Author: Nick Bell (605) 937-5577 | nbell@asgteam.com

How Early is too Early?

One of the most common conversations I have around hiring is when to start the process. A lot of hiring revolves around growth or retirement planning. Deciding when to start interviewing potential candidates and even bring someone on board can be tricky. There are many reasons to push it off (budgeting, planning, etc.), but delaying a start is often the wrong call.

It’s not surprising to hear that the interviewing and hiring process can move at a snail’s pace and often it takes a while to source even a couple of qualified individuals to talk with. Occasionally, a company may luck out and find someone right away, but that often is more related to chance than it is to the labor market. The higher up the ladder you climb as well, the smaller the pool gets to find applicants and the longer a search can go on.

At the end of the day, my bias is that it is like doing a project at home, you should start sooner than you think because it’s always going to take much longer and will be a lot harder than you planned on. It’s tough to start too early.

Keeping the Team Healthy

Having the right team in place makes any job easier and is unquestionably the key to having a successful organization. In an ideal world, every member works well together, knows their job, and is committed to the same goal. We all know that that is not always the case.

Finding the right people and bringing them together takes time. Building that trust and creating a successful group takes even longer. Unfortunately, it’s easy to bring it down at a quick pace with the wrong dynamic or a bad hire. We’ve all heard about or even worked with a toxic colleague who creates a negative environment that quickly drags everyone else down.

Sometimes that person is even a top performer, which can be even more frustrating because they’ll seemingly get a pass for bad behavior due to their personal success.

While not easy, leadership needs to catch this early and try to stamp it out. It is often not the case of someone being malicious, but just unaware of their actions and early intervention can save headaches down the road. Allowing it to fester only makes it harder to course correctly, leaving only a few options that typically involve some sort of personnel change. If you want to keep a good thing going, have the tough conversation at the beginning and watch your team continue to flourish.