Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

It’s Hiring Time – Gathering Resumes

For me, going through the process of hiring new employees is fantastically frustrating. It’s a time consuming, uncertain, potentially expensive process. I suspect it’s the same for most small business owners. We would much rather spend our time growing and maintaining our businesses than dealing with things that, while important, keep us from our primary tasks. Even so, it’s time again to conduct another round of hiring here at eReplacementParts.com.

It’s always tough to get those resumes flowing in. There are lots and lots of companies out there that can help you find potential employees. In fact, the second you place any visible job ad they’ll come knocking at your door. While I’m sure their services are extremely helpful and convenient, we’re way too small to be able to pay fees of $5,000 or more per employee. It’s simply not an option, especially when we’re hiring entry level employees.

We’ve had pretty good luck using free or relatively inexpensive services to find employees. The first thing I always do when we need another employee is place a free ad on craigslist.org. If I place the ad in the morning, I’ll usually have ten or so resumes by the end of the day. It’s a great start. Also, lots of churches provide free services for connecting employers and job applicants. Try calling your local parish or synagogue. We’ve dabbled in newspaper classified ads with limited success but this can get expensive in a hurry. To be honest, I’ve found the very best way to find quality employees is through my own personal networking. I’m always sure to get the word out to friends and family that we’re hiring.

As our hiring process continues over the next few weeks I’ll make sure to keep this blog updated. I’ll talk a little more about checking references, interviewing, and making job offers. Stay tuned!

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Keeping an Eye on Profit and Loss

Before we had learned to keep track of our finances properly we made all kinds of missteps. There were small, relatively harmless mistakes like buying too much of a small inventory item, or buying an unnecessary computer. And then there were the big mistakes. Every one of these mistakes could have been avoided if we had only been keeping track of our finances the right way.

After we had been shipping our power tool parts for a year or so something became really obvious: DHL Ground was losing a lot less packages than US Mail was. Plus DHL gave us a tracking number and a guaranteed delivery schedule. I decided to drop US Mail altogether and have all of our packages shipped using DHL. This would have been perfectly all right but here’s where I made my big mistake. DHL cost more than US Mail, and I was so afraid that higher shipping charges would turn away customers that I decided to send everything DHL but charge the much lower US Mail rates. This meant forfeiting some profit on certain orders and taking an outright loss on others. I just figured that the profit from the orders would overall outweigh the losses from the shipping carrier.

Turns out I was wrong. To make things worse, we had no way to view our company’s profit and loss statements. We were completely winging it. If we had been carefully watching our costs and looking regularly at margins and the bottom line, we would have been alerted to the problem within a couple of weeks. Instead, we kept losing money for months and months without any idea of what was going on. It was a total disaster.

As soon as we were watching our numbers properly we quickly made some changes to our shipping. US Mail was reactivated as a shipping option and the DHL prices were raised to where they should have been. Like flipping a light switch, we were suddenly profitable that day and everything was fine. After that period of time we’ve watched our profits and losses very carefully. Use QuickBooks or whatever program you prefer for your accounting and stick to it. I won’t ignore accounting as a business owner, and we handle our own books. For us, it’s the only way to keep our heads above water.

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Meet eReplacement Parts

Hello there! Allow me to introduce myself and to tell you a little about my company, eReplacementParts.com.
My name is Mike, and together with my business partner Dave, we started our online business with basically no money and with no real understanding of how to build a website. For a time, it was literally running out of a living room. Four years later, we’re a prominent online merchant selling power tool and machinery parts. I had worked in power tool sales and repair for several years before we started eReplacementParts.com, so I had a decent understanding of tool parts and tool operation. I had also worked as the (very unskilled) web developer for another online store which sold house wares. Through these two previous work experiences, I discovered that it was very feasible to make money selling products on the internet, and that I had a good product that could move.
Everything related to our company has been a huge learning experience. We’re constantly faced with problems and situations that require solutions, and if we didn’t have an answer or the know-how to solve those problems, we had to learn. It’s simple as that. Running a business is about being prepared and willing to meet challenges. That’s what this blog will focus on: challenges that we’ve faced and continue to face, and how we have responded.
Right now we’re currently employing about 15 people, with managers, programmers, bookkeepers, shippers and others. Our inventory is very complicated and very organized. We maintain a very secure and useable website that lives inside two powerful computers. We have many future goals that keep us moving forward and keep us focused. All of this and more comprises eReplacementParts.com, and as always, it’s still a work in progress.
Dave and I will be updating this blog weekly, so come back often, and hopefully we’ll provide information that will be helpful with your own small business.

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