Actually this is not just for a new hire, it’ll work for anyone. on the team I haven’t studied this in some book - this is coming from experience.

5 ways a START-UP can tell if their new hire truly is the right fit or not. Remember, these are for START-UPS, big companies don’t need all of these factors. However, for a start-up, you need every team member to be a “mini-entrepreneur,” so the following qualities are CRITICAL.

1. Do they leave RIGHT when the clock hits?

My biggest sign/annoyance/pet-peeve are those who literally pack up and stare at the clock for it to hit 5 PM and are OUT the door by 5:01. This is the quickest way to get my on my bad-side. Honestly, they may be done with work - fine, but to RACE out is uncalled for and shows that they have places they’d much rather be.

For a start-up, “love for the cause, company and your work” is a big deal.

If they do it every now and then, fine. Even if they typically leave by 5:10 or so, fine. But, if they’re packing up at 4:50 and sitting at the edge of their seat - get another job.

2. Do they twiddle their thumbs or beg for work?

I consistently scan computer screens and look to see how many people are just on GTalk, Youtube or some other waste of time. Gtalk is critical for us since we have a largely virtual team, but if they’re typing for 30 minutes straight - that’s a non-business chat and it’s unproductive.

Bottom line, if they’re not hungry for work and are finding ways to avoid it - they’re not a good fit for a start-up.

3. Do they review training materials at home?

This one is BIG for me. During the first 2-3 weeks, there is tons of training, book reading, video watching, etc… I want someone that says, “can I take this home over the weekend to finish it?”

If they’re ONLY using work time to finish the training and not actually itching to become a full part of the team - bad sign.

4. Do they answer emails OFF hours (nights/weekends)

Another favorite trick of mine. Start-ups don’t have “8 hour days,” I don’t care what position, you’re on call 24/7. Not all, but I want to see some e-mails answered at 11 PM at night. I want to see some e-mails answered on Saturday.

Things need to get done and 8 hours a day is not enough to get them done.

5. Are they resourceful - figure things out without always jumping to a question…

Start-ups have limited resources (personnel wise) so it’s important that a person be self-motivated to find an answer. Of course they can talk to the team and ask questions. BUT, “asking someone” should never be the first resort. There are training materials, Google and even their colleagues. When I say “ask someone,” I’m mostly referring to the busy managers or executives in the company.

I don’t mind answering questions, actually the more I get the more serious I know the person is. But, please, show me SOMETHING that says you at least tried to research the subject before asking.

Again, these are mostly important for start-ups, some are not a big deal for a big company. But, heck, if you can apply those 5 rules to a big company too, you’re going to have an amazing team.

Just remember, it’s the “little” things that tell you the most about people, don’t ignore those, pay more attention to them. 

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My real background comes from marketing and more specifically internet marketing, so as I build this blog out and other sites, I want to share some of my “smaller” marketing tactics with you. Maybe the $100 Million+ companies won’t care about this (although it can impact them too), but my guess is that most of our readers CAN benefit from this…

Thanks to a friend of mine (also on our team who handles all of our design), I got a tip from him recently to pay more attention to Digg.com. I always thought that for Digg.com to really help you, you have to already have THOUSANDS of visitors, but I now learn that that is not the case!

His basic recommendation: Set-up an account at Digg.com and digg my own posts, each one of them and then let it be.

So, starting yesterday, I have pretty much digged the 30 blog posts that are here at MysteryCEO.com right now. The results have been VERY interesting already! Below, I’ll share what I did and also the results…

Step 1: Go to www.Digg.com and sign-up for a free account, it takes about 1 minute!

Step 2: After logging in, go to: http://digg.com/submit/

Step 3: Copy/Paste the URL of the place the story exists, the exact link and choose what kind of media it is…

Step 4: Give it a title and description <– This is CRITICAL because it will determine how many people read or don’t read it.
** Make sure to use a catchy title and a short, to the point, but exciting description…

Step 5: Pick the right category - I have not played enough to see if you should be “tricky” with what category you pick, so for now just pick what makes sense!

Step 6: Prove that you’re human by typing in the letters you see and hit SUBMIT.

Step 7: Careful, you’re not done yet, Digg.com thinks that EVERY story is a repeat so they are double-checking, just scroll to the bottom and click “Original, I Swear!”

NOW, you’re done! That’s it, it was a few clicks and you’ll have presece on a major site. I’ve done this for about 1.5 days now, want to see my results?

First of all, here is how Awstats shows the increase in my traffic…

(Keep in mind that I’m showing this so quickly that the Awstats has not updated for today, so you’ll only see the jump it took yesterday, and I’ve spent time DIGGING today too…).

Now, let’s see the jump that Google Analytics also shows in my traffic from just 1.5 days of Digging my existing content…

Here is the other neat thing, OTHER people actually are liking my story and taking time to digg it themselves, THIS I did not expect…now it’s not a LOT, but it’s something! This is the beginning of building more and more…

Pretty cool eh! This also gives me a chance to see what others like and don’t…

So, this is all I have for today, if your company is already posting content to the site, make sure you have someone doing this for you. As soon as I figure this out, I’m going to assign it to someone here to do it for me every day. Also, I’ll keep doing it for a week and report back on the results I am getting…

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