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 assumed I would avoid it altogether because I nabbed an awesome job straight out of school, but the truth is now that I’m all settled in I’m starting to think, “Now what?”

Not so much in terms of my job – I have more than enough to do and the company has a The Sky’s the Limit mentality – but in terms of my life. Until about three months ago, I was working toward some very important milestones in my life. I had full control. I knew if I did A and B I would eventually get to C.

OK. So I got to C. But now I’m panicking a little bit because there are no prescribed steps to take to get to another place in life. I could potentially do anything, so I’m left feeling a bit paralyzed and I do nothing instead.

Except when I’ve had a few drinks and the paralysis melts away and I feel like I can actually do anything, so I do, but I don’t think about the consequences first. And when that feeling finally returns I find myself even more “stuck” because I’m embarassed for losing control, for being irresponsible, for appearing unprofessional. Sometimes I don’t even need a few drinks; I just feel a bit sassy and try to get away with things I never even would have thought about doing, say, a year ago.

Where there used to be clear paths to follow and distinct lines drawn in the sand never to cross, there seems to now be only greyness and uncertainty. Not to be over-dramatic, but in certain situations I find myself having a hard time telling the difference between right and wrong. I often ask friends and family for advice, but none of them seem to know the answers either.

So, here I am, a little confused, mucking things up … putting some things away which have been bothering me for a while and digging up new ones.

I known I need to set goals for myself and work toward them, but I have no idea what those goals should be. I know I want to move back to Toronto, but I have no idea when the right time should be or how much of my debt I should pay off before devoting nearly half of my income to rent. I know I want to meet new people and maybe even date some of them casually, but I have no idea where these people are or how to meet them.

This all sounds very vague, I know. But it’s kind of how I feel right now. Vague. Bleh.

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.

The older members of Generation Y, like me, have grandparents and parents who are self-made men and women as inspiration for their own success. As many Gen Y denouncers suggest as a flaw, when Gen Y was growing up we were told if we work hard enough there’s nothing we can’t achieve or obtain.

What they didn’t tell us, however, was that this depends on someone else noticing and appreciating our hard work.

My dad is the best example of a self-made man I can think of, and a big believer in this philosophy.

For years, he worked as a cable guy, and in mines and oil fields in northern Alberta and the territories. He went to trade school in the early 1990s to become an electrician and, although my parents had to file for bankruptcy shortly after, it was probably the best thing he ever did.

He worked as an electrician for years, hauling around a heavy tool belt, crawling into small spaces, handling tiny wires and spending weeks in the cold while working on projects in the winter. His work at the airport caught the attention of one of the largest car rental companies in North America and they created a position just for him: he became the facilities manager for all of Toronto.

After almost a decade there, he was offered the opportunity to defect to a competitor (another large car rental company) to oversee locations across the country.

Although there are stressful days when he wishes he was back doing manual labour for a living, he has a comfortable mostly-office job with an impressive salary, especially for someone who didn’t go to university or college. He also has lots of perks like a company car, free gas, plenty of vacation time, an assistant and the ear of the president of the company.

As an unmarried, childless twenty-something working hundreds of kilometres below the earth’s surface in a mine in the early 1980s, he probably had no idea what his career would look like at age 52. He could have followed almost any path.

Today, most young people attend college or university to obtain some kind of speciality and, honestly, some kind of direction or certainty as to which direction our careers will take.

But in today’s economy, many of us are facing the same uncertainty our parents faced at our age.

If there’s one thing I learned from my dad’s career path, it’s that I should work hard at any and every opportunity which comes my way in order to succeed, whether it’s the ideal project or position or not.

For example, when I was hired as a sales and marketing intern at TalentEgg last summer, I was happy to have a paying job at a great company after months of searching. But I was also disappointed I wasn’t able to land my dream journalism internship.

After all, isn’t that what I’m going to university for, what I’m paying tens of thousands of dollars for? Journalism, not sales and marketing.

But I sucked it up and hid my disappointment as best as possible.

I probably wasn’t the ideal salesperson and I had no formal marketing training, but I wanted to learn. And I discovered I was more interested in it and more capable than I thought. Besides, I really believed in the company and the people I worked with were great.

I’m not a one-trick dog and neither is anyone else.

I suppose I wasn’t such a terrible sales and marketing intern after all because Lauren, my boss and the president of TalentEgg, kept talking to me, and became a mentor and friend once I stopped formally working for the company and went back to school in September.

But I never stopped working. I offered to spend some of my time blogging and agreed to represent the company on related blogs and message boards. I made myself available as someone to bounce ideas off of and tried to communicate my genuine interest in the ongoing success of the company.

This week, Lauren offered me the opportunity to head up a new project at TalentEgg. I’ll provide more details once it officially launches. For now I’ll just say I’m extremely excited about it.

It’s creative. It’s online. It involves writing, editing and managing people. And it’s paid.

Although it’s earlier in the year, I find myself in the same position I did last spring. I’ve been applying for journalism jobs for months and haven’t been able to land anything.

The difference between this year and last year is I’m not disappointed to take this position. I’m fired up about it. It’s all I think about. I’m not just grateful for a job, any job, I’m starting one I love at a company I believe in and feel connected to.

I’ve worked hard at many things over the last year and TalentEgg was one of them. I didn’t expect anything out of it – I really wanted to do it. But Lauren noticed and now she’s placing value on my work.

More details about the project to come in the next week or two.

What has paid off for you once someone noticed how hard you were working?