Nobody To Fill The Chair

Today is a bitter sweet day at Leading Advisor because today is the day that the new Administrative Assistant was going to start, the new office is ready to go and we have nobody to fill the chair – by choice.

This is because we made a decision not to hire the person that seemed to be the right choice.

In many ways the person was perfect for the job.

At the same time, I contributed to creating a potential hiring mistake by wanting to hire up.

Hiring Up, meaning hiring someone that was overqualified for the position that just happens to have loads of experience in marketing and publishing.

So here is some real time public admission that the painters house isn’t always painted as we made the same mistake that many people make with their hiring.

They try to get a jack of all trades and in the financial advisor’s case, they try to hire what they term as a back office assistant and kid themselves that the same person can be a marketing wiz at the same time.

There are a few Nightingales out there and if you have got one pay them well as they don’t come along very often. Nightingale meaning someone that can take care of the back office and do the marketing at the same time. However, the majority of the time the jack of all trades doesn’t work out because they will be good at many things and a master of nothing.

What matters is matching the job description to the behaviours not trying to match the behaviours to the job description.

We attracted a person that had more “hire up” than we were ready for with marketing, book publishing and writing experience galore and we decided not to go ahead because the job description would not have honoured the behavioural style and the talents that the person aspired to and the job description would not be honoured either.

So back to the drawing board with another six week hiring process with a goal to hire by August 1^st.

The good news is Laura and I will be able to take a slower pace taking a number of one week Staycations that includes; spending alone time together, reading, bike rides, hikes, trips to the book store, going to Starbies, yoga, kayaking and playing with Shadow.

Shadow and his new toy Whale that he returned with along  with a load of other cool gifts from the Puppy Shower that our friends put on for Laura and Shadow on Sunday, June 14^th, 2009.