035: The Modern CEO Guide to Hiring: Part 1

Hey, have you heard there's a new style of CEO on the block. The modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family, and impact. And her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen t your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Because when you embrace your role as modern CEO, you will have more freedom, more profit, and more fun. Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreamed. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Amber McHugh, and I'm excited today to be continuing on our how to clone yourself journey as we step into the interviewing process. Because, yes, there is a right way to interview and there is a not so great way to interview. Interview if you want to make sure the perfect partner in crime you are hiring is not an evil clone. And boy, do I have some stories around this that might surprise you a little bit. They shocked me. They floored me when I experienced these not so perfect partnering crime cloning situations that I'm going to tell you about in today's episode. But we're going to break down how you want to think about your hiring process and your interviewing process so you increase your chances of success in finding the right person. But before we dive in to the heart of this, I wanted to say hi to you personally. I did something unique today. You know, I was thinking about all the people that are loving their peloton bikes. Have you seen this? Have you heard of the peloton bike? It's a very nice bike that is delivered to your house with a little bit of white glove treatment. It sounds like I have not personally experienced the peloton bike delivery because I'm in Ethiopia and frankly, I don't know if I'd use it. But I do have a bike here. So I thought, you know, let me test this. Let me see what this is all about. Because the peloton bike cycle classes that are available through an app accessible online for people to ride their bikes live or recorded classes in groups or on Their own. I just love that concept, how you're bringing this group dynamic and this community through this virtual platform also can be very live. And, you know, I wanted to try it. So I was like, is there an app for non Peloton bike users? Peloton app for non peloton bike users. And in fact, there is. So I started a trial with that today and I just did a 10 minute rhythm cycle class. Just 10 minutes, y'. All. Just 10 minutes. And I had ankle weights on because I thought, you know, it's just 10 minutes, I'm gonna kick it up a notch. No, I took three minutes in, I took those ankle weights off, and 10 minutes after the workout, my legs were wobbly at the end of that short workout. So if you are also curious about the Peloton raving fans, you might wanna check out that free trial on the app as well. And this is totally not sponsored. I just wanted to share with you something cool that I was trying. And I wasn't even to record this episode today. I was gonna do it tomorrow, but after that workout session on that Peloton bike, I was feeling motivated and inspired to come hang out with you. So thank you for being here chatting with me and if you are a Peloton bike user, if you have any tips or best workout people, I've got 14 days for this trial, so PM me, tag me. I would love to hear from you with that in mind. I am fired up. Like I said, that workout got me fired up. So we're gonna dive into talking about how to make sure your clone isn't an evil twin. You know, you'd think it would be easy to hire someone, right? I like you, you like me. Let's do this. Nope, not so easy. You don't wanna go that route with your hiring. I'm a fundamentally positive person, but I do know that the 100% importance of putting measures in place to make sure your clone isn't the evil twin and to make sure we do diligence with building our teams. Because companies are made up of teams. Companies are made up of people. Strategy is good. We've got to have our strategy. But ultimately it's people who are executing at the end of the day. So we're going to cover how you sort of get the ying to the yang of what, what's happening for you in your business. Because we don't want a bunch of clones. We want people who can offset what you don't want to do, what you're not getting to, or what you aren't very good at or to complement resources on your team. If you've got someone who's stellar at one thing but really does not want to do the other thing, we want to find complimentary team members and resources so we can build out a well rounded team for you. It pays to be thorough in this process and one of the stories I have to share with you is from way back in the day when I was working at a consulting firm and I was overseeing some of our recruiting efforts and our lead recruiter came to me with two resumes from two different people. But the only difference between these two resumes from two different people was was the name. It was clear that one person had copied from another or they were working with an agency who was just kind of mishmashing. Oh, they've got the same skill set. Copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. Either way, this is case in point why you need to take the interviewing and the recruiting process seriously. Because even if you don't by chance see both resumes and catch this, things like this happen from time to time. And I'm a pretty trusting person. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I found out that people were getting creative like this with their resumes. It bears repeating that trust is fundamental in any relationship, including our professional relationships. But as Stephen Covey said, your role as CEO is to trust but verify. So how do you do this? Picture the scene. Two VAs are in the running for a prized place in your business. On the surface, they both seem like fantastic candidates. They have resumes that represent they have got the skill set, showing that they'll be able to get down to it and focus at the work at hand and deliver on the goods. But in reality, one of them is not such a great multitasker. I mean, in fairness, is there a good thing when it comes to multitasking? One of these clones never meets deadlines and might actually drive you bananas just because of their working style. The million dollar question is how do you tell the difference? Believe it or not, there is a way to drastically reduce the likelihood of a huge misfire in the hiring process. Now it's easy to forget that the interview isn't simply about finding out if you and your potential partner in crime are a match made in heaven. It's also a fantastic branding opportunity and a chance to get your candidate excited about working for and with you. So as much as the candidate might be selling themselves to you, you're also selling yourself and your company to the candidate. You want candidates to leave an interview Excited about you and your business and the prospect of creating something incredible with you. If you get the sense the candidate isn't your vibe or that they're not that excited about working with you, explore that, go deeper. And we're going to break down how you probe and how you identify. Are they going to meet deadlines? Will they be able to sort of prioritize when multiple things are coming at them? And are we a cultural fit as we break down the interview process today? I recently hired someone who seemed reverted reserved in the interview. And as I thought about it more after we talked, I suspected what was really going on wasn't that they were reserved, but that it was nerves. She was qualified. She was otherwise demonstrating all of the characteristics I personally wanted in my partners in crime. And in our second interview, I just decided to specifically outright ask her about this. Right. Might as well address it and see what the response is. I mentioned that she seemed like she was holding something back in our last interview. I didn't even have to say the word nervous, y'. All. She specifically said nervous herself. Yeah, you're right. You know, I was a little bit off because I'm nervous. I really want to work with you. I'm excited about this opportunity, and I'm paraphrasing what she said here. I was not recording this interview, so I do not have the direction quote at this time, but I remember the significance of this moment because I might have passed on this otherwise fantastic candidate because I had this slight reservation that I was reading as, oh, she's not very excited to work with me. In fact, it was quite the opposite. By having the courage to probe and go deeper, I was able to uncover what my new partner in crime was really thinking. This open and honest conversation allowed us to begin our relationship with a strong foundation, which is everything. Now, I was equally as open with her about our current state of the company. Now, it was July by the time I was speaking to this candidate, but I knew as early as January, or maybe even the November before that, that we needed her. With that in mind, I kind of started letting go of things that I knew someone else would be coming in to eventually fix. So by letting go, I mean, I was a little bit embarrassed by the state of some areas in our business. I'm a systems person. I like structure. I like to plan. But I wasn't keeping up with the systems because I knew we needed help. As I mentioned in prior episodes, I knew I had reached a breaking point and I wasn't going to be able to stay Visionary and stay operational in the business. Funnels had gone wild and systems were left undocumented. I tell you this for two reasons. You are not alone. If things feel messy for you right now, new levels of growth and success in your business can get messy. It's okay. It's going to happen to all of us. And number two, did you notice how I opened up to our candidate about the reality of the situation? I shared with the candidate that I, someone who loves systems and likes for things to be somewhat organized, had let things go a little bit. There were weeds growing in my garden. Now this realistic job preview I gave was important and I did this for a reason. You want people on your team to know what they're coming into so they're not disappointed when they arrive. We are selling to each other and you're going to have a better chance of hiring a satisfied partner in crime who was set up for success. If we are transparent now, we're not going to open the full kimono right. You don't have to show everything and every anything. But give a realistic preview of what's happening and you will likely find the best candidate for your role. On the flip side, when people sell that it's all shiny and everything's beautiful back here. But that's not the reality. People can get discouraged when they come on their team because they're expecting one things and expectations are not met. And that is not a great way to start any relationship. Especially when we want to build long term relationships and we want to have high ROI with our hires and with with our investments. Just like we want our candidates to be honest with us, we will share with our candidates. I highly encourage you to be transparent and open and honest. Notice I did not air all of this dirty laundry on the first call either. I waited until we were a bit further in our relationship to do that because it's vulnerable also for us as business owners, as leaders, as managers to share the ugly. But sometimes as you move forward in the relationship, it's gotta be done so you can make sure that person is really gonna be comfortable with a little bit of the mess and can help you improve it. Being realistic is essential for what's to come. For example, if you make it sound like it's a leadership role, when in reality it's admin backup and data entry, you're going to quickly have a seriously unhappy, disgruntled team member. And that's not what we want at all. Because as we talked about in the last episodes, happy team members make happy customers and successful companies disengaged, disgruntled team members are not going to help you move your vision forward in the way that you want. Higher turnover rates, a bad reputation in the marketplace, constant need to invest time in retraining, and wasted time looking for and introducing new team members is going to happen if you don't take this process seriously. In fact, I've had experiences where clients have came to me and said, hey, listen, I got a referral, I got a referral. You said referrals were a great place to find new candidates. Yeah, that's what I said. So what interview process do you use? Well, I didn't really interview them that much. I just, you know, checked in with them to see if they knew, you know, if they could do this thing like, ok, that's not all I said about the referral process. I didn't just say take a referral, hire them and go. I said, even if you have a referral, you have to go through the interview process because what's good for one company may not be ideal for your company. And that's not a judgment call on the candidate, that's on us. As companies, we gotta look for the win win. An environment where our candidates will be successful and they can help us determine that if we are transparent and upfront with them. Now give your candidates the opportunity to explain why they are a great company, a great fit for you and your business. When you're open and transparent, people can self identify. Yeah, that is me. I love cleaning up messes or nope, nope, I'm not your girl. Not your girl, right? You're going to find any number of things when you start to open up on what the situation is in your business. Now, this transparency and the time that going through the interview process is going to save you gets me super excited. I get excited about this because we spend so much of our time at work. You want to work with people that you get along with well and you jive with. And we want to create incredible working environments for those people on our team so that we create this phenomenal ripple effect. You know, in our photography business we have a core value of freedom, just like I do@ambermceh.com and we want that freedom not only for us as business owners, but for our team members too, because we rise to. So how can you find the right people for your team? Interviewing is a key piece of this process. So we've been building up to this and now I want to start to step into the step by step of how you're going to screen your candidates as you start to bring on new team members. So you've written the role description as we discussed earlier in our how to Clone Yourself series here on the podcast. You've posted it to your website, you've shared it in your networks. You may have shared it and started to get some candidates from some job websites as well. I highly recommend you set up a form on your website for candidates to fill in, because otherwise you're going to have candidates coming from every which angle and it's going to be a mess to organize. Also, in a form that a candidate can fill out on your website, you can define the key information you want to receive on first contact with a prospective partner in crime. This is so relevant if you're doing broad untargeted outreach and it's going to help you narrow down your funnel so that you're finding the win win questions that you ask on the form can be extracted from your requirements and what you defined in the role description and in the how to Clone Yourself process. We've also got some sample things that we like to ask about as well that we'd be happy to share with you over@howtocloneyourself.com now, if your outreach is being done simply by email, email me at send me your cover letter and resume at. You can always reply and say if you're a good fit for this position, please respond to this email with the answers to these questions. So whether you're doing it on email or in a form, definitely have a core set of questions that's going to help you streamline this process in an objective way. Because as I said when we started this episode, the recruiting process isn't a oh, I like you, you like me, let's do this. You've really got to objectively evaluate your candidates. Asking the same questions of every candidate is going to bring an objective measure to what is a pretty subjective process. It's also a great idea to include some info on availability to speak in that set of questions. Right. How can I get in touch with you if. When it's a good time for us to speak? Right. Are you available on Skype? Are you available through WhatsApp? Right. How can I best reach you? So as you start to narrow down the candidates you're going to speak to based on the information that they have submitted to you, both on their resume and on the form, or in your email engagement or however else you decide to collect this information, you're going to start to prepare for the interview process. Now, interview processes can get a little bit messy, so I'm going to give you a few strategies here for streamlining them. Before you step into the interview, set aside a little bit of time to check out the candidate's website, review their resume, check social media feeds, take a peek at LinkedIn. You don't have to spend a ton of time here, but spend enough time to get a sense of what's going on in their world right now. With this information in hand, you'll be able to start the interview with broad questions or an observation to set the tone and indicate that you're familiar with what they're up to. Something like, oh, I was on your website earlier and I saw that you just launched a new site. It looks amazing. What did that process look like for you? Are you happy with it? Whatever source you choose, you'll definitely be able to pick up a couple of timely, relevant nuggets to guide and set the tone for the interview. That's going to make it super easy to steer the direction of the conversation in a behavioral based interview style, which I'm going to tell you more about in a minute. I also recommend that before you step into the interview, just like the form, so you can be more objective, I recommend writing up a standard set of interview questions that you plan to ask every interviewee. Now, that subject process we talked about, do I like her? Does she like me? Are we going to get this done? No, no, no, that's not what we want to do here. You want to have a core set of questions that are pretty much scripted that you weave through the interview and in the conversation and that you can also probe deeper into as you identify, like, oh, that was interesting. I want to know more about that. She may be able to help with this in a uni. She may bring a unique perspective to this activity. So using this core set of questions will enable you to one, be objective, but you don't want to be a robot. So you're also going to be able to layer in probing questions related to the core set of questions as your candidate tells you more and more. This is a core piece of behavioral based interviewing and this is a technique I want you to think about using as you do your interviews. Because behavioral based interviews have a 50 to 90% prediction rate of future job performance, a traditional interview process only gives you about a 10% prediction of job performance for a candidate. So it's really important that you think about using this behavioral based interview style so you way increase your chances of finding the right person. That range of prediction of future job performance of 50 to 90% is the range I use because there's varying research on it. But the lowest I have found is about 50% prediction for future job performance. So listen up as we step into the behavioral based interview structure, here's a little quiz to see how or if you already think in terms of behavioral based interview questions. Which of the following three questions is the best approach to interviewing a candidate on their customer service skills? A Are you good at customer service? B How do you think you'll do in a situation where you have to use customer service skills? Or C tell me about a time when you had to respond to a customer who was angry and requesting a refund. Okay, what did you pick? A are you good at? B how do you think you'll do? Or C tell me about a time when if you chose C, you are correct. Questions one and two are oriented in what I'm calling the traditional interview style. The question C, tell me about a time when is really where we want to start and focus because it takes people, people back to a place in time when they've already done the thing that you are asking them about or they can outright tell you. I actually haven't done that before, but I did this other thing or this situation was similar. So you're getting a very accurate portrayal of the actual skill set that someone has and the actual work that they have done before versus in questions A and B, are you good at. Well, I'm good at a lot of things, but you don't want me in your WordPress, right? Do you know WordPress? Yep, I know WordPress. I am not going to be your most efficient and your best clone to help you out with WordPress activities. Or b how do you think you'll do in a situation like this? Well, that's just giving me the opportunity to hypothesize. You may use are you good? Or how do you think? Or what do you think? Or what would you have done? Different type questions. In a probing question, after you invite the candidate to set the stage and take you back to a place in time where they actually did the thing that you're talking about. So this way you are framing and setting up the candidate to describe and share with you their actual experience. And then of course you will dig deep and explore how they did certain things. If they would have done something different, what did they learn from that experience? Right, because we're not looking for them to give perfect answers or for all of their work history to have Been perfect. What we're trying to determine is if they will be able to be successful in this role and if this is the right role for the candidate. So you will probe after that and you will ask those follow up questions that will allow you to go deep into the experience that the candidate has. So circling all the way back to the beginning, this next step in the interview process, after you've evaluated objectively the difference in experience and the skill set across the candidates that you have, and after you've used behavioral based interviewing to probe on experience and skillset and culture and values like we talked about in a prior episode, you're also going to want to think back to that role description. Remember what you went through in preparing that and the logic behind it. The role description serves to delineate and lay out the requirements and what you need out of a role. It allows you to have clarity in what you're looking for and it's going to help you now as we circle back to compare the objective findings that you have outlined through the recruiting process and compare to what you're actually looking for. Right. Remember not to settle. You might actually, as you go through the process, find a couple of hybrids. Oh, this person's really good at this part of the role. This other person's an A player for this part of the role. I'm going to hire them both and we're going to reshape what this role is a little bit. So you're not locked into any one thing. But don't forget why you are hiring and what you are looking for. Right. Because it's very easy as we go through this process to think, she's amazing. Hire her. Oh wait, what are we hiring for again? What do we actually need? Do we need to reshape this role a little bit based on what we have learned from the candidates throughout this process? You may also find as you move through this process that you still have some underlying questions. For example, you know, it sounds like they can do design, but I'd really love to see a sample of what they would do for me. Or it sounds like they can build a content plan, but it'd be great to have a sample of what they've done before. Or I think they can do customer service, but I want to know how they're going to reply off the cuff. So there are ways and structures that you can set up work, simulations. It can't be actual work. Right. Because that would be a paid position. This would be a test or a little bit of a trial. A little bit of a teaser of how they might reply or ask execute on something related to the work that they'll be doing for you. In another instance, one company I worked for had every single person that went through the interview process do a project review where the candidate brought something to the table, whatever it is that they felt was appropriate to review with the interviewing team and the hiring team in the context of the position. So it is true, every single level of employee, all the way down to the person who was greeting people that walked into the office at the front desk through VP and Senior Leadership positions, had to do this project review or presentation. So there are a number of ways that you could create a simulation or take a look and invite the person to share work that they have done in the past. These project reviews and simulations are going to provide you an even further objective and tangible look into how this person operates and the work that they do. So I definitely encourage you to think about weaving in a simulation or weaving in a project review where the candidate presents something to you that they think will help you in making the best hiring decision for your team and for this role. So we again, per usual as we move through this how to Clone Yourself series, have moved through a lot of ground now. We didn't specifically cover how to build a hiring plan or interview specific interview questions, but we did look at building out your application form or taking that by email. We looked at how you're going to interview and screen to make sure your clone is not an evil twin. But we have a lot more resources for you over@howtocloneyourself.com and we are not done with our how to Clone Yourself process. In the next episode, we are going to step into a space of talking about how you're going to lead and manage your team and onboard them for success when you find the right candidates through your interview process. We are just scratching the surface and and still I feel like I am keeping you here forever chatting. So please do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any specific questions or if you get stuck as you move through your unique how to Clone Yourself process. Because this is not one size fits all. Your values and your culture are different than my values and my culture or the other person on the other side of the world or the other side of the country that's listening to this episode right now. But one thing is for sure, it is entirely possible for you to build a team of people that operate in alignment with your values and that will help your company be more successful than you ever thought possible. With all of that in mind, I want to take just one second to remind you that wherever you are in the how to Clone Yourself process or the team building process, you are right on time. It is impossible to be late for your destiny. I'll chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for being here.