#1 Hiring Podcast Designed Specifically For Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Tuesdays @12PM (PST), LIVE on LinkedIn, YouTube, & Facebook Our mission is to enable values-driven startups to win-win the strongest hires by sharing insights from top-performing entrepreneurs, game-changers, & industry thought leaders. www.hirepowerradio.com www.rickgirard.com
Episodes
Thursday Apr 29, 2021
Thursday Apr 29, 2021
“But I have managed to hire two rockstars without having any formalized hiring structure” Said my friend Anthony. To which I quickly replied back “I’d rather be lucky than good”!
It is great to have a few “superstars” in your organization but it is outstanding to have an organization built entirely of well positioned, highly productive people, A-players.
Having a system for hiring is the only way to make the leap from average to extraordinary.
Our guest today: Robert Glazer, Founder & CEO of Acceleration Partners.
A global partner marketing agency, and the co-founder and Chairman of BrandCycle. A serial entrepreneur, he has a passion for helping individuals and organizations build their capacity to Elevate.
Robert was twice named to Glassdoor’s list of Top Small & Medium Companies CEO's (#2) and was selected as a Top 22 Conscious Business Leaders of 2019 by Conscious Company.
He speaks to companies and organizations around the world on topics related to business growth, culture, capacity-building and performance.
Today we discuss:
- Why systems, especially in hiring, to win!
- Robert’s process for hiring
Why are business leaders reluctant to follow a hiring system?
- Moving from a superstar hiring culture to a systematic process
- Getting everyone to do work up front
- Agreeing on what success looks like in the role
- Clarity in the scorecard
- Everyone to follow the process
- Being thorough to meet objectives
Why is this important to the company?
- Process pushes the responsibility of building great teams to the teams
- Scalable in removing leadership from the process quickly
- Scientific process and repeatable
Rick’s Nuggets
- Process & systems win
- “I’m too busy and don't have time to sit down and develop a process” - You
- Hiring process needs to be driven by leadership
- Hiring the strongest people, needs to be your strongest talent
How do we solve the problem?
- Collect process from other firms
- Layout - read Who
- Developing the playbook as a team
- Eliminating the bias & urgency
- Clear on qualities & outcomes
- Making everything behavioral based
- Training the playbook
- Train & certify on the process
- No interviewing unless you are and expert on the process itself
- Evaluate interviews
- Following the process
- Look at the data and scorecards, not gut
- Improving the playbook based on mistakes
- Debriefed on mid hires and find the holes in the system
- Get uncomfortable and figure it out now
Rick’s Nuggets
- Read Healing Career Wounds (Available May 20 - Preorder on Amazon)
- HireOS interview process -
- Role playing - best training!
- Scorecard = performance metrics - measurable / timeline
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Your current hiring process is probably no better than 50/50
- Based on individuals not a repeatable process
- A good process also really helps with remote hiring
- This is the #1 way to improve your culture
Links
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/glazer/
Websites:https://www.accelerationpartners.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AccelerationPartners/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/accelerationpar
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accelerationpar/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Accelerationpartners/featured
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
Thursday Apr 15, 2021
It’s no secret that I feel that employer branding is bullshit. Mostly because it is focused on perks and selling a “utopian” environment that is not what the company really is at all.
Messaging is focused on being the greatest place to work. But we all know that if you are a small to mid sized business, you are at best, a “hot mess”.
Clarity in who you REALLY are as an organization is the one thing that will propel your business forward and attract the strongest people to your company.
Our guest today: Eric Morley, Co-Founder & COO for Blue C Advertising
Eric has been helping companies across both B2B and B2C segments create brand strategies, campaign development, strategic design, content creation, and digital marketing strategies with a goal of outperforming the competition.
Eric and the Blue C team have been honored to work with some truly innovative and impactful brands that keep them constantly pushing and evolving their exclusive BrandPWR Platform.
Today we discuss:
- The truth about what branding is
- The elements for a true branding initiative
According to Wikipedia: Employer brand describes an employer's reputation as a place to work, and their employee value proposition
- EVP-a set of associations and offerings provided by an organization in return for the skills, capabilities and experiences an employee brings to the organization
Challenge today?
- Not having your messaging down
- Retooling messaging for a covid friendly world
- The world has changed in the last year
- Equally important to communicate to your customers as well has your future employees
Why is this important to the company?
- A players have seen it all before and can smell a skunk a mile away
- Laser focused messaging creates massive clarity
- Sales side, it affects revenue
- Employees- will view you as the same as…. Just getting by
Rick’s Nuggets
- Branding is not perks, puffing your chest (ego) or the product
- Today’s employer branding focus on transactional components
- Not about “what’s in it for me”
How do we solve the problem?
A 360 degree process- brand clarity
- Discovery
- Pull everything apart
- Question
- Verbal Messaging
-12 point process
- Vision
- Mission
- Positioning
- Brand pillars
- Brand promise
- Values
- Brand personality
- Voice & tone
- Mantra
- Tagline
- Visual Messaging- Recognition
- Website, social media, external marketing, inbound marketing
- Transcend from written to visual
Rick’s Nuggets
Pain
- Why
- Desire (what’s in it for you)
- Problems to be solved
- Performance metrics
Impact
- How you grow
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Strategy first - roadmap to the promise land
- Create laser focused messaging
- Massive clarity in the minds of your employees, future employees
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericmorleybluec/
Websites: https://bluecusa.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlueCAdvertising/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blue_c_usa/
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Mar 25, 2021
Thursday Mar 25, 2021
If hiring right is so critical to the organization, why is interviewing the one action that is entirely left up to chance? It has been my experience that virtually zero small companies invest in training their people how to interview.
This was the experience of an extremely successful executive, Jeff. Who at the C-level had only attended a one hour session of interview training in his whole career…. 10 years ago.
It is assumed that most leaders already know how to interview but the truth is that they don't. Most of us know how to talk skills and look for likable traits. But the process is riddled with bias and assumptions. Missing the evidence that is so critical in hiring the strongest person for the role.
Our guest today: Adam Stonehocker, Head of Sales at Gemini
Adam is the head of Sales at Gemini, a data visualization company that helps executives make key decisions involving their most important asset, their people. He has led sales teams for Peek, Google, Twitter, Pandora Radio, and AdRoll, EBay.
Adam has hired over 500 salespeople throughout his career and trained his leaders to interview with purpose.
Today we discuss:
- Why you need to invest in training your people how to interview
- How to train your people to interview effectively
There is a belief that there is no right way to interview and in the end it all comes down to “trusting your gut” and pulling the trigger... So wrong in every way!
Why don't companies invest in interview training?
- Attrition was 20% per month with poor hiring
- Team only hit 85% of goal for the year
- Culture was terrible
- Top performers said “your hiring anyone who can breathe”
Why is this important to the company?
- Without recognition & change top performers would have left
- Interview team has no idea how to identify the right people,
- You have to get the right people on the bus
- Upper management not happy
- Costs a lot of money when you have a leaky bucket
Rick’s Nuggets
- Every company should prioritize training everyone who interviews for the company
- Systems put in place maximize productivity & efficiency of your employees
How do we solve the problem?
- Identifying core values & culture that you want to hire for
- Make sure everyone is on the same page
- Hiring managers, recruiters,
- Structuring the Interview guide
- Gauging the competencies in the interview guide
- Coachable: Role play exercise to implement feedback from prior interviewer
- Training
- Values we’re looking for
- Interview guide gauges those values or competencies
- Role playing with each other
- Using the interview guide as a script
- Feedback loop and discussion from the group
- Reps/future managers take part in calibration and interviews
- Quarterly calibration
- Continually updating the interview guide
- Have your needs changed?
- Are there questions that aren’t pulling the right competency
- Problem questions that most people stumble on?
- Feel of the interview, is it intense or laid back and fun? Your interview feel should match your culture
Rick’s Nuggets
- Write behavioral questions that uncover evidence to support your company values
- Write follow up questions for deeper digging
- Assign to each team member
- Role play
- Practice makes proficient
- How did that work?
Key Takeaways :
- Define your values/culture
-
- Everyone on the same page, looking for the right types of talent
- Only then can you ABR (Always Be Recruiting)
- Structure your interview guide to gauge value competencies
- Set up quarterly calibrations to refine interview guide, interview skills,
- This is where your team continually sharpens the saw,
- Feedback loop on interview process
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamstonehocker/
Websites: https://gogemini.com/
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Friday Mar 19, 2021
Friday Mar 19, 2021
Thinking about the people you hire as objects or obstacles to achieve your company goals is poison.
Often we venture into the hiring process with the mindset of “how can YOU help ME”. This is wrong in so many ways. Especially if your goal is to fuel the growth of the organization.
The truth is, the people you hire could care less about you and your goals. This is why people take your job simply for the paycheck and bounce at the first hint of trouble.
Understanding the other person’s pain & desires allows you to connect the dots, for both parties, of how they can bring maximum impact to their careers and the company.
Our guest today: Jonathan Domsky, Founder of Untangled Coaching
An entrepreneur since he was 24 years old, Jonathan uses many of the same tools as a traditional business coach—goal setting, accountability, best practices. But his purpose in life is teaching personal mastery.
Jonathan’s superpower is to distill this wisdom into practical, easy to understand, and simple to apply tools that will make your life more easy, meaningful, and joyous. To untangle the clutter in your business and life so that you can be your best, most authentic self. And most importantly—see a clear path on how to get from where you are right now, to living your beautiful future.
Today we discuss:
- Why you need to change your hiring mindset
- How to shift your mindset to fuel growth
Challenge today?
- Hiring manager hires people who are not a good fit for the company.
- Only thinking about what’s in it for me
- Not long term
Why is this important to the company?
- Behavior drives results. But what drives behavior? Training and incentives aren’t enough. The answer is mindset
- Outward mindset is a tool, a lens, that gets everyone on the same page
- Side steps personal issues to allow focus on the organization
- It allows space to find solutions to things that aren’t working
- Change success metrics (data point)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Shift from listening to answer to listening to understand
- Need to fill & ego drive hiring. Period
- Result 51% bad hires
How do we solve the problem?
- Seeing others as having needs, challenges & objectives of equal importance to our own
- First ask- what is needed?
- Remind yourself “am I doing what is in the best interest of all parties”
- Realize the impact that has been received by you in your career
- Can you state the top three goals and objectives of key coworkers?
- How does what you do affect other people in the organization?
- Adjust efforts to actually help them
- Make a list of the objectives, needs, and challenges that belong to the people you impact in the organization--peers, manager, direct reports, candidates. If you aren’t 100% sure, ask them. Evaluate how you are helping these people accomplish their objectives, meet their needs, and face their challenges. Make a list of ways you can improve
- If the success metrics and incentives in your organization are inward, then an outward mindset is unlikely to have a lasting impact. Change those metrics so that they are focused less on what you do and what you get, and more on how what you do affects others
- What are your current metrics around Selection and Onboarding--do job descriptions and training simply describe what the employee is hired to do? Or does it also explain why they do what they do, and what is the desired impact?
- Reporting Practices--are they used to control and monitor or to empower?
- Incentives and Compensation and Performance Management--Are people rewarded for individual performance, or for accomplishing group goals?
- What are negative effects of inward thinking in these areas? What are ideas to approach this with an Outward mindset?
- Measure results
- Check in to see that their needs were actually met. Adjust your efforts accordingly
Rick’s Nuggets
- First- Understand what the business needs, not your ego
- Second- Understand what the person needs for themselves
- Third- Connect the dots
- Value load every challenge into the person’s desires and allow them to make an impact
- Metrics: Time saved, interview experience
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Are the success metrics in your organization inward or outwardly focused? How could you make them more outward focused in order to experience less drama and conflict?
- Carefully consider this statement--As far as I’m concerned, the problem is me. I am the place to start.
- Who is one person who needs more from me than I am currently giving? What more could I begin to contribute today? How could I know that my actions made their life easier?
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-domsky/
Websites: https://untangled-coaching.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.domsky
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtBAgyPKr5_-boeLjQWFGA
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Mar 04, 2021
Thursday Mar 04, 2021
How many resumes do you need to see to fill a role? Let’s take it a step further. How many people do you need to interview to fill a role? If you guessed One, you are correct!
So, what is wrong with Gloria wanting to wait to interview other people before making a decision on the person that was just interviewed?.......Everything!
Waiting to interview other people is a ridiculously clear beacon that you have a weak interview process. Not being able to gather enough data and make a decision within 24 hours is not only a waste of your time, but the other person’s as well.
Comparison shopping is how bad hiring decisions are made.
Our guest today: Jodi Brandsttetter, Chief Talent Strategist of Lean Effective Talent Strategist, LLC
Jodi is passionate about talent acquisition and uses design thinking in creating selection and hiring processes focused on people and business. She is certified through IDEO U in design thinking.
Jodi is the CEO and founder of Lean Effective Talent Strategies which includes The Hiring Blueprint, talent acquisition consulting firm and Talent Acquisition Evolution, a community for recruiting professionals to connect, learn, and work together.
Today we discuss:
- The dangers of comparison shopping when it comes to hiring
- A plan of attack to enable quick decision making for each individual interviewed
Why do we feel like we want to see more people before we make a decision?
- The hiring manager lacks confidence in making a decision with just one interview.
- Being able to communicate the desire skill set and experience needed to find the best candidate
- Understanding the motivators
- Miscommunication between the manager and recruiter on the best candidate for the role
- Or no communication between the manager and recruiter
- Not everyone is the same person- shrug off bad hires
- Stupid Assumptions!
Why is this important to the company?
- Having confidence in pulling the trigger with the first person will lower time to hire/fill.
- By hiring the first person who is align with the role, there can be a positive impact on the business in a faster time frame.
- Builds a stronger relationship with the hr/recruiting team when a hiring manager knows what they need and able to make decisions in a timely manner.
People will judge you based on the quality of your questions. Therefore, your interview questions must be intentional and have a specific purpose.
How do we solve the problem?
- Recognize that you do not have the tools and experience in hiring to have real confidence in your hiring decisions.
- Join Hiring Managers Anonymous, a community for hiring managers who have a hiring problem.
- Step 1: Admit that you have a hiring problem
- Step 2: Believe that there are tools and training available to help you.
- Step 3: Find training and tools to help you become a confident hiring manager.
- Step 4: Start your learning journey with the training & tools
- Step 5: Make a Candidate Persona to understand who your ideal candidate is and focus on them.
- Step 6: Communicate with your recruiter/recruiting team so that they can find the ideal candidate for you.
- Step 7: Use the training and tools to make decisions while interviewing.
- Step 8: It is ok to fail. Shake it off and try again.
- Step 9: Be open to feedback and continue to improve.
- Step 10: Once you become a confident hiring manager, carry this message to other hiring managers and continue to practice these principles.
- 10 Step Program to Help Build Confidence in your Hiring Decisions
- In order to have the confidence, you need help.
- Join Hiring Managers Anonymous, a community for hiring managers who have a hiring problem.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interview questions are the root of interview failure
- Questions must be tied to corporate values
- Linked questions have purpose & produce evidence
- Eliminates bias
- Promotes diversity in thought & experience
- Train your employees how to interview
- Assign interview questions
- Conversational evidence gathering
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Join Hiring Manager Anonymous and find training and tools that will help you have confidence in hiring.
- Use a Candidate Persona to create your ideal candidate.
- Communicate who your ideal candidate is to your talent acquisition team and work in collaboration with them.
- Be willing to fail. It is the only way you can learn.
Links
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodibrandstetter/
Websites: https://letscincy.com/index
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/letscincy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jodi_recruiter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2BNdy2kafFSs-cimLyBPBA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCToc02W0GAFHMhXWJZIbhxQ?view_as=subscriber
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.co
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Beating The Job Description Dead Horse with Mark Herschberg of The Career Toolkit
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Thursday Feb 25, 2021
Why do I need to waste my time writing a job description? You might ask.
The answer is: To save Time … & be able to Sleep
The Job Description is there to evaluate how successful the person you hired is in the role they were hired for. Consider it the essential evaluation tool to manage expectations... A syllabus for success.
Investing the time up front will allow you to set the performance metrics the person needs to achieve in the critical first 90 days. Thus cementing quantifiable data to ensure a successful hire.
And that just helps all parties sleep better at night!
Our guest today: Mark Herschberg, MIT instructor, CTO, & Author of The Career Toolkit
From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia.
He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator,” where he teaches annually. Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, including Techie Youth and Plant A Million Corals.
He was one of the top-ranked ballroom dancers in the country and now lives in New York City, where he is known for his social gatherings, including his annual Halloween party, as well as his diverse cufflink collection.
Today we discuss:
- Why Job descriptions are critical to the success of your company
- How to craft job descriptions that positively impact the organization
Challenge today with Job Descriptions?
- Vague
- Too much redundant information
- Missing information
- Break down what the tasks are ie:% of time
- Understanding the skills
- Defining soft skills
- Technical knowledge- not digging deeper
- Throwing up barriers
- Unclear job description leads to unclear evaluation of the interviewee
Why is this important to the company?
- We waste a lot of time interviewing the wrong people
- We hire for the wrong reasons
- Breeds a underperforming team
- Infects the culture
- Domino effect downgrading the business
- No compensation for a good teammate
Rick’s Nuggets
- A job description is not a wishlist of skills
- Job description and job advertisement should be the same document
How do we solve the problem?
-
- Working backwards
- Define the specific attributes that are wanted
- Uncover the why
- Similar mentality bread into the person
- Industry
- Write the job description
- Start with a selling point
- Getting everyone on the same page
- Define the interview questions
- uncover how the person fits the company
- Working backwards
Rick’s Nuggets
- What’s in it for me? (pain)
- Problems solved
- 90 day performance metrics
- Includes hard & soft skills
- About us
- Call to Action
- Homework before resume submittal
Key Takeaways:
- Step 1 of hiring: define the role, including the qualities you’re looking for, beyond just knowledge and experience
- Step 2: make sure everyone on the hiring team is clear
- Step 3: make sure the questions you ask align to evaluating on what you’re looking for
Links:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hershey/
Websites: https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCareerToolkitBook
Twitter: https://twitter.com/markaherschberg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CareerToolkitBk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecareertoolkit/
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Feb 18, 2021
Thursday Feb 18, 2021
No one is interested in working for your ego. Just ask our friend …. Dick (name changed to protect the innocent).
Dick is a VP of a small, well funded start-up and very proud of what they are building. So proud that he has established a very high bar for the people he wants to hire. Let’s just say his expectations are a bit out of whack! He has Ferrari expectations on a Hyundai budget.
The way in which the interview is conducted comes across as adversarial. Dick comes across as a real, well you know…. Horses ass. As a result, some fantastic people have opted not to accept his offer and negative Glassdoor reviews are abundant.
Today is about how to NOT run off talented people in your interview, just like Dick.
Our guest today: Molly McGrath, Founder of Hiring & Empowering Solutions
Molly is a National Podcaster, decade long national blogger and 2 x Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She has coached, consulted and directed presidents and founders of national organizations and over 4,000 small business owners in; executive-level leadership, continuous improvement and team empowerment initiatives to infiltrate new markets, leveraging partner ecosystems and producing profitability.
Today we discuss:
- How you come across as Dick
- How to fix the problem even if you are a Dick
Full disclosure: My dad’s name is Dick…. Sorry dad!
Challenge today?
- Entrepreneurs don't believe that is a employee market
- People are looking for an opportunity
- People need leadership
- No one needs a job for a paycheck
- Realize that you are not the prize
- Recruiting is 100% sales
- You can't hide the fact that you are an asshole
- You are responsible for the energy that you leave in every room
- The interview is reckless
- You have to be
Why is this important to the company?
- Mis-hires
- Brand Reputation Management
- Ability to hire
- Social Media, Glass door Reviews
- Greatly reduce your ability to hire
Rick’s Nuggets
- Own who you are
- No matter how great your company is, it is not the prize
- Means to an end & a Paycheck
- Two words: Improper screening
How do we solve the problem?
- Audit on current interviewing, onboarding, & training process
- Make it safe
- Name it and own it
- Be clear on who you are, prepare people for the interview
- Treat your interview like a client
- Brand reputation management
- End process gracefully
- Leave them better than when they entered
- Close the loop
- Feedback
- Honest & intentional feedback
- Be a coach, leader, mentor
Rick’s Nuggets
- Preparation for everyone in the interview process.
Key Takeaways:
- FINDING ROCKSTAR/Batteries Included EMPLOYEES-- hiring and recruiting is 100% sales. You are selling YOUR COMPANY. don't make the entry point harder than hacking the white house--- keep your ADS short/empowering- don't include salary….you might push away a superstar b/c your top pay is dollars short of what they are worth. You want to take EVERYONE….interview for mindset/emotional intelligence/core values and don't get seduced by the resume. You can always training knowledge & Skillset BUT the Human stuff is what destroys a team.
- KEEPING ROCKSTAR EMPLOYEES---Once you have a rockstar team-- don't get too cocky and think you're safe. Implement a quarterly “Employee Growth Plan'' for very employee in your business. This is the KEY to keeping and creating lifetime employees. Please feel free to email me and I will give you my process for free, as a listener of Rick’s. Nothing makes me HAPPIER as a recruiter when In box an employee and say “hey, are you happy & being treated well @ your current job or are you interested in hearing about a great opportunity…..” and then i get a response “I am VERY happy where I am, not interested!” i will immediately go check out the company they are working for and can IMMEDIATELY see the culture/values/ of that company and get so hopeful there are amazing companies finally understanding the value of team empowerment!
- PERSONAL GROWTH is MORE Important than Professional growth-- when you invest in your team and invest (pay for!!!) coaching programs, mindset programs and have them CONSISTENTLY enrolled & engaged in coaching and personal development & growth your employees wont leave! (I will elaborate on ALL of this more during the LIVE.)
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-hall/
Websites: www.hiringandempowering.com
Twitter:https://twitter.com/HireAndEmpower
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Friday Feb 12, 2021
Friday Feb 12, 2021
Think what you may about the military but the truth is they hire better than you!
They developed and refined a process that, over time, has ultimately uncovered those individuals who exemplify the core values that are critical to the success of the organization and the mission.
A strong commitment to We, before Me! …which is what your company needs
Today is about lessons learned from Special Forces that you can apply to your company, to ensure that you are hiring the people who also share your company's core values.
Our guests today: Michael Sarraille, Founder & CEO of EF Overwatch, & George Randle, managing partner at EF Overwatch & Head of Global Talent Acquisition of Forcepoint.
Mike Sarraille is a former Recon Marine and retired US Navy SEAL officer with twenty years of experience in Special Operations, including the elite Joint Special Operations Command.
George Randle is a former US Army officer, and Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at Forcepoint, a human-centric cybersecurity company. George has more than two decades of experience in talent acquisition at Fortune 100 and Fortune 1000 firms.
Today we discuss:
- Why it is critical for values to align with the mission
- How to Model Military Special Forces in Hiring Talent
Can we all agree almost every core business problem can be traced back to a people problems?
Knowing this, why do we set ourselves up for failure by hiring the wrong people?
Challenge today?
- Companies are terrible at hiring
- Not the best leading recruiting
- Actions don't reflect people importance
- Wrong people leading people
Why is this important to the company?
- If you don't achieve strategic competitive advantage over people, you will fail
- Weak HR function- CEO’s need to empower HR to breed success
- Every business function starts with people
- Costs are 213-1500% for a senior executive bad hire
- Direct cost- 2-15x the person's salary ($3400 per every 10k in salary)
- Indirect cost- disengaged employees
- Run out your A-players
Rick’s Nuggets
- Disengaged employees are easier to pluck out of your company when leadership is compromised
How do we deploy into your company?
- Focus in talent management solutions
- Talent diagnostics
- Leading in talent management first
- Starts at the top
- Investing into your people
- Constant Training (less than 1% of companies do this)
Key Takeaways:
- Look in the mirror
- Treating your human capital as discipline, rigor & focus as you do on your financial?
Links:
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsarraillemba/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgelrandle/
Websites:
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/efoverwatch/
https://www.facebook.com/talentwargroup/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/MJSarraille
https://twitter.com/EfOverwatch
https://twitter.com/talentwargroup
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/efoverwatch/
https://www.instagram.com/talentwargroup/
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Feb 04, 2021
Remote Interviewing Done Right with Brenna Loury of Doist
Thursday Feb 04, 2021
Thursday Feb 04, 2021
The remote interview is still a HUGE challenge for a lot of companies. Especially for those of you who are lacking a formalized process.
Simply evaluating skills and heavily relying on “vibe” to influence decisions is producing even worse results in this work from home environment.
Too much is able to remain hidden because video is limiting on the non-verbal cues that happen in the interaction.
Assumptions, bias and misinformation have become the new plague in today’s interview.
Today is about nailing your video interviews to ensure the strongest hire!
Our guest today: Brenna Loury, Head of Marketing for Doist.
Brenna Loury knows that the road to success isn’t a path you find — it’s a trail you blaze.
Fueled by her unorthodox marketing efforts, Brenna left her PR firm and joined Doist full-time in 2014. She handles everything from overall marketing strategy, to HR duties, to writing website copy. She’s helped expand Doist’s remote-first team from 5 to 92 employees in over 30 countries, and her grassroots marketing strategies have helped bring the company over 25 million users globally.…And everyone is remote!
Today we discuss:
- Why the Video Interview is so challenging today
- How to master the video interview
Challenge today?
- Not meeting in person
- Touch points have gone away
- Video interviews - change in format
- Onboarding
- Hire based on core values
Why is this important to the company?
- 98% employee retention rate
- Benefited the business
- People are happy and the quality of work
- Willingness to go above and beyond
Rick’s Nuggets
- Limited view of subject
- Uncomfortable/unnatural interaction
- Breeding ground for assumptions & unconscious bias
How do we build into your company?
- Same interview process across the company
- Structure
- Hiring committee (3 people)
- 1 hour interview
- Add insight question for people who submit a resume
Cultural Interview - team manager
- What are the challenges that Doist’s products are trying to solve that most excite you? (did they do their homework?)
- How might you improve our landing pages/XYZ? (can they be radically candid?)
- Tell me about a time in your personal life or at work when you had to be very detail oriented.
- Tell me about a time when you completed a project 100% on your own. How did you get started and what was the outcome? (can they work autonomously?)
- What’s the last good book that you read? (interests/life outside of work)
- Favorite apps on your phone? (interests/life outside of work)
Technical- person assigned (senior people)
- Judging the skills
- Can you tell me about a company that you think does a great job at product marketing?
- What are the advantages/disadvantages of using CSS preprocessors?
Test Project
- Pay people to do the work
- Examples:
- Create a week-long social media plan
- Write a blog post about a product update
- Create a Hacker News style reader
Cultural Final - leader/executive
- Covers 5 core values: Mastery, Independence, Communication, Ambition & Balance, Impact
- Behavioral questions:
- What’s the difference between someone who’s good in your field versus someone who’s outstanding?
- Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a team member. How did you approach that situation?
- Tell me about a time that you went above and beyond what was expected? What motivated you to do so?
- Behavioral questions:
Rick’s Nuggets
- Phone Screen / Discovery Call
- Pain, Desire, Impact
Key Takeaways:
- Prioritize hiring for cultural fit – some technical skills can be learned later on the job
- Do everything you can to cultivate an environment that values trust over tracking
Links:
Website: https://doist.com/
Blog: https://blog.doist.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/doist, https://twitter.com/brennakL
Relevant blog posts:
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Jan 21, 2021
Thursday Jan 21, 2021
One bad hire in your startup negatively affects your balance sheet and is the fuel to future boardroom conflict.
Often, we entrepreneurs feel the pressure to fill our roles at the expense of elevating our people's performance. This disintegrates the company values and results in the exit of your strongest players.
Today is about hiring “gravitators” and avoiding the “disintegrators” that will surely be the subject of boardroom conflict.
Our guest today: Rod Robertson, Founder & Managing Partner of Briggs Capital.
Rod is an international entrepreneur and co-author of the book The Human Vector. He has conducted business in over 15 countries while focusing on developing small-to-medium-sized businesses and taking them to market worldwide.
Robertson’s career in transaction experience and entrepreneurship includes guest lecturing around the globe at institutions such as Harvard Business School and other top-flight MBA schools as well as business forums and news outlets worldwide. He sits on numerous boards, guiding firms to streamline operations and make businesses more profitable before selling.
Today we discuss:
- The difference between hiring a gravitator vs a disintegrator
- Why this is important to your board of directors
- How to gain evidence to support hiring the right person - a Gravitator
Challenge today?
- Companies have no room for error in hiring
- Hiring folks that can contribute to increased value of the firm
- Boards are looking at the income statements & balance sheet
- Are they cohesive with growth strategies?
- How to assess quickly to unload non performing employees
Why is this important to the company
- In 2021 the PPP bailouts have run their course - no margin for error
- Your hires must stick - no “numbers game” in hiring
- The co culture equal to individual go
Rick’s Nuggets
- A speedy hire often results in a miss hire
How do we fix this issue in your company?
- Bring on more outside Board of Advisors (not traditional Boards) to analyze and share the responsibility of hiring and layoffs
- Human Vector
- Systematic approach to maximizing employee performance
- GRAVITORS can change employees “angle” to the” Vector”
- INTEGRATOR -manager who accelerates integration of employees
- FUNNEL OF VECTORS acceptable deviation of employees from company values
- DISINTEGRATORS a disruptive employee
- Attributes as they relate to the goals of the company
- Management hiring and termination based more then ever on cash flow
- Quantitative analysis trumps culture for now
- $1.9B stimulus will prop up economy for six months then economic slide predicted for balance of 2021 thru 2022
- Small to medium size businesses must pivot quicker then ever
- Using outside Board members or advisors to make quantitative decisions should be utilized
Rick’s Nuggets
- Behavioral Interview
- Tie interview questions to your company values
*Knockout:
- Tell me about your most difficult Customer interaction (give wow)
- What were the circumstances that led to the difficulty?
- Break down the steps you took to resolve the problem
- What was the root of the customer issue?
- What solutions did you come up with?
- How were you able to calm them down?
- How were you able to deliver beyond their expectations?
- How did the interaction end?
- Why was their view important to you?
Key Takeaways:
- During these difficult times, systematic hiring and termination most adhere to a firm’s financial
- Outside Advisory input can bring clarity to growth and/or scaling back strategies
- It’s a perfect time to shake up your roster!
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roderickrobertson/
Website:www.briggscapital.com
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Saturday Jan 02, 2021
The Reality of Vanity Hires with Greg Toroosian of Elevate Hire
Saturday Jan 02, 2021
Saturday Jan 02, 2021
“We really need to hire a person from xyz company and they need to be from a top tier school.” Words that make every recruiting professional cringe.
This criteria is the perfect storm for making the worst hire of your career. The Truth is, Your ego WANTS these things but the business needs a person with the RIGHT DNA to fuel company growth.
Our guest today: Greg Toroosian, Founder & Managing Director of Elevate Hire
Having worked for startups, globally recognized brands, and recruiting agencies, he brings a unique perspective, a fresh sense of understanding, and an elevated level of service to his clients.
He previously held the roles of Recruiting Manager for Virgin Hyperloop and Director of Talent Acquisition for Sweetgreen. Greg believes that recruiting and retaining talent is key to having a successful company.
Today we discuss:
- Setting expectations of what you can REALLY hire
- How to hire what you can Really hire
There are 2 ways to hire A-level talent
- Pay for them
- Be the solution to their career wounds
Challenge today?
- Overall value proposition
- Competitive market
- Hard to find or in demand roles
- Stage of growth
- Disconnect on what the market really is
- budget
- Clarity on what you are actually hiring for and why
- Coming back to earth on what is really needed
Why is this important to the company?
- Impact time to hire
- Help to hire the right people
- Think through their recruiting strategy
- Help with financial planning
How do we build into your company?
- Build your value proposition
- What is it to your employees
- Cultural element
- How to communicate you culture
- Honest and open about What your culture really is
- Allow people to opt in/opt out
- Business element
- What the work is
- Product/ service
- Social good, clean energy, industry
- Clear about how it is different from their competitors
- Personal/Professional element
- What’s in it for me?
- What will I learn?
- What will this do for my career?
- Clarity On what needs to be done
- What really needs to be done?
- First hire??? Now what?
- Clarity helps to target the right people, industries, competitors
- Gain clarity on what success looks like for this role
- Understanding the competitive market
- Clarity on what you are hiring for and why
- Common complexity of what is being built
- Reality check on what you NEED to be paying this person
- Who else you are in competition with for that person
- Solutions if the role cant flex
-
- If the person you need is unhirable?
- Competition, salary, location, level of skill, small pool
- Training & molding a person intro the role
- Contractor, fully remote,
Key Takeaways:
- Craft and solidify your EVP - at least for your company. Use the cultural, business, professional buckets to help.
- Be mindful of the market you’re hiring in and self aware of your company's positioning.
- If hiring the people you want or the way you want aren’t currently realistic, then consider creative ways of making your offering more attractive or creative ways of getting the work done.
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: Greg Toroosian
Website: Elevate Hire
Twitter: Toroosian
Email: greg@elevatehire.com
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Thursday Dec 24, 2020
The Pivot to a Remote Interview Process with Vince Thompson of MELT
Thursday Dec 24, 2020
Thursday Dec 24, 2020
Please, please, please wear pants during your video interview! Both parties, not just the person being interviewed.
Just yesterday, Jessie filled me in on the horror story of her last interview. The interviewer spilled his coffee, jumped up really quickly to reveal he was in his holiday boxers. While it makes for a hilarious story, it did not win the hire for the company...
Our guest today: Vince Thompson, Founder & CEO of MELT
One of America’s most successful sports marketing and branding agencies, and author of Build Brand You .
Vince has been named one of Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “Most Admired CEOs,” among the “500 Most Influential Atlantans” by Atlanta Magazine, the American Diabetes Association’s “Father of the Year,” one of Sports Business Journal’s “Power Players,” and was listed by BizBash as one of the top 1,000 people in the event industry.
Today we discuss:
- An impressive Pivoting story doing
- Building a virtual hiring process
Challenge today?
- Business collapsed overnight on March 16th
- Overnight NCAA canceled everything
- Nobody knew what was going to happen
- Had to furlough dozens of employees within weeks
- Breakdown in demographics
- Fear & unrest
- Pandemic, unrest, election …. Oh my
- Made the shift to 100% remote
- The liability gap is HUGE
- Mitigating the litigation dream
Silver linings
- Positive forward facing manner
- Reposition the company - opportunity to showcase what they are doing
- Career development
Why is this important to the company?
- Shifted /evolved the company into a multimedia & event company
- Overnight the market shifted to buyers market
- It will kill the “bounce” mentality
- Prepare for the next evolution
- Good will is good business!
How do we build into your company?
- Building a virtual hiring process
- Bring the heat (first impression)
- Wear something nice
- Know everything about the company, job & the person you are interviewing
- Get a good feeling for the chemistry before diving in
- Trust your gut
- Cease the opportunity to really have a more thorough vetting process
- Improve the process
- What did they do for themselves & others during Covid?
- What did you do to enhance yourself?
*during this time, if nothing was done for self or others…. Not something you want to hire
- Look at the big picture of “Who” the person really is
- A whole different set of ways in which you can
- Can't coach desire & attitude!
- Put something out that is positive, and
- No bad ideas to pitch in the marketplace
- Go from crazy to genius overnight
Key Takeaways:
- Pursue any crazy idea that might have been shelved
- Use a lot more discretion in hing as it is now a buyers market
- Shift in hiring for chemistry & culture to allow us to make more value based decisions
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: Vince Thompson
Website: MELT
Email: vince@meltatl.co
Twitter: vinnyinc
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
Thursday Dec 17, 2020
Skills can be learned, but who a person is, is what determines a successful hire. This all comes down to core value alignment with the organization.
Shared values create a much tighter bond and a more engaged team member.
The correct answer is rarely hiring for skills. So consider alternative hiring initiatives like an apprenticeship program designed to purely foster career growth.
Our guest today: Nicholas Wyman, President of IWSI America
Nicholas is an international expert, particularly zero-ing in on CTE education, apprenticeship and training models in the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland and Australia. Wyman writes opinion pieces for Forbes, Quartz and Fortune, appearances on National Public Radio, he has notched top education writer on LinkedIn.
Today we discuss:
- Why an apprenticeship program might be the key to unprecedented company growth
- 6 step process to build a program at your company
Challenge today?
- Can't find people with the skills they need
- Employers need to do more to train people
- Design an apprenticeship program or internship model needs to be turned upside down
- Misconception that because a lot of
- Young people who have not been able to get a start
- Displaced people who need a fresh start
Why is this important to the company?
- Skills gap has gotten wider
- Economic uncertainty
- Global economic changes
- Impact of new govt coming in
- We will not be returning to normal
- Need to really look at your talent strategy
Rick’s Nuggets
- Apprenticeships for those in career transition- modern elders
How do we build an apprenticeship program into your company?
Six Step Plan:
1 - Identify the apprenticeable occupations
2 - Form a team to run the program
- Internal team- leadership support
- Identify coaches / mentors
3 - External partners
- Deliver Training has to be structured
- Training provider
- State funding assistance
4 - Define training goals & Wage schedules
5 - Marketing & Recruitment of the program
- Brand it & give identity
6 - Develop an ongoing evaluation process
Rick’s Nuggets
- Develop everything around your true corporate values
- Interview process that uncovers evidence to support the hire
Key Takeaways:
- Broadening your view on who you might employ - broader than diversity, disability - more women (women and youth disproportionately impacted by Covid)
- Get people engaged- lost generation of young people
- Take a long range view to skills development
- Rock solid, top down support- can not be just another training initiative
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: Nicholas Wyman
Website: IWSI America
Twitter: @nicholas_wyman
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Thursday Dec 03, 2020
Thursday Dec 03, 2020
Can we all agree that the people you hire determine the success of your company. It is not enough to just “fill a role”. Especially if you're a smaller, growing company.
Every hiring mistake that your company has made is due to your focus on the wrong ego driven priorities. (Ie: the work to be done, what I think I need, image for the company)
Focus on hiring the “WHO” that aligns with the corporate values first and you’ll achieve unbelievable results.
Our guest today: Tim Spiker, Founder & President of The Aperio
...And the Who* Not What Principle, a profound research-based truth that has powered 15 years of leadership development success.
Tim’s book, The Only Leaders Worth* Following, reveals that 77% of leadership effectiveness comes from who a leader is and not what they do. Using this principle, Tim helps people become, be, and stay leaders who are actually worth following. Tim’s work includes delivering keynote talks, creating unique and customized learning experiences, and guiding long-term development journeys.
Today we discuss:
- The advantage of focusing on Who before What
- The role Trustworthiness plays in a Successful “Who”
- 3 steps to hiring the Right Who!
¾ of things working is about WHO the person is who is leading the process.
- Listening for who based questions
- Eagerness to hallmark others
Challenge today?
- Are your leaders trustworthy??
- Strong Leader:
- Who is inwardly sound and others focused = trustworthy
- Engages people at a higher level
- How much energy are you putting into your leaders to help them be more trustworthy
Why is this important to the company?
77% of leadership effectiveness comes from who a leader is and not what they do. Why? Because trustworthiness drives engagement and engagement drives performance. Therefore we must interview for and intentionally develop leaders who are trustworthy. Not leaders who give the appearance of being trustworthy, but who are actually trustworthy.
- Trustworthiness drive engagement which drives performance
- Huge Difference between image and the perception of others
- Start of a trend of external image vs
- Downside to the company - long term value creation at the fundamental level
- Company will never maximize performance of the organization
How do we hire the "Right Who" into your company?
- Become Trustworthy
- Develop the core of who you are
- Being curious - about others
- Tell me more about that...
- Depth, Community & Time
Hire for trustworthiness!
- Giving the interview questions in advance
- Let them prepare for the interview
- Dig under the hood
- Provide the Interview questions in Advance!
Interview question:
- "Tell me about a time when you broke trust with someone and what did you do to fix it?"
- Continued Development
- Use the phrase “tell me more” 100 times
- Develop those around you
- Depth
- Community
- Time
- Majoring in politics downgrades your trustworthiness!
Key Takeaways:
- Be willing to look in the mirror, courage to own your shortcomings
- To have a organization with world class leaders, you have to engage with world class conversations -
- Be willing to work on myself to set the example for the other leaders to have “who” based conversations
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: Tim Spiker
Websites: TheAperio.com (The Aperio) TimSpiker.com (TimSpiker.com)
Twitter: TimSpiker
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Friday Nov 20, 2020
Friday Nov 20, 2020
Data Driven Insight into Your Video Interviews.
“Look, I just need to hire someone who can do the work so we can get this product done” Said Peter. A CEO for a newly funded startup. “Besides, there is no way to really know if someone fits into the company until you experience working together”. Not true at all!
Your interview process, when structured properly, will give you all the evidence to support making the right hire each & every time. Because, as we all know, one bad hire can destroy your company!
Today we are talking about the power of digging deep on the “right” questions and utilizing AI to confirm your conclusions.
Our guest today: Scott Sandland, Founder & CEO of cyrano.ai
Scott is the former world's youngest hypnotherapist. A few companies (and decades) later he is the CEO of a company focusing on artificial empathy and strategic linguistics.
As a former executive director and CEO of a mental health clinic and longtime technologist, he has experience leading purpose driven organizations. He has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, Psychology Today, Forbes, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Today we discuss:
- Getting to the truth about the person in a video interview
- How to leverage AI to confirm your hiring decisions
Companies today have an interview process that is no better than a coin toss.
- No process
- Shallow (how can you help me)
- Or rely heavily on assessments for decision making
Challenge today?
- Understanding the mental state of the person you are interviewing
- How they are thinking allows you to understand a persons mindset now
- Analyzing the what and how things are said
- Keeping track of people
- Understanding how people will fit
- Correctly auditing the client pool at scale
- People are dishonest during interviews
- Creating a right fit with a specific management style
Why is this important to the company?
- A lot of the “right” people get screened out via a resume
- People who look good on paper/resume that don’t actually fit reality of job/culture
- How to manage/mentor the person you do hire
- Right person, wrong team… vision to see who will “blow up the locker room”
- Making sure you are in a position to get the most out of a new hire
- What burns them out/demotivates them and how to avoid it
- Allow you to really utilize all the features that are strengths (create a more well rounded team!)
How do we build into your company?
- Profile yourselves & your team
- Look at the relationships of what already exists
- Understand what you really need
- Make strategic decision for similarity or diversity
- Profile each person to interview
-
- Run youtube interviews /linkedin profiles through their system
- Get a head start on your hiring process
- Creating custom interview questions based on insights
- Measure relationships between interviewer and interviewee
- Confirm understanding of what motivates and what burns out
- Accountability vs recognition environments
- Gives the tools to accurately set performance metrics
- Makes the intangibles, tangible from the beginning.
- Hire
- Confirm fit & hire
Rick’s Nuggets
- Understand yourselves then build your company values around
- Do your homework, target & connect
- Interview for values first
Key Takeaways:
- Soft skills assessment of candidates is more important than resume checklist
- Consistency and transparency in that assessment is critical, which is why machines should be used instead of a person with moods and distractions
TAGS
#AI #data #videointerview #artificialempathy #strategiclinguistics
Links
LinkedIn: Scott Sandland
Website: cyrano.ai
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Friday Nov 13, 2020
Friday Nov 13, 2020
Entrepreneurs, take your mental health seriously because the life of your company depends on it!
Our guest today: Sally Spencer-Thomas, President of United Suicide Survivors International
Sally Spencer-Thomas is a clinical psychologist, inspirational international speaker and an impact entrepreneur. Dr. Spencer-Thomas was moved to work in suicide prevention after her younger brother, a Denver entrepreneur, died of suicide after a difficult battle with bipolar condition.
Today we discuss:
- Why it is critical that you prioritize your mental health
- The 3 components of a strong mental health practice that you can build into your company
My entrepreneurial journey has been a plethora of highs and lows… At times:
- Question my purpose
- Question my judgement
- Manifested extreme confidence followed by imposter syndrome
My saving grace: Having an outlet of physical & mental stimulation outside of business
- Jiu jitsu
Challenge today?
- Cannot let mental unwellness show to investors or competitors
- Extreme self-reliance
- Can not take a mental health day
- When things go down it is on you
- When it crashes it is on you
- A lot of pressure
- Isolation: Tend to be lone rangers
- Competition for funding, being first to market,
- Less likely to reach out for support
- Evidence that we live on the bipolar spectrum, susceptible to maina: https://www.bphope.com/entrepreneurs-success-bipolar/
Why is this important to the company?
- The entrepreneur is the essence of the company.
- You have to keep yourself well because it is on you
- People’s holistic health keeps people engaged in the company
- Talent will not stick around if they are not getting broader opportunities to find a passion for living beyond work
How do we build mental health practice into your company?
- Appreciating that our mental wellbeing is part of our overall asset to the wellbeing of the company.
- Understanding of your own mental health and how best to promote the wellbeing of others.
- Upstream about driving a culture of care -- attract and retain talent, long-arc of productivity and success
Upstream - Building protective factors, resilience as strong at it can be -- modeling self-care
- Eating, exercising, sleep
- Having the a team of the ready
- Front end your day with as much personal wellbeing investment as possible
- Walking the dog touches many aspects of wellness
Midstream - Catching things early
- Before they become catastrophic -- what are the early warning signs that the wheels are wobbling.
- Measures put in place to course correct
- https://www.helpyourselfhelpothers.org/
Downstream - Where do we turn? Resources we have access to
- Dealing with the crisis in our lives
- What is the plan
- Crisis Text Line: https://www.crisistextline.org/ text HELLO to 741741
- iRel8: https://irel8.org/
Key Takeaways:
- Commitment to investing in your health first
- Check out when your brain is not sharp
- Having a plan for crisis (personal)
- Kick the tires of mental health resources before you need them
Links
Guest website and social media platforms:
https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/
TEDx Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/sally_spencer_thomas_stopping_suicide_with_story
Entrepreneurs and mental health video: https://youtu.be/qrWbePKB-6A
Article: Prevent start-up suicide. Literally. Entrepreneur. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271435
Article: Entrepreneurs And Suicide Risk: A New Perspective On Entrapment Provides Hope. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/prudygourguechon/2018/08/23/entrepreneurs-and-suicide-a-new-perspective-on-entrapment-gives-hope/?sh=2b2e3cbb5385
Article: The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship. Inc. https://www.inc.com/magazine/201309/jessica-bruder/psychological-price-of-entrepreneurship.html
Carson’s story: https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/history/
https://www.facebook.com/DrSallySpeaks/
https://twitter.com/sspencerthomas
https://www.instagram.com/sspencerthomas/
https://www.pinterest.com/sallyspencertho/boards/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfr2b_0rxSsItOgo021ykkw?view_as=subscriber
Facebook @WorkplaceSuicidePrevention
Twitter @WorkSuicidePrev
Insta: @WorkplaceSuicidePrevention
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOjL6-clq63_G9X_F7Wp1mQ
Friday Oct 30, 2020
Friday Oct 30, 2020
The keys to attraction and retention are transparency and process. Just like having a strong interview structure, Compensation structure is just as critical.
Having clearly defined salary thresholds allows people to be comfortable with your environment while eliminating uncertainty in the minds of your employees.
Our guest today: Louis Beryl, Founder & CEO of Rocketplace
Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace, a curated marketplace of high quality professional service providers. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and was also previously a YCombinator Partner part-time. Outside of being an entrepreneur and investor, Louis is an avid cook and has recently been perfecting his homemade pizza.
Today we discuss:
- Benefits to establishing a compensation structure early on
- 4 step process to building a successful comp plan
Challenge today?
- Setting a correct compensation structure
- Disparity in salary
- Miscalibrated pay system
- How to promote and compensate properly
Why is this important to the company?
Ultimately compensation to align with the values of the company
- tighten range of cash & equity
- Wiggle room for negotiation
- Tradeoff flexibility
- Determine range of percentile before you start ( Netflix 110%)
- Trade off on higher compensation is a recipe for disaster
- Compensation is what does NOT determine the level
- Provides organizational transparency
- Manage expectations & promotions
When compensation changes, adjustments are across the organization
How do we build a compensation structure into your company?
Talk about what values you have in your compensation package
- People feel that teammates will be paid very similarly
Build compensation Matrix
- Cash, quality, bonus, etc
- Determine levels
- Functional areas
- Collect data (compensation data)
- Determines what percentile your organization is willing to pay
Leaders need to define what each level is
- Interview process at each level
- Promotion process
Live values through the interview process
- Adjust the interview process according to the interview
Key Takeaways:
- Think about what you value
- Think about compensation in advance
- Develop methodologies to allow the organization to scale
Guest Contact & Links:
Email: louis@rocketplace.com
Website: Rocketplace Facebook Twitter
Friday Oct 23, 2020
Friday Oct 23, 2020
We are in the greatest time for opportunistic hiring! An unprecedented number of talented people are on the sidelines and now is your time to hire the people that will take your company to the next level. All it takes is some creative thinking and a plan.
Our guest today: Scott Hamilton, President & CEO of Executive Next Practices Institute (ENP)
Scott and his team of Nextworks partners provide executive and organizational programs around strategic planning & execution, internal innovation methods, performance management improvement and the pioneering use of “collective intelligence” alignment.
Today we discuss:
- Why to start executing your talent strategy next year Today
- The 3 critical elements to building your hiring plan - executing in a targeted way
I find the biggest challenge today is that business leaders have not recognized the tremendous opportunity we have in front of us. That opportunity is displaced talent.
Challenge today?
- Getting lost in the covid fog
- Getting disconnected
- Employment brand message is getting lost in all the noise
- Lost in person networking
- Need to force connections in a different way, that you don't know
- Expanding your network channels
Why is this important to the company?
- Business value proposition, new ideas come from outside our industry
- Talent: High quality talent in other arenas
- Have skills, aptitude & capabilities to be successful
- Transparency & increase communications in our marketplace
- Be found easily and understand the value in working for your company
- Diversity, Equity (level playing field) & Inclusion
Rick’s Nuggets
- Leaders are still unclear about the opportunity we are in right now!
- Disrupting your own business through
How do we build it into your company?
- Bottom up strategy
- Tap the collective IQ
- Clear on mission
- Shared purpose
- Not just say it, but live it
- Culture of learning
- Community Partner
- Talent Skills
- Valuing adaptability
- Ideation - create
- Culture that allows people to step up & take risks
- People who have good judgment
- Execution skills
- Execution
- Acting with measurable intent
- Knowing KPI’s & OKR’s
- Pace & Rhythm
- Faster cycle to fail fast, learn fast
- 30-60 days (smaller projects to allow for testing)
- Reward & recognition for hiring - referrals
Rick’s Nuggets
- Target and connect
- Build a strong referral strategy
- Communicate needs daily
- Ask for names & contact information of top performers
- Contact yourself
- Do NOT pitch your job/company/yourself
- Treat as a “get to know you” call
- Take your time
- Hire for value alignment / cultural alignment before skills
- Value growth
Key Takeaways:
- Get started now on 2021
- Business value creation
- Talent value creation
Guest Contact/Links
Friday Oct 16, 2020
Friday Oct 16, 2020
Consider the possibility that giving may be the answer that propels your business through challenging times.
There is nothing more alluring to talented people than a leader who finds cause to support. Especially when most businesses are hanging by a thread.
Today we are talking to four business leaders who are giving back to the community and experiencing tremendous engagement from those they serve.
Our guests today:
Charles Antis, Founder & CEO of Antis Roofing & Waterproofing
Eric Morley, Co-Founder & COO of Blue C. Creative Marketing Agency
Wendy Ellis, Strategic & Creative Partnerships at Meruelo Media - KLOS FM
Wing Lam, Owner of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos & Co-Founder of CA Love Drop
These Four business moguls came together in April of 2020, to start up a charity called California Love Drop. The California Love Drop delivers meals and treats to our well-deserving Front Line Heroes and community neighbors in need. In October 2020, California Love Drop celebrates their 100th Drop!
Today we discuss:
- The importance of finding a cause & giving now
- How to build giving into your culture to spur abundance
Now more than ever people need help. It is easy to forget this when so many of us are focused on keeping our businesses afloat.
With this uncertain business environment, your strongest talent is most likely “keeping their options open” so shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to keep them engaged and productive?
Challenge today?
- Thinking about giving when we are treading water
- Finding people that align
- Charity is the best way to find great people
- Giving philosophy
- Nothing going on so no excuse to not give
Why is this important to the company?
- Not afraid to try things and fail
- Time to do good
- Shine a light on good
- It becomes not about price but it is now about Value!
- Elevate yourself above your competition
Rick’s Nuggets
- Cause attracts winners (people who will thrive in your company)
- People desire more than a transactional relationship
How do we build cause into your company?
- Find a cause
- Alignment with your company that you hold a strong passion
- Doing something for your people that allows them to be proud of giving back
- Join it, promote it within your company
- Allow your people to own the success
- Become involved
- Participate consistently
- Make your story compelling
- Celebrate & Openly talk about your cause
Rick’s Nuggets
- Start with what is important to you and your team
- Hire for cause / culture alignment (passion to the cause)
- Build in a knockout question in your interview process related to uncovering evidence as to the real passion for the cause
Key Takeaways:
- Just say yes to helping people
- Continually show up
- Indirectly network to spur opportunity
Cause Links:
Hire Power + Working Wardrobes T-Shirt Fundraising
Today's episode made possible by Criteria Corp
#hirepowerradio #giveback #calovedrop #rebuildcareers #workingwardrobes #mixonesound
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Why the 30, 60, 90 Day Job Posting Wins Hires with Dan Moore of Vaporware
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Our guests today: Dan Moore, Co-Founder & CEO of Vaporware
Dan is a trained computer scientist who helps clients craft ideas into scalable products. Always one for over-communication and compulsive attention to detail.
Dan co-founded Vaporware to help entrepreneurs take their software ideas to market. Over the past 7 years he has helped Vaporware deliver dozens of apps in Human Resources, Staffing, and Recruiting—all while building vaporware into a stellar organization.
Hiring a bench of developers, designers, and product managers is a challenge for any organization, but Dan has created 2 expert teams that combines all 3 roles at Vaporware.
Today we discuss:
- The 30,60,90 job posting; What it is & how it works
- How to build it for hiring success!
What is a 30/60/90 job posting?
- A better way to do job postings to find the right candidates.
- A list of objectives at different checkpoints (30-60-90 days)
- Designed to ensure proper onboarding and culture fit before the company invests too much.
What happened to drive this solution?
- Created out of personal desire because of the experience from prior companies- escape from past experiences
- How would we want to be hired?
- Tailoring to culture fit is much more important
- Allow people to do different things within one company
- Not looking at what they have but looking around ….
Why is this important to the company? Yes can meet those objectives!
- Limits company risk
- Shifts away from skills
- Keeping people onboard
- Retain people longer from 3-6 months to up over 4+ years
- Bottom line, higher attraction of more seasoned employees
Rick’s Nuggets
- 90 day performance metrics are a necessity for a successful hire
- Sets up the framework for the communication and expectation structure
- Clear guide of what needs to be accomplished by when
How do we build out a 90 day plan?
- Start with the end goal (6 months to a year)
- Stay with us forever: They’re bought into the mission and helping us define it
- Figure out how we can evaluate that in the first 90 days (limit our investment)
- Question what is realistic in 90 days?
- To get to 90 days
- Negotiation between desires and realism.
- Hope for the best but don’t negotiate your minimum expectations
- Define 60 and 30
- Break out what needs to happen for 90 to be successful = 60 days
- Break out what needs to happen for 60 to be successful = 30 days
- Keep flexible enough for applicant to define their own OKRs within that framework
- Post into job listing. Applicants can define OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) within that posting
- Reverse engineer what needs to be
- What are the OKRs
- Set up framework for people to self manage their goals
- Break things down into strategy
- Compelling ability to break things down for company
- Autonomy, bring people who are smarter and can teach us something
Rick’s Nuggets
- Additional formatting for the job add to attract passive people
- What’s in it for me?
- Solution
- Performance metrics
- Call to Action!
Key Takeaways:
- Align to culture first
- Have a 90 day plan
- Review and adjust the plan as you go
Full video of today's #hirepowerradio show available on YouTube
Guest Contact:
Vaporware website or Email: dan@vaporware.net
Links
Website: Vaporware
Vaporware's Sample: 30,60,90
#hirepowerradio #vaporware #hiring #founder #startup #business
Thursday Sep 24, 2020
Thursday Sep 24, 2020
To Cultivate Employee Engagement Focus on Performance Management & Personal Development
Our guests today: Michael Caito, CEO, Management Action Programs
Michael and two business partners launched Restaurants on the Run (ROTR) with a mere $6,000. His company experienced explosive growth after Michael attended a workshop hosted by Management Action Programs (MAP).
After selling the business valued at 12x EBITDA, Michael seized an almost uncanny opportunity to purchase the very coaching firm that helped transform his own leadership and business development. He bought MAP in December 2017 and is now, serving as its CEO.
Michael both gives back and pays forward what he learns: He has been a member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization and has served as its past Global Chairman. The balance truly matters, too, fueling his unstoppable energy, direction and focus, a discipline that transpires into positive action, producing results both on the job and at home.
Today we discuss:
- Performance management & development: what is it? Why should it matter to me?
- 5 steps to building a stronger organization
The roots of a successful company (engaged team) start with your hiring process
- Snapshot of how things are done
- Demonstrates your commitment to performance
Challenge today
Staying focused on what is vital today & moving toward innovation
- First the focus was on cash
- Non market forces we can't control
- Moving toward growth & innovation
- It is all about process!
- Fake it till you make it (imposter syndrome)
- Accountability & focus alignment
Why is this important to the company
- If you are not focused, you are everywhere
- If people are not aligned, how are you getting the best self from your team
- Strategy and not chasing shiny objects
Rick’s Nuggets
- Growth must be known & demonstrated
- Promoting within first, then gathering referrals
- Focused and deliberate hiring process wins hires
How do we do it?
5 Step process to drive:
- Accepting reality
- Face the brutal facts of your business. You can't be hopelessly optimistic
- Look at what’s really going on. Outside forces
- Market & non market forces
- Having empathy with your team
- What are your people feeling?
- LISTENING!
- You may just have to fake it. Take the steps to show that you are listening
- Create an envisioned future that people can get behind
- Place that people want to get to
- Picture of where we are trying to go
- Engage your team
- Communication; work together
- Stability plan first, where are we going first
- Where we are going. Prioritize projects that move people forward
- Process in place to hold people accountable
- Cadence of accountability check ins
- Monthly check in at the minimum
- Problem solving exercises
- KPI’s & cascading goal setting system
- Everyone sets goals
- Leader has to have the system in place to align the company. EOS, Gazelle,
- Map One page business plan
Rick’s Nuggets
- Reality - great companies find a way to grow through difficult times
- Listen - to the people you interview. What’s important to them is what ensures a strong hire
- Engage- coordinate delivery & feedback
Key Takeaways:
- CEO needs to deep dive on themselves. 360 degree feedback to understand yourself and be vulnerable enough to share. Creates psychological safety with your team. Allows people to bring their best selves.
- Need a goal setting system in your company. Habits
- Have a coach to hold you accountable. “It takes a village”
Guest Contacts:
Website: MAP Email: map@mapconsulting.com
TAGS
#Michael Caito, #MAP, #Leadership, #Manager, #Howto, #Tedxspeaker, #EO, #Entrepreneurs, #Organization
Friday Sep 18, 2020
Friday Sep 18, 2020
Our guests today: Anne-Marie & Chuck Lerch, Co-Founder & CXO’s of HI Tech Hui
Chuck heads up Cybersecurity. been the CIO and CTO at numerous companies with great emphasis on security. His passion for secure networks is what led him to his love and vision to bring cybersecurity solutions to the Hawaiian islands.
Anne Marie is the CXO & Head of Counting Beans. Her love for business strategy and technology is what inspired her to start a consulting company in Hawaii. She specializes in project management for software development projects.
Today we discuss:
- Why it is important to secure your at home workforce
- Steps to take to mitigate the risk of being hacked
What are the security risks we are experiencing today with a remote workforce?
- Cyber crime is up over 650%
- Most office workers are working from home
- Companies and workers are ill equipped from a
- Culture Impact
- Technology Impact
- Depression
- Kids at home at same time
- Workers are can be less productive and not pay attention to what they are doing
Why is this important to the company?
- Money Loss
- Vendor hacks
- Moral Issues
- Productivity Issues
- Management Issues
- Home Issues
How do we secure our remote workforce?
- First we need to answer some questions and create a plan with our vCISO’s, CTO’s and Project Managers
- Understand what is at stake
- A hack can cost you millions of dollars!
- Depends on Company Budget and Industry
- HITRUST?
- CMMC
- NCUA, FFIEC -
- Healthcare ?
- Business with the Federal Government
- Banking
- Gap Assessment
- What are the weaknesses
- Corporate policies must align with security policies
- Cybersecurity hygiene
- Passwords -every login needs to have a different password!
- Remediation
- MFA- multi factor authentication
- Education & Monitoring
Key Takeaways:
- Implement education - security training, be aware so you don't get jacked
- Multifactor
- Securing the cloud infrastructure . secure the endpoints (computers) - configure against shady sites
- Monitor traffic
Guest Contacts:
Websites: HI Tech Hui, LLC or Cyberuptive
Friday Sep 11, 2020
Friday Sep 11, 2020
Today's Guest: Jerri Rosen, Founder & CEO of Working Wardrobes
Jerri’s organization helps over 5,000 men, women, veterans and young adults each year re-enter the workforce with career development services and professional wardrobing.
Today we are discussing:
- The hidden gem that is the veteran pool
- How to find and hire veterans to diversify your talent pool
Why Companies don't actively seek to hire veterans?
- Bias
- Think they all have ptsd
- Not knowing the value of the training that vets get in the military
- Not knowing the true value
- Too much bad press
- Painting with a brush that is very negative
- Vets fall on hard times because they miss the discipline/brotherhood
Why is this important to the company to hire veterans?
- Intense loyalty, when treated with dignity
- Absolutely mission driven
- Path of a veteran
- Make outstanding employees
- Can help recruit -underground network
How do we find and hire veteran talent? Decide to hire outside your comfort zone
- Outstanding, dedicated people
Finding Vets
- Active duty national guard or reserves (highly under employed)
- Vet spouses,
- Military connection through working wardrobes, on your own
- Vetnet team
Interviewing & Hiring
- Understand a MOS- military status
- Translate what was done in the military to civilian language
- Look past the acronyms
- Look for the passion & talents
- Experience & gravity of the work
- Look past the stoic demeanor
- Recognize that task at hand/orders need to shift to a “going above and beyond” mindset
- Requires a bit of patience
- Hire as normal
- Understand that everything was provided for them in the military
- Learning to operate in a very different world & culture
- Different level of expectations
Rick’s Nuggets
- Dig deeper on what work was done and look for transferable skills to justify
Key Takeaways:
- Veterans become a much better employee
- Veterans also bring a network of additional talent
- Looking to hire veterans, WW can be the one stop shop. Hidden Talent Pool!
Working Wardrobes is Rebuilding Careers, and we’ve teamed up with Hire Power Radio Show & Podcast to support this initiative.
The Hire Power Radio team has created limited edition shirts, the proceeds of which benefit Working Wardrobes. Together we can make a small dent in reeducating, coaching and providing resources for our transitioning veterans, professionals and workers affected by the current world landscape.
Get yours here: T-shirts
Guest Contact:
Website: Working Wardrobes
Office Number: 714-210-2460
Thursday Sep 03, 2020
Your Local Hiring Market is Going to Disappear! Bradley Clark of RecTxt
Thursday Sep 03, 2020
Thursday Sep 03, 2020
Local hiring market is now gone! Guess what! Today, your best people will be hired outside your geographical location.
Our guest today: Bradley Clark, Co-Founder & Product Strategy of RecTxt
Bradley Clark, who is both a recruitment leader and an actual entrepreneur himself. He’s the Co-Founder of Rectxt, a text recruiting platform, and after a long consulting career working with organizations like Samsung R&D, Boeing Labs, Plenty of Fish, Best Buy, he’s now leading recruitment at Article.
Being on both the front line and talking to a number of companies and recruiters, with COVID and Work from anywhere - he’s seeing this rapidly emerging trend of where top local talent is getting scooped up from outside the market.
Today we are discussing:
- Why your local talent pool will continue to dry up
- How to counter this trend and give your company a competitive edge
Challenge today?
- Candidate experience is consumer behavior. People do have a lot of buying power right now. With remote, you are able to buy anywhere right now.
- Hiring local talent is now more competitive. Remote work will decimate your local hiring market. Already seeing it happen. Organizations say - work anywhere! Precedence to work anywhere led by tech giants.
Why is this important to the company?
- The best people in your local area, are going to be out of your market
- Transactional market/process will out bid you!
- Disrupt smaller markets
- Local discount is over
Rick’s Nuggets
- Work from home has opened the flood gates
Adjust your mindset and start adjusting your processes:
- Focus on growing your own talent
- Finding ways to build your own people
- Making them committed to you
- Rewards & recognition (your cool office, and office based perks are no longer valuable, mental health is important)
- Focus on Keeping them
- Engagement
- What the work looks like and the meaning of that work
- Flexibility & shift to output based
- Interview process as a promoter rather than a bouncer
- Mindshift change
- Rather than no… who do I say yes to?
- Speed & decisiveness
- Pre-interview process
- Understanding what the problem really is that they are trying to solve.
- What skills are needed to solve that problem
- Define what the person is really needed to do
- You need to be able to identify the “what and why”
- Interview process
- Focus on the “how & when”
- Selling the problem, how it is good for them
- Identify people that want to be a Big fish in a small pond
- Be decisive
- Communication
- Improve both the Speed of communication and keeping an open channel of communication. Get off email, this is why we created Rectxt.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Whats in it for me (not you) needs to be all you are con
Key Takeaways:
- Understand they’re no longer competing locally for top talent, so they’ll have to change to compete (business can’t be the same as always)
- Interview well with knowing what you want, then be decisive
- if/ when possible grow your own talent, then do everything you can to keep them
Guest Contact:
LinkedIn: Bradley Clark
Website: RecTxt
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Friday Aug 28, 2020
Why Hiring through the pandemic is a strong Indicator of a innovative business.
“We have all been forced to pivot and now we are weathering the storm” for most businesses.
Our guest today: Jay Connor, Founder & CEO of Learning Ovation
Recognized as an early thought leader in collective impact, Joseph A. “Jay” Connor, JD/MBA, is the Founder and Chief Executive of Learning Ovations, Inc. The mission animating Learning Ovations is to have all students reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade.
Jay, a C-suite officer for two separate Fortune 500 corporations, has extensive leadership experience in the business, nonprofit, and public policy arenas.
Today we are discussing:
- Why you should be hiring NOW
- How to evaluate for the business and skate to the puck
Challenge today?
- Is this company able to adapt and respond?
- Have a future, capacity to respond to change vs. being changed
- Higher quality people attracted to the company simply because they are hiring
- People are open to talking.
- Not hunkering down during pandemic is a sign that the company will thrive post covid
Why is this important to the company?
- Expanding & growing in the face of problems
- Approaches & ways of doing things are more attractive to potential businesses. New approaches are welcome and critical to moving forward in the business.
- Engagement at the strategic level is more accepted today. Requiring employees/people to expand their knowledge base.
- We are in the second wave now and you can't be on the sidelines anymore!
How do we do it?
- "Skating to where the puck is going to be." - Wayne Gretzky
- Force yourself to ask “what is the opportunity”
- What allows me to be active vs passive?
- What windows are opening up when the doors are closed?
- What do we need to do to skate to that puck?
- Something need to change about what your delivering (product)
- Or way to change about positioning, branding, communication
- What to change about your team?
- Evaluate every person.
- Where will people have to be 6 months from now.
- Top down assessment
- Gives the opportunity to expand & refine
- Decide to grow the workforce with their PPP
- Highest risk position is the status quo!
- Ability to minimize the risk by acting
- Business as usual is NOT viable!
- Start hiring for new competencies (what are we missing?) and values & mission focus!
Rick’s Nuggets
- Now is the opportunity to double down and be able to attract strong talent
- People are open to talking because of the uncertainty
Key Takeaways:
- Never too late to pivot. What is the most likely scenario for my business a year from now. Assume that there is not going to be a quick fix. Position for the worst case scenario!
- Do an honest appraisal of the team… Including yourself! Will the people you have be good for the business a year from now. Change is tough
Guest Contact:
Website: Learning Ovation
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
What's your story?
"Well, we are funded by Greylock and we are disrupting a $30 Billion dollar industry. What else do you need to know?"
This is good information to know but it is not your story. I quickly became a very bored audience with this CEO. Ultimately your story is what draws people in and invites us to work with you. When communicating with the people you are needing to hire it is critical that your story inspire them to join.
Our guest today: Stepahanie Paul, Founder & Head of Training & Development of The Executive Storyteller Academy
Stephanie takes great pride in coaching developing executives, sales teams, TEDx speakers, Women in leadership and experts of all kinds, to become master communicators.
In fact, her proven approach, "Powerful Emotional Engaging Presentations," draws upon her years of rich and diverse entertainment experience as well as she is a certified trainer using 5 science based assessments for behavior and communication using Psychology and Neuroscience.
Today we are discussing:
- Why communicating your story is so critical from your hiring process through tenure
- A 3 step method maximizing your communication
Communicating effectively during an interview is riddled with assumptions, bias and shallow content. Rarely is communication deliberate and with purpose.
Challenge companies face today?
- Developing a person to be in more of and executive leadership role
- Understanding your True Values because your values whether you know them or not depict your behavior and your audience define you by your behavior and actions not by what you say.
- Many are so busy “doing the task” they have no concept of how you show up in the process of the task! Understanding your Stimulus Value
- Checking your behavior before you engage what do you want the audience to do, achieve, react in a certain way?
- No one wants to tell you how you show up because everyone just wants to keep the boss happy being open to feedback is the key to a growth mindset
- Developing lifelong learners for value added leadership that build engagement within themselves and their teams rather than dictators who only drive the bottom line and don’t see the wealth in their people.
- Great leadership is looking at the possibilities not the limitations and not focusing on your “Power” instead using your energy to empower others to ignite the leadership within themselves.
- The way you deliver is more important than what you say
- Come up with a great question to ask yourself on everything - Mine is “How do I make this more fun and engaging for the audience so they will remember?”
- Being hyper aware of how you show up and listening and reading your audience effectively
- Audience will always tell you what they need
- Energy you chose to bring to the table is super important!
Why is this important to the company?
- Immediate benefits to the team and individuals include better fits for task assignments and fewer, easier resolved conflicts. You will find these communication tools and understanding this type of developed skill set will also help you grow in your work and as a member of your field as well. The concepts we are talking about here can help you get a better understanding of yourself and your clients’ communication styles and motivations, which will help you more effectively respond to their needs. And because these are cutting edge concepts in the market space, will give you the opportunity to continue to grow as leaders in your industry.
How do we do it?
- Y: In the first component we use a series of assessments to build understanding around stimulus value and the areas of strength and opportunities for growth in the recipient. We then teach successful behavior, memorization and delivery techniques for connecting with an audience
- O: The overall objective is to teach the recipient effective ways (established in science) to build storytelling, supportive images, stimulating slide decks, and content that is dynamic and influential.
- U: The last component of “The Y.O.U Method” and the most important is the audience. We work with the recipient of the training to guide them through effective techniques to read and work with an audience so they develop deep engaging presentations based in our biology and how that works.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Yourself: must be your corporate values
- The person you are hiring is your audience
Key Takeaways:
- Always check in with where you are at, how you show up is a choice not a reaction to what just happened to you. Make sure that before you start communicating with your audience of 1 or 1001 you are emotionally and energetically where you need to be to achieve the results you want to achieve.. Self leadership is just as important as leading others.
- Learn to read the behavior or your audience, know how to check in and deeply listen to what they are communicating, research, prepare and listen to their needs and be value added.
- Make sure that your content supports your message (result) with powerful emotional images, stories and delivery. Make sure your accessories support you and make you shine rather than become a distraction.
Stephanie's resources:
I would love for you to become a founding member of our newly formed Facebook Group Executive Storytellers and follow us on Instagram @executivestorytellers
Instagram: https://vimeo.com/444640964
Facebook Group: https://vimeo.com/445080878
Here is a discount code to Stephanie's e-book that was released in February “The Why Guide To Story Hacking” use the Code: HACK4U
Thursday Aug 13, 2020
Unlimited PTO… The Pretend Time Off with Addam Gordon & Ulises Orozco of PTO Genius
Thursday Aug 13, 2020
Thursday Aug 13, 2020
But we have unlimited time off! Why would anyone not want to join a company with such a progressive time off schedule? Asked founder Sanjeev.
Two reasons, One PTO is a perk not a reason for joining a company. People will join and stay at your company when they believe in your vision and experience professional growth.
And Two, your company is a start up. No one is going to believe that with the aggressive production cycles that they can just take off and take advantage of this policy.
Our guest today: Adam Gordon & Ulises Orozco, Co-Founders of PTO Genius
With over 30 years of HR tech experience and a focus on employee benefits and leave management.
Adam & Ulises are serial entrepreneurs who founded PTO Genius to help companies increase job satisfaction, attract/retain top talent and lower payroll liability by re-imagining what employees can do with paid time off.
Today we discuss:
- The pros & cons of Paid time off structures
- How to implement the right structure for your unique company
Challenge today with Paid Time Off?
Potential liability for the company because it creates an environment where not self managed, managed like a traditional policy. Too dependent on the individual manager approval.
- Using unlimited as a marketing tool. But there really is no unlimited
- Creates more legal liability
- People either don't take time off or too much time off
- The bedrock to unlimited PTO is good culture. The bedrock of trust which can NOT be managed by managers.
Why is this important to the company?
- Culture
- Trust
- Mutual respect
- Accountability
- Unlimited PTO looks desirable to avoid the liability of the employment contract
- Avoid the management
- Payout at the end of employment
Rick’s Nuggets
- PTO is not a reason why people join your organization
- How PTO is managed/supported is a snapshot of your leadership style (which is the root of why people stay or leave your company)
- Benefits & perks are icing not the cake.
How do we do implement the right PTO policy?
Questions to Ask First: Can we trust our employees? Do I want to give managers the authority to manage when people are away?
- Starts with leadership and how you value the employee
- Communication- transparency
- Being Vulnerable as leaders
Start with the right culture. Most startups should start with a traditional PTO model
- Better to keep yourself out of a legal liability.
- Can't eat the cost of litigation
- Employees with unlimited PTO end up taking fewer vacation days than their limited PTO counterparts (13 days versus 15 days). SHRM source link HERE
If you want to implement an unlimited PTO policy
- Ask yourself if you are really built for it?
- Don't call it a “unlimited” policy but a “Self Directed” PTO
- Document the policy
- Define non starters- set up bumpers
- Manage that everyone has access to time off
- Encourage time off
- Creative time off incentives
- Assignment & tracking should be no disruption to workflow
- Set up a calendar where people know when people are off
- Hand off before someone goes away
Rick’s Nuggets
- Look at your company values and align your PTO policy with that which aligns with your leadership style
Key Takeaways:
- Unlimited policy- do you meet the above criteria. Is it truly self directed?
- Proactive hand offs
Guest Contacts:
Website: PTO Genius
Email: hello@ptogenius.com
LinkedIn: Adam Gordon or Ulises Orozco
Twitter: Adam Gordon or Ulises Orozco
Friday Jul 31, 2020
Friday Jul 31, 2020
Key Points for Episode:
Timeline for Video Interviews - 72 hours
1- 45 minutes
2- 45 minutes
3- 45 minutes
4- 45 - 60 minutes
Decision - 24 hours from Final Interview
You must have your questions pre-written and assigned to the individual Interviewer
Questions designed to gain evidence of cultural alignment
** DO NOT just pick random behavioral questions!
They must have purpose and be tied to your company values!
Behavioral Questions
Follow up each question with the “How & What”
The purpose of each interview is to get to the “truth” of who this person is and how they align with company core values. Our goal with each question is to find hard evidence one way or the other. Past performance is a key indicator of future performance. We are going granular to understand the core of who this person is to fill your gut with accurate information to make the correct decision.
The Behavioral Interview: The simplest way to learn the behavioral model is to use STAR methodology. Let each interviewee outline the Situation & Task first. This is just the background of the story that you need to know to make the story make sense. Clear context! Look for difficulty, complexity or size of the challenge. What was the person trying to accomplish and why?
Approach: This is where we focus on the actions taken to address the issue, complete a task, solve a problem or improve the situation. We focus on the WHY here!
Focus in on this area the most and poke holes in the answers.
Each answer needs to be tested and must be followed up with why.
Look for Key details and explore them!
Why did you take that approach?
Why was that important?
Why did that work?
Results: What is the positive outcome for the story? What were the issues? Where did they fail? We are looking for tangible, supported evidence.
Video Interviews (Same Day Ideal)
- Ideal to line up back to back
- Schedule back to back or split them up 2/2 or 3/1
- Build a knockout question for each interviewer
Interview 1 - Cultural Value Alignment I
Interview 2 - Skills Screen
- Live working session to evaluate skills/communication
Interview 3 - Cultural Value Alignment II (optional) 24 hours from interview 2
Final Interview - Cultural Confirmation III & Offer preparation (Decision Maker)
Decision / Offer (24 hours max)
- Best to give immediate feedback
- Time kills hires, be decisive
Role Play
Interview Questions
Walk me through the steps you took to prepare for your last project / client presentation (preparation)
- What made those steps the most efficient?
- How did you do it specifically?
- Timeline set?
- Potential Challenges identified and how were they prioritized for consideration?
- What were the things you missed?
- What was the result?
- Why was this important to you?
**Give me an example of something you tried that failed miserably (keep light & fun)
(innovate without fear)
- What were the circumstances that justified the risk
- How was it implemented?
- What was the potential upside if it worked?
- What was missing?
- What would you have done differently?
- Why did it fail?
- What did you learn?
Tell me about a time when it was necessary to admit to others that you had made a mistake. (accountability)
- What was the specific mistake
- How did you identify the mistake?
- How did you handle it?
- Why did you choose that particular approach?
- What was the lesson learned?
- What did you do differently going forward?
Tell me about the last project you worked on where you were major time constraints (own it/quality effort)
- What steps did you take to ensure quality?
- What shortcuts were taken?
- What mistakes were made
- How did the client receive the work?
Thursday Jul 23, 2020
Thursday Jul 23, 2020
We are now remote. And we are learning so much about what it takes to keep your people engaged and productive. The balance between communication and micromanagement is often the Biggest challenge.
Here’s what we’ve learned: Consistent communication with ultra flexibility is working. Encouragement to take care of yourself first: ie: a walk, bike ride or step away is increasing productivity. Virtual happy hours are helping to forge team comradery.
Our guests today: Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey, Founders of the world's top wine brand, Barefoot Wines
Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. Michael & Bonnie pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and as a result were acquired by E&J Gallo. Today, they offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) & Shelf Smarts courses to help consumer product brand builders achieve success by maximizing the value of their human resources.
Today we are discussing:
- Virtual challenges today
- How to build company culture to an off premise workforce
Off Premise challenge today?
- Disengagement
- Not routine
- Physical commitment
- Daily encouragement
Why is this important to the company?
Two biggest hidden costs in every business!
- Reduce turnover
- Increase engagement
Good people transform to great people through growth
- Improve skill sets & relationships
- Allow people to do the work they like to do and not do. Allow them to create their own roles.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Accountability & Productivity
- Remote causes you to really put your business under the microscope
- Cost of a Bad hire is 30% of individuals earnings (US Dept of Labor)
- Does not include Morale & Productivity loss costs
How do we do it?
Find good people & build great people *****
- Keep people from being isolated (Team based)
- Culture of permission - make mistakes right. Don't hide mistakes.
Hiring tactics?
Overkilling Orientation
- Over educate
- Money map
- About understanding how the money flows to get to your paycheck
- 2 division company
- Getting into the cause & effect of the business
- Sales & Sales support
Include people in the solutions
- Everyone asked to contribute their ideas
- Footsteps to the wine in stores from the receptionist! (recognition)
- Throw problems out on the table and allow people to contribute
- Promote the idea that everyone has a voice
Rick’s Nuggets
- Finding good people requires work & a lot of conversations
- Creative ways to encourage engagement
- Virtual happy hour
Key Takeaways:
- You have a responsibility to improve your hires. Find their talents and expand upon them
- All companies have 2 divisions- sales & sales support
- All salaries start from the community not from the company!
Find Bonnie & Michael here:
Business Audio Theatre Linkedin
Websites: www.thebarefootspirit.com & www.consumerbrandbuilders.com
Thursday Jul 16, 2020
Thursday Jul 16, 2020
High performing individuals come in every flavor. They can not be identified by looking at a resume! They can only be discovered by understanding who the person is, the values they hold dear and the track record of the impact they have made in the past. Every day, your company loses money when you allow personal bias to influence your hiring decisions without proper evidence. Quite often, the strongest hire is not the person you envisioned for the role.
Our guest today: Kelly Robinson, CEO of RedDotMedia.
He founded Broadbean.com Inc 2001, which was acquired by CareerBuilder in 2014. Now he lead RedDot Media, 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.
Today we are discussing:
- Why you need to consider hiring people over 45+
- How to value wisdom & hire modern elders
Why don’t employers hire older people?
- The person they are hiring probably has more experience than they do.
- Oh, why would he want to work for me,
- They have done my job for 20 years!
- They don’t have the right degree.
- Younger workers are better because:
- They have more energy.
- They're more tech savvy.
- They're more willing to give discretionary effort.
- They'll work for us for the next 30 years.
- They have less health problems.
The reality is younger workers have just as many problems as older workers.
- Older workers are better because:
- They don't have kids pulling them constantly off their game (Uh oh! Parent bias!)
- While possibly not as tech savvy, they have experience in getting things done in different ways and they won't panic when the internet goes down for 15 minutes.
- They grew up in a time when work life balance meant you worked until the job was done.
- They're willing to by loyal to you for the next 7-10 years, which is more loyalty than you'll get from anyone else you hire.
- Older workers statistically don't miss work more than younger workers.
- In the next few years, 35% of our workforce will be 50 or older.
- And 8% of them—about 13 million workers—will be 65 or older.
- It’s hard to finance a 30-year retirement with a 40-year career - Chip Conley (Airbnb 52)
The average duration of unemployment for older job seekers has dropped sharply since 2012 (though still long); it’s down from roughly 50 weeks to 34 weeks for job hunters age 55 to 64. In other words, it now typically takes about seven to eight months to find a job if you’re over 55.
About 29% of job seekers 55+ are considered long-term unemployed (looking for work for 27 weeks or more); while that’s still high, it’s down dramatically from roughly 45% in 2014
AARP surveyed 3,900 people age 45 and older, 61% said they’ve personally seen or experienced age discrimination. Among those who’ve applied for a job in the past two years, 44% were asked for potentially job-losing age-related information such as birth dates and graduation years It’s almost an acceptable bias.
Why is this important to your company?
- Older workers may be better because:
- They don't have kids pulling them constantly off their game (Uh oh! Parent bias!)
- While possibly not as tech savvy, they have experience in getting things done in different ways and they won't panic when the internet goes down for 15 minutes.
- They grew up in a time when work life balance meant you worked until the job was done.
- They're willing to by loyal to you for the next 7-10 years, which is more loyalty than you'll get from anyone else you hire.
- We all miss work for stuff. Older workers statistically don't miss work more than younger workers.
The fastest-growing age demographic of employees in the workplace is 65 and older, which has experienced a 35% jump in numbers over the past half-decade. In the next few years, 35% of our workforce will be 50 or older. And 8% of them—about 13 million workers—will be 65 or older.
- According the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 22.2 percent of the workforce is 55 years old and over!
- Research from the National Council on Aging has shown that modern elders have lower absentee and turnover rates than younger workers.
- Ultimately, age will be less of a factor. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that those ages 65 and over will experience the fastest rates of labor force growth by 2024.
- Many people who reach retirement age now are often healthy enough to run marathons, build houses
Rick’s Nuggets
- You can NOT tell if someone is good for your company via a resume! Anyone who says otherwise is delusional
- Recruiters/hiring managers filter people out
- Ageism
- Overqualified
- Too expensive from a benefits perspective
- Not technically aware- can't learn new skills (stereotyping!)
- Not the right educational experience
- Not a cultural fit (fitting in with people in their 20’s)
How do we do it?
- Start valuing wisdom
- Appreciate that you have no choice
- Promote diversity & inclusion… which includes AGE
- D&I increases innovation
- Productivity
- Demand that those responsible for recruiting Talk to people everyone who is reasonably close
- Eliminate educational barriers
- Anyone over 5 years experience, ignore the educational background
- Develop a phone screen process to gather evidence of success
- Judge viability by gathering accurate data
- Take notes
Guest Contact:
Email: kelly@reddotmedia.co
Twitter: @KellyJRobinson
Thursday Jul 09, 2020
Thursday Jul 09, 2020
Not having a clearly defined corporate culture document is a recipe for failure. Why? The culture document is a business plan for how your people are expected to behave, interact and resolve conflict. It is your saving grace when things go sideways! You must provide a clear and accurate picture to everyone you interview about the good, the bad and the ugly of the organization and the expectations of behaviors that result in success in their role.
Our guest today: Jeff Wald, CoFounder & President of WorkMarket
Jeff Wald is the Founder of Work Market, an enterprise software platform that enables companies to manage freelancers (recently acquired by ADP). He also founded several other technology companies, including Spinback, a social sharing platform (purchased by salesforce.com).
Jeff is an active angel investor and startup advisor, as well as serving on numerous public and private Boards of Directors. He also formerly served as an officer in the Auxiliary Unit of the New York Police Department. Jeff is the author of The Birthday Rules and The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. Jeff frequently speaks at conferences and in media on startups and labor issues. He is an expert at building cultures that thrive.
Today we are discussing:
- Why it is critical to have a culture document
- The three steps to building your own culture doc
Why does a company need to have a culture document?
- Not very clear about the culture of the company
- First stages you hire the people that you know
- First months/years are the most difficult
- Very difficult to make sure you work well together
- When you exhaust your talent pool/first level network
- Then you branch out
Do people really understand the nature of being at a startup?
- Terrible hire / fit amazing person, really a vanity hire
- Understand how to be resource constrained
- Amazing person, disastrous fit
Why is this important to the company
- Resource allocation problem
- Few dollars, time
- End up giving a longer rope so the failure impact is that much greater
- Cost the company Millions of dollars- spending power, budget
How do we do it?
- You should not hire quick at the executive level
- They need time to succeed
Creating a culture Document
- Start with your values
- 6-8 core values of the company
- Different to everyone
- Be clear with what it is you believe
- Who you are (mission statement), where you are going (North Star) & why you are there (purpose)
- Needs to be super clear to EVERYONE in the organization (repeat it again and again...when people start complaining about hearing it too often, you are halfway there!)
- Behaviors & Policies
- Behaviors to support the values
- How we run our business
- How you hold meetings, how you promote, how you do business with clients, how you communicate, how you make decisions, your social events, etc., all have to support your values, otherwise what's the point of having values?
- People
- What are the behaviors that everyone at the company should strive for? Do we want people constantly learning and growing, or just doing their job well and going home? Are they questioning things, or just rowing when told to row? How do they disagree with a decision?
- What do we expect from our managers? Are the efficiency drivers or coaches? Are they transparent? How do they give feedback?
Key Takeaways:
- A culture document brings clarity to you and your team
- Repeat it again and again, because your team has to know it
- Use the document as hiring and promotion guide
Guest Contacts:
Book: The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations (Amazon)
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Ever finished an interview with a great person and just felt unsure or maybe you need more data to make the decision either way?
This all too common scenario is caused by a poorly executed interview process and not asking intentional questions designed to gain the evidence to support a decision either way. Today we will be discussing how to avoid the pitfalls of this conundrum when hiring for your company.
Our guest today: Steve Pfrenzinger CEO & Head Peformance Coach of Pfrenzinger Agency, Inc.
Steve Pfrenzinger is an entrepreneur, a coach to entrepreneurs and a Hall of Fame investor in entrepreneurs. He’s also an author, speaker, and Self-Awareness expert helping entrepreneurs, innovators and change agents solve big problems. Steve is also a Forbes Coaches Council member.
Using his decades of experience building multiple 8-figure businesses, where he hired over 1,000 team members, Steve has helped hundreds of clients make better decisions, plus expose their career and business blind spots that can clear their path to success.
Today we are discussing
- Why gathering evidence is critical to support your decision
- What Steps need to be taken to avoid this conundrum
Why is gathering deep evidence important
- You have found a very good candidate, but you are just a little unsure, you want one more data point
- E.G., 3 said yes and one said no or “not sure”. then what?
- Finding out how people are “wired mentally” in DISC or Myers & Briggs might impact the decision
Why is this important
- Personality type is a predictor of future behavior and key to major hiring decisions
- Knowing one’s “preferences” is key, how they “lean” in certain situations, e.g., Thinker vs Feeler
- Ask Steve to define a “preference”
4 elements to the personality
- Compare DISC styles to Myers & Briggs types. Cheat sheet below. If you know one, you know the other. If you know neither, you need to find out.
- D = ET (Dominance = Extroverted Thinker)
- I = EF (Influence = Extroverted Feeler)
- S = IF (Stability = Introverted Feeler)
- C = IT (Consciousness = Introverted Thinker)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interview questions need to be intentional
- Digging deeper uncovers the truth…. How & Why?
- Must avoid injecting your own personal bias/agenda
How do we do it?
- Ask them for their DISC style or M&B type
- Have them take a test at www.16personalities.com
- Fast type them with Steve’s 2-page form, uses easy-to-learn computer metaphor
- Fast typing form, Steve has one for all that ask. Contact him at steve@stevepfrenzinger.com
What is Fast Typing?
- PIPO model
- Power
- Imput
- Process
- Output
Rick’s Nuggets
- Proper sequence: Interview => Assessment => Interview close
- Assessments often done too soon
Key Takeaways:
- Personality Type and the behavioral preferences (tendencies) it highlights can further insure the success of key hires.
- You can fast type others without a formal test in minutes, with the PIPO fast typing form
Check steve out at www.coachstevep.com or email him at steve@stevepfrenzinger.com He has many coaching and educational programs for executives and management teams, from entrepreneurial ventures to major corporations.
Saturday Jun 20, 2020
Hiring Trusted Talent with AJ Bruno of QuotaPath
Saturday Jun 20, 2020
Saturday Jun 20, 2020
Why you need to hire trusted talent to build and scale your startup. Referrals are still the strongest way to stack the deck with talent for your organization. But you cannot shortcut the interview process. Just because a person worked well in another organization does not mean they will be successful at yours. Diligence in gathering evidence of value, growth and cultural alignment must be gathered to avoid making a bad hire.
Our guest today: AJ Bruno, CEO & Co-founder of QuotaPath.
AJ leads the QuotaPath team as CEO & Co-Founder. Prior to QuotaPath, AJ spent 6 years at TrendKite, the company he founded and was president of in Austin Texas. At TrendKite, AJ led the go-to-market and sales strategy/execution and took that team from initial product inception through $20+ million ARR and 250+ employees. TrendKite was acquired by the public company Cision for $225 million in January 2019.
AJ is religious about vetting and hiring talent and has made over 300 hires in his career
Today we discuss
- Why trusted talent is the best option to build and scale your startup.
- What to do when you don't have a strong network
- The steps to take to hire through referrals:
Why is hiring “trusted talent” the best route
- Look into your own network of people you have previously worked with or go to a trusted source to help build the team you need to take you to the next level.
Why is this important
- Avoid running into bad hires
How do we do it?
- Reverse engineer your network
- Looking for trust and loyalty
- A lot of back channeling (connect with at least 5 people)
If you know the person?
- He needs to justify why for both parties
In the Interview process
- Disqualification questions- do you know who Elon Musk is?
- Tie questions to the importance of the role
Rick’s Nuggets
- Knock out questions
- Provide a growth path to avoid a transactional experience
Key Takeaways:
- Backchannel with at least 3 references if the hire is very strategic (the first hire in their position or respective position)
- Create a consistent process (with knockout questions or frameworks) if it will be a hire you will make multiple times (sales reps).
- Ensure that the person is sold on working with you and learning from you as much as possible if it is a strategic hire.
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Why do You Need to Hire a Leader? with Ed Tyson of PerSynergy Consulting
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Will a subject matter expert be a better solution to hiring a leader for your company? We can all agree that there are different types of leaders. I am going to contend that the wiring of the leader you are hiring is more important than the pedigree that is brought to the table.
Our guest today: Ed Tyson, CEO of PerSynergy Consulting.
Ed Tyson is the chief executive officer of PerSynergy Consulting, architect of LeadershipSOPs, author of From Expert to Executive: Mastering the ABCs SOPS of Leading, and executive coach and consultant to both small niche brands and Fortune 500 companies. With a mastery of leadership refined throughout his years as a Marine, executive, coach and consultant, Ed guides executives, to key findings he has learned through intimate connections with a diverse array of leaders.
Today we are discussing
- How to identify the right leader for your startup
- What steps you should take to build the right job description to find the best candidate to fill this position
- What questions you should ask to ensure your candidate is the best fit for the job
Why not hire a leader in your startup?
I think we can all agree…
- ...leaders have a tremendous impact on your culture and process. The smaller the team, the larger the impact of each individual but particularly each leader.
- Deciding to add your next leader could either be that decision which propels you forward or sets you back.
- Leaders are more expensive and more capable of damaging your culture than individual contributors - so be certain it’s a leader you need, that you are clear about the challenge you need answered, and you are confident your candidate can indeed answer it.
- For example, there is a start-up client I am working with right now, just north of here in LA county. They are in the biotech space and have hired several key leaders from a much larger, global entity in the broader pharma space.
- The leaders they have brought on were extremely competent and well-positioned to lead the functions which they were hired to run. HOWEVER, they were not prepared to engage in both the breath of strategy and depth of tactics the job requires. Further, they are struggling with the lack of defined processes and support from other functions. Consequently, project timelines are being missed and their time-to-market will be impacted.
- Going the other direction on the 5, I have a client in San Diego county in the manufacturing business who is just reaching beyond the start-up phase. They have a relatively small corporate staff but almost a third of them are leaders with big titles but very small teams (with one or two subordinates a piece). Additionally, almost every leader is an internal promotion with no professional leadership experience – this founder has placed a lot of bets on continuing to cultivate raw talent but does not have the time to do it – which is admirable but making it difficult to grow beyond his current book of business or empower these leaders to really lead.
- At the end of the day, the team is too big and too inexperienced to comprehend and reach decisions without its leader (keeping the CEOs nose in the very parts of the business he has to escape to hit his growth targets).
- Both of these companies made the same mistakes (just differently). They both failed to clarify and challenge what they needed and ensure they got it.
- So again, my first tip is don’t hire a leader in the first place… unless and until you are confident you absolutely need a full-time person whose primary role is to structure, operate and perfect a community of effort.
- If that thought makes you nervous, if you're worried who will do the work, you might need someone to lead the work, not the people. Don’t fall into the trap of mistaking a technical lead, a senior subject-matter expert for a leader.
Rick’s Input
- Focus on correctly positioned talent
- Avoid vanity hires
How do we hire leaders then?
- Purpose of a Leader
- The purpose of adding a leader to your growing team is not to add to your subject-matter expertise, it is to ensure someone other than yourself wakes up every day focused on cultivating a willing, capable and sustainable community of effort. Leaders are no longer obsessed with their craft because every step a leader takes on the career ladder is away from their craft.
- Leaders are not obsessed with technical puzzles. They are obsessed with people puzzles. Their primary work functions are to structure, operate and perfect powerful communities of effort.
- Do they need to understand the work? You bet. But their work is different from the team’s work. And the better you understand that work, the work of a leader, the more likely you are to find the type of leader you need.
- Defining Your SCOPE
- For me, it all starts with understanding the SCOPE of the community of effort you need.
- SCOPE is an acronym which helps leaders remember the five most important architectural components of a community of effort. It stands for Strategy, Culture, Objectives, Purpose and Ecosystem. You can think of it as a replacement for the old mission / vision / values mantra which still permeates business schools today. In fact, Culture, Objectives and Purpose stand for exactly those same three components. The different being, the full SCOPE acronym adds the importance of understanding the players and interactions within your ecosystem and the strategies you craft by considering that ecosystem, how you deliver value to it (i.e. your purpose), the objectives you set (from both a visionary and near-term perspective) as well as the culture you have and the culture you’d like to have.
- Your best shot at getting the leader you need is taking your best shot at defining the company SCOPE and the departmental SCOPE for the team you want this leader to lead (and do it with your existing team if you can).
- Your clarity here will allow you to differential the team’s work from the work the leader must do to be successful. This will result in a rich, leadership-focused job description based on the real work of leading.
- Then you can use the interview to pressure test key concepts in your company and departmental SCOPEs across a broad set of applicants (think of it as free consultation) and dig into the how.
- Process Not Outcomes
- Don’t fall into the trap of listening to canned lists of outcomes your candidates come prepared to throw at you. Ask about the how, the process. How did they refine the SCOPE at their last job? How will they do it here? How will they stay in alignment with the departments to their right and left? How will they stay aligned with you? How will they translate it into clear work methods, roles and responsibilities, how will they structure rewards and recognition; how will they secure the knowledge and capabilities you need to succeed? What repeatable processes do they use to inspire and engage people, drive accountability, evolve the team, etc.?
- I think the most important thing is to gain insight into their own personal LeadershipSOPs – in other words, what are their standard operating procedures for structuring, operating and perfecting communities of effort?
Rick’s Nuggets
- Job descriptions
- Person type (builder, improver, maintainer)
- Performance metrics
- Evidence of past performance
- Performance tied to process
Key Takeaways:
- Don’t Hire a Leader in the First Place!
- Throw Away Your Job Description!
- Ignore Candidate Stories about Outcomes!
Friday May 22, 2020
How to Manage Remote Teams with Shiran Yaroslavsky of Cassiopeia Tech
Friday May 22, 2020
Friday May 22, 2020
A remote workforce has proven to be challenging to a lot of companies who have traditionally run operations from a centralized location. Aside from the technical issues (ie:security and connectivity) productivity, engagement and mental health become more difficult to manage. Today we take a dive into how we can utilize policies, tools and data to create a more engaged remote workforce.
Our guest today: Shiran Yaroslavsky, Co-Founder & CEO of Cassiopeia Tech
A startup that empowers managers that lead fully or partially remote teams to maximize workplace experience. Our solution delivers actionable insights to boost team collaboration, belonging, and mental health by analyzing communications patterns (not content) within and among teams. Shiran is an expert in all things related to data driven products and people analytics and was featured in 2019 Forbes 30 Under30 list.
In this episode we cover
- The problems of managing a remote workforce
- Providing direction on how to fix it
What are the remote work challenges are companies facing today?
- 77% Managers feel it is harder for them to manage their team remotely
- Don't have visibility, water cooler talk
- Creating a sense of belonging becomes more difficult (more than third were affected)
- Needs not being met.
- Need more empathy (fear, uncertainty) (36% of employees would like their managers to be more empathetic to their challenges at home to improve their work experience.).
- Lead with an open approach
- Be more sensitive to employees’ needs and how we interact.
Why is this important?
- Managers need to constantly asses the team pulse
- Remote teams are the future (GitLab report. 86% of respondents believe remote is the future)
- New skills and tools that help to adapt to the new environment
- Challenge with surveys
- People are fearing for their job
Rick’s Input
- Leaders must adapt, or parish
- Changes operational efficiency and the need for more hands on management
- Cuts the need for layers of management
What needs to happen for a company to be successful in managing a remote workforce?
There are 3 main domains companies should adjust in order to be successful in managing remote teams:
- Establish Remote Work policies & culture that are suitable for remote work. There are 3 things we need to pay attention to.
- Rules - We need to establish new rules for gaining clarity
Will we pay people for overtime if they work off-hours? How do we manage security and passwords? - Norms - When do we email, text, or message people? Are cameras always on for online meetings? How do we run and manage meetings?
- Design our broader company DNA -
- Rules - We need to establish new rules for gaining clarity
- How do we communicate when we aren’t satisfied with something? How can we stay connected while working remotely?
Establishing the right culture will help us to foster trust - Training for managers
- My interview with Amy Cappellanti-Wolf. Today the new leader is more about empathy. It’s still about driving for results but in a more collaborative way. Much more listening and a lot more guiding rather than directing.
The new leader also needs to be more flexible and innovative to adapt to the new challenges as the world is changing very fast. - Training can help to gain these new skills.
- My interview with Amy Cappellanti-Wolf. Today the new leader is more about empathy. It’s still about driving for results but in a more collaborative way. Much more listening and a lot more guiding rather than directing.
- Tools needed
- Working remotely is not just working from the office only with Zoom. Working remotely creates new challenges for leaders. According to our data - 77% of managers indicate it’s harder for them to manage their team remotely. There is a workplace experience gap that technology can help in closing.
- Team Insights tools.
It is more challenging to use Surveys for feedback tools (employees are busy and insecure while as a manager you need fast real-time insights to act on).
- Team Insights tools.
- Communication shifted to online - people analytics can empower remote managers.
- Examples from Cassiopeia - We analyze communication patterns to provide actionable insights to improve collaboration, belonging and mental health.
- For example - create a healthy workday balance. Experience of new employees
-
- Communication platforms (zoom, Slack etc)
- Collaboration tools - to share documents, thoughts, goals.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Your policies need to start with your interview process and carry through to onboarding and tenure. Not just when the person is already working for you
- Implement the same management tools in the hiring process. It provides a real life picture of how you work.
Key Takeaways:
- Be Aware of the workplace experience gap created by the shift to remote work
- Design the right policies and company culture to allow your company to prosper while working remotely.
- Use the right tools to boost your teams’ collaboration, communication, and employee experience.
Thursday Apr 30, 2020
Using Assessments to Eliminate the Resume with Josh Millet of Criteria Corp
Thursday Apr 30, 2020
Thursday Apr 30, 2020
The key to successful hiring is in uncovering evidence in a person's ability to align culturally and professionally with your unique company. … None of this evidence is on a resume! How do we gather evidence? First, not short cutting the interview process. Focusing on deep behavioral questions then confirming your conclusions with data through assessments.
Our guest today: Josh Millet, Founder & CEO of Criteria Corp
Josh started the Criteria Corp in 2006 with a vision to create a SaaS-based pre-employment testing service that would make the highest quality employee assessment tools accessible to companies of all sizes.
Criteria has over 4,000 customers in more than 40 countries across the globe. Their pre-employment tests are an efficient and reliable means of gaining insights into the abilities and tendencies of potential employees.
Today we discuss
- Assessments
- Why and how to use them effectively
- A process to properly assess the person you want to hire
Why are assessments important?
With all the advances in HR tech in the last ten years that have transformed talent acquisition, we aren’t getting better at hiring when you look at results. 46% of all new hires are unsuccessful. The problem is we are relying on 70-year old tools, resumes and unstructured interviews, to gather info on applicants and make hiring decisions. These tools are letting us down. Why is it important? Immense bottom line implications.
Problem with Resumes
- Poor, incomplete, unreliable information that in the end does not predict much
- 85% of resumes contain falsehoods or inaccurate information
- Inject unconscious bias into the hiring process
- Boston & Chicago study
Unstructured interviews don’t work much better. Highly subjective, most interviewees make decision about applicants in first 5 minutes, based on highly subjective Criteria
- Evaluating for good data - using objective data to reinforce your decision
- When you think about how to gather data to make good decisions on candidates you should be focusing on:
- Accurate, reliable info
- Objective data not subjective impressions
- Removing bias from decision-making
- Being forward-looking data: how can this person learn, evolve as job does, rather than just past experience
Why are assessments the answer to resume
- Focus on good reliable data
- Things that are relevant to the job. Data that is not subjective and predicts job performance
- Ie cognitive ability (best predictor or job performance, critical thinking, attention to detail learning ability, problem solving)
- Behavioral or personality assessments - Interaction driven roles
- EQ/EI- overlapping
Rick’s Input
- Confirmation of data gathered minimizes bias
How to do it?
- Moving past the resume
- Use assessments early in the process (high applicant to hire ratio)
- Right after the application
- Resume submittal
- Link to assessment in the job post
- Most common after the application has been accepted
- Passive searches (a bit later in the process)
- Assessment become a resume substitute
Process for Active
- Choose assessments that are job related
- Measuring things important to the role
- 30-40 minutes of assessment
- Tailor the testing for the role
- Run at the Application stage or just after (automated)
- Use results to prioritize the people that are more likely to succeed
- Interview
- Assessment can generate further behavioral interview questions tailored to the individual based off their results
Process for Passive (recruits)
- Smaller number of people
- Lower number of people interviewing
- Use later in the process when the candidate is more engaged
- Assessment after the phone screen
- During the interview or just before
Rick’s Nuggets
- Must gain a personal buy in BEFORE giving tests or assessments
- People perform better when they want something
Key Takeaways:
- Do things in your hiring process to get good data
- Make sure everything you are using has a purpose that measures outcomes related to it
Friday Apr 24, 2020
Friday Apr 24, 2020
How can you tell if someone is good just through a phone screen?
A BIG thanks to our guest today: John Driscoll, Co-Founder & CEO of Naked Development.
Part 1: Outlining Key Points for Episode:
- Phone Screening: From reviewing the application to proceed to scheduling a call should be between 2-4 days (MAX)
- Ideal timing for phone call: 45-60 minutes
Part 2: 3 components of the phone screen (understanding the person) Why, What & How
*PAIN (Why):
- Discussion part 1:
- Pain is the person's reason for talking to you
- Types of PAIN to be aware of from an employer prospective:
- LEGITIMATE PAIN
- Lack of Growth
- Work Content/Technical Exposure
- Leadership Issues
- Unappreciated, Under challenged, Underutilized & Underwater
- Commute
- SELF-INFLICTED PAIN
- More Money
- Personality conflicts
- Always open
John’s role “Hiring Manager”
*DESIRE (What): What is the environment that this person will THRIVE
(This is the part where the employer should look into whether or not the candidate is a cultural fit)
- Things to consider when taking a deep dive into their desire:
- Their Vision for where they will thrive
- Fit to your company
- Important note for employers:
- Cultural fit and Attitude are far more important than skills. Yes, More important than skills! Skills can be taught and acquired. Attitude and cultural fit are often woven into the fiber of who this person really is at their core.
IMPACT (How?) (Identify Level of performance)
- Evidence of Success
- IMPACT - Do they go above and beyond (This should be demonstrated by example they give you of their past success and how they work with others)
- Commitment to Personal Growth
- Phone Screen Script:
- *PAIN (Locate a solid PAIN) …. Dig, dig, dig!!!
- What is happening with your current role that is making you open to exploring something potentially stronger?(Very important one to begin with)
- *DESIRE:
- If you could create your next company, what would that look like for you?
- What is your vision of your next role?
- What type of environment do you flourish? Culture, Size, Role, & Domain?
- *IMPACT:
- Tell me about the most significant impact you had in your current role?
- *SKILLS:
- What are your core Strengths?
- COMMUTE:
- Where are you willing to commute on a daily basis? (push limits)
- INTERVIEWING: Currently: Interested:
- To properly pace out the process, where are you in the interview process?
- CITIZENSHIP:
- What is your current work authorization status?
- SALARY: Looking to make $
- What are your minimum salary requirements?
- AVAILABILITY:
- What is your availability to interview this week? (dates/times)
- ***OFFER ACCEPTANCE MAIN CRITERIA: 1: 2: 3: 4:
- What are 3 or 4 “Main Criteria” that you would need to see in a company for you to accept an offer with them?
Final Step: Connecting the Dots
Thursday Apr 23, 2020
Thursday Apr 23, 2020
We are now living the new normal.....And that normal is a mostly remote workforce, work/life/self balance and a heavy reliance on technology to lead the business. It is not about keeping what you have but changing who you are to adapt your business to the new world. Companies who will thrive are those who are embracing the change and committing to disrupting their own business. Not holding on to what was. Today is all about embracing the opportunity that has been given to us during this pandemic.
“We are never going back to normal. Too much has been exposed in the inefficiencies of expensive office buildings, amenities, drive time and personal time.” - Rod Trujillo
Our guest today: Rod Trujillo, Founder & CEO of International Rubber Products
A company founded in 1999 with the sale of all personal assets including savings and retirement accounts. IRPG is comprised of three distinct facilities in Southern California focused on the Medical Device industry, Aerospace/Defense industry and the Coating and Laminating industry.
The cornerstone and key component of our success as a business is the principal that regardless of macro and microeconomic changes, the company will be run as a God honoring business that seeks to bless everyone it encounters. As a result, IRPG has been adding 25-40 employees annually the past five years and has an annual five-year compounded annual growth rate of 23%.
Today we discuss:
- Why this forced change is a blessing to your business
- Where to focus
- How to implement change
Why the change is a good thing?
- Efficiency!
- We are not as efficient as we think we are… but more is getting done under the current environment and the company is more productive… we are finding that you don't need as many people… realizing how inefficient they have been
- Realization
- People like coming to work and appear to be more social than we thought. Along with technology we are able to touch each employee daily and track projects which we are seeing projects getting done much faster.
- Question
- Assess what you really need?
- Now that people are isolated, you really start to see how productive people can be especially when you add a little fear of the economy as well as being confined to the home.
Where do we need to focus?
- figure out the technology tools and track productivity.
- Realize we weren't managing efficiently and were over staffed.
- Understand you can do more with less
- Realize that the office has really been used for social interaction
- easier to manage people through the lock down than it was
Rick’s Input
- Deep evaluation into what the business REALLY needs
- Upgrade in Performance mentality
How do we get ahead of the curve and thrive Now?
- Pro-activity
- Get ahead of what is being shown. Be proactive and being to embrace the video conferencing technology along with project and daily touching of employees.
- Encourage this change to make the workforce more healthy by having a workout as part of the daily routine for attendance etc. Establish benchmarks and data everyone can become excited about.
- Tools
- Using Zoom- and other technologies we are improving with has really changed how we think about our administration moving forward post covid-19.
- Data
- Read up to get ahead of the curve. Gobs of information.
- Transparency and pro-activity
- Do more with less while selling a new vision of a healthier work balance experience driven by results and care for each employee.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Zoom for Interviewing
- Invest in educational growth (self & company)
Key Takeaways:
- The rapid changes in hiring, retention and adjusting to a new normal. Being forced to home quarantine has shown the inefficiencies with our administration systems as well as management of personnel.
- We need less and can do more. Corporate offices with amenities are monies that should be invested in the workforce and technology. Eliminating an hour of commuting while people are more efficient without the social interruptions make the execution of projects more robust.
- Adding by our estimation a minimum of ten hours a week to either personal time or work time. (AVG drive 5 hours, 5 hours of social interaction)
Thursday Apr 16, 2020
AI: Solving for Ego Hires that Fail with Neil Sahota of UC Irvine
Thursday Apr 16, 2020
Thursday Apr 16, 2020
Is AI the future of recruitment? Better yet, will AI replace the need for a resume? Tools are available to utilize AI in improving workflow and screening applicants. The question lies in their accuracy and viability in identifying the strongest people for your unique organization.
Our guest today: Neil Sahota, AI Expert & Author of “Own the AI Revolution”.
Neil Sahota is an IBM Master Inventor, United Nations (UN) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisor, Faculty at UC Irvine, and author of Own the A.I. Revolution. He is one of the few people selected for IBM's Corporate Service Corps leadership program that pairs leaders with NGOs to perform community-driven economic development projects.
In addition, Neil partners with entrepreneurs to define their products, establish their target markets, and structure their companies. He is a member of several investor groups like the Tech Coast Angels and assists startups with investor funding. Neil also serves as a mentor in several incubator/accelerator programs.
Today we are going to discuss
- All things AI, What is it, how does it help with hiring
- Why it is important today
- How to implement the effective use of AI into your hiring today
Why is AI important in hiring through today’s landscape?
- People looking for work should be looking for more than just a paycheck.
- Why is this important?
- People quit when you bring the wrong person onto the team
- Productivity plummets
- Ai can eliminate the need for a resume!
Rick’s Input
- Automating workflow
- Sourcing/screening
- Good at all things transactional
How do we start leveraging AI to optimize hiring in today's landscape?
- Using AI to eliminate ego based hiring decisions
- Story of Omelveney (law firm)- use pymetrics
- Testing for cultural value
- Allow you to evaluate for culture and team fit
- Ai tools to analyze how well code is written
AI Tools Currently Available:
- Pymetrics: https://www.pymetrics.ai/
- Paradox.ai: https://www.paradox.ai/
- Ayra: https://goarya.com/
- Eightfold.ai: https://eightfold.ai/
- Xor.ai: https://www.xor.ai/
- Pandologic: https://www.pandologic.com/recruiting-with-ai/
Rick’s Nuggets
- Add CTA’s into your job postings to allow the cream to rise to the top
- Innovation is eliminating the resume
Key Takeaways:
- Elimination of resumes
- Reduced bias in recruitment
- Increased diversity & inclusion (by accessing “non-traditional recruitment pools)
- Quantifying cultural/team fit
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
Remember that person who you really wanted to hire but they took a job somewhere else? Now is the time to reconnect. Through no fault of their own, great talent is being displaced due to the pandemic. Now is the time to proactively hire and raise the level of performance through opportunistic hiring! This crisis will pass. And when it does, emerge as a much stronger organization and be positioned to crush your competitors!
Our guest today: Jeff Erle, Former CEO of MobilityWare
Jeff has held numerous C-level positions throughout his career. His experience spans across start-ups, small privately-held and large public enterprises including ADP, Western Digital, MobilityWare and most recently as the COO at Blast.
Jeff focuses on building high-performing teams and evolving award-winning cultures focusing on multi-generational workforces, developing/coaching key executives, and helping companies develop strategies to scale for growth and/or exit.
Today we discuss
- Why it is a great opportunity to hire
- A-players: what are they?
- How to identify and elevate your company performance during this downturn
Why is this important evaluate and proactively hire now?
- Talent is your #1 asset
- You now have the opportunity to upgrade your talent
- Missing an amazing opportunity to settle for the first people to knock on your door
- Now you have the ability to find an abundance of a players
Obviously, the Covid-19 virus has changed the world’s landscape like never before in our lifetimes. In particular, for businesses of all sizes, the nature of the workforce has and will continue to evolve, especially given the looming changes to the large number of workers that will be looking for work. Whether already or soon to be unemployed, or working for a company whose business model has been adversely impacted, millions of people will be applying for open positions later this year unlike anything we have seen in a very long time.
What's an A-player?
- top 10% of experience, capability, for the compensation you are willing to pay for the role.
Given that, for most companies, people are their greatest assets, the challenge will be to retain your A-players. And the opportunity would be to use this historic dynamic to “upgrade” your team and your organization. We’ll focus today on the latter, using the talent either already available or soon to be to assure our businesses come out of this cycle stronger than ever before.
Rick’s Input
- SalesForce, CEO Marc Benioff (tweet- 2200 jobs open…… prioritizing referrals of friends & family who have lost jobs.
- A-player - right profile (builders/startups), cultural alignment
- Desire should be workable
How do we start?
First step is to develop a definition of what an A-player looks like for your organization.
- One who is among the top 10% “available” for the open (or too be upgraded) position
- “Available” means: they are willing to accept an offer given the compensation level offered, in a culture such as yours, in your particular industry and location, with the resources available to them, with specific accountabilities/responsibilities, and reporting to a specific person
- Discuss examples...
Second step is to take an inventory, or a snapshot of your people assets and the level of their quality on an individual basis:
- Identify the “Pioneers” (A-players), “vacationers” (maintainers), and the “prisoners” (those always complaining… but they never leave; they feel handcuffed...)
- Methods to accomplish this include: (1) performance management tools (reviews, feedback, etc.) commonly used at year end for merit increases, and/or (2) “force-ranking” individuals either within departments, or if small enough, across the entire organization. (NB: There are numerous views/debates of the efficacy of force-ranking… but I have used it successfully, especially in circumstances such as this, when economic times demand tough decisions around headcount.)
Last step is to assure your recruiting strategy, methodologies and capabilities can fulfill this goal
Be diligent
- Shift focus to finding the best; this may mean balancing identifying and vetting “passive” candidates with “active” candidates.
- This means you cant be lazy. Its easier/faster to work only with the myriad of resumes and candidates that will be applying to your company this year, but they may not represent the best pool of A-players available to you.
- Ways to assure this include:
- If you have internal recruiting teams, assure they are aligned with your remit of seeking passive candidates as well as active.
- Get a good third-party recruiting partner to find the passive A-players and focus on presenting those people to your hiring manager(s).
Embrace increased volumes and/or new modes of interviewing
- Phone screens
- Video interviews (zoom, skype, etc.)
- Learn best practices on how to do these; many do’s and dont’s lists now available
- Teach managers how to do an appropriate phone screen and video interview
- Pre interview prep and internal alignment amongst interviewing teams
- What are the top key capabilities you all want for the role?
- Who is vetting which ones?
- Who is determining cultural fit?
- Who is making the final decision? Is it unilateral, consultative, or consensus?
- Agree on Who is “buying”, who’s “selling” during the process?
Remember:
- The more time you spend up front the less time you spend in the interviews themselves
- Poor managers don't want to do the work up front to coordinate
- You need to stand out to be the memorable company to attract the A-player.
- People go to work for good leaders/managers (converse of that's what they quit), not just good companies.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Build a list and say Hi
Key Takeaways:
- Now is a great time to re-evaluate your talent, your greatest asset, and upgrade as necessary
- To do so, you will need to embrace new internal areas of focus and philosophies, and your org will need to embrace and/or learn new ways of defining, finding, vetting and attracting A-player candidates
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Secure Funding Through Your Hiring Process with John Yanyali of JuiceBot
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Friday Apr 03, 2020
Fundraising is difficult especially when you are missing a hiring process! Understanding who you are and defining your process are critical in bringing confidence to your investors. It is NOT difficult to solidify a process! Bring confidence to your team and your investors by demonstrating that you understand the importance of getting the right people on the bus!
Today’s Quote:
"You must have confidence in your competence." - Elijah Cummings
Our guest today: John Yanyali, CEO of JuiceBot
John is an energetic entrepreneur who jumped into the business world by investing in the agriculture, education, construction, and technology industries.
He is the former COO of Elektronet, a digital technologies provider similarly focused on the Smart Industry. With John’s involvement, Elektronet became the largest manufacturer and developer of custom hardware and software systems in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2017, he joined Juicebot as an executive board member and last year, he was made the Chief Executive Officer of Juicebot. He builds and models a great company culture while providing inspired leadership
Today we are going to discuss
- Why having a hiring process is critical in raising funding
- How build your hiring process into your capital raise
Why does Your Hiring process affects fund raising
- Investors invest in the people more than the idea itself. A great team will turn a great idea into a great product or a service.
- The technical people who build the product are the key.
- Experienced, key players with a stake in the company will significantly contribute to the business.
- Besides creating a great product, they will help the management in creating new revenue streams.
- Technical due diligence is becoming more important for the investors. Where your product is from a technical stand-point will define its success. Therefore, the investors are spending a considerable amount of time trying to understand the technology behind your product so they can help you with the product-market fit.
- Technology companies need great technical people who own up to the mission of the company. We need to build not only a great company culture but also an authentic engineering culture.
- This will give investors the confidence to fund the company as the alignment of business and technical is necessary to succeed.
Why was it important to bring technical talent first?
- Technical people (engineers, designers, developers) are actually turning the idea into a product. They own the design process.
- We need to connect them with all aspects of the business whether it is marketing, sales, or investor relations.
- We need to create a platform where transparency is key to getting things done. We can not and should not compartmentalize. All the stakeholders of the company need to be aligned on the mission and the vision. That can only be achieved by being transparent and sincere.
Rick’s Input
- Highest failure rate is after seed funding
- Pressure from investors
- Most critical hiring happens after raising seed round
- Critical to have a process at this point!
- Sloppiness kills talent attraction, without talent no future capital raise
How to build hiring process to attract funding. Where do we start?
We need to surround ourselves with effective advisory board members to bring in the expertise we may not have. For many entrepreneurs, the decision to involve outsiders in their business may be a wrenching step. Some simply do not want to dilute their control by establishing a board of directors with formal responsibilities and authority. However, the introduction of an advisory board can help some come to terms with this decision, by enabling an entrepreneur to feel comfortable with the business of providing information to, and accepting advice from, an external group.
- Get the message out there to get help from the startup community
- You need a lot of help. Networking at events, forums… ask for help
- Figure out what you don't know. Then reach out to people with the problems you are facing and allow them to join you when the time is right
- If people are not joining, take a step back and ask why?
- We need to be open to working with other people and be open to feedback and criticism.
- Not isolating people to their lanes. Letting everyone involved contribute at all levels.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Outline your hiring process and timeline
- Phone screen, video/onsite interview, Decision/offer
Key Takeaways:
- The future of your business is dependent on your hiring practices. Every new employee will either contribute positively to customer satisfaction, growth and profitability, or contrasting have a negative impact on the business.
- By adopting a structured and comprehensive hiring process, you’re taking the first step in positioning your business for success by attracting the right talent. The type of talent that will help build the company culture, drive sales and ultimately position the company as a leader in the industry. Failing to instill the right hiring process will do the exact opposite, resulting in under-performing employees and wasting resources, time and money.
Thursday Mar 26, 2020
Conducting A Powerful Phone Interview with Christopher Wood of Rise Recruitment USA
Thursday Mar 26, 2020
Thursday Mar 26, 2020
One of the most powerful tools in your hiring process in the phone interview. The challenge that we have is that it is treated as a screen just to find out if someone has the skills needed. And this process takes on average 5-10 minutes.
It is such an opportunity loss because your first point of contact should be about establishing the connection with the person regardless of the outcome. Your phone interview sets the stage for how you are perceived and severely affects your ability to hire.
Today’s Quote:
"When it comes to success, there are no shortcuts." - Bo Bennett
Our guest today: Chris Wood, Director of Recruiting for RISE Recruitment USA & Managing Director of theRecruitmentCollective
Chris has spent the past 15 years in the Staffing industry utilizing his background in Recruitment and Account Management to help Fortune 500 companies solve their hiring problems by recruiting top talent within the Aerospace, Automotive, Medical Device, Healthcare, Finance & Consumer Goods industries.
In 2017, he took on the role of Managing Director at theRecruitingCollective, an organization of independent, specialized recruiters and boutique firms centered around providing new, custom talent programs. His primary focus today is attracting over and retaining top talent to the Cannabis, CBD & Natural Products industries.
He previously sat on the board for National Human Resources Association – Los Angeles and is currently on the program committees for DisruptHR Orange County and San Diego. In addition, he is an advisor to numerous Recruiting Technology platforms and emerging Cannabis and CBD companies and a member of the National Association of Cannabis Businesses.
Today we are going to discuss
- Why phone interviews are a critical part of the hiring process
- How to conduct an effective phone interview
Why are Phone interviews more important now than ever?
- Understand the person
- Goals, skills & interests - Career path/motivations
- Passive recruiting - building a constant stream of qualified candidates
- Due to the lack of face to face; with Covid-19 restrictions on in person meetings, this is the only way to hire talent during these times
- Sets the tone for process
Positioning of your phone interview
- Setting a clear objective of what you want to get from the call; feel for personality fit with team, explanation/knowledge of necessary experience, understanding of career path and long term intentions
- Asking specific questions that address strengths of candidate that fills a need with your team
- Identifying interest of candidate in role & joining your team
How to conduct a phone interview
- Self reflection- identifying the hole on the team
- Understand what is really needed
- Identify characteristics of the person so you can create questioning to reveal if candidates fulfills your teams need
- How are you going to find what you need
- Creating the profile of the ideal hire
- Establishing must haves vs nice to haves
- Contact
- Asking the questions that are centered around the key things you need to know
- Strategic questioning
Rick’s Nuggets
- Purpose of the phone interview is to understand the person first
- Identify their reason for hearing (pain), what they want to be doing (desire) and what they have accomplished
Key Takeaways:
- Don't just look at the resume, definitely talk to someone. Take the phone screen very seriously
- Really get to know what the person wants. Get to know them!
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
How to evaluate for good discretion in the hiring process. Discretion is defined by Merriam Webster as an “Ability to make responsible decisions”. This is a quality that all leaders expect from their people but as we know, this is not always the case. How do you interview to uncover good discretionary habits?
Today’s Quote:
"A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it." - Christian Nestell Bovee
I’m Rick Girard and welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show. We help Entrepreneurs and hiring managers to avoid costly hiring mistakes by identifying a specific problem and providing proven solutions to enable you to WIN the right hire. We share insights from top-performing rebel entrepreneurs, disruptors & industry experts.
Like our guest today: Joseph Hopkins, Founder & Senior Managing Partner of The IPRESTIGE Emerge Fund, LLC
Joseph is a thought leader in AI, authentication and security technologies, He leads an innovative emerging technologies firm that serves as a proprietary first-mover advantage IP incubation model that concentrates on growth opportunities in digital identity protection, security and advance encryption technologies.
Prior to Joseph’s AI and digital identity security work, he served in key executive management roles for Fortune 500 companies, including Kaiser Permanente, 3M, GSK, Allergan, and KPMG. He has hired Hundreds of people throughout his career.
Which makes Joseph a perfect expert for today’s topic. Joseph, Welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show today!
Today we are going to discuss
- Why it is important to Connect with people while adding value
- How to evaluate for good discretion in the hiring process
Connecting with people to add value
- Listening skills
- No one wants to hear about your problems
- Pick up on a person’s cadence
- What makes the person tick as a person
- Navigate how you engage as to their preference
- If you miss the connection, you’ll never get it back
- Pick up folks who miss the 9-5 mentality
Rick’s Input
- No one cares about the words coming out of your mouth
- While hiring it is critical to be more concerned about the other person than filling your role.
How to evaluate “good discretion”
- Trusting the gut, instincts
- Less tricky the older the person is
- More experience, the less risk
- Interest or passion in the work
- Experience
- Clear signs around eye contact, body language, smile while talking, taking themselves too seriously, jovial.
- Education - important to him.
- Live your life based on what you have learned rather than the exceptions
The ingredients that keep people engaged in an
- Balance of coolness and professionalism
- *Discretion - overly doing something can affect the relationship with the client
- The more the client is comfortable the successful the interaction will be.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Opener “open to hearing about something career advancing”
- Don’t pitch your job, company or yourself
- Find out what’s happening with you?
Key Takeaways:
- Empirical stuff- education, background & skills
- Interpretative- talk to people that have worked with you. Subjective perspective
- His Gut instinct- in conjunction with the other two
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
Thursday Feb 27, 2020
The value of being able to directly text or call a person you are needing to recruit for your company is staggering. Want people to give you the opportunity to recruit them? Then you need to contact them where they will respond. Hint: It is not through email or LinkedIn.
Today’s Quote:
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." - Thomas Edison
I’m Rick Girard and welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show. Our mission is to help Entrepreneurs and hiring managers to avoid costly hiring mistakes by identifying a specific problem and provide proven solutions to enable you to WIN the right hire. We share insights from top-performing rebel entrepreneurs, disruptors & industry experts.
Like our guest today: Shafiur Rahman, Founder & CEO of Chatterworks
Shafiur has been the right-hand to founders and has built out the operational infrastructure for several companies, including Airbus Aerial, Specright and Connectifier ( acquired by LinkedIn February 2016) . He has extensive experience driving the day-to-day and long term requirements to ramp up a successful, high-growth startup.
Shafiur’s new startup helps you reach potential hires with their personal contact information!
Today we are going to discuss
- Why direct contact is critical to your recruiting efforts
- What contact information is most important
- How to find the contact information of the people you need to hire
- Typical scenario - What most do… industry best practices
Why do we need to find people's contact information when hiring?
- Low likelihood of response rate through the LinkedIn platform.
- Most people are not daily or even weekly on LinkedIn
- Passive people are not logging on at all
- People respond to Text directly. Much more than email.
- Limited to what LinkedIn offers/shows
- Have to work under their platform
What data is most useful
- Social intelligence
- Personal phone, email
Rick’s Input
- Text messaging has the highest response rate
- Open & Response rates
- 45% SMS, 8% email response rates
- 98% of texts are read, compared to 20% email
- Text messages has a 750% response rate over email
How do we find contact information?
- Hire a PI
- Background Check companies
- Build your own tech stack
- Piece together the various social platforms and cross reference data
- Your own personal aggregation
- Super labor intensive
- Can waste 30-45 minutes on just one person.
- Can still not get their direct contact information
Aggregate contact information?
- Build crawlers
- Buy public data
- Find tools
- Only gives you listed information, like home phone, no email
- If you want cell phone info, you have to pay for it
- Whitepages.com
- ZoomInfo - just business data
- spokeo
- ChatterWorks
- Swordfish
Key Takeaways:
- First identify who it is you want to hire
- Then get there personal contact information
- Where people respond the most, like start with text messaging
- 3rd- have my messaging down to ensure I’m touching people the right way. Not selling them, how can you help them in a career, how your job solves there problems.
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Interviewing for Skills is Today’s Coronavirus! with David Kinnear of Vistage
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Thursday Feb 20, 2020
Everyone in a hiring capacity has made a wrong hire in their career. I believe that this is a direct result of hiring for skills first. Here’s the scoop, a person’s skills can change, but you can't change who they are. And technical abilities are not a clear indicator of passion in the work.
Today’s Quote:
“Values should underpin Vision, which dictates Mission, which determines Strategy, which surfaces Goals that frame Objectives, which in turn drives the Tactics that tell an organization what Resources, Infrastructure, and Processes are needed to support a certainty of Execution.” — Mike Myatt
Our guest today: David Kinnear, Executive Mentor & Group Chair of Vistage International.
Dave Kinnear is a Business Advisor, Mentor and Executive Leader Coach. Through his affiliation with Vistage Worldwide, Dave convenes and facilitates peer advisory boards of Business Owners, Company Presidents, General Managers and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.
Dave is also an executive-to-executive mentor to Executive MBA students at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business and a coach for the Center for Entrepreneurship at CalState University, Fullerton.
Today we are going to discuss
- Why a skills-based interview is dangerous
- values alignment is critical
- The framework for a successful interview
Why do people interview for competency/skills?
- Competency is easy
- This is what people focus on
- Today's workers need mastery, purpose and autonomy
- Shared values aligns well with the way decisions are made within the company
- We all want to do what's right for the tribe
- The soft stuff is not easy.
- Most CEO’s don't know what the real values are
- Profitability is what is really valued
- Transparency on the financials are missing
- Management decisions are the values
- Culture is the way things get done around here
- The way things get done is by making decisions
- Decisions are made reflective of the values
How do we Hire for Values?
- Running, Knees, shoes analog
- Know what the real values
- Ask questions to determine the person’s values
- Uncover the person’s values
- How someone works with others and makes decisions
- Ask questions that validate the core values
- Let the silence do the heavy lifting!
- When they have the values
- Reveal the mismatch in what they have now and where you align
- Skills can be learned
- The person you want is not on the street
- Hire them
Rick’s Nuggets
- Design questions around the corporate values (Amazon's leadership principals)
- Ask behavioral questions and dig deep. This uncovers the truth about who the person is
- "Walk me through a time"... Then ask why, why, why?
- Do not ask leading questions
- Ask the question and shut up!
Key Takeaways
- · Values are the foundation of an organization's culture.
- · An organization’s leader has only one critical job, and that’s to actively manage the culture
- · The leadership team must believe in and live the values every day
Thursday Feb 13, 2020
Thursday Feb 13, 2020
The truth is most of the good players are on the sidelines. Great people are inundated with mindless spam therefore most messaging is getting ignored. Here is the good news, Gallup reports that 7 of 10 people are open to something stronger.
Today’s Quote:
“Great people want to work on things that matter. Inevitably, a great person working on imaginary work will turn into an unsatisfied person.” - Jason Fried
Our guest today: Marc Hutto, Founder & CEO of Reveal Global Intelligence
Marc is the chief architect of Purpose-Driven Recruitment . This methodology focuses the talent acquisition process on the people who are hiring and being hired - as it should be. Revealing hidden and highly-valued talent in this way also aligns to Marc's stated vision for the company of delivering evidential value to every life we touch.
Today we are going to discuss
- Why you believe you can't find people
- The truth behind the myth (79 % of people on LinkedIn, polled, will not see a posting)
- A script to successfully find the people you need - A “pattern interrupt”
Why is the view that company’s can’t find people wrong?
- You can easily believe this because most people are not responding to job postings.
- Mindset - most people need to be approached.
- A lot of people approaching them
- A lot of noise, people not responding
- Only 21% of people are looking at a job posting
Reach out
- Outreach and response is the main challenge
- A lot of the same messages
- Get rid of the hooks and talk to the person
- Pitching the job is the wrong mentality
- Get into career coaching mode as quickly as possible
Rick’s Input
- Treat people all the same, regardless of where they came
- Hit people at their pain point first.
- What could be better?
How to recruit passive talent?
Mindset
- Approach people who did not come to you
- You have to be proactive
- Business owners and leaders take great care when investing in hard assets (equipment, supplies, inventory, etc.) - should we not have the same mindset when investing in a new colleague?
Reach out
- Don't pitch the job (it’s presumptuous)
- Digital video job description (digi-me.com) 1 minute
- Polite, professional, persistent - it differentiates
Coaching call
- Talk to people about them- their career/career drivers
- Look for the opportunity to provide career coaching
- Start a conversation around career drivers
Incumbent interview - document
- Why did you come here?
- Why do you stay?
- Challenges you encounter?
- Want someone to understand what it is like to work for your company?
Reasons why people stay (career drivers)
- Compensation & benefits
- Impact of the work
- Environment - culture, people, space,
- Personal & professional growth
- Leadership or management
Rick’s Nuggets
- On average 7-10 calls to get in touch a person today
- Write 5 email sequences
- Top Desires: Growth, Content of Work, Leadership
Key Takeaways:
- Hiring and being hired are big deals. Keep them humanized. Focus on Career Drivers.
- If you are an employer, you are in sales mode for top talent.
- Post and Pray has to give way to Polite, Professional Persistence.
- Purpose Driven Recruitment Toolkit: revealglobal.com/hirepower
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Interview Qualification is a Two-Way Street with Greg Toroosian of Elevate Hire
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Each individual brings a unique perspective to every interview conversation. Yet most interviews focus on “what you can do for me” almost entirely from a skills perspective. People want to know what’s in it for them before they choose to engage with you.
Today’s Quote:
"Though we may have desires or bold goals, for whatever reason, most of us don't think we can achieve something beyond what we're qualified to achieve." - Simon Sinek
Our guest today: Greg Toroosian, Founder & Managing Director of Elevate Hire
Greg Toroosian founded Elevate Hire after more than a decade in the Talent Acquisition space. Having previously worked for startups, globally recognized brands, and recruiting agencies, He believes that recruiting and retaining talent is key to having a successful company.
Greg is an expert at qualifying talent for organizations which has led to successful hires for many clients in a variety of industries.
Today we are going to discuss:
- Types of qualification
- Plan of attack on how to effectively qualify people
What is candidate qualification?
- Definition: A quality or accomplishment that makes someone suitable for a particular job or activity
- Two types of qualification
Checkbox
- Asking yes/no questions
- Requirements focused
- Doing the bare minimum
- Ineffective because you are lying to yourself
Thorough
- Have a clear understanding about what the person is actually looking for
- Clarify the likelihood of acceptance of the job
- Fit for the company
- Answer the question (Is this a good candidate)
What's important for qualification?
- Look at profile (linkedin, resume)
- Longevity, career trajectory, companies/industries, titles
- Recommendations (linkedin)
How do we avoid having a checkbox process
- Mindset of the call: don’t go into every call wanting or being hopeful that this person will work out. Ask the questions that unearth what you really need to know.
- Conversational qualification calls.
- Ask open questions, ask scenario-based questions, and ask questions that will determine if this person is a non-starter.
- Listen carefully. Be strict and be honest.
Framework for Effective Qualification
- Firstly, you need a clear understanding of the role you’re interviewing for, its scope, the immediate need, and the future possibilities.
- Be comfortable in leading the conversation so you can get the questions answered that you need.
- Conversational and open questions with enough space for the person to really say what you need to hear.
- Have a form of the questions to be asked, know what you need the answers to be, but don’t read a script.
Key Takeaways:
- Build your own qualification form to use as the foundation for every call.
- Questions that unearth a lot:
- Why are you open to a new role?
- What are you looking for from your next role?
- Talk me through your current role and responsibilities. You can tell a lot about someone's role, their involvement, and their overall understanding of their craft by hearing them speak freely about it. Take notes and then clarify any points you need to.
- After telling them about your open position, ask them how it sounds to them as a next step? What specifically appeals to them from what you shared? Get them to sell the role back to you and to sell themselves as a candidate.
Thursday Jan 16, 2020
Thursday Jan 16, 2020
Making a strong hire starts with attracting the right people. Knowing who the right hire is the first step. But in order to attract the right people there needs to be a message that resonates with the individual and motivates them to respond.
Today we are talking about hacking your hiring through the use of communication profiles.
Today’s Quote:
"Hacking involves a different way of looking at problems that no one's thought of." - Walter O'Brien
CEO of Scorpion Computer Services and executive producer of the TV series Scorpion
I’m Rick Girard and welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show. Our mission is to help Entrepreneurs and hiring managers to avoid costly hiring mistakes by identifying a specific problem and provide proven solutions to enable you to WIN the right hire. We share insights from top-performing rebel entrepreneurs, disruptors & industry experts.
Like our guest today: Christopher Hadnagy, CEO of Social-Engineer, Inc.
Chris Hadnagy is a professional social engineer, author of 4 books, and keynote speaker. He’s the CEO of Social‐Engineer, LLC, a company who serves some of the globe’s largest organizations. Additionally, Chris provides free resources, including the world’s first Social Engineering Framework, via Social-Engineer.Org, and heads the Innocent Lives Foundation, a non-profit that unmasks anonymous child predators.
So Christopher knows hacking! Which makes Christopher a perfect expert for today’s topic.
Christopher, Welcome to the Hire Power Radio Show today!
Today we are going to discuss:
- Identifying the right person
- Crafting the right messaging to attract
- Logical steps to weed out the obvious
Problem
- Really bad hires!
- People look great on the surface
- Not showing up for work
- Quitting fast
Why am I having an issue getting good employees?
- *** realize how much time you spend on the back end when you hire with the wrong people
- Aftermath
- Lost over 100 hours and thousands of dollars
- Killed company morale
- Outline the type of person you want before you start interviewing
- Thinking about the work that needs to be accomplished
- Defining expectations up front
- Managing your own expectations- avoid unreasonable tasks
- Experience expected to have
Rick’s input
-
- Create messaging around the personality profile of a successful hire
- Pain, Desire & Impact
How do we fix it?
- Determine the best communications profile first
- Write the job description with keywords that attract the right people
- Describe the words and language to attract the right person.
- Detract the wrong people.
- Logic steps to weed out the obvious
- A list of questions to determine the right fit, video interview to whittle down to 3
- Give the disc test - confirm communication style
- Weed out the wrong cultural fit
- Confirm what is really needed with who the person is
How does one determine the right messaging?
- Disc profiling roles (general)
- D- management, leadership, - Aware D - understands how they communicate
- I- Sales, public speaking, Training
- S- HR, support role,
- C- Accounting, office management - detail & organization
Rick’s Nuggets:
- One size fits all messaging does not work
- Create messaging with a call to action to minimize
- Performance metrics attract the right people
- Plan and put process in place
Key Takeaways:
- Time invested in the prework saves thousands of dollars for the company
- Define what it is that a person must have
Thursday Dec 12, 2019
Is Fractional Leadership The Key to Startup Growth? with Matt Spooner of GigX
Thursday Dec 12, 2019
Thursday Dec 12, 2019
Seasoned leaders are out there and they are willing to work with your startup at more than just an advisory level. They are called fractional leaders and they are easier to find than you might think.
Consider the possibility that in this hiring market, seasoned veterans maybe your best hiring option for building your company!
Today’s Quote:
"We came into a broken world. And we're the cleanup crew." - Kanye West
Our guest today: Matt Spooner, Fractional Chief Business Development Officer for GigX
Matt has nearly two decades of experience within the arenas of Marketing, Sales, Business Development, and Account Management. He has built and led high-performing teams within both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. His cross-industry, cross-function experience allows him to approach opportunities and issues from a unique and valuable standpoint.
Fun fact, Matt is an avid endurance athlete who has completed 3 ultra-marathons!
Prior to joining GigX, Matt worked in the world of retained executive search. His role as a Vice President at McDermott & Bull has kept him close to hundreds of C-Suite leaders and hiring managers. Matt is plugged into the senior-level executive community - he understands what they bring to the table...and how organizations can best attract and leverage them.
Today we are going to cover
- The benefits and drawbacks to fractional leadership
- where to find fractional leadership
- How to evaluate and Hire them
Problem
What is Fractional Leadership?
Why is this important?
- Budgetary issues and/or concerns frequently limit companies from hiring senior-level leadership; This is an acute pain point for SMBs and early-stage organizations
- Frequently, these companies don’t consider and/or realize that their issues re: talent can be solved by exploring “independent” options such as fractional talent
- Even when these companies have a desire to explore fractional leaders, it’s challenging for them to find this type of talent
- There are a lot of misconceptions re: senior-level talent. Here are a few:
- SMBs and early-stage companies can’t afford them
- They only want full-time roles
- They’re too set in their ways
- They’re not as nimble
- They’re not current
How do we fix it?
- Fractional talent is the answer
- Why it is beneficial?
- Most fractional leaders are senior-level executives who’ve pivoted in their careers and are now serving multiple organizations simultaneously
- Fractional leaders bring their numerous business connections/relationships with them; In many ways, they serve as de facto Business Development professionals for the organizations they work for
- They show-up on Day 1 with an immense amount of acumen and skill
- They’re less of a “flight risk,” as their desire is to serve on a long-term basis
- Their experience, talent, and connections allow them to do the work of multiple team members
- Companies can get the acceleration and acumen that they need, and only pay a fraction of the price for it
- Steps to hire someone
- The first (and most important) step: Pursue the in-transition population! Why? Because this population represents a talent market that’s highly-skilled and readily-accessible, yet largely underutilized.
- The second step: Know the time commitment that you’re asking for. Why? This will show the fractional executives you speak with that you understand one of their top criteria for engaging with a prospective client: How much of their “bandwidth” are you asking for.
- The third step: Collaborate on expectations. Why? Because you’ll only be engaging with your fractional executive during a portion of any given week/month/year, you’ll want to have clear KPIs that you’re moving toward and monitoring. Similarly, you’ll want to set expectations around how often you’ll be “seeing” each other - whether it’s in-person and/or via a platform like Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime
Key Takeaways:
- Fractional leadership is an affordable and powerful way to bring C-Level execs into your organization
- There are thousands of overlooked, undervalued senior-level leaders that can be leveraged immediately for fractional roles
- The key to success with fractional leaders: Create clarity early-on re: time commitment, KPIs, and when/how to connect
Thursday Dec 05, 2019
How to Pipeline Talent Without a Talent Brand with Jack Copeland of Staffing Future
Thursday Dec 05, 2019
Thursday Dec 05, 2019
How are you going to attract the strongest talent for your company when people have no idea who you are? The truth is, you are not! Passive talent and those who are not on the open job market will just ignore you because you are just another me-too company.
This is why you will rely on the “I know someone” method to hire Your best source for talent is referrals. What if you can gain awareness before you reach out to someone
Today we are talking about How to pipeline talent when you don’t have a talent brand
Today’s Quote:
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.” - Elon Musk
Our guest today: Jack Copeland, Founder & CEO of Staffing Future
Staffing Future, a website development, and technology stack consultancy, with expertise in building, developing and managing technology solutions. The team has built over 600 staffing Agency websites and deployed innovative technology solutions with a multitude of third-party apps to create a holistic sum of their parts.
Jack has worked and consulted with dozens of recruiting software providers who are inclined to augment and develop the industry, they include top tier originations like CareerBuilder, and Tracker RMS.
Today we are going to cover
- What is a talent brand & why it is important
- Framework to build your talent brand
What is a talent Brand:
The message you want to provide to potential talent about who you are, what it’s like to work for you and why they should work for your company.
What’s the difference between a proactive and reactive Talent Brand?
Most small and medium companies don’t even think about what their Talent Brand is but a proactive Talent Brand is taking the time to understand your message, providing a platform for potential hires to engage before speaking to you and pipe lining potential hires.
Problem
- What is a reactive talent brand:
- Persuade people why you are the right company to join
- You are selling to them
- Happens late in the game
- Spend money to get people through the door
- Eliminated access to Heavily sought after talent
- Not responding, applying or know you
- No idea who you are or your value
- You have no perceived value
Rick’s input
- Talent brand is not as important as answering “what’s in it for me”
- About solving an individual problem
How do we fix it?
- Optimizing the website to maximize attraction offering a place to engage for potential candidates
- Solidify your message around who you are, what it's like to work for you and the ethics and values of your business, make sure your management team and business goals align with these internally
- Identify your target ‘finite’ talent and implement strategies to engage and nurture proactively
What are three practical things I can do:
- Understand who you are? Take the time to evaluate your business. Why would I want to work here? Why would I want to stay here? What kind of people are your looking to engage and fit with your culture? How can you retain and attract them. What kind of people are not a good fit? What is our culture and what do i want out culture to be. Summarize this
- Provide a platform for people to engage on your social and website, allow a place for people to understand your business without talking to you and your team. You have no idea who isn't taking your call, applying to your jobs or responding to your recruiters. It’s a marketing exercise to engage potential buyers just like the product you sell. If you have this is can help your convert taken to the top of the funnel if you don't have this it's a red fag.
- 3. Be proactive. For most SMB companies there is a finite resource of available talent in their location and market. E,G Python developers in Portland. How can you get them to understand you exist? Connect with potential hires on LinkedIn before you ate hiring at a C-level and have an open door policy, push out social content but focusing on working for your company and it’s values, attend or host career fairs and speak to relevant colleges. Find a meaningful way to tap into your employees network.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Perks, benefits and free lunch are not attractors
- Companies rely way too much on perks to retain people
- People development needs to be the focus
- Humanize the messaging
Key Takeaways:
- Understand who you are what your message is
- Provide a platform for highly sort after talent to understand who you are
- Be proactive in pipe lining and reaching your core talent in most cases it;s a finite resource.