“There is nothing more important for a business than hiring the right team. If you get the perfect mix of people working for your company, you have a far greater chance of success.”
Richard Branson.
As young businesses expand and get more successful there comes the inevitable time where work has multiplied to the point where the founder or founders are unable to cope and must hire additional team members.
The hiring process is tricky and selecting the right people is a potential minefield but I believe that the hiring practices at Richard Branson’s Virgin Group are a very useful starting point.
Personality is prioritised in the belief it is easier to teach someone with the right personality the job than it is to change the personality of someone who might know the job. Transferrable skills and experience are valued above paper qualifications and allowance is made for individuals who might not exactly fit the group’s culture at the start but who later grow into their roles.
Another important Virgin hiring practice is to hire skills which will complement those in the organisation and that is very relevant for the founders of new businesses overwhelmed by the amount of work they need to.
A very common mistake made by the founders of new businesses is they try and keep control for too long and wear themselves out doing tasks they don’t really have the skills for. What they should be doing instead, is identifying the tasks they are particularly skilled at and delegating the rest to staff members hired for those skills.
Delegation and letting go doesn’t come easily to a lot of people but it can be done successfully by keeping a few simple things in mind including choosing the right person for the task, outlining it in detail to them and setting targets and deadlines. The staff member should then be trusted to complete the task, subject to follow-up, and be given full acknowledgement when the task is complete.
Properly chosen staff members can be an asset to the business but they must be nurtured and cared for to keep them operating at their peak. The Virgin Group again shows the way by prioritising its staff above customers and shareholders in the knowledge that happy staff will inevitably result in happy customers and therefore, happy shareholders.
I started with a Branson quote and I’ll end with another which just confirms his attitude to his staff:
Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.
– Richard Branson.
