Employees

I’ve always been of the opinion that chaining employees to desks would be a great guarantor of productivity. That, and beating them around the head with rolled-up newspapers. So when I saw
the article 5 reasons why you should treat your employees like dogs my hopes were raised, albeit briefly. No abuse here!

I have a problem with my tailors.

They make good shirts for my customers and me. In fact, I think they make great shirts - I love wearing them! (When for the first time you wear a shirt that’s been especially tailored for you… you can feel it.) So, that’s not the problem.

They haven’t yet missed a special request - I’ve taken a few and so far, so good. So that’s not the problem.

The problem is this : they could be faster. Quite a bit faster. On my site I say that Australian customers can get their shirts within 28 days (international customers 35 days). This is quite good for a remote tailor. For me though, it’s not. I want to raise the bar higher.

That’s why I’m hiring someone in Bangkok. He’ll physically take the order into my tailor. And rather than a two week slow back-and-forth email process about the different shirts, they’ll be able to deal with everything on the spot. Everything else can be fixed in a quick phone call the next day.

He’ll then go back the next week and pick up the shirts, mail the international orders directly to the customer, and bulk send the Australian orders to me. Because of this, I’m hoping to shorten the timeframe by 7-10 days.

I know I’ve been talking about hiring someone in Bangkok, but I will also be getting an employee in Australia soon

Mat’s philosphy about hiring employees

• Experience doesn’t matter much in entry level jobs. I can’t believe the amount of businesses that have unskilled jobs  such as working in clothing stores or sandwich bars where experience is mandatory. What drugs are these guys on? If it takes less than two weeks to train someone for a job, don’t require experience. A great person who is willing to learn will be  a much more valuable employee than someone who has experience but isn’t that great. Think about it this way - every time you get bad service, it’s from someone who’s experienced. Go get natural hard-workers, and teach them.  NB. This is different for managers - as much as possible, promote internally.
• You’re going to hire someone for a permanent position - don’t base everything on a 30 minute interview. You’re going to be investing thousands of dollars in someone. Don’t think that by sitting in a room for thirty minutes and reeling off a bunch of standard questions that you’ll be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.  Something I want to try out is to whittle down employees to a final group of 5-7, then take them all out to dinner. A long dinner, with entrees, main meal, dessert - and if I’m feeling brave, alcohol. By the end, you’ll know them very well - which ones can only maintain high energy in short bursts, how they interact with others, their humour, their etiquette, ability to deal with awkward situations…
• Hire someone you’d want to spend time with (Thanks Guy Kawasaki) : There’s three types of people : those you’d cross the street to say hi to, those you’d say hi to if you both happened to make eye contact, and those you’d cross the street to avoid. Hire the first type.