I think this question of how do you hire people into an ESC business? What are the hiring practices? This is a great thing. We haven't spoken about this too much and early on um I didn't think about much about that because it wasn't on my awareness radar screen. You know, just starting a business was important enough. So I the first few employees when it went beyond myself, it was all about do they do good work? Do I know them? do they seem to be good people?
You know, and and it turned out those some of those were great decisions. Uh so they they worked themselves out. But there have been uh there were a number of times where we tended to select people who were outstanding in their field, who were top of their class, you know, you know, who who have a record of success. I mean, that's that's the typical American way you would do that, right? And we didn't always foresee some of the problems you might have when you have a an outstanding person who's a hard charger.
He might get an A+ in his schoolwork, but he might have done that by stepping over all his other fellow students, you know, and so so we had maybe a few of those that happened and was like, "Oh, wow. This person, he's good at what he does, but he's not a good people person." So um so we began in the hiring process to to talk about a little bit of our our company values about what's important to us and and so that's that's more of a standard practice now and it's not just John saying we're part of the EOC and let me give you you know a primer on the EOC but we use it in language people can understand and what about the fact that we aren't so focused on profits but on quality and on relationships. ship with people and our senior staff have bought in and they're they're part of that.
Um, however, you know, when you have a bang up year and you need to add employees like we have a couple of employees we've hired this year where we need to go backtrack and do a little more because they got hired in and then boom, they were put into this great year. But, um, so but they've they've begun to experience that. So, I would say it's it's good to have the hiring kind of qualify that a bit and have everybody when they're interviewing have a radar on, you know, did this person participate in community events?
What kind of things were they involved in besides just school and experience? Um, so it's it's an important thing how you hire people. Uh, it doesn't mean you always hire the perfect person. You have to see the potential in someone. Uh and you also sometimes hire people that are kind of a a project for the company. Uh you hire them because you see goodness in them, but you also know this would be something good for them and they're one of those people in need, you know.
So, and we've had a few of those. We hired a senior person one time who I knew who um he was going through depression. He his oldest son had they thought he had cancer. He didn't but it threw my this senior person into a tail spin and he was undergoing depression etc. Couldn't get himself dressed and I knew him and I had had a meeting with him. I said, "You know, I don't have any work for you right now, but why don't you get dressed and I've got a desk for you to come in and sit on in our company."
And he really, he thought, "Okay, if I have a desk to go to." And I said, "I'm going to expect you here tomorrow at 8:00." So, he came, he dressed, he shaved, and uh for a few weeks, I thought of things for him to do, right? Hey, John, can you do this? Can you do that? Okay. and and come back to me in a couple of hours with success. I don't want don't I'm not going to lay a bunch of stuff on you.
Three or four weeks into that, I got a call from a client who had a large project whose expertise this person had. Exactly. And all of a sudden, we went through two or three years where that person was a full-time employee, got hired, dealt with his problems and his concerns, but really helped us do these projects. Now, I could say, "Oh, wasn't that great?" And everything worked out Rosie. Well, after the projects, after a certain time, he still was facing certain of those challenges.
And we ultimately he had to take early retirement and uh because he couldn't function as well. but his family and his wife for those years he did that were so appreciative and that was our role and you know sometimes I would uh he couldn't get himself to come in till late and so I met with him in early evening for a couple hours and gave him task and then you know and so it took it took extra personal time to do that but I felt it was just part of the EOC so that's one example
