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In New Bern, North Carolina, Donna & Team New Bern rainmaker Donna Harmatuk has fine-tuned the hiring process for her business and enjoys an extremely leveraged life – all while her business brings in more than $120M in sales. With ambitious goals for 2022, like selling 750 units, Harmatuk is confident in her team’s ability to succeed without feeling overwhelmed with the situation. But, it hasn’t always been this way.
Harmatuk shares there was a time when she had built her business so large that it wasn’t fun anymore. So, she took a few steps back, reassessed, and made some moves that changed the game for her. “Having to let go was a lot of it,” she shares. “I was able to surround myself with people that are far more talented than me. Those first three hires were crucial. Now I work on my team one day a week doing what I love: coaching and consulting.” Here, she shares three mistakes to avoid when you want to hire well and get out of the way.
Related reading: Five Best Practices for Sourcing Talent
Building Your Team? Steer Clear of These Mistakes
Mistake 1: Waiting too long.
Don’t wait until you’re in pain to hire. As rainmakers, you should always be looking for talent. Even when you don’t have a position open, you should think ahead and be aware of future needs. When do you anticipate having a new opening and what will that opening be? When do you anticipate being in a state of growth?
Mistake 2: Failing to cast a vision for where you are going.
It can feel weighty to be responsible for someone’s family. You wonder if you have enough leads and if you’ll have plenty of sales to take care of them. “I recommend getting your organization chart worked out,” says Harmatuk. “Go ahead and put placeholders there for the hires you’ll need to make and start to have meaningful conversations with potential talent.”
It is important to share with your existing team and potential hires where the team is headed. Having that future vision is so important because without it you don’t have a road map for where you’re going or a GPS to help you get there. “Our team looks ahead to where we are going all the time,” Harmatuk shares. “For 2022, we sat down, got a big piece of whiteboard out, and drew out 750 units. We wondered together what it’s going to take to achieve that. What are the exact steps we are going to take to get there? If one person only wants to work for 50 sales, then we know we have to hire more people. As leaders, we have in our minds where we want to go, but we aren’t always good about sharing it. We assume everybody knows, but they don’t, so it’s really having the vision and continuously communicating it to help your team get excited about where you’re going together.”
Related reading: Hiring a Virtual Assistant? Six Tips for Success
Mistake 3: Not using tools and systems already in place.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. If you are a Keller Williams agent, there is a suite of time-tested tools and systems that are ready for you to plug into. Courses such as Career Visioning provide the tools necessary to hire talent that is most likely to succeed within your business. “The KPA (a behavioral assessment that measures personality traits and cognitive abilities) and 30-60-90 (a success plan for a hire’s first few months on the job) are my best friends. I use them regularly. They help you position people in their strengths,” Harmatuk shares. “That’s why a lot of times I move people around because they’re on board with the vision, but they may be in a role that doesn’t synchronize with the way they work and think.”
Leaders, Share Your Fail Forwards!
Have you ever made a hiring mistake that affected your business in substantial ways? What did you learn from it? What are some of your mistakes to avoid? Let us know in the comment section.
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