It took a long time and an enormous amount of reflection to realize that business had failed for many reasons, not simply because I was a miserable excuse for an entrepreneur. I wasn't looking to shuck blame so much as simply trying to understand what really went wrong. A few years later when I mustered courage to take plunge again, I did so with knowledge gained from my first failed business. I knew what I had done wrong and I knew what I'd done right. Lessons learned, put to good use. Knock wood, this time so far, so good.

Performing an autopsy on a failed business is a simple process, but one that can reveal a wealth of information that you can use should you ever decide to step out onto business high wire again.

To do your business autopsy find a quiet place where you can sit and reflect on life of your business. With pen and paper in hand (or laptop on lap) write down everything that you can think of that went right with business and alternatively, everything that went wrong. Your goal is to create a "Success" versus "Failure" spreadsheet that will help you better understand exactly why business went south.

For autopsy to be effective, it is imperative that you are completely honest with yourself. Shove your ego in a drawer and be completely realistic or autopsy will just become an exercise in futility. You will end up looking for scapegoats instead of reasons.

If your lack of experience was a contributing factor to failure of business, write it down. If your brilliant negotiating skills allowed you to close a big deal and beat out a competitor, write it down. If you were undercapitalized or incorrectly estimated your share of market, write it down. If you had a partner who didn't pull his weight or a product that didn't sell as well as you thought it would or your building was flattened by an earthquake, write it down. Write it all down.

Once you have all facts in front of you, it's easy to see why business really failed. You might be surprised to find out that failure of business wasn't completely your fault, after all.

Then again, you might discover that business failure was your fault. If that turns out to be case, don't beat yourself up for long. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur and that's OK.

The world would be a miserable place if everyone sat around whining about their lack of customers or complaining about their employees.

Next time we'll take a look at primary reasons businesses fail and discuss how you might avoid them.

Here's to your success.

Tim Knox tim@dropshipwholesale.net For information on starting your own online or eBay business, visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net

Small Business Q&A is written by veteran entrepreneur and syndicated columnist, Tim Knox. Tim serves as the president and CEO of three successful technology companies and is the founder of DropshipWholesale.net, an online organization dedicated to the success of online and eBay entrepreneurs.

Over 90% of resumes that you receive will not be appropriate for job. Reading each and every one of them is time consuming and tedious. Some resume management systems allows you to set filters to identify relevant resumes. The filters are keywords that you can specify for each job and filter will check resume if those words are present. They are only partially effective as they are looking for particular words in a resume and they may find them in places that have no relevance to qualification of candidate. They do not understand in what context those words were used.

You can use advanced technology like resume match technology that can automatically select best candidates not on basis of a few keywords but on basis of your entire job requirement. This technology considers resume like an actual recruiter; it takes into account objective of applicant, applicant’s experience, skills and education and matches them with each requirement in a job description. This also understands that not all requirements are same, and that some are more important than others, and ranks candidates accordingly.

With a click of a button and a well defined job description, you would be able to shortlist candidates in under 10 seconds.

How to Reduce Recruiting Cost

Your recruiting costs depend on whether you do it yourself or you avail services of an external agency. Do it yourself requires that you commit time and resource before you even conduct first interview. Time and costs can be significantly reduced if you have a backend resume management system in place that can automatically receive, consolidate and short list candidates without any manual intervention.

External agencies work with you on a contingency or a retainer basis. Contingency firms charge you anywhere between 20 – 30% of hiring salary. Retainer firms charge an upfront retainer and charge you by hour. Such firms primarily focus on senior executives.

You need to decide if you have necessary time and resource to devote to recruiting and remember, time spend on recruiting is time not spent on your business. If 30% commission is on high side, you can consider fixed price services. These services charge you a fixed price for attracting right candidates, help you select best candidates and assist you in hiring process. (Contact author for a free, Recruitment Cost Estimator tool. This tool estimates your recruiting cost. It also compares “Do it Yourself” costs with commissioned recruiting and fixed price services.)

Conclusion Cleary define ideal candidate for job. Make use of internet job boards, your web site, your local newspaper etc. to attract applicants. Have a backend system that eliminates manual processing of resumes. The system should also be able to select and rank best candidates for a job. Compare cost of doing it yourself, paying commissions and availing service of a fixed price service. Happy Hiring!! (Contact author for “Tips for a smoother Hiring”, a white paper with tips and hints to make your hiring go smoother.)