I find hiring people really challenging. I’m not going to lie. I was trained as a journalist, not as a manager; and as such a small company run by mostly young people, we learn as we go. And that’s awesome!

But I find the whole process awkward, kind of like dating or interacting with babies or old people (yes, I’m one of those people).

I’m never quite sure how to act. If I play good cop, I feel like I’m being too nice and basically begging them to work for me even though I’m not entirely sure I want them to work for me. If I play bad cop, it’s even more awkward because I’m waiting for the moment when they say, “This is bullshit!” and walk out of the interview.

I’ve made the mistake of hiring someone who turned out to be completely different than they came across in their interview in the past, so this time around, I feel like I can’t trust my own good judgment. I’ve asked a few people for advice IRL and I’ve gotten some good feedback which I’m eager to employ as I start interviewing candidates this week or next, but I’m still a bit worried.

Because I’m really, really picky. If things aren’t done right, I go all OCD and have to fix them on my own time. After a few times of someone not picking up on the fact that they’re not meeting my standards, I tend to assume they’re incompetent. If they can’t spell or form a sentence that makes sense: incompetent. If they run into a problem and assume it can’t be done instead of figuring it out by, oh…I don’t know, Googling it: incompetent.

I discussed all this with some family and friends over the weekend, and many of them told me my expectations are too high; that not being grammatically correct is the way the world works now; that hiring young people means they’ll need a bit of hand-holding; that I’m setting myself up for failure because I’m never going to find that one perfect candidate.

But why would I hire someone onto my team who isn’t exactly what I’m looking for? Maybe large corporations can get by with slackers and illiterates, but fast-paced “small businesses” (my boss hates it when we’re referred to as a “small business,” but I can’t think of what else to call us) can fall apart within a very short period of time if one person isn’t carrying their weight. Businesses like ours thrive on superstar-ness, and I think everyone on the team right now is just that.

If you’re not a superstar, I don’t want you. Is that discrimination?

I know, I know…not the best “manager” here. But I’m working on it. Maybe. The truth is I want to be one of those terrifying editors who make people cry and realize their own incompetence by way of my overwhelming meanness.

OK. For real. How do you detect superstar-ness? I know a lot of you out there are superstars, so maybe you know the secret that I just haven’t been able to figure out yet?

P.S. I know this is my first blog post in ages, but I’m now trying the whole “write about anything and see what happens” strategy.

Photo credit: Shooting Stars by stefanvds

I still don’t have the Internet at my apartment, and I’m kind of getting used to it because it gives me the freedom and the time to do other things. But it also means I don’t have any time for blogging. And that sucks.

But I’m not going to beat myself up about it too much. I’m just going to post an article of mine that was published yesterday, and move on.

TalentEgg has been providing content for the careers and education section of the new free Toronto evening newspaper t.o.night, which is available in some newspaper boxes at major hubs (such as Union Station), but which is mostly handed out by old school newsies in the downtown financial district. For those of you who have access to t.o.night, our content appears every Tuesday.

I’ve simply edited some of the articles we’ve published in the past and passed it on to the editors at the newspaper, but this week I had the opportunity to report and write a short news story about the Canada’s Top Campus Employers rankings.

It’s the first thing I’ve had published in print since my stint at the National Post (which, dramatically, was almost shut down last week) and although I publish my own writing online through TalentEgg almost every day, there’s just something special about print.

So, here it is. (Somewhat surprisingly, they don’t publish any of their content online, so I’m going old school with a scan.)

I was inspired to track some of my goals here on my blog after seeing Rebecca Thorman do the same over at Modite earlier tonight (check out her post for the “rules”). I think it’s a great idea to establish and track goals in a such a public forum. I’m not a To-Do List person at all, but I like this concept a lot.

To start this on the right foot, here are some goals I had for August – some of which I accomplished and some I didn’t:

• Negotiate for a raise so I can move back to the city and not have to live in a cardboard box
• Go to the gym 3 times a week (I left my gym shoes in my cousin’s car and I haven’t seen her again yet, so…)
• Get a new cell phone and get on a plan instead of doing “pay as you go” (got a BlackBerry!)
• Start looking for an apartment for October 1st (found a cheap apartment in a good neighbourhood for September 1st, but with half price rent for September – score!)
• Go to Montréal to visit family (this is long overdue, but it had to be postponed because I can’t afford rent and such an expensive trip at the same time)

Life and career goals for September:

• Move into the new apartment, get all nest-y and finish painting over Labour Day weekend
• Go to the beach a few times before winter sets it since I live right on it now – I already took my first early-morning beach walk last weekend when I crashed at the empty apartment to begin cleaning and painting
• Get the Internet at home (!!!)
• Throw a house-warming party
• Hire an intern to help me with all the insanity at work
• Actually trust said intern enough to delegate tasks to him/her

The only huge news I have is that my face was on the “front page” of GlobeandMail.com on Friday! And not for some random reason, but because I wrote something that The Globe and Mail published on their GlobeCampus site. That’s huge, right?

TalentEgg recently partnered with GlobeCampus for a blog/column called From Class to Career. Lauren’s article went up early last week and mine, “It’s been two months since graduating … now what?”

Needless to say, it’s a very exciting (or eggciting as Lauren would say) time for TalentEgg and for me personally/professionally. Already this year I’ve been published in the National Post multiple times and now something I wrote was featured on the Globe and Mail’s homepage. Two national newspapers in the span of a few months. Not bad!

You don’t have to be hired by a media giant to be published by one!

If someone points me in a direction, I will go at it full throttle without much assistance. What I’ve accomplished happened mostly by me seizing chances and opportunities. The truth is, I probably could have ended up in any number of fields and done fairly well at each of them. Journalism was just one of many possibilities for me, including psychology, graphic design, advertising, web development, photography and more. I considered all those options before I took a leap of faith into journalism.

I don’t believe any of this makes me dumb, unambitious or unsuccessful. I think it just means there are different types of brains which face the world in different ways.

Today, I’m employed by an entrepreneur.

She’s young (but still older than me), she’s smart and she has about a million ideas each day. Since she runs a small business, she wears a lot of hats. She’s not just the president, she’s also the accountant, the public relations rep, the company spokesperson, the manager and a hundred other things. She’s being pulled in every direction at once and, especially as the company grows, has very little time to sit down and perform every small task which allows the business to run from day to day.

And that’s where I come in because I’m more of a do-er and a problem solver. Although by nature Gen Yers like me are multi-taskers and procrastinators, I typically attack tasks in a certain order without really planning to do so and then “wing it” if/when it comes down to crunch time. Everything I do happens in a sort of organized chaotic way that probably only makes sense to me.

I’m also not a Yes (wo)man. I’m not afraid to tell my boss I don’t like one of her ideas, or that I think it needs to be tweaked, or that it doesn’t mesh with our brand, or that it will take way more work than she thinks it will, or whatever. We have a good rapport so I can voice my opinions (respectfully) without fear of retribution.

If or when I ever do stop working for TalentEgg, and if I have to get a job at a big corporation … I think it’s going to be a very hard adjustment. Instead of saying, “Yes, good idea, I didn’t think of that,” my manager would probably say, “Who do you think you are?”

Or, hopefully the TalentEgg Way will be widespread by then and collaborative, laterally structured, Gen Y-friendly workplaces will be more common. A girl can dream.