Lessons in Hiring

At the (fortunately) young age of 30, I started my business. Let me tell you, being young and dumb was a blessing because if I had known the trouble I’d get into managing people, I may have ran the other way. (Actually no, I take that back—I’m stubborn and would have needed to learn it myself).

However I did sell myself short. You see, I’m of the school of thought that I need to hire smarter than me. I always knew I wasn’t the diplomatic type & thought I needed a middle manager to be a liaison between employees and I. That was my biggest mistake. I’m not terribly smart at anything else except what I do and eating croissants. Here’s what I’ve learned works for me, and keep in mind it only took me over five years to learn this.

I cannot work and/or deal with:

Dead weight: if you don’t love what you do, and could be just as happy being a bank teller you are in the wrong industry. No passion tells me the quality of your work is going to suck.
Dishonesty. When I hire people, I tell them they will get raised based on changing my mind. That it’s part of the RCM ethos. If they can’t drop their ego for the client, they won’t drop it for me. Clients are my bosses. The sneakiest ones are in over their head and don’t ask for help. They pretend to know. I’ve decided these people are the scariest. You learn to delegate, you’re taught it’s a ‘healthy’ thing, but when you get caught off guard you can find yourself 90K in the hole and 6 months behind. These people are actually worse than the people that make just too many mistakes.
People with principles: two words – GO AWAY. If you’re on some kind of campaign to save the world through political correctness, or not to hurt anyone’s feelings, you will not only be censoring yourself but censoring the entire team who’s scared to brainstorm without obstructions—an agency must. Go save the whales somewhere else.
Emotional vampires: if I’m spending more time diagnosing you than seeing my own daughter, and nothing ever changes—fire early rather than later. Sometimes morale can take a hit instead of YOU.

In all, I cut out middle management, keep the low-drama employees who are just as passionate about what they do—and don’t get me wrong: changing my mind and respecting me as a boss HAS to be a fine line, but I’ve put my money where my mouth is and if people could just judge me by actions and not words they could take over the world.