HOPSON POTTER BUSINESS

The term entrepreneurship may sound very ordinary to your ears, but has huge scope in the field of business. There are various definitions for this term but in simple language an entrepreneur is an ambitious individual, who assumes full responsibility of the risks and the consequences of his/her business venture. This person is a skilled individual, who is able to sniff out various opportunities with the purpose of discovering a successful project. He/she possesses certain characteristics in order to start a new business enterprise, which is elaborated below:

Self confidence:

The key to achieving a determined success is to be self confident and believe in your ability. A self confident entrepreneur has complete faith in their capabilities and has the power to overcome the flaws in their venture. They are motivated and do not wait for someone else to make the first move.

They are the initiators.

Rational thinking:

Common well structured strategies must be used while initiating a new business. It is very crucial for an entrepreneur to be judgmental about various issues, which must be faced on a regular basis. The essential prerequisites for developing common sense in an entrepreneur are acquired knowledge and sufficient experience. They can identify complex problems and convert them into simpler ones and have the capability of accessing basic life experiences when making decisions.

Creativity:

Exceptional imaginations are necessary to pinpoint problems using the smallest bit of information, and use this information to launch new products and new marketing techniques. They find solutions to problems and see them as opportunities for growth.

Hard work:

They have the perseverance of working day and night with the purpose of achieving a lucrative outcome.

They thrive on challenges. They do not have a lazy bone in their bodies.

Leadership:

Business leaders possess qualities such as motivation, self-reliance, planning and evaluation, because they are the initiators and are one step ahead of others. They look for opportunities and seize them. They are the example for others to emulate.

Emotional roller coaster:

You possess the gene of being a successful entrepreneur if you are aware of the fact that every business venture has certain ups and downs. Entrepreneurs think of business as a roller coaster ride and are ready to face problems, while being open to change. They are accountable for their actions and recognize the various forms of success and failure. They turn failure into success, embrace challenges and never give up. Do you possess the gene?

This article will explain how you can become an entrepreneurial genius without having to really be good at business yourself. By using mentoring and creating a team of advisers, you can accomplish anything you want in business.

Henry Ford was not a business genius, but he reportedly had a huge phone that he could press any number of buttons, and an expert for his particular topic would be at the other end of the phone with the answer. Just look at Oprah and all of the other talk show hosts. These people are not experts in ANYTHING, yet they surround themselves with people that have all the answers to provide content for their shows.

The same technique can be used by you, the entrepreneur. No one has the answers to everything, and no one is an expert at every task, so why not create your own little board of advisers that can make you a genius without you having to know that answers.

You can create a coffee club, find experts that give you specific advice (such as accountants and lawyers), and you can network with people whom you trust.

You do not have to have these experts on your payroll in order to get them to help you. All you have to do is ask.

By surrounding yourself with business experts, you can get the answer to almost any business issue, many of which have already been solved by your mentors. Remember that these people have gone through issues just like you are having, before they became successful. Just make sure that you are not wasting your mentor’s time because you didn’t do you basic homework. People love to help, but they will stop answering the phone if you waste their precious time.

The key objective for an employer

…when he ventures out on taking interviews for new candidates for the company is to get the candidates to portray themselves in the true sense, which would then help the employer to determine whether the employer is suited for the company or not, the employer interview questions therefore must be framed in that fashion.

Just like candidates appearing for the interview would be preparing for the interview so is it important for the employer to prepare the correct employer interview questions.

By being under prepared or lacking in discipline would only result in candidates perhaps themselves opting to not work for the company.

Therefore considerable amount of thought going into the right employer interview questions is very important indeed.

To start off, like mentioned above; a good set of employer interview questions must get the candidate to speak their minds.

For this purpose the following style of questions would be best suited:

? “Why does our company interest you?”
? “Tell me about your prior professional career”
? “What kind of duties/responsibilities are you best at?”

Secondly, questions must look for honesty from the candidates. A good candidate is not always the one with the best credentials in written paper.

These three questions should be able to prove to you in their answers from the candidates a bit of the candidate’s personality.

? “Tell me about your strengths”
? “Tell me about your weakness”
? “What kinds of people can you not deal with?”

Look for well framed answers yet honest responses, your ideal candidate must be able to present himself well while being honest and answering the employer interview questions.

While these above employer interview questions might be the more common questions that one can use to initially break the ice; if your interest in the candidate continues to grow you could challenge him or her with some tougher to respond to employer interview questions.

These following questions are more critical and would require a confident candidate to reply and moreover the answers to these employer interview questions would help you to analyze the candidate better.

These questions that challenge the candidate include:

? “What is your take and belief on luck?”

? “What kind of a boss would you like working with?”
? “What is the main complaint that if asked honestly, your family would have against you?”
? “Which answer amongst all these did you most like giving?”

The candidate’s answers to these above questions should give you a clear vision of what you can expect out of your candidate and what further employer interview questions you can continue asking.

Nevertheless, no matter what the questions you had planned on asking each candidate, there is one key thing you must remember.

If a candidate has not been able to impress or create an impression on you as an employer in the first five minutes it is never going to happen and you should rather not waste time trying to find out.

Still unsure? Get in the head of your victim

I spend a lot of time teaching employees to know what they want from a job or a career. I teach them to take personal inventory of their talents. What is very frustrating for employees is when the company they work for, their employer, hasn’t taken the time to evaluate what they want from an employee. Most employers don’t know what they want from an employee. Employers generally create job descriptions, but these job descriptions don’t really say what they want.
 
An employee job description should set out the minimum acceptable standards for a specific job. The job description should basically say … do this and this and you will be doing enough to get by. In addition to the job description, employers should create an ideal employee profile. This may be created for the company in general, or for each specific job. It should include things like dress code, attitude, and behavior expectations and yes, even outside the job behavior. You want your employees to know that everything they do on and off the job reflects on the company and you want to help them be “good” people, not just “good” employees.

 
It is also important that employers are honest about the job description and ideal employee profile. If the company is a micro-managing, dictatorship regime that doesn’t want or encourage employee input, that needs to be stated. I know that previous sentence probably seems absurd, but so many companies hire employees that believe they can “make a difference”, just to find out that their input is not appreciated or wanted. This leads to bad employee performance and they look for the first opportunity to get out. Oddly enough, there are people out there that just want to “punch a clock” and be told exactly what to do.
 
On the other hand there are some companies that really want employee input, but these companies aren’t clear enough about it in the job descriptions or ideal employee profile. With one of my companies I went so far as to require employees to bring one new idea to the table every pay period. Some of those employee ideas lead to my company cutting costs by over 15% in one year. I shared that savings with my employees by giving them a 7.5% pay raise. Needless to say, they came to me with more ideas. 

So every company regardless of size needs to take the time to really evaluate what is that they really want and need from employees. Then and only then can they begin to put together an employee group that fits the business’ model. Keeping a business thriving and surviving starts by setting yourself up for success. Knowing what you want is very important piece to that puzzle.