Make a better hiring decision by weighing both sides.

Employee referrals are great. Sometimes. Before you take the word of an employee on the next ‘perfect hire,’ be sure to weigh the benefits against the potential issues to help guide you as you make your hiring decision.

Why your company needs an employee handbook

Legal and financial. Those are the two primary reasons every company should have an employee handbook. For small businesses, drafting a handbook might seem like an inefficient use of valuable temporal resources, however, in the long run, it pays off exponentially in time, money, and peace of mind.

Why you should give your patients “the spa treatment”

Think of an ideal spa experience:

As you drive to the spa, you recall that the person who called to confirm your appointment sounded lovely on the phone. And from the moment you walk in the reception area, you’re made to feel special. You get the sense that this will be a good experience as you get a warm personal greeting and a smile from the receptionist.

What are team or group interviews?

There is some confusion about the terms “team interviews” and “group interviews.” One, because the two terms are often used interchangeably, and two, because they can mean either of two things: when interviewers get together in a group and simultaneously meet with a single candidate, or when one interviewer interviews several candidates simultaneously in a group setting.

Hire the right person for the job, right from the start.

Envision the following scenarios:

1. You’ve brought in a dozen candidates for interviews for front desk sales associate positions at your health club. Several people seem promising, but you don’t have positions for all of them. How are you going to choose who will get an offer?
2. You need several patient registration specialists and advertised the position on a job board. Now you are flooded with hundreds of resumes. Who has the time to slog through them to determine who to bring in for interviews?
3. Everyone in your organization seems to have a different opinion on which interviewees should be hired. How do you decide?
4. There are several different job openings in your organization, and you’ve interviewed someone you like a lot, but are not sure where they’d fit best. Now what?

Having owned, worked-in and consulted with retail service businesses for many years, I’ve noticed some key differences between the businesses who struggle and those who seem to magically grow year after year. If your business seems stuck, take a moment to assess how you’re doing in these three areas.

A little while ago I was meeting with a prospective client.  I asked this client one of my favorite questions, “What is your vision for your business?”  She looked at me and said, “I don’t have a vision. What is your vision?”  Nobody has ever turned that around on me before, but I was happy to share with her my thoughts about the people part of my vision.  I described my vision of an organization where everyone on the team wants to grow and they find that there are many opportunities within the organization to learn and improve their skills.

Business executives could benefit from a coach for a variety of reasons. Many times the executive is looking to move ahead in his/her career and knows that there are specific areas she needs to improve in order to make that happen. A coach can help an executive identify those areas and work with her to sharpen her skills. This accelerates the learning process.

The top leadership mistakes often made by entrepreneurs fall into four areas:

• Identifying too closely with their business
• Doing everything themselves
• Forgetting their vision
• Ignoring leadership lessons

The mistake I see most often with entrepreneurs is that they don’t separate themselves from their business.