Do you aspire to be the perfect employee? Perhaps you want to find and hire the perfect employee. Either way, this guide to recognizing the perfect employee is one you may find to be essential to your success. Please consider the guide carefully. As you will see, the perfect employee is rare. The best most of us can do is to come close. Even so, it’s well-worth the effort.
• The perfect employee avoids personal actions or involvements that may associate negatively with the organization.
If you are in the imperfect employee majority and plan to stay there, you likely believe that what you do on your own time is none of your employers’ business. The larger the organization is and the less important your job and you are within the organization, the more likely it is that your belief will work out okay for you. This is especially true if you stay out of trouble with the police and have no plan to get a higher position or more responsibility in the organization.
On the other hand, there are a few factors that can quickly make your personal life very relevant for your current and future employment. Two are central. First, the more sensitive to and dependent on public support or perception the organization is, the more your personal life matters and the more your behavior and personal choices become associated with the organization. Second, the higher or more important you and your position are in the organization or the higher your aspirations, the more your personal life matters.
The conclusion is easy. When employers are looking for the perfect employee or if you aspire to be the perfect employee, reputation, conduct and deportment do make a difference. Personal history, current and past reputation, the opinions of people who know you well and your current life circumstances matter a lot. They matter to perspective employers and equally matter to those who aspire to be the perfect employee.
• Shows up every day.
For most of us, this probably seems like one of those no brainers. For virtually all employers, though, it is far from a no brainer. I don’t know what the percent is, but experience tells me that it is about half and half. About half of employees show up every day unless they are truly ill or have a real emergency that prevents their being at work. The other half includes people who vary from those who make up an occasional excuse not to show up to those who use every excuse or justification they can conjure up. The worst of this group are those employees who don’t come to work because they just don’t feel like coming today.
Again, the conclusion is easy. Employers looking for the perfect employee stick with the group who responsibly come to work every day, in the absence of a legitimate reason not to be there. If you aspire to be the perfect employee, show up when you are expected, every time, on time, with none but legitimate reasons for being absent or late, no exceptions, no excuses. That is a major part of what employers mean when they talk about dependable employees.
• Is present all day.
This is obvious to most employees and employers but is a real brain twister for employees who just don’t get it. I think this is because there are only a few ways to be present and so many ways to be at work but not actually present.
Being present means that the employee is thinking about work and work-related activities, is paying attention to their work and to what is going on at work and is fully engaged with their work activities and responsibilities.
Not being present while being at work means thinking, doing and attending to anything other than work activities and responsibilities. The employee may be day dreaming, surfing the net, doing personal things on his or her cell phone, gossiping or socializing with other employees, taking care of personal business,
