Greetings Friends,

Happy Holidays and all that good stuff. O.K., I'll jump right to it I recently have taken a job with a small consulting firm and am faced with the responsibility of hiring for my department. I've never done hiring like this before

The potential employee I interviewed is a 56 yr old guy that's been in my industry longer than I have. The long and the short of it is that we're a small company and I don't know if hiring him would be the best use of our resources right now. He has alot of experience and contacts and that's what I'm hoping will drive our business right now. one down side is that the sales cycles in my business may take 6 months. That's alot of $ my company would be out of if he doesn't produce, plus I would be responsible

I asked the Yi Jing the following:

1. "please show me if I should hire Mr. Miller. I don't know what to do."

Hex# 15, 6-4 changing into Hex# 62

2. "if I hired Mr. Miller how would this affect our companies profits for 2007?"
Hex# 47 no lines
Distress....

3. Then I just ask Yi straight out..."Yi JIng what do you think about hiring Mr.Miller for my company?"

Hex# 19 no lines


I guess I was thinking asking the Yi would be easier than what I'm experiencing in regards to this matter. I'm at odds guys. I know what it's like to be out of work and it's horrible. I want to do the right thing for everyone involved.


Thanks,

mirrorsaw

Mr. Miller sounds to me like a nice gentleman. However, he is a “nickel and dime-er”, hitting on his already established contacts, who will throw him a few bones because he’s friendly and has been around the block. He alone wouldn’t have significant impact on the bottom line for 2007.

The potential, as I see it, is that if you and he work as a team, you can accomplish good things: nothing that wouldn’t further. But on his own, only small potatoes. If you bring him on as a team player with you, and you’re completely upfront about the game plan, and if you don’t short-change him because it took you or some other heavy hitter to go in with him and close the bigger deals, it could be a very productive relationship.

"3. Then I just ask Yi straight out..."Yi JIng what do you think about hiring Mr.Miller for my company?"

Hex# 19 no lines"

Great, but a warning about later on down the line.

dobro said:

"3. Then I just ask Yi straight out..."Yi JIng what do you think about hiring Mr.Miller for my company?"

Hex# 19 no lines"

Great, but a warning about later on down the line.

Click to expand...

Yup, good point.

Once his contacts have been exhausted, maximized through the joint effort, then what? Can you entrust these now big accounts to him? or will they just whittle back down to bones?

Ain’t business a bitch?

"1. "please show me if I should hire Mr. Miller. I don't know what to do."
Hex# 15, 6-4 changing into Hex# 62

Hex 15.4 suggests that he will not commit himself to the job 100%, perhaps he will turn out to be a time waster.

Hex 62 this is about a man that is not suited for this job at all it is too big for him, he really needs something much smaller to be in charge of, therefore he will only be able to achieve small business successes, nothing major.

"2. "if I hired Mr. Miller how would this affect our companies profits for 2007?"
Hex# 47 no lines"

Hex 47 it looks to me that the profits for 2007 will actually go down with Mr.Miller at the helm.

"3. Then I just ask Yi straight out..."Yi JIng what do you think about hiring Mr.Miller for my company?" Hex# 19 no lines"

Hex 19 in the beginning all smiles and happiness, with lots of hope for a prosperous year ahead. At the start of the year Mr.Miller produces some results but slowly business tails off, until there is no business, so for the first few months , nice but then things start to go from bad to worse.

So, the IC is telling you quite clearly that Mr.Miller is not the man for the job in the long term and that if you employ him then the company profits will actually go down by the end of the year and I suppose you would certainly be held responsible for hiring a lame duck.

willowfox said:

So, the IC is telling you quite clearly that Mr.Miller is not the man for the job in the long term and that if you employ him then the company profits will actually go down by the end of the year and I suppose you would certainly be held responsible for hiring a lame duck.

Click to expand...

The lame duck thing seems borne out by this as well:

"2. "if I hired Mr. Miller how would this affect our companies profits for 2007?"
Hex# 47 no lines"

Seems to me you should have more to look at than a Yi toss to look at when you hire somebody or not, though. You say you've never hired somebody before. Okay, have you been talking to people who have done hiring and asked them for their input? Balanced the oracle work with the pre-interview/post-interview research and canvassing of opinion and eliciting of anecdotes from people with experience?

mirror saw said:

...
I asked the Yi Jing the following:

1. "please show me if I should hire Mr. Miller. I don't know what to do."

Hex# 15, 6-4 changing into Hex# 62

2. "if I hired Mr. Miller how would this affect our companies profits for 2007?"
Hex# 47 no lines
Distress....

3. Then I just ask Yi straight out..."Yi JIng what do you think about hiring Mr.Miller for my company?"

Hex# 19 no lines

Click to expand...

1. "please show me if I should hire Mr. Miller. I don't know what to do."

The upper trigram changes from 000 (earth) to 100 (wood).
Earth is to give way to wood, the master to give way to the servant etc.


2. "if I hired Mr. Miller how would this affect our companies profits for 2007?"

What can you say with Hex#47?


3. Then I just ask Yi straight out..."Yi JIng what do you think about hiring Mr.Miller for my company?"

What Yi suggests is - take up the responsibility of Mr Miller, do the jobs yourself (or with the resources at hand)!!!

I interpret this a little differently. For your first question, "should I hire him?", I think your answer is specific advice about how to make your decision, not commentary on Mr. Miller. 15 is about conducting yourself without pretense. The advice is to balance your perspective. Don't project either prejudices or unrealistic expectations into your evaluation. See him clearly for who he is, and from that insight, make your decision about what he can contribute to the company. The advice of line 4 is to follow your gut, and not to overanalyze (62). The fan yao of this line is 62.4, which is about excessive caution, which could possibly extend to the concept of analysis paralysis. The fan yao is the inverse energy advised, so the advice is to act on gut instinct with Mr. Miller- and not over-analyze.

How will he affect profits in 2007? Unchanging 47 means that he won't have the opportunity to affect profits. He's cut off from profits. He's powerless over your profits. I can think of two reasons for that. One, it's already decided he won't come to work there. Or, two, what he does as an individual takes more time to root before you see a profit (in 2007)

Yi Jing, what do you think about hiring Mr. Miller? 19. You are the authority, look down upon your people. Approach him and descend from the hill, and then the answer will be clear. I don't think the decline associated with 19 has the slightest thing to do with him working well for a while and then a decline, and the reason why is because of your question. You didn't ask for a prediction of his performance over time. If you had, then either 55 or 19 would have been problematic, but neither is problematic when applied exclusively to describing the present moment.

A better question, "Show me a picture of how Mr. Miller will impact our company over time if I hire him?"

Thoughts on 19... The Image here is of a teacher who tolerates all mistakes in an effort to guide the student, but the judgement warns of misfortune in the "eighth month". This suggests to me a situation where you would have to keep a careful watch on your employee, carefully monitoring his efforts and filling in for his shortcomings. Then there is this bit about the eighth month. Often towards the end of the school year students will start to think they now know everything and if the transition from student to equal isn't handled carefully the student may become rebellious, and think he now knows everything and is no longer respectful of the teacher, acts like he's "smarter than the teacher."

That's just my take on 19, but I wonder if it is refering to the fact this fellow is older, maybe even more experienced - would you have a hard time being The Boss?

I think these are issues the I Ching is pointing out for your consideration, but as autumn has said, this is not the I Ching telling you what to do.

Thoughts on 47..The Judgement, "When someone has something to say, it is not believed," sounds ominous if this is a sales position! Or is it simply saying that YOU do not believe in him for the job? But the Image suggests that no matter what the fate of the company, this fellow will give it his full effort, "He stakes his life on following his will."

Not saying I believe my interpretation to be absolute; I don’t. But let me say that it came as much from personal experience (2 decades in sales management) as it did from the Yi. So, for sake of elaboration, here’s the main clues I saw, not including change lines:

62 saying: lots of contacts but handles them in a small way
47 saying: he won’t make it on his own
15 saying: teamwork
19 saying: think responsibly

I put myself (again) in Mirror Saw’s place:

As manager I don't have time to organize and call on all those accounts (contacts) he brings, but if this guy can get us in the door, then I can make something happen. If I then treat him as a nothing and take his commission or credit because I made the deal, it cheats him. So I need a big 19 to tell me to do the right thing as his manager and pay him for it, even though I make less.

But, the question still remains: Do I want to hire him, knowing all that, or, find a more powerful person who will open those doors on his own, work the account, and bring the money in the door?

Yi didn’t tell me what to do, or even what would be best to do; Yi told me the nature of the man in question, and what would be entailed to make him, the company and myself succeed from the hire. So the question still remains, and is solely up to the hiring manager.