Put More Money In Your Pocket By Hiring Better People

What is the number one riskiest thing that you can potentially do to your business? Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to jump in and talk to Barry Shamis. Barry Shamis is the CEO of the international consulting firm Selecting Winners, and he's written multiple books and has been featured on ABC News, 20/20, Wall Street Journal. Barry Shamis understands that hiring is one of the biggest risks in your business, not only because, number one, are you hiring somebody who's going to do well or not, Number 2, what is their effect on morale? And number 3, do you have the right people in order to take care of your customers correctly? There's a whole spectrum that needs to be understood when it comes time to hire. But is there a specific time to hire? Should you be looking at a specific time of the year? Should you be looking all year round? Barry's going to be sharing light on all of that and much more as we put more money in your pocket by hiring better people. I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless. His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name. The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing. Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

We're gonna have a really fantastic morning. Barry Shammas and I have spoken together in Phoenix, Arizona for ROYFAD a couple of times. I have, I see a lot of speakers, folks, and there's some really fabulous speakers in the world, but Barry is is a really, truly great speaker. He, he really talks from his heart. He talks and will share with you information and things that we think we should all know because we all hire staff. We think because we are bosses we should know things, but he is really going to open up your mind to ways of utilizing and capitalizing your existing staff and hiring people in a much different way to make your life a lot easier, and I think that's why you're all sitting here. How many of you are a little frustrated with your staff or hiring staff? Okay, hence the seated being here. Yes. Well, I want to give you some— by the way, in your book, there's a very nice introduction about Barry, and you should read that because he has done a lot of things. But basically, what I really want to share is that his business model about hiring employees will really definitely change your business. The right people in the right jobs at the right time doing the right things is your real goal. And you're gonna be able to make that a reality today, not only by listening to him, but I also wanna share with you that I know people who have invested in his programs before, and they, I have never heard anybody say anything but they were absolutely thrilled and it changed their life. He is the CEO of the international management consulting firm called Selecting Winners, and he has delivered more than 1,800 presentations in 54 countries on subjects of recruiting and selection. He has worked with hundreds of companies and coached thousands of business owners spanning all types of organizations in every industry. He has written numerous books and hundreds of articles on selection and has been featured on ABC News, 20/20, and The Wall Street Journal. So with great pleasure, I would like to introduce Barry. Give him a great round of applause.

Thank you, Lee. It was my absolute pleasure when I found out that Lee was going to introduce me. One of my favorite people. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. Quick question. How many of you currently have staff? Raise your hand. Okay. Put your hands down. Quick question. What are you going to do in the next break?

Fire them.

What are you going to do in the next break? Let me take a wild guess. You are going to, as fast as you possibly can, whip out the cell phone and call the office. Am I right? Well, no. Good for you if you're not, because I have to tell you something. I got 17 people I won't call the office today. Do you want to know something? When I'm gone, things tend to go better. Isn't that amazing? Things tend to go better when I'm gone. I don't add a whole lot of value at the office. I really don't. Why? I've hired great people. By the way, does anybody want to know what I'm going to do during the break? What am I doing during the break? Anybody like to know after I'm done answering your questions? I'm going downstairs. Does anybody know what's going on downstairs? There's 5 different organizations holding meetings. Some of it is training. My primary company is a training company. Do you know what I'm doing during the break? I'm recruiting. I'm recruiting because I have a recruiting mentality. I think about it all the time. There may be somebody downstairs conducting a session who might work for me. So I'm not worried about things falling apart back home. I'm gonna go be proactive about it because I have a recruiting mentality. We're gonna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about a whole bunch of things today. But before we get started, I gotta get this off my chest. I'm reading— I gotta put my glasses on because I'm not so good, the eyes aren't so good anymore. I'm reading the March 31st edition of Fortune magazine on the plane on the way out here. And I get to the very last page, which is called "While You Were Out," for those of you who have ever read Fortune magazine. And there's an article, the title of the article is "How Fred Got His New Job." And here's a so-called expert telling you how to hire. And I just highlighted a paragraph for you, and I'd like to read it to you. It says, you see a lot of talented people when you're in this process, but within 6 seconds not 7 or 8, you know whether the person in front of you is going to be somebody with whom you can sustain a 10-minute conversation. The only thing I look for is whether the prospect of doing so makes me feel like falling asleep. Since 1974, I have done nothing but teach people business owners, companies, how to hire people. I wish, I pray that I was good enough in 6 seconds, not 7, not 8, but in 6 seconds to figure out if somebody was going to be successful in my business. Can I give you some first piece of advice for the day? Goodbye. Garbage. It doesn't make any sense. We're going to talk today about the stuff that you've heard that doesn't make any sense. There's tons of it out there. Terrible advice in a national, well-respected publication. People are going to read this and say, "Let me see, can I have a 10-minute conversation with this person? Who cares? I don't want to talk to my people, I want them making me money." Isn't that what you'd like them to be doing? Doing something to enhance your business? I don't care if I can have a 10-minute conversation with someone. I'd like to know that they're going to be successful on my job. Far more important to me than having a 10-minute conversation with them. That's absolutely Nuts. So, hiring employees is the riskiest part of running a business. Everybody with employees agree? I mean, think about it. You're good. You're good at what you do, right? You can do it right. All of a sudden you delegate, you bring someone else on board, that's scary. They're not as good as you, are they? They're not as good as you. I'll tell you an interesting fact. I do a lot of speaking. I travel all over the world and I speak, and once again primarily I have 5 companies, but my big company is a training company. We go into organizations and we teach them how to hire. We have a whole big model that we use. And I tend to generate a lot of the interest in the company because I stand up here on the platform and I talk to people. And at the end, you know, I get CEOs of corporations who come in, they say, "Oh, we'd really like to have you come in and train our people." I'd say, "You know, be happy to do that. I'm gonna send— where are you located?" "Oh, we're up in the Northeast. I've got a guy in New Jersey." My guy from New Jersey will be coming. "No, we want you." I get this all the time, and you know what my response is? You can have me, but I'm the worst trainer in the company. True, absolutely true. I am the worst trainer in the company. Would you like the worst trainer I've got? They want me. And you know what? As soon as they see one of my people, they go, uh, Barry, well, we don't really want you anymore. We'd like one of your people. Because they're better. Everybody I hire is better than me. Why would you hire anybody but somebody who's better than you? If you could do it yourself, you wouldn't need them, would you? Got to change the way we think about this subject. It's completely different. This is risky. It's a risky part of running a business, but you better learn how to do it. You guys are going to be exposed to some magnificent strategies. This weekend. We've already heard some fabulous people talk. There's, there's really— I mean, the list of experts is fabulous. You're exposed to some great marketing ideas, great business operations ideas, all wonderful stuff. But let me tell you something: at the end of the day, if you don't get this one right, none of the rest matter. None of the rest matter. You gotta do this great. I'll give you two reasons. I tell people this all the time. There's two reasons why this ought to be absolutely on your daily study list. To get better at this. One of two reasons— you can take one or the other or both, your choice. Number one, get good at hiring people, you will make more money. But he got it, it's a flat guarantee. Get good at hiring people, you will make more money. Should that not appeal to you— and by the way, if that does not appeal to you, You have my permission to leave now. But if that doesn't appeal to you, hire great people and life gets easy. How many of you cannot wait to get out of bed in the morning, get into the office to manage your hiring mistakes? How much fun is it to manage our hiring mistakes? Excuse my French, but it sucks. Managing is the worst job in the world when you have lousy people working for you. When you've got great people, I love to manage. I do. I love to manage. Why? Because I've got great people. When my people come to me, we're doing good stuff. You know, we're doing stuff where I add value. We're negotiating programs and practices and strategies, and we're working on clients, and I mean, good stuff. I like doing that. That's why I'm in the business. I don't deal with people problems. Ew. Ew. I don't know about you, but I can't do it. Hire great people, life really gets good. Two most important words you utter, and I'll bet you, we're all adults in the room, I'm going to bet you think it was, "I do." Two most important words you hired? "I'm going to change it." Two most important words? "You're hired." You're hired. Scary, scary thought. Huge commitment. You're letting go of a piece of your business. We talked about it being risky. These now become the two most important words in your business, and you need to behave like these are the two most important words in your business. You're hired. People take this lightly, and I don't get it. We're gonna talk momentarily here about the adverse impact, the financial impact of making a hiring mistake, it's gonna scare you. It should scare you. These are the two most important words. This is my latest race car. I got a passion for racing cars about 5 years ago, and I have a number of race cars, and this is my latest race car, which I'm just in love with. But I put it up here because I want to tell you a story. I bought this car in November of '07.. And as soon as I bought the car, a ready-to-go race car, I got to put a new engine in it. Why? Because it's a race car. You got to put a new engine in a race car. And I found there was an organization— I live up in the Pacific Northwest, I live about 80 miles west of Seattle— and I heard there was a shop in Seattle called Intech Racing. And I picked up the phone and I called Lawrence, who's the owner of Intech Racing. I told him the car. Interestingly enough, he knew the car. It's a fairly famous car in the Northwest. He says, "Oh yeah, I know that car." And so I said, "Well, I want to do an engine swap and so forth." He says, "Bring it in, let's talk about it." So I brought the car in to Lawrence and we looked and we decided and we picked an engine. We had actually imported an engine from Japan to put in the car and we went through the whole works. And in the process of this, because it's not a quick process, I got to be friendly with Lawrence. Lawrence runs what's called a tuning shop. For those of you that are into high-performance cars, you know, he runs a tuning shop. He has 6 employees and he's losing money hand over fist. And Lawrence is brilliant. This guy can make an engine talk to you and he's losing money. So we went out to lunch one day while they were working on the car and I said, you know, Lawrence, what's going on? And he goes, Chris is killing me. Now Chris is the guy who's working on my car. Chris is a guy, Chris is a guy who's off the scale brilliant when it comes to cars. He tuned this car. He got more horsepower out of this engine than I believe anybody else outside of professional racing team could get out of this engine. He's brilliant, but he comes to work when he wants to come to work. He's got girlfriend problems, okay? Looks a little hungover every once in a while. And Lawrence has a whole business built around this guy, because this is the guy— when you put this car on the dyno, which is how you tune an engine, this is the guy who does the work. And it's killing Lawrence because that's his most profitable activity in his business, is tuning. Get a car in the tuner, run it through the dyno, and they make a lot of money. And he can't count on them, he can't schedule, and this and that. So I sat down with Lawrence, and of course we did a little trade, And I got Lawrence straightened out. This was December timeframe. From December until the end of March, 'cause I talked to him right before I left here, his business is up 65%. By the way, he fired Chris 2 days later. His best guy, technically, he fired him. He's replaced him with 3 other people, all good, competent guys, and His revenue is up 60% in 4 months. Because he couldn't get it. He says, "But he's so good." Doesn't matter. He's costing you money. He's costing you money. So, I taught Lawrence at Intech Racing how to hire his guys. He's since hired 3 guys. They're all fabulous, making more money. He's happier. He gets to go home at night and see his wife and his little babies. And life got good. Learn how to hire people. It's a typical client. I have some very, very large clients. I have some Fortune 10 clients, but I do a lot of work with small companies, handful, you know, 25 employees or less. And here's one employee who was really destroying his business. It's really destroying his business. And if anybody would like to talk after the presentation about the race car, I'd love to talk to you about the race car. Here's some of the problems facing a small business. You have lots of them when it comes to hiring, but you can't get enough candidates. Where do they come from? Does everybody understand that we're in the United States right now? And I know we have some people from outside the United States, and I can't quote the numbers from other countries right now, but by the way, I should say, those of you not from the United States, every single thing I'm gonna tell you today applies. I don't care if you're from the Far East. Lee said in my introduction, I've presented in 54 different countries in, in every part of the globe, and the Selecting Winners principles I'm gonna share with you today work everywhere. In the US, we're at 4.7% unemployment. What you should know is below 5% is effective zero. The only people not working today are people who don't want a job. Everybody got it? We're at effective zero. There's not enough candidates. It's a problem. As a small company, you have a hard time attracting those candidates. They're expensive to find. You can spend a lot of money— we're gonna talk about recruiting in depth this morning— you can spend a lot of money chasing candidates. You're gonna waste a whole bunch of it, but you can spend a lot. They're very, very expensive to find. They're not reliable. Anybody in here ever hired someone and been surprised? What a novel concept. They did things you didn't expect them to do, or they couldn't do things you wanted them to do. Why were you surprised? You were surprised because you didn't have a clear-cut profile on the way in. You figured, I'll know it when I see it. Oh, give me that back. You're one of these 6-second hires, huh? Let's, let's do a real quick vote here. How many of you tell the truth? How many of you make up your mind in an interview in the first 2 minutes? Raise your hand. Okay, let me give the rest of you an opportunity to be honest. How many of you make up your minds in the first 5 minutes of an interview? Those of you who didn't raise your hand, you're part of a statistically abnormal group. 'Cause let me tell you what statistics say. 60% of all people have made up their mind in 2 minutes or less. 80% of all people have made up their minds in 5 minutes or less. I don't care how good you are, in 2 or 5 minutes you can't get enough data to make a quality hiring decision. I can't do it, and I do this for a living. And I can't do it. You can get a first impression. You can't gather enough data to make a quality hiring decision. And yet people do it. It's amazing. It's just amazing. Turnover is costly. Lori, raise your hand. Lori back here runs an animal hospital. She came up before my presentation and we talked a little bit. And I told her, give everybody a 50% raise. And she looked at me like I was an idiot. And then I talked to her a little bit about the cost of turnover. Does anybody understand what the cost of turnover is? I got a slide in here. I'm going to show you what the cost of turnover is. I'm going to blow your mind. I'm going to blow your mind when you see the cost of turnover. Every point you can reduce your turnover puts money in your pocket. And if you take some of that money that you're going to make or save, give it to your employees, turnover comes way down, you get to keep the difference. You make more money. Here, where? Let's pay people more money and we'll make more money. Probably haven't heard that one before. I'm telling you, it works. Why? Because the business gurus that are telling you, "Oh, keep payroll, you know, don't pay people well," have massive turnover. They have mass— they're churning more money than they can possibly imagine. I got a very large contract. Oh, 3, 3 or 4 years ago from a huge— I'm not going to mention the name, but trust me, you would know them— a huge insurance company. And they wanted me to teach them how to hire. And their model is hire 10, keep 1. Hire 10, keep 1. And I had a guy come in and say, yeah, you know what, I'm hitting 2 out of 10. And he was proud as all get-out. He's hitting 2 out of 10. You know what I told him? I can flip a coin and do 5 out of 10. So you're proud of 2 out of 10? I mean, come on. It's crazy. And by the way, I had to end the contract because they couldn't change their mentality. They couldn't get away from the fact, well, boy, if I hire 10 and 2 stay, I've done good. Real estate folks, you don't need to raise your hand. Sound familiar? What's it, 3 years later, isn't it something less than 30% renew their license? Isn't that the real world? That's unacceptable. That's unacceptable. Do a better job of hiring. You get competition from bigger companies. See, I can crush you. I got more money than you. Everybody knows who I am. I'm up from the Seattle area. We got 2 big players. We got Boeing and Microsoft. We got a lot more. But we got Boeing, we got Microsoft, and you know what? Try competing with them. Hard to do, isn't it? Actually, it's really simple. I'm gonna give you some strategies that'll show you how to do it. It's actually very, very simple to compete with the big guys, but it's a problem. You certainly can't outspend them, can you? Anybody wanna know what Microsoft's recruiting budget? I haven't seen '08. For 2007, Microsoft's recruiting budget, $485 million. Anybody in here match that? So, you know, we can't play fair with the big boys or they'll crush us, but it's a huge problem that we have to face. Finally, you don't like doing it, do you? I'll bet you there's not a soul in here who loves recruiting and hiring. It's hard work. You don't know how to do it. It's not fun. You don't think it makes you money. It does. It actually makes you more money than almost anything else you do., but we don't like doing it, so we don't. So let's take a look. I keep talking and I keep alluring to these costs of hiring mistakes. Let's take a look at these. First of all, lost opportunity. Lost opportunity. How many potential customers are you losing because you can't service them? You don't have the people to service them. You want to know the single limiting factor in my company? We teach companies how to hire people. Do you think I have an upside on my company? Because basically every company in the world is a prospective client of mine. You want to know the limiting factor in my business? Finding good people. I could double my business if I could double the number of people I have. At some point it comes down to that. You lose opportunity. And by the way, single biggest cost of hiring mistakes is lost opportunity. You have a vacant position. We just moved to a new town. We built a new house, moved to a new city, didn't know a soul. I'm looking around for a dentist. Unfortunately, my previous dentist didn't know anybody in this town, so I didn't come in with a referral. And I'm calling people and they're saying, you know, we're not taking new patients. Not taking new patients? I don't get it. What's the limiting factor in the business? You think he— this person might hire another dentist? Expand the building? Think they might make a little bit more money? Not taking new patients. Lost opportunity. It's incredible. Management time. How much time do you spend with your superstars? Answer: not enough. Am I right? Isn't most of your management time torn up with people problems and the underperformers and the people not doing a great job and hiring people and getting rid of people. Ugh. What's your time worth? I was in Adam's presentation next to you. He said, what, on average, Glaser Kennedy member, it's gonna be $375 an hour. Every time you spend an hour messing around with an employee problem, you've lost $375. Oh God, I don't even want to think about it. Administrative costs. Hiring people, you got paperwork, you got to sign them up, you got to get them enrolled in payroll, you got to do the benefits, you got to do, you know, workers' compensation, you got to do all this stuff. There's cost, there's cost. It gets expensive. Vacancy costs. Vacancy costs. What happens when one of your people leaves and is gone? What happens to their workload? Either it doesn't get done or it gets assigned to other people. What happens when you hire somebody who's not a stellar performer? Let's talk about this for a minute. What happens when you've got a really critical job that needs to get done in your business? Who gets assigned that job? Your best employee. Everybody agree? So what's my reward for being your best employee? I have more work! Do you see how it's a disincentive to people to be a top performer because you reward your top performers with more work? What a great idea. We don't think about stuff like that. High cost of a hiring mistake. Training costs. Nobody comes in and hits the ground running day one. You got to spend a bunch of time, you got to bring them up to speed. It's expensive. Customer costs, complaints, satisfaction, erosion. Before we moved, we lived just on the east side of Seattle. I have a Sunday morning ritual. I get up Sunday morning early, before the rest of the family, and I go down about a mile from the house. There's a strip mall, and inside the strip mall is this magnificent bagel place. And Sunday morning I get fresh hot bagels and cream cheese and all the works. All right, here. And I bring them back to the family, newspaper, everybody's ready to go. So I go in, I've been doing it for years, we lived in the house for 9 years. I show up, and there's a new lady behind the counter. And I go up and I said, "Can I get 6 sesame seed bagels?" And she said, "We're sold out." And I think she saw the tear leaking out of the corner of my eye. And I had the look on my face and she goes, "I guess I just ruined your day." Can you imagine? So, here's your clerk, you're paying what? $8.42 an hour? Whatever the number is. What did that person just cost the company? Your new clerk, who doesn't quite get it, doesn't quite get that you gotta take special care of your really good clients, right? What's the lifetime value of Barry Shammas who comes in every Sunday and has been doing it for 9 years to get his bagels on Sunday morning? "I guess I ruined your day." Isn't that amazing? Customer complaints, customer satisfaction, customer erosion, it all goes down. Replacement costs, they go away. Guess what? You gotta replace them. You gotta go recruit, you gotta spend money, you gotta spend time, you gotta bring them in, you got all these costs that you've gotta do all over again. The interesting thing is I tell people, figure out what your turnover cost is and then double it, because you get to do it twice. Once with the first person and once with the second person. It just absolutely kills you and it makes no sense. And finally, morale cost. I touched on that. There's nothing worse than bringing in a subpar performer. You know what I tell clients? I tell them all the time. I said, the second you relax your hiring standard, you're on a downward spiral. You've all heard this. A's actually hire A's, but B's hire C's, C's hire D's, D's hire nobody. That's the truth. That's the reality. Why? Because people don't want to hire better than them. See, I'm maybe a CC+ on my best day. But I've hired A's. But most people don't do that. I don't want a guy who's smarter than me. I don't want a guy who's better than me. I want everybody smarter than me. I want everybody better than me. Why? Who benefits? Who benefits when my people do great? I do. I do have a bias when I hire. I should tell you this. I'm going to confess. I do have a bias when I hire. I call it the green bias. You guys get it? I look across the table and say, "Is this person gonna make me money?" It's my green bias. See, I don't care if you're white or black or male or female or Earthling or Martian. Makes no difference to me. You gonna make me some money? That's good, 'cause we're in business to make money, are we not? We're in business to make money. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. The cost of hiring mistakes are astronomical. You want a general rule? 10 times their annual salary. 10 times their annual salary. So, if you're paying somebody $25,000 a year, you want to know what your exposure is? A quarter of a million dollars. You start talking about lost opportunity. I'll tell you a very quick story. I got hired by a company. They were hiring a president. They brought me in to help them hire the president. We were down to the final candidate, and I'm doing a reference check. And this candidate, this woman, one of her references was the president of another company. They had worked together in a previous life. So I call into this reference's company asking for the president of the company. Receptionist answers phone, has no idea who I am. Said, "Hi, may I speak to so-and-so?" And the response I get is, "She's not here." And I said, "Well, when do you expect her to be back in?" And she goes, "I have no idea. I just got back from vacation. Everything around here is screwed up." I am calling into the company asking to speak to the president of the company. And that's how I got treated. They have no idea who I am. I could be their biggest customer. I could be their biggest prospect. So let me ask you a question. This person that you're paying $8, $9, $10, $12 an hour, what'd they cost you? If I'm their biggest prospect and you got $1 million in a contract or lifetime value of that customer sitting out there, what'd this person cost you? An awful lot of money. So I don't want you to sit here and think that, oh, you know, I hired a marketing assistant and I kept them on board for 3 months, he couldn't set any appointments, and you know, so I got rid of him. So what did I pay him? I paid him 3 months of a salary. I'm out 6, 7 grand. Wrong. How many customers did you lose in the 3 months? You just have to take a completely different perspective on this subject. If you don't get good at this, it's really hard to grow your business. Loss of competitive advantage. Does anybody in here have service as a competitive advantage? Anybody? Treat your customers well, don't you? They call in, they don't get called back, they're treated rudely, whatever. You guys like working with Glaser Kennedy? Everybody? I taught Bill how to hire. Almost everybody who works for Glaser Kennedy is a direct result of what I taught Bill. That's the only testimonial I'll give you today. It's the only one. Bill came to me, he said, "Barry, this thing has taken off." I gotta hire some people, and I worked through with him, and he just now— you know what he does? He turns the crank. He's got some really good people working for him. Got some really good people working for him. 4 critical things you need to know. If you're gonna hire good people, there's 4 critical things you need to know. Number 1, where do I find good people? It's called recruiting. We're gonna talk about that. Where do I find good people? Number 2, what must the person accomplish to satisfy my needs? We hire people for one reason, and one reason only. Can anybody tell me why you hire somebody? As a matter of fact, get it right, I'll give you a book. Making money. Making money. That's pretty good, but it's not quite that easy. You got to work a little harder. Go ahead. Free yourself up. Free yourself up. Pretty good. Not quite. Go ahead. Back of the room. Solve a problem. Solve a problem. You know what? This is a mercy book. All right? This is a Mercer book. You hire people for one reason and one reason only. You guys send that back there. You hire people to satisfy a business need. You hire people to satisfy a business need. Now you're sitting there saying, "Wait a minute. That's not very profound. I came here to hear that?" You hire people to satisfy a business need. You want to know why people do hire? You hire to fill openings. It's Friday afternoon. Mary's your top performer. Mary walks in and resigns for whatever reason. Mary's gone. What's your knee-jerk reaction? I'm like, "I gotta replace Mary. I gotta replace Mary." Wrong! You got an opportunity. You gotta look at this differently. You might upgrade the position. You might downgrade the position. You might eliminate the position. You might split it into two jobs. What's the right solution? The answer is I don't have a clue until I analyze what my business need is. Once I know what my business need is, then I can figure that out. Well, the first part of business needs is that a person has to come in and do something. So you better know what the person needs to do to satisfy your business need. Different way of thinking about this. Number 3, you better know what it takes to get that stuff done. What do they have to know? What do they have to be able to do? How do they have to go about it to get that stuff done? Huge mistake people make. They say, "I have an open position. Let me see. I need somebody—" Say you're hiring a controller for your company. I'll pick a number. A bookkeeper. "I need somebody who knows the state of Washington tax laws and the federal tax laws and basic accounting, basic principles of accounting." Ah, wrong. You're completely out of sequence. Great story. 6, 8 months ago, I get called by the CEO of a startup software company. It was referred to me by another one of my clients. He said, Barry, I've heard all about you. Listen, we've been around 6 months. We're getting ready to take our product to market. We've been in an R&D stage. I need to hire a VP of worldwide sales. What should I look for? And I said, you just asked me the wrong question. He goes, "Well, what's the right question?" I said, "The right question is, what does this person need to do? Because until I know what they need to do, I don't have a clue what you should look for." What you should look for is dictated by what you need, what needs to get done. So once I know what they have to accomplish, now I can say to myself, "Great. What do they need to know? What skills do they have to have? How do they have to behave to get that stuff done?"? That's a logical process. That's different. Finally, will the person apply those skills in a manner consistent with success in my environment? This is the behavior. This is the fit. This is the culture. This is the morale. This is the attitude. This is all that stuff. Which, by the way, I don't get any of that stuff. It's important, but I don't get it. So, we have to translate it in, "Will this person behave in a way consistent with success in my environment?" I don't have 2 people in the same city anywhere in the world. I don't have an office where 17 people come to work every day. My personal assistant is in Atlanta. You know, I'm west of Seattle. We don't have offices. We're virtual. Have been since day 1. My people need to be independent. My people need people— I need to hire people who are self-sufficient, because if they wake up in the morning and wait for me to tell them what to do, they're not going to do anything. Interestingly enough, when I interview somebody and we get towards the end of the interview and someone will ask me, well, can you describe your management style? I say, absolutely. I manage by neglect. I said, you don't bother me, I won't bother you, we'll get along just fine. That's how I manage. I manage by neglect. But guess what? My people know when I add value. If they're strategizing a deal, if they're trying to put a presentation together, if they're working through a client, boy, you know what? They call me because they know I add some value, and we talk about it. But I manage by neglect. I don't want people sending me reports. They send me reports, I gotta read them. I don't want to do that. So I hire people who are mavericks. I don't have any team players. I don't have a single team player in my company. Interesting, in January of 2000, I started this company in 1984, up till '90, from '84 to '90, it was Barry Shammas working out of his bedroom. I was a one-man show. Then we started growing the company and adding employees and so forth. But in January of 2000 was the first time I'd ever brought everybody associated with the company into one place at one time. We went to Kauai in Hawaii, and I have to tell you, I was nervous. I was afraid they were going to kill each other. I mean, my people don't play nice in the sandbox. They just don't. And so I was a little nervous about this. But you know what? If you sit around and want to tell everybody how you spent your weekend, You're not getting that in my place. Is that good or bad? There's no value on it. That's the behavior necessary for success in my organization. We are on the cutting edge of hiring technology. We do this a little bit better than everybody else does. That's our claim to fame. So you know what? I need people who are quick on the uptake. If my guys don't get it first time out of the box, we make fun of them. We don't have time to tell them 2 or 3 times. So I have to hire people who are quick on the uptake. Why? Because that's a behavior necessary for success on that particular job. I'm not saying that's the best behavior. Every one of my guys would get fired in a corporation. Matter of fact, most of them have been fired from corporations. Why? Because we don't play nice. So, there's no good or bad. It's an important thing to understand. I don't believe in placing value judgments on people. There are no good or bad people. There's the right person or the wrong person for a particular job. Most of the jobs in the world I would fail at miserably. Doesn't mean I'm a bad person. Doesn't mean my people are better than your people. There is no good, bad. It's the right person, the wrong person. So do they apply these skills in a manner consistent with success in your environment? So let's take a look at each of these 4 in a little bit of detail. The first one is recruiting. So let's talk about recruiting for your small business. I want to talk first about money wasters. I want to talk about money wasters. Ineffective ads. I created a product, God, it's going back 7, 8 years ago now, called How to Hire the Perfect Administrative Assistant. And basically it holds your hand and walks you through how to hire an office manager, a secretary, an administrative person in your organization. Great product. Still available. I highly recommend it to everybody. But I want to tell you a little bit of research that I did to prepare that product. I went and I got 30 major metropolitan Sunday newspapers. And I went to the classified ads, because this is how people get administrative assistants. And I opened it up to the help wanted under administrative assistant, and here's column after column after column of ads for administrative assistants, universal, every paper I opened up. I want somebody to take a wild guess what you think the headline of every single ad was. Administrative assistant. So now put yourself in the shoes of a customer. I'm an administrative assistant, I'm looking for a job. What do I do? I go to the Sunday paper, I open up to the help wanted, I go to the administrative assistant, and here's column after column after column of ads that are identical. That works great, doesn't it? You can waste— I got some numbers on what ads cost you later on that I'll share with you. Money wasters. Headhunters. You can go out and pay an independent research, search person to find people for you. And by the way, for 17 years I owned a search company, so I'm not denigrating these people. It's a legitimate business service. It happens to be extremely extremely expensive. Everybody understand? It's probably the single most expensive thing that you could do. By the way, if you figure out what it costs you daily to have the position vacant, it may be a cheap way to go. So I'm not saying don't do it, but there's some other things that you can do. Non-targeted online postings. Monster.com. I help a lot of companies recruit. I have never placed an ad. A monster. Never done it. Don't get it. Don't get it. I have a little something I wrote in the hotel room this morning. Who's heard of the ladders? What do you get there? $100,000 jobs and above. Execunet. Same thing. $100,000 jobs and above. Military hire. What do you get there? People coming out of the military, people who have been in the military, which is a fabulous, fabulous place to recruit. If you're looking for technicians, if you're looking for— I mean, it's a fabulous place to recruit. Craigslist. What does it cost? Nothing. It's free. There's lots of things you can do. If you're recruiting locally, In your little town? I'd do Craigslist before I'd go to your Sunday newspaper. There's lots of places that you can post. So I'm not against online postings. I'm against wasting money on online postings. Reactive recruiting. Two kinds of recruiters in the world: proactive recruiters and reactive recruiters. Let me tell you about reactive recruiters, because I'm going to guess most of you are reactive recruiters. A reactive recruiter is a person who goes, Oh no, I've got an opening, I better go recruit some candidates. Sound familiar? Yeah. In a market of effective 0% unemployment, when you are a reactive recruiter, do you know what you get? You get to hire the leftovers and you get to pay a premium for the privilege. How many of you like being in that position? As opposed to a proactive recruiter. Anybody want to guess what a proactive recruiter is? I recruit 365 days a year. During the break, I'm going downstairs looking for trainers. That's what I do. What does it cost me, by the way, to go downstairs and look for trainers? You can spend a lot of money on recruiting, but you don't have to. When you create a recruitment mentality, when you're thinking about recruiting all the time, it's amazing the world that opens up to you., and you don't have to throw a lot of money at it. I promise you I know the next 2 people that I will hire in my organization. I'm not ready to do it right now, but they've been identified, they've been screened, they've been vetted. I know who they are. So when I'm ready, it'll take me exactly 2 weeks to have the person on board. Why? Because I recruit every single day. I'm constantly looking. I have been doing speeches to CEO organizations since 1992. I've worked with Tech, which is now Vistage, the CEO Network, Young Executives, Young Presidents Organization. I've been speaking to these organizations for years and years, and I always ask them a question. I get them in small groups. I get 15 of them, and we get to spend a couple of hours together talking about this particular subject. And I always ask them the same question. I said, if I bring you a superstar, I don't care what the category is, salesperson, a marketing person, a finance person, a manufacturing person, if I bring you a superstar, can you figure a way to make money off of them? Universal answer is yes. Would you agree? So why are you not looking for that person every single day? Because when you find them, you're gonna make a bunch of money. That's what a proactive recruiter is. I love to say this. Any idiot can recruit with enough money. You know what? Give me a $485 million budget. I'll get you anything you want as fast as you want and I'll guarantee it. I'll never miss. By the way, has anybody got a $485 million budget? Because I do have an opening in my schedule. If you've got a $485 million budget, I'm available for hire. Any idiot. You need to start being just like your marketing. You think about your marketing, don't you? You think about your prospects. You think about what they read and where they live and where they congregate and what their emotional triggers are. You think about all these things, don't you? Why do you not do that when you're recruiting? Because it's exactly identical. It's exactly identical. Instead of trying to attract a new client, you're trying to attract a new employee. The principles are the same. Why would you ever run an ad without a headline? I mean, I don't need— you guys are way better marketers than I am, so I'm not going to tell you about marketing principles, but you get it, right? You get it. Recruiting musts. You all know what a USP is, don't you? Nod your heads. You all know what a USP is. It's a unique selling proposition. It really answers a simple question. It answers the question, "Why should I do business with you? Why should I purchase your product when I can purchase other people's products?" I created the UHP, which is the unique hiring proposition, which really answers the question, "Why should I work for you?" I got really bad news. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I got bad news. The good people out there don't need your job. Everybody got it? The good people out there don't need you. They can get a job anywhere. They can go to work for anybody they want. They don't need you. So whether they're thinking about it consciously or subconsciously, every single person you interview in the back of their mind is thinking to themselves, "Why should I work for you?" And if you don't have an answer to that, just like if you don't have a USP, What's your probability of selling consistently? Pretty slim. You don't have a UHP? What's your probability of hiring on a regular basis? I tell people, you got a mission statement for your business? Junk it until you got a UHP, because your UHP is way more important. This will dictate every single piece of activity that you do, just like a USP does for your marketing. So what do we need to do if you're going to recruit and recruit successfully? Number 1, develop a strategy. Develop a recruiting strategy. I don't do it the same way every time. You're in a big city, we'll do it a little bit different. You got a lot of money, we might do it a little bit different. If you got a great reputation, we might do it a little bit different. Are there geographical concentrations of the people you're looking for? We might do it a little bit different. I don't know. Do you market the same way every single time, or do you figure a strategy and put a plan together that makes sense for you? Create a recruitment mentality. Be recruiting 365 days a year. Always be on the lookout for new talent. Always, always be on the lookout for new talent. Recruit 365 days a year. And finally, be innovative. Be innovative. Don't have the same headline that everybody else has. Recruit in some different places. We were talking with Lori before. She's profiled the person she's looking for to be relatively affluent, a little bit older. So I said, in your geography where you live, Where do a little bit older affluent people go on a regular basis? So I said, do you have a high-end, do you have a Whole Foods Market, a real high-end food? Yeah, you know what, a little 5x7 card posted on their bulletin board can do some amazing things. Cost, nothing, free. But once again, you guys are way better marketers than I am. I'm not going to stand up here and tell you about marketing. You understand how to market. Just apply your marketing principles to recruiting. Because if you don't, all that great marketing may go to waste. You walk away, you pick up a new strategy at this conference, and I'm sure you should, and you go back and you double your business in the next 6 months. How are you going to support the business? At some point it comes down to people. I know there's some businesses out there where you don't need employees. I get it. But for the most part, at some point people come into the picture. So you better get, you better get good at this. Be creative about recruiting. Bill asked me last night, we were talking and he was telling me about his outrageous book. And he said, do you have something incredibly outrageous on recruiting? I said yes. He said give it to me and I'm going to put it in the new book. I said okay, so it will be in the book. Why? Because it works. It makes sense. Be the employer of choice. Last thing I want to talk to you about. I'm really good— let me, Lori, let me pick on you a little bit. You have an animal hospital. I'm a veterinary technician, okay? I got 15 years of experience. I'm really good at what I do, and you're in St. Louis, correct? I'm moving to St. Louis. Do you think I might have a hard time finding a job? Do you think somebody, some animal hospital in St. Louis would consider hiring me? I'd say it's gonna be pretty easy for me to get a job, don't you? So now I'm holding the cards, aren't I? I can pretty much work wherever I want to work, because pretty much any animal hospital in St. Louis is gonna want me as an employee. I'm good at what I do, I got good references, a lot of experience, they're gonna want me. Who am I gonna go see? Who am I gonna go see? I'm gonna start calling around and say, "What's the best hospital in town? Who's got the best reputation?" I don't want to work for the one who's got a bad reputation, do I? I want to work for the one who's got a great reputation. The employer of choice is all about reputation. Do people know you exist? Are you known as a good place to work? You want to know a cost of turnover that'll blow your mind? The more people walk in the streets saying bad things about your company, that's all your turnover people, your reputation goes straight down. Hidden cost of turnover. Hard to put a dollar figure on it, but I'm telling you, it hurts. Be the employer of choice. Be a great place to work. Get word out that you're a great place to work. Think about how you can do that. Second thing we talked about that you had to know is you need to know what you're looking for. I have created something called a performance-based success profile because the only reason we hire people is to satisfy business needs. Business needs are satisfied by people who perform. They deliver. Remember the first thing they have to do? We have to know what does the person need to accomplish to satisfy our business need. Call it that roadmap to the right person. So we have to come up with something called a performance-based success profile. What must they accomplish? If I hire this person, at the end of 3 months, what have they done that allows me to label them a success? What results? What accomplishments? What deliverables? What outcomes will I have benefited from, from having hired this person? That allows me to feel good about that? Over what time frame? People say, "Oh, they have to, you know, answer our customers' questions." When? 6 months from now? A year from now? You want one of my radical thoughts? Job descriptions don't work. They don't work. You can't hire from a job description. You can't do it. I don't have a clue. They don't work. They never have. They never will. You got to answer some of these questions. What qualities and characteristics must they have? And finally, what behaviors am I looking for? I look for independent self-starters. If you're working in a team environment, you might be looking for team player and shares ideas and cooperates with other people. What are the behaviors necessary for success in your environment? These are the pieces that go into my performance-based success profile. Will the person fit? Is fit important? Can we all agree? You all have a culture, do you not? Do you know what culture is? Culture is a collection of behaviors. So how does a person have to behave to fit in your organization? You better answer that before you start recruiting. And by the way, how are you going to get that in 6 seconds? Is that the dumbest thing you've ever heard? How are you going to get that in 6 seconds? But if you don't know how this person is going to behave on the job, you have no ability to predict success. And an interview is all about predicting success. Education and experience are not predictors of success. You like radical thoughts? How's that? I don't interview for education or experience. Why? Because I don't care. I interview for what they know, what they do, and how they behave. Now there is a correlation. Without some education and experience, you probably aren't going to know the right things, you probably aren't going to do the right things, and you may not behave the right way. But let me steal a line from one of my favorite comedians, George Carlin. I really enjoy George Carlin, one of my favorite guys. He goes, Somewhere out there in the world is the world's worst doctor. Now think about it. The world's worst doctor graduated from medical school, probably has 20 years of experience, and they're the world's worst doctor. So what did education and experience buy you? Nothing. What do they know? What do they do? How do they behave? I'll show you samples here momentarily. First of all, let's take a look at some samples of outcomes. Sample outcome statement. Can you guys read this okay? You can't. Okay, well, I'm blind, so I can't either. I'll come over here and read it to you. First thing we do is we break our job into 3 time periods: short, medium, and long-term. Okay, so I'm hiring a marketing assistant. Short term I've defined as 30 days. By the end of 30 days, here's what the person has to do for you to label them a success. They've gained agreement on a marketing plan. They've created a plan. They've brought it to me. We've agreed upon it. It's good. I'm happy. They've contacted 50% of my existing clients. They've developed templates for key correspondence. And they've put a scheduling system in place. Sound a little bit different than your run-of-the-mill job description? These are specific. They're time-bound. They're measurable. And you know what? If they do these things, I'm willing to take money out of my pocket and give it to them. I've said that 90 days is medium term. In addition to those things, because this is cumulative, in addition to what they've already done, by the end of 90 days, I want them, uh, they've accomplished all the 90-day targets from the marketing plan. They've delivered those results. They've generated X number of appointments, whatever specific for your particular business. They've effectively communicated with clients about key products and services. And finally, they made adjustments to the marketing plan as necessary. You get— you start to hear the words that I use. There is no doubt when someone comes to work for me what they're supposed to do. There it is in concrete. Do this, you're a hero. Don't do this, you won't be here. And you cannot hire somebody until you have this down in detail. So the first half of hiring is setting your short, medium, and long-term expected outcomes. What does the person have to do to earn the label of success? I call these expected outcomes. The second half is where we have to talk about our critical requirements, knowledge, skills, and abilities. Here's where ambiguity enters into the program and it messes us up. I've always said this, it's one of my mantras, ambiguity kills. How many of you think that when you're hiring somebody, it's important that you get a good gut feel about them? Come on, raise your hands. My hand's up. How many of you think it's important that a person have a good attitude? Come on, it's good. That you have chemistry between you and them? Good stuff, right? That they fit in your organization? I— my hand was up too. Gut feel, chemistry, attitude, fit— critical! So here's my challenge: pull out your little pieces of paper and write me a definition of these 4 terms. There's not a soul in the room that can do it. If you did it, I'm going to come up with 250 different definitions, am I not? Doesn't make any sense. Ambiguity kills. They're important things, but we don't know what they mean. So somehow we have to get from these labels to something that we can interview for. Well, the good news is gut feel, attitude, chemistry, fit— nothing more than labels for behavior. You want to do a quick exercise? This is my favorite. Let's do this real quick. I want everybody in the room to think of someone in your life— could be business or personal, I don't care which— think of somebody in your life who has a bad attitude. Just don't look at anybody else in the room. Okay? Everybody got somebody? Could be a 6-year-old kid, could be a coworker, one of your employees. Everybody got somebody in your head? All right, now I want to ask you some follow-up questions. What does this person do or say How do they handle tasks or situations? How do they deal with people or things that cause you to think of them when I said bad attitude? I want you to think of some specific things that cause you to think of that person when I said bad attitude. Everybody got one or two? Throw a couple out. They complain all the time. What else? They don't listen. They come— yeah, they make excuses. They always come to the table with problems, never with solutions. Huh? They complain all the time. Yep. Yeah, glass is always half empty, not full. What's everything I just said? It's a behavior. You have decided that that collection of behaviors is a bad attitude. Let me give you another collection of behaviors. Does not listen. Rejects any type of authority. Will not work cooperatively with other people. Sound like a pretty bad attitude? I just shared the basic behaviors of everybody who works for me. You're sitting there going, "You got a bunch of maniacs working for you." No, truth of the matter is I got a bunch of superstars. Team player? Get out of here. We don't have team players. So do you see the only reality is the behavior? You've got to translate your labels into the underlying behavior because we can interview for that. And behavior is predictable. People repeat their behavior. People repeat their behavior to a stunningly high degree of reliability. How high? 88% of the time people repeat their behavior. So if I can find out how somebody has behaved in the same or similar situation in the past, I'm going to know to 88% degree reliability how they're going to behave again in the future. That's a powerful concept. Because what are we trying to do when we hire somebody? We're trying to predict their behavior. How do you predict their behavior? Simply find out what their behavior was in the past and you've predicted their behavior. And I can show you some techniques to take that 88% and drive the number way up. So let's take a look at some of these behavioral statements. I will come down here and read these for you again. Actually, I can— I got— first one is computer skills. This is our marketing assistant still. Would it be important that they have computer skills? Hey, I got computer skills. I hit the on button. Is that what you meant? That's about what I can do. Or uses all desktop applications at an intermediate level. Got a better feel for it? Organization skills. Uses systems to manage time and appointments. Rapport skills. Would it be important for your marketing assistant, person making appointments for you, to have rapport building skills? What does that mean? Quickly establishes dialogue with a variety of people over the phone. Do you see how definitive these statements are? You start to get an idea why I do a good job of hiring. I am not smarter than you. I use a better system. By putting this level of specificity into your profiles, guess what? You do a great job. There's no magic. There's no magic. Couple more. Let's get some of the real strange ones. How about tenacity? Would you want your marketing assistant to be tenacious? What does that mean? Overcomes obstacles sticks with the plan until conclusion. That's the behavior I want. I don't want somebody who runs and hides first time they hit an objection. I don't want somebody to do that. I want them to be able to work through it. So these are requirement statements. So when we build using my model a profile of the candidate we're looking for, it's those short, medium, and long-term outcomes followed by specific behavioral statements. The labels—computer skills, organization skills, rapport skills—that's only how we keep score. I don't know how to interview for rapport skills. I don't have a clue. I don't know how to do it. But I can interview quantitatively for quickly establishes dialogue with a variety of people over the phone. It's a different way of looking at this. You could say my marketing, oh, I run ads. It's probability of success, probably not very good. Hire people, oh, I interview them because I'll know it when I see it. You'll know it when you see it, I got a roadmap. See the difference? Does anybody in here— okay, there's an opportunity. Does anybody in here go into an interview thinking I'll know it when I see it? Come on. Tell the truth. All the rest of you lie in other parts of your lives. I know that for a fact now. Because the truth of the matter is every single one of us goes into an interview thinking, "I'll know it when I see it." You want me to prove it? They did a study not too long ago looking at the greatest influencing factor in determining whether or not a person gets offered a job. Do you want to know what the single biggest influencing factor is in determining whether or not a person gets offered a job? I'll give you a hint. It's a personal characteristic. I heard how they look. You want to know something? Everything that falls under the umbrella of appearance is actually number 2, second biggest influence factor. You know what number 1 is? Enthusiasm. Single biggest influencing factor in determining whether or not a person gets offered a job is whether or not they're enthusiastic in the interview. Well, I got a question for you. How hard is it to be enthusiastic for 20 or 30 minutes? I can do that. You'd hire me and boy would you be sorry about that decision. Are you hiring talent or are you hiring interview behavior? Sheesh! Without a detailed roadmap, it's too easy to get snowed. Here's some problems in that face-to-face interview. Candidate walks into your office, you get a good feeling about them, They're all enthusiastic. They look you in the eye, give you that firm handshake. Hired. But it's all this stuff going on below the surface that causes the problems. You make your decisions too quickly. We talked about that. 2 to 5 minutes. You can't do it. You ask the wrong questions. Do you realize almost every question you've ever heard about interviewing is wrong? Almost every question you've ever read or heard about interviewing is wrong. Want me to prove it to you? I wrote a book. I've written a bunch of books, but I wrote a book a few years ago. This was for me, and the title of my book is Smartass Answers to Stupid Interview Questions. And let me tell you a little bit about the book because it's interesting. I'm pretty sure I have the largest private library in the world on this subject because I pretty much have every book ever written. I have thousands of systems, tens of thousands of articles. It's amazing the stuff I read, like that article down there. That's just dead wrong. So I decided to write a book a few years ago just to address this issue of questions in an interview. And what I did was I came up with the answers candidates have always wanted to give you to show you how bad the questions are. You want to hear a couple? Where do you want to be 5 years from now? Answer: As far away from you as possible. Why should I hire you? Answer: Answer: They say you should always hire people who are better than you, and I'm definitely better than you. Why do you want this job? Answer: So I can have a front for my more lucrative activities. Come on! How about this one, because I'll guarantee you every single one of you has asked the question. I'll guarantee it. What's your greatest weakness? How many people have ever come back and said, well, basically I'm stupid and I don't get along with people? I mean, nobody will tell you the truth, but the experts are telling you to ask the question. Last one, we'll move on. What was the last book you read? What? What was the last book you read? You want to know my answer? A Beginner's Guide to Violence in the Workplace. You ask the wrong questions. You miss important information because you don't have a profile. You concentrate on impressions instead of fact because you don't have a clear-cut decision-making process. You lose control of the interview. Here's a great one. Raise your hand if you've ever lost control of an interview. Okay. Put your hands down. I'm going to ask a second question. Raise your hand if you ever lost control of an interview and you didn't know it. Raise your hand. Scary thought, isn't it? Let me tell you what it means to control an interview. Are you getting the data you need, or are you getting the data the candidate wants to share with you? May not be the same two sets of data. By the way, first time you ever ask an open-ended question— everything you've ever read or heard says that, right? Ask open-ended questions. They're wrong. They're dead wrong. First time you ask an open-ended question, what happens to control of that interview? Hey, tell me about business planning. Classic open-ended question. Who now owns the agenda, me or him? He does. First time you ask an open-ended question, you've lost control of the interview. Doesn't make any sense. You let your gut make your decision instead of basing it on facts. Why? Because you don't have a process. Maintaining control, getting the information in the time allotted. How do you do that? You ask effective closed-ended data gathering questions. Here's some guidelines for interviewing. Forget the games, gimmicks, and tricks. You ever pick up an article, Here's a neat trick. I got one for you. I read one not long ago. The guy says, follow the candidate outside and look at their car. Tells you everything you need to know about the person. Well, I want to tell you something. You kind of know this, but I'm a car guy. Okay, it's my hobby. I own 11 cars. And on different days and for different occasions, I drive different cars. I drive every one of my cars. So you know what? I have one car It's my go-to-the-airport car. And by the way, all my cars have names. My wife hates this. But every one of my cars has a name. You know what my go-to-the-airport car is? It's the crash car. I got a 1987 Acura Integra with 220,000 miles on it that's got an AM radio and it's beat to heck. Now, mechanically it's perfect. People don't know that by looking. But I go to the airport because you want to open the door and bang me? I don't care. I don't take my nice cars to the airport. So if I happen to take my crash car to the interview, what are you going to learn about me? If I take my really expensive car to the airport, what are you going to learn about me? The answer? Nothing. It's ridiculous. No games, no gimmicks, no tricks. Be wary of volunteered information. Candidates always going to want to share that fun stuff about themselves. Take consistent notes. You got to take notes during an interview. Finally, your interview guide is gold. You prepare your questions in advance. How do you use your gut feel in an interview? Your gut feel is your radar system. When my radar goes off, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, I don't know which, I don't make a decision. You know what I do? I verify and I validate. My gut feel is nothing more than a warning system for me. 3 keys to hiring. Education. Do something to advance your education. You don't get to learn about marketing through osmosis. You gotta go read books, you gotta buy systems, you gotta try stuff, you gotta do stuff. Invest in an educational system. Choose the appropriate strategy. By the way, choosing the appropriate strategy is dependent upon an education base, a knowledge base upon which to draw from. Finally, implementation. I tell my clients very simply, you need to get religion about this subject. You need to get religion about this subject. The choice is yours. You know, gambling is for casinos, not hiring. Here's what you want to avoid. Common myths. I know I'm running out of time, but I gotta share a couple with you. You're gonna love this one. Anybody ever heard of personology? Reading people by their face. True story. I got the brochure in my hand. Here's a guy who's an expert in personology. You want to hire somebody? Read their face. Look at their eyebrows. Look at their hair. Thickness of their lips. Wideness of their nose. And they'll tell you everything you need to know about their personality. You ready for this? You read through. Great brochure. Comes to the best. For your own personal consultation, please call. You guys get this? They gotta look at your face, but they want you to call. People do crazy stuff that doesn't make any sense. Don't do that. Unproven systems. There's all kinds of people that are experts on this subject. They're not experts on this subject. Since 1974, I've done one thing in my life and one thing only, and you know what it is? I teach companies how to hire people. That's all I do. Thank you very, very much. It's been great. Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow, and the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. This free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free, just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at NoBSLetter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month, one from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.