Inside the Ant Farm: Recruiting in the Wild West

Warning, this is a bit of a rant, but there are some lessons in there at the end.

So, I just had my first adventure in recruiting my first employee.  I am looking at hiring someone for a canvassing position to help me drum up business.  I posted an ad on Craigslist and received a resume at 4:30pm.  Being close to dinner time I decided to call the person in the morning.

The next morning before I could call back the prospective candidate called me.  After a short time on the phone I found out the following:

1) The address on his resume was 3 years old
2) He lived in a different state than me and wanted me to pay for commuting
3) He did not want to do canvassing, but instead suggested working a cart in a mall
4) He wanted $100 per lead which is the equivalent to $2500 per week just for leads!  (I was offering $10 per lead and $160 per job sold.  That works out to $1250 per week for 15-20 hours of work.)

Can you say red flags?

Anyway, being somewhat new to this I decided to meet him anyway and told him to e-mail me so I could send him the address for a coffee shop where we could meet.  He sent me an e-mail at midnight that night.

The next morning at 10am I get a text saying "I never received an e-mail.  I can't do business like this sir."

I thought, that's a little forward considering I only had 10 hours to respond, during which 7 were definitely while most of America was sleeping.

Based on that text I replied that I thought it would not work out and wished him luck in his search.

Then he went ballistic on me calling my ad a garbage ad and saying I was crazy and that he wouldn't work for free.  All I can say is wow!  Not the type of person I want on my team.  Now that I've written this it all seems too obvious.

So, lessons from recruiting:

1) Some people are crazy
2) If a candidate calls immediately after submitting a resume then be on guard.  Why are they being so incredibly impatient.  If they are worth their salt then waiting 1 business day for a phone call shouldn't be a big deal.  (I return all phone calls the same or next business day)
3) If a candidate won't take the time to update their resume (their first impression) then they probably won't give a good second, third, fourth impression either.
4) If someone says $5000 per month for a 20 hour per week job is "working for free" then that person is probably a whiny loser.  Stay away!

I think it's interesting that there are people out there who demand so much of others.  How do these people hold a job and make ends meet?  I suspect that this fellow may be hurting big time and that by rejecting me he can avoid being rejected himself.  He obviously didn't take to kindly to me not hiring him.

Okay, it's time to let this one go.

Inside the Ant Farm: Postcards Failed

So the first 2000 postcards landed on Monday.  I got one call and that guy didn't leave a voicemail.  I called him back with no results.

That's a 0.05% response rate.  :(

I'm trying to decide if it is worth paying to send out the remaining 4000 postcards.  Is it better to put the money into something else or should I stick to the plan of 3 waves of 2000 postcards to the same audience?

I'm going to sleep on it.

Inside the Ant Farm: Waiting for Postcards

Yesterday my first wave of postcards went out.  I am now in limbo until they land.

I continue to test my phone system to make sure it works and am constantly reading internet case studies on response rates.  There is basically no good data out there about response rates.  Probably because they can vary so much.  I'm hoping for a 0.25% response rate or better over the whole campaign.  That means I am looking forward to getting 5 phone calls next week.

Fingers crossed!