Hiring and Firing (The Brian Tracy Success Library)

by Brian Tracy

The key executive talent is the ability to recruit, hire, and build a team of effective, competent people.

Because individual human beings are so complex and unpredictable, even the best hiring skills will give you a success rate of only about 66 percent.

The first law of management is selection.

Ninety-five percent of the success of any enterprise is determined by the people chosen to work in the enterprise.

When you have to hire, therefore, the best rule is to hire slowly and to select carefully.

Hiring is expensive

it costs between three and six times the individual’s annual salary to hire someone and then lose them when they don’t work out.

The companies that are the most profitable have turnover rates that are as low as 1 percent or 2 percent per year.

“THINK!”

Each person in the company was encouraged to look at those signs continually whenever making decisions or solving problems.

Think through the actual requirements of the job. What will the person have to do, day in and day out? What specific results do you expect this person to achieve?

When thinking through the job, ask yourself, “Exactly what specific, measurable outputs do I want from this new person, and what skills will this person need in order to accomplish these required outputs?”

Think on paper. Start creating your job description by standing back and thinking through what the individual will be doing from the time work starts in the morning until finishing time in the evening.

List every task, function, and responsibility that the new person will have.

This task takes work, which is why most people don’t do it.

Next to each of the items on your list you write “very important,” “important,” and “not so important.”

the candidate must be capable of performing the “musts.”

to attract a large number of resumes at the beginning to be sure that you get the right person at the end.

16 candidates, on average, to find one person worthy of being hired.

The rule in finding suitable candidates is to cast a wide net.

One of your chief responsibilities as a manager is to be constantly on the lookout for people who are already working and to offer them much better positions.

Companies that hire from the inside have the lowest turnover rates and the highest levels of productivity.

As a result of this bonus system, everyone in the company was continually looking for people they could recommend.

An advantage of this system is that no one wanted to recommend someone who would reflect badly on him or her personally.

LinkedIn, Craigslist, Monster, or CareerBuilder.

Another way that many companies recruit is by communicating with their personal contacts.

Either the job you are describing cannot be done by a single person or the money that you are offering is not acceptable to a person with the talent to do the job you are hiring for.

you must plan the interviewing process and the interviewing sequence in advance, before you meet the individual.

First of all, write out and follow a logical questioning sequence for the interview. Don’t attempt to wing it.

Your job is to reduce this stress before you begin.

‘Without prejudice.’”

Then I’ll continue: “This means that I will tell you about the job and what the company does. You tell me what you do and what you are thinking and feeling about the job, and we’ll work together to see if there is a fit. You want to be happy with this position, and we want to be happy with whoever does this job. If this interview process doesn’t work out, it won’t be a reflection on either one of us. So just relax.”

You are trying to refer to the job as if it was out there on the table between you, and you are having a discussion about it.

You then go through the highlights of the candidate’s resume and begin asking questions that expand on the candidate’s background and history.

You ask questions and listen 20 percent of the time while you encourage the candidate to answer and speak 80 percent of the time. Whatever you do, avoid dominating the conversation.

After you tell them something about the responsibilities of the job you ask, “How do you feel about that?”

In a job interview, you are looking for a person who can get the results that you have identified earlier. This means that you are continually asking questions about what the person has done in the past relative to the most important outputs of this job, and how it worked out. What were the person’s successes and failures, and what does the person think and feel about them?

One of the best indicators of success in life is creativity.

And one of the best indicators of creativity is curiosity. A good job candidate wants to interview you and learn...

The more questions that a candidate asks, the more likely it is that he or sh...

The best people available ar...

interview companies to decide where to work, rather than going around being interviewed and having their careers determined by ...

The most important quality for success in life is a willingness to work hard.

Successful candidates are goal-oriented. They see jobs as opportunities to help them achieve their personal goals by helping companies

Ask Candidates wgat goal they have and what they are trying to achieve?

A sense of urgency is a key quality of the best people, both employees and managers.

the word SWAN stands for “Smart, Works hard, Ambitious, and Nice.”

interview the one you like best a minimum of three times, and interview that person in at least three different settings or locations.

It is at the first interview that the candidate will impress you the most. If for some reason he does not impress you at the first meeting, he is not going to impress you later on.

The reason the company was so careful about the interview process was because it planned to hire people for life.

Nothing sorts out candidates better than a multiple interview process.