I did not know or recognize my eye for quality hires until years after I had hired many people. However, it became SHI Group’s eye for quality hires.
Wherever I worked, the best results were that the people I found were the biggest gems of my work.
In 1997, I made my first hires in Tianjin in that shocking start up the spring of that year. 13 weeks after hiring me, we had a 70 person factory and shipped SMT pager lamps to Motorola on four continents. It was an unbelievable success in speed and quality.
Everyone knew it was the surprising and fabulous hires I made that had been the base of the miracle.
My method was/is to focus on the character of the hire as much as the skills. In this 1997 factory I started up, I succeeded like no one believed a guy with no factory experience could succeed in 1990’s China because of the hires I brought in.
However, another thing was out there. My intuitive sense grew and carried us through. As it develops, SHI Group now knows when we have the right person in hand, more so than that formative success in 1997. In 2000, I led another start up. We got the same result. Fabulous hires had done what others could not believe possible. Character counts, and I knew it worked. I could sense and know the right hires and move us forward. Of course, I still made some hires that made me think— a good eye was not enough.
Quality China Hires Take a Good Hire and More
Therefore, my hiring system kept developing. From 2006 to 2009, still in China, I fixed many China based entities of a multinational company by the right hiring. I fleshed out all my hiring methods at this time and from first contact with customer to years after the hires started, the system worked.
In 2009, I started my own company focused on quality hiring from the first contract we signed. 16 plus years later, we know so much more. However, Paul and my eye for talent has never faded. We have just gained much more knowledge to fill the gaps. Candidates can be mighty tricky. We know how to make sure.