Hiring for fulfillment

I lost one of my fulfillment employees back in March. Since then we’ve been very lean and it’s been pretty tough. I commissioned the local employment agency to find a replacement employee for me. In three months I’ve interviewed two people for the fulfillment position. I interviewed three people for the marketing/accounting/everything-else-I-need position. I hired on who I thought was best suited for this position. I was right and then some. Saying she does a fantastic job is an understatement. I couldn’t be happier with this hire.

So this employee has helped me out significantly but I still need an additional staffer in fulfillment. I called the employment agency a couple weeks ago and said, “What gives? I need someone ASAP” They said there weren’t that many job seekers right now.

The two full-time fulfillment employees are stressed and errors are starting to pop up. I really need a third person… So I wrote a great help wanted ad and ran it in three local papers. The phone has been ringing non-stop. I’ve had five interviews this week so far. I have seven interviews tomorrow and five interviews on Friday.

Interviewing folks is fun, especially if you have a few in a day and can get into a rhythm. I like when I strike that perfect balance where I can break the ice, make the interviewee feel comfortable and then conduct a productive interview that doesn’t warrant an awkward, cookie cutter conversation.

This is a general labor, no experience necessary position so I get an exciting array of applicants. Some are scared shitless, some are bubbly, some are assertive and some are confused. One was 15-minutes late for her interview with a poor excuse. I had planned on immediately sending her away but she looked down on her luck. I don’t like to assume or pigeonhole people, but it’s fairly simple to determine “types” by asking a couple simple questions.

The next two days are going to be full of interviews. In the meantime, my workload is piling up. Yee haw.