Texas' oldest placement
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Introduction

My reason for writing these essays and newsletters was to offer some day-to-day, practical ideas on how to recruit, interview, and hire people. The vst majority of businesses in America do not make a daily practice of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and retaining employees. They do not have dedicated professionals or departments to help them in these endeavors. The majority of business people have very little practice in the necessary endeavors and yet most of them think they know how to go about doing them as though they were experts.

Even though most employers agree that recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and retaining good employees is one of the most important aspects of their business, they do it so infrequently and with such little training or expertise that they do it very poorly. Let's face it: few if any employers start a business with its main purpose being the recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and retention of good employees. We institute and grow businesses that provide services, manufacture goods, distribute goods, etc. The process of hiring employees to help us do our business is necessary to the existence of that business, but our primary focus is on what we do as a business. Good lawyers practice law, good doctors practice medicine, and good accountants practice accounting. The skills and practice that it takes to recruit, interview, hire, and retain good employees to help us do our work usually don't have anything to do with the type of work itself. These functions do not necessarily follow good accountancy, lawyering, or doctoring, and yet we know that performing them well is crucial to the success of our business.

The message of these articles can be appreciated by all types of employers, no matter what the expertise of the reader. It is primarily aimed at the professional who doesn't claim to be an expert at these functions and whose job function only includes these duties when necessary. The message is meant to be nonscientific, practical, gut-level, "in the trenches" type of stuff.

Although I came out of an academic atmosphere, the last twenty years in the placement and recruitment business have shown me that although our businesses have rapidly evolved technologically and in many other ways, we still have a tendency to screw up the people end of it. Don't let anyone kid you: Recruiting, interviewing, and hiring are all very emotional, personal duties. Most people just won't admit that these functions are as emotionally charged as they are. Everyone thinks that because he has either been hired or hired someone before, he knows how to do it well. Yet, we all know that the truth is far from this premise.

I recently heard a multi-millionaire Texan asked why he had become so successful. He replied that he was successful because he had made good decisions. The interviewer was not satisfied with the answer, so he asked the man how he made good decisions. The millionaire quickly replied that he had made good decisions because he had experience. Feel still frustrated with the simplicity of the answers, the interviewer asked the millionaire how he had gotten experience. The man quickly replied that he had gotten experience by making bad decisions.

Since a wise man learns by making bad decisions and an even wiser man learns by another's bad decisions, my purpose is to share with you the observations and bad decisions I have seen in watching thousands of people at all levels of business get hired an fired. My view as a third party has allowed me to experience first hand the crazy, emotional, ridiculous things people do when they recruit, interview, and hire...the kind of things that no one admits to doing. My ideas are not mystical, revolutionary, or miraculous. They are meant to be practical, day-to-day observations and concepts that can help the average businessperson (if there is such a thing) do his or her job better and more easily. Most employers make a lot of costly mistakes in the recruiting, interviewing, and hiring process. They can sometimes even be disastrous. If these ideas with you saves you even the smallest amount of time, money, or aggravation, then it will be worth it.

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