The 5 Obsessions of a Passionate Employee
A recent report entitled "How Google Grows?and Grows?and Grows" stated that the 650 people that work at Google are the most passionate bunch of geeks in the high tech industry. Google was also recently called the fastest growing company in history. To mimic their growth and success, passion must be injected into every level of your organization. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to hire passionate people. Passion is an easy thing to spot once you know where to look. By understanding the 5 following characteristics you can develop an eye for passion and begin surrounding yourself with it. Voluntarily Working Overtime Passionate employees see the end of the work day as an interruption rather than a relief. They often stay hours after work to complete their projects, and take work home on the weekends when co-workers nag them about working too hard. To determine whether an employee has this during an interview, ask them the following question; "Tell me about a time when you had an urgent project that couldn't be completed by the end of your normal work day? What was the situation and what did you do?" Sounds too simple, right? You'd be surprised at the responses you will get. A passionate employee will be able to recall numerous projects that tended to run after hours. By the way, hourly employees don't count for this criteria. Reading Books and Listening to Tapes Passionate employees are consumed with making themselves better at what they do. They are always trying to improve themselves and their companies. During the interview, ask them the following question; "What were the last 3 books that you read and why did you choose to read them?" A passionate employee should be able to list several titles that relate to their business or their position. If they're passionate about what they do, they'll try to learn about how to do it better. Many times this question will reveal that an employee is passionate about something entirely different than his or her career. While this shouldn't be a deal breaker, be aware that the employee will be consumed with something other than growing your business. Spending Free Time on Business Growth This is very similar to reading books, but can be seen in different outlets other than reading. For example, spending a weekend at an industry conference or joining a professional networking and development organization. Here's a couple of questions you can ask to reveal this characteristic; "What organizations are you a member of that aid in your professional development?" or "What activities, not mandated by your employer, have you done this past year to develop yourself professionally?" Make sure you distinguish the resume builders from the truly passionate people. Deeply probing around the previous questions will reveal the former from the latter. Taking Every Opportunity to Advance the Business A perfect example of this is the salesman that introduces himself to strangers in the line at the grocery store in the off chance that they might be a prospect. When you find an employee that lives and breathes his profession, you've found a keeper. Someone who isn't an employee from 9 to 5, and a completely different person in the evening, but someone who genuinely loves what he does, and reflects it in every aspect of his life. Someone obsessed with perfecting his trade. One of the easiest ways to determine this in an interview is to ask; "Give me 4 to 6 ideas that you have had to grow your company." Anyone obsessed with business growth will be able to rattle off dozens of ideas, and probably try to sell you on why they'll work. One of the most common answers that dispassionate employees give is "My responsibilities aren't in business growth." If you're a business owner or executive, you know that simply isn't true. Great ideas should come from all level of an organization and your front line employees should be suggesting them regularly. Doesn't it make sense that the people doing the job should be the one's making recommendations on how to improve it? Writing to Advance the Industry If this exists, you've got a truly passionate employee. Writing can be one of the hardest things for employees to do since most people aren't born with Shakespearian writing skills. But the quality of the writing isn't what's important, it's the employees outward expression of their thoughts and theories about their industry which reveals their passion for it. This one sounds easy, but here's the question you would ask to reveal this trait; "What things have you written to advance your business or your industry?" A single passionate employee with the right skills can take a company from good to great. Assemble an entire team of passionate people and you've got the makings of a world class workforce. Start building habits today to hire passion into your organization and soon, people may start calling your company the next Google. Mike Nacke is the Director of Development for PrideStaff, a national staffing and recruiting firm and is an expert at building world class workforces. For more information on how to attract and retain passionate employees visit http://www.mikenacke.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Pitching to Employees
The senior flight attendant on the WestJet flight was starting the routine safety talk: the bit about flotation vests and emergency exits that we ignore at the beginning of every flight.
How to Build Your Business and Still Take Time Off
We all know people who are like human dynamos. They seem to make an art form of building their business and still enjoy quality time with friends and family. It isn't magic, you can do it too.
Managing People - No One Shows You What To Do
Imagine the following scenario - you pay a visit to your
doctor one day and in the course of the conversation he or
she lets it slip that they have no formal medical
qualification. However, everything's okay because they've
been involved in the "doctoring" business for years, had
lots of experience and have read several books on the
subject; I bet you'd be out of there like a shot.
Creativity and Innovation Management ? Hierarchies
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
Indiscretion Can Kill Your Business
The quickest way to cancel out all the thought, work, energy, time and expense you've poured into promoting your business is with indiscretions. I'm not talking about giving your clients' confidential materials to their competitors, though that certainly will kill your business I'm talking about the indiscretions that leak out of your mouth, such as:
Business Innovation ? Status Games
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
Business Innovation ? the Value of Work Processes
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
How To Delegate for Fun and Profit
Ah, the wretched pain of delegation. It comes easy to some people. But others ? you know who you are ? would rather undergo a double root canal than hand over a task and walk away from it.
How to do SWOT Analysis for your Business
SWOT analysis is needed for all business to understand how to improve their business.
Increasing the Return on Your Training Investment
Insightful leaders and organizations recognize that training is a valuable tool for personal and professional development and therefore set some sort of an annual training budget.
Eight Key Steps to Building B2B Major Account Client Alliances
Audiences who saw the fabled Broadway musical, Chorus Line, marveled at the intricate timing and seamless interaction of the dancers as they mastered the choreographer's precision steps after many false starts in rehearsal.
Why People Resist Us
There's a one-word reason most ideas never see the light of day: Resistance.
Employee Discipline: How to Nip Problems in the Bud
Are you uncomfortable with delivering disciplinary action, even involving employees you know deserve it? You're not alone. Disciplinary action is one of the least favored tasks a supervisor must occasionally perform.
Employee Motivation - Access Their Unique Talents
Your people are invaluable to you. They are the lifeblood of your business or organisation. And yet, in many situations, managers take little time to truly find out what makes each of their people special. Makes them unique.
The Fairness of Office Politics... Integrity and Political Motivation!
I hear many complaints daily about the "unfairness" of politics in corporate America. Employees say that their managers "lie" or issue "personal attacks" against them. Indeed, based on the pure ideals that we are taught as a child, this might appear to be the case. However, the corporate culture is not the "real world" in which we live out our personal lives. Each corporate culture is its own world with its own rules and reality. To understand this, one must understand the directions and desires of this world and learn how to best adapt to achieve the vision and mission of the corporation.
Medical Collection. How Organized is Your Office?
At one time or another, all of us have experienced the frustration of waiting in a doctor's office. It seems as though every time we go to see the doctor or the dentist we end up having to wait for a ridiculous amount of time, and then when we finally do get in, we are only "treated" for a few minutes and then sent on our way. I have always wondered why that is the case. If the doctor is only seeing each patient for a fraction of the time that the patient had to wait, then what are they doing behind the scenes? As a student in the field of business, I have often wondered if doctor's offices are slow because they might possibly be a little bit disorganized. I have friends that work in medical offices and they have said to me that things can be a bit crazy because there is so much paperwork that goes on and time to be organized is hard to come by. In this article I would like to propose a few solutions to help medical offices to be more organized.
More Computer Consulting 101 Hiring Tips (Part 2 of 2)
Does your company need to retain the services of a competent computer consulting firm, but you have no idea how to really evaluate "competence"? In the first part of this two-part series on Computer Consulting 101 hiring tips, we looked at why small businesses find it so difficult to hire good computer consulting companies, as well as four basic questions that you must be addressed when searching for a new computer consulting vendor. Now in this second and final installment of this two part series on Computer Consulting 101 hiring tips, we'll look at how you can evaluate the true, often-confusing expenses of using a computer consulting company, as well as how to more thoroughly review the computer consulting company's professional credentials and experience.
Using the Six-Sigma Methodology to Improve Wafer Fab Productivity
As a result of consolidation of operations and significantly increased production requirements, Intersil's main Fab was facing bottlenecks in supply versus demand. Intersil enlisted Tefen USA first to support identifying the Fab bottleneck, and then to develop a comprehensive roadmap for capacity and cycle time improvements. A team composed of Tefen USA and Intersil members conducted a short assessment to confirm that the Photo area was the bottleneck, and then initiated an aggressive and focused cross-functional improvement team. The improvement team combined their extensive experience in semiconductor manufacturing with the DMAIC methodology to systematically Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control the Photo performance. In the next six months after the initial assessment photo cycle time dropped by 60%, while Photo and overall Fab production increased to record levels (a 40% increase). In the following article, we will highlight how we used the Six-Sigma DMAIC approach and other tools to eliminate the bottleneck, and ultimately to control and sustain the change.
Truth or Consequences: How to Give Employee Feedback
In the bestseller, Good to Great, Jim Collins discovered that, "the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality."
The Narcissist in the Workplace
To a narcissist-employer, the members of his "staff" are Secondary Sources of Narcissistic Supply. Their role is to accumulate the supply (in human speak, remember events that support the grandiose self-image of the narcissist) and to regulate the Narcissistic Supply of the narcissist during dry spells (simply put, to adulate, adore, admire, agree, provide attention and approval and so on or, in other words, be an audience). The staff (or should we say "stuff"?) is supposed to remain passive. The narcissist is not interested in anything but the simplest function of mirroring. When the mirror acquires a personality and a life of its own, the narcissist is incensed. When independent minded, an employee might be in danger of being sacked by his employer (an act which demonstrates the employer's omnipotence).
|