Results of our latest Hiring binge…

I have mentioned our latest round of interviews and hiring needs over the last week or so. It was a fairly easy decision for us to hire Megan. She has restaurant experience, and just graduated with a degree in photography. She is excited about being involved with getting Nautilus Photography up and running. We called and offered her a position about an hour after her interview, and she came in the next morning at 8:00am for her first training shift! Tracy said she did great, and picked everything up quickly. It will take some time for her to be fully trained and take over all of the closing duties, but we are very happy that she is doing so well. I have a family photo portrait session on Saturday, and she is going to assist with it. I will probably find out that she knows much more about photography than me. She’ll probably think I’m an idiot!

We also offered Rory a job, and he accepted. Today is his first training day. He has a natural magnetism, and is very easy to get along with. He smiles easily and often. He also has restaurant experience and seems to be catching on very quickly. We have learned over the last year that hiring quality people and training them is more important than hiring people with coffee house experience. An average employee with experience is not nearly as good as an exceptional employee that has to be trained…

There was a third person we interviewed that we also like very much, and would love to offer her a job as well. We are looking at our schedule and trying to figure out if we can work her into our schedule, without violating our labor $$ budget (another piece in our financial house of cards structure). I discussed with Tracy that we need to have the best staff possible in our store in order to be successful. I don’t want to continue to give hours to an average employee if we have we have a potential EXCELLENT employee who wants to work for us. Just because someone has been around for 5 or 6 months does not mean we are obligated to maintain their same scheduled hours if we have better options. That might sound a little bit ‘cut throat’ but I want to reward excellent employees with hours in the schedule, and take them away from people who perform at a lower standard. I don’t think that is mean, I just think it is wise in a business environment. We have not yet decided on this issue, and we will figure it out in the next few days.

Gotta run…
JD