#1 Hiring Podcast Designed Specifically For Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Tuesdays @12PM (PST), LIVE on LinkedIn, YouTube, & Facebook Our mission is to enable values-driven startups to win-win the strongest hires by sharing insights from top-performing entrepreneurs, game-changers, & industry thought leaders. www.hirepowerradio.com www.rickgirard.com
Episodes
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
Hiring the Right Person, Right Seat, Right Stage with Dean Stoecker of Alteryx
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
We all understand the concept of right person, right seat. But as the company grows the demands of each seat change. What is required from zero to $5 Million will most likely shift on your journey to $10 million in revenue.
So hiring ahead of that curve becomes the biggest challenge.
It is important that, in the earliest stages of the company, everyone in the organization identifies as a “builder”. Builders are the people who have a deep desire to problem-solve issues that have not even become identified and create systems from scratch.
As the business grows, the need for “improvers” becomes critical as they are the people who can scale to each milestone and beyond.
Guest Bio:
Dean Stoecker is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Board. Dean founded Alteryx in 1997 and led the company as CEO through October 2020, achieving solid organic growth, and a successful IPO in March 2017.
Dean’s leadership and motivational skills, along with his ability to create, communicate, and realize a vision, were a driving force behind the company’s 20+ year success.
Dean serves as advisor to entrepreneurs, is an active philanthropist, and is passionate about humanizing the world of data science and analytics, which is evident in the company’s culture, extensive resources for continued education, and efforts to influence social change.
TODAY WE DISCUSS
- Right person, right seat, right stage
- How to ensure you have the right person at every growth stage
PROBLEM:
- Preparation for changing out key employees at different levels
- @ $10mil, $25mil,
- Get great alignment with the teams
- Strategically & tactically- align strategy with tactics
- Don't be afraid to switch your teams
Challenge?
- Alignment between strategy & tactics
- People have different ideas about what we need to do as a company
- Knockdown, drag-outs about who we wanted to be when we grow up
- KPI’s for each department
- People knowing why they were building things
Why is this important to the company?
- People need to be rowing in the same direction
- First hires need to be 9’s
- 9’s will never work for 6’s
Rick’s Nuggets:
- All about Positioning
- Value alignment, builder, passion for the mission
SOLUTION:
How do we solve the problem?
- Predicated on growth rates
- Team of 5 did a million in the first year
- Understanding if they are willing to accept tasks that they never signed up for
- Focus on the next milestone
- Build teams that can get you there
- Keep your 9’s
- Risk/Reward profile needs to match yours
- Play any position then go deep
- Legacy of promoting
- Leadership is about how many leaders you create
- Invest in training
- Who has the best skills at the cheapest price that can last you the longest
- Biggest worry, Middle management
- Take stock of your own skill sets
-
- Andre Geim- “grazing shallow”
- Fall in love and go deep
- Risk reward profile
- You want someone who can play any position then goes deep
- Longevity - meandered from generalist to specialist
- Risk reward profile needs to match yours
- Andre Geim- “grazing shallow”
Rick’s Nuggets:
- The first team
- It’s all about positioning
- Really desire what you are (ie: ground-level startup with no money)
- It’s all about positioning
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Make sure you have a time that provides strategic and tactical alignment(first 6 years)
- Be prepared to swap out the team many times. The team that got you to $5mil won't get you to $20m. Be aware of your markers
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-stoecker/
- Company: https://www.alteryx.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alteryx
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alteryx
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alteryx/
- Other: https://www.siteminder.com/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Pre-vetting Candidates Before the Interview with Payman Taei of Visme
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Over the past few years talent has been scarce. And when talent is scarce, fear leads hiring decisions. We don't want to lose (what we perceive to be) “good people”, so we shortcut the interview process.
Here's the thing, our perceptions are often wrong. Our gut is often wrong. And it is wrong because the data we input is either assumed or circumstantial. Resulting in marginal hiring that hurts your business.
So, what if every person that you hired thrived in your company? What would be the ROI if you operated at a hiring success rate over the 90th percentile? It would be pretty f-ing amazing, right?
A crucial part of why we get hiring wrong too often is that we don't invest the time to adequately vet people before we bring them in for an interview. This starts with your first call (phone screen). We miss the opportunity to gather true data as to whether a person is positioned well for the organization and their level of performance.
That's right, positioning and performance. The most crucial data that help you understand alignment before wasting anyone’s time in a formal interview process.
Evidence that is not present on a resume.
Guest Bio:
Payman Taei is the Founder of Visme, an all-in-one visual communication platform, and Co-Founder of Respona the link-building for SaaS and Agencies to improve google rankings.
Payman is an avid technologist who loves new trends and tries to keep up with the ever-evolving internet. His background in Biology has led him to truly believe in the art of evolution. Everything changes in time. You either follow or create new trends or you will be left behind.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- The challenges in today's pre-vetting of talent
- How to properly vet people before they enter your interview process
HIRING STORY:
- Hired a marketing person, a person who was known. Went on a whim and made the hire without involving
- Assumed that because the person worked for a certain company the person must be good
- Knew within a 45-day window, the wrong hire
- Missed clues: a bit of fluff, selling themselves more. Claimed to have done a lot. Exaggerations
- Marketers commonly take a lot of credit for a lot of company success
- My post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6999061564083380225/
PROBLEM:
- Pre-vetting people before they come in for an interview
Challenge?
- 100’s of resumes. More does not mean better
- Select a handful of people who are worth the time to interview
- Most of the roles the CEO is still involved with
- Create an efficient system without automation (Smaller companies)
- Highest quality with the least friction as possible
Why is this important to the company?
- Made some bad hires
- Time is a premium
- personality /cultural fit & skills
- We Sacrifice lower experience for a better cultural fit
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Judgement should not be made on a resume but on the phone screen/Discovery Call.
- Great resumes don't equal great people
- High performers are busy making an impact
- Great interviewers have had a lot of practice.
- Understand Pain, Desire & Impact
How do we solve the problem?
- Pick the needle from the haystack
- Prequalification process
- The application itself
- Manner in which the resume is submitted -spammer or researched
- Passionate - learn and know about the company
- Not job hopping
- Interested because of a,b & c
- Large pool of referrals
- HR interview
- Personality & brief technical experience
- Going through the resume and understanding career history.
- Gut check - authentic, a nice person, compassionate & caring, wanting to make a difference,
- Technical interview (2 step)
- Projects, role on projects
- Tech stack, where are you comfortable, specific technical questions
- Deep dive into the technical experience with the team lead
- Decision
- Yes- move into reference check
- 30, 60, 90 day review cycle on kpi and goals
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Operate from a position of abundance
- Discovery call
- Positioning
- Does the person have a good reason to make a move
- Does the person truly desire what your company is offering
- Positioning
- Impact
-
- High performers become passionate about what they have done
- Dig into the “HOW” and “WHY” to gather evidence
- Go deeper than 2 layers down to find the TRUTH
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Eliminate the noise
- Trust your intuition- What’s the gut feeling? does everything seems to check?
- Group Decision: How does everyone feel about the person- team assessment
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paymantaei/
- Company: https://www.visme.co/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/visme/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/vismeapp
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vismeapp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vismeapp
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VismeApp
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Building an Advisory Ecosystem with Coco Brown of The Athena Alliance
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Let’s talk about building an advisory board.
I think we would all agree that having strong advisors and mentors in your corner brings huge benefits to every organization. Not just as sound advice in making business decisions but also providing introductions and bringing credibility to the business.
So when is the right time to build your advisory board? As soon as you find the right people who will help. This means before you hire your first employees.
Building an advisory board, much like building company values, is often an activity to do later. But guess what, later is too late!
It is like pouring a foundation after the house has been built.
Investing the time to build a board before things get too crazy, is the smartest way to ensure that the decisions you make are solid enough to bring the business to it’s full potential.
Guest Bio:
Coco Brown is the Founder and CEO of The Athena Alliance. Athena has helped thousands of leaders grow and advance in their executive careers, and has brought over 400 women to corporate boards from growth stage private companies to name brand public companies.
Coco has personally worked with hundreds of top leaders, CEOs and boards to evolve modern leadership. She’s served on ten commercial and non-profit boards and advisory boards, and has led two notable companies (Taos, acquired by IBM, and now Athena).
She is part of Nasdaq's Governance Insights Council, and is often called on to share guidance to the evolving focus and breadth of responsibility within the Modern Boardroom.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- When to build your board of advisors
- How to leverage your advisors through investment cycles
Challenge?
- Not having the right board in place when the company gets to funding
- Not building a structure, cadence
- End up with a board that is forced on you.
- Not being as strategic as you can be.
- In a formal advisory capacity
Why is this important to the company?
- If your are not thinking early about this, when funding comes you may not have a strong pool of potential independents for your board
- Becomes feeder for the formal board
- Need to balance the power of the board
- Even without that - maybe you never need a formal fiduciary board beyond the core founder/owners. But not having an ecosystem of advisors around you limits the competitive advantage you get by consulting outside your employee base.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Making decisions on your own,
- Gut without data
How do we solve the problem?
- Mindset
- Most of us oriented around the team under - the team we are building
- You need to orient as well to the team around you
- Framework -How the team evolves over time
- Close connections that best approximate the roles you will need to build
- Lesser known to you, but better known publicly - pool of people to draw on
- Formalized - work on issues of the business together over time, in a rhythm/ cadence
- Structure -
- Individual relationships
- Experts who are honest with you
- Think tank - bench for something formal in the future:
- Mixed group
- Diverse
- Formal Advisory to Board
- Mimic your C-Suite to get ahead of where you are now
- Give you choices
- Individual relationships
- Networking
- Beyond your usual network
- Who are the experts
- Groups like Athena ;)
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Identify “Who”
- Dream team
- Reach out- Go for it!
-
- Cold call or gain an introduction
- Ask for help
- Formalize the relationship quickly
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Think beyond your internal team
- Build in advance of your needs
- Consider the competitive advantage
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cocobrown/
- Company: https://athenaalliance.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-athena-alliance/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CocoBrown1020
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/athenaalliance
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
The Characteristics of a Successful Hire with Allan Jones of Bambee
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
What are the common characteristics of every successful person at your company?
Think of those characteristics and write them down as standard operating procedures. This is critically important because when we operate under the same frequency, pace, and purpose… growth happens. But this can change instantly when a new person is added to the team.
Too often we hastily add a person to the mix without understanding how they really operate on a daily basis. Assuming that they will be the answer to all of our current challenges because of the skills they are bringing to the table.
There is nothing more critical to hiring success than aligning people first, and skills second. This means investing the time to dig deeper into your interview process. Understanding not just what a person accomplished but the details of exactly how it was done and why it was approached in that manner.
Guest Bio:
Allan Jones is at the helm of Bambee, a new type of business built on the innovative premise that every small business should have a dedicated HR Manager. This concept was derived from Jones’ previous experiences working with—and growing up around—small business owners.
In 2021, Goldman Sachs celebrated Allan Jones as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs at its Builders + Innovators Summit. For three years running, Forbes has named Bambee a top startup employer in the U.S., and in 2022 it announced Bambee as a Top 5 Company in Los Angeles.
TODAY WE DISCUSS
- Understanding your company's unique characteristics
- How to implement critical characteristics into your interviewing & hiring process
Challenge?
- Getting people who fit a special suite of characteristics
- Infinite characteristics that are valuable
- How do you narrow it down to 8?
- Being honest about who you are
- Characteristics of leadership values
- Mastery of communication
- Broad outcome objectivity: don't care where the right answer comes from
- Urgency & greatness in tandem
- Separate leadership & team values
- High potency friction
- Hired leader that doesn't fit,
- Courage to make a change
- Scoring system & scorecard
Why is this important to the company?
- Looking at blemishes before celebrating wins
- Continuous loop of how can we be better
- Continuous improvement is just part o the game
- 200+ employees
- Not afraid to say “not every person is right for the company”
- Companies are Olympic sports teams, not govt service agencies
Rick’s Nuggets:
- How people operate within your company
- Core values drive the operating characteristics
- Adding a player to the game, not an ass to a seat
How do we solve the problem?
- Identify that the problem exists
- Building leadership personas
- Hired multiple executives and 50% did not work out
- Right after fundraising
- Practices did not scale
- CEO can not make hiring decisions for the company
- He is not the only sign-off anymore.
- Interview Structure
- Hiring committees
- Only leaders sit on the committee
- Master of communication
- Cliff notes version of who you are personally & professionally
- Go to the resume
- Listening skills along with speaking
- Eliminated Leadership savior complex
- Problems would be solved by our next hire
- Company already had great people
- Never let a problem go unowned
- Realization that already had an A+ executive team
- From savior to draft pick
- 90% success rate
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Values drive characteristics
- Interviewing process
- Structured & designed to gather evidence to support the correct decision
- Assign interview questions for people alignment
- Follow up with what & how questions
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Offsite with sr leadership & build leadership personas’
- As a founder ask yourself “ your unique role in the hiring failure”
- Set up screening committees
- Make sure you are aligned
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allandjones/
- Company: https://www.bambee.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bambee/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheAllanJones
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BambeeHQ
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bambeeHQ/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJhkTm7baY&t=1s
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Let’s talk about performance metrics for a minute.
Do you have performance metrics drawn out for every person before they are hired? Are they clear on the expectations for the first 90 days of employment?
If not, you are setting people up for failure because expectations are never in alignment. We're going to leave it to you to “figure it out”. Then we scratch our heads when the person fails, wondering what we missed in the interview.
What was missed was the work on defining the role and writing down the company’s expectations of what needed to be accomplished by the individual in the first 90-120 days of employment.
I have discovered that companies who just “wing it” have a much higher offer turn-down rate and employee failure rate than companies that invest the time to clearly define what success looks like.
Look this is not “too hard” because you don't know what will happen in the next few months of the business. If it is too hard, maybe you are in the wrong business.
Guest Bio:
Kurt Davis is a technology entrepreneur and author.
The first 20 years of his career were spent between Silicon Valley and Asia, working with technology startups in finance and business development roles.
Kurt is now focused on Biteline (a startup marketplace for dental professionals) & Recently published a book called Navigate to the Lighthouse: A Silicon Valley Guide to Executing Global Deals.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Performance metrics
- How to clearly define metrics
Challenge?
- The company is not successful because of people not knowing
- Gate of allocation of resources
- Deep analysis
- Gut & instinct drive the decisions
- Distrust the gut …. Until it is the last variable
- The team cannot hide now that we are under the microscope
- Setting expectations:
- The work is going to be hard
- Leadership needs to communicate
Why is this important to the company?
- Need to get it right the first time
- Want people to trust the strategy and thought process
- Need people to come on board the thinking & the strategy
- Getting people behind the way of thinking
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Not sure how to clearly define the metrics
- Out of the scope of their expertise
- Dont have the time
- Not sure
- We’ll let them tell us
- Hiring failures start with your preparation (or lack thereof)
How do we solve the problem?
- Look at the problem (analysis)
- Clearly define what you want each person to achieve
- Clear about what you are investing against
- Very clear on what you need each person to get done
- Do they fit the culture, values
- Measure twice, cut once
- Can the person get it done
- Resume checks off
- Fit value wise
- Deep details
- Look at the work, ask for deliverables
- Working exercise
Rick’s Nuggets:
- First Week, First 30, 60 & 90 days
- Have deliverables at each milestone
- Present to the team your findings on X
- Prepare a plan for Y
- Deliver first version of Z
- Put them in your Job description
- Here’s what you will be held accountable for in your first 30 days
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Take the time to do your homework. Do your strategy, planning.
- Know exactly what that person is going to do in the first 90 days.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtdavis1/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/KurtDavisNew
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kdalive/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kdalivetravel/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/kudavis
- Book: https://www.amazon.com/Navigate-Lighthouse-Silicon-Valley-Executing/dp/1544530331
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Maximizing VC Hiring Referrals with Rob Whalen of PTO Exchange
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Referrals are most often your most potent source of talent for your organization.
So investor referrals must be the holy grail of all referrals. After all, there is a vested interest in your company's success so why shouldn't the referrals be outstanding?
Here’s the thing to consider. Yes, these referrals are gold but it is dangerous to assume that this person will automatically thrive in your unique company. We cannot forgo a formal interview process based on a strong voucher from a trusted source.
The only way we discover if they will in fact thrive, is to be diligent in the interview process to really understand if the person desires the value your organization brings to the table. .
The decision needs to be made through evidence and buy-in rather than confirmation bias and assumptions.
Guest Bio:
Robert Whalen is the Co-founder and CEO of PTO Exchange, the first benefits platform that allows employees to self-direct the value of their unused paid time off for other needs and causes.
He is a serial entrepreneur that has over 25 years selling and developing software and hardware products for the world.
Under his leadership, Rob and his co-founder, Todd Lucas led PTO Exchange to “Cool Vendor of the year” by Gartner in 2017 and awarded “Awesome New Technologies" at the Health and Benefits Leadership Conference in 2018.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Investor referrals: The value & challenges
- The importance of proper diligence in your interview process for referrals
HIRING STORY:
When we first started the business with 4 founders, 2 of us were working on the project constantly and the other 2 were not putting in the time so prior to vesting we bought the other two out.
We had to do this to keep a clean up the cap table so that we could raise capital.
Going through this process we realized having that right person at the right time joining the company is really important. So we put a simple process in place
- What the company needs or needs to know in our case.
- 3 things we are looking to have them accomplish - alignment
- 3 interviews at minimum
- Gut check - (culture, willingness to learn)
- Reference checks
PROBLEM:
Challenge?
When you raise capital you hope those investors will bring value and relationships. But investors aren’t there day in and day out managing the business and they sometimes associate a person's success at another of their other companies to the value that individual could bring to yours
Most of the time the investors' relationships are with the other executives and most of the time you aren’t looking for a high paid person.
An example is when we were hiring a VP of Sales as a small company.
- VC wanted them to hire a particular person
- Expensive
- No skin in the game
- Not a known entity to you - getting dirty
- Not the highest paying company
- Get to do things they wouldn't be able to do at a large company
- Mission-driven people - passionate about the mission
- Do they care about what we do
Why is this important to the company?
- People have to fit in with the culture
- They are a large % of the population
- They need to be able to learn, be curious, and take on responsibility
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Value in referrals
- Cannot rush or fast track the process.
- Work within your timeline
- No skipping steps
How do we solve the problem?
- Knowing when to say no to the investor
- This is sometimes tough to do when they are looking to help your business and they don’t see their input being considered
- When people try and help you, you need to understand that those suggestions or introductions come with emotions attached.
- Having a process that to hiring helps facilitate your decisions and reasoning. Which helps take the emotions out of the decision
- In an early-stage company where you might not have the money or benefits to attract the top-top tier individuals. we look for those candidates who are trying to grow into the role.
- Candidates that have the experience but do not have the title and maybe they are looking to have more responsibility because that comes with being in a small/agile company.
- They have the ability to solve problems and are open to new ways of thinking.
- Look for the hidden value in the person
- The individual needs to have the willingness to learn and take on responsibility
- Finding the intangibles that they can bring to the team.
- Usually this is in comes from their personal experiences and not their career experiences
- Personality fit
- We look for candidates that have similar passions but different problem-solving skills
- This brings diversity in developing our company’s ability to be more agile when confronted with roadblocks.
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Values fit first
- Does the person operate to the expectations of the rest of the organization?
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Create a process - simple is best but a process that works for the size of your company.
- I have made great hires and bad hires. The difference in those decisions was not following the process and being in a hurry to fill the role. Taking things slowly, stepping back, and following a process would have shed light on what later became an issue.
- Culture fit is the most important piece.
- I have a rule of thumb.
- When making a big purchase, walk away and reflect on how this purchase is going to impact your life. Because making a wrong purchase can have a very negative impact on you. I have found the same rule applies when hiring employees.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-whalen-1287077/
- Company: https://www.ptoexchange.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pto/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ptoexchange
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ptoexchange
- Blog: https://www.ptoexchange.com/blog
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
Hiring the Right Person in the Wrong Seat with Thomas Brunskill of Forage
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
How often have you hired the right person for the wrong seat?
Here’s how that happens.
A person is identified and it is assumed that because of their background that they crush it for you. After all, they are already doing it for someone else.
Perfect logic, right? Nope!
The reason this logic is so dangerous for your company is that current skills are just a small part of success. As we have all experienced, by going above and beyond to land that “rockstar” from a name brand company. Only to have them crash and burn within the first 90 days.
To avoid this dilemma in the future, we simply need to understand the person’s desires and level of accomplishment first. Interviewing to understand, not to sell.
This produces much stronger evidence to predict of success of your new hire in your unique business.
Guest Bio:
Tom Brunskill is the co-founder and CEO of Forage which is changing the world of career discovery and skill building.
Before moving to San Francisco, Tom was a corporate lawyer at a multinational law firm in Australia. It was during his own career journey that Tom discovered that an education and a degree doesn’t necessarily translate to knowing how to do a specific job role. He also realized just how inequitable the education-to-workforce pathway is.
After observing the unfair advantage those with access to connections or educational opportunities had, Tom made it his mission to provide anyone the ability to learn skills through virtual job simulations produced by the world’s top companies,
By breaking down barriers to gaining workplace-specific skills.
Tom hopes to level the opportunity playing field and empower anyone to pursue their dream career.
TODAY WE DISCUSS
- Why your company might be the wrong seat for the right candidate
- How to avoid wrong seat hires
HIRING STORY
This isn’t a story about a hire we did make, but a hire we wanted to make and didn’t pull off.
We were building out our leadership team between our Series A and Series B. Obviously in an early-stage company, getting the right leaders into your organization is crucial. Leaders in early-stage environments have a disproportionate influence on the ultimate success or demise of a company so the stakes are high.
On this particular search for this VP role, I was finding it really tough. It was the middle of 2021 when start-ups were sitting on a record amount of capital and there was a real pinch finding exceptional talent...
Challenge?
- Too many people end up in the wrong seats.
- Education on what the roles look like
- Gap between the candidate's perspective and what the role really is
- Realistic depiction of what it is like to work in the company
- Attract the right people
- Le
- Companies use the wrong signals when they hire
- Schools, companies
- Don't predict future success
Why is this important to the company?
- High attrition 73% failure rate
- SHRM reports that the cost of replacing an employee is approximately 33% of that employee’s salary
- But that’s just the direct cost of having to find and replace that employee. It doesn’t take into account the indirect costs of a disengaged, non-aligned workforce.
- My broader take is that recruitment processes traditionally focus on getting bums on seats rather than the right bums on the right seats. Until you figure out how to design a process that gets the right people into the right roles for the long-term, employers will continue losing millions in direct costs and lost productivity.
Rick’s Nuggets:
- What a person desires needs to be discovered in the 1st conversation!
- Do they get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it
How do we solve the problem?
- Educate the candidate pipeline
- The recruitment process has typically worked as a ‘hire then train’ model. I believe that in an age of software employers should be training their candidates first then hiring. And this needs to start at the top of the funnel.
- This is a great model for both candidates and employers. If you take the time to educate your candidate pipeline on who your company actually is and what the roles truly entail, you are going to attract the right type of candidates rather than a large pool of applicants who have no real idea whether they truly want to work for you or not.
- Volume has become the enemy of quality. Too many HR tech companies and employers have focused on removing friction from the recruitment process in the pursuit of getting the maximum number of candidates. That’s dumb. I would argue that it’s actually far better to introduce positive friction - and education or a ‘try before you buy’ model is a great example of positive friction.
- What does education actually look like?
- What are your values?
- Who are your people?
- What are you building? And why?
- What does this specific role look like?
- Be authentic and realistic. Don’t sell a candidate a lemon otherwise you will end up with lemons. You don’t want your hires to turn up on day 1 and realize they’ve signed up to something which didn’t fit their expectations. Employers and candidates don’t win in that situation.
- The other great consequence of spending time educating your candidate pipeline is that you’re more likely to attract candidates from broad and diverse audiences.
- Better hiring signals:
- So educating your candidate pipeline is the first crucial step towards getting the right person into the right seat. But then you have to look at the hiring signals you are using to hire candidates.
- My view is employers do a very poor job of what hiring signals they use to make a hire. I do a lot of work in early-talent recruitment where employers over-index your GPA, what school you went to, and other signals which statistically just don’t correlate to long-term success in a role. If they were indicative of success, you wouldn’t see 70% attrition.
- But even in start-up land I see this happen and I have fallen into the trap of this myself. The classic hiring signal trap in start-up land is over-indexing where someone was an early employee at a successful company. You will often hear a founder say ‘We just hired employee no #25 from Salesforce’. I have found out the hard way that the connection between being an early employee of a successful company and going to be a great hire at your company is tenuous at best.
- One of the most underrated hiring signals, especially for more junior employees, is intent. Does the candidate exhibit demonstrable intent that they are deeply interested in your work, your people, your values and your brand? My bet is that if you truly vetted for intent during the recruitment process, 9 out of 10 hires you made would become exceptional hires. And compared to the mean, that’s a pretty good strike rate.
- Simulations / case studies:
- So you’ve educated your candidate pipeline and vetted that candidate pool using better hiring signals. What’s the final step?
- I strongly believe in the use of simulations or case studies during the recruitment process.
- When you get down to your final few candidates, you want to give them an opportunity to road test working with your team and the problems your company is focused on solving. And vice versa, you want to be able to see the candidate in action before you commit to hiring them.
- This is undoubtedly the most interesting and illuminating part of any recruitment process. Understanding the way a candidate thinks, communicates, builds in a live setting can’t be replicated. It’s obviously crucially important for the employer to see them in action, but equally important for the candidate to see their new potential team and company in action. So any great case study or simulation requires active participation from both sides.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Values
- Own who you are & your environment
- Does the candidate “get” your values. If not, let them go
- Evidence over “feel”
-
- Train interviewers to extract evidence to support their decisions
- Discovery call & Interview
- Record and document the data
- Desire it
- Does the person want what you offer
- Is there value in your opportunity for the individual?
- Does the candidate recognize and feed back the value
- “ What's in it for me”
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Educate your candidate pipeline. Figure out how you can adopt a ‘train then hire’ model so that you’re attracting high-intent candidates who truly want to work at your company.
- Look for better hiring signals. Stop and think about whether the signals you are currently using truly connect to long-term success. Instead of pedigree, college, GPA, who they know, look for signals such as motivation, demonstrable intent and true capability.
- Use case studies and simulations for your very best candidates. It’s a super illuminating exercise for both you and the candidate to figure out if you are truly a good match.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tombrunskill/
- Company: http://www.theforage.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theforage/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theforage1
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/theforage_
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theforage_/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
How Your Company Can Hire Like Amazon with Steve Anderson of Catalyit
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Amazon’s leadership principles (Core Values) have been the most critical element in their unprecedented success. Value alignment first, and skills second.
So why is this not a standard practice among all up-and-coming startups?
The reason I believe is that leaders then become accountable for their actions when they misbehave. Without values, it is easy to hide. It is easy to rationalize bad decisions and easier to deflect blame when the shit hits the fan.
This is why 9 out of 10 startups fail. Without the right people, your company will not be able to execute. And the right people are attracted to more than just money. They want growth, structure, and purpose.
When your company demonstrates that none of these elements are present, the A-players run! And what you are left with are the people who are willing to take the job.
Guest Bio:
Steve Anderson is the CEO of Catalyit. He has spent decades shaping the insurance industry through a deeper understanding of emerging technologies and how businesses today can best integrate and leverage them.
Steve is a sought-after speaker and influencer. He is also the author of the widely-anticipated book The Bezos Letters, where he reveals 14 principles for business growth based on the ideas and patterns that emerged when he examined Jeff Bezos’ 21 annual letters to Amazon shareholders.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Balancing need with patience to get the right hire
- How to put the right structure in place to land them
HIRING STORY:
- Hired an operations manager, who seemed like a good fit. Terminated after 3 months. Hired too fast! Pressure to move fast from start to offer in 3 days. The person already had an offer.
- He didn't follow his own advice.
Challenge?
- Balance need with hiring the right person
- Miscasting a hire
- Don't hire when you rushed to fill a position
- The interview process is not intentional.
- Not having a hiring process, hiring questions (winging it)
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Problem: Pacing is determined by the candidate
- Clue that the person just needs the money
- Mitigated by disclosing your hiring process & timeline
- Intention: purpose of the interview?
How do we solve the problem?
- Structure
- Have a good job description
- Have a good hiring & interview process
- Intentional interviews
- Amazon
- Will you admire this person?
- Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group
- Along what dimension might this person be a superstar
- Don't cave into the pressure
- Candidate pressure
- Own need pressure
- Find short term solutions while the interview process is moving along
- Be willing to fire fast
- Not fully committing or fully focused
- Not understanding urgency
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Evidence trumps assumptions
- Pacing determined by the process, not the person
- No need to fire, when you have hired the strongest person
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Process is key to success
- Need a place to start - Use Amazon’s hiring questions
- Culture fit might be more important than skills.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetn/
- Personal: https://thebezosletters.com/
- Company: https://catalyit.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/catalyit/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SteveTN
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveAndersonNetwork/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveanderson/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS™ inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.intertru.ai
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
The Hire, Fire, Hire, Fire Cycle with Jason Sherman of Spinnr
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
There is nothing more disappointing than a hire that does not work out.
Especially when the person hired was someone you were convinced, would be a great hire!
Conventional wisdom says “hire slow, fire fast” but this almost never happens. Because we are too concerned with filling the role fast. Triaging our pain.
Maybe if we really hired slowly, the interview would produce much stronger results.
To break the hire, fire cycle we must ignore our assumptions about the person's resume and start by gathering evidence. Evidence that supports a proper decision that ensures a successful hire.
Guest Bio:
Jason Sherman is a successful innovator, award-winning filmmaker, published author, tech startup expert, and the co-founder of the video friendship app Spinnr.
Jason’s methodologies on entrepreneurship and data-driven decisions are his main source of education for those he helps worldwide. His startup book Strap on your Boots is the culmination of his life’s work to help other entrepreneurs succeed with a podcast of the same name, and is the focus of a class he created called Startup Essentials.
Jason is fluent in Spanish, is a classically trained violinist, and was a featured speaker on FOX’s Emmy award-winning Futurist TV Show: Xploration Earth 2050.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Breaking the hire, fire cycle
Challenge?
- Finding people who are excited about the company vs just looking for a job
- Care about being part of something where your creative input matter
- Just there for the paycheck
- Uninterested, unenthusiastic, easy remote work paycheck
- A lot of time onboarding
- Time differences
Why is this important to the company?
- Bad hires impede growth
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Positioning
- Time
How do we solve the problem?
- Finding the excited people in the interview
- Install the app, try it out, and tell us what they think
- Give feedback
- website & social media content
- Smiling happy
- Have questions about the business
- Not focusing on payment/ paycheck
-
- Excited to learn they can earn stock options
- Ownership
- Get through the process to find the 4 people who worked
- What to do before the interview
- Share pitch deck to understand the company mission
- Have everything ready in a package for onboarding
- What have you done; share your work
- Filming content event
- Content creation hiring day
- Gig hiring
Rick’s Nuggets;
- Positioning
- Get it, want it, capacity to do it
- Do they really desire what you offer?
- A, B, or C player?
- Don't be the destination for a JOB (ie: paycheck)
- Interview with purpose
- Get to the truth
- Not sell
- Interview design
- Truth fast
- Empowered decision-making - Keep your people productive
- Evidence trumps gut
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Finding the excited people who want to do what you do.
- Fully read & understand what your business is. Come with questions
- Don't discount onsite parties to hire people. Compensate people who show up
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonsherman76/
- Personal: https://jasonsherman.org
- Company: https://spinnr.app/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/appspinnr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/appspinnr
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/spinnr_app
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spinnr_app
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
Every interview that happens in your company needs to have a purpose.
There is a specific purpose for the phone screen, which is positioning & quality of the individual.
The onsite interview’s purpose, does this person align with our company values and finally, the skills interview’s purpose is to determine if the person has the capacity to thrive in the role.
Too often the directive is given to “have a conversation to find out if you would like to work with this person”. And it is in this non-structured format that bias and discrimination fester because the interviewers don’t understand the interview’s purpose.
Guest Bio:
Robert Hudock founded Hudock Employment Law Group in 2015 to deliver tailored legal services to California companies that thrive in vibrant, creative work environments. His clients are often companies looking at new markets and competitive opportunities, that want to recruit the best talent available while avoiding distracting workplace issues or lawsuits.
Robert is also a competitive triathlete, which requires careful planning, attention to detail, and dedication. He uses those characteristics in his professional life for his client's benefit.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Employment law issues in the hiring process you may not know–but should.
Challenge?
- The 3 most common recruiting and hiring functions in which employment-related issues can arise are: (1) job posting/advertisement, (2) interviewing, and (3) assessing fitness for a position (e.g., any criminal history, drug screening, physical capabilities, psychological health).
- California’s anti-discrimination laws explicitly apply not only to employees and termination of employment, but also to applicants and “refusing to hire” based on a characteristic protected under the applicable antidiscrimination laws (e.g., age, disability, gender, race, etc.).
Why is this important to the company?
- Consider a scenario where your company spends significant time and resources on employment law compliance and protecting itself from lawsuits, only to be subject to an employment-related claim that could have been prevented but for a gap in general knowledge and available preventative strategies relating to recruiting and hiring. Today we’re going to introduce you to the topic and some possible preventive measures.
How do we solve the problem?
- Interviewing: any non-job-related inquiry that "expresses, directly or indirectly, any limitation, specification, or discrimination as to” any protected characteristic is prohibited
- Common implicated categories: age, disability, national origin
- Some examples may surprise you - you may have been asked such questions and you answered without a second thought, the questions are relatively common, or are common topics of conversation:
SUBJECT |
ACCEPTABLE |
UNACCEPTABLE |
Age |
Virtually nothing - but allowed when law requires it |
|
National Origin |
Inquiries re verification of legal right to work in US |
|
Marital Status/Family |
Virtually nothing |
|
Religion |
Statements re regular days, hours, or shifts of the position |
|
- Identify and define, BEFORE interviewing, any legal justification for discriminating with respect to a protected category
- As with job postings, antidiscrimination law does not categorically preclude any and all inquiries into matters relating to protected categories, or lawful discrimination. For example:
- AGE: When a law specifically requires a certain age for job, or requires keeping records re employees’ ages or related information
- RELIGION: When an inquiry directly or indirectly relates to any religious belief or practice does not have any “exclusionary effect”
- DISABILITY: An inquiry re physical capabilities legitimately related to ability to perform an essential job function
- Proper education and training of all interviewers
- How to respond when applicant volunteers information
- Let’s say an interviewer and interviewee are discussing where the interviewee obtained his/her undergraduate degree
- The interviewee, making friendly conversation, says tongue-in-cheek: “...that’s hard to remember for an old guy like me, but I’ll never forget these seemingly endless stairs going up to where I met with my “Campus Christians” group. It was like running a marathon once a month because of my knee injury” → just that short aside references three protected categories (age, religion, and disability)
- In these types of circumstances, the interviewer should (1) steer the discussion away from references to any protected category, and (2) and at some point identify the company’s commitment to equal opportunity
- E.g., “Interesting. That story makes me think about how this company supports equal opportunity and has a strong policy against discrimination.” Let’s move on to your work experience.”
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Teach your people the purpose of each stage
- What data are they expected to gather during the conversation
- Provide a script to each person
- Behavioral interviews
- Tell me about a time when…
- How did that work?
- Walk me through that…
- What steps did you take…
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Develop job descriptions and use them as a foundation for interviews; this can help interviewers remain focused on job qualifications and duties
- Education/training of anyone who will be conducting an interview; e.g., covering the topics we’ve been discussing today
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hudockemploymentlaw/
- Company: https://hudockemploymentlaw.com/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com | www.intertru.ai
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Sep 22, 2022
Top 3 Offer Mistakes when Hiring with Rick Girard of Intertru Inc.
Thursday Sep 22, 2022
Thursday Sep 22, 2022
It has been decided that we want to hire a person who made it through our interview process. Yay!
Now we invest the time to have the “offer conversation” about what it is going to take for you to join us. Eagerly, we present our case, discuss our benefits & perks, and divulge our rationale behind what we would like to pay our hot new employee.
The only problem is, that having this conversation now, is too late.
When the stakes are low, people are the most open and truthful. And the stakes are lowest at the beginning of the relationship. The first conversation is the most important time to have the offer discussion.
Before the interview even happens!
Today we’re going to discuss:
- The 3 most common offer mistakes
- How to remedy them for offer acceptance
Challenges today?
- Gathering information too late
- The end of the interaction is the worst place to start developing the relationship with the person
- Candidates feel like they are being sold- which they are
- “Now that I passed your tests, you want to know me better”
- Candidate is now totally focused on the money
- Highest offer blinders
- Offers based on general assumptions
- Shallow focused interview
- I've demonstrated I can do what you need
- One sized-fits-all
- Shallow focused interview
- Offer acceptance
-
- Shop your offer to other suitors
- Time to think about the offer means:
- I don't believe what you are trying to sell me!
Why is this important to the company?
- Excessive interviewing & offer turndowns are a tremendous waste of time
How do we solve the problem?
- Gathering information too late
- Discovery call - First Contact
- Understanding the Pain, Desire (Positioning)
- Legitimate reason to move
- The type of company the person will thrive in
- Size, Role, Domain
- Understanding the Pain, Desire (Positioning)
- Impact
- A, B, or C player?
- Main Criteria for Decision
- Elements that NEED to be present for an offer acceptance
- Salary expectations
- What do you need?
- Discovery call - First Contact
- Offers based on general assumptions
- Everyone likes our benefits
- Benefits & perks do NOT attract or retain people
- Allow the individual to share what is important to them
- Discuss expectations
- What makes this important to you?
- Discuss expectations
- Everyone likes our benefits
- Offer Acceptance
- Feedback
- Engage in conversation about VALUE
- Are they sharing with you “why” they would like to join?
- Pacing
- Pacing too soon, too slow
- Only make an offer when there is obvious alignment
- They tell you: what your company offers is what I desire from my career
- Verbal acceptance
- Discuss and agree on terms
- Address anything that does not fit into desire
- Start date
- Formal written offer
- Autograph
- Start onboarding
- Feedback
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Gather information as soon as possible during the Discovery Call.
- Based on your first conversation, tailor exactly what's going to attract that person into your company to the content they gave you at the Discovery Call.
- Offer acceptance: make sure you pace it out, continuous feedback throughout the process, and get verbal acceptance first before you extend the written offer.
Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
- Authored: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 - Startup - Intertru Inc: www.Intertru.ai
- Technology: HireOS™
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
When Hiring is Overwhelming with Karima Gulick of Innovent Law
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
Most good hires are a result of luck rather than skill. In fact, I would argue that very few hires are by design.
Throughout my career, I have never met a person who views interviewing and the hiring process as anything more than a chore that they loathe. In fact, the most common reaction to the subject usually results in a huge “uuuggghhhhh” or “I hate hiring”.
We dread the act of interviewing and hiring because it is unstructured and inconsistent and it produces mediocre results.
Here’s the good news: There is an easy fix! When we train our people how to interview it brings purpose to each and every interview question. Giving your people a basis for decision-making that results in extraordinary hiring results.
Guest Bio:
Karima Gulick is the CEO & principal patent attorney of Innovent Law.
She dedicated her career to counseling businesses within the tech and creative communities, combining her passion for engineering and the law. Karima is a polyglot and guides her clients through legal matters in French, English, Arabic, Spanish, and some Italian as well! She is also the former co-host of the Gen Y Lawyer podcast, a show where she interviewed innovative lawyers shaking things up in the legal industry.
Karima is building a next-generation law firm and is here to share her experience.
Today We Discuss:
- The overwhelming hurdles of hiring.
- How to interview to bring purpose to your interview questions
Challenge today?
- Overwhelmed & stuck in the business
- The idea of hiring was overwhelming
- So overwhelmed in my business, that adding one more task to my list, which is hiring to free me up seemed daunting
- Having had a bad experience with hiring in the past, it seemed as an even more daunting task
- No clear strategy on how to go about
- interviewing
- selecting candidates to interview
- Finding candidates.
- I could write what I thought was an amazing post but it might not be read or looked at by the right person
- Jaded on values because of corporate America
- Values area words splattered on the wall
- No one ever explained what the values stood for
- Never defined what it looked like.
- Defining what you stand for seems hokie
Why is this important to the company?
- A burned-out and overwhelmed leader is the worst thing that can happen to a company
- Even if you have the best team, without the right energizing and enthusiastic leadership,
- It’s just a matter of time before you stop caring, and the rest of your team starts seeing that
- We all have values,
- You have them as an employer
- Certain things that are intangible
- Employees have a reason to care. Buy in and bring more energy to the process
- Employees have taken more ownership
- When there is a change in the workforce, the chatter makes it more difficult find a fit. Buying into the negative ideas
Rick’s Nuggets
- Values First Strategy
- Makes evaluating people easier
How do we solve the problem?
- Realizing that I was stuck
- Knowing that I needed someone to step in and save me from myself
- Knowing myself, I knew I needed to bring on someone to help
- I had posted a couple of job posts but I was too exhausted to even call people
- Then I realized I was making the same mistake as I’ve made before
- I’m in pain doing all the work, so I pick someone who can do the work
- But there is so much more -
- That’s where Rick, you came in and opened my eyes on the hiring process
- It’s more than just a post and looking for someone who can do the work
- Values discussion - being jaded from the corporate world where values were meaningless
- A fresh new look at values
- Example: Caring, Competence, Trust
- Might not mean much to others, can come off as just buzzwords, but with this process, these values came to life.
- Example: Caring, Competence, Trust
- Holding conversations with candidates looking to learn more about them and their pain points
- Conducting interviews based on your values
- Conducting assessments and work sessions to see how you’d work with these people
- Reaffirming that I already have great people
- Believing that you deserve being able to grow the business
- Allowing the entity to grow
- Sitting down with intention
- Mindful & intentional on what you want/ the business needs
- Clarity on what you are hiring for & why?
- Being Systematic
- Bring life into the process - involve others
- Flexible on terms/needs
- Having a flow
- Discovery calls
- Having a process
- Behavioral questions to understand if people align with what the company really stands for
- Informed process
- The more thorough you are, the better the chances of bringing on the right people.
- Evolve
- Coming up with my own set of questions based on behavior I see around me
- Tell me about the first thing you do when you come home from a trip..
- Coming up with my own set of questions based on behavior I see around me
Rick’s Nuggets
- Discovery call
- Values
- Not aspirational
- Team input
- Working session
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- You don't know what you don't know. Bring on help to allow the business to grow
- If you’re serious about growing your business, you have to go through this exercise
- You can have the best gut feeling in the world, but having a systemized approach and one you can delegate to your team will help you scale.
- If you’re serious about growing your business, you have to go through this exercise
- Invest the time to get clarity on what you are looking for
- Be open to learning new things, including skills outside of your comfort zone.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepatentlady/
- Company: https://kgulick.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/innoventlaw/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepatentlady/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepatentlady/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepatentlawyer/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/innoventlaw
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Instilling Values into Your Hiring Process with Ken Babcock of Tango
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Do company values really matter? They do if you are looking to scale a business.
In order to scale you need the strongest people, but the strongest people don't need you…or your company.
What High performers need is to understand how your company brings value to their world, personally & professionally. And how we bring value through value alignment.
Value alignment is the catalyst for performance and retention. When a person is misaligned with the company values, they underperform and/or leave.
As a startup company, every person who is misaligned is a setback of 3-6 months of productivity. So, before you hire another person, incorporate your values into the interview to encourage the strongest people to join your company. Giving your business the fuel for success.
Guest Bio:
Ken Babcock is the Co-founder and CEO of Tango, which allows users to create beautiful step-by-step tutorials of any digital process without the performance art of video recordings.
Ken, along with his co-founders Brian Shultz and Dan Giovacchini, dropped out of Harvard Business School during the pandemic to start the company. Since then, the company has grown to over 150,000 users and 25 full-time team members.
Prior to HBS, Ken spent most of his career in the Bay Area at Uber, where he helped scale launch operations through playbooks and best practices.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Why building your interview around your values is so important
- How to build your interview to gain evidence of value alignment
Challenge today?
- Bringing values into the interview process
- Defining how to show up for an interview
- Principles of how we evaluate people
- Training people on how to interview
Why is this important to the company?
- Every hire is important
- Critical that the process was not shooting ourselves in the foot
- Great experience brings great people
Rick’s Nuggets
- Defocus on skills.
How do we solve the problem?
- Framework for Evaluating for Values
- Define Your Values
- Training
- Defining what a good/bad answer is
▶️ Take Action
Avoid indecision and move past points of uncertainty. Value speed.
🚀 Aim High
Set uncomfortably ambitious goals. Reject mediocrity.
🌎 Embrace Diversity
Bring our true selves to work each day. Seek unique perspectives.
🌱 Leave It Better
Be an owner, not a renter. Cultivate a growth mindset.
✨ Customer Love
Serve the end user and listen closely. Make magic.
🏆 Team First
Winning as a team beats winning alone. Lift up others.
Training
- Develop a recruiting process document
- Shadowing
- Hot to operate during an interview
- Time, opener,
Initial Phone Screen - 30 minutes
Purpose: Determine whether a candidate’s experience is relevant to the role. Understand whether the role matches what they hope to do next (scope, career path, salary expectations).
🚀 Aim High. Set uncomfortably ambitious goals. Reject mediocrity.
- Attributes: Passion, Champion’s mindset, Ambition, Optimism
- Sample Questions:
- How do you think this role fits in with your career goals?
- What are you most proud of in your career?
- What’s your underlying motivator? What’s your why?
- Do you think you're ready to make the jump?
Hiring Manager Phone Screen - 30 minutes
Purpose: Determine whether the candidate would thrive on this team and whether the team would be up-leveled by this candidate
🌱 Leave it Better. Be an owner, not a renter. Strive to improve 1% each day.
- Attributes: Growth mindset, Humility, Ownership, Feedback-oriented
- Sample Questions:
- What are your development areas? How are you working to address them?
- Tell me about a project that fell short of expectations. What happened and how did you fix it moving forward?
- Fast forward five years - assume Tango was a great experience. Describe what might have happened.
- What's a tough piece of feedback you received recently? How are you working on it?
Technical Screen - 60 minutes
Purpose: Determine whether the candidate can execute in the role at a high level.
▶️ Take Action. Avoid indecision and move past points of uncertainty. Value speed.
- Attributes: Resourceful, Decisive, Problem-solving, Truth-seeking
- Sample Questions:
- How do you approach projects where the scope is overwhelming?
- Tell me about a time where you had to act on incomplete information.
- What's the first thing you'd want to do if you started tomorrow?
- Tell me about a project where your hypothesis turned out to be wrong.
Virtual Onsite - 30-45 minutes each
🏆 Team First. Winning as a team beats winning alone. Lift up others.
- Attributes: Mentorship, Collaboration, Communication, Gratitude
- Sample Questions:
- Tell me about a colleague or manager you admire. What qualities do you try to emulate?
- Tell me about a team dynamic that just wasn't working for you and others. What did you learn from that?
- What do you need from your team members in order to be successful?
- How do you pay it forward in and out of the workplace?
✨ Customer Love. Serve the end user and listen closely. Make magic.
- Attributes: Listening, Perspective-shifting, Humble, Creative
- Sample Questions:
- In prior roles, what have you learned about your customers?
- How do you incorporate the customer’s perspective into your work?
- Tell me about a time at work you made a mistake.
- What does it mean to you to deliver an “Aha Moment” to a customer?
🌎 Embrace Diversity. Bring our true selves to work each day. Seek unique perspectives.
- Attributes: Unique, Conscientious, Self-aware, Inclusive
- Sample Questions:
- You've just been notified you have to give a Ted talk in 15 minutes. What's your topic?
- What have you changed your mind about recently?
- Tell me about a time at work where you really thrived. What contributed to that?
- How do you incorporate feedback into your work?
Closing Interview - 15-30 minutes
Purpose: Sell the candidate on the company’s vision and the quality of the team. Answer any remaining questions.
- Sample Questions:
- How did today’s interviews go? What excites you most about the opportunity?
- What hesitations do you have?
- What timelines or competing processes should we account for?
- Are there any other questions I can answer?
Answer Quality Rubric
Weak |
Average |
Strong |
|
|
|
Decision
- Thumbs up or down
- Do not require unanimous thumbs up
- Debrief, revote
- verdict
Rick’s Nuggets
- 4 to 6 values is all you need
- Phone screen
- Working session
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Integrate your core values into your hiring process and beyond! (performance management, operating cadence, etc.)
- For early-stage companies, you need to toe the line of “always be selling” and evaluating candidates
- Requiring unanimous decisions on candidates can actually force a regression to the mean and avoid taking risks on high-potential candidates.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbabcock/
- Company: https://www.tango.us/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trytango/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigredbabz
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Doom & gloom is the impending economic forecast according to the media. Having flourished through two previous recessions, I have learned to look for the opportunity that comes with the adjustment.
And when it comes to hiring, the opportunities to thrive are bountiful!
One trend that I have personally observed throughout the years is that companies like Google & Facebook silently ramped up passive recruiting during those times and were able to come out of the adjustment even stronger.
Today I challenge you to recognize the opportunity that lies ahead and to commit to the growth of your people. This can and will only have positive results for them and the business.
Today’s Question:
- How do you build a stronger company in tough economic times?
Today we’re going to discuss:
- Why it is critical that you continue hiring activity
- How to hire effectively to increase the productivity & retention of your people
Challenge today?
- Keeping your High performers engaged
- Your best people are MORE valuable!
- They will be hunted by your competitors
- Hiring stronger people challenges & motivates the people you already have
- Your best people are MORE valuable!
- Growth through an economic downturn
- Look for the opportunity for your people
- People become fearful and move to more “stable” environments
- Recruiting remains a reactive activity
- We only hire when we feel the pain
- Hiring happens regardless if you chose to participate
- Participate
- Look for the opportunity for your people
Why is this important to the company?
- Downturns are opportunities for growth!
- The people onboard Fuel or Stifle growth
- Fear drives people to make poor decisions
- Poor decisions kill business
- Avoid being forced to hire anyone who is willing to accept your role… because they need a job
-
- Due to attrition
How do we solve the problem?
- Perspective
- Understand the value of continuously hiring
- Higher bar, less volume
- Opportunity to opportunistically hire
- Attract people who will elevate performance in the organization
- New ideas, new energy
- Understand the value of continuously hiring
- Increased Communication to retain your current people
-
- Career pathing
- Know the “What’s in it for me” for every one of your people
- Planned exits
- Promote purpose
- Engaging New People
- Dedicate 1-2 hours a week
- Passive talent engagement; NOT RECRUITING
- Reconnect with past talent
- Ask for new referrals
- “Get to know you for the future”
- Commit to 2 meetings a week with potential hires - Coffee ok
- Use Discovery Call script
- Purpose: positioning & value alignment
- Empower the hire
- Communicate timeframe and allow the person to be proactive
- Pull the trigger!
- Dedicate 1-2 hours a week
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Proactive hiring: Commit to 1 hour a week to expand your talent network
- Communication: Recognize the opportunity for your people and the business to thrive
- Action: When the opportunity arises to hire a high performer, embrace it. Allow the new person to fuel the energy of your team
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
- Authored: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Jul 14, 2022
It’s Never Too Early to Lead through Core Values with Marc Reinfenrath of Spinutech
Thursday Jul 14, 2022
Thursday Jul 14, 2022
Last week I had a conversation with a CEO who thought it was too early to establish core values because his company was only 15 people. His thinking was that things would just change anyway and he would have to do them all over again as the company grows.
But here was the ginormous problem: Two of his people recently quit, the last 4 offers he made were turned down and the candidate pipeline was drying up.
… And he thought it was about the money.
Today, more than ever, people desire to be in alignment with the values of the organization. If they aren’t in alignment, they leave.
Here’s the truth: your company has values whether you like it or not. Solidifying your values and making them a decision-making tool can never happen too early and will only fuel company growth.
Guest Bio:
Marc Reifenrath is the CEO & Co-founder of Spinutech, a full-service digital marketing agency with 165+ team members across the U.S.
Marc has helped Spinutech grow from a college start-up to one of the premier full-service digital marketing agencies in the country. The secret ingredient? Company values that are truly lived, including a commitment to “Get Better Every Day”.
In that capacity, Marc understands firsthand how critical a company’s culture is to achieving and maintaining success.
Today We Discuss:
- When to implement your company values
- How to weave them into the fabric of your company
Challenge today?
- Had unwritten core values but were not formalized
- Had a miss on 2 or 10 or 20.
- Talent outweighs the cultural fit
- Drawn in by talent and weeded out by the environment
- 2 people hired that within 90 days were gone. Instant misalignment
- -realized culture pushed them out
Why is this important to the company?
- From a hiring perspective, it is a really quick filter
- Not too aspirational. You have to own what you really are
- We take too long to make the decision
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Formalization attracts the right people and repels those who do not
- Notion that you want to attract everyone is WRONG
- Time!
- Interviewing kills the production of your team
- Assumptions, bias & personal motives… oh my!
How do we solve the problem?
- Leadership team development
- People who understand the organization
- Doesn't need to be perfect
- Needs to be honest
- *** needs to be authentic, not aspirational
- Values need to be actionable
- We get better every day: better myself, team & clients
- Work into a daily routine
- Core values onboarding
- Slack channel language is communicated
- Natural part of how they do business
- Lived every single day
- Leaders need to show core values in Action!
- Weekly video “get better every day”
- In every part of the business
- Without core values, a lot more problems.
- Stronger the core values the more you are prepared for growth
- Every person who onboards becomes less of an attack
- Inject DNA into people as quickly as possible
- Feedback on how to enhance the value
Rick’s Nuggets
- Be realistic about who YOU are
- Aspirational values are worthless
- North star for how everyone operates within the organization
- Build interview questions around core values
- Evaluate against values
- Aligned = hire
- Build an interview question library
- Assign interview questions to each interviewer
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Honest about what your core values are, Lived not aspirational
- Actionable values -
- Stay patient in the hiring process. Don't just put a butt in a seat.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcreifenrath/
- Company: https://www.spinutech.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/spinutech/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spinutech
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/spinuser
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spinutech.llc/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/spinutech
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
Thursday Jun 23, 2022
Thursday Jun 23, 2022
Why is the phone screen is the most underutilized tool in hiring today?
There is this perception or fear that the person making the call will say the wrong thing and screw up the chances that the person will show up. So the phone screen is treated like a used car sale.
Tell people all the great things about our company, gather some basic information and invite the person in to interview. And because we like them because look good on paper, we assume they will want to work for us.
Here’s the truth: High performing people do not want to work for your company based on your sales pitch. What people want is to be understood and to be positioned where they can deliver the greatest impact.
How do I get better with phone screens?
Today we’re going to discuss:
- Why Phone screens (Discovery calls) are critical to hiring A-players
- The most important question you need answered before you bring ANYONE in for an interview
Challenge today?
- Phone Screen! - Discovery call
- Often skipped
- Viewed as a time waster
- Real time waster is the interview
- 90% of the people that get interview will position themselves out
- The most important question:
- “What are 3 or 4 main criteria you need to see in an opportunity for you to accept an offer with a company”
Why is this important to the company?
- First impression of your company
- You need people to show up to your interview
- Understand how to close the person at the end of the proces
How do we solve the problem?
- Value the Discovery call
- Prioritize time
- Make the decision to call EVERYONE
- Basic screening eliminates the bottom 10% but also the top 10%
- A-players often hide
- Positioning before skills
- Pain, Desire & Impact
- Common info (skills, commute, interviewing, compensation expectations)
- Wrap up
- Main Criteria Question
- “3 or 4 main criteria you need to see in an opportunity for you to accept an offer with a company”
- Confirm if they desire what you offer
- How you can get me to join your company!
- Connect the dots
- Allows them to take ownership
- They show up, ready to succeed
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Prioritize the phone screen/discovery call
- Look for alignment of positioning for EVERY person you talk to BEFORE they are brought in for an interview
- Let the person ask for the interview
Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
- Authored: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Friday Jun 10, 2022
Leveling the Interviewing Playing Field with Lee Rubin of Confetti
Friday Jun 10, 2022
Friday Jun 10, 2022
One big thing that we have learned over the past year is that employers no longer have control over the people they hire. The balance of power has shifted with the majority of people willing to walk away from an opportunity that does not align with their personal beliefs or values.
Many companies are left scratching their heads as to why. So, the thinking has evolved into “it must be the money” so let’s increase compensation & benefits. Hoping this will solve the problem. But it hasn’t.
The interviewees today are the one’s making the selection, not the company.
The interviewees are the ones evaluating the company for more than just the paycheck.
And the interviewees are the people who have a lot of options, not the companies.
So to get people to choose your company to join you simply need to level the playing field by understanding “what’s in it for them”.
Guest Bio:
Lee Rubin is the Founder and CEO of Confetti. A platform that helps companies build stronger culture by providing shared experiences for a distributed workplace. Their holistic tool empowers HR and other team leads to quickly discover, plan and book from a catalog of exclusive experiences that optimize corporate culture and employee’s professional growth.
Lee is a visionary culture leader with a decade of experience in B2B sales. She's one of the world's experts on remote event planning and has built her company from 0 to 60 employees in just 3 years!
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- What the field really looks like today
- How to stand out as an employer of choice through your interview process
Challenge today?
- Differentiate the company
- Higher chance of closing the person
- Taste of the culture
- Demonstrating a healthier dynamic
- Not posting salary to optimized offer
- Win-win scenario
- Interests here aren’t aligned obviously (one wants the higher and one wants the lower). I once heard the phrase “Good deals can’t happen with bad people” and have kept hold of it. Brings me back to leveling the playing field…
Why is this important to the company?
- You don’t want your people to feel under-valued monetarily
- People feel respected because they get what they ask for
- Not over spending on talent
- We close 80-90% of the people we really want join
Rick’s Nuggets
- Optimize for remote vs. onsite
Authenticity - As you know from your book “healing career wounds” people are literally traumatized from their job and don’t want to make the mistake again of joining a company they don’t like. So how do you get to know them authentically, make them feel comfortable and close the deal better?
How do we solve the problem?
- Getting people to feel comfortable
- Body language, casual talk: friendly
- Excited to speak to you! casual conversation
- Vibe fit
- Learn about our culture
- Showing respect
- One of their core values
- 2 Minute Intro
- About you, improvised
- Listen for concise,
- Pay attention to the time in the presentation
- Coherent
- Able to express their resume in the form of a story?
- What did they learn? brother/sister, primarily professional
- Assignment
- Prepared with job posting
- Each job has a different assignment
- Core elements of the job
- Ie: Customer success- create a customer response email
- Negotiation
- Negotiate respectfully
- How much are you “hoping” to make
- Tap into a person's dreams = context
Rick’s Nuggets
- Values driven experience
- Get them to talk first
- After emotional engagement
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Optimize for people you want to go through the shit with
- Optimize for those who share your same values
- Academia is overrated
- Loyalty is the #1 currency
Confetti Offer: *This special promo expires on July 9th
Redeem a $150 discount on your first event by sending an email (see below) to plan@withconfetti.com with the Subject line: HIRE POWER Confetti Discount
----------
Hello!
I'm a listener of HIRE POWER and am looking to redeem the exclusive HP150 discount to run my first team building experience with Confetti!
I’ve signed up to Confetti with the following email: USEREMAIL.
Could you please let me know once the discount has been applied?
Thank you!
----------
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubinl/
- Company: https://www.withconfetti.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/withconfetti/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/withconfetti
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withconfetti
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/with_confetti/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Jun 02, 2022
Why do Company’s Need Data Scientists with Asim Razvi of Intertru Inc.
Thursday Jun 02, 2022
Thursday Jun 02, 2022
Do you really need a data scientist for your startup?
Throughout my career, I have placed a lot of data scientists at smaller companies. Most of the people placed left within a year of starting with the common feedback that the work didn't warrant having a data scientist.
In most cases a data engineer is more than sufficient to build the organization. Sure AI and machine learning may be critical to your business but the question that should be asked before anyone is hired.
Guest Bio:
Asim Razvi has been focused on Business Intelligence for the last 20 years. He leads the analytics and data strategy for high growth companies. Asim brings a wide background across Media, Communications and Finance and has built Business Intelligence practices for PwC, Cognizant and Accenture.
Formerly the Head of Education and Research for TDWI where his focus was to rebuild the TDWI brand through alignment with Analytics, Big Data and Cloud thought leadership.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Why to think twice before hiring a data scientist
- How to hire once a need is established
Challenge today?
- Why hire a data scientist?
- Hiring company
- Think they need AI & ML
- Its a trademark
- Organization set up for a data scientist
- Organization
- Data maturity
- Data Scientist
- Build something valuable
- Not a subject matter expert on what the company wants
- Insights that drive the company
- Needs to be linked to the business level
- Build something valuable
Why is this important to the company?
- Knowing when to hire a data scientist
- Monetize data
- Most companies don't need data scientists.
- Data analyst - subject matter expert
- Provide the relevance
Rick’s Nuggets
- Not enough challenging work
How do we solve the problem?
- Focus on data maturity
- Sophisticated business users
- Want business user to become information explorer - drill down
- Power user- pair with analyst
- Organization
- Vertical chain
- Data scientist working in the sweet spot- co-creation feedback loop
- Readiness assessment
- How prepared is the organization to hire a data scientist
- Do I have the “track”?
- Data engineer on board
- Hire or use a Tool
- Data robot
- Enable users to become data scientists
- Predict algorithms that work
- Hire
- You don't need a data scientist as a startup
- Learning - neural net capability
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Don't hire earlier than you need to
- Remember you need data for a data scientist to work
- The Business needs to be mature enough in data to hire the data scientist
- Make sure there is a career arc for the data scientist to grow in the organization
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asimrazvi/
- Company: https://hydrafacial.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DataAsArt
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday May 19, 2022
Creating Artificial Collisions in a Remote Workplace with David Wald of Aclaimant
Thursday May 19, 2022
Thursday May 19, 2022
A big push for people to return to the office is the argument that spontaneous interaction is critical to the growth of the business. The fear is that people are not communicating and it has hindered innovation.
However, let’s look at the number of fully remote companies who have been thriving throughout the past few years. The big differentiator is the structure and setting up interaction channels to foster communication.
Mastering the interview has been more challenging as it is often difficult to read nonverbal cues and interactions. As we have grown more comfortable with this method of interviewing, the structure of consistent interview questions has been the single most important element in hiring success.
Guest Bio:
David Wald is cofounder and CEO of Aclaimant, an insight driven workflow solution for safety and risk management. As CEO, David’s primary focus is driving the company’s vision, identifying and executing strategic partner and customer relationships, and growing the Aclaimant team and investor base. The company has been remote first for the past 8 years!
Prior to Aclaimant, David spent time with the Lightbank Venture Capital fund in Chicago on both the investment team, and as an operator and EIR. He was also a management consultant at Bain and Company. David graduated from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Chicago with his wife and three kids.
Today we discuss:
- What's critical in a remote work/interviewing environment
- How to fuel communication away from the watercooler
Hiring Story:
- Intro to our top candidate's brother's high school friend…
- Series of comedic events
- Got drenched on the way to the meeting
- He took the job anyway, now is their department head
Challenges today?
- Artificial collisions- bumping into people in the hall, watercooler conversation across departments
- In a remote environment there are no collisions that aren’t preplanned
- Creating a knowledge transfer in a remote environment
- Zoom is not good for rapid collaboration
- More than 4 people in a meeting
- Create feedback loops
- People feel disconnected
Why is this important to the company?
- Cant have passive actors in a remote environment
- I was waiting for….
- Proactive collaborators
- Remote vs scaling
- Onboarding is challenging remotely
- A lot of time spent
Rick’s Nuggets
- Communication must be fueled by leadership
- Daily huddles (connection)
- Not mandatory, but everyone shows up
How do we solve the problem?
- Tooling:
- Slack- internal connectivity tool
- Every team, project & customer have their own room
- Sole service purpose in every room- avoid the noise
- Zoom
- candidates , customers & internal
- Zoom interviews
- Scientific method
- Each person testing on different topics
- Prep the candidates
- Notion - collaboration tool
- Documenting every process and keeping it clean
- True information source & driving everyone to that location
- Documenting every process and keeping it clean
- Dedicated team connected hours
- Office hours for every team (meeting) once a week
- Happy hour, game day, trivia,
- Informally stop and chat
- Team members end up city hopping!
- Deliberate information distribution pathways
- Information needs to get out
- Surveying tools, function specific data,
- all hands meetings (4-6 weeks)
- Daily standups
- Information needs to get out
- Feedback Channel
-
- Every manager & director is plugged into the right sequence of events to gather feedback
- All very deliberate
- Everyone in the know
Rick’s Nuggets
- Remote (Zoom, Teams) interview
- Rules of engagement
- Start on time, end on time
- Interviewer questions assigned
- Must gain evidence to support decision
- Must take objective notes
- Clear decision to move forward or release
- No scorecard
- Feedback
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Very deliberate about how you create connectivity
- Proper tools in place to facilitate
- Right set of people who want to connect
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidawald/
- Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aclaimant/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aclaimant/about/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavWald
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/aclaimant
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: www.stridesearch.com
Thursday May 12, 2022
How Hiring the Wrong Person Eats Profits with Rocky Lalvani of Profit Comes First
Thursday May 12, 2022
Thursday May 12, 2022
We often hear data on how much bad hire costs you and your company. About 3x the person’s annual salary.
But how much did the interview process itself cost?
For a startup to make a hire, the company spends about 73 total hours interviewing. With the most significant cost being 30 hours of the production team's combined time. And this is assuming that 6 people make it through a full interview to get to the hire.
We have to ask ourselves, can we really afford to lose almost 4 days of productive activity to interview? Roughly $9,855 per role, not including candidate marketing or recruiting fees.
As a small business, the answer is NO!
Guest Bio:
Rocky Lalvani of Profit Comes First, serves as Chief Profitability Adviser for business owners. He teaches them how to ensure they get paid and make profit a priority! As a certified Profit First Professional he implements Mike Michalowicz's Profit First System.
Rocky started with nothing when his parents immigrated to the United States when he was two years old, and his parents were in their 40's. It was his parents' second time starting over in life as they moved here to experience the American dream.
In spite of a lot of struggles and his mom passing away when Rocky was 7, he has been able to achieve financial and life success. Rocky loves to share his journey and inspire others to achieve their dreams even faster.
Today we discuss:
- Why it is critical to understand what interviewing costs
- How to maximize your team's time with structure
Challenges today?
- Employees are the major cost for the business
- Employee should provide a return for the business
- Return of Cost of person (taxes, unemployment)
- Inefficiency does not show up anywhere on the p&l
- Wealth is built on the balance sheet!
Why is this important to the company?
- Costs to the company hiring
- Reduces morale
- Loose customer
- Nobody is tracking interview or training costs
- Hard costs that are very difficult to figure out
- As a client- doesn't want to do business with a company that hires wrong
- (leadership issue)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Team time waste!
- People who meet the team must be positioned properly
- Demonstrate strong leadership in protecting time
How do we solve the problem?
- Mission values purpose
- This is the step most business owners skip!
- Or in their head, but no one else knows
- Hire to it
- Have to live it
- Hire in alignment with mission, values, purpose
- Not who you like
- Having a interview process
- Understanding the real cost
- Bad Hire- Employee does not provide any value
- Mistakes
- Morale for everyone else
- Lose clients/ client trust
- Example Costco vs. Sam's
- Bad Hire- Employee does not provide any value
- Gross profit / Total payroll including taxes
- For every $1 in payroll returns x$ in gross profit
- Measure & Know
- Need to be making at least 2X payroll
- It all comes back to leadership!
We change the accounting formula of Sales - Expenses = Profit to Sales - Profit = Expenses. This ensures Profit comes first! (PS. It's not about money at all costs, people come before money!)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Values - most important
- Protect time costs
- Structure interview
- Each step is a decision
- Only progress value aligned, well positioned & accomplished people
- Decisions must have evidence to back
- Eliminate uncertainty
- Assign interview questions
- Prepare all for success
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Is mission vision purpose written down & do your employees know it?
- Cost of a bad hire for you?
- How much profit do your employees bring you?
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rocky-lalvani/
- Company: https://profitcomesfirst.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/profit-comes-first/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/rockylalvani
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richersoul/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richer.soul/?hl=en
- Blog: http://richersoul.com/
- Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/profit-answer-man-implementing-the-profit-first-system/id1508245322
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ/featured
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rick.girard.5
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/rick_girard?lang=en
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickgirard1/?hl=en
Show Sponsor:
Friday Apr 29, 2022
Friday Apr 29, 2022
Sometimes an innocent conversation during an interview can have horrific consequences, especially if you end up not hiring a person.
The biggest problem every company faces during the hiring process is the interview.
Two people go into a room together for a conversation and no one knows what transpires. Conversations flow and curiosity carries the conversation.
As we all know, curiosity killed the cat… and possibly your company.
Let’s replace curiosity with consistency.
Because the lack of consistency is what breeds unfair interviewing practices by promoting assumptions and cultivating bias. By simply eliminating assumptions & bias from the interview, we can create a process where evidence is gathered that supports the decision.
Minimizing your exposure to future litigation.
Guest Bio:
Victor Xu is attorney extraordinaire in the Fisher Phillips Irvine office where he represents companies in all aspects of labor and employment litigation, from inception through trial, in state and federal courts throughout California.
Victor also has significant experience in conducting internal investigations into alleged employee/supervisor misconduct, including harassment and discrimination, and has provided recommendations for remedial measures, including preparation of new company policies.
Today we discuss:
- Ways your interview might be harming your company
- How to set a process that minimizes potential litigation
Challenges today?
What gets you in trouble when interviewing
- Telling people “you are a perfect candidate”
- California is pro-plaintiff
- People grasp on to certain words
Having a standard in place where interviewers are not just shooting from the hip in the interview
- Mitigate risk
- What kind of music do you like?
- Fishing questions
- Trying to be personal but it is going too far
- Too much feedback
Why is this important to the company?
- Serial interviewees who doesn't get the job claiming discrimination
- Going after tech companies
- Puts handcuffs on the company to settle
- People catch wind of who was hired
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interviews tend to be shallow and decisions are made on assumptions & bias
How do we solve the problem?
Train people to interview and use trained people exclusively
- Select interview team
- All people trained
- Stick to the interview outline and consider a list of no-go questions.
- Training limits the liability of what is said/asked (extra layer of protection)
Create an interview guide of objective questions
- Consistent & fair process
- Questions for everyone & role specific questions
- Questions vetted to mitigate risk
- Off-handed comments
- “Your a perfect candidate”
- “Youthful culture”
- Religious assumptions - questions about drinking, etc.
- “What's your ethnic background?”
- Relating to the candidate can get you in trouble
Honest response for hiring choice
- We are going to pass at this time: Thank you for applying, but we have decided to pursue other applicants. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
Values cannot be discriminatory, Legitimate business reason- values
- Information to disclose
- We decided to go with another person
Rick’s Nuggets
Tie your interview questions to values
- Assign the questions to a specific interview position (ie: interview #1)
- Remove opinion from the decision making process
- Score card ranking - highly subjective
- Weigh values alignment above skills
- Evaluate skills based on performance metrics for the role
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Brewery of the perks that you offer candidates and understand their consequences.
- Ensure employees are properly classified even where both sides agree.
- Train and prepare your team on appropriate interview questions.
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victor-xu-b43bba25/
- Company: https://www.fisherphillips.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fisher-&-phillips-llp/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/labor_attorneys
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fisherphillipsllp/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHCDdUXOnEjfOtUYu6OqTxA
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Hiring Super A-Players with Steve Newcomb of Powerset
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Let’s talk about why your company is not stacked with A-players. It is not because you cannot afford them.
At its root, the reason is narrowed down to one thing, your foundation
We tend to think of hiring as an activity rather than an essential function like product or finance or even your pitch deck. So much time is invested into these activities. Yet, hiring is the most critical component of building a successful business. In fact, most investors' decisions are heavily influenced by the people who are onboard.
Solidifying a foundation for hiring requires the same amount of care and work as do the other components of your company. It cannot be outsourced. Hiring needs to be owned by leadership, documented and taught to everyone in the organization.
Foundation is what attracts high performers to want to join your company, not the paycheck.
Guest Bio:
Steve Newcomb is a product/engineering led serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful venture backed mission-driven startups. He’s best known for co-founding Powerset (now Microsoft Bing) and scaling its engineering team, culture, and operations.
He is the author of some of the most fundamental essays on hiring, culture, and scaling engineering teams, including the original “Cult(ure) Creation” and “In Defense of Introverts”
Today we discuss:
- Building a strong hiring foundation
- How to execute an outstanding interview
Challenges today?
Foundation: Do the big things right and then everything becomes exponentially easier
Be the valedictorian of Stanford. Do the hard things early
- Money tier 1 VC
- Mission
- Product that represents a true and novel breakthrough
- Purpose above just flipping the company
- Oh my god…
- Founder that is technical, thought & cultural leader, good @ recruiting
- excellent at recruiting- study how to speak to people, how to talk to introverts & inspire them. How to be inspiring.
- Have founders that are technical, thought, and culture leaders
- Have a company that matters, something with a mission that’s embedded
- Be a Super A
- Have a founder that is excellent at recruiting and is a Super A
- Track everyone who has ever worked for you. Keep in contact
- A=A, B=C
- Get the right people in early
- VPE needs to be a baller!
- Why buy silver when you can rent gold
- Friends that want to be founders- get them to help 3 days a week?
- Often worth 10 engineers
- Obvious Yes then there is everything else = automatically hire slower
Without this?
- How to hire good people?
- Lie to them & pay them a lot of money
Rick’s Nuggets
Chad Walters from Powerset
- Foundation = Structure & Process
- Structure- steps, timing & interview questions
- Process - flow of the steps, transition & feedback timing, decision
How do we solve the problem?
Principles of doing good interview process. Treat everyone like gold.
You interview me
- Earn your job first
- Change the power dynamic
- De stress
- Have they done any research to come up with questions
- Do not negotiate
- Pay should be at the 50th percentile not pay above market
- When you have to pay above market the worse your product is
- Tier one vc firm gives - data
- Design for introverts and socially awkward situations
- Don’t repeat
Creative Tactics: Don't work without good fundamentals
- Look for “Thank you’s” in IRC/stack overflow
- Reverse layup- founders reverse lookup on everyone that follows you
- Already interested in what you have to say. Know who they are
- Sit down with your A’s
- Ask who they know, names
- Release from the social awkwardness of asking their friends
- Who follows your A’s?
- Super A’s are how you fire fast
- Jr engineers
- Hack reactor- meet everyone and ask ”who is the best engineer is”
- Kill the weeds
- Don't need a unanimous vote to say yes
- If you build trust, they trust you to hire the right people
The interview
- Assign jobs
- Assign interview responsibilities
- Founder leads recruiting
- Do not waste the team's time with duds.
- The highest level Founder/Exec does the filtering so that every candidate that makes it to a full spread interview is a Super A, or an A.
- Do this well, you build trust, followers. Do this poorly and you deserve to fail.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Purpose is to get to the TRUTH
- Script the questions
- Discovery call
- Positioning & Impact
- Value aligned interview
- Do behaviors align with the values, mission & vision of the business
- Working session
- Real life scenario of how the team will work together
- Solve a real problem
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- If the foundation is right. Everything else becomes easier
- Spend all your time getting the first people done right
- Be relentlessly creative
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenewcomb/
- Blog: https://medium.com/@stevenewcomb
- Website: http://famous.co/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenewcomb
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Thursday Mar 24, 2022
Thursday Mar 24, 2022
Today I’d like to start with a question: What if you could 15x your company in 24 months?
We all understand that this is virtually impossible as a solopreneur. As delegation creates the space for growth.
It is very possible for you to 15x your business by dedicating yourself to becoming really good at hiring. This starts with changing your attitude. “I hate hiring”, or “I’m not good at hiring” or “I'll delegate this to someone else” will not get you where you want to go. It also sets you and your team up for failure.
Today is your wake-up call to embrace getting really good at hiring.
Because the lifeblood of Your business is WHO you hire.
Guest:
Johnny Robinson is owner of Orange Window Cleaning & Mary & A Mop (Maid Service).
During his freshman year of college, Johnny and his best friend Sergio started a window cleaning company by going door to door to small mom and pop businesses. As they continued to pound the pavement, the business started to grow through word of mouth. They started to see the potential for an actual business by building a great reputation, and doubling down on digital marketing.
Fast forward to today, Orange Window Cleaning has AT LEAST doubled every year since starting the business. One key component to this rapid growth has been hiring for performance.
Today we discuss:
- Why it is important change your relationship with hiring
Hiring Story
Johnny’s Story - employee doing cocaine at the customer's house. Left residue in the bathroom. 2 months of problems ignored. Operated out to the scarcity mindset and kept them. Confronted and they wouldn’t own up to it. The customer sent pictures. Fired them on the spot.
Shifted mindset- take hiring process more seriously
Challenges today?
- Running off emotion over kpi’s
- Hate hiring!
- Hiring whoever/ too fast
- Desperate for people
- Hiring family or friends
- Keeping people too long
Why is this important to the company?
- Hiring is hard
- Hard to see the problems when you are in the trenches
- Treat hiring like marketing-
- Keep the funnel full when you run into problems
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Don't hate hiring if you are good at it
- Tell yourself- I’m Awesome at hiring
- The lifeblood of your business is who you hire
How do we solve the problem?
- Listen to podcasts related to industry
- Home Service Expert
- Stop taking referrals from the wrong people (c- players)
- Hired 2 people from one underperformer
- Vetting with pre-qualification questions tied to core values
- Situational questions
- Hired one of their best people this way
- Always be hiring
- Funnel full of applicants
- Run ads - like sales
- Appointment setter (vetting) and Interviewer -closer
- Performance based pay structure
- Incentive based- review bonus, upsell bonus,
- Commission - selling a neighbor
- Hourly was killing morale
- rewarded for hard work
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Hire power radio??
- Document & Practice
- Treat like your pitch deck
- Internalize and teach
- Discovery call
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Performance based pay structure - making sure our employees were aligned with the companies goals - growth
- ABH - Always be hiring
- Join a peer group - EO
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnny-robinson-a2b632120/
- Company: https://orangewindowcleaning.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orange-window-cleaning/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orange_windowcleaning/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
When time is of the essence and work needs to be executed, we often forego formalities and hop right into execution. Hiring a contractor or friend to help you with the work.
This was the case with my friend Pat (name changed) who paid a friend to build a proprietary software product for her company. A lot of problems came up in the process and the relationship was terminated. Pat wanted the IP to finish the product but there was no formal agreement in place and Pat did not own the IP.
Long story short, the relationship went south and it ended up in litigation. The end result was an additional 7 figure payout to obtain the rights to the code so the company could finish & release the product. A very costly encounter for Pat that would have been circumvented with a written agreement.
Today we discuss:
- Why your IP needs to be protected before you hire
- How to best protect it with anyone who touches your product
Challenge today?
- Is your IP protected
- Freelancing platform
- Software / product Development contractors
- Website development
- Video creation
- Training manuals/courses
Why is this important to the company?
- Becomes a problem when…
- Changing the terms of the agreement (product development)
- Not having rights to the video content you paid for
Rick’s Nuggets
- Employment/ Co-Founder Agreements
- What happens when someone leaves
- Who owns what? Messy & difficult
- Without an operating agreement:
- You don't own and may have a non exclusive right to the IP
How do we solve the problem?
- Get this in place BEFORE you pay anyone!!!
- Components that protect you
- Outline the role/position
- Work for hire
- Fiver not protected
- CIAA
- Indicate when the relationship concludes
- Indicate that their role is either an employee or an independent contractor
- If they are employee, indicate the extent they can make decisions for the company or represent the company (or not), information they keep confidential, non-competes, etc.
- If they are an independent contractor, indicate that they are not an employee of the company, do not represent or make decisions on behalf of the company, the company doesn’t pay their insurance or taxes, they are a separate legal entity, shorter term arrangement, you don’t exert control of the contractor, etc.
- * Duty to assign the rights to you
- Whether they are an employee or an independent contractor, make sure to include a clause indicating that they have a duty to assign any materials, work product, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and so forth that they created. If they are an employee this includes any work product created during their employment and using any information or assets of the company. If they are an independent contractor, this includes any work product and intellectual property created while the independent contractor is working on the project.
- Whether they are an employee or an independent contractor, make sure to include a clause indicating that they have a duty to assign any materials, work product, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and so forth that they created. If they are an employee this includes any work product created during their employment and using any information or assets of the company. If they are an independent contractor, this includes any work product and intellectual property created while the independent contractor is working on the project.
- Exclusive rights
- To the extent that the employee or contractor maintains any rights to the intellectual property or other works, they give the business an exclusive license to the IP/works free of charge
Rick’s Nuggets
- Expectation Alignment
- Values Aligned (employee/founder)
- Clearly defined expectations
- timelines and deliverables
- Formal Service Agreement
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Get agreements in place
- Know what the agreements cover
- Review/update the agreements periodically so make sure they still cover what you are doing
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/millerip/
Company: https://milleripl.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/miller-ip-law/
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Feb 03, 2022
Hire Faster by Interviewing Deeper with Kison Patel of MAScience & DealRoom
Thursday Feb 03, 2022
Thursday Feb 03, 2022
As an entrepreneur, we all share one thing in common. Every single one of us has made a bad hire.
Let’s define what a bad hire is. A bad hire is what happens when our need to fill something quickly overrides our logic. The interview process gets rushed, red flags get overlooked, and… Just like that, you have hired a person who is nothing more than a seat filler. We all hope that the person will work out but we know deep down we just made a bad hire.
Here’s the truth: You can still hire quickly when you slow down your interview process. Less steps, more quality time. Going deep is the only way to uncover the fit of the individual into the culture of the organization.
Today we discuss:
- Why we continually make bad hires & when to break the cycle
- How to go deeper while moving faster
Kison’s Hiring Story:
- Hired the first 5 people who responded to his craigslist ad
- Flannel shirt, BO guy who sent video rants.
- Went through a year and a half of harassment.
Challenge today?
- Hiring across functions
- Organic vs outside leaders
- Be proactive about letting people go
- Talent you need with goals your trying to achieve
- 1 of 8 hires was a bad hire in 2021
- Development function & Marketing is really mature, low attrition
Why is this important to the company?
- Learning
- When to take a passive hiring approach
- Knowing key roles, CFO, Demand Gen… get to know those people and courting
- Centralizing the hiring
Rick’s Nuggets
- My bad hire story
- Friend no more - The relationship ending was on me!
- Expectations Alignment document (write it down!)
- Friend no more - The relationship ending was on me!
- Root of the issue: expectation alignment
- Not sharing the same values
- Process allows people to take you seriously
- Interview: less questions, more depth
How do we solve the problem?
- Accountability
- Shifted from founder hiring to leaders
- Stepping back and optimizing leads
- One person that didn't work out came through a search firm
- Being systematic
- Pragmatic in having a comprehensive scope
- Do more passive recruiting
- Test project 24 hours
- Closing people
- Ended to end in 10 days
- Keeping things compressed
- *** Write the offer letter on the phone with the person
Rick’s Nuggets
For critical hires:
- Create an expectations document (Positioning & Accountability)
- Why (pain)
- Desire (do we both want the same thing?- positioning)
- “Positioning is the single largest influence on the buying decision.” -Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm
- Impact (growth plan)
- Outline & communicate your process
- People check out with time & poor communication
- Provide active feedback
- Timing
-
- Time + communication + feedback = Hire
- Less time, more depth
- Empower each person to be a decision maker
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Identify and build your company's core values
- Utilize your referrals and be proactive with recruiting
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kisonpatel/
Company: https://www.mascience.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mascience/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dealroominc?lang=en
Website: https://kisonpatel.com/
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Episode Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Friday Jan 28, 2022
Friday Jan 28, 2022
We hear a lot about culture today as being the most important aspect of growth. Yet product development & sales are too often prioritized over people.
Let’s break this down for a quick minute. Your company's success and/or failure is determined by your people and the relationship you have with their growth. What this means as an entrepreneur is that you are responsible for creating an environment where communication and failure is embraced and celebrated.
It is only when people feel safe & important that they take ownership of their role and allow themselves to thrive.
Guest Today: Justin Erdtsieck, President of Trencore & Brix
In 2016, Justin started to focus the business on hard work, perseverance, determination, resilience, compassion, and trust, and then began relaying these core values to his team through servant leadership.
Each individual employee knows they’re valued and respected and in turn, they care for the company and the final product.
As a result of this mindset shift, Justin has grown the company from $10M in revenue to over $60M in just a few years.
Today we discuss:
- Why you must adopt the mindset shift from product to people
- Justin’s mission to put culture at the forefront of the business & the results of that work
Challenge today?
- Story:
- Stagen: coaching
- Culture was a shit show!
- Inspired by a tour of Zappos. Allowed everyone to create their own space
- Bio -
- History of the company
- Who we are as a company
- People come in with understanding the purpose
- Training
Why is this important to the company?
- 2016 - now- grew from $10M to $60M in revenue. 600 people
- People want to stay- no one has quit in 4 years
- Proactive communication has saved the company over $1M a year
How do we solve the problem?
- Review Core Values
- Weekly Standup
- Check In meetings in the field (fostering company health)
- Culture
- Creating a purpose, helping everyone understand the why
- Living by core values
- Innovative on spreading the word on purpose,
- “A place where people feel safe & enjoy the experience we call work”
- Hiring process
- Eliminate the cancer
- Starting people from the bottom and growing them
- No formal interview process
- Moved people up internally!
- Understand the culture
- Teach
- Trial by fire first… didn't work
- Stagen program for leadership
- Personal development is key
- Motivated
- Creating daily habits to hold people accountable
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Document your purpose so the people who work with you understand the “WHY”
- Success comes when you stop worrying about how much money you are going to make
- Treat people well, take care of yourself & create a good support syste
Guest Links:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-erdtsieck-a20716105/
Company: https://trencoreandbrix.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trencore-brix/
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre HireOS
inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Jan 20, 2022
Thursday Jan 20, 2022
Sourcing talented people is a HUGE challenge right now. Over 38 million people quit their jobs in 2021. And a lot of them are not coming back.
Then we have the divide over pandemic policies that has driven people away from corporate America. Making it more difficult to retain good people.
But sourcing is not the biggest challenge in today’s hiring landscape. Engagement is. It is important that we utilize every viable avenue (ie: boards, postings & direct recruiting) with the objective of just starting intentional conversations. By intentional, I mean, not selling. But understanding the desires of the person first… Because It's not about you. Intentional conversations lead to engagement. Engagement leads to the hire!
About the Guest: Kelly Robinson, CEO of RedDotMedia
Kelly founded Broadbean.com Inc 2001, which was acquired by CareerBuilder in 2014. Now he leads RedDot Media, a recruitment advertising agency with a particular skill in programmatic advertising campaigns.
Kelly has spent the last 25 years in recruitment and recruitment technology, during which time he has grown, integrated, bought, and sold businesses in both the UK and US. Kelly is the goto industry expert in all things job posting
Today we discuss:
- The current job posting landscape
- How to best utilize the tools available to maximize your hiring outcome
Challenge today?
- Everyone is having a staffing crisis
- Not about the job posting.
- It is about making a connection
- 14k recruiter jobs got added Friday!
- 100% more jobs available,
- 3 % of the workforce has just … quit in just one month!
- Meaningful work!
Rick’s Nuggets
- Structure is winning over $$
- What no one is talking about
- vaccination policy of the company
How do we solve the problem?
- Posting
- Depends on the position
- Indeed
- Ziprecruiter
- Linkedin-sourcing/outreach
- Sales people, marketing, recruiters
- Dice, Angel list
- Write a great ad
- Nothing’s Free - It’s all paid
- Algorithm distributes jobs equally
- PPC has gone away. Can't define what you pay per click
- Need to spend at least $250
- Should translate to 10 applications
Rick’s Nuggets
- Active Reach Out!
- 1 hour a week
- Discovery call- where the magic happens
- Buy in/opt out
- Referrals - HUGE VALUE
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Yesterdays ideas dont work today
- Cant do things cheeper
Guest Links:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyjrobinson/
Company: https://reddotmedia.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/reddotmedia/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reddotmedia.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kellyjrobinson
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
We are neck-deep into a highly competitive job seeker’s market. What this means is that the feeding frenzy for talent has created a perfect storm for people to ask for a lot… and get it. The interview process has been plagued with bait and switch tactics, ridiculous compensation renegotiations (after the offer has been accepted), and outright ghosting once an offer is accepted.
The root of the issue is the transactional way your interview is being run. Evolving your phone screen into an in-depth “Discovery Call” is the first step to eliminate the huge time sink that results in a turned-down offer.
Today we are going to discuss the pivot that must take place in your hiring practice to align with what people really want. And it all starts with your first interaction.
Today we discuss:
- The changes in candidate attitude and positioning
- How to eliminate the frustration & engage people at a more human level
- Approach evolution
- Here's what I am hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs
- A lot of dishonesty
- People are being unreasonable when it comes to their demands
Challenge today?
- People are lying on phone screens
- Not showing up for interviews
- people asking for ridiculous stuff
- Problem:
- We still approach people with an “About us first”
- Educational approach with selling
- Needs to be done at the end of the phone screen
- Practice of not negotiating
- Negotiating mitigated when people want it
Why is this important to the company?
- Losing great talent
- It keeps you awake at night
Rick’s Nuggets
- I believe that a lot of the challenges are coming from two places:
- Speed
- Not taking the time to understand before selling
- Need
- Need to get this filled / off my plate
- Speed
How do we solve the problem?
- Your phone screen (aka: discovery call) sets the tone for the relationship
- If your transactional, expect that from the relationship
- If your adding value, expect that from the relationship
- Adding value:
- Seek to understand a person’s WHY (Career Wounds)
- What's broken in their career that you can fix
- What does this person want? (besides a job)
- Environment in which they will thrive
- Can they make an impact?
- Past performance is a key indicator of future performance
- Do they align with your opportunity?
- Where do they fit, where they do NOT fit
- How you solve their career wounds
- Let them connect the dots for you
- Seek to understand a person’s WHY (Career Wounds)
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/dEWWWEq
Company: https://lnkd.in/dG5aMUxY
Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gyG9YDuD
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://lnkd.in/g8YbdsH
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
Juggling Fundraising While Building a Strong Team with Bruce Watanabe of PowerBuy
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
People will only do something when it is in their own best interest AND aligns with our values.
This was a key takeaway for me from the book “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There” by Marshall Goldsmith.
We talk a lot about aligning with values when hiring on this show. And almost everyone recognizes the importance but it is so often missed. Why?
First, the disdain that most of us share for hiring. Very few entrepreneurs enjoy the process of interviewing & hiring. But it is the single most important activity that YOU can get good at that will make the biggest impact in your organization.
Second, the path of least resistance is easy… But it is almost always the wrong path. We must remember that the purpose of the interview is to get to the TRUTH about the person no matter the source. And the truth you need to know is not in skills. It is in positioning and value alignment.
Bruce Watanabe is a serial entrepreneur whom has co-founded a number of technology and Internet ventures including, PowerBuy, MassGenie, SIRE Mobile (SMS Solutions), and SETA International (Global Systems Integrator & Solution Provider).
With over 20+ years of leadership experience ranging from start-ups to Fortune 10 companies, Bruce is proficient in corporate strategy, business development, sales, and channel development. He is actively building Powerset from the ashes of a pivot and is here to share his wisdom
Today we discuss:
- Why it is important to prioritize the thing you hate most (interviewing)
- How to balance raising capital while building a stellar team.
Challenge today?
- People are the most important aspect of a company
- As an early stage startup
- Balancing generating revenue while getting financing
- Need capital to hire the right people
- Pivot the business to powerbyte
- Lack of funding, resources
- Have the grit to power through the pivot
Why is this important to the company?
- Only a handful of people stayed
- Believed in the vision- disrupting social commerce
- CTO- grit / determination to power through
- Relaunched the company
- Second raise
- Balance the valuation
Rick’s Nuggets
- First recognize/admit that you have no idea how to hire (admit to your problem)
- Prioritize getting good at Interviewing
- Values
- Process
- Evidence
How do we solve the problem?
- Bringing the right team in place
- Referrals- all interconnected
- Advisors- only way to hire people
- Vouch for someone
- Advisors must be strong
- Prefer a strong
- At the end of the day, you can buy talent, you can't buy grit
- Would love to get good at interviewing but …
- Really hard to gauge if someone
Rick’s Nuggets
- Take an active role in interviewing
- Seek to understand- filters down through the organization.
- Poke holes & dig deep
- Understanding positioning
- What does the person really want to do?
- Desire = Passion
- Does their desire align with my goal
- Don't be just a paycheck
- Everyone gets the same interview
- Often the best person for the business is the least like you
- Evidence supports strong decision making
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Make sure you know who you are getting into bed with- have a great team
- Know who your co-founders are
- If you are friends, be prepared to lose them. Rarely a happy ending
- Don’t hire on a resume/linkedin profile
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Guest Links
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-watanabe-5a661a4/
Company: https://linktr.ee/powerbuyapp
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ppowerbuy/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/powerbuyapp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/powerbuyapp
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/powerbuyapp/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDjcG5dHXE282FGzfaf2Jjw
Pinterest:https://www.pinterest.com/powerbuyapp/_saved/
TikToK: https://www.tiktok.com/@powerbuy.app?
Show Sponsor:
Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Oct 07, 2021
Thursday Oct 07, 2021
4 Million Americans quit their jobs in July of 2021 , according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What this means is that you have a tremendous opportunity to upgrade your talent base in your organization.
The pandemic has magnified people’s career wounds in a way that every business will be impacted.
While many reasons are given as to the cause of this mass exodus, the root of the fall out is that the people leaving are no longer in alignment with the company’s values.
Value alignment is now more critical than ever to attract and hire people. Because when people align with the actual company values, they find meaning & discover their purpose.
And their purpose is far more important to them than your profits.
Today is a special episode due to the massive number of requests from our audience about this little problem called the great resignation
We discuss:
- Why it is critical to own your company values
- How to prosper in Hiring - TODAY!
Challenge today?
- My people are getting poached!
- We have come to a point where people want meaning & purpose in their lives.
- Perks, compensation & benefits no longer matter
- People are questioning their “why”
- Imbalance
- Stress & heartache
- More flexibility is not the real issue
- Inc Article https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/great-resignation-work-meaning-esther-perel.html
- Demonstrating meaning & the company cares about them as “human beings”
Why is this important to the company?
- Who’s leaving?
- Mid- career employees have the highest resignation rates! (30-45)
- You are positioned to heal a person's career wounds.
- When you align with values and provide a solution to heal, both parties WIN
- People are expecting win-win relationships with their employers
- The Great Opportunity!
- Easiest time in history to engage A-Players!
- Raise the performance bar in your organization
4 Steps to Win-Win Talent in this Great Resignation
Get solid on your Values
- Key to attracting top performers
- Who you are
- how you lead
- how people act
Understand your Recruiting Process
- Recruiting is how you identify people & get people to talk to you.
- Just because you recruited someone great, doesn't mean you should hire them
- Or that they will even accept your job offer
- What is working today
- Target and Contact & Reconnect
- Do not sell, listen
Understand your Hiring Process
- Start with an in depth Discovery call (phone screen)
- Does this person’s desires align with the company (correctly positioned)
- Not skills
- Vision for the environment in which they will excel
- Timed & structured Interview
- Values alignment first
- Skills second (working session)
- Nurture a proactive flow - allow the person to have a voice in what happens next
- What would you like to do next?
Heal the Career Wound
- Growth, Content of work, Management
- Value Alignment
- Progression, learning, flexibility
- If you cannot provide a path to the individual, don't hire
- Someone else will thrive in the role
- You will be just a paycheck (if the person joins)
Key Takeaways -Value:
- The “Great Resignation” is real and you need to be capitalizing on the opportunity that has been presented to us!
- Get tight on the company values… They are the key to a successful hire
- Don't confuse a recruiting process as a hiring process. They are two separate activities.
Rick's Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
Book: Healing Career Wounds - https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Career-Wounds-Ridiculously-Successful/dp/173580360X
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Sep 23, 2021
How to Stop Sucking at Hiring Sales People with Joseph Fung of Uvaro
Thursday Sep 23, 2021
Thursday Sep 23, 2021
Hire slow, fire fast is a motto we have all heard as startup founders. It makes logical sense but what really happens is quite the opposite. As entrepreneurs we shift into panic mode when we have a need and move quickly to fill the role. Completely missing all the evidence that this person will be a bad hire.
Once the person is in the seat, the dread of having to refill a role often leads to concessions made to the detriment of the business.
Hiring Slow means investing the time to really make sure the person will be a strong hire. Therefore there should be no need to fire fast. Especially if you really understand who the person is and gain evidence of the value they add to the company.
Think of each person you hire as being worth $2 million dollars to the company. Changes your perspective, right?
A lot more care and a higher talent bar would be prioritized over just “filling the seat”.
Our guest today: Joseph Fung, Founder & CEO of Uvaro
A tech sales career accelerator, and of Kiite, a sales enablement platform purpose-built to provide sales teams with the information they need when they need it. Joseph’s a repeat Founder & CEO, and with multiple successful exits, and speaks frequently on the topics of sales leadership, diversity, and corporate social responsibility.
Joseph is an expert in sales, startups and building scalable culture.
Today we discuss:
- Our mentality around hiring sales people
- How to effectively attract & hire high performers
Challenge today?
- Hiring for software skills rather than problem solving skills
- No internal training- want someone who already doing what you need done
- Rely on stereotypes and gut
- Need people who can speak to a bigger variety of customers
Why is this important to the company?
- Fix the problem, you can triple the production of 1st year sales reps
- 8 months to ramp, average sales rep only achieves 60% of quota
- Ramp in ⅓ time and drive production to 80% - Training
- Churn & burn kills morale
- Cash costs are immense on the back end
How do we solve the problem and hire the strongest people every time?
- Throw out your job description
- Translate ideal customer to sales job description
- Ideal Customer Profile- go granular
- Choosing what & who to hire
- Invest in Revops & sales enablement
- 50:1 ratio Rep to SE is a start => move to 20:1
- Mindset
- Treating the organization with respect
- Thinking is you solve the problem by hiring more people
- Interview
- Culture fit interview - “Is this someone I want to have a beer with?” not
- Turn it into a behavioral interview - what behaviors demonstrate values alignment
Rick’s Nuggets
- Performance metrics are most critical component today for job descriptions today
- Accountability up front
- Understanding a person’s positioning
- Transactional Sale VS. Enterprise/Solutions Sale
- Resources available
- Builder, Improver, Maintainer
- Uncovering the impact that has been made in their current/former position
- Save time, increase revenue
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Throw out your job description . Copying others is just propagating bad habits
- Stop asking people to sell like the founders - it won’t work
- Re-think your culture fit interviews...write behavioral questions
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephfung/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/josephfung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephfung/
Company: https://uvaro.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/uvarolife/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/uvarolife
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uvaro.life
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uvaro.life/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/uvaro
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Aug 26, 2021
Thursday Aug 26, 2021
You are at the point in your business where the company is ready to hire the first person to head up a department (i.e.: sales, marketing, engineering). You are excited and terrified at the same time. You’re thinking “I have to get this right”... and you are right, you do!
How do you evaluate a person with an area of expertise that you are NOT familiar with?
The answer, my friends, is being prepared, digging deep and really listening! Step outside of your first impression and be aware of your tendency of confirmation bias.
Shift your focus on gathering concrete evidence and the outcome will be the correct decision every time.
Our guest today: Liam Rose, Founder of Catalina Seven Ventures.
Liam is the founder of Catalina Seven Ventures, a Southern California consumer software startup. Before forming C7V, he managed the sales team for an Orange County-based entertainment startup. As a result of his own challenges trying to juggle health, academic obligations, and personal relationships while attending the University of Richmond, Liam created a new approach to life scheduling built to enable better balance. During his time at the Robins School of Business, he was selected as a 2019 Innovator Under 25.
Catalina Seven Ventures' first product, HORUS Life Schedule, is now available for Beta testing on iOS and Android (access available through the company website)."
Today we discuss:
- How to effectively make your first departmental hire
Challenge today?
Hiring the first person within a department
- How do you make that hire
- How do we know if the person is good
- What's the barometer
- First tech person, marketing, HR or finance person
How do you know if the person is the best person do the job at the current stage
- Culture & environment fit
- Metrics & deliverables
- How well they can make the connections between metrics and the outcome
Why is this important to the company?
- They will be the departmental cultural lead
- Top quality people hiring more top quality people
- The greatest impression people get is from the interview process itself
- Set the tone on how you are going to manage the person based on the interview process itself
- Improved interview process results in a higher level of talent
- Demonstrates the ability to understand the individual
- Ignorance of the process
Rick’s Nuggets
- Every hire is critical at every stage of your start up!
- Hire slow, fire slower-er-er
- Firing fast is negligence & kills culture (reduces trust, increases anxiety)
- Cult creation- Steve Newcomb (https://medium.com/cult-creation/cult-creation-a44303564f21)
- Firing fast “kills innovation, ownership and trust”
How do we solve the problem?
- Signaling - feel a unique attraction to our company
- Job Advertisement
- Distributed via word of mouth/referrals first
- The step beyond who we are. Bold- unapologetically ourselves
- Demonstration of understanding
-
- Interview process
- Realistic expectations
- Show that people can succeed
- Difficult but not impossible
- Show professional empathy
- What is going to make you most happy?
- What does the individual want?
- Communication preference, invest in every core operation of the company
- Calling the Hotline
- Advisor de-risk
- Outside influence to identify the obvious
Rick’s Nuggets
- Prepare yourself by adopting process, engage in interview training & experience
- Process: must have a flow and timing- Start on time, end on time
- Discovery call (45 minutes)
- Interview #1 Cultural (60 minutes)
- Deeply tied to corporate values/principles/culture
- Interview #2 Working Session - judge skills (60 minutes - ½ day)
- Live example of how we work together, problem solve, communicate
- Process: must have a flow and timing- Start on time, end on time
- Interview Training
- Behavioral interviews produce EVIDENCE to uncover the TRUTH
- Assign interview questions to the individual interviewers
- Prepare the candidate for what to expect
- Experience (not yours, theirs)
- A-players are attracted to excellence
- Leave everyone feeling good about their time investment
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Their language, not your language
- Gets you the people you want rather than the people you can get
- Use experience to de risk: everyone in your network. What you should avoid with absolute certainty
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamwrose/
Company: http://catalina7ventures.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/c7vinc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catalina7ventures/
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Jun 03, 2021
Your Strongest Hire is Gone in 8 Seconds with Henna Pryor of Pryority Group
Thursday Jun 03, 2021
Thursday Jun 03, 2021
You’re hiring and just are not seeing the quality flow of people responding to your job ads. A bit frustrated, you decide to launch an email/LinkedIn campaign targeting people from your competitors. You identify the people you want to talk to and start sending messages. Hopeful that you’ll draw in the strongest talent.
But the response is underwhelming at best. Why?
Because no one cares about your company, your job or you until you can demonstrate the value of “what’s in it for me?”. The selfish way you message is the #1 reason you fail to gain a positive response. Start with a person’s pain first, then you'll gain their attention.
Our guest today: Henna Pryor, President & Executive Coach for Pryority Group
After an explosive 14-year recruitment career working with top performers, growing managers, and C-suite leaders, Henna founded Pryority Group to realize a vision that access to coaching and development is the most important asset to any individual’s continued growth.
Henna prides herself on an "empathetic but no-nonsense" approach and has been recognized quickly as a secret weapon of companies ranging from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500. She has a dual specialty in working with high-achieving women and measurably improving the performance of sales teams and growing start-up businesses through her in-demand sales messaging training programs and strategic coaching.
Today we discuss:
- Why no one cares about your messaging today
- How to structure your digital communications to gain a positive response
Challenge today?
Reaching out to candidates digitally in a noisy marketplace - getting their attention and keeping it.
Problem:
- Peoples attention span is about 8 seconds in digital communication (goldfish)
- Initial outreach is usually operating from middle school English class writing techniques
- Subject line kills you (great opportunity)
- The spotlight is in the wrong spot. People start by talking about themselves right out of the gate. People don’t want to hear about you right away. They want to be the hero of their sales message first.
- People are motivated by
- Love
- Hate
- Fear of
- Vanity
- Pride
- Longing for
Why is this important to the company?
- Even in digital communication, people buy on emotion.
- People get 121 emails a day- most of which are deleted or ignored
- Most leaders have not been taught sales writing
Rick’s Nuggets
- Pain, desire, impact
How do we solve the problem?
- Subject Line
- Must induce curiosity
- Ie: You wouldn’t believe how we do this,
- Confidential mysterious confession- top open
- “That was a huge fail”
- What's something special? What’s something you want to get away from?
- The Content
- You Perspective (“I get you, I understand where you’re coming from, I relate”
- Here’s why it might be worth chatting with me for a few minutes (features + benefits, ideally at least 3)
- Call to action
- Very clear
- Low pressure, low commitment
Rick’s Nuggets
- Strike a nerve by identifying their pain
- Be specific (growth, management, work content)
- Desired outcome by alleviating the pain
- Performance Metrics (Impact they will make)
- How’s my telepathy?
Opener
- You have been eagerly anticipating my email, but I just received your telepathic message so I apologize for taking so long to get back to you ;-).
Acknowledge the Pain
- I understand you are pretty good at your job but your talents in XXXX (personalize) may be a bit underappreciated (or underutilized, under-challenged, over-managed) in your current role.
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Attention is a currency. You might have the best opportunity with the biggest runway, but none of it matters if you don’t have a rock solid digital communication strategy to catch the attention of the right people to engage the conversation further.
- Your value proposition alone isn’t enough to attract a good candidate in this marketplace. You need to express in your outreach that you understand THEM, and then walk them through the benefits that will make your message compelling enough to want to continue the conversation.
- Using the framework shared will give you a much more compelling message to attract the candidate and give you a much better chance of starting conversations with the top passive talent as well, not just the active talent.
Guest Links:
Henna Pryor: LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/hennapryor
Company: Pryority Group Facebook Instagram
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop
Friday May 21, 2021
Diversity Hiring Fire Drills with Venesa Klein of Calibre One
Friday May 21, 2021
Friday May 21, 2021
It is no secret that diversity sparks innovation and fuels business growth.
But diversity for the sake of image or social pressure is dangerous. It needs to truly be embedded into the fabric of the corporate values in how people interact. It is not just checking off a box to satisfy outsiders.
This is most dangerous when someone is hired simply for their gender or race without any consideration of what the individual is positioned to contribute. Values are misaligned, expectations miscommunicated and voila …. Let the nightmare begin.
Costly mistakes that result in wrongful terminations, and hostile work environment lawsuits.
Our guest today: Venesa Klein, Executive Recruiter & Partner for Calibre One.
Since 2007, Venesa has helped some of the world's most successful companies build out the critical leadership teams that drive their success.
As Partner at Calibre One, Venesa founded its Purpose-Driven Practice, which focuses on placing executives in growing organizations seeking to create innovation with meaningful impact. Her empathy forward personality along with her strategic thinking has enabled her to successfully build diversity programs for her clients.
Today we discuss:
- Why diversity may not be right for your company
- How to correctly implement a diversity program
Challenge today? Having a real diversity strategy
- Implement a long term strategy that develops people into leaders
- Diversity in leadership to fill a role - check off the box
- Oh Shit, we need to hire a woman because we are an all male leadership team
- the structure to give opportunity to diversity
- Vanity hire
Why is this important to the company?
- Real change and a more diverse workforce equals growth & innovation
- Companies
- The reality is that a woman
- Diversity of perspective: Will the person really be valued
Rick’s Nuggets
- Hiring for core values alignment eliminates bias, promotes diversity
- Just filling a seat for diversity sake, dangerous
- Value aligned
- Empowered to thrive
How do we solve the problem?
- Bottom up approach
- Add people at the most jr level first
- Development plan
- Way of identifying people who are doing well and offering opportunity to continuously grow
- Promote into leadership
- Incentivizing organization to develop those around them
- Leadership accountability
- When you have to go out to search
- Leadership team in agreement
- Think through the obstacles in recruiting within the criteria
- Ask Why?
- Needs to be a level of honesty -that is not happening
Rick’s Nuggets
- Build your interview process to eliminate bias first
- Value alignment first
- Values come in every flavor of person
- Positioning before Pitch
- Understand the person’s desires
- Path to success
- Heal their career wounds with your opportunity
- Value alignment first
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Bottom up approach
- Strategy around developing diversity in the organization
- Looking through the lens of diversity
Guest Links:
Venesa Klein: LinkedIn Twitter
Company: Calibre One Facebook Twitter
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop
Thursday Apr 22, 2021
Thursday Apr 22, 2021
It is very possible to share the same core values, yet differ in our religious or political views. This, we must understand when hiring new people.
Now you might be thinking something like “we have a really harmonious team and we don't want someone who will be bringing their strong political, religious or social agenda”. Then build the practice into your corporate values and let it blossom throughout the company.
After all, we are all servants to the “business”. And what is good for the business is innovation, diversity and growth. All of which are fueled by proper value alignment.
Our guest today: Bianca Lager, President of Social Intelligence Corp.
By driving the vision for Social Intelligence to provide productive, ethical and innovative solutions, she has spent her time working closely with Fortune 500 companies and non-profits alike to create safe and discrimination-free workplaces.
Bianca obtained an MBA from Pepperdine University with a concentration in Dispute Resolution and is a LinkedIn Learning Instructor. She is an expert in consumer reporting, focused on online risk for human resources.
Today we discuss:
- Valid reasons not to hire based on a person’s social profile
- How to properly use a social media background check to limit your company liability
What are the challenges with conducting a social media background check
- Violating privacy rights by doing it yourself
- Fed and state laws regarding politics in the workplace
- Whose standards are you using
- Is it related to business outcomes
- Is it fair to the person or the company
- Context is key
Why is this important to the company?
- Disqualification based on personal views does not lead to better business outcomes and could be discriminatory
- Culture fit -
- Diverse teams
- Or single mindset
- Business suffers
- Code of conduct standards
- Avoid someone who is disruptive to the business
- Limits the success of the company
- Who are we or What are we not?
- What is hate speech - how do we define and document that?
Rick’s Nuggets
- Difference in opinion among people who can communicate (agree to disagree) produce magical results
- unintended consequences
How do we implement a proper social media check? Do NOW!
- Review laws in your jurisdiction/jurisdiction of your employees
- Create a policy
- Risk - what is actionable
- Definition of what is acceptable code of conduct
- Stay away from protected class information
- Age, race, sex, religion, political affiliation
- 3rd party solution - defines content and behavior appropriately and consistently
- Violence:
- Intolerance:
- Criminal activity (drugs / stealing):
- Sexually explicit:
- Well documented and legally vetted business related behavior
- Fbi, Anti-Def, SPLC
- Actionable
- Legally defensible position
Rick’s Nuggets
- Preparation is key for everyone that you invite into your organization.
-
- Let your Values policy be known to everyone
- Crystal clarity from the minute they are engaged in the interview process
- Hire for value alignment first
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Formalize your social media screening approach
- Create a simple, 2-3 sentence social media policy based on a basic code of conduct
- Document and stay consistent (Documentation + consistency + policy = Actionable)
Links:
SI Podcast Offer - receive a free sample report along with discounted pricing offer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancacalhounlager/
Websites: https://www.socialintel.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/socialintelligencecorp/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/socialintelco
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BiancaLager
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialintelco/
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Apr 01, 2021
Thursday Apr 01, 2021
We can all agree that the only way to 10 or 100x your company is to hire the strongest people. So, what are the strongest people?
The strongest person for your company is a person who aligns with your values first. They understand the mission and they have a strong desire to impact the business because it benefits them first.
Understanding the person across the table does not happen by chance but by a systematic approach to your interview that is designed to gather concrete evidence.
The smartest companies know that cultural alignment is far more critical to a successful hire than merely a person’s skills.
Today we discuss:
- The value & pitfalls of a hiring system
- How to implement a hiring operating system into your company
What is a hiring operating system? The step by step process by which your company successfully hires.
Challenge today?
- In any market, care needs to be taken when hiring
- Right person, Right seat … Jim Collins - Good to Great
- Time pressure
- Hiring is a guessing game
- Likability/commonality
- Skills
- Bias - educational background, company history (assumed success)
- People hired are not properly positioned for your unique company
- Builder, Improver, Maintainer
- Hiring Process is common, weak or unorganized - Key indicator of how the business is run
- People are systems resistant.
- Systems are the key to success
Why is this important to the company?
Operating Systems
- Save time & money
- provide structure & clarity
- Build accountability
- Build effective practices
- Attract talent
- A- players are drawn to successful opportunities
- Systems Win
- Business operating systems (EOS, scaling up, Strategic Coach, MAP)
- IDC: Companies lose 20-30 percent of revenue each year due to ineffective business practices
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/286084
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2016/11/01/5-ways-your-business-processes-could-be-hurting-your-business/?sh=6b39e50452e9
How do you build your hiring operating system?
Foundation
- Values first
- Own it- embrace the truth
- Be transparent about the Good & Bad
- No one believes your company is perfect
- Build Interview Question Library
- Craft Behavioral questions (2-3)
- Determine **Knockouts
- Agree on questions
- Establish Interview Structure
- Timeline Commitment
- Define Format
- Outreach / Application
- Intake Process - discovery call
- Interview
- Assessments/Tests (not too soon)
- Decision
- Build Job Description Template
- Understand Performance Metrics
- Build Call to Action Questions
- Assign Questions
- to Interviewer position (order of importance)
- Assemble Interview Team
- 3 teams of X
Execution
Rules of engagement
- Discovery/Screening call
- Assessment over Resume
- Time up front saves pain in the end
- non-transactional
TRAINING!!!
- Behavioral Interview
- Bias annihilation
- Knock Out’s
- Role playing exercise
- Interview question tweaking
- Iteration of follow up questions
- Solidify questions
- Logging data
- Wrapping up interview & Handoff
- Gather feedback
- Dismissal
- Role Playing wrap up
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Systems -breed success and eliminate all the things that keep you up at night
- Prioritize owning a hiring operating system that attracts the strongest people to your business
- Train your people how to interview to gather evidence to support the hire
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Websites:
https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
https://www.stridesearch.com/rick-girard
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HirePowerRadio/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Friday Mar 19, 2021
Friday Mar 19, 2021
Thinking about the people you hire as objects or obstacles to achieve your company goals is poison.
Often we venture into the hiring process with the mindset of “how can YOU help ME”. This is wrong in so many ways. Especially if your goal is to fuel the growth of the organization.
The truth is, the people you hire could care less about you and your goals. This is why people take your job simply for the paycheck and bounce at the first hint of trouble.
Understanding the other person’s pain & desires allows you to connect the dots, for both parties, of how they can bring maximum impact to their careers and the company.
Our guest today: Jonathan Domsky, Founder of Untangled Coaching
An entrepreneur since he was 24 years old, Jonathan uses many of the same tools as a traditional business coach—goal setting, accountability, best practices. But his purpose in life is teaching personal mastery.
Jonathan’s superpower is to distill this wisdom into practical, easy to understand, and simple to apply tools that will make your life more easy, meaningful, and joyous. To untangle the clutter in your business and life so that you can be your best, most authentic self. And most importantly—see a clear path on how to get from where you are right now, to living your beautiful future.
Today we discuss:
- Why you need to change your hiring mindset
- How to shift your mindset to fuel growth
Challenge today?
- Hiring manager hires people who are not a good fit for the company.
- Only thinking about what’s in it for me
- Not long term
Why is this important to the company?
- Behavior drives results. But what drives behavior? Training and incentives aren’t enough. The answer is mindset
- Outward mindset is a tool, a lens, that gets everyone on the same page
- Side steps personal issues to allow focus on the organization
- It allows space to find solutions to things that aren’t working
- Change success metrics (data point)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Shift from listening to answer to listening to understand
- Need to fill & ego drive hiring. Period
- Result 51% bad hires
How do we solve the problem?
- Seeing others as having needs, challenges & objectives of equal importance to our own
- First ask- what is needed?
- Remind yourself “am I doing what is in the best interest of all parties”
- Realize the impact that has been received by you in your career
- Can you state the top three goals and objectives of key coworkers?
- How does what you do affect other people in the organization?
- Adjust efforts to actually help them
- Make a list of the objectives, needs, and challenges that belong to the people you impact in the organization--peers, manager, direct reports, candidates. If you aren’t 100% sure, ask them. Evaluate how you are helping these people accomplish their objectives, meet their needs, and face their challenges. Make a list of ways you can improve
- If the success metrics and incentives in your organization are inward, then an outward mindset is unlikely to have a lasting impact. Change those metrics so that they are focused less on what you do and what you get, and more on how what you do affects others
- What are your current metrics around Selection and Onboarding--do job descriptions and training simply describe what the employee is hired to do? Or does it also explain why they do what they do, and what is the desired impact?
- Reporting Practices--are they used to control and monitor or to empower?
- Incentives and Compensation and Performance Management--Are people rewarded for individual performance, or for accomplishing group goals?
- What are negative effects of inward thinking in these areas? What are ideas to approach this with an Outward mindset?
- Measure results
- Check in to see that their needs were actually met. Adjust your efforts accordingly
Rick’s Nuggets
- First- Understand what the business needs, not your ego
- Second- Understand what the person needs for themselves
- Third- Connect the dots
- Value load every challenge into the person’s desires and allow them to make an impact
- Metrics: Time saved, interview experience
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Are the success metrics in your organization inward or outwardly focused? How could you make them more outward focused in order to experience less drama and conflict?
- Carefully consider this statement--As far as I’m concerned, the problem is me. I am the place to start.
- Who is one person who needs more from me than I am currently giving? What more could I begin to contribute today? How could I know that my actions made their life easier?
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-domsky/
Websites: https://untangled-coaching.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.domsky
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtBAgyPKr5_-boeLjQWFGA
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Mar 11, 2021
When to Hire Freelancers vs Full Time Talent with Shahar Erez of Stoke Talent
Thursday Mar 11, 2021
Thursday Mar 11, 2021
Do you really need a person full time or will a freelancer suffice? Often the need to get work done clouds our vision who we really need.
Ask yourself, “what does the business need?” and what is the timing in which the work needs to be done. When you need something quick, you most likely need a freelancer. But know that your explicit communication is the key to successful project completion.
Just don’t shortcut the selection process and hire those who get it, want it and can deliver results.
Our guest today: Shahar Erez, Co-Founder & CEO of Stoke Talent.
An experienced executive with solid engineering, product and marketing leadership backgrounds backed up by sound results. He has more than 15 years of experience in various management positions in a wide range of organizations building stellar teams and leading them to new levels of success in highly competitive markets.
Shahar has hired hundreds of Freelancers throughout his career and is here to share his expertise.
Today we discuss:
- When to hire freelancers vs full time talent
- Roadmap to how to most effectively hire freelancers
I struggle with the notion of hiring freelancers as I have time challenges in communication of expectations
Challenge today?
- There was no flood in the market of talent
- Cultural challenge
- Mental barrier
- Freelancers
- Compliance & back office challenges
Why is this important to the company?
- Get the right talent
- Agility to move fast
- Flexibility & budget control
- Quick time to hire
- Try before you buy
Rick’s Nuggets
- Even freelancers need to align with your company values
- They are part of the culture
- When values align & expectations are clearly defined the quality of work skyrockets
What is the process for hiring freelancers?
- Open to the possibility of freelancers
- No strings attached
- Budget flexibility to get work done quickly
- Training managers on what it is to manage & hire freelancers
- No need for a full interview
- Lower Expectations
- Very clear on deliverables- what to happen & when
- Start with a 2 week project
- Define deliverables
- How to operate in the two weeks
- Clear communication- more important than full time employees
Rick’s Nuggets
Interviewing Freelancers
- Must have a strong Discovery / Screening call - do not shortcut!
- Understand the person’s pain, desire & impact
- Why do they want the work??
- Every person you add has an influence on culture
- Do they get it, want it, and have the capacity to do the work? - Gino Wickman
- Do not hire if they are just there for the paycheck
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Number of independent contractors are growing and will make more than 50% of workforce within the next 5 years
- Prepare your organization and leaders to operate within this new workforce composition model
- You should treat this as strategic shift and get a platform to assure you are managing this correctly
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaharer/
Websites: https://www.stoketalent.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stoketalent
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shaharer
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stoketalent
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Dec 10, 2020
Hiring 250 Remote Employees in 2 Weeks with Brock Blake of Lendio
Thursday Dec 10, 2020
Thursday Dec 10, 2020
Imagine having to staff 250 roles... just as many companies were laying off and scrambling to get their PPP loans approved.
Our guest today had 2 weeks to hire 250 people to handle the demand for PPP loans and is here to share his story.
Our guest today: Brock Blake, Co-Founder & CEO of Lendio
Brock spent the last nine years developing technology to get loans to more people, more quickly, and more efficiently than traditional lenders. Under his leadership, Lendio grew to be the largest online marketplace for small business loans in America. So when the coronavirus pandemic struck, he knew he was in a unique position to make a difference.
Today we discuss:
- Creative ways to bulk hire in a short period of time
- The hiring system to be able to crush a lot of hires in a very short time
Challenge today?
- We had committed to [a company] that we would hire 25+ of their people on a temporary basis to help with PPP and then they would return to their employment. It was a win/win. The painful part was realizing the people we hired through them were not skilled in computer software and systems. We ended up keeping only 8-9 people from [Company] which put us behind in getting resources to meet the demands we had.
- Being told “we are good, no more hires” next day “Let’s get 150 hired by next Monday” and we crushed those goals
Why is this important to the company?
- Getting to the bottom of the barrel in terms of Temp to hire resources for the last group that we hired. The incentive to stay home instead of work because of the unemployment benefits had kept a lot of people from applying for work. So those that were applying by the end of our hiring process were not the most employable people. The number of wage garnishments, failed background checks, etc. was much higher for this last group than our overall hiring experience.
- Having the opportunity to extend offers to people during the pandemic. Some people were experiencing the worst few weeks of their lives and were overcome with joy when they received offers. Truly an awesome experience!
- Candidates crying on the phone with us when we offered them the position because they were so grateful to be able to provide for their families or be helping w/PPP
How do we build a quick hiring structure into your company?
- Bulk interview process
- One interview, Decision
- Creating SOPs and generic equipment setup/login instructions - Getting 200+ new hires setup and logged into equipment was a massive undertaking. Staying up until 2 am helping new hires set up their computers for the next morning
- Trying to run new hire orientation with 50+ people in a Zoom meeting who have never used Zoom or their equipment before. No understanding of the mute button.
- Guy falling asleep for 2 hours during training. Snoring.
- Being responsible for retrieving equipment; traveling to unknown places (I’m from out of state), former TMs not cooperating, equipment not being left where they say it would be, thoughts of getting Covid from equipment boxes, equipment not being packed up properly and left outside in garbage bags.
- Cops involved (one emergency contact saying that the temp was MISSING and that us reporting her equipment as stolen might help the authorities find her!) - 4 total police reports
- One person saying “If you want your stuff back, come and get it. And BTW I have COVID”
- Driving all over the state
- Condition that equipment was returned in (garbage bags, shoe boxes, etc.)
- Russ and Kimberly stories of tracking down equipment after terminations
Rick’s Nuggets
- Do not get rid of your hiring process to rapid hire
- Scale the number of interviews
- Train 2-3 interview teams to allow scale
- Assigned interview questions
- Back to back video interviews
- Be aware if interviewer fatigue
Key Takeaways:
- Have a process in place
- Don't cut corners on culture fit, screening
- Get creative
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: Brock Blake
Twitter: BrockBlake
Instagram: Lendio
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Friday Nov 20, 2020
Friday Nov 20, 2020
Data Driven Insight into Your Video Interviews.
“Look, I just need to hire someone who can do the work so we can get this product done” Said Peter. A CEO for a newly funded startup. “Besides, there is no way to really know if someone fits into the company until you experience working together”. Not true at all!
Your interview process, when structured properly, will give you all the evidence to support making the right hire each & every time. Because, as we all know, one bad hire can destroy your company!
Today we are talking about the power of digging deep on the “right” questions and utilizing AI to confirm your conclusions.
Our guest today: Scott Sandland, Founder & CEO of cyrano.ai
Scott is the former world's youngest hypnotherapist. A few companies (and decades) later he is the CEO of a company focusing on artificial empathy and strategic linguistics.
As a former executive director and CEO of a mental health clinic and longtime technologist, he has experience leading purpose driven organizations. He has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, Psychology Today, Forbes, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Today we discuss:
- Getting to the truth about the person in a video interview
- How to leverage AI to confirm your hiring decisions
Companies today have an interview process that is no better than a coin toss.
- No process
- Shallow (how can you help me)
- Or rely heavily on assessments for decision making
Challenge today?
- Understanding the mental state of the person you are interviewing
- How they are thinking allows you to understand a persons mindset now
- Analyzing the what and how things are said
- Keeping track of people
- Understanding how people will fit
- Correctly auditing the client pool at scale
- People are dishonest during interviews
- Creating a right fit with a specific management style
Why is this important to the company?
- A lot of the “right” people get screened out via a resume
- People who look good on paper/resume that don’t actually fit reality of job/culture
- How to manage/mentor the person you do hire
- Right person, wrong team… vision to see who will “blow up the locker room”
- Making sure you are in a position to get the most out of a new hire
- What burns them out/demotivates them and how to avoid it
- Allow you to really utilize all the features that are strengths (create a more well rounded team!)
How do we build into your company?
- Profile yourselves & your team
- Look at the relationships of what already exists
- Understand what you really need
- Make strategic decision for similarity or diversity
- Profile each person to interview
-
- Run youtube interviews /linkedin profiles through their system
- Get a head start on your hiring process
- Creating custom interview questions based on insights
- Measure relationships between interviewer and interviewee
- Confirm understanding of what motivates and what burns out
- Accountability vs recognition environments
- Gives the tools to accurately set performance metrics
- Makes the intangibles, tangible from the beginning.
- Hire
- Confirm fit & hire
Rick’s Nuggets
- Understand yourselves then build your company values around
- Do your homework, target & connect
- Interview for values first
Key Takeaways:
- Soft skills assessment of candidates is more important than resume checklist
- Consistency and transparency in that assessment is critical, which is why machines should be used instead of a person with moods and distractions
TAGS
#AI #data #videointerview #artificialempathy #strategiclinguistics
Links
LinkedIn: Scott Sandland
Website: cyrano.ai
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Why the 30, 60, 90 Day Job Posting Wins Hires with Dan Moore of Vaporware
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Our guests today: Dan Moore, Co-Founder & CEO of Vaporware
Dan is a trained computer scientist who helps clients craft ideas into scalable products. Always one for over-communication and compulsive attention to detail.
Dan co-founded Vaporware to help entrepreneurs take their software ideas to market. Over the past 7 years he has helped Vaporware deliver dozens of apps in Human Resources, Staffing, and Recruiting—all while building vaporware into a stellar organization.
Hiring a bench of developers, designers, and product managers is a challenge for any organization, but Dan has created 2 expert teams that combines all 3 roles at Vaporware.
Today we discuss:
- The 30,60,90 job posting; What it is & how it works
- How to build it for hiring success!
What is a 30/60/90 job posting?
- A better way to do job postings to find the right candidates.
- A list of objectives at different checkpoints (30-60-90 days)
- Designed to ensure proper onboarding and culture fit before the company invests too much.
What happened to drive this solution?
- Created out of personal desire because of the experience from prior companies- escape from past experiences
- How would we want to be hired?
- Tailoring to culture fit is much more important
- Allow people to do different things within one company
- Not looking at what they have but looking around ….
Why is this important to the company? Yes can meet those objectives!
- Limits company risk
- Shifts away from skills
- Keeping people onboard
- Retain people longer from 3-6 months to up over 4+ years
- Bottom line, higher attraction of more seasoned employees
Rick’s Nuggets
- 90 day performance metrics are a necessity for a successful hire
- Sets up the framework for the communication and expectation structure
- Clear guide of what needs to be accomplished by when
How do we build out a 90 day plan?
- Start with the end goal (6 months to a year)
- Stay with us forever: They’re bought into the mission and helping us define it
- Figure out how we can evaluate that in the first 90 days (limit our investment)
- Question what is realistic in 90 days?
- To get to 90 days
- Negotiation between desires and realism.
- Hope for the best but don’t negotiate your minimum expectations
- Define 60 and 30
- Break out what needs to happen for 90 to be successful = 60 days
- Break out what needs to happen for 60 to be successful = 30 days
- Keep flexible enough for applicant to define their own OKRs within that framework
- Post into job listing. Applicants can define OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) within that posting
- Reverse engineer what needs to be
- What are the OKRs
- Set up framework for people to self manage their goals
- Break things down into strategy
- Compelling ability to break things down for company
- Autonomy, bring people who are smarter and can teach us something
Rick’s Nuggets
- Additional formatting for the job add to attract passive people
- What’s in it for me?
- Solution
- Performance metrics
- Call to Action!
Key Takeaways:
- Align to culture first
- Have a 90 day plan
- Review and adjust the plan as you go
Full video of today's #hirepowerradio show available on YouTube
Guest Contact:
Vaporware website or Email: dan@vaporware.net
Links
Website: Vaporware
Vaporware's Sample: 30,60,90
#hirepowerradio #vaporware #hiring #founder #startup #business
Friday Sep 18, 2020
Friday Sep 18, 2020
Our guests today: Anne-Marie & Chuck Lerch, Co-Founder & CXO’s of HI Tech Hui
Chuck heads up Cybersecurity. been the CIO and CTO at numerous companies with great emphasis on security. His passion for secure networks is what led him to his love and vision to bring cybersecurity solutions to the Hawaiian islands.
Anne Marie is the CXO & Head of Counting Beans. Her love for business strategy and technology is what inspired her to start a consulting company in Hawaii. She specializes in project management for software development projects.
Today we discuss:
- Why it is important to secure your at home workforce
- Steps to take to mitigate the risk of being hacked
What are the security risks we are experiencing today with a remote workforce?
- Cyber crime is up over 650%
- Most office workers are working from home
- Companies and workers are ill equipped from a
- Culture Impact
- Technology Impact
- Depression
- Kids at home at same time
- Workers are can be less productive and not pay attention to what they are doing
Why is this important to the company?
- Money Loss
- Vendor hacks
- Moral Issues
- Productivity Issues
- Management Issues
- Home Issues
How do we secure our remote workforce?
- First we need to answer some questions and create a plan with our vCISO’s, CTO’s and Project Managers
- Understand what is at stake
- A hack can cost you millions of dollars!
- Depends on Company Budget and Industry
- HITRUST?
- CMMC
- NCUA, FFIEC -
- Healthcare ?
- Business with the Federal Government
- Banking
- Gap Assessment
- What are the weaknesses
- Corporate policies must align with security policies
- Cybersecurity hygiene
- Passwords -every login needs to have a different password!
- Remediation
- MFA- multi factor authentication
- Education & Monitoring
Key Takeaways:
- Implement education - security training, be aware so you don't get jacked
- Multifactor
- Securing the cloud infrastructure . secure the endpoints (computers) - configure against shady sites
- Monitor traffic
Guest Contacts:
Websites: HI Tech Hui, LLC or Cyberuptive
Friday Sep 11, 2020
Friday Sep 11, 2020
Today's Guest: Jerri Rosen, Founder & CEO of Working Wardrobes
Jerri’s organization helps over 5,000 men, women, veterans and young adults each year re-enter the workforce with career development services and professional wardrobing.
Today we are discussing:
- The hidden gem that is the veteran pool
- How to find and hire veterans to diversify your talent pool
Why Companies don't actively seek to hire veterans?
- Bias
- Think they all have ptsd
- Not knowing the value of the training that vets get in the military
- Not knowing the true value
- Too much bad press
- Painting with a brush that is very negative
- Vets fall on hard times because they miss the discipline/brotherhood
Why is this important to the company to hire veterans?
- Intense loyalty, when treated with dignity
- Absolutely mission driven
- Path of a veteran
- Make outstanding employees
- Can help recruit -underground network
How do we find and hire veteran talent? Decide to hire outside your comfort zone
- Outstanding, dedicated people
Finding Vets
- Active duty national guard or reserves (highly under employed)
- Vet spouses,
- Military connection through working wardrobes, on your own
- Vetnet team
Interviewing & Hiring
- Understand a MOS- military status
- Translate what was done in the military to civilian language
- Look past the acronyms
- Look for the passion & talents
- Experience & gravity of the work
- Look past the stoic demeanor
- Recognize that task at hand/orders need to shift to a “going above and beyond” mindset
- Requires a bit of patience
- Hire as normal
- Understand that everything was provided for them in the military
- Learning to operate in a very different world & culture
- Different level of expectations
Rick’s Nuggets
- Dig deeper on what work was done and look for transferable skills to justify
Key Takeaways:
- Veterans become a much better employee
- Veterans also bring a network of additional talent
- Looking to hire veterans, WW can be the one stop shop. Hidden Talent Pool!
Working Wardrobes is Rebuilding Careers, and we’ve teamed up with Hire Power Radio Show & Podcast to support this initiative.
The Hire Power Radio team has created limited edition shirts, the proceeds of which benefit Working Wardrobes. Together we can make a small dent in reeducating, coaching and providing resources for our transitioning veterans, professionals and workers affected by the current world landscape.
Get yours here: T-shirts
Guest Contact:
Website: Working Wardrobes
Office Number: 714-210-2460
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
What's your story?
"Well, we are funded by Greylock and we are disrupting a $30 Billion dollar industry. What else do you need to know?"
This is good information to know but it is not your story. I quickly became a very bored audience with this CEO. Ultimately your story is what draws people in and invites us to work with you. When communicating with the people you are needing to hire it is critical that your story inspire them to join.
Our guest today: Stepahanie Paul, Founder & Head of Training & Development of The Executive Storyteller Academy
Stephanie takes great pride in coaching developing executives, sales teams, TEDx speakers, Women in leadership and experts of all kinds, to become master communicators.
In fact, her proven approach, "Powerful Emotional Engaging Presentations," draws upon her years of rich and diverse entertainment experience as well as she is a certified trainer using 5 science based assessments for behavior and communication using Psychology and Neuroscience.
Today we are discussing:
- Why communicating your story is so critical from your hiring process through tenure
- A 3 step method maximizing your communication
Communicating effectively during an interview is riddled with assumptions, bias and shallow content. Rarely is communication deliberate and with purpose.
Challenge companies face today?
- Developing a person to be in more of and executive leadership role
- Understanding your True Values because your values whether you know them or not depict your behavior and your audience define you by your behavior and actions not by what you say.
- Many are so busy “doing the task” they have no concept of how you show up in the process of the task! Understanding your Stimulus Value
- Checking your behavior before you engage what do you want the audience to do, achieve, react in a certain way?
- No one wants to tell you how you show up because everyone just wants to keep the boss happy being open to feedback is the key to a growth mindset
- Developing lifelong learners for value added leadership that build engagement within themselves and their teams rather than dictators who only drive the bottom line and don’t see the wealth in their people.
- Great leadership is looking at the possibilities not the limitations and not focusing on your “Power” instead using your energy to empower others to ignite the leadership within themselves.
- The way you deliver is more important than what you say
- Come up with a great question to ask yourself on everything - Mine is “How do I make this more fun and engaging for the audience so they will remember?”
- Being hyper aware of how you show up and listening and reading your audience effectively
- Audience will always tell you what they need
- Energy you chose to bring to the table is super important!
Why is this important to the company?
- Immediate benefits to the team and individuals include better fits for task assignments and fewer, easier resolved conflicts. You will find these communication tools and understanding this type of developed skill set will also help you grow in your work and as a member of your field as well. The concepts we are talking about here can help you get a better understanding of yourself and your clients’ communication styles and motivations, which will help you more effectively respond to their needs. And because these are cutting edge concepts in the market space, will give you the opportunity to continue to grow as leaders in your industry.
How do we do it?
- Y: In the first component we use a series of assessments to build understanding around stimulus value and the areas of strength and opportunities for growth in the recipient. We then teach successful behavior, memorization and delivery techniques for connecting with an audience
- O: The overall objective is to teach the recipient effective ways (established in science) to build storytelling, supportive images, stimulating slide decks, and content that is dynamic and influential.
- U: The last component of “The Y.O.U Method” and the most important is the audience. We work with the recipient of the training to guide them through effective techniques to read and work with an audience so they develop deep engaging presentations based in our biology and how that works.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Yourself: must be your corporate values
- The person you are hiring is your audience
Key Takeaways:
- Always check in with where you are at, how you show up is a choice not a reaction to what just happened to you. Make sure that before you start communicating with your audience of 1 or 1001 you are emotionally and energetically where you need to be to achieve the results you want to achieve.. Self leadership is just as important as leading others.
- Learn to read the behavior or your audience, know how to check in and deeply listen to what they are communicating, research, prepare and listen to their needs and be value added.
- Make sure that your content supports your message (result) with powerful emotional images, stories and delivery. Make sure your accessories support you and make you shine rather than become a distraction.
Stephanie's resources:
I would love for you to become a founding member of our newly formed Facebook Group Executive Storytellers and follow us on Instagram @executivestorytellers
Instagram: https://vimeo.com/444640964
Facebook Group: https://vimeo.com/445080878
Here is a discount code to Stephanie's e-book that was released in February “The Why Guide To Story Hacking” use the Code: HACK4U
Thursday Aug 13, 2020
Unlimited PTO… The Pretend Time Off with Addam Gordon & Ulises Orozco of PTO Genius
Thursday Aug 13, 2020
Thursday Aug 13, 2020
But we have unlimited time off! Why would anyone not want to join a company with such a progressive time off schedule? Asked founder Sanjeev.
Two reasons, One PTO is a perk not a reason for joining a company. People will join and stay at your company when they believe in your vision and experience professional growth.
And Two, your company is a start up. No one is going to believe that with the aggressive production cycles that they can just take off and take advantage of this policy.
Our guest today: Adam Gordon & Ulises Orozco, Co-Founders of PTO Genius
With over 30 years of HR tech experience and a focus on employee benefits and leave management.
Adam & Ulises are serial entrepreneurs who founded PTO Genius to help companies increase job satisfaction, attract/retain top talent and lower payroll liability by re-imagining what employees can do with paid time off.
Today we discuss:
- The pros & cons of Paid time off structures
- How to implement the right structure for your unique company
Challenge today with Paid Time Off?
Potential liability for the company because it creates an environment where not self managed, managed like a traditional policy. Too dependent on the individual manager approval.
- Using unlimited as a marketing tool. But there really is no unlimited
- Creates more legal liability
- People either don't take time off or too much time off
- The bedrock to unlimited PTO is good culture. The bedrock of trust which can NOT be managed by managers.
Why is this important to the company?
- Culture
- Trust
- Mutual respect
- Accountability
- Unlimited PTO looks desirable to avoid the liability of the employment contract
- Avoid the management
- Payout at the end of employment
Rick’s Nuggets
- PTO is not a reason why people join your organization
- How PTO is managed/supported is a snapshot of your leadership style (which is the root of why people stay or leave your company)
- Benefits & perks are icing not the cake.
How do we do implement the right PTO policy?
Questions to Ask First: Can we trust our employees? Do I want to give managers the authority to manage when people are away?
- Starts with leadership and how you value the employee
- Communication- transparency
- Being Vulnerable as leaders
Start with the right culture. Most startups should start with a traditional PTO model
- Better to keep yourself out of a legal liability.
- Can't eat the cost of litigation
- Employees with unlimited PTO end up taking fewer vacation days than their limited PTO counterparts (13 days versus 15 days). SHRM source link HERE
If you want to implement an unlimited PTO policy
- Ask yourself if you are really built for it?
- Don't call it a “unlimited” policy but a “Self Directed” PTO
- Document the policy
- Define non starters- set up bumpers
- Manage that everyone has access to time off
- Encourage time off
- Creative time off incentives
- Assignment & tracking should be no disruption to workflow
- Set up a calendar where people know when people are off
- Hand off before someone goes away
Rick’s Nuggets
- Look at your company values and align your PTO policy with that which aligns with your leadership style
Key Takeaways:
- Unlimited policy- do you meet the above criteria. Is it truly self directed?
- Proactive hand offs
Guest Contacts:
Website: PTO Genius
Email: hello@ptogenius.com
LinkedIn: Adam Gordon or Ulises Orozco
Twitter: Adam Gordon or Ulises Orozco
Thursday Aug 06, 2020
Removing Bias in the Hiring Process with Bruce Marable of Employee Cycle
Thursday Aug 06, 2020
Thursday Aug 06, 2020
“I want to work with really smart people and here is a list of schools that this person will have graduated from” said Lawrence, the CEO. “I do not want to interview anyone who has not come out of one of these schools”.
My gut reaction was to simply say, “no thanks” and exit the meeting. Afterall, this CEO was going to be difficult to work with.
My response back was simply “Confirmation Bias”
We favor information that confirms our world view and this helps us to reduce any cognitive discomfort that discounts our values and realities. As Entrepreneurs, we are more susceptible to this bias because we are so focused on the task at hand. This reduces our ability to objectively make decisions that are best for the business.
Lawrence laughed, grabbed the sheet of paper and threw it in the trash. “Ok find me smart people”!
The truth is the strongest people often surface in the most unexpected ways and your bias clouds your vision of the truth!
Our guest today: Bruce Marable, Co-founder & CEO of Employee Cycle, the all-in-one People Dashboard
Bruce is a Philly-based serial tech startup founder. When Bruce is not helping HR leaders better use data to make smarter workforce decisions, he is making music playlists on Spotify, taking self-care at the boxing gym, or hunting for the best bread pudding around town.
Today we discuss:
- Why Bias needs to be eliminated from your hiring process
- How to deliver an unbiased, evidence based interview
Challenge today?
According to Wikipedia, Bias is defined as a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair.
We all have bias. It is important to eliminate it for one simple reason… Your company’s success
Why is bias elimination important to the company?
- More diverse companies succeed
- More revenue
- Higher productivity
- Cannot properly market to diverse groups of people/customers
- Totally different backgrounds bring different ideas
- More diverse individuals create more self awareness, well rounded thought process
- Disabilities
- Sexual orientation
- Ethnicity
- Ageism
- Re entering workforce
- Incarcerated
- Parenting
Rick’s Nuggets
- Innate Biases
- Overconfidence: Subjective confidence in ideas or decisions
- Illusion of control: overestimate ability to control situation or outcome
- Anchoring/Adjustment: past experience predicts plans for future
- Confirmation: preexisting beliefs- devalue contradictory information
- Cognitive tunnel vision
- Curse of Knowledge : experts assume similar content understanding in others
- Optimism: See the positive outcomes… delusional optimism
How do we solve the bias issue?
Mindset
- Open to People who are different
- Everyone is on equal footing
- Allow people come in as being perceived as qualified
- Vs. unqualified
- Reinforce that they are qualified
- Eliminate your assumptions- college degree
Actions
- Recruit from a diverse pool of job candidates
- Remove all language in job descriptions that may have bias.
- Standardize the interview questions.
- Perform the same due diligence on all candidates whether that candidate is a referral or not
- Give all candidates the same level of respect
- Blind the resume process
- Remove bias from likability
Rick’s Nuggets
- Customer experience mindset - applicants are your customers
- More difficult to say No than yes
- Conduct a qualifying call with most
- Interview questions
- Pre-determined and assigned to the individual interviewer according to the order in which they participate
- Must gather evidence to support the decision either way
- Feedback & closure
Key Takeaways:
- Acknowledge confirmation bias.
- Review the language in your job descriptions
- Standardize your interview questions
Guest Contact:
Friday Jul 31, 2020
Friday Jul 31, 2020
Key Points for Episode:
Timeline for Video Interviews - 72 hours
1- 45 minutes
2- 45 minutes
3- 45 minutes
4- 45 - 60 minutes
Decision - 24 hours from Final Interview
You must have your questions pre-written and assigned to the individual Interviewer
Questions designed to gain evidence of cultural alignment
** DO NOT just pick random behavioral questions!
They must have purpose and be tied to your company values!
Behavioral Questions
Follow up each question with the “How & What”
The purpose of each interview is to get to the “truth” of who this person is and how they align with company core values. Our goal with each question is to find hard evidence one way or the other. Past performance is a key indicator of future performance. We are going granular to understand the core of who this person is to fill your gut with accurate information to make the correct decision.
The Behavioral Interview: The simplest way to learn the behavioral model is to use STAR methodology. Let each interviewee outline the Situation & Task first. This is just the background of the story that you need to know to make the story make sense. Clear context! Look for difficulty, complexity or size of the challenge. What was the person trying to accomplish and why?
Approach: This is where we focus on the actions taken to address the issue, complete a task, solve a problem or improve the situation. We focus on the WHY here!
Focus in on this area the most and poke holes in the answers.
Each answer needs to be tested and must be followed up with why.
Look for Key details and explore them!
Why did you take that approach?
Why was that important?
Why did that work?
Results: What is the positive outcome for the story? What were the issues? Where did they fail? We are looking for tangible, supported evidence.
Video Interviews (Same Day Ideal)
- Ideal to line up back to back
- Schedule back to back or split them up 2/2 or 3/1
- Build a knockout question for each interviewer
Interview 1 - Cultural Value Alignment I
Interview 2 - Skills Screen
- Live working session to evaluate skills/communication
Interview 3 - Cultural Value Alignment II (optional) 24 hours from interview 2
Final Interview - Cultural Confirmation III & Offer preparation (Decision Maker)
Decision / Offer (24 hours max)
- Best to give immediate feedback
- Time kills hires, be decisive
Role Play
Interview Questions
Walk me through the steps you took to prepare for your last project / client presentation (preparation)
- What made those steps the most efficient?
- How did you do it specifically?
- Timeline set?
- Potential Challenges identified and how were they prioritized for consideration?
- What were the things you missed?
- What was the result?
- Why was this important to you?
**Give me an example of something you tried that failed miserably (keep light & fun)
(innovate without fear)
- What were the circumstances that justified the risk
- How was it implemented?
- What was the potential upside if it worked?
- What was missing?
- What would you have done differently?
- Why did it fail?
- What did you learn?
Tell me about a time when it was necessary to admit to others that you had made a mistake. (accountability)
- What was the specific mistake
- How did you identify the mistake?
- How did you handle it?
- Why did you choose that particular approach?
- What was the lesson learned?
- What did you do differently going forward?
Tell me about the last project you worked on where you were major time constraints (own it/quality effort)
- What steps did you take to ensure quality?
- What shortcuts were taken?
- What mistakes were made
- How did the client receive the work?
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Ever finished an interview with a great person and just felt unsure or maybe you need more data to make the decision either way?
This all too common scenario is caused by a poorly executed interview process and not asking intentional questions designed to gain the evidence to support a decision either way. Today we will be discussing how to avoid the pitfalls of this conundrum when hiring for your company.
Our guest today: Steve Pfrenzinger CEO & Head Peformance Coach of Pfrenzinger Agency, Inc.
Steve Pfrenzinger is an entrepreneur, a coach to entrepreneurs and a Hall of Fame investor in entrepreneurs. He’s also an author, speaker, and Self-Awareness expert helping entrepreneurs, innovators and change agents solve big problems. Steve is also a Forbes Coaches Council member.
Using his decades of experience building multiple 8-figure businesses, where he hired over 1,000 team members, Steve has helped hundreds of clients make better decisions, plus expose their career and business blind spots that can clear their path to success.
Today we are discussing
- Why gathering evidence is critical to support your decision
- What Steps need to be taken to avoid this conundrum
Why is gathering deep evidence important
- You have found a very good candidate, but you are just a little unsure, you want one more data point
- E.G., 3 said yes and one said no or “not sure”. then what?
- Finding out how people are “wired mentally” in DISC or Myers & Briggs might impact the decision
Why is this important
- Personality type is a predictor of future behavior and key to major hiring decisions
- Knowing one’s “preferences” is key, how they “lean” in certain situations, e.g., Thinker vs Feeler
- Ask Steve to define a “preference”
4 elements to the personality
- Compare DISC styles to Myers & Briggs types. Cheat sheet below. If you know one, you know the other. If you know neither, you need to find out.
- D = ET (Dominance = Extroverted Thinker)
- I = EF (Influence = Extroverted Feeler)
- S = IF (Stability = Introverted Feeler)
- C = IT (Consciousness = Introverted Thinker)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interview questions need to be intentional
- Digging deeper uncovers the truth…. How & Why?
- Must avoid injecting your own personal bias/agenda
How do we do it?
- Ask them for their DISC style or M&B type
- Have them take a test at www.16personalities.com
- Fast type them with Steve’s 2-page form, uses easy-to-learn computer metaphor
- Fast typing form, Steve has one for all that ask. Contact him at steve@stevepfrenzinger.com
What is Fast Typing?
- PIPO model
- Power
- Imput
- Process
- Output
Rick’s Nuggets
- Proper sequence: Interview => Assessment => Interview close
- Assessments often done too soon
Key Takeaways:
- Personality Type and the behavioral preferences (tendencies) it highlights can further insure the success of key hires.
- You can fast type others without a formal test in minutes, with the PIPO fast typing form
Check steve out at www.coachstevep.com or email him at steve@stevepfrenzinger.com He has many coaching and educational programs for executives and management teams, from entrepreneurial ventures to major corporations.
Friday May 22, 2020
How to Manage Remote Teams with Shiran Yaroslavsky of Cassiopeia Tech
Friday May 22, 2020
Friday May 22, 2020
A remote workforce has proven to be challenging to a lot of companies who have traditionally run operations from a centralized location. Aside from the technical issues (ie:security and connectivity) productivity, engagement and mental health become more difficult to manage. Today we take a dive into how we can utilize policies, tools and data to create a more engaged remote workforce.
Our guest today: Shiran Yaroslavsky, Co-Founder & CEO of Cassiopeia Tech
A startup that empowers managers that lead fully or partially remote teams to maximize workplace experience. Our solution delivers actionable insights to boost team collaboration, belonging, and mental health by analyzing communications patterns (not content) within and among teams. Shiran is an expert in all things related to data driven products and people analytics and was featured in 2019 Forbes 30 Under30 list.
In this episode we cover
- The problems of managing a remote workforce
- Providing direction on how to fix it
What are the remote work challenges are companies facing today?
- 77% Managers feel it is harder for them to manage their team remotely
- Don't have visibility, water cooler talk
- Creating a sense of belonging becomes more difficult (more than third were affected)
- Needs not being met.
- Need more empathy (fear, uncertainty) (36% of employees would like their managers to be more empathetic to their challenges at home to improve their work experience.).
- Lead with an open approach
- Be more sensitive to employees’ needs and how we interact.
Why is this important?
- Managers need to constantly asses the team pulse
- Remote teams are the future (GitLab report. 86% of respondents believe remote is the future)
- New skills and tools that help to adapt to the new environment
- Challenge with surveys
- People are fearing for their job
Rick’s Input
- Leaders must adapt, or parish
- Changes operational efficiency and the need for more hands on management
- Cuts the need for layers of management
What needs to happen for a company to be successful in managing a remote workforce?
There are 3 main domains companies should adjust in order to be successful in managing remote teams:
- Establish Remote Work policies & culture that are suitable for remote work. There are 3 things we need to pay attention to.
- Rules - We need to establish new rules for gaining clarity
Will we pay people for overtime if they work off-hours? How do we manage security and passwords? - Norms - When do we email, text, or message people? Are cameras always on for online meetings? How do we run and manage meetings?
- Design our broader company DNA -
- Rules - We need to establish new rules for gaining clarity
- How do we communicate when we aren’t satisfied with something? How can we stay connected while working remotely?
Establishing the right culture will help us to foster trust - Training for managers
- My interview with Amy Cappellanti-Wolf. Today the new leader is more about empathy. It’s still about driving for results but in a more collaborative way. Much more listening and a lot more guiding rather than directing.
The new leader also needs to be more flexible and innovative to adapt to the new challenges as the world is changing very fast. - Training can help to gain these new skills.
- My interview with Amy Cappellanti-Wolf. Today the new leader is more about empathy. It’s still about driving for results but in a more collaborative way. Much more listening and a lot more guiding rather than directing.
- Tools needed
- Working remotely is not just working from the office only with Zoom. Working remotely creates new challenges for leaders. According to our data - 77% of managers indicate it’s harder for them to manage their team remotely. There is a workplace experience gap that technology can help in closing.
- Team Insights tools.
It is more challenging to use Surveys for feedback tools (employees are busy and insecure while as a manager you need fast real-time insights to act on).
- Team Insights tools.
- Communication shifted to online - people analytics can empower remote managers.
- Examples from Cassiopeia - We analyze communication patterns to provide actionable insights to improve collaboration, belonging and mental health.
- For example - create a healthy workday balance. Experience of new employees
-
- Communication platforms (zoom, Slack etc)
- Collaboration tools - to share documents, thoughts, goals.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Your policies need to start with your interview process and carry through to onboarding and tenure. Not just when the person is already working for you
- Implement the same management tools in the hiring process. It provides a real life picture of how you work.
Key Takeaways:
- Be Aware of the workplace experience gap created by the shift to remote work
- Design the right policies and company culture to allow your company to prosper while working remotely.
- Use the right tools to boost your teams’ collaboration, communication, and employee experience.
Thursday May 14, 2020
Thursday May 14, 2020
There is a flood of great talent on the market and the competition for those limited positions is heating up. With this rise in the talent pool the ability to properly access applications is a major challenge. The bar has been raised! Are you leaving good people on the table?
Our guest today: Shawn Sheikh, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Pivot CMO
Shawn is a Silicon Valley & Beach serial entrepreneur and Y Combinator alumni. His specialty is helping companies scale from $0 to multi-millions in revenue, through both conventional paid acquisition and non-conventional growth hacks.
Apart from Pivot CMO, Shawn loves to work with founders to find creative ways to scale their businesses and owns and invests in a portfolio of small to medium sized businesses
Today we are discussing
- The challenges in a heavy applicant reply market
- How to effectively screen applicants to avoid false positives
What are the issues you are finding in screening applicants
- Quality
- Response rate
- Don't want to do the case study
Right Approach?
- Reply with application (google form)
Phone Screening
- Report to person call screen
Rick’s Input
- Job description- performance metrics and call to action
- CTA: 3 questions for submittal - to be completed for all applications
- Timing of the event…. ie: when to do a test
- Phone screen for Purpose
Current process that works
- Application process does work (cuts from 3k to 300)
- 20-30 people are qualified (phone screen)
- 75-80% show up for phone screen
- 6-8 to interview
- 1-2 to offer
Referrals- from employees
- 4 all hires
- One referral from a person they
Process
- Applicant review/application
- Phone screen -50% technical/ 50% fit
- Walk through assignment
- Test
- Interview
- Offer
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interview Structure & process tied to your Company values
- “What are you capable of achieving?”
- Make the call based on the person’s answers rather than the resume
Key Takeaways:
- Better screening questions during the process
- Addressing people’s needs before money
- Owning who you are!