Protip: Treat Hiring Like Dating
3. USE ALL THE TOOLS AVAILABLE—Social media. Your blog. Your vendors. Your customers. The free sites. The for pay sites. The job board of every college within 200 miles of your shop. And yes, even your local paper. Use them all.
4. TAKE YOUR TIME—we all know how costly a bad hire can be (and how crappy a bad boyfriend can be) so don’t rush it. Have a very clear picture of what you are looking for IN WRITING, and enlist as many employees and trusted advisors as you can. It is not unusual for the hiring process to take as many as EIGHT (yes, I said EIGHT) interviews.
5. LOOK FOR FIT AND TRUST YOUR GUT OVER WHAT YOU SEE ON A PIECE OF PAPER—Building on what I said above in number five, if the voice in your head is telling you there is a problem. Don’t hire. Conversely, if you get such a great feel for someone but his/her resume tells you s/he is "job-hopper" or doesn’t have enough experience or a degree, that’s bollocks.
TRUST. YOUR. GUT.
So that’s it—get out and look for that perfect girlfriend/boyfriend—I mean salesperson—right now!
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- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Blogger, author, consultant, coach and all around evangelist for the graphic arts industry, Kelly sold digital printing for 15 years so she understands the challenges, frustrations and pitfalls of building a successful sales practice. Her mission is to help printers of all sizes sell more stuff. Kelly's areas of focus include sales and marketing coaching, enabling clients to find engagement strategies that work for them and mentoring the next generation of sales superstars.
Kelly graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Political Science and, among other notable accomplishments, co-founded the Windy City Rollers, a professional women's roller derby league. She is also the mother of two sets of twins under the age of ten, so she fears nothing.
