous sprinkler pipes explode underground in our yard, only to discover that they contained primer but very little glue. The unlicensed “landscaper” we hired to pour cement pads must’ve lost his level, because the cement gets huge puddles in the most inconvenient places. He also sodded our lawn with weed-infested grass that will never be a beautiful green lawn no matter how many hours I spend weeding, spraying, or fertilizing it.

If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, you’re probably used to wearing multiple hats in your business just as I do in my yard. But hiring is a complicated occupation, one that your professional recruiting partner focuses on full-time. Sometimes, doing it ourselves may not produce the results we need, in the time frame in which we need them. And as the weeds in my yard attest, sometimes not hiring the expert introduces problems we were not expecting to encounter.

When you need to hire a new employee, are you equipped to write an attention-grabbing job posting, post it to the places where top candidates hang out, and filter through all the resumes you receive to choose the best candidates?  Are you prepared with job-specific behavioral interview questions to screen for competencies and culture fit? Do you have a scoring system to measure one candidate against another, a salary-negotiation and hiring process, and a full-spectrum onboarding system to get your new hire off to a great start? How are your employee retention and turnover levels?

If you struggle with any of the above and are worn out doing it all yourself, you may need help with your hiring process. At Amtec, when we say that better processes equal better hires, we really believe it.  It’s why we’re always ready to share with you the knowledge we’ve gleaned in our 50+ years of recruiting top professional and technical talent. It’s why we write our monthly newsletter and weekly blog with great advice and articles to help you make smarter, more confident hires.  If you’d like to subscribe to our free monthly newsletter or need expert recruiting advice, call us at (714) 993-1900 or click here.

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