Over the past couple weeks, WealthNet has been looking to expand our business development efforts by bringing on a couple new employees.  We placed an ad on Craigslist ($25 for businesses in Phoenix), and received dozens of replies.  I won’t go into the art of writing an ad, but needless to say we set a very high bar to discourage  unqualified applications.  We also shared the compensation right in the ad; no “depending on experience” and we didn’t give a range either.

While the position has some incentive compensation, allows for telecommuting, and offers flexible hours, it is part time and the base is $10 per hour.  And yet I’d say a full half of the people we’ve been interviewing have been amazing.  I recognize that people can lie through their teeth on their resumes and in person, but you can’t really pretend to be more articulate than you are (unless you have a really good British accent).  Aside from presence, our interviews also involve an element of creating hypothetical goals based on past experiences.  If they aren’t experienced, people can’t articulate how their performance should be measured, and what reasonable goals would be.  About 25% of the interviewees set goals that were far too low, or goals that were impossibly high.  And lastly, we do a role play.  I give them the scenario before the interview, and ask them to prepare for it.  Again, the way people prepare for the role play and how they conduct themselves during the actual event is indicative of their experience, their ability to think quickly, and their demeanor and composure.

WealthNet is going to be grabbing some fantastic talent in our quest for growth.  I feel bad for businesses that are letting people go instead of picking people up.  In some cases we will be picking up this talent for more than 50% less than what they made in previous positions.  I don’t deceive myself that I’d be able to keep these tremendous individuals at this price forever, but it’s a great advantage in the short term.  And fortunately, being as nimble and entrepreneurial as we are, there’s a lot of room for growth and advancement for this new crop of talent.

Have you also picked up some great talent this year?  Are you letting great people go but don’t know how you can possibly keep them?  Please share your comments!