076: Despise the Hiring Process? This Might Be Why
Do you dread the process of hiring? You might know that it’s time to bring on additional support but the thought of having to create the job posting, interview candidates and everything else that comes along with hiring has you feeling stuck…
If this is you, you aren’t alone. A lot of people run into this when hiring and there are a few reasons why you might be feeling this way. In this episode, I am uncovering why you might be putting off hiring and what you can do to make the process better for you.
You’ll also learn the two questions you should ask yourself when hiring and why hiring is a good investment of your time (even if you feel like you don’t have much of it).
What’s in this episode:
- Why you might be dreading the hiring process
- How to move forward if you haven’t been looking forward to hiring
- Why hiring is a good investment of your time
- Two questions to ask yourself during the hiring process
- My concept of spiraling up and how it relates to hiring
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EPISODE 76 TRANSCRIPT:
Download the Episode 76 Transcript
Welcome to the Scale Your Way podcast, episode number 76.
You’re listening to the Scale Your Way podcast, where we share simple, proven strategies just for done for you service based companies here, you’ll learn how to scale your business on your own terms so that you can have more time, money, create a bigger impact and a better life. I’m your host, Nicole Jackson Miller. Let’s dive into today’s episode.
Hey, everyone, Nicole here and welcome back to the show. Today, we were talking about hiring and specifically what to do if you are just absolutely dreading the hiring process. If you are listening to this and you have hired before and are growing your company, I am sure at some point you have known that you’ve needed to make a new hire and you’ve probably just not wanted to do it.
So there’s several reasons why this may be happening for you. And so I want to walk through with some of those reasons may be in ways that you can move forward, because what happens when you are dreading anything is that the thought of dread is keeping you stuck. Right? If you’re dreading something, oftentimes we avoid it or it makes it seem so hard. Every time we go to do something, we’re thinking like, I don’t want to be doing this, which is making the whole thing not enjoyable. And the actual process of hiring is really not that hard.
And I know for those of you that may have hired in the past who have had trouble finding applicants or getting the right person in the right role, you might be thinking that is absolutely not true, Nicole. But if you look at the actual process of hiring someone, so writing a job host, creating an application and posting it live and scheduling interviews, that’s not that much once you sit down to actually do it and commit to it. Right? But if you are dreading doing something, sometimes there are other things that are going on and that’s what we want to talk about.
So when I talk to people who are dreading the hiring process, not really feeling excited about it, there’s if you don’t want to say excuses, but there’s a few things that pop up in our conversations. Challenges, let’s call them challenges. So one is the time. So I hear, Nicole, it’s going to take me so much time to hire in this new person. I just don’t have the time for this. Another thing I hear is that it feels challenging because they maybe were hiring to replace someone and you’re going to have to let someone go. And so there’s hesitation and having to go through that process because letting someone go feels hard or the timing of it feels challenging. So how do I let someone go? And then at the same time, hiring someone new feels like it’s too much. Another thing that could come up is money. So if somebody has been doing a job and you want to replace them, maybe you just don’t want to hire someone and you think I’ll just do it myself, I’ll just take these tasks back on.
This happened to one of my clients recently where she was letting go of a team member and instead of hiring a replacement, she figured she would just do it herself for a while while she found someone else. Maybe she would just continue to do it. Long term side note, that was not the solution that she ended up moving forward with because she is in my program. And I did not let her do that because it wasn’t the right choice. I have my clients write a Post-it note on their computer saying the answer is never to just do it myself because and we’ll dove into this a little bit more later. But if you are going to take something back on again, it needs to be a very strategic decision. It needs to be for the right reasons. And you have to have a transition plan to get it back off of your plate again. And that’s not what was going on for this client. Going back to money. It could be a financial component of actually, like, I’ll just do it myself. It’ll be less expensive and I’ll be able to pay myself more. Could be a money thing. It could be annoyance that your last hire didn’t work out and you just don’t want to do it again. Or maybe you’re now telling yourself a story that this isn’t meant to be, that you’re never going to find somebody who’s going to do the same level or quality, have the same quality of of work that you would. No one will be as good as you are at your job. Right?
It could be that, you know, you have to create processes in order for this new person to come in and be successful. And the last one I’ll mention is something that can tend to run underneath the surface that we might not even be aware of. And that is the commitment to your business. So when things haven’t worked out or haven’t gone smoothly, oftentimes we avoid growth and hiring as a growth activity because we’re questioning our business and we’re questioning our commitment to our business. So that can be another challenge that you can either be aware of or maybe you’re not aware of. And so if you are not committed to your business, of course, you wouldn’t want to hire in more people to work with you. So I want to go through each of these in a little bit more depth to really challenge what’s happening so that in case any of those items felt like Something that you really resonated with, I want to give you some strategies to understand, well, first, an understanding of what’s going on and then strategies to be able to move forward.
OK, so the first thing that I recommend doing is writing down. What are all of the reasons why you are dreading hiring someone new? Is it having enough time? Is it having to let someone go? Is it a financial reason? Is it annoyance that your last hire didn’t work out? Is it because you feel like you’re going to have to create new processes? Right? And that kind of goes back to the time piece. Is it that you’re really questioning of this is business is what you want to be doing and be really honest with yourself here. So after doing that, I want you to write down whether or not each of those things are true.
So, for example, if you if one of your challenges is that you don’t have enough time to go through the hiring process, is that true? Right? Because when we look at the hiring process, it’s creating a job that’s creating a job application. It’s setting aside some time for interviews, and it’s interviewing those people and making a decision. So if you have hired for this role before then, you probably have a lot of the things that you need to move forward with hiring someone new. And it’s going to be a lot less time. If you have not hired for this position before, it might take you a little bit more time. But honestly, once you sit down and actually start writing, it doesn’t take you that long to put together these materials. It just takes maybe I would say like 30 minutes to an hour of focus to get a job application questions up. We have inside of our programs job host templates, application templates, example, questions to ask for interviews. So it does save a lot of our clients time. But even if you’re not inside of our programs, you can sit down and write those things up, too. And again, I would just put like 30 minutes on your calendar, thirty to forty five minutes on your calendar to get it all out.
And, you know, when it comes to time, you know, there’s there’s never enough time to do all of the things that we want to do. Right. But what’s important is that we prioritize our time so that we get the biggest return. So I’ve talked about this in other podcast episodes that when we are looking at time, we want to make good investments. So what is it, an investment? What is a good investment? It is something that is going to give you a great return. So when you look at your time, you’re going to have different activities that you’re doing that will bring you different forms of return. So by you investing your time in doing client work, the client work is getting done. But it’s not really giving you anything extra in the future by investing some time in hiring a team member. Not only are you getting somebody in that can help you, but you are actually going to be gaining more time back in the future, right, if you have this new team member and that’s taking more work off your plate. So that is what I would consider a good investment of your time.
Now, you still need to deliver for your clients, right. And fulfill your contract. So there is a balance, but it’s more around prioritizing your time to make sure that you’re doing activities that are going to give you that return.
So while, yes, your calendar might be full, what is it that you can either delegate off of your plate to people that are already in your life? And when I say life, I mean life and business, right? Because I’m sure there’s some personal things that are filling up your calendar as well. What are some things that just don’t never need to get done? Where are things you can just delete off of your plate? And what are the things that you could delay? So maybe you don’t have to do it this week or next week, but you need to do it the following week. That is definitely going to help free up some time for you so that you can focus in on hiring.
So when you’re going through this list, if time is one of those issues, ask yourself, is this true or not? And time is likely not going to be something that is true. It may be something where maybe you don’t have time this week, but you would have time next week. Right. And so then you want to put that on your calendar for next week or maybe you don’t have time over the course of the next two weeks. But in three weeks you can put that time aside or maybe you do have time right now to do it right. And it’s just because you keep telling yourself this is going to be such a dreadful process that you keep you’re not prioritizing it.
That’s what I want you to go through. And when you really write this stuff down, it can be so helpful for those of you. I have a few clients that they’re like, you keep telling me to write things down. I never write things down. I always I like to do other ways. So do this in a way that works for you. Maybe it’s going out and taking a walk and kind of talking through this with yourself on the walk. I sometimes when I go for a walk with my dog scout, I have little conversations with myself. Sometimes they’re in my head. Sometimes I kind of talk. Sometimes I talk to Scout, which is very strange. But I’m sure there’s others out there who also talk to their animals and kind of work through it as I am walking. So do this and whatever way feels good to you. Hey, so write down your challenges. I don’t know if they’re true or not, and if you’re not sure, then talk yourself or right through it, just like I did with time, right. Like do OK. Yes, my calendar’s full. What could I change around? How could I make this work?
So then after you go through those different areas, I want you to ask yourself two questions. One, what absolutely has to get done before I hire this person absolutely has to get done. So if one of your challenges is that, you know, you need to create processes, what processes actually have to be created before you hire this person? Oftentimes, people will say very generally, I need to create processes for my business. Right. But that is so broad and so general. So if you are looking, what I recommend to clients is if you are looking to hire someone in and you need them to get started in order to take more off of your plate, to be able to focus and on other things in your business, don’t just say you need to do processes, literally list out the processes that are specifically related to that person’s job. And then you can determine what are the most important processes that you need to write first, because you don’t have to have all of these processes in place before you even post the job. You can actually overlap some of these things so you can create the job post, create the application process, go live. Right? You can have people start to apply while you are then creating some of these processes for them to get started. You can also be doing this while you’re interviewing people, right? You can overlap some of these things. So it’s not that one thing has to come before the next right. Which is going to significantly extend your timeline. You can be doing these things as you get started. And you only need to have the processes created for what that person needs immediately when they start right. There may be some things that they need later on in their onboarding process, but that you don’t necessarily need to do before they’re hired. You can do it after they’re hired.
Through my program agency, I walk people through how to on board new team members and creating a really strategic onboarding plan so that you don’t feel overwhelmed. They don’t feel overwhelmed. It’s expectations are super clear. We have a great process around it, which so many people use for new hires or even new things that they are delegating to current team members. OK, and so this process can also help you with identifying what needs to get done so that this person can do the things that I need them to do right away. And there’s going to be some things that I need them to get done, but it won’t come until maybe like a month, two or three, so I can wait on creating those things.
So that leads us really nicely into the second question that I want you to ask yourself is what needs to get done after I hire this person? And then you can list out some of those things so that it doesn’t seem like just a pile, a big mountain of stuff that needs to get done. You can really be strategic around what you’re implementing and when. So hiring isn’t as hard as you think it is. Right. We make this stuff up in our mind because we’re thinking thoughts like I’m dreading hiring someone new or this is going to be so hard. Those are all thoughts that are then informing your feelings and your actions. Right. So if you’re thinking that this is going to be terrible, you’re probably going to create an experience for yourself that feels really terrible. Right. But when you really boil down what needs to be get done, it’s really not that hard.
So what I typically recommend to stretch all of my clients is to just move forward and create the job post, now. Create the job post if you have hired in the past. And it hasn’t been a great experience, even better, because what you can do is go through the job posts that you created in the past and you can edit it based on what you know that you don’t want to repeat. Right. So if you’ve had an experience with a team member where maybe the quality of their work wasn’t as great as you thought it would be. Right. You can start emphasizing what you do want, which is someone who either has experience or they’re able to provide that higher quality or maybe more attention to detail. You can really think of some cool application questions to ask so that you can get really an honest response from the people that you’re interviewing based on either positive or negative experiences that you’ve had in the past. So if you have to let someone go or your last hire didn’t work out, I invite you to channel the feelings around that like annoyance, like feeling upset, sad, angry, and use that energy instead of just sitting in the annoyance and the anger. Use that energy to focus on creating something that you do want. Right? Whether it be changing a process. Because you know what you. To be fixed, whether it’s, you know, creating or editing a job host or creating an application, a situational application question based on something that just happened where you didn’t like how someone handled it right. Ask tell the new hire or the candidates that situation and ask how they would handle it so that you will know in the future really use those experiences to help grow your business.
And this comes back to the concept that I’ve talked about in prior podcast episodes, which is what I call spiraling up where at points in our business after gaining experience, we kind of need to look, reassess some key areas. One of them is team one of them as our offers and some of the foundations of our business and other pieces like our business operations and our own leadership. Right. And so sometimes it can look like we’re having to do the same thing over and over again when we’re really not. So hiring is one of those things, right?
Hiring and having a team is not something that you just check off of the list and never have to address again. It’s something that you hire in a team. You gain experience, you get to the next level and you’re going to have to reassess it. It’s a normal part of running a business. It can feel like a challenge and it can feel hard and especially can feel even more hard if you’re telling yourself why am I having to do this again? I thought I already got it done. Remember, it’s not just something you check off and never have to address again. Team is a living, breathing part of your business. So as you gain those experiences, it will help you inform that next level. And we can’t just skip levels, right. We have to go through our own levels and our own experiences. And so use that spiral, use that experience, use that time to be able to better inform how you want your team to operate, who you want on your team and what the expectations are, what’s important to you and what’s not important to you.
So to recap, if you are dreading the hiring process, if you’re dreading hiring someone new, write down all of the reasons, whether they’re logical or not, of why it feels challenging, just get it all out. Get it all out. If you don’t like writing, if you don’t like journaling, go for a walk, talk to your dog, talk to your cat, whatever, talk to your kid, really get that out of your head. Then ask yourself, are these things true or not? Then ask yourself what really needs to get done before I hire this person, like really, really, really needs to get done. Right. And what can wait until after I hire this person, it is very likely that you will feel less overwhelmed. And the great thing about it is that once you hire in a person, they can also help with some of the things that you might need to have set up. If there are processes that need to be created right. It’s going to help free up some of your time. It’s going to help with some of these challenges that you have likely listed out.
So with that, I wish you well on your hiring process. If you want more support with this, when it comes to hiring a team that will deliver excellent client results for your clients inside of your agency, I highly recommend you check out my program AGENCY. We are now enrolling. You can head over to NicoleJacksonMiller.com/agency to get all of the info and to apply and fill out an assessment that will give you some idea of the direction that you will need to go. And next, in your business, a lot of people have gained so much clarity with that. All right, everyone, until next week. Have a great one.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you are ready to stop settling for being a done for your service provider and really fully step into the role of agency owner and CEO and lead a team that you love that just delivers excellent client results, then you have to check out my new program called AGENCY, which is specifically designed to remove you from at least 50 percent of client delivery in 12 months or less, so that you can have the time and the space to be able to run your business and, you know, to take a tech free vacation to. That’s always nice, right? So if you’re interested in learning more, head over to NicoleJacksonMiller.com/Appy. You can learn more about the program. If it looks like a good fit, then apply and we will send you before our call. We’ll send you a free business assessment that will really explain more about the framework that we use to remove you from client delivery. And it’ll give you an assessment that you can take to really show where you are now and where you’re going. We’ve had so many people get a lot of insight just from taking that assessment, so I can’t wait for you to check it out.
