#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
2 days ago
2 days ago
Having a need often clouds reason. Especially when it comes to hiring and the interview process. There is work to be done and no one is doing it.
So you prioritize filling the gap with a warm body, rather than focusing on the right person in the right seat. How’s that been working out for you??
Short-cutting the interview process is never a good idea because when you do, It will most often bite you in the ass!
Guest Bio:
Bill Snyder is the CEO of digital health startup Vivante Health, the employee benefit for GI care. Bill works with Fortune 500 companies and large health plans, including Walmart and Cigna's Evernorth, to reduce GI-related healthcare costs.
He secured a Series B fundraise in September 2023, which was led by high-profile VC firms Mercato Partners and Health Catalyst Capital. Bill’s success in various leadership roles has been a result of building strong teams and learning each day from those he is fortunate enough to work with.
Challenge today?
- Moving too fast on hiring and not following a detailed process leads to poor hiring.
- Anytime you negotiate against yourself it never works out well
- Deviation from the process does not end well either.
- Never skip steps
- Culture
- Clear about what they value and answer that they don't.
- What they are looking for and not looking for
- Mission-driven organization
- Why us?
- Does align with the mission, not a fit
Why is this important to the company?
- Culture is built by people at the company.
- Strong culture has been driven by the people
- Engagement (#)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Set people up for success even if it is outside
How do we solve the problem?
- Three things:
- 1) Put process in place early
- 2) Ensure there is transparency, collaboration, and accountability across the team for all hiring managers and all positions
- 3) Never settle
- Plan on recruiting, interviewing, and ongoing cultural engagement
- Having one
- Healthy Job description- core themes,
- Put together the interview panel
- Mission and Culture front and center
- Formal presentation- evidence of the work
- Feedback on the work
- Interview for coachability
- Holding each other accountable with the process
- Collaboration with co-workers
- Full visibility for everyone across the organization
- Same process.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Job description- focus on them (WIFM)
- Intense process - determined on what the business needs. Working session.
- Accountability- the process is a value chain for the candidate- attracts a
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today!
- Start the process early and adhere
- Always include culture early
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: Bill Snyder
- Company: Vivante Health
- Facebook: Vivante Health
- Instagram: Vivante Health
- X: Vivante Health
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: Rick Girard
- Company: Intertru, Inc.
- Podcast: Hire Power Radio Show & Podcast
- Book: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
This show is Powered by Intertru
Friday Apr 05, 2024
When HR Takes Away The Nerf Guns With Steven Freidkin
Friday Apr 05, 2024
Friday Apr 05, 2024
People like to join small organizations because they are challenging and fun. There are few rules to follow and very little red tape.
As the company grows, it becomes necessary to formalize business processes. With process comes rules and before you know it… Poof someone gets shot in the eye and the Nerf guns get taken away.
Some might view this as a good thing, but the high performers who built the business do not. Take away the fun and they will just go somewhere else.
Guest Bio:
Steven Freidkin is the Founder and CEO of Ntiva, Inc., a full-service technology firm offering managed IT services including cybersecurity, strategic consulting, cloud solutions, and business process automation. Founded in 2004, Ntiva now has over 450 employees who serve over 1400 clients.
Steven is an active member of a multitude of boards and organizations including Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He is a big believer in purpose-driven organizations and leads Ntiva with this in mind.
Problem:
Challenge?
- The employee was shot in the eye
- Solving the problem without taking the fun out of the workplace
- Out-of-the-box ways to keep things light, fun and enjoyable
- Create cultures and environments that make things fun
Why is this important to the company?
- The people team is to support and keep the company fun
- Rules cannot be the default-
- Manage issues as exceptions
- Decisions made understanding our purpose of growing people and our core values
- Care
- Ownership
- Responsiveness
- Excellence
- Original mistakes are okay if made under this framework
Rick’s Nuggets
- People appreciate the small things much more than work
- When fun is a core value, it must be protected!
How do we solve the problem?
- Existence is to grow people
- Core values are the framework
- Keeping the company fun
- Being intentional
- Being tolerate of only the outcome you want
- As you scale, naturally create more structure/rules to limit liability
- Limit the rock star talent because you are telling people they have to follow rules
- Other ways to solve the problem
- The best talent comes from company referrals 114 referrals in 2023
- Stories become things talked about and create referrals
- Retained longer
Rick’s Nuggets
- Retention is more important than compliance
- Attrition happens when people feel like they start feeling restricted and are no longer growing
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today!
- Question every requirement- what are the other
- You win talent by differentiating yourself from the competition
- Aligned motivations around the why & purpose
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: Steven Freidkin
- Company: Ntiva
- Facebook: Ntiva
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: Rick Girard
- Company: Intertru, Inc.
- Podcast: Hire Power Radio Show & Podcast
- Book: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
This show is Powered by Intertru, Inc.
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
Hiring the Right Person, Right Seat, Right Stage with Dean Stoecker of Alteryx
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
We all understand the concept of right person, right seat. But as the company grows the demands of each seat change. What is required from zero to $5 Million will most likely shift on your journey to $10 million in revenue.
So hiring ahead of that curve becomes the biggest challenge.
It is important that, in the earliest stages of the company, everyone in the organization identifies as a “builder”. Builders are the people who have a deep desire to problem-solve issues that have not even become identified and create systems from scratch.
As the business grows, the need for “improvers” becomes critical as they are the people who can scale to each milestone and beyond.
Guest Bio:
Dean Stoecker is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Board. Dean founded Alteryx in 1997 and led the company as CEO through October 2020, achieving solid organic growth, and a successful IPO in March 2017.
Dean’s leadership and motivational skills, along with his ability to create, communicate, and realize a vision, were a driving force behind the company’s 20+ year success.
Dean serves as advisor to entrepreneurs, is an active philanthropist, and is passionate about humanizing the world of data science and analytics, which is evident in the company’s culture, extensive resources for continued education, and efforts to influence social change.
TODAY WE DISCUSS
- Right person, right seat, right stage
- How to ensure you have the right person at every growth stage
PROBLEM:
- Preparation for changing out key employees at different levels
- @ $10mil, $25mil,
- Get great alignment with the teams
- Strategically & tactically- align strategy with tactics
- Don't be afraid to switch your teams
Challenge?
- Alignment between strategy & tactics
- People have different ideas about what we need to do as a company
- Knockdown, drag-outs about who we wanted to be when we grow up
- KPI’s for each department
- People knowing why they were building things
Why is this important to the company?
- People need to be rowing in the same direction
- First hires need to be 9’s
- 9’s will never work for 6’s
Rick’s Nuggets:
- All about Positioning
- Value alignment, builder, passion for the mission
SOLUTION:
How do we solve the problem?
- Predicated on growth rates
- Team of 5 did a million in the first year
- Understanding if they are willing to accept tasks that they never signed up for
- Focus on the next milestone
- Build teams that can get you there
- Keep your 9’s
- Risk/Reward profile needs to match yours
- Play any position then go deep
- Legacy of promoting
- Leadership is about how many leaders you create
- Invest in training
- Who has the best skills at the cheapest price that can last you the longest
- Biggest worry, Middle management
- Take stock of your own skill sets
-
- Andre Geim- “grazing shallow”
- Fall in love and go deep
- Risk reward profile
- You want someone who can play any position then goes deep
- Longevity - meandered from generalist to specialist
- Risk reward profile needs to match yours
- Andre Geim- “grazing shallow”
Rick’s Nuggets:
- The first team
- It’s all about positioning
- Really desire what you are (ie: ground-level startup with no money)
- It’s all about positioning
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Make sure you have a time that provides strategic and tactical alignment(first 6 years)
- Be prepared to swap out the team many times. The team that got you to $5mil won't get you to $20m. Be aware of your markers
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-stoecker/
- Company: https://www.alteryx.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alteryx
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alteryx
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alteryx/
- Other: https://www.siteminder.com/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Pre-vetting Candidates Before the Interview with Payman Taei of Visme
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Thursday Dec 08, 2022
Over the past few years talent has been scarce. And when talent is scarce, fear leads hiring decisions. We don't want to lose (what we perceive to be) “good people”, so we shortcut the interview process.
Here's the thing, our perceptions are often wrong. Our gut is often wrong. And it is wrong because the data we input is either assumed or circumstantial. Resulting in marginal hiring that hurts your business.
So, what if every person that you hired thrived in your company? What would be the ROI if you operated at a hiring success rate over the 90th percentile? It would be pretty f-ing amazing, right?
A crucial part of why we get hiring wrong too often is that we don't invest the time to adequately vet people before we bring them in for an interview. This starts with your first call (phone screen). We miss the opportunity to gather true data as to whether a person is positioned well for the organization and their level of performance.
That's right, positioning and performance. The most crucial data that help you understand alignment before wasting anyone’s time in a formal interview process.
Evidence that is not present on a resume.
Guest Bio:
Payman Taei is the Founder of Visme, an all-in-one visual communication platform, and Co-Founder of Respona the link-building for SaaS and Agencies to improve google rankings.
Payman is an avid technologist who loves new trends and tries to keep up with the ever-evolving internet. His background in Biology has led him to truly believe in the art of evolution. Everything changes in time. You either follow or create new trends or you will be left behind.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- The challenges in today's pre-vetting of talent
- How to properly vet people before they enter your interview process
HIRING STORY:
- Hired a marketing person, a person who was known. Went on a whim and made the hire without involving
- Assumed that because the person worked for a certain company the person must be good
- Knew within a 45-day window, the wrong hire
- Missed clues: a bit of fluff, selling themselves more. Claimed to have done a lot. Exaggerations
- Marketers commonly take a lot of credit for a lot of company success
- My post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6999061564083380225/
PROBLEM:
- Pre-vetting people before they come in for an interview
Challenge?
- 100’s of resumes. More does not mean better
- Select a handful of people who are worth the time to interview
- Most of the roles the CEO is still involved with
- Create an efficient system without automation (Smaller companies)
- Highest quality with the least friction as possible
Why is this important to the company?
- Made some bad hires
- Time is a premium
- personality /cultural fit & skills
- We Sacrifice lower experience for a better cultural fit
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Judgement should not be made on a resume but on the phone screen/Discovery Call.
- Great resumes don't equal great people
- High performers are busy making an impact
- Great interviewers have had a lot of practice.
- Understand Pain, Desire & Impact
How do we solve the problem?
- Pick the needle from the haystack
- Prequalification process
- The application itself
- Manner in which the resume is submitted -spammer or researched
- Passionate - learn and know about the company
- Not job hopping
- Interested because of a,b & c
- Large pool of referrals
- HR interview
- Personality & brief technical experience
- Going through the resume and understanding career history.
- Gut check - authentic, a nice person, compassionate & caring, wanting to make a difference,
- Technical interview (2 step)
- Projects, role on projects
- Tech stack, where are you comfortable, specific technical questions
- Deep dive into the technical experience with the team lead
- Decision
- Yes- move into reference check
- 30, 60, 90 day review cycle on kpi and goals
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Operate from a position of abundance
- Discovery call
- Positioning
- Does the person have a good reason to make a move
- Does the person truly desire what your company is offering
- Positioning
- Impact
-
- High performers become passionate about what they have done
- Dig into the “HOW” and “WHY” to gather evidence
- Go deeper than 2 layers down to find the TRUTH
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Eliminate the noise
- Trust your intuition- What’s the gut feeling? does everything seems to check?
- Group Decision: How does everyone feel about the person- team assessment
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paymantaei/
- Company: https://www.visme.co/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/visme/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/vismeapp
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vismeapp/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vismeapp
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VismeApp
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Building an Advisory Ecosystem with Coco Brown of The Athena Alliance
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Thursday Dec 01, 2022
Let’s talk about building an advisory board.
I think we would all agree that having strong advisors and mentors in your corner brings huge benefits to every organization. Not just as sound advice in making business decisions but also providing introductions and bringing credibility to the business.
So when is the right time to build your advisory board? As soon as you find the right people who will help. This means before you hire your first employees.
Building an advisory board, much like building company values, is often an activity to do later. But guess what, later is too late!
It is like pouring a foundation after the house has been built.
Investing the time to build a board before things get too crazy, is the smartest way to ensure that the decisions you make are solid enough to bring the business to it’s full potential.
Guest Bio:
Coco Brown is the Founder and CEO of The Athena Alliance. Athena has helped thousands of leaders grow and advance in their executive careers, and has brought over 400 women to corporate boards from growth stage private companies to name brand public companies.
Coco has personally worked with hundreds of top leaders, CEOs and boards to evolve modern leadership. She’s served on ten commercial and non-profit boards and advisory boards, and has led two notable companies (Taos, acquired by IBM, and now Athena).
She is part of Nasdaq's Governance Insights Council, and is often called on to share guidance to the evolving focus and breadth of responsibility within the Modern Boardroom.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- When to build your board of advisors
- How to leverage your advisors through investment cycles
Challenge?
- Not having the right board in place when the company gets to funding
- Not building a structure, cadence
- End up with a board that is forced on you.
- Not being as strategic as you can be.
- In a formal advisory capacity
Why is this important to the company?
- If your are not thinking early about this, when funding comes you may not have a strong pool of potential independents for your board
- Becomes feeder for the formal board
- Need to balance the power of the board
- Even without that - maybe you never need a formal fiduciary board beyond the core founder/owners. But not having an ecosystem of advisors around you limits the competitive advantage you get by consulting outside your employee base.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Making decisions on your own,
- Gut without data
How do we solve the problem?
- Mindset
- Most of us oriented around the team under - the team we are building
- You need to orient as well to the team around you
- Framework -How the team evolves over time
- Close connections that best approximate the roles you will need to build
- Lesser known to you, but better known publicly - pool of people to draw on
- Formalized - work on issues of the business together over time, in a rhythm/ cadence
- Structure -
- Individual relationships
- Experts who are honest with you
- Think tank - bench for something formal in the future:
- Mixed group
- Diverse
- Formal Advisory to Board
- Mimic your C-Suite to get ahead of where you are now
- Give you choices
- Individual relationships
- Networking
- Beyond your usual network
- Who are the experts
- Groups like Athena ;)
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Identify “Who”
- Dream team
- Reach out- Go for it!
-
- Cold call or gain an introduction
- Ask for help
- Formalize the relationship quickly
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Think beyond your internal team
- Build in advance of your needs
- Consider the competitive advantage
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cocobrown/
- Company: https://athenaalliance.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-athena-alliance/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CocoBrown1020
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/athenaalliance
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
The Characteristics of a Successful Hire with Allan Jones of Bambee
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
What are the common characteristics of every successful person at your company?
Think of those characteristics and write them down as standard operating procedures. This is critically important because when we operate under the same frequency, pace, and purpose… growth happens. But this can change instantly when a new person is added to the team.
Too often we hastily add a person to the mix without understanding how they really operate on a daily basis. Assuming that they will be the answer to all of our current challenges because of the skills they are bringing to the table.
There is nothing more critical to hiring success than aligning people first, and skills second. This means investing the time to dig deeper into your interview process. Understanding not just what a person accomplished but the details of exactly how it was done and why it was approached in that manner.
Guest Bio:
Allan Jones is at the helm of Bambee, a new type of business built on the innovative premise that every small business should have a dedicated HR Manager. This concept was derived from Jones’ previous experiences working with—and growing up around—small business owners.
In 2021, Goldman Sachs celebrated Allan Jones as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs at its Builders + Innovators Summit. For three years running, Forbes has named Bambee a top startup employer in the U.S., and in 2022 it announced Bambee as a Top 5 Company in Los Angeles.
TODAY WE DISCUSS
- Understanding your company's unique characteristics
- How to implement critical characteristics into your interviewing & hiring process
Challenge?
- Getting people who fit a special suite of characteristics
- Infinite characteristics that are valuable
- How do you narrow it down to 8?
- Being honest about who you are
- Characteristics of leadership values
- Mastery of communication
- Broad outcome objectivity: don't care where the right answer comes from
- Urgency & greatness in tandem
- Separate leadership & team values
- High potency friction
- Hired leader that doesn't fit,
- Courage to make a change
- Scoring system & scorecard
Why is this important to the company?
- Looking at blemishes before celebrating wins
- Continuous loop of how can we be better
- Continuous improvement is just part o the game
- 200+ employees
- Not afraid to say “not every person is right for the company”
- Companies are Olympic sports teams, not govt service agencies
Rick’s Nuggets:
- How people operate within your company
- Core values drive the operating characteristics
- Adding a player to the game, not an ass to a seat
How do we solve the problem?
- Identify that the problem exists
- Building leadership personas
- Hired multiple executives and 50% did not work out
- Right after fundraising
- Practices did not scale
- CEO can not make hiring decisions for the company
- He is not the only sign-off anymore.
- Interview Structure
- Hiring committees
- Only leaders sit on the committee
- Master of communication
- Cliff notes version of who you are personally & professionally
- Go to the resume
- Listening skills along with speaking
- Eliminated Leadership savior complex
- Problems would be solved by our next hire
- Company already had great people
- Never let a problem go unowned
- Realization that already had an A+ executive team
- From savior to draft pick
- 90% success rate
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Values drive characteristics
- Interviewing process
- Structured & designed to gather evidence to support the correct decision
- Assign interview questions for people alignment
- Follow up with what & how questions
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Offsite with sr leadership & build leadership personas’
- As a founder ask yourself “ your unique role in the hiring failure”
- Set up screening committees
- Make sure you are aligned
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allandjones/
- Company: https://www.bambee.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bambee/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheAllanJones
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BambeeHQ
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bambeeHQ/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzJhkTm7baY&t=1s
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Maximizing VC Hiring Referrals with Rob Whalen of PTO Exchange
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Thursday Nov 03, 2022
Referrals are most often your most potent source of talent for your organization.
So investor referrals must be the holy grail of all referrals. After all, there is a vested interest in your company's success so why shouldn't the referrals be outstanding?
Here’s the thing to consider. Yes, these referrals are gold but it is dangerous to assume that this person will automatically thrive in your unique company. We cannot forgo a formal interview process based on a strong voucher from a trusted source.
The only way we discover if they will in fact thrive, is to be diligent in the interview process to really understand if the person desires the value your organization brings to the table. .
The decision needs to be made through evidence and buy-in rather than confirmation bias and assumptions.
Guest Bio:
Robert Whalen is the Co-founder and CEO of PTO Exchange, the first benefits platform that allows employees to self-direct the value of their unused paid time off for other needs and causes.
He is a serial entrepreneur that has over 25 years selling and developing software and hardware products for the world.
Under his leadership, Rob and his co-founder, Todd Lucas led PTO Exchange to “Cool Vendor of the year” by Gartner in 2017 and awarded “Awesome New Technologies" at the Health and Benefits Leadership Conference in 2018.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Investor referrals: The value & challenges
- The importance of proper diligence in your interview process for referrals
HIRING STORY:
When we first started the business with 4 founders, 2 of us were working on the project constantly and the other 2 were not putting in the time so prior to vesting we bought the other two out.
We had to do this to keep a clean up the cap table so that we could raise capital.
Going through this process we realized having that right person at the right time joining the company is really important. So we put a simple process in place
- What the company needs or needs to know in our case.
- 3 things we are looking to have them accomplish - alignment
- 3 interviews at minimum
- Gut check - (culture, willingness to learn)
- Reference checks
PROBLEM:
Challenge?
When you raise capital you hope those investors will bring value and relationships. But investors aren’t there day in and day out managing the business and they sometimes associate a person's success at another of their other companies to the value that individual could bring to yours
Most of the time the investors' relationships are with the other executives and most of the time you aren’t looking for a high paid person.
An example is when we were hiring a VP of Sales as a small company.
- VC wanted them to hire a particular person
- Expensive
- No skin in the game
- Not a known entity to you - getting dirty
- Not the highest paying company
- Get to do things they wouldn't be able to do at a large company
- Mission-driven people - passionate about the mission
- Do they care about what we do
Why is this important to the company?
- People have to fit in with the culture
- They are a large % of the population
- They need to be able to learn, be curious, and take on responsibility
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Value in referrals
- Cannot rush or fast track the process.
- Work within your timeline
- No skipping steps
How do we solve the problem?
- Knowing when to say no to the investor
- This is sometimes tough to do when they are looking to help your business and they don’t see their input being considered
- When people try and help you, you need to understand that those suggestions or introductions come with emotions attached.
- Having a process that to hiring helps facilitate your decisions and reasoning. Which helps take the emotions out of the decision
- In an early-stage company where you might not have the money or benefits to attract the top-top tier individuals. we look for those candidates who are trying to grow into the role.
- Candidates that have the experience but do not have the title and maybe they are looking to have more responsibility because that comes with being in a small/agile company.
- They have the ability to solve problems and are open to new ways of thinking.
- Look for the hidden value in the person
- The individual needs to have the willingness to learn and take on responsibility
- Finding the intangibles that they can bring to the team.
- Usually this is in comes from their personal experiences and not their career experiences
- Personality fit
- We look for candidates that have similar passions but different problem-solving skills
- This brings diversity in developing our company’s ability to be more agile when confronted with roadblocks.
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Values fit first
- Does the person operate to the expectations of the rest of the organization?
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Create a process - simple is best but a process that works for the size of your company.
- I have made great hires and bad hires. The difference in those decisions was not following the process and being in a hurry to fill the role. Taking things slowly, stepping back, and following a process would have shed light on what later became an issue.
- Culture fit is the most important piece.
- I have a rule of thumb.
- When making a big purchase, walk away and reflect on how this purchase is going to impact your life. Because making a wrong purchase can have a very negative impact on you. I have found the same rule applies when hiring employees.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-whalen-1287077/
- Company: https://www.ptoexchange.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pto/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ptoexchange
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ptoexchange
- Blog: https://www.ptoexchange.com/blog
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS® inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
- www.intertru.ai
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
How Your Company Can Hire Like Amazon with Steve Anderson of Catalyit
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Amazon’s leadership principles (Core Values) have been the most critical element in their unprecedented success. Value alignment first, and skills second.
So why is this not a standard practice among all up-and-coming startups?
The reason I believe is that leaders then become accountable for their actions when they misbehave. Without values, it is easy to hide. It is easy to rationalize bad decisions and easier to deflect blame when the shit hits the fan.
This is why 9 out of 10 startups fail. Without the right people, your company will not be able to execute. And the right people are attracted to more than just money. They want growth, structure, and purpose.
When your company demonstrates that none of these elements are present, the A-players run! And what you are left with are the people who are willing to take the job.
Guest Bio:
Steve Anderson is the CEO of Catalyit. He has spent decades shaping the insurance industry through a deeper understanding of emerging technologies and how businesses today can best integrate and leverage them.
Steve is a sought-after speaker and influencer. He is also the author of the widely-anticipated book The Bezos Letters, where he reveals 14 principles for business growth based on the ideas and patterns that emerged when he examined Jeff Bezos’ 21 annual letters to Amazon shareholders.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Balancing need with patience to get the right hire
- How to put the right structure in place to land them
HIRING STORY:
- Hired an operations manager, who seemed like a good fit. Terminated after 3 months. Hired too fast! Pressure to move fast from start to offer in 3 days. The person already had an offer.
- He didn't follow his own advice.
Challenge?
- Balance need with hiring the right person
- Miscasting a hire
- Don't hire when you rushed to fill a position
- The interview process is not intentional.
- Not having a hiring process, hiring questions (winging it)
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Problem: Pacing is determined by the candidate
- Clue that the person just needs the money
- Mitigated by disclosing your hiring process & timeline
- Intention: purpose of the interview?
How do we solve the problem?
- Structure
- Have a good job description
- Have a good hiring & interview process
- Intentional interviews
- Amazon
- Will you admire this person?
- Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group
- Along what dimension might this person be a superstar
- Don't cave into the pressure
- Candidate pressure
- Own need pressure
- Find short term solutions while the interview process is moving along
- Be willing to fire fast
- Not fully committing or fully focused
- Not understanding urgency
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Evidence trumps assumptions
- Pacing determined by the process, not the person
- No need to fire, when you have hired the strongest person
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Process is key to success
- Need a place to start - Use Amazon’s hiring questions
- Culture fit might be more important than skills.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetn/
- Personal: https://thebezosletters.com/
- Company: https://catalyit.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/catalyit/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SteveTN
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveAndersonNetwork/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveanderson/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- Startup: www.intertru.ai
- HireOS™ inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.intertru.ai
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Sep 15, 2022
Hiring Without Money with William Glass of Ostrich
Thursday Sep 15, 2022
Thursday Sep 15, 2022
How do you hire people when you have no money?
While this may seem like an impossible task, the truth is that it is not as difficult as you might think. It starts by understanding what is important to the individual. Then connecting their desire your the value of your opportunity.
Compensation comes in a lot of different forms and money is just one piece of the equation. Professional growth, challenging work, strong leadership, mission, purpose, mentorship, and equity are also forms of compensation.
The most powerful form of compensation you can offer is the one thing that is REALLY important to the individual that you need to hire.
William Glass is the Co-Founder & CEO of Ostrich, a financial habit-building app that uses community and social accountability to help people achieve their financial goals.
In addition, William is the host of the Silicon Alley Podcast which focuses on telling entrepreneurs’ stories & learning from their experiences. His background is in software sales leading sales teams at Gartner and opening up a new vertical for an AI startup, Remesh.
In 2014, Will was awarded a Fulbright scholarship through the U.S State Department where he taught English in rural Thailand. Glass has his B.A. in International Relations from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Will is originally from Alabama and now resides in Queens, New York.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- How to hire strong people without money
- Outline steps to take to compensate with limited funds
Challenge?
- Not in the financial position to bring someone on full-time.
- Almost outsourced everything during the pandemic but would’ve spent all of the little money we had.
- Both wanted to work together but could not afford a salary
- Set financial metrics
- Funding challenge
- Found someone through referral
Why is this important to the company?
- No other way to build the MVP
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Take your time
- Really understand a person's desire
- Does your opportunity fill that desire?
Solution:
- No code
- Built using no-code and hacked along the first version of the app
- Couldn’t do all of the key functions so sought a full-stack dev familiar with the no-code tool
- Referral
- Found developer through a referral on the no-code forum.
- Brought them on to extend the no code version.
- Liked working together, but after the no code tasks were completed no budget to bring on full-time.
- Mission aligned and interested in working together.
- Neither of us is in a financial position to pay a salary nor to not take a salary with 5 kids.
- Created a unique way to solve both needs.
- Agreed to bring Stephen our developer on full-time when we were in a position to do so.
- In the interim:
- Banking hours
- Tracked hours worked as a contractor but rather than billing us, he banked them.
- Those hours are paid back on a revenue share basis.
- Equity vesting
- Equity vesting began when the engagement began.
- Revenue share
- A small percentage of revenues goes to paying off the banked hours.
- Triggering mechanism for salary
- Once the company hit certain financial milestones, Stephen to come on board full-time.
- Life changed
- Altered the agreement before hitting financial metrics.
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Resourceful
- Identify people you want to work with
- Reach out and have conversations
- Ooze Value
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- If there is alignment in mission & desire to work together, and you can find creative solutions that meet both the company's and individual’s needs.
- Ask the tough questions
- Only through strong communication were we able to determine the solution and it meant both parties sharing openly the financial situation.
- Transparency
- Transparent with the financials of the company, runway, and salary from the get-go.
- Buffer model of transparent salary.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williampglass3/
- Company: https://getostrich.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theostrichapp/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/theostrichapp
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/williampglass
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theostrichapp
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theostrichapp/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrPUxyTASwW71P5ahxD5VzQ
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@intretru.ai
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
When Hiring is Overwhelming with Karima Gulick of Innovent Law
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
Most good hires are a result of luck rather than skill. In fact, I would argue that very few hires are by design.
Throughout my career, I have never met a person who views interviewing and the hiring process as anything more than a chore that they loathe. In fact, the most common reaction to the subject usually results in a huge “uuuggghhhhh” or “I hate hiring”.
We dread the act of interviewing and hiring because it is unstructured and inconsistent and it produces mediocre results.
Here’s the good news: There is an easy fix! When we train our people how to interview it brings purpose to each and every interview question. Giving your people a basis for decision-making that results in extraordinary hiring results.
Guest Bio:
Karima Gulick is the CEO & principal patent attorney of Innovent Law.
She dedicated her career to counseling businesses within the tech and creative communities, combining her passion for engineering and the law. Karima is a polyglot and guides her clients through legal matters in French, English, Arabic, Spanish, and some Italian as well! She is also the former co-host of the Gen Y Lawyer podcast, a show where she interviewed innovative lawyers shaking things up in the legal industry.
Karima is building a next-generation law firm and is here to share her experience.
Today We Discuss:
- The overwhelming hurdles of hiring.
- How to interview to bring purpose to your interview questions
Challenge today?
- Overwhelmed & stuck in the business
- The idea of hiring was overwhelming
- So overwhelmed in my business, that adding one more task to my list, which is hiring to free me up seemed daunting
- Having had a bad experience with hiring in the past, it seemed as an even more daunting task
- No clear strategy on how to go about
- interviewing
- selecting candidates to interview
- Finding candidates.
- I could write what I thought was an amazing post but it might not be read or looked at by the right person
- Jaded on values because of corporate America
- Values area words splattered on the wall
- No one ever explained what the values stood for
- Never defined what it looked like.
- Defining what you stand for seems hokie
Why is this important to the company?
- A burned-out and overwhelmed leader is the worst thing that can happen to a company
- Even if you have the best team, without the right energizing and enthusiastic leadership,
- It’s just a matter of time before you stop caring, and the rest of your team starts seeing that
- We all have values,
- You have them as an employer
- Certain things that are intangible
- Employees have a reason to care. Buy in and bring more energy to the process
- Employees have taken more ownership
- When there is a change in the workforce, the chatter makes it more difficult find a fit. Buying into the negative ideas
Rick’s Nuggets
- Values First Strategy
- Makes evaluating people easier
How do we solve the problem?
- Realizing that I was stuck
- Knowing that I needed someone to step in and save me from myself
- Knowing myself, I knew I needed to bring on someone to help
- I had posted a couple of job posts but I was too exhausted to even call people
- Then I realized I was making the same mistake as I’ve made before
- I’m in pain doing all the work, so I pick someone who can do the work
- But there is so much more -
- That’s where Rick, you came in and opened my eyes on the hiring process
- It’s more than just a post and looking for someone who can do the work
- Values discussion - being jaded from the corporate world where values were meaningless
- A fresh new look at values
- Example: Caring, Competence, Trust
- Might not mean much to others, can come off as just buzzwords, but with this process, these values came to life.
- Example: Caring, Competence, Trust
- Holding conversations with candidates looking to learn more about them and their pain points
- Conducting interviews based on your values
- Conducting assessments and work sessions to see how you’d work with these people
- Reaffirming that I already have great people
- Believing that you deserve being able to grow the business
- Allowing the entity to grow
- Sitting down with intention
- Mindful & intentional on what you want/ the business needs
- Clarity on what you are hiring for & why?
- Being Systematic
- Bring life into the process - involve others
- Flexible on terms/needs
- Having a flow
- Discovery calls
- Having a process
- Behavioral questions to understand if people align with what the company really stands for
- Informed process
- The more thorough you are, the better the chances of bringing on the right people.
- Evolve
- Coming up with my own set of questions based on behavior I see around me
- Tell me about the first thing you do when you come home from a trip..
- Coming up with my own set of questions based on behavior I see around me
Rick’s Nuggets
- Discovery call
- Values
- Not aspirational
- Team input
- Working session
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- You don't know what you don't know. Bring on help to allow the business to grow
- If you’re serious about growing your business, you have to go through this exercise
- You can have the best gut feeling in the world, but having a systemized approach and one you can delegate to your team will help you scale.
- If you’re serious about growing your business, you have to go through this exercise
- Invest the time to get clarity on what you are looking for
- Be open to learning new things, including skills outside of your comfort zone.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepatentlady/
- Company: https://kgulick.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/innoventlaw/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepatentlady/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepatentlady/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepatentlawyer/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/innoventlaw
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Instilling Values into Your Hiring Process with Ken Babcock of Tango
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Do company values really matter? They do if you are looking to scale a business.
In order to scale you need the strongest people, but the strongest people don't need you…or your company.
What High performers need is to understand how your company brings value to their world, personally & professionally. And how we bring value through value alignment.
Value alignment is the catalyst for performance and retention. When a person is misaligned with the company values, they underperform and/or leave.
As a startup company, every person who is misaligned is a setback of 3-6 months of productivity. So, before you hire another person, incorporate your values into the interview to encourage the strongest people to join your company. Giving your business the fuel for success.
Guest Bio:
Ken Babcock is the Co-founder and CEO of Tango, which allows users to create beautiful step-by-step tutorials of any digital process without the performance art of video recordings.
Ken, along with his co-founders Brian Shultz and Dan Giovacchini, dropped out of Harvard Business School during the pandemic to start the company. Since then, the company has grown to over 150,000 users and 25 full-time team members.
Prior to HBS, Ken spent most of his career in the Bay Area at Uber, where he helped scale launch operations through playbooks and best practices.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- Why building your interview around your values is so important
- How to build your interview to gain evidence of value alignment
Challenge today?
- Bringing values into the interview process
- Defining how to show up for an interview
- Principles of how we evaluate people
- Training people on how to interview
Why is this important to the company?
- Every hire is important
- Critical that the process was not shooting ourselves in the foot
- Great experience brings great people
Rick’s Nuggets
- Defocus on skills.
How do we solve the problem?
- Framework for Evaluating for Values
- Define Your Values
- Training
- Defining what a good/bad answer is
▶️ Take Action
Avoid indecision and move past points of uncertainty. Value speed.
🚀 Aim High
Set uncomfortably ambitious goals. Reject mediocrity.
🌎 Embrace Diversity
Bring our true selves to work each day. Seek unique perspectives.
🌱 Leave It Better
Be an owner, not a renter. Cultivate a growth mindset.
✨ Customer Love
Serve the end user and listen closely. Make magic.
🏆 Team First
Winning as a team beats winning alone. Lift up others.
Training
- Develop a recruiting process document
- Shadowing
- Hot to operate during an interview
- Time, opener,
Initial Phone Screen - 30 minutes
Purpose: Determine whether a candidate’s experience is relevant to the role. Understand whether the role matches what they hope to do next (scope, career path, salary expectations).
🚀 Aim High. Set uncomfortably ambitious goals. Reject mediocrity.
- Attributes: Passion, Champion’s mindset, Ambition, Optimism
- Sample Questions:
- How do you think this role fits in with your career goals?
- What are you most proud of in your career?
- What’s your underlying motivator? What’s your why?
- Do you think you're ready to make the jump?
Hiring Manager Phone Screen - 30 minutes
Purpose: Determine whether the candidate would thrive on this team and whether the team would be up-leveled by this candidate
🌱 Leave it Better. Be an owner, not a renter. Strive to improve 1% each day.
- Attributes: Growth mindset, Humility, Ownership, Feedback-oriented
- Sample Questions:
- What are your development areas? How are you working to address them?
- Tell me about a project that fell short of expectations. What happened and how did you fix it moving forward?
- Fast forward five years - assume Tango was a great experience. Describe what might have happened.
- What's a tough piece of feedback you received recently? How are you working on it?
Technical Screen - 60 minutes
Purpose: Determine whether the candidate can execute in the role at a high level.
▶️ Take Action. Avoid indecision and move past points of uncertainty. Value speed.
- Attributes: Resourceful, Decisive, Problem-solving, Truth-seeking
- Sample Questions:
- How do you approach projects where the scope is overwhelming?
- Tell me about a time where you had to act on incomplete information.
- What's the first thing you'd want to do if you started tomorrow?
- Tell me about a project where your hypothesis turned out to be wrong.
Virtual Onsite - 30-45 minutes each
🏆 Team First. Winning as a team beats winning alone. Lift up others.
- Attributes: Mentorship, Collaboration, Communication, Gratitude
- Sample Questions:
- Tell me about a colleague or manager you admire. What qualities do you try to emulate?
- Tell me about a team dynamic that just wasn't working for you and others. What did you learn from that?
- What do you need from your team members in order to be successful?
- How do you pay it forward in and out of the workplace?
✨ Customer Love. Serve the end user and listen closely. Make magic.
- Attributes: Listening, Perspective-shifting, Humble, Creative
- Sample Questions:
- In prior roles, what have you learned about your customers?
- How do you incorporate the customer’s perspective into your work?
- Tell me about a time at work you made a mistake.
- What does it mean to you to deliver an “Aha Moment” to a customer?
🌎 Embrace Diversity. Bring our true selves to work each day. Seek unique perspectives.
- Attributes: Unique, Conscientious, Self-aware, Inclusive
- Sample Questions:
- You've just been notified you have to give a Ted talk in 15 minutes. What's your topic?
- What have you changed your mind about recently?
- Tell me about a time at work where you really thrived. What contributed to that?
- How do you incorporate feedback into your work?
Closing Interview - 15-30 minutes
Purpose: Sell the candidate on the company’s vision and the quality of the team. Answer any remaining questions.
- Sample Questions:
- How did today’s interviews go? What excites you most about the opportunity?
- What hesitations do you have?
- What timelines or competing processes should we account for?
- Are there any other questions I can answer?
Answer Quality Rubric
Weak |
Average |
Strong |
|
|
|
Decision
- Thumbs up or down
- Do not require unanimous thumbs up
- Debrief, revote
- verdict
Rick’s Nuggets
- 4 to 6 values is all you need
- Phone screen
- Working session
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Integrate your core values into your hiring process and beyond! (performance management, operating cadence, etc.)
- For early-stage companies, you need to toe the line of “always be selling” and evaluating candidates
- Requiring unanimous decisions on candidates can actually force a regression to the mean and avoid taking risks on high-potential candidates.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbabcock/
- Company: https://www.tango.us/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trytango/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigredbabz
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Doom & gloom is the impending economic forecast according to the media. Having flourished through two previous recessions, I have learned to look for the opportunity that comes with the adjustment.
And when it comes to hiring, the opportunities to thrive are bountiful!
One trend that I have personally observed throughout the years is that companies like Google & Facebook silently ramped up passive recruiting during those times and were able to come out of the adjustment even stronger.
Today I challenge you to recognize the opportunity that lies ahead and to commit to the growth of your people. This can and will only have positive results for them and the business.
Today’s Question:
- How do you build a stronger company in tough economic times?
Today we’re going to discuss:
- Why it is critical that you continue hiring activity
- How to hire effectively to increase the productivity & retention of your people
Challenge today?
- Keeping your High performers engaged
- Your best people are MORE valuable!
- They will be hunted by your competitors
- Hiring stronger people challenges & motivates the people you already have
- Your best people are MORE valuable!
- Growth through an economic downturn
- Look for the opportunity for your people
- People become fearful and move to more “stable” environments
- Recruiting remains a reactive activity
- We only hire when we feel the pain
- Hiring happens regardless if you chose to participate
- Participate
- Look for the opportunity for your people
Why is this important to the company?
- Downturns are opportunities for growth!
- The people onboard Fuel or Stifle growth
- Fear drives people to make poor decisions
- Poor decisions kill business
- Avoid being forced to hire anyone who is willing to accept your role… because they need a job
-
- Due to attrition
How do we solve the problem?
- Perspective
- Understand the value of continuously hiring
- Higher bar, less volume
- Opportunity to opportunistically hire
- Attract people who will elevate performance in the organization
- New ideas, new energy
- Understand the value of continuously hiring
- Increased Communication to retain your current people
-
- Career pathing
- Know the “What’s in it for me” for every one of your people
- Planned exits
- Promote purpose
- Engaging New People
- Dedicate 1-2 hours a week
- Passive talent engagement; NOT RECRUITING
- Reconnect with past talent
- Ask for new referrals
- “Get to know you for the future”
- Commit to 2 meetings a week with potential hires - Coffee ok
- Use Discovery Call script
- Purpose: positioning & value alignment
- Empower the hire
- Communicate timeframe and allow the person to be proactive
- Pull the trigger!
- Dedicate 1-2 hours a week
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Proactive hiring: Commit to 1 hour a week to expand your talent network
- Communication: Recognize the opportunity for your people and the business to thrive
- Action: When the opportunity arises to hire a high performer, embrace it. Allow the new person to fuel the energy of your team
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
- Authored: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
How to Avoid Hiring a Bad Actor with Becky Wanta of Q5id
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
We have all become painfully aware that cybercrime is at all-time record highs. Now the bad actors have figured out how to hack your hiring process.
Stories have been surfacing about people accepting roles remotely that are different people from the ones attending the interview.
Let’s face it, hacking the interview process is probably the easiest way to infiltrate your company and ultimately your data. When the interviewers focus on the skills and do not dig deep enough into the truth about the other person the result can be the opportunity that puts your company in jeopardy.
Guest Bio:
Becky Wanta is the CTO of Q5id and a highly accomplished global senior executive with more than 30 years of success in applying extensive IT experience to guide companies in a wide variety of industries to achieve their goals.
She has proven her ability to improve market share and profitability while establishing long-term business relations and recruiting and developing cross-functional and high-performing teams.
She has also been profiled by various publications, including Profile magazine and Bloomberg News. She is the holder of two US patents.
Today We Discuss:
- How bad actors can infiltrate your company
- How to avoid hiring those who can decimate your company
Challenge today?
- Not a guarantee that the person who you are hiring is who they say they are
- No prevent identity
- Billions are lost every year because of data breach
- background check does not guarantee that the person is who they say they are
- References, credit score,
- Remote workforce is giving rise to fake personas & identities
Why is this important to the company?
- Cost the company Millions of dollars
- The FBI just issued a warning on June 28 about fraudulent candidates applying for WFH positions and using deep fakes to hide their true identity. We can be sure this activity will increase, and we can be sure that these are professional criminals and foreign-state actors who want to hijack a company’s data. (source: https://tinyurl.com/mvsnz7bs)
- Background checks are often perfunctory, particularly if a candidate has presented well and you really want to hire this person
- if a person has an apparently clean record, but is a member of a criminal gang or a malicious state actor. Professional criminals are way ahead of you here.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Targeted and focused search
- Totally negates the issue
How do we solve the problem?
- Tighten up and expand pre-employment and background check processes to include a proven identity process which includes:
- Biometrics/personal identifiers that your employees control. This needs to include liveness checks, biometric and AI-driven models to ensure individuals are who they say they are
- Government ID checks
- 15 se Face-to-face live view
- Be Systematic
- So, companies need to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive while building a distributed team, with everyone focused on the product. They must be systematic about finding specific skillsets and finding those skillsets in people who want to work with other people.
- prove their new employees are not working for someone who wants to break into your IT systems and steal everything they can.
- The FBI says cybercrime cost in the form of phishing and other scams and data breaches cost US businesses almost $7 billion last year. With more criminal organizations and state actors involved, and now deploying deep fakes, that number could go up exponentially if companies don’t address this problem urgently. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/yc7abcht)
- CEOs, C-suites, and Boards to implement a program that can combat deep fakes, I’d make sure my Board has at least one person who’s familiar with enterprise-grade security, and I’d make sure I have an A-team Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) on my team.
- Implement a proven identity method
- biometrics
Rick’s Nuggets
- Targeted hiring approach
- Identify & proactively develop a relationship with the person BEFORE you need to hire them.
- Referrals!!!
- Structured Interview process
- Behavioral Interview
- Train your interviewers!
- Evidence
- Values first, skills second
- BS meter
- References
- Verified Managers only
- Backdoor company references
- Behavioral Interview
- Decision Making
- “Hell Yes” or NO
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Never compromise on finding the best people with the best-fitted skills
- Never forget you’re building a product for a specific reason and customer.
- But never be lax in proving your exciting new employees are who they say they are.
- Never be lax in finding out if your new employees are working for a criminal organization or malicious state.
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccawanta/
- Company: https://q5id.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/q5id/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Q5idProvenID
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/provenidentity/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Jul 14, 2022
It’s Never Too Early to Lead through Core Values with Marc Reinfenrath of Spinutech
Thursday Jul 14, 2022
Thursday Jul 14, 2022
Last week I had a conversation with a CEO who thought it was too early to establish core values because his company was only 15 people. His thinking was that things would just change anyway and he would have to do them all over again as the company grows.
But here was the ginormous problem: Two of his people recently quit, the last 4 offers he made were turned down and the candidate pipeline was drying up.
… And he thought it was about the money.
Today, more than ever, people desire to be in alignment with the values of the organization. If they aren’t in alignment, they leave.
Here’s the truth: your company has values whether you like it or not. Solidifying your values and making them a decision-making tool can never happen too early and will only fuel company growth.
Guest Bio:
Marc Reifenrath is the CEO & Co-founder of Spinutech, a full-service digital marketing agency with 165+ team members across the U.S.
Marc has helped Spinutech grow from a college start-up to one of the premier full-service digital marketing agencies in the country. The secret ingredient? Company values that are truly lived, including a commitment to “Get Better Every Day”.
In that capacity, Marc understands firsthand how critical a company’s culture is to achieving and maintaining success.
Today We Discuss:
- When to implement your company values
- How to weave them into the fabric of your company
Challenge today?
- Had unwritten core values but were not formalized
- Had a miss on 2 or 10 or 20.
- Talent outweighs the cultural fit
- Drawn in by talent and weeded out by the environment
- 2 people hired that within 90 days were gone. Instant misalignment
- -realized culture pushed them out
Why is this important to the company?
- From a hiring perspective, it is a really quick filter
- Not too aspirational. You have to own what you really are
- We take too long to make the decision
Rick’s Nuggets:
- Formalization attracts the right people and repels those who do not
- Notion that you want to attract everyone is WRONG
- Time!
- Interviewing kills the production of your team
- Assumptions, bias & personal motives… oh my!
How do we solve the problem?
- Leadership team development
- People who understand the organization
- Doesn't need to be perfect
- Needs to be honest
- *** needs to be authentic, not aspirational
- Values need to be actionable
- We get better every day: better myself, team & clients
- Work into a daily routine
- Core values onboarding
- Slack channel language is communicated
- Natural part of how they do business
- Lived every single day
- Leaders need to show core values in Action!
- Weekly video “get better every day”
- In every part of the business
- Without core values, a lot more problems.
- Stronger the core values the more you are prepared for growth
- Every person who onboards becomes less of an attack
- Inject DNA into people as quickly as possible
- Feedback on how to enhance the value
Rick’s Nuggets
- Be realistic about who YOU are
- Aspirational values are worthless
- North star for how everyone operates within the organization
- Build interview questions around core values
- Evaluate against values
- Aligned = hire
- Build an interview question library
- Assign interview questions to each interviewer
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Honest about what your core values are, Lived not aspirational
- Actionable values -
- Stay patient in the hiring process. Don't just put a butt in a seat.
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcreifenrath/
- Company: https://www.spinutech.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/spinutech/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spinutech
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/spinuser
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spinutech.llc/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/spinutech
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
Thursday Jun 16, 2022
Necessary Interview Intelligence for Hiring with Raphael Danilo of Yobs
Thursday Jun 16, 2022
Thursday Jun 16, 2022
Two people pop into a room together for an interview. What happens next?
No one knows!
This is the eternal mystery that most companies have faced for decades. And the single point of failure in hiring!
Because we assume that everyone knows how to interview. But the truth is, they do not as most interviewers have only been trained on what NOT to say. There is no insight as to what is being said, the questions that are asked or personal motives that drive a person’s opinion on a hiring decision.
So today we are going to help to give you insight into how you can gain valuable interviewing data to empower your people to make stronger hiring decisions for your company!
Guest Bio:
Raphael Danilo is a French entrepreneur and investor based in New York. He's the CEO and founder of Yobs, an Interview Intelligence platform that sits on top of Zoom and the ATS and enables every interviewer to feel prepared and be more efficient in hiring top talent.
Raphael has helped 100+ high-growth organizations up level their recruiting organization with Interview Intelligence through Yobs and Evening Fund, the VC fund he runs on nights and weekends.
TODAY WE DISCUSS:
- The importance of interview intelligence
- How to gain data to secure accurate hiring decisions
Challenge today?
- Recruiting is incredibility opinion spaced
- Opinions about what we remember about the conversation
- Not evidence based
- High vs low quality question
- Work about work
- Labor intensive tasks - ie: interview plan, taking notes
- Pre-interview
- During interview
- Post interview- scorecard
- Recruiting teams misaligned
- Not having a shared view of reality
- Not offering enough benefits, equity, pto
- Opinions drive decision rather than data
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interview is riddled with fail
- Interviewers are not trained
- Company values
- Bias, assumptions & personal motives
- To understand how good the person is across the desk
How do we solve the problem (solution)?
- Capture reality
- capture all candidate interactions - across web conferencing, dialers, phone, and email.
- Invest in interviewer training and coaching
- Analyze Interview them and surfaces key moments automatically to...
- Deliver insights to level-up your organization by better understanding your candidates, your teams and your hiring process.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Interview intelligence
- Start with the company values
- Decision making language throughout the organization
- Interviewers champions of the values
- Protectors of realm
- Everyone buy’s in!
- Assigned Interview questions
-
- Behavioral interview questions
- Questions tied to a measurable of the core value
- Train your interviewers
- Assumptions allow bias & motives to fester
- Listening skills - digging under the hood
- Take diligent notes-
- what they said, not what you translated
- Record & review the conversations
- Video (zoom, teams, etc…)
- Review until you achieve consistent quality data
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Capture reality- record your calls
- Invest in coaching/training
- Reduce bias in process
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphael-danilo-481b41b2/
- Company: https://www.yobstech.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yobs/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- www.stridesearch.com
Thursday May 19, 2022
Creating Artificial Collisions in a Remote Workplace with David Wald of Aclaimant
Thursday May 19, 2022
Thursday May 19, 2022
A big push for people to return to the office is the argument that spontaneous interaction is critical to the growth of the business. The fear is that people are not communicating and it has hindered innovation.
However, let’s look at the number of fully remote companies who have been thriving throughout the past few years. The big differentiator is the structure and setting up interaction channels to foster communication.
Mastering the interview has been more challenging as it is often difficult to read nonverbal cues and interactions. As we have grown more comfortable with this method of interviewing, the structure of consistent interview questions has been the single most important element in hiring success.
Guest Bio:
David Wald is cofounder and CEO of Aclaimant, an insight driven workflow solution for safety and risk management. As CEO, David’s primary focus is driving the company’s vision, identifying and executing strategic partner and customer relationships, and growing the Aclaimant team and investor base. The company has been remote first for the past 8 years!
Prior to Aclaimant, David spent time with the Lightbank Venture Capital fund in Chicago on both the investment team, and as an operator and EIR. He was also a management consultant at Bain and Company. David graduated from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Chicago with his wife and three kids.
Today we discuss:
- What's critical in a remote work/interviewing environment
- How to fuel communication away from the watercooler
Hiring Story:
- Intro to our top candidate's brother's high school friend…
- Series of comedic events
- Got drenched on the way to the meeting
- He took the job anyway, now is their department head
Challenges today?
- Artificial collisions- bumping into people in the hall, watercooler conversation across departments
- In a remote environment there are no collisions that aren’t preplanned
- Creating a knowledge transfer in a remote environment
- Zoom is not good for rapid collaboration
- More than 4 people in a meeting
- Create feedback loops
- People feel disconnected
Why is this important to the company?
- Cant have passive actors in a remote environment
- I was waiting for….
- Proactive collaborators
- Remote vs scaling
- Onboarding is challenging remotely
- A lot of time spent
Rick’s Nuggets
- Communication must be fueled by leadership
- Daily huddles (connection)
- Not mandatory, but everyone shows up
How do we solve the problem?
- Tooling:
- Slack- internal connectivity tool
- Every team, project & customer have their own room
- Sole service purpose in every room- avoid the noise
- Zoom
- candidates , customers & internal
- Zoom interviews
- Scientific method
- Each person testing on different topics
- Prep the candidates
- Notion - collaboration tool
- Documenting every process and keeping it clean
- True information source & driving everyone to that location
- Documenting every process and keeping it clean
- Dedicated team connected hours
- Office hours for every team (meeting) once a week
- Happy hour, game day, trivia,
- Informally stop and chat
- Team members end up city hopping!
- Deliberate information distribution pathways
- Information needs to get out
- Surveying tools, function specific data,
- all hands meetings (4-6 weeks)
- Daily standups
- Information needs to get out
- Feedback Channel
-
- Every manager & director is plugged into the right sequence of events to gather feedback
- All very deliberate
- Everyone in the know
Rick’s Nuggets
- Remote (Zoom, Teams) interview
- Rules of engagement
- Start on time, end on time
- Interviewer questions assigned
- Must gain evidence to support decision
- Must take objective notes
- Clear decision to move forward or release
- No scorecard
- Feedback
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Very deliberate about how you create connectivity
- Proper tools in place to facilitate
- Right set of people who want to connect
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidawald/
- Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aclaimant/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aclaimant/about/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavWald
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/aclaimant
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeEJm9RoCfu8y7AJpaxkxqQ
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: www.stridesearch.com
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Hiring Super A-Players with Steve Newcomb of Powerset
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Let’s talk about why your company is not stacked with A-players. It is not because you cannot afford them.
At its root, the reason is narrowed down to one thing, your foundation
We tend to think of hiring as an activity rather than an essential function like product or finance or even your pitch deck. So much time is invested into these activities. Yet, hiring is the most critical component of building a successful business. In fact, most investors' decisions are heavily influenced by the people who are onboard.
Solidifying a foundation for hiring requires the same amount of care and work as do the other components of your company. It cannot be outsourced. Hiring needs to be owned by leadership, documented and taught to everyone in the organization.
Foundation is what attracts high performers to want to join your company, not the paycheck.
Guest Bio:
Steve Newcomb is a product/engineering led serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful venture backed mission-driven startups. He’s best known for co-founding Powerset (now Microsoft Bing) and scaling its engineering team, culture, and operations.
He is the author of some of the most fundamental essays on hiring, culture, and scaling engineering teams, including the original “Cult(ure) Creation” and “In Defense of Introverts”
Today we discuss:
- Building a strong hiring foundation
- How to execute an outstanding interview
Challenges today?
Foundation: Do the big things right and then everything becomes exponentially easier
Be the valedictorian of Stanford. Do the hard things early
- Money tier 1 VC
- Mission
- Product that represents a true and novel breakthrough
- Purpose above just flipping the company
- Oh my god…
- Founder that is technical, thought & cultural leader, good @ recruiting
- excellent at recruiting- study how to speak to people, how to talk to introverts & inspire them. How to be inspiring.
- Have founders that are technical, thought, and culture leaders
- Have a company that matters, something with a mission that’s embedded
- Be a Super A
- Have a founder that is excellent at recruiting and is a Super A
- Track everyone who has ever worked for you. Keep in contact
- A=A, B=C
- Get the right people in early
- VPE needs to be a baller!
- Why buy silver when you can rent gold
- Friends that want to be founders- get them to help 3 days a week?
- Often worth 10 engineers
- Obvious Yes then there is everything else = automatically hire slower
Without this?
- How to hire good people?
- Lie to them & pay them a lot of money
Rick’s Nuggets
Chad Walters from Powerset
- Foundation = Structure & Process
- Structure- steps, timing & interview questions
- Process - flow of the steps, transition & feedback timing, decision
How do we solve the problem?
Principles of doing good interview process. Treat everyone like gold.
You interview me
- Earn your job first
- Change the power dynamic
- De stress
- Have they done any research to come up with questions
- Do not negotiate
- Pay should be at the 50th percentile not pay above market
- When you have to pay above market the worse your product is
- Tier one vc firm gives - data
- Design for introverts and socially awkward situations
- Don’t repeat
Creative Tactics: Don't work without good fundamentals
- Look for “Thank you’s” in IRC/stack overflow
- Reverse layup- founders reverse lookup on everyone that follows you
- Already interested in what you have to say. Know who they are
- Sit down with your A’s
- Ask who they know, names
- Release from the social awkwardness of asking their friends
- Who follows your A’s?
- Super A’s are how you fire fast
- Jr engineers
- Hack reactor- meet everyone and ask ”who is the best engineer is”
- Kill the weeds
- Don't need a unanimous vote to say yes
- If you build trust, they trust you to hire the right people
The interview
- Assign jobs
- Assign interview responsibilities
- Founder leads recruiting
- Do not waste the team's time with duds.
- The highest level Founder/Exec does the filtering so that every candidate that makes it to a full spread interview is a Super A, or an A.
- Do this well, you build trust, followers. Do this poorly and you deserve to fail.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Purpose is to get to the TRUTH
- Script the questions
- Discovery call
- Positioning & Impact
- Value aligned interview
- Do behaviors align with the values, mission & vision of the business
- Working session
- Real life scenario of how the team will work together
- Solve a real problem
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- If the foundation is right. Everything else becomes easier
- Spend all your time getting the first people done right
- Be relentlessly creative
Guest Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenewcomb/
- Blog: https://medium.com/@stevenewcomb
- Website: http://famous.co/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenewcomb
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Friday Apr 08, 2022
Friday Apr 08, 2022
Let’s talk about what really draws people to your company… and keeps them there. Trust
Trust is what drives better decision making, customer experience and profitability. But trust is not gained after a person starts working for your company. It is established during the interview process.
You see, people’s job mindset has evolved over the past few years. We are being judged throughout the process for clarity, purpose and structural integrity. Elements that demonstrate that you take your business seriously and are playing to win.
When hiring, start with the end in mind. Focus on retention, with the intention of building trust through the experience for maximum engagement & long term growth.
Guest Bio:
Ville Houttu is the Founder and CEO of Vincit USA. Previously, he helped Vincit Finland to reach 350 employees and make it public on Nasdaq First North marketplace. After the IPO, Ville moved to California to start Vincit’s local subsidiary.
Ville and the company have been recognized by several notable institutions, including 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies in America List. In 2020, he led the company to rank top-50 on the FAST Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators list.
Ville is a known public speaker and his leadership has been featured in several leading publications, including TechCrunch, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and Entrepreneur.
Today we discuss:
- Why and how to build trust
- Concept of the CEO of the Day
Challenges today?
- title wave of people leaving your companies
- Don't want to work for people who don't trust them
- Not looking for dollars & sense anymore
- People want a culture that fits
- Let your people build the culture
Why is this important to the company?
- It builds trust
- We are at the end of us telling employees what to do
- Keeping employees happy, healthy and engaged
- Make the Inc 5000 list
- *** how this translates to business!
- Up 65% year on year growth over last year
How do we solve the problem?
- CEO for a day every month
- How to deploy in your organization
- Get everyone on board
- One person who will be the first CEO of the day
- Management team needs to step aside
- Open discussion agreeing to not get involved
- No approval needed from management
- It’s your call
- Decision based on what you feel the people need
- The Question: does the decision make the workplace better tomorrow than it is today?
- Value in engagement far outweighs the cost
- Goal: helps sales, marketing, operational, engineering
- Can be a very focused area of improvement
- Unlimited budget, everyone gets a turn, no one goes twice
Here’s how CEO of the Day works:
- Every month we select one employee to be a CEO for the Day.
- He will have an unlimited budget to improve our workplace.
- Whatever the CEO of the day decides, we all live with.
- We encourage discussion among colleagues, but I do not weigh in.
- The CEO will announce his decision in our monthly meeting.
- After sharing his decision, the CEO selects the next CEO of the Day.
- All employees will get their turn, but nobody goes twice.
Rick’s Nuggets
- What if someone (me) wants to buy a Ferrari?
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Join the movement of companies making their employees CEO’s of the Day, and TRUSTING them to build a culture that FITS. Because when you do, you will see that BY TRUSTING your employees you will EARN their trust and LOYALTY in return. And with employees like that, there’s no STOPPING where your business can go.
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vhouttu/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vincit-oyj/
LinkedIn: https://www.vincit.fi/en/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vincit_Plc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VincitOyj
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vincit_plc/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VincitFlix/featured
Medium: https://medium.com/vincit
GitHub: https://github.com/Vincit
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
What Makes People Stay or Jump Ship with Nicolas Vandenberghe of Chili Piper
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
In 2021 38 million people left their jobs and found new ones. This accounts for 57.3% attrition for US-based companies. It seems as the trend continues as 4.3 million people quit in January of this year as well.
A lot of companies are experiencing turnover today and It makes one wonder, who is winning?
The companies that are winning today are those that focus on their people. Focusing on setting systems to enable productivity, fostering personal growth, career-pathing, and quite frankly, listening to what their people want.
Gone are the days of providing free snacks and providing a ping pong table. What people want is much deeper now and requires more effort. what are you doing that is improving their lives and professional growth? If you are unwilling to provide it, they’ll just go somewhere else.
Guest Bio:
Nicolas Vandenberghe is the co-founder and CEO of Chili Piper, a SaaS platform helping B2B companies double their inbound conversion rates. Since its founding in 2016, the SaaS platform has thrived with a 100% remote work culture.
Nicolas is a four-time serial entrepreneur, in diverse verticals from consumer software to biometrics. He builds his companies under the principles of flexibility, professional growth and communication.
Today we discuss:
- What makes people stay or jump ship
- How to make your company sticky for retention
Challenges today?
- Great resignation
- People quit managers
Why is this important to the company?
- Internal promotions keeps people growing
- Teaching management
- Avoid hostility in communication
- Non violence communication training
- Especially applicable to managers
- Avoid conflict without avoiding disagreements
- Conflict around the disagreement- NOT GOOD
How do we solve the problem?
- Flexibility
- High performers - no barriers
- Anywhere in the world
- No schedule requirement (exception) scheduled meetings
- Open & accepting of everyone
- Unlimited vacation schedule
- *** Professional growth- formailized
- Quality of the work focus
- Okr’s - not kpi’s- Actions to yield to projected outcome
- Avoid ultimatums, were expectations correct
- Hired 3 coaches
- Developing a piper plan
- Getting it out to eht puclic
- Abolish performance review
- Proactive
- Communication hostility avoidance
- Method to rethink your engagements
- Training everyone on the book
Rick’s Nuggets
- Career pathing - Huge retention
- Link everything to help- core value
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):
- Professional development. Work on the foundation
Guest Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nvandenberghe/
- Company: http://www.chilipiper.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chilipiper/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/chilipiper/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamChiliPiper/
Host Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
- Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
- Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
- Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
- HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
- Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Mar 17, 2022
Thursday Mar 17, 2022
How does one evaluate a subject matter expert when you have limited knowledge or expertise in that discipline?
Most individual technical/skills based interviews last about an hour. Where time is wasted quizzing on subject matter that may or may not be relevant to the actual role itself. Scratching the surface on the level of depth that is brought to the table.
Consider another option. What I like to call a “working session”.
Invite the person to collaborate on a real problem that is relevant to the opportunity. This gives you unbridled insight into how a person thinks, communicates and solves problems within the context of real life.
This allows you to really drill down to gain evidence to support the hiring decision either way.
Today we’re going to discuss:
- Why should I care about a working session
- How to structure and execute a working session/ skills interview in your company
Challenge today?
- Skills not matching up to what someone claimed (faker)
- Or... Claimed to be able to handle more than capable (over exaggerator)
- Or… Just here for the perks & paycheck (freeloader)
- What's happening?
- Hiring Maintainers for builder or improver roles
- Testing
- Outdated concepts - learned in college
- Focusing on irreverent problems
- How many quarters can fit in a VW van
- Smart is good, smart with people is much better
- Going too shallow
- Not knowing what to ask
- Not digging deeper to discover the truth
Why is this important to the company?
- Too shallow conceals the truth
- Smart doesn't ensure success
- Relevant skills give evidence of alignment
How do we solve the problem?
- Build Interview Structure
- Only need one technical/skills based interview
- Timing
- 2 hours- ½ day
- Pay for their time (optional)
- Who’s involved?
- Co-workers, direct team, anyone in close interaction
- Define the problem to be solved
- A current problem that needs to be solved (reason to compensate $)
- 3 components (key hires)
- Goals review- understand expectations of KPI’s
- Data or Gap Analysis- how does the candidate interpret data/requirements/etc
- Collaboration- Review the details of the problem. Work to solve!
- Example
- Goals review - (5 minutes max)
- Data Analysis / Gap Analysis - (10 minutes max)
- Marketing Plan & Strategy (1: 45 minutes)
- Let’s discuss the marketing plan starting with what you feel is the best strategy
- Really try to dig into the "Why" How would you bring this plan to life? Based on what you know, what would be your recommendations for reaching the goals? Why? What other angles can we take? What would be the priority? Why?
- Preparation for Candidate & Team
- Candidate
- Let them prepare. Send details in advance
- Set expectations and discuss next steps
- Team
- Coach to be open minded and bias free
- Ignore opinions, praise evidence
- Work true - how they act daily
- Execute to core values
- Everyone should act as to the standards of the company values
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Build a working session for each role. Becomes really easy when you get used to doing it.
- Prepare the candidate for success
- Team collaboration & buy in based on evidence not “uncertain feelings” - bias
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/ Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/ Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio Authored: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
When time is of the essence and work needs to be executed, we often forego formalities and hop right into execution. Hiring a contractor or friend to help you with the work.
This was the case with my friend Pat (name changed) who paid a friend to build a proprietary software product for her company. A lot of problems came up in the process and the relationship was terminated. Pat wanted the IP to finish the product but there was no formal agreement in place and Pat did not own the IP.
Long story short, the relationship went south and it ended up in litigation. The end result was an additional 7 figure payout to obtain the rights to the code so the company could finish & release the product. A very costly encounter for Pat that would have been circumvented with a written agreement.
Today we discuss:
- Why your IP needs to be protected before you hire
- How to best protect it with anyone who touches your product
Challenge today?
- Is your IP protected
- Freelancing platform
- Software / product Development contractors
- Website development
- Video creation
- Training manuals/courses
Why is this important to the company?
- Becomes a problem when…
- Changing the terms of the agreement (product development)
- Not having rights to the video content you paid for
Rick’s Nuggets
- Employment/ Co-Founder Agreements
- What happens when someone leaves
- Who owns what? Messy & difficult
- Without an operating agreement:
- You don't own and may have a non exclusive right to the IP
How do we solve the problem?
- Get this in place BEFORE you pay anyone!!!
- Components that protect you
- Outline the role/position
- Work for hire
- Fiver not protected
- CIAA
- Indicate when the relationship concludes
- Indicate that their role is either an employee or an independent contractor
- If they are employee, indicate the extent they can make decisions for the company or represent the company (or not), information they keep confidential, non-competes, etc.
- If they are an independent contractor, indicate that they are not an employee of the company, do not represent or make decisions on behalf of the company, the company doesn’t pay their insurance or taxes, they are a separate legal entity, shorter term arrangement, you don’t exert control of the contractor, etc.
- * Duty to assign the rights to you
- Whether they are an employee or an independent contractor, make sure to include a clause indicating that they have a duty to assign any materials, work product, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and so forth that they created. If they are an employee this includes any work product created during their employment and using any information or assets of the company. If they are an independent contractor, this includes any work product and intellectual property created while the independent contractor is working on the project.
- Whether they are an employee or an independent contractor, make sure to include a clause indicating that they have a duty to assign any materials, work product, patents, trademarks, copyrights, and so forth that they created. If they are an employee this includes any work product created during their employment and using any information or assets of the company. If they are an independent contractor, this includes any work product and intellectual property created while the independent contractor is working on the project.
- Exclusive rights
- To the extent that the employee or contractor maintains any rights to the intellectual property or other works, they give the business an exclusive license to the IP/works free of charge
Rick’s Nuggets
- Expectation Alignment
- Values Aligned (employee/founder)
- Clearly defined expectations
- timelines and deliverables
- Formal Service Agreement
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Get agreements in place
- Know what the agreements cover
- Review/update the agreements periodically so make sure they still cover what you are doing
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/millerip/
Company: https://milleripl.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/miller-ip-law/
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor:
Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
What Really Matters in Employee Branding Today with Bryan Adams of Ph.Creative
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
Those of you who have listened to the show, know that I am no big fan of “employer branding” because I believe it is generic and unrealistic. Often selling an image of unicorns & rainbows topped off with free lunch.
To me, job advertisements feel like the car dealer who advertises a low price just to get you in the door only to sell you a lemon at the end of the day.
We all understand that every company has its challenges. So why not paint an accurate picture of what the company REALLY is once you start working there?
Simply sharing the good, bad & the ugly of your company is the first step to eliminating bad hires. It attracts the right people, repels those who don’t align with the company values and eliminates the surprises that cause people to question their decision to join your company.
Today we discuss:
- Employer branding: why & when
- How to brand in the most effective way
Challenge today?
- Employer branding:
- Marketing and branding are not the same thing
- Purpose to employer brand strategy is different than consumer brand strategy
- Talent was the commodity and technology was differentiator
- That has switched
- People leaving companies in droves
- Not connecting with the right people
- Differentiation and purpose
- Career decision is transactional
- Operating tactically
Why is this important to the company?
- C-suite are talking about employer branding
- Approach without strategy causes more problems than it solves
Rick’s Nuggets
- Employer branding is strictly a top of funnel activity
- Convinced ourselves that EVERYONE need to be attracted to the brand
- Does nothing to ensure that the right person is being hired
- Top of funnel is a vanity metric
How do we solve the problem?
- Understand the organization
- Gaps are?
- Foundation of the culture
- What the people strategy needs to align to
- Culture you have rather than the culture you need
- Strategy
- Reputation (what & why)
- Specific & tangible that aligns with the business
- Career catalyst (career path) , culture (sense of belonging, great place to work) & citizenship (impact you have on society, doing good)
- Expectation (how)
- Give & Get
- What the organization wants & needs in return
- Comfortable with what you have to give
- Adds more value, more authentic enables greater appreciation
- Uncover a clear proposition
- Things that repel most people attract the right people!
- Polarize your audience
- Reputation (what & why)
- Experience
- Validate the claim & the experience
- Navy seals- Hell week. It has a specific reason in the experience
- Employee experience is more important than candidate experience
- Know exactly where to spend your time & resource
- Job Advertisement
- Story right
- Needs to be a true preview on what to expect
- What keeps people
- “Dissuade people not to join” and you couldn't lie, what would you say?
Rick’s Nuggets
- Only need to see one person to fill one role
- Less candidate flow is the new badge of honor!
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Get specific - Be clear on the talent you need to grow your company and what it takes to really thrive. This helps define the reputation you need as an employer and the proposition you have to offer to make it all worthwhile.
- Show Vulnerability - Tell a refreshingly honest story of where you are, where you’re going, what’s missing and left to build .. show people a very real picture where they can add value and find purpose in their work.
- Own the truth - Include the harsh realities and adversities of your employee experience - 99% of people may run for the hills, but the 1% of people who lean in will likely be the best candidates & employees for your company. Plus it’ll save you a ton of admin and distraction from a blizzard of unqualified candidates.
- Finally word :- this strategic view of building and defining culture with a simple employer brand can never come too soon. Do it immediately. It’s easy, free and can make all the difference especially within a scrappy startup
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanadams1/
Company: https://www.ph-creative.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ph.creative/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/phcreative
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ph.Headquarters
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ph.creativelife/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PhCreativeVideo
Host Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/ Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com Show
Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Friday Jan 28, 2022
Friday Jan 28, 2022
We hear a lot about culture today as being the most important aspect of growth. Yet product development & sales are too often prioritized over people.
Let’s break this down for a quick minute. Your company's success and/or failure is determined by your people and the relationship you have with their growth. What this means as an entrepreneur is that you are responsible for creating an environment where communication and failure is embraced and celebrated.
It is only when people feel safe & important that they take ownership of their role and allow themselves to thrive.
Guest Today: Justin Erdtsieck, President of Trencore & Brix
In 2016, Justin started to focus the business on hard work, perseverance, determination, resilience, compassion, and trust, and then began relaying these core values to his team through servant leadership.
Each individual employee knows they’re valued and respected and in turn, they care for the company and the final product.
As a result of this mindset shift, Justin has grown the company from $10M in revenue to over $60M in just a few years.
Today we discuss:
- Why you must adopt the mindset shift from product to people
- Justin’s mission to put culture at the forefront of the business & the results of that work
Challenge today?
- Story:
- Stagen: coaching
- Culture was a shit show!
- Inspired by a tour of Zappos. Allowed everyone to create their own space
- Bio -
- History of the company
- Who we are as a company
- People come in with understanding the purpose
- Training
Why is this important to the company?
- 2016 - now- grew from $10M to $60M in revenue. 600 people
- People want to stay- no one has quit in 4 years
- Proactive communication has saved the company over $1M a year
How do we solve the problem?
- Review Core Values
- Weekly Standup
- Check In meetings in the field (fostering company health)
- Culture
- Creating a purpose, helping everyone understand the why
- Living by core values
- Innovative on spreading the word on purpose,
- “A place where people feel safe & enjoy the experience we call work”
- Hiring process
- Eliminate the cancer
- Starting people from the bottom and growing them
- No formal interview process
- Moved people up internally!
- Understand the culture
- Teach
- Trial by fire first… didn't work
- Stagen program for leadership
- Personal development is key
- Motivated
- Creating daily habits to hold people accountable
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Document your purpose so the people who work with you understand the “WHY”
- Success comes when you stop worrying about how much money you are going to make
- Treat people well, take care of yourself & create a good support syste
Guest Links:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-erdtsieck-a20716105/
Company: https://trencoreandbrix.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trencore-brix/
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre HireOS
inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Jan 20, 2022
Thursday Jan 20, 2022
Sourcing talented people is a HUGE challenge right now. Over 38 million people quit their jobs in 2021. And a lot of them are not coming back.
Then we have the divide over pandemic policies that has driven people away from corporate America. Making it more difficult to retain good people.
But sourcing is not the biggest challenge in today’s hiring landscape. Engagement is. It is important that we utilize every viable avenue (ie: boards, postings & direct recruiting) with the objective of just starting intentional conversations. By intentional, I mean, not selling. But understanding the desires of the person first… Because It's not about you. Intentional conversations lead to engagement. Engagement leads to the hire!
About the Guest: Kelly Robinson, CEO of RedDotMedia
Kelly founded Broadbean.com Inc 2001, which was acquired by CareerBuilder in 2014. Now he leads RedDot Media, a recruitment advertising agency with a particular skill in programmatic advertising campaigns.
Kelly has spent the last 25 years in recruitment and recruitment technology, during which time he has grown, integrated, bought, and sold businesses in both the UK and US. Kelly is the goto industry expert in all things job posting
Today we discuss:
- The current job posting landscape
- How to best utilize the tools available to maximize your hiring outcome
Challenge today?
- Everyone is having a staffing crisis
- Not about the job posting.
- It is about making a connection
- 14k recruiter jobs got added Friday!
- 100% more jobs available,
- 3 % of the workforce has just … quit in just one month!
- Meaningful work!
Rick’s Nuggets
- Structure is winning over $$
- What no one is talking about
- vaccination policy of the company
How do we solve the problem?
- Posting
- Depends on the position
- Indeed
- Ziprecruiter
- Linkedin-sourcing/outreach
- Sales people, marketing, recruiters
- Dice, Angel list
- Write a great ad
- Nothing’s Free - It’s all paid
- Algorithm distributes jobs equally
- PPC has gone away. Can't define what you pay per click
- Need to spend at least $250
- Should translate to 10 applications
Rick’s Nuggets
- Active Reach Out!
- 1 hour a week
- Discovery call- where the magic happens
- Buy in/opt out
- Referrals - HUGE VALUE
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Yesterdays ideas dont work today
- Cant do things cheeper
Guest Links:
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyjrobinson/
Company: https://reddotmedia.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/reddotmedia/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reddotmedia.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kellyjrobinson
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.hirepowerradio.com
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
Wednesday Jan 19, 2022
We are neck-deep into a highly competitive job seeker’s market. What this means is that the feeding frenzy for talent has created a perfect storm for people to ask for a lot… and get it. The interview process has been plagued with bait and switch tactics, ridiculous compensation renegotiations (after the offer has been accepted), and outright ghosting once an offer is accepted.
The root of the issue is the transactional way your interview is being run. Evolving your phone screen into an in-depth “Discovery Call” is the first step to eliminate the huge time sink that results in a turned-down offer.
Today we are going to discuss the pivot that must take place in your hiring practice to align with what people really want. And it all starts with your first interaction.
Today we discuss:
- The changes in candidate attitude and positioning
- How to eliminate the frustration & engage people at a more human level
- Approach evolution
- Here's what I am hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs
- A lot of dishonesty
- People are being unreasonable when it comes to their demands
Challenge today?
- People are lying on phone screens
- Not showing up for interviews
- people asking for ridiculous stuff
- Problem:
- We still approach people with an “About us first”
- Educational approach with selling
- Needs to be done at the end of the phone screen
- Practice of not negotiating
- Negotiating mitigated when people want it
Why is this important to the company?
- Losing great talent
- It keeps you awake at night
Rick’s Nuggets
- I believe that a lot of the challenges are coming from two places:
- Speed
- Not taking the time to understand before selling
- Need
- Need to get this filled / off my plate
- Speed
How do we solve the problem?
- Your phone screen (aka: discovery call) sets the tone for the relationship
- If your transactional, expect that from the relationship
- If your adding value, expect that from the relationship
- Adding value:
- Seek to understand a person’s WHY (Career Wounds)
- What's broken in their career that you can fix
- What does this person want? (besides a job)
- Environment in which they will thrive
- Can they make an impact?
- Past performance is a key indicator of future performance
- Do they align with your opportunity?
- Where do they fit, where they do NOT fit
- How you solve their career wounds
- Let them connect the dots for you
- Seek to understand a person’s WHY (Career Wounds)
Host Links:
LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/dEWWWEq
Company: https://lnkd.in/dG5aMUxY
Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gyG9YDuD
Authored: "Healing Career Wounds" https://amzn.to/3tGbtre
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
Show Sponsor: Criteria Corp: https://lnkd.in/g8YbdsH
Thursday Dec 02, 2021
Thursday Dec 02, 2021
We all have bought into the belief that following hiring best practices will ensure that we make the correct hiring decisions. Yet those best practices really do not produce consistent results. Why?
First, “best practices” are guidelines that trickle down from the big name-brand companies who all have the advantage of a much fatter wallet… And they are Transactional!
Second, what works for large companies does not work for startups. The truth is that you are needing to hire totally different people. Startup companies need “builders” to fuel company growth. And builders are not all about the $$money. They are about personal & professional growth.
This requires that you approach these people in a way that is counterintuitive to “best practices” and centered upon answering the question, “what’s in it for me”.
For those of you who are new to the show or don’t know me yet:
- Cut my teeth as an Executive Recruiter for Tech Startups in the Silicon Valley
- Coached leaders, candidates & helped to build over 200 tech companies
- Black belt in BJJ, F1 aficionado & adrenaline junkie
Today we discuss:
- Why it is critical to break away from hiring best practices
- Process to create your Own “best practices” that crush your competitors
Challenge today?
Beliefs
- There really is NO right way to hire
- Hiring Fails are acceptable (50% success rate)
- Cost of doing business
- Copy those who are already successful
- Google today is much different than Google at your stage.
- Evaluate for cultural fit… you evaluate for skills
- People from name brand companies are great hires
- They may be…. If they are builders
- Most people that are willing to leave big companies are not high performers
- High performers have “golden handcuffs” - best to rent
- More candidates give me a greater chance of success
-
- More candidates = time loss
- Target
- 1-3 people per position into the Interview process
Focus
- Top of funnel
- Reliance on job boards
Execution
- Interview training
How do we solve the problem?
What to believe
- Strong hires come from someone in your network
- Positioning before Skills
- Positioning is in a person’s DNA
- Builder, Improver, Maintainer
- Only builders will help you grow the company
Focus on the interview, not the funnel
- The Interview process is what wins hires, not the number of candidates
- Current best practices are:
- 10-15 minutes on a “screening call”
- Selling the company
- Selling the job
- Gather requirements
- Schedule an interview
- 10-15 minutes on a “screening call”
- Importance of the Discovery call
-
- Biggest time investment is to be made
- Determines a person's positioning (builder, improver, maintainer)
- Invaluable insight into a person’s pain, what they desire
- Impact they have brought into their current organization (key indicator of a builder)
Make Interviewing your strongest talent
- Solidify your process
- Timing
- from first contact to offer acceptance
- Timing of each interview (45-1 hour)
- Rules
- Interviews start and end on time!
- No meandering
- Timing
- Steps - Discovery call, Interview (video, onsite) -number of interviewers
- Content- pre determine & assign interview questions
- Questions must be designed to surface evidence of value alignment
- Not about asking questions but having conversations
- Broadcast your process
- Make it known that the interview is challenging
- Hire for Value Alignment first!
- Make it known that you foster growth for “builders”
- No Evidence, no vote
-
- Interviewers need to be trained!
- Roleplaying
- Recording conversations
- Bias has no merit
- Either a “Hell Yes” or a no
- Decision must be supported by evidence
- Interviewers need to be trained!
Rick's Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/
Company: https://www.stridesearch.com/
Podcast: https://www.stridesearch.com/hire-power-radio
Authored: Healing Career Wounds (Amazon)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
HireOS inquiry: rick@stridesearch.com
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Friday Nov 26, 2021
Friday Nov 26, 2021
Emotional Intelligence is defined as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
Over the past year, EQ has become less important to companies because of the NEED for someone to fill the seat. This is just creating more problems, as less care is invested into uncovering the fit into the organization.
We need to understand that high performers are taking their time to find the right opportunity. So this is your wake up call to SLOW down!
Now, more than ever, it is critical to cultivate our own emotional intelligence & implement intelligent hiring practices into your organization.
Our guest today: Nada Nasserdeen, Founder of Rise Up For You
With over 10 years of experience as a college professor and former top executive for an education corporation, Nada understands the importance of fusing education, empowerment, and leadership together as she works with her clients and speaks to audiences worldwide.
Her company, Rise Up For You has been featured and worked with brands such as CBS, Google Next 19, and various Fortune 500 companies as well as small businesses.
Nada has been awarded 40 under 40 professionals in Orange County, California, and Women of Influence for Entrepreneurship in 2021.
She is a #1 Best Selling Author on Amazon, Leadership and Career Confidence Coach, and 2x TEDx Motivational Speaker.
Today we discuss:
- Emotional Intelligence and Why it needs to be front and center
- How to activate emotional intelligence into your hiring process
Challenge today?
- Building technology at such a fast rate
- Learning is not catching up
- Result: Huge gap in human skills
- Most values are human skills
- Not looking as values as a benchmark to hire
- Fostering the culture of human skills in the company so you can embrace
- Social skills are creating problems for the organization
- Active values
Why is this important to the company?
- Result
- Executives who implement Emotional intelligence in hiring
- Practicing EI- when things opened up 87% of her team, others were at 12%
- Sales increase of 325%
Rick’s Nuggets
- Feeding frenzy from the company end
- NOW is the time to SLOW down.
- Candidates are taking their time
- Easy to manage the timeline through communication
- Must progress through to conclusion
How do we solve the problem?
- Vales need to be activated around EQ
- Take each value 1 by 1 and figure out how to activate it in the culture.
- Steps to put values into action plan
- Create a value campaign
- Plan to execute the value
- Coach, train and provide development on these skills
- On going, not a 90 minute
- Enough training to be able to trainer, you no longer need a consulting company
- 6 month engagement
- Skills don't grow overnight
- Accurate company analysis
- Gauge on where the company is as far as strengths and weaknesses
- Can not make an impact unless you know the truth
- Survey to uncover where the work needs to be done
- Looking for evidence
Rick’s Nuggets
- Making the values a language
- Decisions made by the north star
- Emotional intelligence needs to be tied directly to your values
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! - Value:
- Do an assessment - understand who and where your company is
- Reevaluate the values and create a strategic map around implementation Ongoing training around soft skills to build the muscles within your team
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadalena/
Company: https://www.riseupforyou.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/riseupforyou/about/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RiseUpForYou/
Twitter: :https://twitter.com/riseupforyou?lang=en
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riseupforyou/?hl=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RiseUpForYou/featured
FREEBIE: https://calendly.com/riseupforyou/freetraining
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Rick’s Book - Healing Career Wounds:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094TL14CD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Thursday Oct 28, 2021
Why Employees are REALLY Leaving Your Company with Leilani Quiray of bethechangeHR
Thursday Oct 28, 2021
Thursday Oct 28, 2021
We are in full swing of this “Great Resignation” and a record 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August.
If you are one of the business leaders who have been losing people, please realize that it is not them, It is YOU! People are quitting because they no longer align themselves with your company values … especially the mandated policies in and around the pandemic.
Right now, there are much better options in the form of growth and career satisfaction. Which is why people are taking their time in locating the opportunity that they really want.
So, if you want to stop the attrition and be able to hire strong people, get solid on your values and focus on what each individual is desiring in terms of their personal career growth.
Today we are discussing exactly what you need to do to become an employer of choice to start winning great people!
Our guest today: Leilani Quiray, Founder & CEO of Be The Change HR
A conscious company and social enterprise, providing HR support for small-to-medium sized businesses in any facet of HR from pre-hire to post-term and everything else that happens in between. Her and her team also teach free job readiness courses and provide free coaching to individuals who’ve been trafficked, homeless and veterans in transition. Her team is not only HR Pros, they are Life Changers.
Today we discuss:
- What people really want today from their careers in this great resignation
- The elements you need implemented in your company to successfully hire the strongest people
Challenge today?
- Why employees REALLY are choosing new employers?
- How to become the employer of choice today?
- People think they know what people want, but they don't know
- Money
- Benefits
- Perks
- Unrealistic vision (modeling google)
- What the owner wants (I like X so they’ll like X)
- What is it that people REALLY want?
- “Experts stress that people are leaving their jobs as workers across the country are demanding higher pay, better employment conditions and critical support in their daily lives.”
Why is this important to the company?
- Companies need humans
- ethics/moral duty to have a healthy workforce
- ROI
- More engagement = more profitable of a company
Rick’s Nuggets
- Flexibility: Personal freedom is a real issue!
- Attrition is happening due to continued company vaccine policies
- Both for and against
- “Don't want to be micromanaged”
- What does not matter … as much
- Compensation
- Benefits & Perks
How do we solve the problem?
- Ask your people
- Needs are different
- Use buckets core values & data on why people choose companies/stay at companies
- Survey your people unanimously
- Use data to make decisions
- Communicate back - low morale and distrust if you do not
- Job requirements reasonable? (also think DEI and diverse hires)
- Education and where (Harvard?) - biggest hurdle
- Opens the hiring pool to disadvantaged candidates
- Compensation Analysis
- Market Value
- Free tools BLS
- By demographics too
- Market Value
- Employer branding
- What do you look like publicly?
- Core values shine?
- How awesome you are should show!
- Evil Glassdoor (aka the Yelp for employers)
- Get ahead of the bad reviews by getting good ones
- Damage control and a look at ones own org if you already have bads ones
- Take a look at who you are hiring
- Core Value Work
- Do you have them?
- Assess them
- Tool?
- Book?
- Live them
- Weave them into everything
- We ask “are we living our core values?”
- Language within the company and how decisions are made
Rick’s Nuggets
- Are your values real?
- Job requirements need to be eliminated and replaced with performance metrics
- Form of conscious bias
- Performance Metrics = Accountability
- Interview for core value alignment
- Value alignment is the only true measure to ensure performance and tenure
- No reason to move when you provide everything a person desires
Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! -Value:
- Do Pulse Check Surveys!
- Rethink your recruiting strategy: job requirements, your online presence, comp analysis
- LIVE your core values!
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leilaniquiray/
Company: https://bethechangehr.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bethechangehr/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bethechangehumanresources/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bethechangehr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethechangehr/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqsQa5CXid2I0xQwiVyE2nw/featured
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Hiring Your First 10 People with Jeremy Parker of Swag.com
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Growing your company from 2 to 10 people is the most critical time in your company's life cycle. The reason for this is every single hire that is made can make or break the company.
Every founder I meet has a story of “we hired a person that we thought was going to be a rockstar and it turned out to be a disaster”.
So where do things go wrong when a bad hire is made?
The interview was run from a position of need; where we focus on selling the opportunity. So excited to get this new rockstar on board that we totally forget to take the time to understand if the person aligns with the values of the organization.
The good news is there is a solution to avoid these sometimes deadly mistakes and it just requires structure and developing your listening muscle.
Our guest today: Jeremy Parker, Co-Founder and CEO of Swag.com
Swag.com is the best place for companies to buy and distribute quality swag that people will actually want to keep. We work with 5,000+ companies including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify and Tik Tok.
Jeremy was named to Crain's NY 40 under 40 (Class of 2020) and Swag is #218 on the Inc 500 (2020) and #368 (2021)- Fastest growing private companies
Today we discuss:
- The importance of the first 10 hires
- Process to avoid making the wrong hire
Challenge today?
- Hiring for the resume
- People who have done it in the past
- Not about the skills but the culture
- One bad hire can destroy a business
Why is this important to the company?
Story: First 2 years just the founders. Then scaled quickly to 14 people
- Who you hire in the early days is super important. Need to be the right fit, for the right time. They could be a great person and extremely talented but if they are not the right fit for the time it can go sideways.
- Up to 70 people now and everyone is ability is important, skills not as important, as culture
How do we solve the problem?
- Stop micromanaging
- Guide & teach & trust that people will get it
- Allow people who are hiring to do the job
- Right mentality & Right focus (embracing failure)
- Failure is ok
- Embrace it!
- 4 rounds of interviews
- First meet with Department Head. If that goes well, meet with someone who is currently in that same position in the company, to make sure they feel this person can do the job well.
- If that goes well, meet with the COO,
- if that goes well, meet with CEO.
- If the candidate gets through all rounds and everyone feels they could be a good fit, we get at least two reference checks. Someone who they worked under and someone who they worked alongside.
Rick’s Nuggets
- Evaluate everyone around your values
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Being ok with failure! Nothing can go wrong when you are ok with it. Failure will get you where you need to go.
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyianparker/
Company: https://swag.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/swag.com/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/promotewithswag?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/promotewithswag/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swagdotcom/?fbclid=IwAR1TnFCOQ8kv-chtsiP5wKexliw55YISu2rESPCLGUu86tEynikmspBy9xc
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
Thursday Sep 23, 2021
How to Stop Sucking at Hiring Sales People with Joseph Fung of Uvaro
Thursday Sep 23, 2021
Thursday Sep 23, 2021
Hire slow, fire fast is a motto we have all heard as startup founders. It makes logical sense but what really happens is quite the opposite. As entrepreneurs we shift into panic mode when we have a need and move quickly to fill the role. Completely missing all the evidence that this person will be a bad hire.
Once the person is in the seat, the dread of having to refill a role often leads to concessions made to the detriment of the business.
Hiring Slow means investing the time to really make sure the person will be a strong hire. Therefore there should be no need to fire fast. Especially if you really understand who the person is and gain evidence of the value they add to the company.
Think of each person you hire as being worth $2 million dollars to the company. Changes your perspective, right?
A lot more care and a higher talent bar would be prioritized over just “filling the seat”.
Our guest today: Joseph Fung, Founder & CEO of Uvaro
A tech sales career accelerator, and of Kiite, a sales enablement platform purpose-built to provide sales teams with the information they need when they need it. Joseph’s a repeat Founder & CEO, and with multiple successful exits, and speaks frequently on the topics of sales leadership, diversity, and corporate social responsibility.
Joseph is an expert in sales, startups and building scalable culture.
Today we discuss:
- Our mentality around hiring sales people
- How to effectively attract & hire high performers
Challenge today?
- Hiring for software skills rather than problem solving skills
- No internal training- want someone who already doing what you need done
- Rely on stereotypes and gut
- Need people who can speak to a bigger variety of customers
Why is this important to the company?
- Fix the problem, you can triple the production of 1st year sales reps
- 8 months to ramp, average sales rep only achieves 60% of quota
- Ramp in ⅓ time and drive production to 80% - Training
- Churn & burn kills morale
- Cash costs are immense on the back end
How do we solve the problem and hire the strongest people every time?
- Throw out your job description
- Translate ideal customer to sales job description
- Ideal Customer Profile- go granular
- Choosing what & who to hire
- Invest in Revops & sales enablement
- 50:1 ratio Rep to SE is a start => move to 20:1
- Mindset
- Treating the organization with respect
- Thinking is you solve the problem by hiring more people
- Interview
- Culture fit interview - “Is this someone I want to have a beer with?” not
- Turn it into a behavioral interview - what behaviors demonstrate values alignment
Rick’s Nuggets
- Performance metrics are most critical component today for job descriptions today
- Accountability up front
- Understanding a person’s positioning
- Transactional Sale VS. Enterprise/Solutions Sale
- Resources available
- Builder, Improver, Maintainer
- Uncovering the impact that has been made in their current/former position
- Save time, increase revenue
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Throw out your job description . Copying others is just propagating bad habits
- Stop asking people to sell like the founders - it won’t work
- Re-think your culture fit interviews...write behavioral questions
Guest Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephfung/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/josephfung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephfung/
Company: https://uvaro.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/uvarolife/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/uvarolife
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uvaro.life
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uvaro.life/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/uvaro
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Sep 16, 2021
Hiring for Talent Optimization with Mike Zani of The Predictive Index
Thursday Sep 16, 2021
Thursday Sep 16, 2021
“There is work that needs to be done and I just need someone good to do the work”
*** sigh ***
This is what we tell ourselves when we decide to hire someone. But it is so much deeper than just getting a butt in the seat!
Growth is the most important factor here. So, we must start with the end in mind to avoid making HUGE hiring mistakes!
Yes, we need to get the work done but will this person really help your company grow? And more importantly, can your company provide the growth that the person you want to hire desperately desires?
Our guest today: Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index.
Mike Zani, the Wall Street Journal best selling author of The Science of Dream Teams, is CEO of The Predictive Index, the leader in talent optimization. Prior to The Predictive Index, Mike served as president of LEDCO, a manufacturer of rugged computer peripherals. It was at LEDCO where Mike, a customer of The Predictive Index, developed his passion for the company’s vital management tools.
An avid sailor, Mike began his career in marketing and sales with Vanguard Sailboats and was a coach for the 1996 U.S. Olympic Sailing Team. He holds a B.S. from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard.
Today we discuss:
Hiring for Talent optimization
- What is talent optimization
- How to hire for it
Challenge today?
How to you hire well within the context of time & risk
- What risk are you willing to take on bad hires?
- Systems in place to support the risk
- 30, 60, 90 day check ins to support
- Do you just want t body in a seat
- Persona
- A talent optimized system allows you to train & develop
- Need to develop the programs to support
Why is this important to the company?
- We are 30 years behind sport in bringing analytics for hiring
- What is sport doing now?
- TA is the single most important function in the organization
- Need to take a maniacal approach to hiring.
- Fantasy league hiring takes more time than hiring to companies
- Data drives success
- Performance measurement
Rick’s Nuggets
- Getting the right person the the bus is FAR more important than getting work done
- If the work is that important, hire a contractor
- The mistake made is the optimism of the founder
- Assumptions
- Hire on their potential (assumed), bias (assumed) & need (get it off my plate)
- Zero time is taken to understand what the other person desires, other than a paycheck
- Consider this: The cost for every bad hire is $2M
How do we solve the problem?
- Top of funnel strategy
- Clear mission
- Hiring brand that attracts talent
- Palpable culture - Strong enough that it disqualifies people
- Great referral strategy - cash after 6 months,
- Bottom of funnel strategy
- Hiring systems
- Strong assessments -behavioral , cognitive, analytics
- Hiring process, structured interviewing
- Training- especially on cultural interview aspects
- interviewer grading, scoring, developing
- Remove people who are bad interviewers
- Post hire Strategy
- Benchmarks
- Performance systems - 30,60,90 day
- Hire for buoyancy!
Rick’s Nuggets
Mid Funnel Strategy
- The Interview
- Structured & timed
- Values aligned
- Challenging
- Does the interview produce evidence to support the decision
- Is the evidence supported by the assessment?
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Need a post-hire system!
- Can take more risk
- Need to have a feedback loop to add/subtract people from the interviewing process.
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikezani/
Company: https://www.predictiveindex.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/predictiveindex?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/predictiveindex/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepredictiveindex/?hl=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCexehrVsBrP9SiNeBm4pY7Q
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Sep 09, 2021
How to Terminate an Employee with Dignity - Lori Torres of Parcel Pending
Thursday Sep 09, 2021
Thursday Sep 09, 2021
The first time I was fired was when I was 16 years old and working at Numero Uno Pizza. It happened really strangely, I went in to pick up my paycheck and the manager let me know that this paycheck would be my last one as I was no longer employed there.
No warning and no explanation.
Bewildered, I simply walked out the door, walked across the street and was hired by their competitor.
The way in which the whole experience went down, left me feeling embarrassed & resentful.
Never again did I eat at that restaurant because of the way they made me feel.
Our guest today: Lori Torres, Founder & Former CEO of Parcel Pending
The nation’s leading provider of innovative package management solutions. Prior to Parcel Pending, Lori was SVP of property operations at The Irvine Company.
She has been recognized on multiple occasions for her leadership, including being named 2017 “Innovator of the Year” by the Orange County Business Journal and chosen as one of 13 entrepreneurs admitted into the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ 2017 North America class.
Lori worked to build a world class organization and is going to share her wisdom.
Today we discuss:
- Making the difficult decision to part ways
- How to fire a person in a way that leaves everyone feeling good about themselves
Challenge today?
- When is the right time to make a change and terminate someone?
- Can you afford to do it, do you have the bandwidth
- Taking the time to really understand
- Have an intervention- performance improvement plan, use to be successful
- Articulate to really improve the person's performance
- Everything possible to make sure they are successful
- Accountability tool &
Why is this important to the company?
- Benefits: often find someone better
- Help the person you are terminating to the world,
- Embrace the people management side of the business
- Termination is part of the evolution of the company
- Change needs to happen,
- This is the game we are playing, these are the rules, here’s how we move forward
- What you need at $3mil is different at $10M
Rick’s Nuggets
- Be proactive in your hiring
- Hiring for growth first - start with the end in mind
- “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou
How do we solve the problem?
- Identify performance issues first
- Candid open, specific conversation
- Time frame to meet the expectations
- Check in: not meeting expectations,
- Provide a performance improvement plan
- Whatree performance is now, when they are not meeting expectations, when we are going to convenience to review
- Termination
- Reason for termination:
- Labor attorney- worth the money to handle things properly
- Quick conversation : next step, it is not working
- Part ways with dignity!
- Severance with a legal document release of liability & non-disparagement
- Walk them out the door and wish them well
- Offer help to help them move forward
- Sample Termination
- Rick gets Fired!
Rick’s Nuggets
- Really take seriously the performance metrics that were set for your people in the job description
- Evidence to support the hire first!
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Really spend the time to hire correct people. It's like dating, Interview a lot
- When the person is not performing, invest the time to
- Have non-confrontational conversations with people
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loritorres/
Company: https://www.parcelpending.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParcelPending
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parcelpending
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parcelpending/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFj7yh4kDC7Jx5CDUYnar7A
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Aug 19, 2021
The Great Resignation & Struggle Learning with Sam Caucci of 1Huddle
Thursday Aug 19, 2021
Thursday Aug 19, 2021
The key to retention is growth. With looming fears of “the great resignation” company’s are unsure as to how to structure the organization. Forcing a state of flux that is not healthy for the business.
The poles tell us that at least 40% of people will quit if forced to go back into the office full time. Will your company have a mass exodus? If you have not put your people first…. Most likely.
Companies who have been fostering personal & professional growth through leadership will experience far less separation because they have put their people in front of the transaction.
Our guest today: Sam Caucci , Founder & CEO of 1Huddle
A workforce tech company that upskills, trains, and motivates employees through science-backed, quick-burst mobile games.
Sam founded 1Huddle on the belief that every worker deserves access to the job training, support, and coaching needed to win on the job. Put simply, 1Huddle is making training more fun, effective, and accessible for the entire workforce.
Sam is also the author of the #1 bestseller, Not Our Job: How College has Destroyed a Generation of Workers and How to Fix it. Sam is an expert in workforce engagement and development.
Today we discuss:
- Why struggle based learning is the key to retention
- How to build learning into your culture
Challenge today?
- Training
- Do unto others as it was done to you
- Struggle is important to learning
- Leverage technology to increase outcomes
Why is this important to the company?
- Middle management job function is more important than ever
- How do we arm them to be better coaches to the front line
- 55% of workers are Millennials & GenZ
- They like structure
- Coaching up and development
- Struggle based learning
- Game based learning 45% faster!
- “Make it Stick” -Peter Brown
- "It's the Manager” Only 15% or workers are engaged (before pandemic)- Gallop
- #1 driver to engagement is having a coach
How do we solve the problem?
Struggle based learning
- Content Audit
- What do you have now?
- Gaps - Where are the business problems?
- Finding content: buy vs. build
- Selecting Technology (learning management system)
- Accessibility, Outcomes &
- Authoring
- What kind of staff is required to manage it
- Wrap learning in a game format
- Mobile first
- 52 week calendar (never ending game)
- Continual development
- Up-skilling (stop siloing workers)
- Reskill & re-onboard
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Workforce technology is making it easy to more effectively onboard every worker from frontline to full time
- Effective skill building and retention requires struggle
- Managers need better tools and strategies to onboard, develop and engage workers.
Guest Links:
Sam Caucci:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samcaucci/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/samcaucci
Company:
1Huddle: https://1huddle.co/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/1huddle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/1huddle/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1huddle/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SalesHuddleAcademy
Author of the #1 bestseller: Not Our Job: How College has Destroyed a Generation of Workers and How to Fix it (Amazon)
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
Thursday Jun 10, 2021
Thursday Jun 10, 2021
You don’t need to see 50 or even 10 candidates to make a hire. You only need to see 1.
Why do we feel like we need to see a lot of people to “compare & contrast” before making a decision? Because we have been conditioned to window shop to ensure we are getting the best “deal”. But this is a transactional mindset which causes us to hire too fast with zero evidence to support the decision. Resulting in bad hires!
Let’s change your perspective...
Start by flipping your funnel. Focus on the channels that produce the strongest hiring results. Referral Network, Warm Recruits, and then supplement with applicants.
Relationships, not money, are what drive people in today’s hiring landscape.
Our guest today: Kate DeWald, Founder & CEO of OnCue.
Kate DeWald is CEO and founder of Oncue, the leading software and booking service for the moving industry. Launched in 2018, Oncue helps moving companies increase their revenue by as much as 400%, year over year, by automating many of their manual processes and enabling them to devote more time towards business growth and longevity. Prior to leading Oncue, Kate served in go-to-market roles to drive growth at industry-leading SaaS companies, including SuccessFactors and ServiceMax.
Today we discuss:
- Why hiring is a long term play
- How to gain access to high quality people
Challenge today?
- Filling the top of the funnel with high quality people
- Leadership roles
- Funnel: either too many (unqualified) or too few
- Making sure the candidate experience is stellar
Why is this important to the company?
- Time wasting
- Want to find the people that are going to be best in the business
- Find the people that are aligned on mission, vision and values
Rick’s Nuggets
- Reactive hiring results in “oh shit” hires
How do we solve the problem?
- Funnel: linkedin recruiting, cold outreach, recruiter
- Hire expert/subject matter expertise recruiting
- Write content: be authentic and write about what it’s truly like to work at your company
- Unbias interview process- doesn’t matter where the candidate comes from
- Training leaders
- Reviewing questions prior to the interview
- Play the long game - interview and connect with people before you have the roles available, help out others where you can, it’s about creating long lasting relationships with people
Rick’s Nuggets
- Referrals first: “Who have you worked with that was a strong performer in the organization?”
- Recruits: cross industry performers, competitors-
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Spend more time than you think you need on recruiting
- Be authentic in your hiring process- if you’re a startup, own it- being transparent with the candidate about what the role is really will set them up for success
- Think about Key ways you can add value - how can you add value to your candidates in the process? Make sure they have a great experience regardless of the outcome
Guest Links:
Kate DeWald: LinkedIn
Company: OnCue Facebook Twitter
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop
Thursday May 27, 2021
How Your Book Can Attract Talent with Alicia Dunams of Bestseller in a Weekend
Thursday May 27, 2021
Thursday May 27, 2021
With everyone struggling to hire, companies are looking for a competitive edge in being able to attract talented people. But the answer is not compensation & benefits. Contrary to what most people are preaching right now.
What draws people to your company is NOT the transaction. It is the substance behind what is in it for me!
Today we are discussing how your book can have a surprising effect in drawing talented people to your company by simply allowing people to understand who you are.
Our guest today: Alicia Dunams, Founder & CEO of Bestseller in a Weekend.
Alicia has helped over 2000 people become bestselling authors through her Bestseller in a Weekend® course and professional ghostwriting author services and coaching company.
Additionally, as a leadership trainer, executive coach and certified peacemaker/mediator who has worked with clients including CBS, Gap, GEICO, and Capital One, Alicia uses the foundation of healthy conversations and storytelling as the bridge to overcome conflict in the workplace and beyond.
Alicia is an expert at bringing a book to life and elevating personal & professional brand!
Which makes Alicia a perfect expert for today’s topic.
Today we discuss:
- Why a book may be the competitive edge
- How to create a book to elevate your professional brand
Challenge today?
- Can't attract the right people
- People don't want to go back to the grind
- Want flexibility in being able to work from home
- Competing from a lifestyle perspective
- Companies are competing in the same pool
- Not attracting the passive people
Why is this important to the company?
- Publicity
- Clear company story
- Insight into who you might be working for
- Shows company values
- Branding
- Omnipresence
- Sales/recruiting channel (24x7)
People who resonate with the message of your book will be drawn to the company
Rick’s Nuggets
- Powerful insight into who I will be working for
- How do one write a book while building a company?
- Determine what do you want to accomplish with book
- Outlining the target audience
- Their pain point and providing solution
- Positioning it for recruiting attraction
- Examples of culture and stories of the people who work for you
- Hire a Ghostwriter
- Find someone who resonates with you - someone who captures your voice, finding your voice
- Contact a service, like The Book Funnel ,or Authors Unite, where a book coach can pair you with a ghostwriter, and handles all the project management and author services
- 6-12 months
- Traditional Publishing Route
- Contact me
- Timeframe 18months
- Connect with a Book Proposal Writer (describe what is a book proposal)
- Contact Agent - they also have a list of book proposal writers
- Your book will be Shopped around
- Book Marketing - make your book a bestseller
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Write a book on workplace culture to attract the right people.
- This book becomes a playbook and operating procedure for your company.
- This also could be a requisite read for new hires/interviewees.
Guest Links:
Alicia Dunams: LinkedIn Website Facebook Instagram
Company: Best Seller In a Weekend YouTube
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop
Friday May 21, 2021
Diversity Hiring Fire Drills with Venesa Klein of Calibre One
Friday May 21, 2021
Friday May 21, 2021
It is no secret that diversity sparks innovation and fuels business growth.
But diversity for the sake of image or social pressure is dangerous. It needs to truly be embedded into the fabric of the corporate values in how people interact. It is not just checking off a box to satisfy outsiders.
This is most dangerous when someone is hired simply for their gender or race without any consideration of what the individual is positioned to contribute. Values are misaligned, expectations miscommunicated and voila …. Let the nightmare begin.
Costly mistakes that result in wrongful terminations, and hostile work environment lawsuits.
Our guest today: Venesa Klein, Executive Recruiter & Partner for Calibre One.
Since 2007, Venesa has helped some of the world's most successful companies build out the critical leadership teams that drive their success.
As Partner at Calibre One, Venesa founded its Purpose-Driven Practice, which focuses on placing executives in growing organizations seeking to create innovation with meaningful impact. Her empathy forward personality along with her strategic thinking has enabled her to successfully build diversity programs for her clients.
Today we discuss:
- Why diversity may not be right for your company
- How to correctly implement a diversity program
Challenge today? Having a real diversity strategy
- Implement a long term strategy that develops people into leaders
- Diversity in leadership to fill a role - check off the box
- Oh Shit, we need to hire a woman because we are an all male leadership team
- the structure to give opportunity to diversity
- Vanity hire
Why is this important to the company?
- Real change and a more diverse workforce equals growth & innovation
- Companies
- The reality is that a woman
- Diversity of perspective: Will the person really be valued
Rick’s Nuggets
- Hiring for core values alignment eliminates bias, promotes diversity
- Just filling a seat for diversity sake, dangerous
- Value aligned
- Empowered to thrive
How do we solve the problem?
- Bottom up approach
- Add people at the most jr level first
- Development plan
- Way of identifying people who are doing well and offering opportunity to continuously grow
- Promote into leadership
- Incentivizing organization to develop those around them
- Leadership accountability
- When you have to go out to search
- Leadership team in agreement
- Think through the obstacles in recruiting within the criteria
- Ask Why?
- Needs to be a level of honesty -that is not happening
Rick’s Nuggets
- Build your interview process to eliminate bias first
- Value alignment first
- Values come in every flavor of person
- Positioning before Pitch
- Understand the person’s desires
- Path to success
- Heal their career wounds with your opportunity
- Value alignment first
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Bottom up approach
- Strategy around developing diversity in the organization
- Looking through the lens of diversity
Guest Links:
Venesa Klein: LinkedIn Twitter
Company: Calibre One Facebook Twitter
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop
Thursday May 06, 2021
Thursday May 06, 2021
Assumptions are the #1 reason we fail in our expectations when hiring and raising capital.
Assumptions are drawn when we don’t invest the time to listen to all parties. Asking deeper questions to gather data to support an accurate decision is crucial. What is not uncovered is the reason we make bad hires. Because we inject our own assumptions, needs & bias where the evidence should be.
This especially holds true in your hiring process when our needs and desires cloud what is most important, the truth.
Our guest today: Brian Franco, Founder & Managing Partner of Meritage Partners.
Brian strives for excellence and fairness in deal structure and has a deeply intuitive understanding of the importance of company’s compatibility. He has represented and completed deals with an extremely diverse set of small and mid-sized businesses (SMB's), private equity groups and public companies in a number of industries and has significant experience working with companies in: architecture & engineering, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, wellness, A.I., software and technology, and professional services.
Brian is an expert in aligning expectations in the M&A process.
Today we discuss:
- Managing Expectations with Market Conditions and Expectations when Fundraising & Hiring
- 3 step process to achieving expectation alignment
Challenge today?
- Capital raisers need to secure time to develop and bring their vision to market. In business as in life, Time is afforded by “capital” ILLUSTRATION: An airplane needs enough runway, a powerful engine or engines , and fuel to develop speed/momentum to get airborne. One without the other will result in catastrophic results
EXAMPLE: Amazon did not expect to make a profit for four to five years
QUESTION: Will you expect Capital Providers to wait months or years to return a profit?
- Does the investment opportunity meet the investors expectations?
- Time requirement
- Return on Investment
- Balanced Risk & Reward
- Is their alignment among the founders and the investors?
- Cultural alignment
- Is the founder/team coachable?
- Is the founder a “rebel” or a “cowboy/cowgirl”?
- Cultural alignment
- Is there TRUST, Is there a Perception of risk when it comes to the topics of:
- Operational Control
- Financial Control
- Investing in the PERSON or TEAM to execute the vision or the business plan
Note: Visionaries aren’t always the best integrators
STORY: Some of us are familiar with the story about Steve Jobs leaving Apple in 1985 for 12 years and then returning in 1997
- To manage you must first understand
- LISTENING
Why is this important to the company?
- Understanding alignment empowers us and allows us to understand how to meet expectations and then meeting those expectations leads to SUCCESS
- Qualified leadership team: is their personal goodwill or collateral in past successes?
- Relevant experience in leadership
Rick’s Nuggets
- Assume nothing- eliminate your needs, desires & bias
- Listening is the only way to understand
- Understanding is the key to truth
- Truth is the springboard to success
How do we solve the problem of managing expectations?
It is as simple as “Listening” and “Educating” ourselves so that we align and meet expectations of Capital Raisers and Capital Providers.
Identify what is Achievable
- Listening
Education
- Educating clients on what the ‘market’ is likely to offer them
- Aligning expectations to market practices or offerings (reality)
Plan & Equip
- Identify relevant investors
- Develop Pitch Deck and Memorandum to articulate a consistent message
- Experience and ability to Assembling the team and identifying strengths and weaknesses (don’t put the strongest person in any position simply because they are “strong” align their strengths with the organization because they are qualified and capable)
Rick’s Nuggets
- Understand the person the business needs
- Target:
- Research, network & connect with 5-10 potential candidates
- Execute
- Have conversations to determine positioning alignment
Key Takeaways -Value:
- Don’t get in the way of your vision (don’t be too rigid)
- Put an allstar team together
- Be coachable
Guest Links:
Brian Franco: LinkedIn Twitter
Company: Meritage Partners
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Crop
Thursday Apr 08, 2021
Are You Really an Entrepreneur? With Gino Wickman of EOS & Traction
Thursday Apr 08, 2021
Thursday Apr 08, 2021
As Leaders, we spend a lot of time wondering if we have the right person in the right seat. But how often do we question if we are the right person in the seat?
Entrepreneurs have a special challenge, in that, some of us don’t choose to be entrepreneurs, it is just who we are. But what if you are really an entrepreneur who is in a J O B… or not an entrepreneur at all but have been forced into that role due to life circumstances.
Today we discuss the core of what makes a business successful, the entrepreneur and how to recognize if you are the right person in the right seat.
Our guest today: Gino Wickman, Founder of EOS Worldwide, Author of Traction & Creator of Entrepreneurial Leap.
An entrepreneur since the age of 21, Gino has had an obsession for learning what makes businesses and entrepreneurs thrive.
Gino set out to help entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses. Based on his years of real-world experience, he created the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness.
His new mission, Entrepreneurial Leap, is to find all of the entrepreneurs-in-the-making, at any age, wherever they are—to help them realize their purpose and live the life they were born to live.
Today we discuss:
- How to discover if you are really an entrepreneur
- The steps to take to launch your entrepreneurial journey
Challenge today in people being in the wrong seat?
- Are Your eyes open
- Did you make the right decision to become an entrepreneur
- Forced entrepreneurs - won't be the next Elon Musk
- Hype around being an entrepreneur
- Not everyone can be
- Career choice for 4% of the world
Why is this important to the person?
- Clarity, certainty, peace of mind, self confidence
Rick’s Nuggets
- Too often the person leading the company is just “running the business”
How do we discover your true entrepreneurial nature?
- Confirm
- Take the assessment
- Know when you on the entrepreneurial range
- Know whether you are or aren't
- Not is not a death sentence
- Glimpse
- What you are built for
- The type of business is right for you
- Day in a life- heaven & hell
- Perfect business for you (my bizmatch)
- Path
- Showing guide post to avoid ½ the mistakes they are going to make and greatly increase the likelihood of success
- Mentor
- Discipline
- Stages of building the company
Key Takeaways -Value:
- 1,2,3 roadmap-
- Assessment - https://e-leap.com/assessment/4
- MyBiz match, vision clarifier
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginowickman/
Websites: https://e-leap.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/readLEAP/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/readleap/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg1fRlytBObtuIIAa46B_cg
Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What It Takes to Become an Entrepreneur? Available for purchase through all major retailers: Order on Amazon
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/
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/
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/
Thursday Jan 07, 2021
Lessons Learned from Hiring Friends & Family with Wing Lam of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos
Thursday Jan 07, 2021
Thursday Jan 07, 2021
CEO campfire horror stories often start with “In the beginning, I hired a few friends of mine”... then the story digresses from there. Sometimes the situation works out but most of the time it is a disaster resulting in a severed relationship.
Today we are discussing lessons learned in hiring from your inner circle and how hiring for growth lands great talent.
Our guest today: Wing Lam, Owner of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos
Wing Lam is the eldest of the three founding brothers and the enigmatic character widely recognized as the face of the iconic Wahoo’s Fish Taco brand. A 30-plus-year restaurant industry veteran, he is often in the public eye participating as a panelist and speaker at global events such as the IEG Conference and guest lecturing for MBA programs at Yale, UCLA and USC.
Wing is Prolific & “rich in the currency of social good”!
Today we discuss:
- The pitfalls & benefits of hiring friends & family
- Two key components to hire successfully
Challenge in hiring friends & family?
- Setting precedence
- People did not take it seriously
- Stealing
- Can't allow people to take advantage of your generosity
- Corporate hires-
- Hired from headhunters for store managers (⅖ stayed over a year)
- Moved to growing from within
Why is this important to the company?
- Mistakes cost the company money, time & morale
Rick’s Nuggets
- Expectation Alignment
- Where we fail is in agreeing on expectations up front
How do we build into your company?
- Understand culture first
- Fit is more important than skills
- Up Hire
- Too much experience is good
- Opportunity to allow the person to do what they want to do
- Others intimidated by credentials
- Didn't feel like the person would take the job
- Personality, integrity, passion
- Translates to a good hire
Rick’s Nuggets
- Positioning determines the cultural fit
- Cultivating growth is what captures & retains talent
- People want to learn, grow and tackle new challenges
Key Takeaways:
- Referrals & dig deeper
- Really understand your culture & what fits
Links:
LinkedIn: Wing Lam
Website: Wahoo’s Fish Tacos
Organization: California Love Drop
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
TAGS : #californialovedrop #wingdash #wahooswing #giving
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 10, 2020
Hiring 250 Remote Employees in 2 Weeks with Brock Blake of Lendio
Thursday Dec 10, 2020
Thursday Dec 10, 2020
Imagine having to staff 250 roles... just as many companies were laying off and scrambling to get their PPP loans approved.
Our guest today had 2 weeks to hire 250 people to handle the demand for PPP loans and is here to share his story.
Our guest today: Brock Blake, Co-Founder & CEO of Lendio
Brock spent the last nine years developing technology to get loans to more people, more quickly, and more efficiently than traditional lenders. Under his leadership, Lendio grew to be the largest online marketplace for small business loans in America. So when the coronavirus pandemic struck, he knew he was in a unique position to make a difference.
Today we discuss:
- Creative ways to bulk hire in a short period of time
- The hiring system to be able to crush a lot of hires in a very short time
Challenge today?
- We had committed to [a company] that we would hire 25+ of their people on a temporary basis to help with PPP and then they would return to their employment. It was a win/win. The painful part was realizing the people we hired through them were not skilled in computer software and systems. We ended up keeping only 8-9 people from [Company] which put us behind in getting resources to meet the demands we had.
- Being told “we are good, no more hires” next day “Let’s get 150 hired by next Monday” and we crushed those goals
Why is this important to the company?
- Getting to the bottom of the barrel in terms of Temp to hire resources for the last group that we hired. The incentive to stay home instead of work because of the unemployment benefits had kept a lot of people from applying for work. So those that were applying by the end of our hiring process were not the most employable people. The number of wage garnishments, failed background checks, etc. was much higher for this last group than our overall hiring experience.
- Having the opportunity to extend offers to people during the pandemic. Some people were experiencing the worst few weeks of their lives and were overcome with joy when they received offers. Truly an awesome experience!
- Candidates crying on the phone with us when we offered them the position because they were so grateful to be able to provide for their families or be helping w/PPP
How do we build a quick hiring structure into your company?
- Bulk interview process
- One interview, Decision
- Creating SOPs and generic equipment setup/login instructions - Getting 200+ new hires setup and logged into equipment was a massive undertaking. Staying up until 2 am helping new hires set up their computers for the next morning
- Trying to run new hire orientation with 50+ people in a Zoom meeting who have never used Zoom or their equipment before. No understanding of the mute button.
- Guy falling asleep for 2 hours during training. Snoring.
- Being responsible for retrieving equipment; traveling to unknown places (I’m from out of state), former TMs not cooperating, equipment not being left where they say it would be, thoughts of getting Covid from equipment boxes, equipment not being packed up properly and left outside in garbage bags.
- Cops involved (one emergency contact saying that the temp was MISSING and that us reporting her equipment as stolen might help the authorities find her!) - 4 total police reports
- One person saying “If you want your stuff back, come and get it. And BTW I have COVID”
- Driving all over the state
- Condition that equipment was returned in (garbage bags, shoe boxes, etc.)
- Russ and Kimberly stories of tracking down equipment after terminations
Rick’s Nuggets
- Do not get rid of your hiring process to rapid hire
- Scale the number of interviews
- Train 2-3 interview teams to allow scale
- Assigned interview questions
- Back to back video interviews
- Be aware if interviewer fatigue
Key Takeaways:
- Have a process in place
- Don't cut corners on culture fit, screening
- Get creative
Guest Links:
LinkedIn: Brock Blake
Twitter: BrockBlake
Instagram: Lendio
This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp
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 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
Thursday Nov 05, 2020
Thursday Nov 05, 2020
Values are the foundation of what your company is built upon. As we all know, without a foundation, the structure that is built can be destroyed at any time. Too often the foundation is poured after the structure has been built.
Our guest today: Darius Mirshahzadeh (Mir Shah Zaday), Founder of The Real Darius & Host of The Greatness Machine Podcast
Darius is a dad, husband, twin, brother and son who was born and raised in California and now lives in Austin Texas.
He is a serial entrepreneur, author, conscious capitalist, speaker and mad scientist CEO. He was ranked #40 in Inc 500 CEO’s in 2007 and #9 in Glassdoor’s Top Ranked CEOs in America for small to medium business. He participated in Birthing of Giants at MIT, graduated from Stagen Integral Leadership Program, is a TEDx curator and expert on core values. Darius’s new book, The Core Value Equation, explains everything on core values.
Today we discuss:
- Why values are so critical in landing unobtainable talent
- How to roll out a Core Values based recruiting machine
There is a silver bullet to hiring! Smart hiring decisions are much easier when you evaluate people for evidence of core value alignment, rather than skills.
Challenge today?
- Social proof
- Everyone pretends to be a cool company
- Catfishing-
- Making sure the best people show up
- A-players are never filling out job applications
Why is this important to the company?
- Not seducing with $$$
- Leading with core values
- Differentiating value proposition
- Value hires are stronger fits for the organization
- Cements a validation process
- You will win Hires
- You are building a better company
- You are only competing with yourself
- Foundation for a “REAL” conversation with each person
Rick’s Nuggets
- People are attracted to opportunities that have a fundamentally stronger foundation
- Opportunity for growth is greater which fuels more impactful work
How do we build a core value recruiting machine into your company? Discovery
What your values are
- Leading with values
- Content
- 2 of 3 hires are referral hires
Design
- High utility value
- Translate into the most powerful language
Roll out
- Teach team the language
- Immersed in the language
Implementation
- Nurture
- Implement in an ongoing basis
Measure
- Measure for efficacy and optimize based on results
Plug into your recruiting efforts
- Built a language for accountability in the organization
- Leading with values when contacting people
- Filter for decision making
- The people on the boat are in alignment with the values
- Dig deep in discovery for value alignment
Rick’s Nuggets
- Design: build interview questions that unearth evidence of alignment with your core values
- Implementation: Train & assign specific questions for each interviewer
Key Takeaways:
- Ultimate decision making engine
- Invisible scale - allow you to grow faster / better
- Magnet for top talent that shouldn't even consider your company (marrying outside your envelope)
Guest Contact & Links:
Darius: therealdarius.com
Book: The Core Value Equation (Amazon)