What’s On Your Company’s Wish-list For 2017?

By Eric McLean

 

Well now that we’re a few weeks into 2017, businesses across the country are looking forward to a great year.

For this entry, we wanted to glean the insights and gather perspectives of business owners from companies in four completely different industries – asking them where they would like to see growth in the New Year and what they would look for in a prospective hire in 2017.

 

Wayne Goldstein, CEO in the IT space

 

What kind of business do you operate?

We are an outsourced IT support organization that partners with and acts as the technical services arm of major telecommunications companies, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and IT Service Providers (ITSPs, MSPs, VARs) to act as their front line of support.

 

What’s on your wish-list for your business in 2017?

  1. Going mobile! Offering comprehensive mobile support and integration for our partners and their end users.
  2. Continue our double-digit growth rate by launching new product lines such as our Network Operations Center where we manage all servers, desktops and network devices on behalf of our customer base.
  3. Continue to promote within and unlocking the potential of the incredibly talented people in our organization.

 

What is the top skill you’ll be looking for in prospective hires in 2017?

It would have to be customer service skills. Being in the support business, the customer-first mentality is the most important and at the same time most challenging skill to teach someone – there just has to be an inherent understanding of how to handle sensitive situations.

 

Barbara Jones, Restaurant owner

 

What kind of business do you operate?

Pub and Restaurant

 

What’s on your wish-list for your business in 2017?

To increase sales/growth we are planning on featuring themed nights such as “around the world.” This would feature a different country once a week and would highlight the country’s food, wine and beer. We are also considering a guest bartender evening as well.

Customer appreciation is also a priority this year, as valued customers will be rewarded with incentives such as attending wine and beer tasting events that will be both on and off-site.

 

What is the top skill you’ll be looking for in prospective hires in 2017?

We would love to add to our extremely talented and well-celebrated kitchen staff. Finding a highly-qualified kitchen staff member to complement the efforts of our current staff is proving to be difficult, but we are confident we will be able to add to our talent roster sooner rather than later.

 

Myles Doak, Founder of a footwear company

 

What kind of business do you operate?

Footwear company, we make slides (flip flops) with hockey lace as the sandal bridge. The only one of its kind in the market (patented).

 

What’s on your wish-list for your business in 2017?

Build our social community and online sales. We had a great year with a new website launched in 2016, shipping to every province and US state.

We also built our Instagram community of followers to 18K+. We would love to keep the online sales momentum we had over the holidays into 2017.

 

What is the top skill you’ll be looking for in prospective hires in 2017?

It is hard to choose a hire with a small/lean company because the team wears multiple hats and that’s most of the fun! A new hire could go a couple different ways: it could be an in-office hire for admin work, customer service, or order fulfillment. We could also go toward the content-building side and get a videographer/photographer on the team and really double-down on content creation.

 

Chris Ferreri, ‎Director of a paving company

 

What kind of business do you operate?

Asphalt paving contractor

 

What’s on your wish-list for your business in 2017?

We are looking to see continued growth for our business this year and have put some goals in place that we think will help us get there:

  • We would love to be able add 3-5 more team members to our already fantastic staff
  • Improving and streamlining our sales service
  • We would also love to purchase a new asphalt paver, as it would optimize just about everything we do

 

What is the top skill you’ll be looking for in prospective hires in 2017?

We are always looking for people that are eager to learn and looking to grow with our company. It’s that eagerness combined with a strong work ethic that really goes a long way.

 

What’s on your wish-list for 2017? Hiring new talent? Maybe it’s boosting employee engagement or just increasing referrals to your business in general?

Whatever you would like to achieve this year, we would like to help you get there.

Don’t forget to check out hiring.monster.ca for more valuable insights from business owners, or to just keep your finger on the pulse of the latest HR trends.