Hire Power Radio Show
 

Hire Power Radio Show

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#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

Interviewing Patience Right Person Force Multiplier with Jeff Leitman

Friday Apr 26, 2024

Friday Apr 26, 2024

It’s human nature to get away from pain as quickly as possible. 

As painful as it is to have an open role, it is even more painful to fill that role with a person who brings more pain. And that pain is most often delivered in the form of the Wrong Person in the Right Seat. 

Today we are going to discuss what this means and how to have the patience to work through finding the right person for the right seat. 

Guest Bio: 

Jeff Leitman is the Founder and CEO of Rocksteady Corp. Rocksteady specializes in the production of the Rocksteady Stadium speaker system, renowned for its high fidelity and connectivity, and is distributed across North America. Family, team members, and creating a positive and supportive work environment are the foundations of the organization.

As a hands-on CEO, Jeff prioritizes the development and empowerment of his team, partners, and vendors, fostering sustainable long-term relationships. 

Problem:  

  • Right person = Aligns with company values, buys into the mission (value)
  • Right Seat = Skills & capacity to do the work
  • 70% of successful hiring is Alignment …. 30% is skills
  • The focus is on the skills and stopping the pain quickly. 
  • 100% focus on skills and hope it works out

Finding the patience to hire the strongest person requires discipline. Especially when there is a dire need to remove the work from your plate. 

Challenge today?

  • In a startup environment, how to define roles to fill first, and how to ensure that role is defined properly and filled with the right person.
  • Roles that need to be done but I can’t support or prioritize or don’t enjoy doing - finding people who enjoy their roles, are capable of filling the role, and who fit within the company culture.  
  • Marketing, Sales, Accounting… for me, this was part of the A-team I needed.  Creative, fulfillment, and supply chain 
  • I love this and thus don’t need a senior person as quickly.
  • Or I need help to do it better, and I can be a positive partner and influence in driving a good result.
  • Remain engaged in the role, even if you hate it.  Example:  I hated marketing, and hired people to do it for me.  It wasn’t until I learned to embrace it that it became effective.

Why is this important to the company?

Adding the right person is a force multiplier, and allows the company to grow at an accelerated pace.  Hiring the wrong person is the exact opposite, so be diligent.

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • Skills-based hiring is transactional
    • Low perceived value
    • Lower engagement
    • Biggest offer wins
  • Narrow focus- “Just fill this role quickly” 
    • Missing culture/value alignment 
    • Costs the company 3-7X the cash spent
      • Opportunity cost loss
      • Productivity
      • Disengagement 

How do we solve the problem? 

  1. Define the position in detail, and be sure the candidate hits all the “has-to-have” criteria.
  2. Don’t be lazy, keep going.  Interview more people, check references, think of more questions.  Be certain.
  3. Don’t overplay your emotional position in an interview.  Don’t fall in love with them (and see what you want to see), keep them talking.  You lose power when selling your company too hard and too soon.
  4. Work ethic is as important as knowledge or skills.
  5. Expose the elephant in the room. 
  6. Check references, and ask the right questions - are they biased?  Were they good managers?  What was the result and reason for the separation?
  7. What is their motivation?  Can you keep them motivated (financially, career path)?  And will they be happy employees?
  8. Our process is not overly-formalized.  If employees do the first interview, I provide guidance and direction but encourage my managers to also have their own criteria (counterpoint discussion).

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • Strongest Person = 
    • Positioned well (desire) 
    • Core values aligned
  • Accurate Seat =
    • Capacity to do the work and grow
    • Boost performance
    • Increase productivity

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! 

  • Adding the right person is a force multiplier, and allows the company to grow at an accelerated pace.  Hiring the wrong person is the exact opposite, so be diligent.
  • Hire people who enjoy what they are doing.
  • Remain engaged in the role, even if you hate it.  Example:  I hated marketing, and hired people to do it for me.  It wasn’t until I learned to embrace it that it became effective.
  • Be disciplined, be prepared, have a plan.

Guest Links:

Host Links: 

Powered by Intertru 

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How Skipping Process Bites You With Bill Snyder

Thursday Apr 18, 2024

Thursday Apr 18, 2024

Having a need often clouds reason. Especially when it comes to hiring and the interview process. There is work to be done and no one is doing it.

So you prioritize filling the gap with a warm body, rather than focusing on the right person in the right seat. How’s that been working out for you?? 

Short-cutting the interview process is never a good idea because when you do, It will most often bite you in the ass!

Guest Bio:

Bill Snyder is the CEO of digital health startup Vivante Health, the employee benefit for GI care. Bill works with Fortune 500 companies and large health plans, including Walmart and Cigna's Evernorth, to reduce GI-related healthcare costs. 

He secured a Series B fundraise in September 2023, which was led by high-profile VC firms Mercato Partners and Health Catalyst Capital. Bill’s success in various leadership roles has been a result of building strong teams and learning each day from those he is fortunate enough to work with.

Challenge today?

  • Moving too fast on hiring and not following a detailed process leads to poor hiring. 
    • Anytime you negotiate against yourself it never works out well
    • Deviation from the process does not end well either. 
    • Never skip steps
  • Culture
    • Clear about what they value and answer that they don't. 
    • What they are looking for and not looking for
    • Mission-driven organization
    • Why us?
    • Does align with the mission, not a fit

Why is this important to the company?

  • Culture is built by people at the company. 
    • Strong culture has been driven by the people
    • Engagement (#)

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Set people up for success even if it is outside

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Three things:
    • 1) Put process in place early 
    • 2) Ensure there is transparency, collaboration, and accountability across the team for all hiring managers and all positions
    • 3) Never settle
  • Plan on recruiting, interviewing, and ongoing cultural engagement
    • Having one
    • Healthy Job description- core themes, 
    • Put together the interview panel
  • Mission and Culture front and center
    • Formal presentation- evidence of the work
    • Feedback on the work
    • Interview for coachability 
  • Holding each other accountable with the process
    • Collaboration with co-workers
    • Full visibility for everyone across the organization
    • Same process. 

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Job description- focus on them (WIFM)
  • Intense process - determined on what the business needs. Working session. 
  • Accountability- the process is a value chain for the candidate- attracts a

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! 

  • Start the process early and adhere 
  • Always include culture early

Guest Links:

Host Links: 

This show is Powered by Intertru

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When HR Takes Away The Nerf Guns With Steven Freidkin

Friday Apr 05, 2024

Friday Apr 05, 2024

People like to join small organizations because they are challenging and fun. There are few rules to follow and very little red tape. 

As the company grows, it becomes necessary to formalize business processes. With process comes rules and before you know it… Poof someone gets shot in the eye and the Nerf guns get taken away.

Some might view this as a good thing, but the high performers who built the business do not. Take away the fun and they will just go somewhere else.

Guest Bio:

Steven Freidkin is the Founder and CEO of Ntiva, Inc., a full-service technology firm offering managed IT services including cybersecurity, strategic consulting, cloud solutions, and business process automation. Founded in 2004, Ntiva now has over 450 employees who serve over 1400 clients. 

Steven is an active member of a multitude of boards and organizations including Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He is a big believer in purpose-driven organizations and leads Ntiva with this in mind.

Problem:

Challenge?

  • The employee was shot in the eye
  • Solving the problem without taking the fun out of the workplace 
  • Out-of-the-box ways to keep things light, fun and enjoyable
  • Create cultures and environments that make things fun

Why is this important to the company?

  • The people team is to support and keep the company fun
  • Rules cannot be the default- 
  • Manage issues as exceptions
  • Decisions made understanding our purpose of growing people and our core values
    • Care
    • Ownership
    • Responsiveness
    • Excellence
  • Original mistakes are okay if made under this framework

Rick’s Nuggets

  • People appreciate the small things much more than work
  • When fun is a core value, it must be protected!

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Existence is to grow people
  • Core values are the framework 
  • Keeping the company fun
  • Being intentional
  • Being tolerate of only the outcome you want
  • As you scale, naturally create more structure/rules to limit liability
  • Limit the rock star talent because you are telling people they have to follow rules
  • Other ways to solve the problem
  • The best talent comes from company referrals 114 referrals in 2023 
    • Stories become things talked about and create referrals
    • Retained longer

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Retention is more important than compliance 
  • Attrition happens when people feel like they start feeling restricted and are no longer growing

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! 

  • Question every requirement- what are the other
  • You win talent by differentiating yourself from the competition
  • Aligned motivations around the why & purpose

Guest Links:

Host Links: 

This show is Powered by Intertru, Inc.

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Driving Culture Change with Jason Lippert

Thursday Mar 21, 2024

Thursday Mar 21, 2024

How do you change company culture when the values of the CEO evolve? 

We all understand that to grow as a company, people need to embrace change. Yet a lot of us fear change because it requires us to work on ourselves. Which is uncomfortable. 

But here is the truth, when you fear change the business will outgrow you and then change becomes inevitable!

Guest Bio: Jason Lippert, President & CEO of LCII

Jason has helped grow the company from $150 million in 2003 to over $5.1 billion  with over 12,000 team members world-wide.

Jason has initiated a cultural transformation within the company known as Everyone Matters. 

To stress a truly human culture in the business, he implemented a Culture and Leadership team who strives to grow the company’s team members through  coaching and working on personal and professional development.

 Problem:  

  • Changing culture Story
    • Didn't realize there was a problem until he was enlightened by Bob Chapman's Ted Talk (Truly Human Leadership)
    • allocating resources to culture development/change
    • Hired someone to own culture
    • 2013 - 5k people

Challenge today?

  • A lot of tenured people resisted
    • Produce good results, I don't need to change
    • Front lines of the business
    • Show up, get work done, and go home
  • A lot more personal transformation
    • One person was in a bad place in her life and was contemplating suicide.
    • Leadership cared enough to start working with her and demonstrated that they cared. 

Why is this important to the company?

  • Main driver 
    • He was working in a different space, running fast and hard
    • It felt empty
    • Praying to god to discover his purpose. 
    • Mentored by the speaker
    • Learned that there is a different way to win
  • Business Impact
    • More people decide to show up here tomorrow. Compelling to be here 
    • High retention
    • Profitability from $1B-$5B over the 10-year span

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Core values are driven by the CEO 
  • How you act filters down

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Push into change
    • Required leaders to get evaluated behind core values
    • Teaching becomes 
    • Attrition - terminations, resisting and bowing out. 
    • Had to exit some high-level leadership positions
    • Didn't want to be coached or change
  • 88% of people work for a company that feels that the company does not care about them
    • It made sense to execute on culture that has an immediate impact
    • A lot of people bowed out
    • When they replaced the people who did not resonate with the culture did more damage than they realized
    • Every time a person left the company, people rejoiced
    • Fear of speaking up- They are always listening
  • Surprised him
    • Winning more than before but impacting people in the community, people's lives
    • Transformation of people's family lives because they are treated better
    • How devastating bad leadership has on people's family lives

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Make the commitment no matter how much resistance
  • It has to be REAL 
  • You have to live the values

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! 

  • No matter how big, someone needs to own culture and leadership development. As serious as any other function of the business. Telling everyone that this is important to us
  • Take time to goal set with every person in the business- front-line team members
  • Brings passion and energy to the business - competitive advantage, people stay longer because they care more.

Guest Links:

Host Links:

Follow the Hire Power Radio Show on LinkedIn. 

Guest referrals: andrea@stridesearch.com

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Creating a Purpose-Driven Company with Jay Wilkinson

Thursday Mar 14, 2024

Thursday Mar 14, 2024

Core values are powerful. But core values driven by purpose are unstoppable! Today we are going to take a deep dive into an entrepreneur who has built not one but two highly successful businesses by not just living core values but tying purpose and giving back into the daily routines of the company. 

And their results have been extraordinary!  

Our guest today:  Jay Wilkinson,  Founder of Firespring, Bloom Growth & Do More Good Movement

Firespring—a Nebraska-based Certified B Corporation featured by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 50 Places to Work in America. 

His TEDx talk on company culture has more than 1 million views. Currently, Jay leads the Do More Good Movement —an organization he founded in 2018 to help save capitalism. 

Jay appears on CNN and other news outlets discussing the important role that purpose-driven companies play in the U.S. economy.  

Problem:

Story:

One person- volunteering wasn't their thing. Ended up parting ways

Volunteering creates an issue that you don't have someone's back as you defer work to another person. 

Challenge today?  Why is this difficult to do? 

Aside from core values- tied to their purpose statement. A major part of the company ethos.

  • Candidates lie to themselves 

Core values (15 years)

  • Bring it every day
  • Have each other's back
  • Give a shit

Why is this important to the company?

Came from experience as a kid. Spending time volunteering and sharing the value with the people he works with. 

How it correlates to the business. Servant leadership mindset. They serve mostly non-profits. The could not serve their clients without walking the talk. 

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Core values are how people naturally operate
  • Purpose is the glue that satiates desire. Validates belonging

How do we solve the problem? 

Let’s start with Interviewing for Purpose Alignment

  • Interview question: Tell me about the last time you donated your time

Jay’s Formula:

Power of 3

  • 1% topline revenue donated
  • 2% of products and services are in kind given away
  • 3% of people 1 full day a month

Volunteer hours- paid time off during work

Uplifting community 

Quarterly conversations

  • The manager asked for advice. Worked through the issue
  • Put the person on a PIP. 
  • The conflict was resolved by editing from the company.

Cover Anti-values- the act

  • Talk about it
  • A lot of nuance, a lot of gray
  • Part ways as soon as they know

How to identify it in the interview

  • Create dialog to get to know beyond the trite responses. 
  • Gotten really good at finding high performers who are introverts. 
  • Use the culture index, and ask questions to understand who they are. 

The company is powered by purpose

Values hall of fame

Rick’s Nuggets

  • You NEED to gain evidence that your purpose is important to them …. 
  • Unpeel the onion… dig deeper
  • The purpose of the interview is to “Understand the Truth”

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today!  - (Values from guest)

  • Vet candidates for alignment with the company’s purpose and vision -- not just core values. People want (and need) to be part of something that’s bigger than themselves.
  • Define clear and precise job requirements - including skill, experience, and personality/attributes.
  • Use assessment tools to understand natural, inherent behaviors and modify questions to get at the heart of who the applicant is.
  • Create a great candidate/interviewee experience. If this applicant is not the perfect fit, but they have a positive experience, they’ll spread the word.
  • Screen to hire Learners, not Knowers. 

Guest Links:

LinkedIn: Jay Wilkinson

Companies: Firespring  Do More Good Bloom Growth

Host Links:

LinkedIn: Rick Girard

Company: Intertru

Book: Healing Career Wound

Follow the Hire Power Radio Show on LinkedIn to get the latest episode!

 

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The 10 Disciplines with Gino Wickman

Monday Jan 30, 2023

Monday Jan 30, 2023

Being a startup entrepreneur is a struggle. 

As some of you know, I recently joined the ranks of a startup founder. In November we launched Intertru and boy, my world has moved to light speed to a totally new dimension. It has become ridiculously exciting!

But there is one huge challenge… maintaining operational discipline. 

My struggle comes from the need to put out fires and execute critical projects outside of my expertise. Making it difficult to stay disciplined in a workflow cadence that produces results.  

Today we are going to key in on 10 Disciplines that you can implement today in your life to produce consistent results to the benefit of your company growth!

Guest Bio:

Gino Wickman is the Author of Traction & founder of EOS Worldwide, an organization that helps tens of thousands of businesses implement EOS with the aid of an international team of almost 600 professional and certified EOS Implementers and online support. There are over 180,000 companies using the EOS tools worldwide.

Today Gino focuses on helping entrepreneurs and leaders maximize their freedom, creativity, and Impact through his books:

Entrepreneurial Leap, Rocket Fuel, The EOS Life, and The 10 Disciplines for Managing And Maximizing Your Energy.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

  • What are the 10 disciplines 
  • Discuss the most relevant to startup entrepreneurs

PROBLEM: 

  • Discipline
    • We are all balls of energy – some burn bright, some don’t
    • You are racehorses (entrepreneurs/leaders) – harness energy
    • Don’t have to motivate/teach basics – eat, sleep, exercise, work ethic
    • Each stands on its own, fully customizable
    • Fast, simple and powerful

Challenge?

  1. 10-year thinking
  2. Take time off
  3. Know thyself
  4. Be still
  5. Know your 100%
  6. Say no…often
  7. Don’t do $25 an hour work
  8. Prepare every night
  9. Put everything in one place
  10. 10. Be humble

How do we solve the problem? 

  1. 10-year thinking
  • Shift your mind from short-term thinking, to thinking in 10-year timeframes
  • Every decision is a 10-year decision/thinking, not a goal
  • Sam Cupp – 10-year business cycle
  • When you do – time slows, a peace comes over you, make better decisions and
  • get there faster
  • Quote “Overestimate one year…”
  • Les Brown “Good Decade”
  • Shifts energy
  • Action – write date 10 years from now, write age, write goal
    • Other things are ok
    • Now think about everything you are doing today
    • See it every night
  1. Say no…often
  • Say no to everything that doesn’t fit in the first 5 disciplines
  • Warren Buffett quote/”No! No!”
  • “…physical discomfort/guilt…” – Essentialism, Greg McKeown
  • Eat a worm?
  • If it doesn’t fit with the first 5 disciplines – say no
  • Turn to person – say “No!”
  • Action – say no to something in the next 7 days/cancel an appointment
  1. Prepare every night:
  • Before your head hits the pillow every night, document the next day’s plan
  • Go to bed knowing exactly tomorrow
  • Sleep better
  • Spontaneous – BS, come one, if you’re running a company, you don’t have the luxury
  • Subconscious does the work
  • Wake up with ideas/solutions
  • Get more done
  • As opposed to waking up and figuring it out
  • Use any technology – I use a legal pad
  • Action – do it tonight
  1. Put everything in one place
  • Pick the one place you will capture every idea, commitment, thought, action item and promise
  • Let people down/chaos/sticky notes
  • The legal pad
  • Throughout the day write down your commitments, promises, ideas, to-do’s
  • Compartmentalize all at the end of the day
  • Action – pick your “one place” and do it tomorrow

Guest Links:

Host Links: 

Show Sponsor:

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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

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • The first team
    • It’s all about positioning
      • Really desire what you are (ie: ground-level startup with no money)

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:

Host Links: 

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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
  • 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

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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
  • 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

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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

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Hiring with Poorly Defined Metrics of Success with Kurt Davis of Stealth Smiles Startup

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. 

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Aligning the “Why” in the Interview Process with Ted Bradshaw of EOS Worldwide

Thursday Nov 10, 2022

Thursday Nov 10, 2022

“People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. - Simon Sinek

How does this translate to your hiring? The simple answer is that your company's WHY is the one thing that differentiates whether a person joins for the paycheck or something bigger. Because it is important to them.  It is the WIIFM (what's in it for me)

Right person, right seat needs to happen, every time. Your company depends on it!

When we hire solely for skills. We experience the Wrong person, Right seat more than 51% of the time. 

When we hire for values first, and skills second, it moves us closer to a 75% success rate of Right Person, Right Seat. 

In addition, when we are in alignment with the “WHY”, the probability of successful hiring skyrockets over the 95 percentile. 

This is how everyone wins. Right person, right seat every time.

Guest Bio:

Ted Bradshaw is an Expert EOS Implementer™ & Community Leader at EOS Worldwide. 

He served as an executive with Xerox and IBM, then left the Fortune 500 world to explore the thrills of entrepreneurship. 

What he found was a long string of success that looked great on the surface. But underneath it all, he felt anxious, exhausted, and stressed, chasing money wherever it led and wondering why he never felt fulfilled. Along his journey, Ted gained valuable insight into how a person can achieve fulfillment in all aspects of life and he shares those insights with his best-selling book, Stop Chasing Squirrels.

Today, Ted lives his passion in helping others find theirs. A leading proponent of the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, Ted is a speaker, author, Expert EOS Implementer™, and the Community Leader for EOS Worldwide

TODAY WE DISCUSS

  • The importance of aligning WHY 
  • How to hire the person that aligns most with your WHY

Challenge?

  • Organizations need to change their frame
    • Purpose alignment
    • Company helps the person achieve their purpose
    • Right people, right seat
  • Understanding how to develop or bring in people to scale
    • How does the mission complement their people 
    • Not selling on the company purpose
    • Employee’s mission/purpose

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • Core values are the foundation of your company WHY
    • Values drive purpose (WHY) & mission
    • Align with values, adopt the why as your own 
  • Align with purpose but not the values?
    • Passionate about the “work” 
    • Disruptive to the organization
      • Operate in a manner that is counter-productive to the rest of the organization?
      • Wrong person, right seat

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Clear on Core Values
    • Mission to mars exercise
    • Culture of the organization 
    • Founder or exec team often generates
    • Jim Collins - Built to Last
    • This is the definition of right person for the company
    • Right people on the bus
  • Hard look a the company mission
    • Look through the lens of the employee
    • Why does this matter to them
  • Understanding the employees purpose
    • Leaders need to understand their why first
    • Help theme to get there
    • Or find it

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • Core Values
    • Define what they mean in terms of how we operate, make decisions and treat others
    • Measurables to avoid being subjective 
  • Getting to the WHY
    • Attract & repel people
    • “Everything we do is to help entrepreneurs to build the strongest companies. Starting with the roots of effective interviewing to hire the strongest people”
  • Proactive Interviewing
    • Listen first  
      • Why open?
      • What is desired (positioning)
  • Candidate ownership of the process  (do they WANT it?)
    • “What would you like to do?”
    • “What value would you get from moving forward?”
  • Working session (Capacity to do the work)
    • Real-life working scenario 
    • Solving a real problem
    • Understanding:  technical skills, problem-solving abilities, communication style, presentation skills, team interaction, passion for the work

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Look at your own personal purpose. Ist it aligned with the company purpose
  • Ask leaders what their purpose is and how does it align with the company

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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

  1. What the company needs or needs to know in our case.
  2. 3 things we are looking to have them accomplish - alignment
  3. 3 interviews at minimum
  4. Gut check - (culture, willingness to learn)
  5. 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.

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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.

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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:

Host Links: 

Show Sponsor:

  • www.intertru.ai
  • www.stridesearch.com

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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:

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

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How Conversational Interviews Breed Bias & Discrimination with Robert Hudock of Hudock Employment Law Group

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
  • Birth date
  • Date of attendance or completion of school
  • Any question, the answer to which may have information indirectly revealing or suggesting that applicant is 40 or over (e.g., “how old are your children?”)

National Origin  

Inquiries re verification of legal right to work in US
  • Where born (applicant or applicant’s relatives)
  • Where applicant grew up
  • Applicant’s nationality or nationalities (e.g., Polish, Iraqi, Mexican)

  

Marital Status/Family 

Virtually nothing
  • Whether applicant is married
  • Whether applicant has children; or number or ages of children

Religion

Statements re regular days, hours, or shifts of the position
  • Applicant’s availability to work on specific days or during specific hours (could reveal religion if unique religious days or times are observed) 
  • Can be anything relating to religious creed (all aspects of religious belief, observance, and practice, including religious dress and grooming practices)

 

  • 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:

Host Links: 

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

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The Perfect Recruiting Email with Dustin Riechmann of Simple Success Coaching

Thursday Sep 29, 2022

Thursday Sep 29, 2022

Do you ever wonder why only a small percentage of people respond to your recruiting emails? 

The answer is that there is nothing in it for them. 

Especially if the person you are trying to recruit is already working. 

Let’s be honest, selling people on what we NEED only attracts people who are actively looking, and 99% of messages all sound the same! 

Here's why we are great…
What we need…
What we offer…
Skills you must have… 
Ending with the hurdles you have to leap, to talk to us

To gain higher response rates, and attract the people you need to respond, we must first change our positioning. Starting with answering the question, “what’s in it for them” above and beyond just a paycheck.

Guest Bio:

Dustin Riechmann, owner of Simple Success Coaching, is a strategic marketing coach who helps mission-driven entrepreneurs rapidly increase profits and massively grow their network using a Partnership Marketing System.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

  • Recruiting messaging
  • How to write a solid cold email

Challenge?

  • Low response rates to outreach
  • Viewed as a spammer
  • Ineffective or confusing communication

Why is this important to the company?

  • Effects reputation
  • Need communication to grow
  • Every missed communication opportunity costs money
  • Lost opportunity

Rick’s Nuggets

  • No value, no response

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Perfect Pitch Email
    • This template has proven to be highly effective at getting positive replies from potential partners in a single cold-pitch email.  It consists of 5 key components:
  • Direct email address
    • Hunter.io, Chatterworks, Swordfish
    • Social media profiles, Google search
    • Bypass gatekeepers
    • Avoid filters
  • Curious subject line
    • Something Personal (reference an episode number for a podcast)
    • Job is to get someone to open the email
    • From field matters
    • Sample: dog poop
  • Relational Anchors (beginning) 
    • Not a random weirdo from the internet
    • Find the point(s) you have in common
    • Demonstrate you’re familiar with their work/interests/passions
    • Flatter them!
  • Clear Win for the Person You’re Pitching (middle) 
    • Demonstrate how you will add value to them
    • Compelling bullet point summary
    • Eyes may go here first so make it super interesting
  • Clear Ask (end) 
    • Call-to-action that’s an easy yes
    • “Are you interested?”
    • Simple signature with a single link to your site

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Craft messaging toward the people that won't normally respond
  • Target the top 10%
  • Subject Line
    • Subject:
    • Real quick or How’s my Telepathy?
  • Opener
    • Thought-provoking, laugh or cry
    • I know you have been eagerly anticipating my email but just received your telepathic message so I apologize for taking so long to get back to you ;-). 
  • Acknowledge the Pain  (Pain)
    • Reason to not ignore
    • “I understand you are pretty good at your job but your talents in XXXX (personalize) may be a bit underappreciated (or underutilized, under-challenged, or over-managed)  in your current role. Obviously, I am not sure about your situation but I wanted to find out if you are open to hearing about a situation that could provide more impact on you both personally & professionally.”
  • Call to Action (Benefit loaded)
    • I'm here to listen…. 
    • “The signals I received from you were strong and I get your urgency. We should talk as I may be able to help alleviate your pain!
    • Let me know your availability for a quick phone conversation this afternoon. If the timing is off, please respond “Not Interested” so that I do not fill up your Inbox with additional messages. (- for LinkedIn) I look forward to your response.”

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • How to craft compelling emails that get an 80% response rate when sent to “cold” prospects, recruits or partners.

Guest Links:

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

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
  • 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
    • 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?
  • 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?
  • 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

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:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

Hiring Without Money with William Glass of Ostrich

Thursday Sep 15, 2022

Thursday Sep 15, 2022

How do you hire people when you have no money? 

While this may seem like an impossible task, the truth is that it is not as difficult as you might think. It starts by understanding what is important to the individual. Then connecting their desire your the value of your opportunity. 

Compensation comes in a lot of different forms and money is just one piece of the equation. Professional growth, challenging work, strong leadership, mission, purpose, mentorship, and equity are also forms of compensation. 

The most powerful form of compensation you can offer is the one thing that is REALLY  important to the individual that you need to hire.

William Glass is the Co-Founder & CEO of Ostrich, a financial habit-building app that uses community and social accountability to help people achieve their financial goals. 

In addition, William is the host of the Silicon Alley Podcast which focuses on telling entrepreneurs’ stories & learning from their experiences. His background is in software sales leading sales teams at Gartner and opening up a new vertical for an AI startup, Remesh. 

In 2014, Will was awarded a Fulbright scholarship through the U.S State Department where he taught English in rural Thailand. Glass has his B.A. in International Relations from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Will is originally from Alabama and now resides in Queens, New York.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

  • How to hire strong people without money
  • Outline steps to take to compensate with limited funds

Challenge?

  • Not in the financial position to bring someone on full-time.
  • Almost outsourced everything during the pandemic but would’ve spent all of the little money we had. 
  • Both wanted to work together but could not afford a salary
    • Set financial metrics
    • Funding challenge
  • Found someone through referral

Why is this important to the company?

  • No other way to build the MVP

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • Take your time
    • Really understand a person's desire
    • Does your opportunity fill that desire? 

Solution:

  • No code
    • Built using no-code and hacked along the first version of the app
    • Couldn’t do all of the key functions so sought a full-stack dev familiar with the no-code tool
  • Referral
    • Found developer through a referral on the no-code forum.
    • Brought them on to extend the no code version.
    • Liked working together, but after the no code tasks were completed no budget to bring on full-time.
    • Mission aligned and interested in working together.
    • Neither of us is in a financial position to pay a salary nor to not take a salary with 5 kids.
  • Created a unique way to solve both needs.
  • Agreed to bring Stephen our developer on full-time when we were in a position to do so.
  • In the interim:
  • Banking hours
    • Tracked hours worked as a contractor but rather than billing us, he banked them.
    • Those hours are paid back on a revenue share basis.
  • Equity vesting
    • Equity vesting began when the engagement began.
  • Revenue share
    • A small percentage of revenues goes to paying off the banked hours.
  • Triggering mechanism for salary
    • Once the company hit certain financial milestones, Stephen to come on board full-time.
  • Life changed
    • Altered the agreement before hitting financial metrics.

Rick’s Nuggets:

  • Resourceful
    • Identify people you want to work with
    • Reach out and have conversations 
  • Ooze Value

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • If there is alignment in mission & desire to work together, and you can find creative solutions that meet both the company's and individual’s needs.
  • Ask the tough questions
    • Only through strong communication were we able to determine the solution and it meant both parties sharing openly the financial situation.
  • Transparency
    • Transparent with the financials of the company, runway, and salary from the get-go.
    • Buffer model of transparent salary.

Guest Links:

Host Links: 

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

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How to Hire a CMO with Matt Blumberg of Bolster

Thursday Sep 08, 2022

Thursday Sep 08, 2022

The reason why people think that hiring is “really hard” is because interviews are conducted without a defined set of criteria to which a person is being evaluated.  This especially rings true when interviewing outside your personal competency level. Most often when hiring a CMO or CRO.

In order for any interview to be effective, there has to be two components by which a person is being judged. Skills & Value Alignment. 

Focusing only on skills may solve your immediate problem but often creates more problems because the person disrupts your culture. 

What I have learned is that culture is driven by value alignment. So, understanding how a person aligns with your values in an interview is the most important criteria that needs to be evaluated to make a strong hire.

Guest Bio:

Matt Blumberg is a technology entrepreneur, business builder, and CEO of Bolster, an on-demand executive talent marketplace that helps accelerate companies’ growth by connecting them with experienced, highly vetted executives. 

Matt has been recognized as one of New York’s 100 most influential technology leaders by Business Insider, by Crain’s as one of New York’s Top Entrepreneurs, and by Ernst & Young as an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. 

Before Bolster, Matt built businesses and worked in marketing, consulting, and venture capital. He is the author of Startup CEO, Startup CXO, and Startup Boards.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

  • The challenge of hiring a CMO
  • The playbook to hire a CMO

HIRING STORY:

  • Over indexing on culture swinging to resume
  • Balance of cultural fit and competencies
    • Like dating…each one corrects the mistakes of the previous one
    • Over-indexing on culture - “nice” - leave replacement
    • Over-indexing on resume - “Vishnu” and “It/Out”

PROBLEM: Challenge?

  • CMO at RP and Defense Against the Dark Arts
    • I had been a CMO
    • CMO is a hard role - expectations are all over the place, function has splintered (chart), marketing can become a dumping ground - french fry problem
    • Marketing to marketers
    • The myth of the playbook and Roth asking for headcount and budget - “plan to overspend and overdeliver”

Why is this important to the company?

  • Disruption
  • Cost
  • Time

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Positioning Problem
    • Desire your opportunity
    • A, B or C player

SOLUTION: How do we solve the problem? 

The final playbook that worked for me for hiring CMOs - three “aha” moments

  • Marketing can quickly be consumed by the “French Fry problem”
    • Define the French Fry problem and marketing as a litany of tactics
    • Moving marketing from the tail to the nose - what’s the real role of marketing? Brand and Audience, so start with strategy and ROI
    • Making limited room for French Fries
    • Producing the ability for others in the organization to make their own French Fries
  • The realization that no one person can be the master of all channels
    • Build list of competencies (channels, etc.)
    • Build job roadmap to see how it evolves over time
    • Make sure all critical competencies are covered somehow
    • Focus on making sure the overall machine is optimized
  • The critical nature of building a Leadership pipeline to grow CMOs
    • Focus on making sure the leader is an intellectually curious orchestator
    • Leadership development at the next level down
    • Cross-training of all the channels and elements of the CMO role - orchestration, hiring/leading, ROI focus, customer service corner around French Fries
    • The machine becomes something where the CMO is at the pyramid on top, not holding up an inverted pyramid and hoping it doesn’t topple

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Values driven interview
    • Do we operate from the same place?
    • Are you REALLY proactive, rebellious, curious?
  • Skills driven interview (working session)
    • Transferable skills
    • Growth
    • Details 

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Find that right balance between culture and values fit and technical competency
  • Help your people architect their own career as if it is a jungle gym and not a ladder
  • (a great way to retain people)

Guest Links:

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blumbergmatt/
  • Company: https://bolster.com/
  • Resources: https://startupceo.com/ &  Bolster.com
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bolstertalent/
  • Facebook: /BolsterTalent
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/bolstertalent
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattblumberg

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

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. 
      • 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..

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.
  • 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:

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

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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
  • Fails to directly answer the question

  • Does not articulate role/impact on broader team

  • Lacks a cohesive narrative in communicating responses

  • Poor attitude towards past experiences that failed to meet expectations

  • Questions back to interviewer are exclusively from self-interest 
  • Answers the question, but does not extrapolate beyond situational elements

  • Understands goals and role relative to broader team

  • Thoughtful narrative in responding to questions, but examples lack tangible or sizable results

  • Grateful for past experiences, even if some did not meet expectations

  • Questions back to interviewer include a focus on goals / responsibilities for the role
  • Answers the question and highlights learnings and reflections

  • Deep understanding of personal and team-wide goals and how their role influences outcomes

  • Cohesive narrative in responses with measurable and significant results

  • Reflective on past experiences and finds nuggets of learnings / improvements at each juncture

  • Questions back to interviewer build on the conversation and touch upon company goals

 

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:

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

The Secret to Hiring through an Economic Downturn with Rick Girard of Stride Search Inc.

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
  • 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 

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
  • 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!

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:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

How to Avoid Hiring a Bad Actor with Becky Wanta of Q5id

Thursday Jul 21, 2022

Thursday Jul 21, 2022

We have all become painfully aware that cybercrime is at all-time record highs. Now the bad actors have figured out how to hack your hiring process.

Stories have been surfacing about people accepting roles remotely that are different people from the ones attending the interview.

Let’s face it, hacking the interview process is probably the easiest way to infiltrate your company and ultimately your data. When the interviewers focus on the skills and do not dig deep enough into the truth about the other person the result can be the opportunity that puts your company in jeopardy.

Guest Bio:

Becky Wanta is the CTO of Q5id and a highly accomplished global senior executive with more than 30 years of success in applying extensive IT experience to guide companies in a wide variety of industries to achieve their goals. 

She has proven her ability to improve market share and profitability while establishing long-term business relations and recruiting and developing cross-functional and high-performing teams. 

She has also been profiled by various publications, including Profile magazine and Bloomberg News. She is the holder of two US patents.

Today We Discuss:

  • How bad actors can infiltrate your company
  • How to avoid hiring those who can decimate your company

Challenge today?

  • Not a guarantee that the person who you are hiring is who they say they are
    • No prevent identity
    • Billions are lost every year because of data breach
    • background check does not guarantee that the person is who they say they are
      • References, credit score, 
    • Remote workforce is giving rise to fake personas & identities

Why is this important to the company?

  • Cost the company Millions of dollars
  • The FBI just issued a warning on June 28 about fraudulent candidates applying for WFH positions and using deep fakes to hide their true identity. We can be sure this activity will increase, and we can be sure that these are professional criminals and foreign-state actors who want to hijack a company’s data. (source: https://tinyurl.com/mvsnz7bs)
  • Background checks are often perfunctory, particularly if a candidate has presented well and you really want to hire this person
  • if a person has an apparently clean record, but is a member of a criminal gang or a malicious state actor. Professional criminals are way ahead of you here.

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Targeted and focused search 
    • Totally negates the issue

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Tighten up and expand pre-employment and background check processes to include a proven identity process which includes:
    • Biometrics/personal identifiers that your employees control.  This needs to include liveness checks, biometric and AI-driven models to ensure individuals are who they say they are
    • Government ID checks
    • 15 se Face-to-face live view
  • Be Systematic
    • So, companies need to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive while building a distributed team, with everyone focused on the product. They must be systematic about finding specific skillsets and finding those skillsets in people who want to work with other people.
    • prove their new employees are not working for someone who wants to break into your IT systems and steal everything they can.
    • The FBI says cybercrime cost in the form of phishing and other scams and data breaches cost US businesses almost $7 billion last year. With more criminal organizations and state actors involved, and now deploying deep fakes, that number could go up exponentially if companies don’t address this problem urgently. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/yc7abcht)
    • CEOs, C-suites, and Boards to implement a program that can combat deep fakes, I’d make sure my Board has at least one person who’s familiar with enterprise-grade security, and I’d make sure I have an A-team Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) on my team.
  • Implement a proven identity method
    • biometrics

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Targeted hiring approach
    • Identify & proactively develop a relationship with the person BEFORE you need to hire them.
    • Referrals!!!
  • Structured Interview process
    • Behavioral Interview
      • Train your interviewers!
      • Evidence
      • Values first, skills second
      • BS meter 
    • References 
      • Verified Managers only
      • Backdoor company references
  • Decision Making
    • “Hell Yes” or NO

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Never compromise on finding the best people with the best-fitted skills 
  • Never forget you’re building a product for a specific reason and customer.
  • But never be lax in proving your exciting new employees are who they say they are. 
  •  Never be lax in finding out if your new employees are working for a criminal organization or malicious state.

Guest Links

Host Links:

Show Sponsor: www.stridesearch.com

Read more

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: 

Host Links:

Show Sponsor: 

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The Hiring 4-S: Strategy, Systems, Staff & Skills with Hilmon Sorey of CoachCRM

Thursday Jun 30, 2022

Thursday Jun 30, 2022

Are Strategy and Systems missing in your hiring process?

The answer is most likely “Yes” as 99.9% of entrepreneurs approach hiring as a reactive activity based on a current need. This is dangerous because it perpetuates the transactional mindset that sets you up for failure.

Strategy is not about “how do I turn on the funnel”. Strategy is about how you identify, contact & engage with the person who will thrive in your business. This means being able to articulate your value to align with each individual.

But, strategy is not enough to get an A-player to join your company. The structure of your interview process is the System that demonstrates excellence within the organization. And excellence is what every high performer strives for in their next company.

Guest Bio:

Hilmon Sorey is Co-Founder of CoachCRM sales coaching software for managers; Co-Founder of ClozeLoop, a sales strategy, training, and enablement firm with offices in New York, Houston, Silicon Valley, and Johannesburg; Partner in 2.12 Angels as a seed-stage venture capital firm; and author of 8 top-selling books on sales, sales management, and coaching. 

He has helped build teams in companies that range from early-stage startups to Salesforce, Box, SurveyMonkey, Bill.com, and some of the fastest-growing companies in the world totaling over $600B in valuation and market cap. 

 He’s an award-winning trainer who has trained over 15,000 salespeople and over 5,000 executives. He is a sought-after speaker around the globe and a Forbes contributor.

Today We Discuss:

  • The 4 S’s: Strategy, Systems, Staff & Skills
  • How to implement the missing pieces into your organization

Challenge Today?

  • Ensuring that you are hiring the right people who will have impact
  • Understanding go-to-market strategy in how you hire
  • Strategy and Systems absent in most hiring process
  • How Companies Scale and How to Use Hiring as Competitive Advantage

Why is this important to the company?

  • Ask any CEO of a Unicorn what they consider to be their competitive advantage.   They’ll say their people.  
  • Tech eventually equals out, Markets change, Investors are wonderful - but even they invest in people.

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Strategy absent:
    • No time to do it
    • Feel it’s not important
      • It’s all bullshit anyways
  • System
    • No time to set up or train
  • The results you get are the fruits of the effort of the work put.

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Strategy 
    • Understanding GTM strategy
    • Competitive Differentiation (direct, indirect)
    • Winning Zone
    • Messaging and Channels
  • Systems 
    • Agile Tech Stack
    • Sales & Marketing Playbooks
    • Feedback Loop and Ecosystem
  • Staff   
    • Sales Strategy
    • Competency Matrix
    • Methodology for Alignment (proof)
    • Culture 
  • Skills
    •  Training
    • Coaching
    • Margin Gains

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Strategy:
    • Only hire people who align with company values!
    • Learn early
      • Understand YOU first
      • Only meet people who “lean in” 
  • System
    • Interview process
      • Documented, and communicated, 
  • Skills
    • Train your people

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Focus on Strategy and Systems to create scale. 
  • Hiring is as critical as identifying customers

Guest Links

Host Links:

Show Sponsor: 

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#1 Question that Needs to be Asked During a Phone Screen with Rick Girard of Stride Search Inc.

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:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

Necessary Interview Intelligence for Hiring with Raphael Danilo of Yobs

Thursday Jun 16, 2022

Thursday Jun 16, 2022

Two people pop into a room together for an interview. What happens next?

No one knows! 

This is the eternal mystery that most companies have faced for decades. And the single point of failure in hiring!

Because we assume that everyone knows how to interview. But the truth is, they do not as most interviewers have only been trained on what NOT to say. There is no insight as to what is being said, the questions that are asked or personal motives that drive a person’s opinion on a hiring decision. 

So today we are going to help to give you insight into how you can gain valuable interviewing data to empower your people to make stronger hiring decisions for your company!

Guest Bio:

Raphael Danilo is a French entrepreneur and investor based in New York. He's the CEO and founder of Yobs, an Interview Intelligence platform that sits on top of Zoom and the ATS and enables every interviewer to feel prepared and be more efficient in hiring top talent. 

Raphael has helped 100+ high-growth organizations up level their recruiting organization with Interview Intelligence through Yobs and Evening Fund, the VC fund he runs on nights and weekends.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

  • The importance of interview intelligence
  • How to gain data to secure accurate hiring decisions

Challenge today?

  • Recruiting is incredibility opinion spaced
    • Opinions about what we remember about the conversation
    • Not evidence based
    • High vs low quality question
  • Work about work
    • Labor intensive tasks - ie: interview plan, taking notes
    • Pre-interview 
    • During interview
    • Post interview- scorecard
  • Recruiting teams misaligned
    • Not having a shared view of reality
    • Not offering enough benefits, equity, pto
    • Opinions drive decision rather than data

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Interview is riddled with fail
  • Interviewers are not trained
    • Company values
    • Bias, assumptions & personal motives
    • To understand how good the person is across the desk

How do we solve the problem (solution)? 

  • Capture reality 
    • capture all candidate interactions - across web conferencing, dialers, phone, and email.
  • Invest in interviewer training and coaching 
  • Analyze Interview them and surfaces key moments automatically to...
    • Deliver insights to level-up your organization by better understanding your candidates, your teams and your hiring process.

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Interview intelligence 
  • Start with the company values
    • Decision making language throughout the organization
    • Interviewers champions of the values
      • Protectors of realm
    • Everyone buy’s in!
  • Assigned Interview questions
    • Behavioral interview questions 
    • Questions tied to a measurable of the core value
  • Train your interviewers
    • Assumptions allow bias & motives to fester
    • Listening skills - digging under the hood
    • Take diligent notes- 
      • what they said, not what you translated
  • Record & review the conversations
    • Video (zoom, teams, etc…) 
    • Review until you achieve consistent quality data

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Capture reality- record your calls
  • Invest in coaching/training
  • Reduce bias in process 

Guest Links:

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

Read more

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:

Host Links:

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

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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

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:

Host Links: 

Show Sponsor:

  • www.stridesearch.com

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The Secret to People Accepting Your Offer with Jeff Wolfe of Veloce Energy

Friday May 27, 2022

Friday May 27, 2022

A company founder approached me last week with a problem. He has had a critical role open for the past 6 months and no one has accepted his offer. 5 people had been offered the job and every single person turned it down.

When asked why, the founder said, “I did a great job selling each one of them from the beginning so It must have been the money”.

Then I asked, “what was it that the person you were trying to hire really desired in their next role. To that his response was “I have no idea”.

We get so busy selling that we forget to ask.

Interviewing is not about selling. Interviewing is about understanding the truth of what is important to the person on the other side of the table.

And understanding is how we avoid turned down offers!

Guest Bio:

Jeff Wolfe is an energy and cleantech industry leader and serial entrepreneur. He has spent his career creating new solutions in the built environment and clean energy. As CEO of Veloce Energy he is working to accelerate the electrification of everything by creating systems that reduce the cost, time, and complexity of powering EV charging and building electrification.

He has been President for the Americas of a global EV charger manufacturer, worked in retail energy and in a multi-national oil company, and designed over a billion dollars of hospitals, laboratories, and other infrastructure. 

 Today we discuss:

  • Why listening during the interview process produces results
  • How to let candidates lead you to the truth and ultimately the right hiring decision

HIRING STORY:

  • Met 4th cofounder through 3rd party 
  • Brought him on over zoom
  • Didn't meet him for 5 months

Challenges today?

  • Aggressive employee environment
  • Wages going up
    • Lower wages 
    • Can't settle on talent
  • Show people that they want to work for us
  • Communicating mission (Why)

Why is this important to the company?

  • Able to hire good people for reasonable compensation
  • Need to find people who want to solve the problems, create the solutions as much as the founders do

Rick’s Nuggets

  • People not accepting or leaving - not the $$$
  • People compelled to align with values, mission & purpose

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Let the person tell you what they need
    • Why do people stay - three elements of compensation
      • Money & Benefits
      • A good work environment and good people to work for
      • Good and important work to do.
    • Provide 1 element, good people will stay for 6 months
    • Provide 2 elements and good people will stay for 2 years
    • Provide all 3 and good people will become great people and will stay a long time
  • Create company culture
    • Learn how to communicate it and own it
    • Don't worry about scaring people away
    • Share fact based beliefs - if people do not believe in the problem being solved, or in the solution, they will do a poor job of executing against it
  • Interview 
  • Look for value alignment early. Part of the filtering process
  • What does HR mean
    • Honest relationships
    • Get to a yes/no faster
    • Better yeses and nos
  • Create understanding of the what the fit is
    • Leadership communication
    • Constant reinforcement
    • Whole picture
  • Honest offers
    • No low balling
    • Get people to join rather than be hired
  • Not over-interviewing people
    • Take notes 
    • Different people focus on different aspects, based on their expertise, no one person can really do a complete interview
    • Cumulative thumbs up/down
    • It is partially a gut decision. Don’t ignore the facts, but the gut needs to align.

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Values
    • North star for strong team
    • Alignment fuels passion & engagement
  • Interview
    • Interviewing for value alignment

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Learn to embody and externally express the company culture and mission. Do not be afraid of them
  • Don’t worry about being liked by every candidate. A strong culture and mission will attract the right people, especially in these times
  • Define HR as “honest relationships”

Guest Links

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffwolfeenergy/
  • Company: https://www.veloceenergy.com/
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/veloceenergy/
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffWolfeSolar

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

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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
  • 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
  • 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

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

 

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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
  • 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:

www.stridesearch.com

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The Blind Spots of Hiring Managers & Candidates with Varun Puri of Yoodli

Thursday May 05, 2022

Thursday May 05, 2022

Let's face it, a lot of people are BAD at interviewing on both sides of the table. 

It is easy to understand that candidates or job seekers are bad for numerous reasons. Being nervous, out of practice, and under pressure to do well because of NEED,  create a large margin for error. For seasoned interviewers, it becomes easier to perform because the person has a lot of practice interviewing. That practice is what eventually makes it easier to land a job. 

On the company side, interviewers get a lot of practice asking the same questions as everyone else, but the lack of structure & coordination does very little to uncover evidence to support the decision. The problem with that is that only surface information is gathered and at the end of the day, the hiring decision is made on circumstantial evidence, assumptions, and bias.

Guest Bio:

Varun Puri is the Founder of Yoodli and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Paul Allen's AI Institute. Yoodli uses AI to help people improve their public speaking and interviewing skills without the pressure of an audience. 

Prior to Yoodli, Varun worked on a GoogleX project to bring high speed internet to unconnected regions using invisible lasers. He also ran special projects for Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder.

 Today we discuss:

  • Why it is important to practice your interview (or any presentation)
  • How to practice effectively for an interview

HIRING STORY:

  • Struggle getting someone to hire him…
  • Now getting people to hire for his startup
  • The key to getting people to bet on you is how you communicate with them

PROBLEM:

  • Smart people on both sides of the fence (interviewers and candidates) who miss dream job and miss dream candidate
  • Outcome: Missed hiring on both sides 
  • Hiring managers may not represent companies in the best way

Challenges today?

  • Communication skills are an amorphous training concept. No clear way of measuring progress or diagnosing issues (we’re dealing with peoples’ deep insecurities).  We practice in front of the mirror, camera, and stopwatch. Or worse, avoid it altogether

Why is this important to the company?

  • Individual: 
    • Land your dream job. Get access to the opportunities you deserve and don’t miss out on them because of how you speak
  • Corporation: 
    • Get your dream candidate 
    • Ensure your team is aligned
    • Help people become more confident communicators and leaders

Rick’s Nuggets

  • We don’t set Expectations
    • Allow people to prepare 
    • Makes interviewers seem unimpressive - demonstrate 
    • Unable to 

How do we solve the problem? 

  • 3 pronged solution needed:
    • Be aware of your biases/ way you communicate
    • Collaborate with your team to ensure you’re all saying the same story
    • Diagnose the issues and work on them
  • Solution:
  • Practice interviewing skills for hiring managers:
    • Be aware of your biases/ way you communicate
      •  
    • Stay on company brand
      • Collaborate with your team to ensure you’re all saying the same story
    • Don’t say the wrong thing (non inclusive language, berate competition)
    • Diagnose the issues and work on them
      • Time stamped feedback
    • Convey energy
  • Practice for candidates

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Interview Structure- expectations
  • Repeatable & predictable process
    • Timing and Steps in process
    • Interview question scripts
    • Feedback loop
  • Interview training
    • Documentation habits
    • Interview preparation 
      • How to prepare the candidate
      • How the interviewer prepares

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Align with your team with a set of interview questions you want to ask and follow up with the Why questions to dig deeper.
  • Conduct the work as a team
  • Watch the post-game highlight reel & critique 

Guest Links

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:

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How Innocent Interview Questions Can Become Litigation with Victor Xu of Fisher Phillips

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

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:

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Founder Led Recruiting Produces Extraordinary ROI with Rick Girard of Stride Search Inc.

Friday Apr 22, 2022

Friday Apr 22, 2022

As a company founder you have A LOT on your plate. So much,  that it is often overwhelming so you scramble to delegate the things you don’t like to do as quickly as possible.

At the top of the delegation list is offloading hiring. Today I'm going to challenge you to own your people function for as long as possible because it is so critical to your success!.

Last week our guest, Steve Newcomb, exposed his key principles for building successful companies. The most important element in building a successful company is … the foundation.

“Do the big things right and then everything becomes exponentially easier”. This means doing the hard things first because if the foundation isn't right, everything else will be more difficult.

Getting really good at the things you hate… recruiting, interviewing & hiring, translates into onboarding the strongest people early and builds personal credibility in you as a leader.

Today we’re going to discuss:

  • Why you as the founder needs to own hiring as long as possible
  • How to build your foundation to enable your business to grow exponentially easier

Challenge today?

  • Founders can't wait to delegate hiring
  • Not good at it
  • Don't want to invest the time to learn
    • ROI?
  • Buy into the belief that there is no “Right Way” to hire
  • Don’t believe 

Why is this important to the company?

  • To Build a company:
  • Having a founder that is excellent at recruiting makes it easier to succeed
  • Build  a company that matters, 
  • Bonus: something with a mission that’s embedded into the product

How do we solve the problem? 

  • The Foundation
    • Pre-determine the Interview questions
    • Assign positions in the interview process
    • Assign interview responsibilities
    • Role play to gain competence throughout the interview
  • The interview
    • Start with the Discovery Call
      • Determine Positioning & Value
      • Positioning: Does what the interviewee desires align with what your organization is?
      • growth?
      • Value: Is this person an A-player? 
      • Evidence of impact that was made in the current role?
      • Step by step 
  • Founder leads recruiting (Steve Newcomb)
    • Communicate expectations to team
    • Shoot for the Moon
      • You can hire a-players
    • Treat everyone like gold
    • Do not waste the team's time with duds. 
  • Team Interviews scripted
    • Easy to gain evidence to support a decision
    • 3-4 questions each person for 45 minutes
      • Hell Yes….. or No
    • Skills Interview
      • Real life problem that will give an accurate experience of how the team will work together to solve problems
      • Prepare candidate for success or failure
    • Get & give feedback
      • Empower people to make the decision at each stage
      • Trust their decisions
      • Let the interviewee provide feedback

Key Takeaways -Value:

  • Strong foundation makes everything exponentially easier
  • Own hiring as long as you can
  • Set teams up for success by scripting the interview questions

Host Links

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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

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

 

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How Employee CEO for the Day Scales Your Organization with Ville Houttu of Vincit

Friday Apr 08, 2022

Friday Apr 08, 2022

Let’s talk about what really draws people to your company… and keeps them there. Trust

Trust is what drives better decision making, customer experience and profitability. But trust is not gained after a person starts working for your company. It is established during the interview process.

You see, people’s job mindset has evolved over the past few years.  We are being judged throughout the process for clarity, purpose and structural integrity.  Elements that demonstrate that you take your business seriously and are playing to win.

When hiring, start with the end in mind. Focus on retention, with the intention of building trust through the experience for maximum engagement & long term growth.

Guest Bio:

Ville Houttu is the Founder and CEO of Vincit USA. Previously, he helped Vincit Finland to reach 350 employees and make it public on Nasdaq First North marketplace. After the IPO, Ville moved to California to start Vincit’s local subsidiary. 

Ville and the company have been recognized by several notable institutions, including 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies in America List. In 2020, he led the company to rank top-50 on the FAST Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators list.

Ville is a known public speaker and his leadership has been featured in several leading publications, including TechCrunch, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and Entrepreneur. 

Today we discuss:

  • Why and how to build trust
  • Concept of the CEO of the Day 

Challenges today?

  • title wave of people leaving your companies
  • Don't want to work for people who don't trust them
  • Not looking for dollars & sense anymore
  • People want a culture that fits
    • Let your people build the culture 

Why is this important to the company?

  • It builds trust 
  • We are at the end of us telling employees what to do
  • Keeping employees happy, healthy and engaged
  • Make the Inc 5000 list
  • *** how this translates to business! 
  • Up 65% year on year growth over last year

How do we solve the problem? 

  • CEO for a day every month
  • How to deploy in your organization
  • Get everyone on board 
    • One person who will be the first CEO of the day
  • Management team needs to step aside
    • Open discussion agreeing to not get involved
    • No approval needed from management
  • It’s your call
    • Decision based on what you feel the people need 
    • The Question: does the decision make the workplace better tomorrow than it is today?
    • Value in engagement far outweighs the cost
    • Goal: helps sales, marketing, operational, engineering
    • Can be a very focused area of improvement
    • Unlimited budget, everyone gets a turn, no one goes twice

Here’s how CEO of the Day works:

  1. Every month we select one employee to be a CEO for the Day.  
  2. He will have an unlimited budget to improve our workplace.
  3. Whatever the CEO of the day decides, we all live with.
  4. We encourage discussion among colleagues, but I do not weigh in.
  5. The CEO will announce his decision in our monthly meeting.
  6. After sharing his decision, the CEO selects the next CEO of the Day.
  7. All employees will get their turn, but nobody goes twice.

Rick’s Nuggets

  • What if someone (me) wants to buy a Ferrari?

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Join the movement of companies making their employees CEO’s of the Day, and TRUSTING them to build a culture that FITS. Because when you do, you will see that BY TRUSTING your employees you will EARN their trust and LOYALTY in return. And with employees like that, there’s no STOPPING where your business can go. 

Guest Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vhouttu/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vincit-oyj/
LinkedIn: https://www.vincit.fi/en/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vincit_Plc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VincitOyj
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vincit_plc/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VincitFlix/featured
Medium:  https://medium.com/vincit
GitHub: https://github.com/Vincit

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

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What Makes People Stay or Jump Ship with Nicolas Vandenberghe of Chili Piper

Thursday Mar 31, 2022

Thursday Mar 31, 2022

In 2021 38 million people left their jobs and found new ones. This accounts for 57.3% attrition for US-based companies.  It seems as the trend continues as 4.3 million people quit in January of this year as well.

A lot of companies are experiencing turnover today and It makes one wonder, who is winning?

The companies that are winning today are those that focus on their people. Focusing on setting systems to enable productivity, fostering personal growth, career-pathing, and quite frankly, listening to what their people want.

Gone are the days of providing free snacks and providing a ping pong table. What people want is much deeper now and requires more effort. what are you doing that is improving their lives and professional growth? If you are unwilling to provide it, they’ll just go somewhere else.

 Guest Bio:

Nicolas Vandenberghe is the co-founder and CEO of Chili Piper, a SaaS platform helping B2B companies double their inbound conversion rates. Since its founding in 2016, the SaaS platform has thrived with a 100% remote work culture. 

Nicolas is a four-time serial entrepreneur, in diverse verticals from consumer software to biometrics. He builds his companies under the principles of flexibility, professional growth and communication.

Today we discuss:

  • What makes people stay or jump ship
  • How to make your company sticky for retention

Challenges today?

  • Great resignation
  • People quit managers

Why is this important to the company?

  • Internal promotions keeps people growing
  • Teaching management 
  • Avoid hostility in communication 
  • Non violence communication training
  • Especially applicable to managers
  • Avoid conflict without avoiding disagreements
  • Conflict around the disagreement- NOT GOOD

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Flexibility
    • High performers - no barriers
    • Anywhere in the world
    • No schedule requirement (exception) scheduled meetings 
    • Open & accepting of everyone
    • Unlimited vacation schedule
  • *** Professional growth- formailized 
    • Quality of the work focus
    • Okr’s - not kpi’s- Actions to yield to projected outcome
    •  Avoid ultimatums, were expectations correct
    • Hired 3 coaches 
    • Developing a piper plan
    • Getting it out to eht puclic
    • Abolish performance review
    • Proactive 
  • Communication hostility avoidance
    •  Method to rethink your engagements
    •  Training everyone on the book 

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Career pathing - Huge retention 
  • Link everything to help- core value

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Professional development. Work on the foundation

Guest Links:

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nvandenberghe/
  • Company: http://www.chilipiper.com/
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chilipiper/
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/chilipiper/
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamChiliPiper/

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:

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Building a Performance Based Service Organization with Johnny Robinson of Orange Window Cleaning

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:

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The Interview Working Session (Skills Assessment) with Rick Girard of Stride Search Inc.

Thursday Mar 17, 2022

Thursday Mar 17, 2022

How does one evaluate a subject matter expert when you have limited knowledge or expertise in that discipline?

Most individual technical/skills based interviews last about an hour. Where time is wasted quizzing on subject matter that may or may not be relevant to the actual role itself. Scratching the surface on the level of depth that is brought to the table.

Consider another option. What I like to call a “working session”.

Invite the person to collaborate on a real problem that is relevant to the opportunity. This gives you unbridled insight into how a person thinks, communicates and solves problems within the context of real life.

This allows you to really drill down to gain evidence to support the hiring decision either way.

Today we’re going to discuss:

  • Why should I care about a working session
  • How to structure and execute a working session/ skills interview in your company

Challenge today?

  • Skills not matching up to what someone claimed (faker)
  • Or... Claimed to be able to handle more than capable (over exaggerator) 
  • Or… Just here for the perks & paycheck (freeloader)
  • What's happening?
    • Hiring Maintainers for builder or improver roles
  • Testing 
  • Outdated concepts - learned in college
  • Focusing on irreverent problems
    • How many quarters can fit in a VW van
    • Smart is good, smart with people is much better
  • Going too shallow
    • Not knowing what to ask
    • Not digging deeper to discover the truth

Why is this important to the company?

  • Too shallow conceals the truth
  • Smart doesn't ensure success 
  • Relevant skills give evidence of alignment 

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Build Interview Structure
    • Only need one technical/skills based interview
    • Timing
    • 2 hours- ½ day
    • Pay for their time (optional)
    • Who’s involved?
    • Co-workers, direct team, anyone in close interaction
  • Define the problem to be solved
    • A current problem that needs to be solved (reason to compensate $)
    • 3 components (key hires)
    • Goals review- understand expectations of KPI’s
    • Data or Gap Analysis- how does the candidate interpret data/requirements/etc
    • Collaboration- Review the details of the problem. Work to solve!
    • Example
      • Goals review - (5 minutes max) 
      • Data Analysis / Gap Analysis - (10 minutes max) 
      • Marketing Plan & Strategy (1: 45 minutes) 
      • Let’s discuss the marketing plan starting with what you feel is the best strategy 
      • Really try to dig into the "Why" How would you bring this plan to life? Based on what you know, what would be your recommendations for reaching the goals? Why? What other angles can we take? What would be the priority? Why?
  • Preparation for Candidate & Team
    • Candidate
    • Let them prepare. Send details in advance
    • Set expectations and discuss next steps
    • Team
    • Coach to be open minded and bias free
    • Ignore opinions, praise evidence
    • Work true - how they act daily
  • Execute to core values
    • Everyone should act as to the standards of the company values

Key Takeaways -Value:

  • Build a working session for each role. Becomes really easy when you get used to doing it.
  • Prepare the candidate for success
  • Team collaboration & buy in based on evidence not “uncertain feelings” - bias

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

 

This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/

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How to Hire in Three Conversations with Nick Livingston of Honeit Software

Thursday Mar 10, 2022

Thursday Mar 10, 2022

10 business days is the optimal time to bring an interview process to a successful outcome. 

The way to achieve this is to tighten timelines from stage to stage and cut down the number of people involved in the process. Now I know what you are thinking, that more people should be involved. Which is incorrect.

The reason we involve more people in the interview process is because we value their “opinion” or “input” on the individual. But opinion has no value when it comes to making a hiring decision. And opinion is what you get when your interview questions are not tied to gathering evidence. 

Opinion breeds assumptions, bias & personal motives. Which do NOT serve the growth of the business.

I’m Rick Girard and welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show. We help Entrepreneurs and executives WIN-WIN the strongest hires. 

By sharing insights from top-performing rebel entrepreneurs, game-changers & industry leaders. Like our guest today:  Nick Livingston 

Nick is the Co-Founder & CEO of Honeit Software. 

Formerly the Head of Recruiting at TubeMogul (Adobe), Nick and his team scaled the company from 60 to 360 employees through a successful IPO ($TUBE) in just over 26 months. 

In the same two years, he attended business school at UC Berkeley, started a family (three daughters) and co-founded Honeit Software, which is the all-in-one interview platform designed by recruiters to schedule, record, transcribe, search and share interview answers for quick collaboration and higher quality hiring.

Today we discuss:

  • Why anything more than 3 interviews it too much
  • How to interview & hire in 3 meetings

In today’s market, a candidate doesn’t have time to speak with 8 different people in your organization. 

Challenge today?

  • Interview simplification
  • Bad solutions that repel solid people
  • Screening
  • One way video interviews

Why is this important to the company?

  • Interview data gets lost
  • Transparency attracts talent
  • Job seekers have become really savvy
  • Humans have changed 

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Value of the discovery call is lost
  • Reason why people are not showing up for a job interview
  • Positioning 
    • What a person desires
    • Are they an A-player

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Interview conversations as business intelligence conversations
    • Competitive intelligence
    • If you record business conversations, you can tag, search, and rewind the tape.
  • Interview structure:
    • Questions related to core values
    • Questions related to the specific role/skill/need
    • Who’s asking the questions? Who knows a good vs. great answer.
  • Interview Collaboration
    • role of the recruiter was to give ‘time back’ to hiring managers
    • But recruiters are not SME…. where the phone screen falls flat.. 
    • Coordinated questions
  • Share interview data/answers/highlights.
    • Record the interview
    • Who are good interviewers
    • What makes a good question, what makes a great answer.
  • Better Interview experience
    • Do we still need 8 separate 45-minute conversations for 8 people to be involved with the interview process? NO!
  • Hiring kick off call… 

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Discovery call
  • Interview #1 - Value alignment
  • Interview #2 - Skills 
    • Working session
  • Interview #3 - Value Alignment / offer 

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

  • Interviews are two-way conversation… Candidates are interviewing YOU and your team.
  • Record interviews for - transparency, accountability, to rewind the tape, to protect your company (discrimination lawsuits). 

Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicklivingston/
Company: https://www.honeit.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/honeit/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeit/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/honeit

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/

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Today’s Hiring Complaints Solved with Ashish Rampal of All Imaging Systems

Thursday Mar 03, 2022

Thursday Mar 03, 2022

The two biggest complaints I hear today from entrepreneurs are “I can't find good people” and “when I hire people, the skills don’t match up”.

The first issue, not being able to “find good people” is an easy one to solve. You're fishing in the wrong ponds! Posting & praying may be working for some roles but the more crucial roles require that more creative tactics be deployed. Go to where your audience is interacting regularly. Hint: Not job boards.

The second issue, “skills not matching” with what a person represented in the interview, is a HUGE indicator of a poor interview process.

Too often we hear what we want to hear (confirmation bias) and we quickly move to get the person to accept the position. Never digging deeper to understand the what, when & how of a person’s work.

Remember the purpose of the interview is to understand the truth of the person across the desk from you.

I’m Rick Girard and welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show. We help Entrepreneurs and executives WIN-WIN the strongest hires. 

By sharing insights from top-performing rebel entrepreneurs, game-changers & industry leaders. Like our guest today: Ashish Rampal

Ashish serves as President and CEO of All Imaging Systems. He brings nearly 30 years of experience delivering high growth among, Service and Green Tech companies. 

His passion for bringing strategy and innovation together has fueled a long list of leadership accomplishments. Ashish has risen to complex challenges where he has crafted growth strategies, tapped new emerging markets and energized global teams – with many successes coming within turnaround environments. 

His leadership approach reflects his deep expertise in creating and leveraging teams that are driven to innovate and excel.

Today we discuss:

  • How to find the right people outside of job boards
  • How to dig deeper on skills to gain evidence of competency

Hiring Story

  • Hire - skills did not match the skills for the job
  • Kept on for 8 months moving from role to role
    • Right person on the wrong bus
  • Demonstrated Ashish being a weak leader 
  • Intention was one of care & empathy but it was misaligned with the goal of making high performance be their best
  • Warning signs
  • Pushbacks from key people not to have to interact with that person
  • Cost 8 months of salary- $40k
  • Impact to culture
  • Impact the trust of his team

Challenge today?

  • Finding people through social networks who are not on LinkedIn
    • Resources are not digital natives
    • No LinkedIn account
    • Meetups
    • Training programs alumni 

Why is this important to the company?

  • People are the path to which we scale
    • To be a relevant business need to bring value over the OEM’s
    • More cost effective option
    • Reverse engineering to repair

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Sources
    • Passive referrals
    • LinkedIn sourcing
    • Professional groups /associations
    • Meetups, repositories, college faculty

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Bring complex challenges into the company
    • Unique business - OEM agnostic, lot of learning opportunities and exposure to different technology
    • Full exposure to business life cycle
    • Solving a problem with minimal competitor
  • Talent is recognized 
    • People Feel respected
    • Have a voice - Let you know when a bad hire has been made
    • Love the challenge
    • Like who they work with
    • Failure is accepted and celebrated
  • Demonstrate Leadership
    • Trust through empowerment
    • Focus on Morale
    • Self introspection
    • Culture of win or affirm, working on today, need help
    • Inject energy -”try to change the weather”
    • Let the team connect emotionally  

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Competency digging
  • First discussed on the Discovery call
    • Impact made in the organization
    • The exact steps taken to complete the project 
  • Interview- Working Session 
    • Solve a relevant problem together with the team

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today!  -Value:

  • You are the custodian of the culture - you define
  • In times of fear or uncertainty the best response is ACTION
  • Teams prefer a leader who is REAL as opposed to one who is CORRECT

Guest Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishrampal/ Company: https://allimaging.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/all-imaging-systems/

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/

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How to Tie Your Core Values to Interview with Rick Girard of Stride Search Inc.

Thursday Feb 24, 2022

Thursday Feb 24, 2022

Two people sit down in an interview. What happens next??? What happens is that, well, we have no idea what happens. 

But the data suggests that a decision is made on behalf of the interviewer in the first 7 minutes of the conversation. The remainder of the time is used to confirm the decision. 

There is no way that a person can extract enough evidence to support making a correct decision without bias or personal motives in an unstructured process. 

A perfect breeding ground for Murphy’s law- Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong

How well a person aligns with the company’s values, vision & purpose is the only way to ensure the success of the person you hire.

Today we discuss:

  • Why tying values to interview questions is the only way to eliminate bias
  • How to build an  interview question for a company value

Challenge today?

  • Interviews are purely subjective
    • Still ranking candidates - Scorecards
    • Compare & contrast conversations
    • Evaluate exclusively for Skills 
    • Interviewer coordination 
      • Different interviewers asking same questions

Why is this important to the company?

  • The wrong hire costs 3-10x annual salary
    • Think of each person being worth $2M to the company.
      • Perspective change?
    • Wrong hire costs in employee morale & your credibility as a leader
  •  People are the #1 reason for failure
    • All your business problems are people problems in disguise 

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Define Core Values
    • Define attributes for each core value (traits)
    • Prioritize values (rank in order of importance)
    • Measurables of each value 
    • Agree on values (are they lived daily)   
  • Dig Deeper (Committed, Expertise, Curious)
    • Invest the time to fully comprehend the root of your challenges
    • Listen to Understand, not to respond
  • Build Interview Question Library
    • Craft Behavioral questions (2-3)
    • Determine **Knockouts
    • Agree on questions

Sample Question  

Tell me about the most difficult customer interaction you encountered in your current role (Dig Deeper) 

  • Tell me more…
  • Walk me through that…
  • What were the circumstances that led to the difficulty?
  • What was the root of the customer issue?
  • What solutions did you come up with?
  • How were you able to calm them down?
  • Break down the steps you took to resolve the problem
  • Why was their view important to you?
  • How were you able to deliver beyond their expectations? 
  • How did the interaction end?

Assign Questions to Interviewer

  • Easier on the interviewer
    • Very little prep time for interview
    • Gathers concrete evidence
    • Eliminates Bias & personal motives from the interview!

Key Takeaways -Value:

  • Break your Values down in measurable components to which you can evaluate a person’s fit
  • Interview questions must have sub questions to keep the conversation flowing. We want deep data from each interviewee!

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/
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com

This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/

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Owning Your IP: Employment & Independent Contractor Agreements with Devin Miller of Miller IP Law

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.
  • 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/

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What Really Matters in Employee Branding Today with Bryan Adams of Ph.Creative

Thursday Feb 10, 2022

Thursday Feb 10, 2022

Those of you who have listened to the show, know that I am no big fan of “employer branding” because I believe it is generic and unrealistic. Often selling an image of unicorns & rainbows topped off with free lunch.

To me, job advertisements feel like the car dealer who advertises a low price just to get you in the door only to sell you a lemon at the end of the day.

We all understand that every company has its challenges. So why not paint an accurate picture of what the company REALLY is once you start working there?

Simply sharing the good, bad & the ugly of your company is the first step to eliminating bad hires. It attracts the right people, repels those who don’t align with the company values and eliminates the surprises that cause people to question their decision to join your company.

Today we discuss:

  • Employer branding: why & when
  • How to brand in the most effective way

Challenge today?

  • Employer branding:
  • Marketing and branding are not the same thing
  • Purpose to employer brand strategy is different than consumer brand strategy
    • Talent was the commodity and technology was differentiator
    • That has switched
  • People leaving companies in droves
  • Not connecting with the right people
  • Differentiation and purpose
    • Career decision is transactional
    • Operating tactically 

Why is this important to the company?

  • C-suite are talking about employer branding
  • Approach without strategy causes more problems than it solves

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Employer branding is strictly a top of funnel activity
    • Convinced ourselves that EVERYONE need to be attracted to the brand
    • Does nothing to ensure that the right person is being hired
    • Top of funnel is a vanity metric

How do we solve the problem? 

  • Understand the organization
    • Gaps are?
    • Foundation of the culture
    • What the people strategy needs to align to
    • Culture you have rather than the culture you need
  • Strategy
    • Reputation (what & why)
      • Specific & tangible that aligns with the business
      • Career catalyst (career path) , culture (sense of belonging, great place to work)  & citizenship (impact you have on society, doing good)
    • Expectation (how)
    • Give & Get
      • What the organization wants & needs in return
      • Comfortable with what you have to give
    • Adds more value, more authentic enables greater appreciation
    • Uncover a clear proposition
    • Things that repel most people attract the right people!
    • Polarize your audience  
  • Experience 
    • Validate the claim & the experience
    • Navy seals- Hell week. It has a specific reason in the experience 
    • Employee experience is more important than candidate experience 
    • Know exactly where to spend your time & resource
  • Job Advertisement
    • Story right
    • Needs to be a true preview on what to expect
    • What keeps people 
    • “Dissuade people not to join” and you couldn't lie, what would you say?

Rick’s Nuggets

  • Only need to see one person to fill one role
    • Less candidate flow is the new badge of honor!

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today!  -Value:

  • Get specific - Be clear on the talent you need to grow your company and what it takes to really thrive. This helps define the reputation you need as an employer and  the proposition you have to offer to make it all worthwhile.

  • Show Vulnerability - Tell a refreshingly honest story of where you are, where you’re going, what’s missing and left to build .. show people a very real picture where they can add value and find purpose in their work.
  • Own the truth - Include the harsh realities and adversities of your employee experience - 99% of people may run for the hills, but the 1% of people who lean in will likely be the best candidates & employees for your company. Plus it’ll save you a ton of admin and distraction from a blizzard of unqualified candidates.
  • Finally word :- this strategic view of building and defining culture with a simple employer brand can never come too soon. Do it immediately. It’s easy, free and can make all the difference especially within a scrappy startup

Guest Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanadams1/

Company: https://www.ph-creative.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ph.creative/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/phcreative

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ph.Headquarters

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ph.creativelife/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PhCreativeVideo

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/

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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!)
  • 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/

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Organizational Growth Through Culture Prioritization with Justin Erdtsieck of Trencore & Brix

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/

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The Hiring Yin & Yang: Job Postings vs Recruiting with Kelly Robinson of RedDot Media

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/

 

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