Hand-stitching a baseball, hiring the right employee and listening to the fortune cookie

Written on March 29, 2010 – 7:08 am | by Michael Harris

This past week I was in Tempe, Arizona where I had the chance to watch the Anaheim Angels play the Kansas City Royals in a spring training Cactus League game.

Striking up a conversation with the people around us between innings, I discovered I was sitting in front of a couple of die-hard Angels fans.

After talking with them a little more, I further discovered one of them, Andrea Gordon, was the President of Diamond Sports, which owns about a third of the market for baseballs in the country.

Being the consummate learner, and perhaps a little hyped up on the first hot dog at the first baseball game of the season, I had hundreds of questions rush into my head that I wanted ask. Using the restraint of a seasoned veteran not swinging at a Randy Johnson slider, I limited myself to only a few questions, but still came away with some great information.

In addition to the knowledge of how to hand stitch a baseball, which I’m quite certain I could do if given the chance, I heard a very valuable point on hiring employees.

The point was, don’t hire the college degree, hire the right person.

Assuming a company like Diamond Sports would be so selective in who they hire because of their reputation and market share, I also assumed that only those with the right degree from the right school would be considered to take out the trash, much less work on designing new products. Needless to say, I was intrigued by the thought Ms. Gordon shared with me that the right degree wasn’t as important as hiring the right person.

I know most of us are more worried about laying off employees instead of hiring right now, but I still see quite a few job notices looking for referrals that come across my desk, so I thought this would be a relevant topic for a few of you.

Because there are so many highly qualified individuals who are under- or unemployed right now, If you were to post an ad in this week’s Business Journal advertising a position paying anything remotely above minimum wage, and give your e-mail address as the point of contact, your inbox will explode within the hour. I’ve actually seen people with PhD’s apply for an administrative assistant position, so I’m pretty confident the difficulty no longer lies with finding applicants, but with effectively screening applicants.

Before hiring new employees, Jan Bonham, President of Express Employment Professionals encourages all small businesses to:

1. Look for transferrable skills. There are lots of qualified people who have been laid off. Just because they weren’t a Service Tech 3 in their last job, doesn’t mean they can’t be the best Service Tech 3 you’ve ever seen if they have previous experience that can transfer over.

2. Create a good job description. Don’t just look. Look for what you really want. Also, make sure your job description isn’t ten pages long with a lot of qualifications that no one will ever meet.

3. Don’t hire someone just because you like them. Ask questions one step deeper than what you normally would. Ask about key requirements. Degrees and certifications don’t always equal knowledge.

4. Consider temp to hire options. This option isn’t just for the big corporations. Small businesses are using this option more and more because they’ve realized while there may be an increase in expense in this option, hiring the wrong person usually results in increased stress for the owner, decreased productivity for everyone and a decrease in office morale. You have to ask yourself, “What is the cost-benefit ratio in that situation?” At the least, consider a working interview where you bring in the person for a day or two to watch them work. This gives you an opportunity to see them under stress and have a better feel for how things might work out.

In my opinion, the college degree has become less of a rite of passage, and more of a rubber stamp of approval. I won’t deny there are certain fields where pedigree matters, but for the average small business I would argue that the degree is nice, but things like communication skills, personality and critical thinking skills are more important.

It might not seem that mysterious, but as my latest fortune cookie advised, “Acting on a good idea is always better than having a good idea.”

Perfect Business!