061: Tactic Tuesdays: The Secrets To Hiring Superstar Talent

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Welcome everyone to a Brand Fortress HQ Tactics Tuesday episode and today what we're going to do is we're going to be talking about creating a team of champions, some of the secrets that we have to hiring superstar talent and I think this is a great topic that maybe doesn't get the same amount of attention and sexiness of you know finding that next ad hack or you know, getting more reviews or whatever it happens to be for Amazon, but is really important when you look at building a strong brand and how to fortify that over the long term.

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So actually, with this, before we hit record, we talked a little bit about starting with the why behind this.

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So with that, I'm actually going to turn it over to you, mike, kind of how you think about the why behind creating a team of champions.

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Sure, I think the biggest thing is speed, let's say so you can grow without a team.

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I mean, obviously there's always going to be a limit to how far you can grow without a team.

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But I think part of the issue is that a lot of Amazon sellers, e-commerce sellers in general probably also, but we try to push as far as we possibly can push, just kind of being a lone wolf and maybe having a VA here and there to do certain things that maybe we're not good at and that works for a while.

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It's not a bad plan.

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Obviously, when you don't have a whole lot of capital, it's necessary.

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There's really no other way to go about it.

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But the problem I think that most of us likely run into is that we carry that stage of our business too long.

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We allow ourselves to remain that lone wolf with a VA here and there for certain things for far too long within our business and, as a result, we grow much more slowly than we could, because there's only so many hours in a day, there's only so many things that you can get done on your own without additional team members and, to be perfectly frank, there's only so many things that you're actually good at.

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You know there may be things that you're doing in your business.

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Well, let's take it another way.

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There's probably things that you hire VAs for that you're no good at at all, and so you know you need a VA.

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You're no good at it all, and so you know you need a VA.

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But there's other things that you don't, because you're good enough you can get the job done.

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Maybe you even think you're good at it, but realistically you're probably not great at it.

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And so I would say that the biggest thing is, if you want the greatest opportunity and the greatest possibility to grow as quickly as possible, or at least as quickly as reasonable, then you really need to back up and start looking at all of the various things that you're doing in your business that likely there's somebody else out there that's probably better at it than you that you probably could pay a fairly reasonable wage to get that work done.

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And then the other thing would be what are the things that you know you should be doing in your business that you're not doing in your business because you don't have time, because of all these other things that you're doing that you might be able to either bring somebody on to do that would be good at it or that you would now be able to do because you brought on team members to cover those other areas in your business.

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And so I just think it's really critical to that, and I think everybody should take a step back and think about how fast are you growing right now and how much faster could you grow if you're willing to take and put that money toward building out.

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You know at least the beginnings of a good team.

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Yeah, I think that's just such a good point and just to give kind of some examples, that from my experience, both in you know, building an e-commerce brand and now you know an agency that works with Amazon brands on a regular basis is, you know, for example, we have a PPC specialist and an Amazon catalog specialist, and the reality of it is is that they are way smarter on that stuff at the tactical kind of everyday execution level than I am.

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And that means that, rather than being in the minutia of bid adjustments and that type of stuff on an hourly or daily basis, it means I can work more with brands on that overall strategy and how do we move that strategy forward.

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And so you can apply that to.

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You know, in thinking about that in brands is, if you have somebody to handle whether it's, you know, maybe it's that logistics to say, hey, to make sure that we've got enough inventory, you know there's a number of areas within the business, they're kind of that execution piece that you can find help with, and what that does is it really frees up both your time, energy and brain space to work on the more strategic things which, let's be frank, if you're a brand, those things boil down to hey, I might be doing well on Amazon, but I might want to develop or I probably need to be developing, another channel.

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That may be building your customer list, it may be expanding onto Walmart, it may be selling off your own website.

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And then the other big one that I really see brand owners not spend enough time on is product development.

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I think we'd all say, as a general rule of thumb, most brands should be launching, you know, especially if they're kind of between that half million to a couple million dollars, they should be launching at least two to three products, new products, a year.

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And I would say that the majority of the brands that I talk to on a regular basis really struggle to launch even one new product a year, and a lot of that is because they just don't give themselves enough bandwidth in order to offload kind of those everyday execution things, to free up their you know both their mental space and also their time to work on more of those strategic objectives that they should have for the brand Way back when I was trying to run the marketing show at my first business.

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I was in a digital marketing course that was talking about building sales funnels and this and that, but the guy was talking about the who before the how, and one of the things I learned when he was talking about this is that, mike, you talked about a task that you're not necessarily great at You're good enough to be passable but what this guy talked about was that those things, those specific things that you don't love and that you don't feel like you're an expert at, there's someone else that not only are they an expert at it, but they love actually doing it.

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So for me, that was PPC.

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I think I was possible.

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I came from a data analyst background, so it was neat for me to download reports and filter them in ways, but I wasn't launching ad campaigns.

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I wasn't doing the competitive research that an actual PPC person does.

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Once I let go of that and gave it to someone that was passionate and was better at it, they did more than I could have done.

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That was one of the first things.

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For me, it was learning who are the things on my list that I need off of it that I can focus on.

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Who is that person and is the person you love to give to?

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That's one of the things I learned in processes is that finds almost passionate skill well, you know, what's interesting too is that idea, you know, and it's kind of come up multiple times as we've been talking here is is this you know, we're good enough to be passable, and, and I think what happens with that is it's not only a skill thing but a time thing, and those two things coalesce into a situation where it becomes I'm good enough to maintain this, but maintenance is not the same as progress, and I think that's the issue is that you end up in this stagnant place where you are capable of maintaining what you have, but you're not capable of progressing beyond what you have, because you don't have the time, you don't have the brain space, you don't have the skill for certain things in your business that could be better.

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And so, as opposed to progressing forward on the logistics side and finding better ways to do what you're already doing, finding new ways to do new things that you're not already doing but you should be doing, you're just maintaining the inventory that you have and you're not moving forward in those logistics practices.

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So you're not progressing and therefore you're not becoming more efficient, you're not improving your profit margins, you're not bringing on new products, whatever that is, you're just maintaining what you have, and that's great, if that's all you want.

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But I would say that there's know, there's a number of you know quotes out there that are very similar in nature to this, which is but you know, if you're plateaued, you're actually declining.

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You just don't know.

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So if you're not progressing forward, you're really on the that.

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You know, I look probably on about a monthly basis at least how for opportunities to fire myself from different roles in the business, because the more of those roles that I can fire myself from and hire somebody else, the more I can work on those strategic things that are maybe, you know, six months a year, two to three years down the line we can make, really focused on making progress on those.

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And I think that that's how, you know, a good framework for how businesses that do progress and do grow move forward is by, you know, really moving yourself out of different roles that you may be okay at, you might be good at, you might be amazing at, and bringing people on your team to take those things over.

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So, with that said, I do want to make sure that we get to, you know, because I think there's a lot of listeners that are at that stage that they're like, hey, yeah, I totally understand that.

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You know, I want to find somebody for these roles.

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You know, and the title of this is creating a team of champions.

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So I'd love to hear from one of you about you know, once you've identified, hey, I want to fire myself from this role.

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What does that next step in the process look like in order to find that superstar talent, in order to fill that gap?

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Well, I think, first of all, you might want to back up just a half step in terms of how do I determine what the role is that I want to fire myself from?

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What is that next role that I should be firing myself from?

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And I think there's a few different ways that you could look at that and, honestly, it's probably where those few things coalesce that becomes the target mark.

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And I would say, first of all, recognize that you should be doing a calculation of how much is your time worth, because if you're not really thinking that through, then I think it's difficult to establish who that next person is that you should bring on and what they should do.

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If, in your business, you were to calculate out what your profits are the actual profit that you're bringing back from your business, versus the number of hours that you're investing in your business, and I would say, be careful about that, because, one, your profits might not be quite as good as you think they are, so make sure you know your numbers.

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But two, there's a good chance you're investing more hours than you think you're investing, and so I would take stock of really determining how much time am I investing on a weekly basis in my business and then also what is my actual profit that's coming back out of the business.

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Once you establish that, then it's pretty easy to calculate what your hourly rate is, essentially.

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What are you making by the hour?

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And so if it turns out that you're making $100 an hour, like if that's what you bring in, then if you can hire somebody for significantly less than $100 an hour to do whatever this thing might be, then you should probably do that, because you're freeing up $100 for maybe $20 or $30 or $10, whatever that is for maybe $20 or $30 or $10, you know whatever that is.

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So that's and it also, I think, helps you to really recognize how much value there is in that hire.

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When you recognize the disparity between what is the cost of hiring somebody to do this job versus what am I essentially spending to do this job by taking my time to do it, which is worth $100 an hour or $200 an hour or whatever it is, when you see that disparity, it becomes much more obvious that you should be bringing this person on.

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So I think you need to start there.

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The second thing is then again going back to what we already said.

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What are the aspects of your business that you're not particularly good at but have a significant impact on how well your business performs, you know, in terms of profit margin or overall revenue or efficiency, whatever that is.

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So, for instance, if logistically you're passable but you're still running into out of stock situations, which is then affecting your rankings, which obviously then affects your sales volume, then logistics might be an area where you could bring in somebody.

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Let's say again, your time is worth $100 an hour.

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Let's say you could bring in somebody at $30 an hour even, and that's still a significant disparity.

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And if you can save yourself all of those out of stock situations because you have somebody who that's their only focus, then the benefits to your business are immense, and so, therefore, that would be where I would target that.

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Yeah, I think that's a great place to start.

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I would just also add to that is that, once you've kind of taken care of that low hanging fruit I've also found success with.

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I'll use PPC as an example.

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I'm pretty darn good at PPC, but there's just a lot more impact that I can have at more of a strategic level.

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So that's why I have people who do PPC.

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Now, what that means is that you know, if I train that person and even if they're, you know, 80% as good as I am, they're still doing a fantastic job.

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And I understand I have a strong understanding of kind of where their weaknesses are and can help coach them to be really good at PPC, and so I think that's kind of the next area to look at.

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But I think I just want to kind of come back and double click on what you said, because I think it's so important, which is, you know, finding those things in your business that have a high impact.

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But you know, be honest with yourself where you say, hey, I am, I'm not definitely not an A in this area.

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I may be a B or a C, but this has a big impact on my business.

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So let me bring somebody in who can put more time and attention and probably has more talent in this area.

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And don't be afraid of team members that are smarter than you.

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You have to be okay with that.

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Look for that and actually be excited about finding that.

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One of the things I'll just add to what both of you said is clearly defining that role.

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Once you've decided on the high level, the highest likelihood to kick the ball or move the ball forward in your business moved to the VA to help me with, you know, lead generation or something like that where I thought I knew, like actually going through this process and understanding what that role was going to be for my business, because what I found is that it wasn't something that you can choose on a profile, that this is what I'm looking for, because I was looking for a little bit more and I was able, once I was able, to define the role and all those things that they were going to be taking up to my plate, then it helped me.

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I used chat gbt to help me come up with more of a like a description of that person, which then kind of backed me into a better role than I would have given otherwise.

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So I think what I've learned in the process my my following your SOP, that you I think it was Josh Hadley that originally introduced you to that SOP, but as I walked through that process, that's what I realized was the very key cornerstone process of that is the final lawyer and then everything else kind of gets done.

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So I think that's a really big, big central part of getting started with that.

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So I think that's a really big, central part of getting started with them.

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Yeah, I think that's a great point, because what I have seen talking to a lot of brands and business owners that don't have a lot of experience hiring is they look for somebody to do their PPC, their logistics and optimize their listings listings and the reality of it is, if you start, you know, if you don't have a clear idea of what that role should be, expecting somebody to be good at those three very different things is you're essentially looking for a unicorn that doesn't exist.

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Or if somebody was good at all three of those things, they're going to be dramatically more expensive than somebody who specializes in one of those areas and don't feel like if you're.

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You know, bringing somebody onto the team, that has to be 40 hours a week.

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You know, in 2024, in this day and age, there's a lot of people that work, you know on and off different platforms like Upwork and that type of thing where they work with you know, multiple brands and they may only work five to 10 hours a week for multiple brands doing the same type of work where they could be really effective for you for just five to 10 hours a week, which can make that extremely affordable as well.

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I think it's also important to recognize that in that process of defining the profile of the role, you gain a lot of insight that you likely don't have on the front end.

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So what will oftentimes happen is in your mind.

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So, let's say, you kind of step through that process that we were talking about earlier.

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You know what's my time worth, what's this area that I think either I'm not very good at or maybe I am good at, but it's taking a lot of time, and there's other people out there who would be good at that, and then I could focus over here.

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So let's take logistics.

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You might come into that, and your thoughts might be I need someone to manage my inventory.

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That might be where you start, right, no-transcript.

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And so the next step, though, in that would be to go to or maybe you just start with.

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Maybe you don't even know the name of the profile, you just know what you want them to do.

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I want them to.

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You know, handle my inventory Right.

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So you go to chat GPT and you say I need somebody on my team that could do this for me.

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What would that person be called?

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What would that person be called?

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Chatgpt is going to spit back.

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You know one, or maybe multiple, you know role titles for the person who would likely manage that within your business.

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And then the next follow-up question that you should be asking if ChatGPT doesn't just give it to you automatically is what are the various things that that person in that title role would be able to do or would likely do for my business?

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And ChatCPT is going to give you about a page of information about what that person would likely do within your business and I guarantee you it's going to name off a bunch of things that you didn't even think about, Maybe things that you're not even doing, but it could also be things that you are doing but you didn't realize that that same person is likely going to be good at that and there's a lot of crossover in those two areas.

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Or if it's something you're not doing, you may realize, well, I'm not doing that, but, boy, I should be doing that.

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And if that person, if I can bring them on and they can not only do the thing that I needed done, but they can also do this other thing that I didn't even think about, Now, all of a sudden, a person who might have only been a 10-hour a week employee, maybe now they're a 20-week or 30 or 40.

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Maybe you can bring them on in a full-time role and you didn't even realize all the things that you really needed done and it turns out that's the perfect role to bring on, and now you can begin to flesh that out even further.

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Yeah, I think that's a great kind of first step.

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The other thing that I would add to that and this is probably more of a first principles thing but is, you know and I'm going to use this in air quotes but find a mentor, you know, a brand owner or whatever it happens to be?

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That's a couple of steps ahead of you, and those types of questions are also really.

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I mean, chatgpt is great because it's available to us 24-7.

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So that's a great place to start.

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But then if you have somebody in your network, that is a couple of steps ahead of you.

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Maybe you're a half million dollar brand and they're a million or a million and a half just to say, hey, I'm looking at offloading my logistics off my plate.

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Who does that in your company?

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What are their responsibilities?

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What does that look like?

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Because you'll get a lot of insights into how other companies do it and that also can be really helpful just to give you a framework, to know what should I have this person do and what does that look like.

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So that way you can set that position up for success.

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Because, matt, like you said, just knowing, defining what that role is and what you expect that person to do, I think is a big part of success, not only for you as the person hiring, but also as that you know team member that you're bringing on to make them really good.

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It's so much easier if you can say, hey, here's the seven things that you know are really important that you accomplish in this position.

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So we've actually talked about when, mike, when you were walking through your executive assistant hiring and I think, john, you were going through it at the same time if I remember, I think both of you started the search for your EAs at the same time and, michael, I think that's around the same time that you had for Josh Hadley present his SOP on hiring, and when we walked through that, I remember that's the process that you used for your EA, which on the end of that, you hired a great VA, a great EO.

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So I'm kind of walking through that same process now with this new role that we're hiring now, that same process now with this new role that we're hiring now.

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And I'm now within the past three or four days.

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But, john, this kind of goes along with what you're saying is talk to a mentor and watch what they do and get a you know, get insight into what they do.

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I'm watching this process that Mike walked through with his, with his EAs, and now one of the tools that he used I think Mike and you can give a better description of the tool Criterial core is the name of this tool Watch them, do an assessment and answer a bunch of questions that are very specific to that role.

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Again, it goes back to doing a very clearly defined goal profile at the very beginning.

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But it gives you a score.

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They go through this test.

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Then it puts them in a percentile.

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I look at these emails that are coming through now.

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It shows me they tested X percent on this, x percent on this, x percent on this and here's their overall score and if it's between 65 and whatever, 76 or something like that, I know that it's in X percentile.

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And I don't even look at the people.

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So it's a list of 180 applicants to now a list of 15 or in the top 10 to 15 percentile in all of these tests that we gave them.

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Watching that process and going through it is I mean it's, it's.

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I'm nowhere near.

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I have never been anywhere near that detailed when I was going through it and it shows why I had challenges that I had.

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I can't wait to see the actual person that comes out on the other side, because it's fascinating, I think.

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Going through criteria report just a little bit and understanding how that piece of the process was into your decision I think is super cool for someone to learn how to do.

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Yeah, it's really worked out quite well.

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Josh's SOP is terrific.

00:22:45.272 --> 00:22:59.278
We made some modifications to it and adjusted it for our business, but in large part, we're implementing it very similarly to the way that he's described, and so if you connect with Josh and get that SOP from him, I'm sure you would really find it useful.

00:22:59.278 --> 00:23:34.852
Great, because it does allow you to essentially automate the process of weeding out your candidates, so that I would say that one of the biggest benefits of it is if you have to do the weeding out of candidates, and if you have to do that, then there's a lot of time investment required, and so what will happen is you will bring in 10 or 15 candidates and then you're going to try to weed through those 10 or 15 to find the best option out of those 10 or 15.

00:23:34.852 --> 00:23:41.193
And you're going to get to the end of it and you're going to be like, okay, well, we've got these two that are.

00:23:41.193 --> 00:23:42.778
They're decent.

00:23:42.778 --> 00:23:45.407
I think they could probably do the job.

00:23:45.407 --> 00:23:50.885
We're going to go with this guy because he's a dollar less an hour or lives wherever, so we can probably pay him a little less.

00:23:50.885 --> 00:24:10.259
And you're going to bring them on the team and I would say, more often than not, you're going to discover that that person really is not what you wanted for that role, and it's because you started with a pool of candidates that was very small and of those, the chances that you were going to find the right person for that role was actually pretty slim.

00:24:11.506 --> 00:24:31.628
What using Josh's SOP and using CriteriaCorp does is it allows you to throw a really large net so that instead of bringing in 10 or 15 candidates, you bring in 300 candidates or 400 candidates, and then the process that you walk them through like.

00:24:31.628 --> 00:24:35.999
First there's an okay kind of this application thing up front.

00:24:35.999 --> 00:24:37.568
They either do it or they don't.

00:24:37.568 --> 00:24:39.755
If they did, then they entered the process.

00:24:39.755 --> 00:24:41.647
Now they get popped into Criteria Corp.

00:24:41.647 --> 00:24:45.617
Maybe only 60% of them even make it through that first stage.

00:24:45.617 --> 00:24:55.153
Now they're in Criteria Corp, and so now they're being tested for personality, for skill level, for a number of different things and Criteria Corp system and I'm sure there's others out there.

00:24:55.173 --> 00:24:57.087
I don't want to say that Criteria Corp is the only option.

00:24:57.087 --> 00:25:21.451
It's just the one that we're using, and what it then will do is that we'll correlate the skillset of the individual against the personality of the individual, against, you know, a number of other factors and then, as Matt was suggesting, it will give you percentiles in terms of how good of a fit is this person for all of these different individual roles that you might have that you're looking for within your business.

00:25:21.451 --> 00:25:30.070
So what's interesting is is that you tell Criteria Corp what you're hiring for, but it will also tell you if you've got candidates that come in.

00:25:30.070 --> 00:25:41.115
You can determine not only are they not right for the current position that you're hiring for, but they might be right for these two or three or four other positions that you might not have considered.

00:25:41.115 --> 00:25:45.536
But they're like, knock it out of the park, amazing for those roles.

00:25:46.005 --> 00:25:52.954
And so you might decide you ran across a good enough candidate that you walk them through the process for a completely different role that you weren't even considering.

00:25:52.954 --> 00:26:03.554
But on the topic of the role that you did want, you have a very good way of vetting those individuals and narrowing it down to a certain select.

00:26:03.554 --> 00:26:09.450
You know maybe three to six candidates that you think are really good for the position versus.

00:26:09.450 --> 00:26:22.791
Nah, I think they'll be okay, and I don't wanna have to go through this process again, so we're just gonna hire one of them, and so that, I think, is what I like about it is that I can throw a really big net and it doesn't really require any additional time on my part.

00:26:22.791 --> 00:26:30.730
I can wait till they get to the bottom of the funnel before I start doing any interviews or anything, and at that point I already know I've got some pretty decent candidates on the docket.

00:26:32.095 --> 00:26:39.096
Mike, do you happen to know how long it takes from the candidate side for them to go through that Criteria Corp survey.

00:26:39.576 --> 00:26:45.451
Honestly, it's not that you like how many minutes or hours do they spend, or like how long it will take for us.

00:26:45.451 --> 00:26:49.318
I mean, it depends on the test that you implement.

00:26:49.318 --> 00:26:57.730
You don't have to implement everything that Criteria Corp does and you can implement some of your own custom projects within Criteria Corp as well if you want to implement that.

00:26:57.730 --> 00:27:02.785
So my guess would be you know a couple of hours, you know to go through everything.

00:27:02.785 --> 00:27:12.188
If you really gave them all of the various different skill and personality tests and you've got some additional project that you want to put them through, I would say it's somewhere in that range.

00:27:12.669 --> 00:27:14.051
Okay, yeah, I would.

00:27:14.051 --> 00:27:16.577
I mean I would just.

00:27:16.577 --> 00:27:29.924
First of all, I think it's important to have a process, and Criteria Corp is a tool and it sounds like you know it's a tool that's worked really well for you and that Josh recommends because it's worked really well.

00:27:29.924 --> 00:27:40.090
I will say personally, one of the things that I'm very sensitive to is how much time you have candidates, and it depends on the pay for the position.

00:27:41.585 --> 00:28:03.563
If it's something that is $10, know 10 bucks an hour expecting somebody to do, you know, go through, you know, a couple hour long project and an hour long survey and three to four interviews and all that type of stuff you know doesn't, isn't going to or probably won't get you the right candidate.

00:28:03.563 --> 00:28:08.034
It just gets you somebody that is willing to go through all the hoops to get to the end.

00:28:08.816 --> 00:28:12.290
I think I might question that a little bit, though, and not the the.

00:28:12.290 --> 00:28:17.405
I would say the idea behind what you're saying, I think, is likely correct.

00:28:17.405 --> 00:28:18.750
There there is a.

00:28:18.750 --> 00:28:27.897
There's a difference between you know one position and another and the amount of money that's going to be paid for it and how much time you should really expect them to put in to get to the end.

00:28:27.897 --> 00:28:38.636
But at the same time, I would say that it's also very dependent upon how much are you willing to pay for the job versus where the candidates are coming from.

00:28:39.305 --> 00:28:51.654
So, for instance, maybe this is a customer service position and you're willing to pay $6 or $7 or $8 an hour for somebody who's really good right Now.

00:28:51.654 --> 00:29:02.606
Obviously you're not going to get that out of the US, but out of the Philippines you could get somebody really good for $6 or $8 an hour, because a lot of people in the Philippines are working for three or four bucks.

00:29:02.606 --> 00:29:17.750
So I think a lot of it is what is the discrepancy or the disparity between what an average wage is in, say, the Philippines or wherever you might be getting your employees from, versus what you're willing to pay?

00:29:17.750 --> 00:29:22.209
Because if I'm a Filipino and I know most times the jobs that I might get.

00:29:22.209 --> 00:29:29.133
I'm going to get paid three or four bucks, but these guys are offering six bucks an hour to start and raises over the next year or two.

00:29:29.133 --> 00:29:40.665
I might be entirely willing to invest two or three or four hours even and I'm not saying it should be that many, but I might be willing to do that because this is a much better paying job than what I might be able to get in any other way.

00:29:41.048 --> 00:30:03.028
I'm gonna go for this, especially if the job description and the description of your business and how you treat your employees and all of that resonates with me and that's another thing that I think is important is that when you put these job postings out there, make sure that the people know what they're applying for, not just the specifics of the job and what the responsibilities are going to be, but how are you going to treat them Like?

00:30:03.028 --> 00:30:34.892
What kind of a company are you, how much do you value your employees and how much are you going to invest in them and bringing them forward, to increasing their skill set and giving them better opportunities, if your job posting makes it very clear that you have tremendous care for your employees and you want to give them opportunities to grow and to make more money and to become better, then I think you get that better quality candidate and I also think you get them to be willing to spend that additional time to walk through and jump through your hoops if they know they're going to get paid decent for the position.

00:30:36.563 --> 00:30:37.967
I think that can be true.

00:30:37.967 --> 00:30:48.692
Sorry, john, I was going to say, now that I can see the data on this side, of these applicants that are filling out, like sure, we probably would have gotten more if there were less hoops for them to jump through, were less hoops for them to jump through?

00:30:48.692 --> 00:31:08.888
But the ones that are coming out on the other side, I think I'm okay with weeding out, the ones that didn't want to spend the hour answering those survey questions, because the ones that did I have some that came out on the other side that are in the one or two percentile in all of the different aptitude, skill and all of that put together, they did go through that hour and a half two hour long process.

00:31:08.888 --> 00:31:11.790
So they did go through that hour and a half two hour long process.

00:31:11.790 --> 00:31:13.315
So the ones that we weeded, out.

00:31:13.185 --> 00:31:13.509
I think I was okay weeding them out.

00:31:13.509 --> 00:31:37.960
Okay, yeah, no-transcript.

00:31:37.960 --> 00:31:49.611
And then the other thing that I would say just from my experience and actually I'm going to test out CriteriaCore for our next position and kind of the Injash Hadley's process to see how it compares.

00:31:49.611 --> 00:32:01.752
But you know, either way, I would say one of the things that is some whatever process you use, a couple of key things that I think you said that I want listeners to really hone in on.

00:32:01.752 --> 00:32:04.422
The first is is that you want to cast a wide net.

00:32:04.961 --> 00:32:25.125
You probably want, you know initial applications to be 100, 200 people for your for that position, because 80 to you know, 70 to 80% of those, no matter how good you write that job position, are going to people that are going to fall into camps.

00:32:25.266 --> 00:32:38.740
Either one they have zero experience and what it is that you're trying to hire for and they're going to apply for the job anyway because they click a button and they've done their duty of applying for the job.

00:32:39.642 --> 00:32:43.430
And then the other one is that they're just not responsive.

00:32:43.430 --> 00:33:00.086
So they might have great experience but they're just not responsive in a timely manner to hey, we're interested in more information about you, and so we've had a process where you know our first thing is is just to ask them, you know, a simple question what interested you in this position?

00:33:00.086 --> 00:33:05.125
And we're typically, you know, a little insider secret.

00:33:05.125 --> 00:33:29.968
We're able to eliminate probably about half of them because we don't get a response back sometimes, for you know, three, four days a week, ever, you know, and that makes it really easy to recognize, like okay, well, you know, if I don't get a response back from you in a week on a simple question of like what interests in this position, then you're probably either not that interested or you're just not able to be that responsive for who knows what reason.

00:33:29.968 --> 00:33:32.472
And now we can move on to other candidates.

00:33:33.299 --> 00:33:34.624
Yeah, not for sure.

00:33:34.624 --> 00:33:36.309
I think it's important.

00:33:36.309 --> 00:33:44.734
We a couple of other things that I might mention that I think are pretty useful in the process.

00:33:44.734 --> 00:34:17.063
So I guess one be aware that most individuals, regardless of what your hiring practice is, what your process is, that you're going to run them through, depending on the importance of the position, I would say that in one way or another, you need to attempt to test not only their ability in the area but also, I guess, their integrity to a degree, if there's some way in which you can kind of test those things.

00:34:17.103 --> 00:34:33.315
And I guess the thing to be careful of is that these days, a lot of individuals that are going to apply to your position are going to be heavily using AI to make themselves look better for that hiring process.

00:34:33.315 --> 00:34:43.985
And I'm not suggesting that's necessarily a bad thing, because you want people in your company who can actually use AI, so people who effectively do that.

00:34:43.985 --> 00:34:45.831
I think there's value there.

00:34:45.831 --> 00:35:04.255
But make sure that you're designing the process and whatever projects or tests that you're implementing, make sure that you implement them in such a way that you're not just getting the people who can use the very basics of ChatGPT or some other AI to make themselves look good.

00:35:04.255 --> 00:35:12.391
Make sure that it takes a little bit of skill for them to actually do that, because then at least you know they're skilled with AI, you know whatever that is.

00:35:12.391 --> 00:35:25.820
I also think that using a tool like CriteriaCorp or something like that for you know, skill-based assessments and things like that I think eliminates a little bit of that, so that you don't have as much of the AI influence on whatever it is in terms of those results.

00:35:25.820 --> 00:36:00.105
And then the last thing that I would say and we can, maybe you know we have a little bit of that they could move into a management position down the road relatively easily.

00:36:00.105 --> 00:36:09.231
Like, if they're good at the job, they simply have the temperament and kind of the base level skillset that they could be good at managing somebody else in that job.

00:36:10.300 --> 00:36:15.849
Technically, I think anybody can move into a management position, but I think it's a lot easier for some individuals than others.

00:36:15.849 --> 00:36:33.702
And so if you're hiring for a position and you're using a tool like CriteriaCorp, I would not only look at the information that CriteriaCorp is giving you in terms of how would they do in that job like just doing the job but also I would look at some of the other things that Criteria Corp is testing to evaluate.

00:36:33.702 --> 00:36:41.302
Would they be good as a manager in that position, so that you're ready for that promotion already?

00:36:41.302 --> 00:36:43.148
You have that person lined up and ready.

00:36:43.148 --> 00:36:52.007
Once they're good at it and you need another person in that department, you can just promote them, rather than trying to bring in somebody new or looking for somebody who can handle management level.

00:36:52.007 --> 00:36:53.469
You know responsibilities.

00:36:53.469 --> 00:36:54.934
You already have that individual.

00:36:56.161 --> 00:37:03.822
Yeah, I think when we've talked about this a little bit before, my experience has been a little bit different, but I think that that you know that's okay to have that perspective and I think there's some.

00:37:03.822 --> 00:37:08.382
There's definitely some value in that in the sense of it makes growing your team easier.

00:37:08.382 --> 00:37:33.849
If you already have that person in place who does have management, you know, or can take on those management responsibilities, you do end up sometimes paying a little bit more for that person out of the gate and you know you do eliminate some people who I'll use the example of I have a brother who's a programmer and he's very, very good at programming but he has zero interest in ever managing people.

00:37:33.849 --> 00:37:39.585
He just hates it with a passion and wants to be an individual contributor because that's where he likes to be.

00:37:39.585 --> 00:37:57.653
And so you know you do find people like that where you might eliminate somebody who's an amazing individual contributor but never wants to or may never be capable of stepping into a management position, but never wants to or may never be capable of stepping into a management position.

00:37:57.653 --> 00:37:59.458
So we do need to start wrapping this episode.

00:38:02.019 --> 00:38:15.228
So I want to kind of think about takeaways for or action items for the listeners, and I think the two that I would give is, especially if it's going to be an important part of your business is make sure that you interview that person and then do an actual interview.

00:38:15.769 --> 00:38:33.913
Surveys and messaging is fine, but you want to put a face to a name and you learn a lot Even if it's getting on a Zoom and talking to somebody in real time, and I've actually found a lot of success with also sharing challenges that that person is probably going to experience in that position.

00:38:33.913 --> 00:38:45.311
Like hey, here's the challenges in that position and setting them up with that expectation of like hey, here's the things that are, you know, might be tough in this role, so that way they can walk into it, you know, with the right expectations.

00:38:45.311 --> 00:39:05.592
Thing I would leave you with is you know we talked about it towards the beginning is you know, look at a regular basis once a month, once a quarter, whatever that happens to be for your business of you know what positions can you fire yourself from to open up more of your time and more of your capacity in order to work on more strategic things.

00:39:06.380 --> 00:39:10.985
Yeah, I think one thing that I would leave the audience with is how important having a process is.

00:39:10.985 --> 00:39:20.516
For the first couple of years of hiring people, I was the epitome of Mike's description of what hiring looked like, where you just hurry up and get someone in the door.

00:39:20.516 --> 00:39:25.202
In a lot of cases you're making a decision on who's a dollar or two cheaper.

00:39:25.202 --> 00:39:40.831
Just having a process of helping to cast a wider net and then being able to weed that down without spending multiple hours and energies, I think, is the quality of people that I'm seeing come out the other side of that is astounding.

00:39:40.831 --> 00:39:50.998
So I don't think that it really is a little bit more work on the front end to set up a process like what we're walking through, but it's well worth it in the end and it'll end up saving time in the long run.

00:39:54.760 --> 00:39:55.704
And fortunately you'll use it over and over.

00:39:55.704 --> 00:39:56.789
You know like I mean it's like any other process.

00:39:56.789 --> 00:39:57.795
Once it's in place, you know, then it's available.

00:39:57.795 --> 00:40:01.407
So every time you hire you get to walk through that same process and it's a whole lot easier each time.

00:40:01.407 --> 00:40:21.188
I think the the the couple of things that I would leave listeners with is one really spend that time on the front end developing out the role profile, you know, really figure out what is it you need, what is, who is the person that you need for that and what are all of the things that that person would likely be able to do.

00:40:21.188 --> 00:40:22.472
That maybe you're not even thinking of.

00:40:22.472 --> 00:40:28.242
Build that profile out really well so that you can build out a really good job description when you put the job out there.

00:40:28.242 --> 00:40:32.728
And then the other thing is coming back to what John said, which is this in-person interview.

00:40:32.728 --> 00:40:45.929
I think it's really critical, especially in this day and age of AI, because if it's real time, then they don't have the time to use AI to formulate their answers and to give you exactly what they think that you're looking for.

00:40:45.929 --> 00:40:58.201
Having that real-time interview makes a big difference in that process to make sure that you can weed out some of that and I also am a big fan, and this is one of the things that Josh Hadley does is the group interviews, like we do.

00:40:58.842 --> 00:41:02.532
You know, for the last position, that we did we had two sets of group interviews.

00:41:02.532 --> 00:41:03.865
We had six decent candidates.

00:41:03.865 --> 00:41:05.065
We did two sets of three.

00:41:05.065 --> 00:41:08.646
We whittled that down and we went through that process.

00:41:08.646 --> 00:41:14.664
I think there's a lot of value in doing that and we actually asked Josh made this recommendation.

00:41:14.664 --> 00:41:15.307
I think it was great.

00:41:15.307 --> 00:41:18.568
We asked each person at the end of the interview who would you hire?

00:41:18.568 --> 00:41:25.384
You can't vote for yourself, and that actually is fairly helpful, because most of the time they vote for the same person that you would likely have chosen.

00:41:26.507 --> 00:41:27.570
Okay, well, very nice.

00:41:27.570 --> 00:41:33.530
I think this is a lot of great information for brands out there that are looking at creating that championship team.

00:41:33.530 --> 00:41:39.690
So I would just encourage listeners take away at least one of those items, implement in your business and then let us know how it goes.

00:41:39.690 --> 00:41:41.485
So, part of the reason why we do this.

00:41:41.485 --> 00:41:44.818
I want to thank everybody for listening and we'll see you at the next Tactics Tuesday.

061: Tactic Tuesdays: The Secrets To Hiring Superstar Talent

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