Career Course

The smaller the business, the more hiring the right people matters. When employee #100 turns out to be a disaster the impact on the business is relatively small and usually confined to a small group of employees.

When employee #4 is a disaster, everything suffers.

Attitude is everything. you can teach skills but it’s incredibly hard to teach and instill enthusiasm, teamwork and independence (you need both), and motivation.

The best small business employees:

• Feel “it’s all 8 hours to me.” I first heard this expression when I asked an employee to help me clean up after a backed-up sewer line spread waste water across the warehouse.  He said, “Sure. It’s all 8

Dear Evil HR Lady,

Here is why people with less qualifications than you have are being hired to work the fast food jobs and clean the restrooms:  You don’t want to do those jobs.

I know, I know, you want a job–any job–because you need money.  But a manager hiring someone to say “would you like fries with that?” is going to think 2 things about you.

1. As soon as a better job comes along, you’ll be out the door.
2. If you are almost finished with a master’s degree in engineering and you want to flip burgers there must be something wrong with you.

Number 1 is definitely true.  You can’t tell me you’ll turn down an engineering job because you’ve made a commitment to clean toilets.  What you’re trying to find is a something, anything, to pay the bills.  This is definitely honorable and I totally respect that.  Still, managers want to hire someone who wants this job and not just a job.  A person who has just graduated from high school actually wants that job because she isn’t qualified for something more advanced.

If it’s a professional job that’s going to a recent college grad, again, it’s an entry level job and you’re not entry level.

And therein lies the problem.  You’re applying to every job you can possibly find.  I imagine you sitting down at Monster or Craigslist and clicking apply on every job available.  This process rarely works.

You’ve tried networking to no avail.  It is true that many people with jobs are tired of people without jobs constantly asking them for help. They are disillusioned and are concerned about