People parts

Q. What else do you
do to make sure you get
the right people?

Besides checking their
references, we have
multiple interviews. A
person doesn’t come
with our company and
just be interviewed by
their future supervisor. They’re
interviewed by several executives in the company, and we
get together and get everybody’s opinion. That’s important.

Secondly, everybody who
comes with us, they’re on a
probationary status for a while
because it is difficult to really
accurately evaluate a person
just in an interview. An interview is like a honeymoon —
everyone is nice to each other
and smiling and positive, but
it’s important to know as
much as you can possibly
know about a person before
you actually bring them in to a
company.

The better job you do in
screening and evaluating, the
better success you’re going to
have in their productivity.
None of us are skilled psychiatrists. None of us are that perceptive of a person’s character
and what they will be like
when they get on the job, how
they’ll relate to the person at
the desk next to them, how
they’ll work out on the job.

Multiple interviews are good
because it gives you the benefit of different viewpoints.

Maybe everybody agrees
with the evaluation of the
person. That’s great if they do, but I just can’t trust my
judgment of a future employee on the basis of an interview. If we are interested in
possibly hiring somebody, it
will not likely be on the first
meeting. It would be after
the second or third interview.

I have a lot of respect for
the viewpoints of the other
supervisors in the company.

Q. How do you work through
differing viewpoints about a
candidate?

You probably don’t. You
probably end up rejecting a
potential employee if somebody that you worked with
for years sees a real negative
that I didn’t see or somebody
else didn’t see.

I trust their judgment and
their insight. Maybe they
asked just the right question
that I didn’t ask that revealed
some flaw in that person that
I didn’t pick up on, or someone else didn’t pick up on. It
would need to be pretty
much unanimous to bring a
person in.

If you bring the wrong person into a company, it can be
very destructive — even if
it’s only temporary until you
straighten out the problem.
Good morale is important.

A person who shows undesirable traits can hurt the
morale of other fellow
employees if they don’t get
along with the other fellow
employees or they gossip or
criticize.

You can’t get in a hurry and
just bring in bodies. Hire the
very best people you can,
and then educate and train
them properly.

HOW TO REACH: RBC Life Sciences Inc., (972) 893-4000 or www.rbclifesciences.com