When you hire someone, you don’t know exactly what they can do for you (other than what they promise) or how long they’ll stay with you.
I wanted to hire people to help me write tweets. I realized that it is hard to write interesting tweets and that someone who doesn’t have a writing background won’t be able to do a good enough job. But, they could learn. Then, I thought that even if someone learned on their own time, by the time they learned, my Twitter account would be much bigger and my standards would be much higher.
Then it dawned on me that I need to think about the future in a new way. I need to behave as if the future is already here. I need to think that my Twitter account already has a million engaging followers and that my tweet writer needs to be the best in the business. With this attitude, my whole hiring strategy is completely different. Someone who is merely “good enough” now is not going to cut it. They need to have amazing talent. Even writers don’t produce perfect results on Twitter because they are daunted by the 140 character limit and tags. But, you can easily spot talent early on, and if someone has the talent, they might be your ideal future employee.
Then I thought about my sales needs. My sales needs have changed in the last seven years, but my salesperson has not. I’m trying to put hard pressure on her to adapt to my “new” needs. She is complaining every step of the way. I’m realizing that I need a salesperson who is versatile and can do inbound as well as outbound sales, not to mention be able to do other tasks. So, now I’m trying to hire multi-taskers and believe me that isn’t easy.
It’s hard to picture your future needs. You’ll probably be wrong if you try. But, by trying to predict what you’ll need, you’ll be closer to target than if you don’t. So, try to be in tune, and envision your future. You should do this anyway as the mind is your most powerful asset for your future success!