Payments, Strategy & Growth with Rachel Platt

Welcome to the Biz to Biz Podcast, your number one source for all business news. Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode of B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast, sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems. Check out our new smart invoicing and payment platform called NPS One. You can book a demo at nationwidepaymentsystems.com. And today we're going to dive into the world of Hiring, firing, how you look for employees and how you manage it all with Rachel Platt from Platinum Consulting. I like how she worked an extra T in there to connect the whole word. And that's really cool. And welcome to the show, Rachel.

Thank you so much for having me. Glad we're together this afternoon.

So where are you located?

I am located just outside our nation's capital. Um, I live in Maryland.

All right, nice. I'm in Florida, Fort Lauderdale.

Wish I was there today.

So we were chatting before we jumped on the podcast, you know, so, you know, the higher, you know, every, you know, today, no matter who I talk to, people in the corporate world, people that own a small to medium-sized business, people who work as a manager and have employees underneath them, You know, we all, you know, we talk about, you know, the hiring, hiring people, firing people, unemployment, how to deal with employees. You know, hiring has gotten really hard. Somebody asked me one day and they said, what do you look for when you're looking at all these resumes on Indeed? Yeah.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out in the market right now. This is a tough time to be looking for a job. You know, the combination of some things that are happening in the economy, some things that are happening depending on what part of the country you're in, with, you know, the administration, the shutdown, AI, um, just other changes that, that are happening. So there's a lot of people in the marketplace, and organizations, regardless of your size, need to not only be thinking about the job that needs to be done today, but the career and the opportunity and the type of employee that you are bringing in and how that person not only does today's job but can be a contributor to drive innovation, profitability for the future. And so there's a lot more than just saying, "Oh, this person showed up and they're here." It's really about thinking holistically and strategically about what your organization needs now and for the future and what those skills are, as opposed to necessarily exactly the experience that someone has.

So you mentioned AI. So yeah, how— I mean, how is AI— I mean, everybody sits there and they say, oh, AI is taking away jobs. But I have a different theory. My—

what's your theory?

My theory is, is that people know how— that know how to use AI are taking jobs away from people who don't know how to use AI.

And absolutely, I am on board with that theory. I'm also on board with the theory that the reality— AI in the last couple of years has just become so much more accessible for everyone at such a lower price. But automation has been happening in businesses for decades already. It looks— it has different names. It comes in different shapes, sizes, you know, different software. But the people who understand how to use the technology in an appropriate ethical and sustainable way, and who are able to use the time that they get back for higher-level thinking, being more strategic, those are really the people that are going to be the most successful.

Yeah, it's interesting, some of the tasks. So I was on a roundtable and they were talking about what tasks can AI do in your business, and everybody was going around the table and they go, 'What do you use it for?' And I was like, one of the things I was explaining, like you were talking about automation, so it says, you know, there's automation and then there's AI. It's two separate things. But I was telling them, I go, like, for one, SEO, it's a huge headache, right? We've been using this tool called Search Atlas. The guy should be paying me how many times I mentioned his product on the internet, on the podcast. But it's like an insane tool that you take your blog post, you have like a, you know, a plugin in your WordPress, and then this thing is doing all the plugging in all the SEO and backlinking and linking inside the website and all this crazy stuff that would literally take somebody 3 hours, 4 hours to do, and it's done in like 5, 10 minutes. You know, or less. It's just done. And, you know, and then other things like putting together presentations, putting together blogs, putting together all sorts of, you know, even writing an email. You write an email, it doesn't look so good, ChatGPT, boom, make this sound better.

Yeah.

And, and this is what people are doing with it and saving time and saving money and you know, you know, being able to take things and repurpose them. And, um, you know, it's a, it's a big, it's a big thing. But the hiring process, like, I had to hire somebody for my office, and, you know, one of the things that I kept seeing on people's resumes was lots of gaps of employment. And I don't know, you know, I'm sure, like, hey, during COVID Maybe they weren't working or maybe they were doing— I would ask people, oh, were you doing like a gig thing? Like, you know, 2 years you didn't do anything. Like, so, and I don't, I don't, I just don't get it anymore. Like people don't care. And you know, and a lot, you know, so I had people applying that were completely like never did any kind of office work. And then people who had 20 years of experience had no business working here.

Yeah, sometimes that really happens. You know, when I work with my clients, we are really focused less on the day-to-day and more on the people strategy. So like aligning how you attract and retain and grow and assess your talent with your business strategy. So it's a little bit more holistic of What are your processes? What initiatives do you do? As opposed to, how do I hire Joe on Monday? It's more of like, what is my hiring strategy? What are the steps that I'm taking? But one of the things when you're hiring that is just really important, and lots of people talk about this for different reasons, but this hire slowly. That's not to say that you should have a long drawn-out process. But you should really be doing your pre-work before you're looking at resumes, before you are spending time interviewing people. If you spend that time upfront writing a really darn good job description of what skills you need the person to have, what behaviors, how you're gonna know if they are successful, you really think about what questions are being asked during the interview process and what a good answer would look like, all of that pre-work helps an organization or a small business owner to much more quickly identify the better candidates and their success rate once they make a hire for being able to retain that person, actually having that person have the skills that they said that they had. That pre-work, um, is really a critical aspect. And so many people go into it with, oh, I'll know it when I see it. You don't know it when you see it, trust me. Experienced professionals who have been doing this for their career, they're still barely breaking even, um, on 50/50 of good hires versus bad hires. So for the average person, come on now, folks, let's, let's be real honest with ourselves. You don't know it when you see it.

It's like, for— it's like we had a, you know, like in my office, like we need people to do kind of, I wouldn't say they're weird jobs. They're jobs, you know, someone who's working on social media, somebody who's editing like this podcast, the video, and producing video clips. Well, where do you go find these people? Then it's not like a job where you're just going to go look and then people are going to come and say, oh, I have experience editing videos. The guy we hired that does, helps me with the podcast, had a YouTube channel. I was like, this is the guy we need to hire. Um, it's not like there's no school that's teaching these people like how to make social media posts, you know. You have to find somebody, they have to be willing to learn, like, okay, because there's not this— that wasn't a job 10 years ago, right?

Absolutely. And find it. And but identifying that, okay, we don't know how things are going to keep changing, I need to be asking questions in the interview process about how do you stay up on what the trends are? How curious are you really about the technology? Are you somebody who's passionate about this and cares? And when technology changes or SEO guidelines change or social media algorithms change, are you staying on top of that? And that the skills of continuous learning, being curious, you know, testing things out, not being willing to say, hey, I'm going to try this and if I'm wrong, I'll figure something else out. Those are the things that you've got to be interviewing for, not just the person who has on their resume that they got paid for this in their last job.

Oh yeah, people have to have a passion for technology, because sometimes people are surprised when I tell them my age. They go, wow, you know a lot about technology. I say, yeah, because I'm like, it interests me, so I keep up on it and I read things and I look at things and I watch what's going on. That's how I found this SEO tool that we use now and find other tools. And, you know, I encourage them. I'm like, listen, you guys are using the Adobe Suite and there's all these things in the Adobe Suite and in Canva and, you know, be, you know, try them out, experiment with them. I mean, now there's this whole thing, Sora 2, which is really scary, and you can make— there's like fake videos everywhere, the craziest stuff, and you don't even know what's real and what's not real because it's very hard to tell. And like, you know, the other thing, like, in the hiring process And this is stuff that recently happened to me. I hired somebody and they just finished college. I figure, okay, I'm going to be able— possibly be able to mold this person because I said to them, I said, okay, you want to be in business, you want to work in a business, you're interested in business, you're interested in sales, so I'm going to teach you. But you got to learn everything. Can't just— you're not the sales manager tomorrow, right?

Right.

So we're going to teach you. You start as a sales assistant and then He didn't like, he's like, oh, that's too many phone calls. I said, what do you think sales is about? This is what you got to do. This is the job. And then, you know, we struggle all the time with, with in our business, you know, oh, do you hire people? This is like a big discussion amongst a lot of people that I know in business. Do I hire 1099 salespeople or do I hire salaried salespeople? You know, and how do I navigate this, this whole thing? Like, how do you navigate this? Because a 1099, there's a lot of rules, and the government's made more rules over the last couple years about 1099. So, you know, you, you know, so you can't tell them what to do, what time to do it, and all that, right?

I mean, that's what it is when you are an independent consultant.

Right. So if you want to be— if you want to really guide people and tell them what to do, then you're going to have to hire people and put them on salary. Yep.

That is the way that the current rules work. You are exactly right.

And it's— and it's gotten to be where now I'm starting to see more companies get away from 1099 and go to salaried employees, which kind of shocks me a little bit because because the trend was the other way for so long. And now I see the trend switching, the, the tide going slow, not moving fast, but slowly going that way.

I mean, a lot of it depends. I mean, there are so many rules associated with independent consultants, independent salespeople. And, you know, you spoke about a few of the guidelines, but also, you know, working for multiple different people, not being exclusive, and putting someone on your payroll, whether they're salaried or hourly, depending on what exactly the role is or entails, or whether they're commission-based. I mean, those are real business decisions, strategic decisions that a business owner needs to make, because there also tend to be implications related to benefits, longevity, tenure with the organization, loyalty, innovation that happens. And it's neither bad nor good. It's just, it's a business decision that the leadership needs to make for what's going to have the most positive impact on your business. And, you know, 'cause your business is not only about the bottom line, it is hopefully about how you are, you know, helping society, how you are, like, you have a purpose and a mission for your business, but also you, most business owners and leaders, they feel a sense of dedication to, to their employees, to wanting to grow and develop those individuals.

And what's super important to do that, to work with your employees and, you know, so that you understand what, you know, direction they want to go into and what can you do to help them improve their their skills or, you know, software that they need or whatever it is that they need to do or try to work with and to put things, you know, to do whatever you can do, continuing education, whatever it is to maintain your, to maintain your staff. Every business has that in it, whether it's a restaurant.

Absolutely.

I mean, Allen Kopelman organization, any kind of business, you're dealing with this all the time. And especially now technology is moving at a speed that we've never seen before. And people that you hire have to be willing to learn how to do things. I always say get comfortable with doing— with being uncomfortable.

Yes, that is for certain, because you have to learn.

You might, you know, everybody's got to develop new skills. You can't just say I'm not going to develop a new skill.

That is, that is for certain the truth.

The other thing that's, you know, super frustrating for businesses now is like we were talking about, like things like employee handbooks and how to deal with that. Even if you're a tiny business with 3 or 4 or 5 employees, you know, how to deal with, with all the craziness in our society of of how to deal with things like employee handbooks. And when you let somebody go and you have to deal with the frustration of possibly dealing with the unemployment or reemployment office, depending on where you live.

And a lot of it comes down to, I mean, things like handbooks. A lot of it really comes down to just clarity. The more clear you are with people in any aspect of your life of what your expectations are, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. Clear, Brené Brown is a social worker, PhD researcher, and writes a lot of books about business. I really enjoy her work. And philosophically aligns with what I believe, that clear is kind. You do not have to, people don't have to love you, people don't have to like you, but you have to be as a boss, as a supervisor, your ability to be clear in your direction, be clear about what your expectations are, Give consistent, actionable, meaningful feedback. Nobody comes to work— most people don't come to work wanting to do a bad job, wanting to be a jerk. But you do need to set the guidelines for what's acceptable and what your expectations are. If not, it's actually the leadership's fault if somebody is not performing well because they don't know what's expected.

Yeah, you have to, you know, I always say, I have a saying, you get what you inspect, not what you expect.

Yes.

Oh, one of my famous sayings.

That is a famous saying.

So that's a saying I had when I was a chef, you know. You know, my, the guy who mentored me said, people do what you inspect, not what you expect. So if you want the cooks to cook a dish a certain way. You have to show them how to do it, and they have to do it over and over and over. We call that rote. And that way they know how to do it. So the guy's going to make the steak the same way every single time. So when the customer comes, they get, they get the same steak every single time. You know, that, that works in a lot of different, in a lot of different businesses when there's a task, you know, whether it's— it could be shipping a box. Okay, you log in here, you make a label, you tape it up, you stick it on.

You have process.

Yeah, you know the process of each little thing that you're doing and, you know, training people and all that. And it's sometimes it's amazing. I hired somebody and they were like, well, I don't want to do that. And I was like, that's part of the job. Like, if you're not going to do the job, then you can just go, you know, just leave.

And I agree with that. But a lot of times people have a better way of doing it. And just because this is the way we've always done it should not be the end-all be-all.

Oh no, you got a better way how to do something, then absolutely do it that way. But don't say, I don't want to do that.

I want to do that, right? That's not, that's not allowed. So that's your favorite. I mean, I really like that phrase. Um, you've got, people will do what you inspect, not what you expect. One of my key phrases is We reserve the right to get smarter. We have, you know, maybe we've done something. We made a decision based upon the information that we had at that exact moment in time. We're not politicians. We're allowed to say we made a mistake. We're allowed to say I have new information and now I want to rethink what I did. That's how businesses innovate.

Yeah, if you get it wrong, you have to say, hey, we got this wrong.

Right.

Let's figure out how to do it right, you know.

We reserve the right to get smarter and to do better. Yeah, it's a good phrase.

It's important, you know, to, to, to think about these things. And it's, you know, it's— and, you know, managing, you know, managing businesses at all levels, which I did. I worked in the hotel industry as a food and beverage director, and I had like 7, 8 managers. And all of them had, you know, I was the executive chef, plus I was in charge of 2 restaurants and the banquet department. So there was managers everywhere. Right.

And they had people and right.

They have people, you know, disseminate from the top down. And, you know, the company had a very, you know, had a very good, you know, a very good vision that they explained to the managers and they wanted to manage. We had this whole thing, be our guest thing. So the be our guest thing was, is that extends all the way back to the guy washing the dishes. Because if the waitress comes in and just slams dishes in front of him, he's not going to be happy. Then he's going to hand dirty dishes to the cooks. The cooks are going to get mad at the guy. The waitresses are going to then be mad because they're not getting their food because there's dirty dishes and not clean dishes. And all this stuff really affects the guest out in the front of the house.

Yep.

And it's super important to know how to, you know, that people know how to train, train people. One thing I learned, you know, and you just have to go through it. And like a lot of my son used to tell me when he was young, he's 30 now, but when he was like 18, he would tell me, bosses are bad. This is bad. I'm not getting any chances. And I'm like, listen, if you want to be the manager, then you got to do the manager's job. So when the manager is trying to train you to do something, They're doing that so that you can be a manager one day. And I said, if you're working for a company and they don't want to make you, get you to be from where you are now, the top sales guy in the store, to be the manager, then you're working at the wrong store. You need to go work at a different store. So he said to me, he goes, oh, you know, I don't know if that's going to make a difference. So he went to work at another store, and that person was really training him to be a manager. He became the number one assistant manager, then he became store manager, now he's a general manager, and he's in charge of more than one store. And so, you know, I said, look, look where you were and how you complained. And I said, now you got to look at your employees, and you have to— you had some—

invest in them the way that somebody invested in you, developed you, the way that somebody gave you those opportunities and sponsored you. Um, that's what you've got to do for others.

Yeah, and that, you know, every business, you know, some businesses there's, you know, you just have to, you know, you have to sit with people and talk to them, say, oh, you know, well, what can we do better about this, and what can we do better about that? You know, that's what it's all about.

Yeah, what's working and what's not working.

Yeah, another thing that like happens at jobs that I hear about all the time is this whole where people want to express their free speech at work. So I learned, uh, through this thing I was telling you I was dealing with, long unemployment thing, it took 7, 8 months to resolve, is that there is no free speech at work, and you don't have— and you literally have no civil rights at work.

Yeah, I don't want to get into the legal—

no, no, I don't want to get— no, I didn't even— I didn't even know it was like a thing, right? And then the, you know, And, but I'm just saying, like, this is where, this is where I was telling you, like, companies need to really, like, think and say, okay, I'm in business, I need to invest in it. And I'm looking into it now after this crazy lesson. Invest in an employee handbook so that you don't find yourself in certain situations. And even as a small business owner, you need to do that.

I, I agree. And be clear about what you value and what your values are. Catch people doing something right as often as possible so that when you do need to correct them, it's not a, you know, it's not the end of the world. Um, but back to that where we started earlier on, having a handbook keeps you— I mean, besides the true compliance pieces of it, it's a reference document for people to go back to say, oh, they did actually set parameters, guidelines, guardrails for us. We do have information that says what's expected.

Yeah.

So it's not a bad thing.

So if— so when people are hiring, no matter what kind of business you have, What are some good pointers that a business owner or a manager should be using when they're hiring people? Like, what's some good barometers?

I mean, I am a big believer in talking to people about how they learn and how they like to learn. There are some people who can read a book or watch a video Some people who need to sit side by side, some people who need to do things, you know, over and over and over again, and some people who are really quick studies. I think it's really beneficial for a manager to ask the person how they learn and how they like to learn so that they can be sure that that aligns with how either the manager or whatever process you have for teaching people things, um, so that there's not a mismatch that is there, because you're both going to end up pretty frustrated. Um, that's one thing. I think that asking people about feedback that they received in a prior role, a prior life, and what they did with that feedback How open to change are people? How resilient are people? How creative or innovative? A lot of that comes back to had they received some feedback and had they taken action in a timely manner. Um, and I, I think it is important You know, not everyone has the luxury of the, you know, Ivy League degree, or there have just been so many ups and downs over the last X period of time. You know, I think people, people need a chance sometimes.

And I think there's a lot of jobs out there. That when people, when you really look at them, you know, somebody doesn't really need a degree to do a lot of these jobs.

Of course, that is the case. And more and more organizations are moving away from a degree being a requirement. It is more of a skill rather than exact experience base. And I'm happy to see that. I mean, I'm all for education. But I think that people have different ways of learning and acquiring experiences, and organizations that have some diversity of experiences tend to be more successful.

Yeah, I think when you see like jobs where people are doing like computer software things, programming, or editing videos and doing social media, things like that. I don't think there's a school.

I mean, those are part of degrees these days, um, all of those things. But those are also things that people can learn in their own house, and you don't have to have— you know, there are aspects of it that people can gain that, that knowledge from a lot of different ways these days.

Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of unusual how the, you know, like when we're hiring people to do like the different stuff in the office that's technical, like website stuff and things like that, I'd rather find somebody, okay, show me a bunch of websites you made. I don't care where they went to school, right? I want to see that you made functional websites and you know what to do, or show me videos you edited, or show me the social media posts that you, that you made. And, you know, and, and, you know, some, you know, like when we first started our business, we didn't have a way to automatedly post to social media, right? Now there's a way to do that. So they have to learn how to use the software that does that so that they can make their jobs more efficient, so they're not spending time having to manually post everywhere. I mean, we— that's what we do. We just try to, you know, and then when I hire people, I always ask them, I go, how are you about, you know, learning a new skill? You know, yeah, that's where we are today, especially with AI. You need to be able to learn a new skill to do something different. You might have to think outside of the box, you know. Yep. And things like that.

Change ready, that's what we call it.

Change ready.

We want people who are ready and willing. You don't always have to be happy about it because change can be very tough, um, but who are ready to transform because that's the age that we are in.

So yeah, more than, more than ever. I don't care what business you're in. You're at a restaurant, you know, restaurants are today going from pad and paper to carrying around a tablet to collect, get an order. Oh, I never did that before. Okay, well, instead of going over to the computer, you're just going to use this now. Yep. That's for sure. All these changes, these technological changes are happening everywhere at every kind of job, at every kind, every level of work.

Yep, that is what we are seeing, and it's an exciting time. You know, it is. There's, there's a lot to do. There's a lot to learn. There's a lot of opportunity. For creative people to innovate and improve the experience of both working someplace and of being a customer of that place.

So if somebody is a job seeker today, we'll finish up with this, and they, you know, you said the job market is really tough. What, what should they be putting in their resume or saying on an interview that's gonna make them look better to get hired?

Well, I do believe that people should use AI as a tool to prep them for the interview, asking, you know, showing the job description, showing your resume, asking AI, you know, what are 10 questions that I might be asked. You can do a back and forth, um, where you're actually voice answering questions, um, through AI, and they— and the AI can evaluate your answers, give you suggestions to improve it. But I will say, even with all of those skills Do not completely turn your resume over to AI because it looks like a whole bunch of gobbledygook. That is an official technical HR term.

We call that word vomit.

Yes, word vomit I use as well. Like, it can be a thought partner for you, but actually read it to make sure that it makes sense. Um, don't lie, because I can tell you the number of times I've asked somebody a question, they have something on their resume and you ask about it and they— it is clear that they do not know what they're talking about, or they never did a particular project, or they cannot give you any details related to something. You're done. That's it. You can just get up and walk out of the interview. So utilize it for what it is good for. Use your network. I mean, particularly when this is an employer's market right now, it is not an employee's market, and you really need to take the time to Think about who you may know, who may be able to connect you. That does not get you the job. It just gets you in the door to have the interview, to at least be considered.

Oh, yeah. So, well, thank you for joining us on the podcast today. How can people get in touch with you?

You can find me most days of the week on LinkedIn. I am regularly posting about people strategy, leadership, funny things people do at work, whatever. Okay, put it all in the future of work. Um, you also can find me at platinumconsulting.com. That is Platinum with two Ts like my last name. Um, so platinumconsulting.com, and right through there you can book a meeting. And I'm actually a real human being and It will go on my calendar.

All right, that's awesome. So thank you everybody for listening to the podcast today. Follow Rachel on LinkedIn. You can go read maybe a funny story somebody did at work. And follow B2B Vault on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. We're on LinkedIn. And thank you everybody, and carpe diem. Peace out.

Peace out!