The more you know about people the easier it gets to run a small business. This statement is so true, yet I don't know many business owners that use this power principle.

Are you working long hours? Do you have few holidays? Would you like to grow your business, but you already work many hours and don't want to work any harder? This article is for you!

When it comes to recruitment there are 3 key points to understand. Business owners fail to understand these 3 points and wonder why they hired a person who doesn't do what they want them to do. Or, they work really hard for the first few days or week then their performance wains over time.

So let's look at the 3 points.

First, most people hire on experience instead of attitude. That's the first mistake business owners make. Instead, a better aspect to hire on is ATTITUDE.

The next aspect you need to hire people on is their personality type. Lastly you need to hire people on experience. Experience is a very poor third.

Let me go over each of these points to explain why this is all so true.

When you hire on attitude you're looking for the following traits in a person... willingness to learn, willingness to change habits, someone who is open minded, someone who is keen, positive in response to new ideas, willing to take on responsibility, has a good emotional state of mind nearly all of the time and someone who doesn't complain or criticize others.

What I have described are very powerful traits in a person. If someone has these traits they will be a very fast learner. They will have good self esteem and take pride in themselves and their work.

People are a mirror and if they like themselves and take pride in themselves they will with their work.

Unfortunately people write ads for recruitment that looks like they are recruiting for the army! They ask for qualifications, state areas of experience and hardly mention attitude at all. And the more you emphasise experience and qualifications the more you state you don't want attitude.

I've found the break even time of hiring an experienced person to one who has little experience with a fantastic attitude is about 4-6 weeks. In other words the new person with great attitude learns very quickly and keeps on performing better over time. While the experienced person's performance reduces over time due to any number of reasons.

Experienced people have their own way of doing things, their own habits and often can feel like they know as much you. And when that happens you often become dependent on them and that's when the trouble begins.

The advertisement must be carefully considered with little mention of experience. If you must hire a qualified person then state it in the ad, but then write other attitude type wording in the ad.

You can teach a person anything, fast if they have a great attitude, but you can't teach someone to have a great attitude.

The second aspect of recruitment is personality type. This is a huge subject, which I can't do justice here, but let me say 2460 years ago Hippocrates identified 4 types of personality so this isn't new! The 4 personality types are now known as DISC profiles.

DISC profiling gives incredible insight into matching roles in a business to personality type. Sales needs a very different personality type to production. DISC profiles give you incredible insight into a person's natural strengths and weaknesses in a work environment. Everyone has both.

When you write your recruitment ad with the descriptive aspects of the DISC profile you want based on the role in your business you then attract the person you are looking for.

This is a science and very few people understand DISC profiles, yet alone how to match them to a role in a business. If you find it hard to trust people or rely on them, study DISC profiles.

Knowing people's DISC profiles is the most powerful management tool there is! Each profile needs to be managed completely differently. You'll manage them based on your own profile, which is great if they’re the same profile as you.

When you put all this information above together into one powerful advertisement you're on a winner. Great people are always out there in the market place, but they aren't usually unemployed. They're already working for someone feeling unappreciated or wanting a change or challenge.

Your ad has to make your business "attractive" to work for. If you don't make your business attractive you don't even get the phone calls from these great people.

Learning copywriting is where good recruitment begins. Understanding people's 6 emotional needs Tony Robbins explains and incorporating them into the ad is powerful as well. You'll have to read his book to find out more about these.

I could explain how to sort through 50 applicants who might call in a powerful interview process that only takes 2 hours, but that's something else that takes too much space here right now. Be creative though and test people's attitude with your interview as seeing if they want to respond in a positive way to a new concept is a great tool to test their attitude.

Remember, its attitude first, personality (DISC profile) second and experience third. That's the most powerful 3 step formula in the world for recruiting fantastic people you can trust and rely on!

How do you know you've hired a person with a great attitude? If you still say the person is great 6 months after you've hired them, you've hired a great person!