Recently, I was rushing to get ready for an event and noticed my vision was blurry and unclear. I thought one of my contacts still needed to settle properly on my eye and eventually it would find its way to the right fit. I got dressed, did my hair and makeup, and hoped that my vision would clear up. Except it didn’t. I tried to remove the contact and became panicked when I was unable to find it. I thought the contact had torn in two and would be impossible to remove. If I was unable to see, I couldn’t drive to the event. I frantically went in search of my husband to help me. My husband looked and looked and found nothing in my eye.

That’s when it hit me. I had forgotten to put in my contacts. Sheepishly, I went back to the bathroom and put on my contacts. Voila! My vision was back and I could see clearly.

In the rush and busyness of the holiday season, it’s easy to lose your vision. You get consumed by the things you must do, and you forget that there is a greater purpose for what you’re doing. Your vision for your business gets lost in the myriad of details that go into planning for holiday closures, team members taking time off, year-end planning, and more.
If you are also recruiting at the end of the year, keeping your vision is especially important. It’s easy to take the first available candidate to relieve the burden of tasks that must get done. Remember that your recruiting and your vision need to be aligned. When you recruit, your vision guides you to the right people for your unique business needs—the people with the skills, attitudes, mindset, and beliefs that align with your vision. Leaving it to chance or expecting a miracle is a bad strategy.

When your recruiting is out of alignment with your vision, you open the door for serious hiring mistakes.

Here’s a great example of what happens when you lose sight of your vision and allow your recruiting to fall out of alignment.

A small business owner rushed to hire a general manager because she needed someone during a stressful, busy time. She initially focused on hiring someone with the specific skills, attitudes and behaviors of a successful general manager. During her recruiting, she felt pressured by the upcoming busy season, changed her mind, and hired someone who was highly experienced in her niche industry without considering the attitudes and behaviors she had previously identified. The result was disastrous and almost bankrupted her business. The person she hired lacked critical skills and abilities like leadership, problem solving, critical thinking, and the ability to handle a huge volume of work in a stressful environment.

If the owner had remembered her vision and waited to find the right person, she would have saved thousands of dollars as well as a major time investment and a big hit to her personal sanity.

This holiday season remembering your vision while you recruit can pay huge dividends. Whether you are hiring for the first time, or you have been hiring for a while and are having problems finding the right people, a renewed focus on aligning your vision and recruiting may be just what you need to turn a busy, stressful time of year into a calm and profitable time.

What’s Your Vision?

As you focus on the past year, ask yourself this question: “What’s my vision?” Your future success depends on having clear vision. So, as you reflect on the past year, make sure you capture your vision, or lack of vision, in your successes and failures. Use this knowledge to improve your recruiting and hiring for 2017.

I’d love to hear what’s working for you this holiday season. Share your stories of how you are using your vision in your recruiting process. If would find it helpful to have someone walk you through aligning your recruiting with your vision, visit my website to learn more and schedule your free insight session.