Hire and advance the right people
Once the values are in place, you need the right kind of people to
integrate them into the culture.
“In the cycle of the employee development, it starts with a good
hire,” Siegal says. “That good hire means, are they capable of doing
the job you hire them for?”
Siegal says he has a constant struggle with one of his managers, who consistently hires really nice people, but really nice
people who aren’t qualified for the positions he’s putting them
in. So first check a person’s qualifications and make sure they
match with the job for which you’re hiring.
Once you’ve established that, then you need to find out what’s
important to the job candidates. Siegal says it’s crucial that people
who join Olympic Steel care about something.
“If you can’t say, ‘I care about something,’ you probably aren’t going
to care about your job, so the first priority is caring,” he says.
During interviews, Siegal will bluntly ask job candidates what
they care about. It may be their family or it may be the environment, but regardless of what it is, if they can’t articulate something,
then that’s a sign they may not be committed to your business.
“We’re happy to invest in you as long as you’re willing to invest in
yourself, but it’s a partnership,” he says. “I’m not going to invest in
you if you don’t care.”
Once you’ve hired someone who is qualified and cares, then you
have to advance that person through the organization if he or she
is a top performer. Choosing the right people to advance can often
prove challenging, but Siegal says to start with the people who buy
in to your values.
“If you share our values and perform, you have no issues,” Siegal
says. “If you perform, but you don’t share our values, you probably
won’t have a sustainable job here.”
Once you’ve identified someone, then you have to see if that person is ready for the next level.
“Put new people on projects, and see how they perform,” he
says. “If they’re saying, ‘I don’t have time,’ or, ‘I’m too busy,’ or,
‘I’m coaching my kids in softball,’ or, ‘I have life issues,’ or, ‘My
parents are sick,’ at a certain point, we keep asking you, and you
keep saying no, you’re not going to get a lot of chances.”
It’s also important to communicate to your employees why it’s
important to take the opportunities the company presents.
“You tell the younger people who aren’t experienced, ‘Look, if I
ask you to do something, and you say no, it’s a test. It’s a test of
who I can count on and who I can trust,’” he says.
Once you have someone who is both aligned and has stepped up
to the plate, then you need to talk to that person about his or her
goals.
“They have to say what they want,” he says. “If you cannot tell me
what you want for your career, it’s very hard for me to meet your
standards. Start off with, ‘What do you want? How do you see yourself? Where do you see yourself when you’re 45 years old?’ If you
can’t articulate that vision, then I probably can’t help you get there.”
If someone says that he or she wants to have a full career and
wants to stay with you, then that’s a person you want to invest in
and help get to the next level, so point out what needs to be done
to get to there.
“Here’s the skills you need to get there — you don’t have
them yet,” Siegal says. “Here’s how we can help you get there,
but it’s going to take commitment for you to go back to school,
go to seminars. You’re going to have to do things at night.
Homework doesn’t end when you graduated high school or
college. It goes on. The stuff you do at home is a lot more valuable than just doing homework. It’s doing lifework.”
It’s also important to identify what an employee isn’t willing to do to reach the next level.
For instance, Siegal says that if someone refuses to leave
Cleveland, then he may not be able to advance that person
because the next opportunity may never come up here, but it
might come up in Georgia or Minnesota.
“You have to go out to the world, and then you can come back,
but the world is not centered in Cleveland, Ohio, so you have to be
able to also be willing to commit to your career as much as the
company is willing to commit to you,” he says.
