Hire for different skills
When Cargile started hiring people who wanted more than just a job and was paying them twice as much as he previously had, he realized that he could be pickier and look for people with better skills in the interviewing process.
The biggest thing he began looking for was a can-do attitude, but beyond that, candidates have to have a core set of skills.
First, they needed to demonstrate that they’d be good with customers.
“As much as anything, it’s communication skills during the interview,” he says. “You’re looking for some confidence. You want some experience, whether it’s from school or other jobs or other places they’ve worked.”
And he also wants to see that somebody is able to successfully multitask.
“We lay out: ‘You’re going to be doing 15 different things at one time, they all have to get done, and one doesn’t have priority over another, and you’ll be answering the phone in between working on these 15 projects,’” he says. “You can tell if someone is just giving you an answer to placate you and get the job, or they’re sincere in saying, ‘Yeah, I do that all the time.’”
Whatever you’re looking for, you have to stick to it and have confidence in your abilities to hire.
“Trust your intuition, and if you have the intuition and have hired good people, then listen to that inner voice and follow it,” Cargile says. “If you have a history of not hiring good people, listen to that inner voice and figure out what you’re doing wrong, or maybe do the opposite of your inner voice. All you have to do is look at your employees and you know if you’re doing a good job hiring or not.”
