If you missed phase one you can check it out here.

On to phase 2!

Before we get into the heart of our process a quick excerpt:

I received a surprisingly small number of applications from friends and family.  Right when I started the process we actually received one application who was referred by a trusted friend.  I interviewed the applicant because he came from such a trusted source.  I had actually yet to even post the job at the U or on Craigslist.  While I was not blown away by the applicant I thought he would do “good enough.”  Without interviewing anyone else I actually offered him the position…..

Big Mistake.

Within a week, for reasons I will not bring up, we rescinded our offer and the hunt continued.  Once we posted at the U and on Craigslist it became obvious we would have a plethora of applicants to choose from, one benefit in an otherwise terrible economic business environment.  Lesson learned on my part.  Don’t settle, and don’t hire the first person that comes in your door that is “passable”  as you never know who else will come your way.

Once we got through that bump, we could move on to the search and phase 2!

With all of the applications we actually ran into what became an unexpected problem.  Many of the applicants from our Craigslist posting were way more experienced & qualified than I had originally expected.  In my head this was great.  I was all excited and happy and I became positive we would hire an allstar with all kinds of relevant experience.   It really made me change my focus from what we really needed at this point to what kind of employee with crazy cool skills could we get.  I lost track of the fact that we didn’t need a ton of experience or an MBA.  All we needed was someone who fit culturally, was smart enough to learn new things, and would put in the effort needed to learn those things.

Mistake!!

Fortunately, all I really lost was the time spent on these applicants, many of whom I am very sure would have done well here.  I ended up offering phone interviews to about 8 people from the first round of applicants and then face to face interviews with 4 more, all from the Craigslist pool, all of whom were overqualified.  After the interviews and taking some time to reflect on everything I finally realized that I had gone off track and didn’t need the MBA or the experience at this stage in the company.  I decided to get back to the core of what we needed and re-worked our job positing at the University of Minnesota.  I was sure a recent, motivated grad would fit the bill.

Like Craigslist, we had a significant number of applicants from the U.  We offered phone interviews to about 8 more applicants and interviewed 3 or 4, all of whom had way more impressive resumes than I did when I was their age.  After the interviews I again had time to reflect.  We had interviewed 2 “kids”  with undergrad business degrees and two from the liberal arts side.  All of them seemed smart and motivated.  It honestly came down to our three core needs:  cultural fit, ability to learn, and willingness to learn.  If they had those three I figured we could train them on anything they would need to know.

We ended up hiring Eva.  She is now four weeks in.  So far so good as she has surpassed expectations in the first four weeks.

ScrubSquared was lucky yet again.

Takeaways from the hiring process:

1.  Keep in mind the stage your company is in and hire to that life-stage of the company.

2.  Don’t rush to hire.  We went 3 years without anyone else full time on the business side, what was two more weeks?  I rushed into a stupid decision and it could have cost us.

3.  Take the time to truly distinguish the needs for the position.  It will help you when decision time comes.

4.  Culture fit is incredibly important, especially at a small company.  I can’t imagine how tough it would be had Eva not ended up fitting culturally.  This is my new #1 for any hire.

We have recently begun a search for our 3rd permanent employee.  First I tried to send a job description out to friends and colleagues locally.  We did not have much luck so, three days ago (on Friday) I posted it on Craigslist.

Needless to say, hiring a complete stranger is incredibly nerve-racking.  Bringing someone new into the company is like bringing someone into my family.  They will quickly learn everything there is to know about our company.

Over the weekend we have already received at least 30 applications. We are going to do some phone screening and have any applicant we decide to interview in person fill out a few forms so we can collect more information and really do our diligence on this hire. Unfortunately, we do not have an HR department nor do we have these boiler plate forms.

I started Googling in the hopes of finding something usable (and free) and I came across an unexpected site with some great resources.  It turns out that Office Depot provides a slew of corporate forms that are all free.

What a great resource for a start-up.

Oh, I am sure I will let you know how the hiring goes!

No matter if you sell scrubs or if you are an entrepreneur in some other random  industry, you will likely encounter similar issues, and anytime there are standard issues there are probably some general rules to live by.

On that note, I recently read a great article by James Altucher where he laid out his 100 Rules for Entrepreneurship. It is a quick read and is certainly worth it. Heck, it inspired me to tell you all about it.

Believe it or not I actually agree with almost everything he has written.  There are a few rules that I think can be very industry specific and don’t apply to scrubadoo as much as they may another company.  However, of everything he writes what really sticks out?

Rule #1 – ‘It’s (entrepreneurship) not fun.”

This is obviously a bold, blanket statement that is meant to inspire conversation and people like me writing posts like this.  I have gone back and forth on whether or not I agree with him on this, in the end I am pretty confident I disagree.   Altucher doesn’t feel the need to justify or prove it, but I figured I would give my two cents.

My argument against him is pretty simple.  If entrepreneurship isn’t fun, why would anyone ever really do it? It can’t be money, there are a lot easier ways to make money.  In a traditional job people will be miserable yet continue to go to work day after day and year after year because they work to provide for the rest of their lives. They don’t “live to work”  they “work to live”  if you will.

Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury to do this.  Working is living and living is working.  If you can’t have fun with it then you probably won’t last in the start up game very long.  Am I passionate about the medical uniform industry?  No.  Do I love taking customer service calls every day of the week at all hours?  Not always.  But I am extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and building something that can be around for a long time.  To me that challenge  is fun.  To find the fun in entrepreneurship you can not concentrate on the day to day.  You have to look at the experience as a whole.  That is where you find the fun.

On the flip side, the supporting argument for Altucher is also pretty simple.  There are a TON of annoying day to day things that plain suck.  A lot of my days are not fun at all.  In fact the majority of the days are probably not very fun for me.  Why isn’t every day fun?  Lots of reasons; I have talked in the past about how lonely entrepreneurship is, which is probably one of the worst parts of it.  In addition to this, it is tough, you have a ton of weight on your shoulders, you never have enough money, every day is a struggle to be successful, and you deal with an immense amount of the unknown to just name a few. There are an uncountable number of things that can make you want to crumble into a pile and give up.  What makes it worse?  They happen on a daily basis.  It is a roller coaster ride.
All that being said I think the “fun factor” of entrepreneurship  really probably can be compared to  a roller coaster ride.

1.  It is certainly not fun for everyone.

2.  Even if you like roller coasters there are probably parts of the ride that suck (spending the money to get into the park, waiting in line, going up that first hill, getting knocked around, etc).

3.  But if the over-all experience wasn’t fun no one would ever ride a coaster a second time.

3b.  If  anyone tells you they love everything about it they are a liar or crazy.

Basically, all the parts of entrepreneurship may not be fun, but the total experience has to be.  Or else, you should probably get a normal job.