Entrepreneurial Edge: Effective Hiring

Posted: August 19th, 2025

Written By: David Volk

Effective hiring, done right, is hard work. Your attitude towards hiring has to show it is important to you and that you will take your time to find the right person. It is easy to think you have a vacancy that must be filled immediately. Instead, think of the havoc a bad hire can bring to your business. We have a great team at Volk Law Offices that I enjoy working with. I do not want to hire anyone that could disrupt our harmony and efficiency, so we are careful with talent selection. We also help employers deal with toxic employees.

A bad hire can do bad work that takes a lot of effort to do over or worse. The bad hire can destroy customer relations. They can get you sued. They can cause your other employees to suffer if the new hire does not play well with those others. A gossip guy or other pot stirrer is toxic. Toxics take oxygen out of the room. Toxics are a distraction. Toxics capture an excessive amount of your attention when you should be paying more grateful attention to your good people. You often put immense effort into fixing Toxic Tommy. Here is the big bad news: Toxic Tommy often thinks he is just fine the way he is. So, he will not make any effort to improve. And, you run the risk of turning blue in the face trying to get him to shape up. For some bad hires, it is impossible for them to change. They may be borderline personalities or have narcissistic personality disorders. Really bad eggs always blame others for their problems or simply deny they exist. They will push back on efforts to improve their performance, because they are fine with the way they are.

I am sure many owners and managers are nodding as they read this. You know. You have been there. Many times. So, what is the solution? Plan!

People do not plan to fail. They fail to plan. You need a plan to significantly reduce the chance of a bad hire.

Step one: do not think in terms of urgently needing more help to fill a vacant position. Write a job description with as much detail as you can think of for what you need to new employee to do. Functions are first.

Step two: what attributes are the key characteristics you need to have? I will start you off in making your list based upon core value attributes I highly value. Volk Law Offices core values are highly aligned with Big Law’s Cleveland based Jones Day. Jones Day is one of the firms I have always thought of as one of the best in the country, so I was thrilled when my office manager Nichole Stevens shared Jones Day core values with me as part of our process in articulating our core values. Those Jones Day and Volk Law Offices core values include:

·        Integrity, both individually and institutionally, in dealings with our clients, the courts, our adversaries, and among ourselves;

·        A sense of personal accountability for every decision, judgment, and action on behalf of our clients or the Firm;

·        A level of competence which is marked by creativity and judgment that makes the quality and value of our services distinctive, and that our lawyers will enhance by continued professional growth;

·        A dedication to our clients' interests and an intensity of effort which distinguish our lawyers from others in the profession;

·        An independence which does not detract from dedication to the interests of our clients, but which always enables us to determine and to advise what is in the best interests of our clients;

·        An understanding of our clients that makes us more sensitive to their concerns, objectives, and discipline that makes us more responsive to their needs;

·        A determination to provide quality legal services to our clients with real efficiency and within an organization structured to facilitate, rather than to impede, the achievement of these objectives; and

·        Commitment to this Firm as a professional endeavor, composed of people who have the same professional values and aspirations, the most important of which are contained in these principles.

Thank you, Jones Day! You made it easy for me to think through what we value at Volk Law Offices and to get you started in creating your list. We had an office exercise where we went through that list and put them in order of importance for us. I will add a few more. Being a lifelong learner is indispensable to success in a business and real estate law firm with clients like ours who love problem solving and good results. The universe of commercial legal issues is extremely broad, and you have to love learning the nuances of the types of work we help clients with. The law constantly evolves; our people have to have the flexibility to evolve instead of having a know-it-all attitude. For instance, the Florida Supreme Court made some earth-shaking changes to our Florida Rules of Civil Procedure effective January 1, 2025, and we were far out in front of those changes by becoming well versed in them before they kicked in.

Step three: find the people that share your core values. Most applicants will tell you what they think you want to hear. Many will exaggerate or lie about experience. The best practice is to find out as much as you can about the person. I urge you to buy and study Topgrading by Brad Smart. He works with large companies and smaller ones. He asserts that if you follow his protocol, you can get ninety percent hiring success instead of the twenty-five to forty percent most companies achieve. He has also recently written a quick summary book with Chris Mursau, Foolproof Hiring, which will win you over by first explaining why hiring is so hard. Then he starts prescribing the medicine for you to achieve greater success. A sample question guide in Topgrading includes types of questions to determine intellectual characteristics such as intelligence, analysis skills, judgment/decision making, conceptual ability, creativity, strategic skills, pragmatism, risk-taking, leading-edge adaptation, education, experience, and track record.

Wow, that sounds like an exceptionally long interview process. It is. And, that is why it works so well. This helps you find out the type of person you are considering instead of just going by a resume and mundane run of the mill questions that get unreliable answers.

We also do reference checking and internet searching to find out bad news about people. The Brad Smart “truth motivator” is a powerful referencing checking tool. You tell the candidate that you want to take to the next level of screening to provide three references and that they need to tell the references we will be in touch and that they should speak freely and truthfully about the candidate. Great candidates like this process, because they know their references will speak very highly about them but will also share any limiting factors. Everyone has those. Great candidates know what they are and strive to improve which was impressive to the references. The great candidates will also tell you what they are working on to get better at.

You want to win the hiring adventure. You can and will if you make it important. Yet again, I could go on and on, but space is limited. If I got you excited about learning more about how to win this hiring game, you are on your way to greater success. The more you try to learn and the more you practice, the easier it gets. You are not filling the vacancy. You are creating a great culture with great people you like working with.

 

David Volk, a Business Litigation Attorney with Volk Law Offices, P.A., has 30 years’ experience and can be reached at help@volklawoffices.com or by visiting VolkLaw online at VolkLawOffices.com 

The matters discussed here are general in nature and are not to be relied upon as legal advice. Every specific legal matter requires specific legal attention. 

The law is constantly changing and matters discussed today may not be the same tomorrow. Legal matters are also subject to different interpretations by attorneys, judges, jurors and scholars. No attorney-client relationship is intended or created as a result of matters discussed here. You should consult counsel of your choice if you have any dealings in these areas of the law. Volk Law Offices, P.A. and its attorneys make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the matters addressed.