Don’t Let Great People Hold You Back

Relax.  I’m not trying to convince you that great people (GPs) aren’t that great.  I’ll take GPs over crazy or mean any day.  Just hear me out…err, read me out. 

I’ll start off by saying this is a sore spot for me because I’m responsible for recruiting professional
air quality consultants (GPs of course) at ALL4.  Fifteen years of sales experience and a Master’s
in organizational psychology has not completely prepared me for the interesting world of recruiting…which feels more like a 22-year old’s dating game (save that topic for my next blog!)… I digress.  Back to my case against GPs – so I’ll start with my story.  Just an FYI, I haven’t completed a statistical analysis for this conclusion, but I’m willing to give it a 95% confidence interval that my theory is accurate.

My story is about my own experience with GPs in the workplace. My career began at a finance company where I met tons of GPs!  I was convinced that I would stay there for my entire career.  Fast forward 5 years, I get married, do the family thing and decide to take some time to raise kids.  After a couple years, I tried getting back into the finance company and there were no openings.  What to do, where else could I ever find GPs??  Begrudgingly, I started looking elsewhere and was hired as a sales director for a technology company. After a short while, I realized that this company was also filled with GPs.  What luck!  Unfortunately, my position required way too much traveling, so even in spite of the GPs (which I get it, who leaves GPs??), I had to leave, which is how I found ALL4.  To my shock, there are tons of GPs at ALL4 – what were the odds of this?? (wink, wink).  I was slowly catching on – GPs are everywhere.  Not only are GPs everywhere, but my network of GPs continues to grow.  I don’t lose GPs from previous employers, I just keep adding to my pile of awesome GPs who are now mentors and friends.  Win-win.

So what does this have to do with GPs holding you back?  Stay with me, this is the good part.  I talk with so many people at different consulting firms, and I hear a lot of gripes, concerns and problems. (Actually…click here to read their Top 5 Complaints).  Naturally, when I hear all of this negative stuff, one question comes to mind.  “Why the heck do you stay?”   Do you know what the response ALWAYS is?  Yep, you guessed it, GPs.  If I had a penny for every time I heard someone say,” I stay because I work with a lot of great people,” I would take you out for a burger and fries.  So here’s my next question: What’s the cost of those GPs?  If your boss stinks, there are limited career growth opportunities, your ideas get shot down, billable hour targets are sky high and there’s no one driving the ship, what gives?

Do you see it now?  Great people can hold YOU back but that’s your choice.  Not to get all touchy feely, BUT If they’re “real” GPs, they’re going to stick by you no matter… whether you stay right where you are, move to ALL4, or decide to build a rocket ship and fly to the moon. 

Here’s my request: if you’re reading this and you are staying at a company only because of the GPs and nothing else… call me.  I promise, we have GPs… and we have so much more. 

Editor’s note: You may think we eat our young at ALL4 since we are always hiring and looking for more GPs. Or, you may even think we can’t keep people…which is quite the opposite since our retention rate is one of the highest in our industry. The truth is…we are growing…substantially.  We grew by almost 20% in 2015 and our goal for 2016 is to grow by another 20%.  Yes folks…that means hiring even more GPs at ALL4.