Hiring Slow and Firing Fast

This week we have been talking about hiring and firing.  As we have worked through the assignments this week, I learned that it is important to take your time to hire someone so you make sure you hire the right person.  Not only do you want someone who is a good worker, but you want someone who believes in your company culture.  If you have a certain vision for your company and the way it should be run, you must find someone who fits into that culture.  Otherwise, you will constantly be bucking heads with each other.  This is not productive or a good environment.  We learned that you have to be focused on what you want, have a job description of what the job entails and then be willing to wait until you find the perfect person for the job.  This could take days, weeks or even months.  What is important is that you find the right person to fill the job not the person to fill the job right now.

However, if you are unfortunate enough to hire someone that isn't working out, you need to be willing to cut your losses as soon as possible.  In this day and age, it seems as long as someone is working, at least a little, companies are willing to keep them on even if they really don't fit the company culture or aren't truly putting in an honest day's work.  Of course, also in this day and age, you have to make sure all your bases are covered as you don't want to find yourself in a legal battle for wrongful termination.  This makes finding the right candidate even more important to begin with.

The lesson learned for me is to don't be too anxious to hire just anyone.  Make sure to take the time to find the right person for the job.

This week has been a productive one for my bread business.  I was able to make the bread to fill all the orders from my bread party last Friday.  I had a small mishap where two out of the three loaves of a batch of banana bread the bottoms completely stuck to the pan and the bread was ruined.  I was so annoyed and not sure what to do, but my kind-hearted son offered to buy them from me so I could still meet my goal and not lose all the money for the lost bread.  However, I did tell him I would give him a two for one deal, he could pay me for just one bread and I would give him the other free.  He was STOKED! haha  Not to mention, glad to clean up my mistakes. So instead of the $2 per loaf I would have made I only made $1 per loaf, but any profit is better than a loss.  In addition, I finally got a chance to post about the bread business on Facebook.  In the 24 hours after I posted it, I received orders for 20 loaves of bread!  That will push my profit over the $100 mark and on my way to the $200 goal I had for the project.  So this weekend and next week will be busy making bread, bread, and more bread!  Luckily, my friend let me borrow her bread pans today so I don't have to wash them between each batch! This will make the process go a whole lot quicker.