A girlfriend of mine recently stayed with me and we discussed, among other things, what she’d been up to while abroad recently.
In between businesses and career opportunities she’d recently transitioned from being the CEO of a respected business organisation to taking a time-out as full-time carer for her one-year-old niece for six weeks.
Many people might have seen this as an opportunity to either:
Instead, my friend showed up at my house after this six-week stint with a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for little ones (very helpful as I have a 15-month-old myself). Rather than take the easy road out during these six weeks, she’d done her research on what children of this age should be doing and she’d even networked with nannies for further information.
In finding out her niece should be working on shape sorting she’d organised a shape sorter, but while waiting for that to come had also hand made one. She’s been wowing me for the past few days with statistics on kids, recipe ideas and suggestions for new activities we can be trying with my daughter.
In short, she took her role seriously. She treated it like she would any job and threw herself into it. She went above and beyond.
Is it likely she’ll ever return to this sort of work or pursue it as a career? I very much doubt it, but she went into it with all she had. I feel she’d do the same if she was selling hot dogs or running Vogue!
This is the sort of attitude I always look to hire for. I want to hire the person who approaches the small tasks (and we all have them in every role) with vigour and does them to the best of their ability. I want someone who is not only capable, but is also enthusiastic.
What do you hire for?
Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27, If I Can do it Anyone Can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Now Kirsty does lots of fun things which you can read about here. Her favourite current projects are Elephant Property, a boutique property management agency, Baby Teresa, a baby clothing line that donates an outfit to a baby in need for each one they sell and ReallySold, which helps real estate agents stop writing boring, uninteresting ads.
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