Episode 73: Nailing the Recruitment Process is Absolutely Within Your Reach, with Grant Butteriss

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered sales teams. Today, an episode I've been waiting quite a few months actually to bring to air with a friend of mine, Grant Buttress, who I've known for a very long period of time and someone who I regard as one of the best analytical and strategic operators that I've dealt with probably across my 21 year career or so. But please don't tell him because if he hears it, no doubt I will never hear the end of it. In return, to give you a bit of a rundown on Grant before we throw over to him, he's a repeat exited founder, so he's had his own businesses and done and he's been very successful, I think, in how he's managed to scale those businesses, particularly from not just a national point of view in Australia, but also a global point of view, particularly through to the us. He's also a CEO who I think really prides himself on getting out of bed because he loves unstructured work, that possibility type of field environment where, particularly where you see a company that's building to scale and really needing that dynamic and agile type of operator to bring it to life. That's where I see Grant as being really successful in what he does and so much so that he actually does that as a career. Now, through the butterfly affect, which we'll talk about in a moment, where he really aims to identify the small number of things that founders can focus on to then drive enormous progress in what they do. So I've worked with Grant across that and seen some wonderful things that he does in terms of Grant. He spends a lot of time building leadership, capability and growth in the people he works with. But today specifically we're actually going to be talking about how he works with leaders to get them great talent, and whether that means develop it or get it externally, and how the role of psychometrics can be really impactful to that. For him, business has been really impactful in his life and I know that he sees it improving others significantly. So I think that actually comes from some of the really successful people that he's been mentored by along his journey. So, welcome, Grant, to the show. Very nice to have you here.

Thank you very much, Ben. Absolutely ripping introduction. I very much appreciate that and been looking forward to coming on for a while. So, yeah, let's get into it.

Excellent. We're going to talk specifically. I know there's lots of things that you know lots of things about, but I want to talk specifically around the recruitment and hiring process today. It's something that we did a bit of research on over the last 12 months. In fact, we went out and had an independent study conducted ourselves completely independently through third parties that we know, but. But more importantly, took out all of that subjective nature that you often see from trying to plug a service with a research project. But what we actually wanted to know was the top five challenges that sales leaders were facing. And recruitment, retaining and developing talent was number one of those top five. And it was number one by a long period of time. Now, I think the market has morphed a little bit this year and we're starting to see sales growth really charge up again, up those top five challenges. But getting the best out of talent is no doubt still up there, hence why I want to have you on today. So as we get into the show, could you please tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, particularly when it comes to the butterfly effect.

Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Butterfly Effect was born from the idea that really leveraging the success that I had in my last business, that when we got really focused on the very small number of things that mattered and were really clear on why they mattered, the focus there got us disproportionate results. And that was something that I learned through experience. And you mentioned some of my mentors. Robert Keane, who started vistaprint and is now CEO of the Simperes Group, was really heavily involved there. It was quite analogous what we were doing at Reform or what we were attempting to doing to what he did there. And he really gave the confidence to buy in with that. And that was a big influence in the success we had. So it's a bit of a play on words. Butterfly Effect. You've seen the movie with Ashton Kutcher that a small random change has an unknown but huge impact later within a system. I've just changed the effect to affect and it's the intentional change that has that really big impact that a lot of the business leaders that I'm working with are looking to achieve. So that generally focuses on strategy systems, their leadership, particularly on what we're talking about today, talent. And I use psychometrics across that spectrum to really help get the results there.

Yeah, I really love that focus on changing or really putting your energy behind a couple of key things to make significant adjustments to what you do. I think it's really relevant in this world when we simply have too many stimuli coming into us, we just cannot keep up with what we are confronted with each and every day. So if you are one of those operators who can block out noise, be really clear on where you need to focus, go and execute it, then iterate and learn as you get the feedback coming back your way. Super, super power. I think really an emerging leadership trait that just cannot be understated. So let's dive into that a little bit and let's start around hiring. I think hiring new talent in particular. Where are you seeing people that you work with or people that you associate with in the industry really struggling when it comes to the recruitment of talent?

Yeah, there's a lot of different root causes, but the symptoms seem to be pretty consistent. So I hear all the time it's really hard to hire consistently high quality talent within a reasonable timeframe. For those that are hiring, the strike rate is often too low. I'm really frustrated with actually I got this person in the door and they're not who I thought they were going to be. That consistent churn leading to disruption. You've got to onboard again, you've got to retrain, you've got to go through the recruitment process again. And then specifically to those without strong recruitment brands having challenges getting that level of talent into the top of the funnel.

Yeah, look, all of those I've experienced myself and I've had some great help along the way and some terrific people that I've been able to align with that. Absolutely. That one where you get someone in the door and you think you have hired gold but you quickly recognize it, it's aluminium and it is so hard to work through that.

It's also a two way street. So sometimes the candidate is on the receiving end of that where they feel they've been misled, sold and therefore the company gets the person that they want but they don't keep them and damage their reputation in the process.

Yeah.

So that's probably one of the less spoken about but important parts of a recruitment process. You really want the candidate to have the right information and be able to select in not just to get them across the line, but to be able to keep your team around longer and build around that solid base.

Yeah, yeah. And we might touch on that in a little bit, actually. But for the moment, where are you seeing companies in particular make mistakes in their hiring process? What are they not getting? Right?

The biggest mistake that I see is selecting on a basis that doesn't predict performance. But you think that you are selecting on a basis that doesn't predict performance. It's really common to hire people because they're great interviewers.

Yeah.

But there's a low correlation between being great in the artificial interview environment and being a great performer at whatever that role requires you to do to be a great performer. Selecting on positive attributes that aren't predictive, like right person stuff. This person reminds me of a successful person. I know. I like them. They've got brand names on their resume. All these different things influence us subconsciously. And we're often overconfident in our ability to predict. So that's number one by far. Number two, we go broad instead of going deep. So we also have a tendency to try and understand everything about a person and tick the boxes and cover off as we go through an interview process. Most stuff that a person has done does not really matter for the role that you're trying to understand if they'll perform, but there will be a subset of their experience. Most likely that is going to be the most analogous to your role. Go deep and really understand that stuff that's happened out in the real world. That's where your nuggets of gold are not on the top layer, but several layers down. Focusing on results the candidates have achieved without giving focus to context. So it's one thing to achieve a certain level of impact, but that same approach and the tools that that person uses may not work in a different context. So really understanding if the tools that each person uses or their playbook or whatever way you want to think about it will apply in your specific context. And probably the last one is, I see a little bit around senior people just saying, can you interview this person? Can you interview this person? And they might ask three different people to sit down with them without any design around the interview process or clarity about what they're trying to achieve. And the candidate might have the same conversation three times with three different people and it doesn't yield any new information and frustrates the candidate you don't get to look at in that depth because you're just covering the same ground.

There's two things in there that are just so impactful in particular. The first one being that the interview process is the way that we make judgments on the people that we want to be bringing in to our business. And I actually talk a lot about this around. As you become more and more senior, some of the people you need to put in those roles don't necessarily need to be great at making decisions in a really dynamic and agile environment, but you actually need to hire people who can think in a rational, even slow paced manner to be able to get the best out of the situations. And sometimes those skills, they don't run in parallel when it comes to how you interview and then how you make those decisions. So I really like that. But the other one that I've actually never thought of before and I am definitely writing down and how to change my interview process is a piece around not looking at results, but looking at how they got those results and the tools that they used. That is whether or not they're compatible with your business or your industry. Right. Super powerful. But so if we look at those tools in particular, I think for me that sparked my interest in a question that says, so what is a reliable way then to use a form of whatever it may be, data analytics, interviewing, to actually really increase your chances of success during the hiring process?

Yeah. One of the easiest changes that you can make to increase how effective your hiring process is, apart from being really clear on that criteria, is just to have a standard of evidence. So there has to be a rule, an understood standard that something has to get passed to be influential in the decision making for that candidate. So I can give you mine if you like.

Yeah.

So the standard evidence I've used in my processes is conclusions must be supported by real world events with enough detail that someone else is able to support or challenge the conclusion. So if you weren't in the interview, can I read the things that you've taken into account to reach the conclusion that you've read and say I agree or I don't? I think that's a fairly high bar and it does involve recording a lot in an interview. And there's tools that can help you do that to stay in the discussion with a candidate. But by having that you move away from people. Just being able to have those earlier biases that I spoke about brand names or you Know, I like this person or they're like this successful person that I know. So having that standard really mandates that people conduct high enough quality interviews to get that information. And the decisions are made on things that actually exist and not biases.

Right. So what we're talking about is proving worth in a manner that everyone can understand. And we're almost talking about presented in the way a third grader. Funny topic. We're talking about that a lot at the moment. Can understand and be able to work.

Through, not just the third grader part of it, but it forces us to look at what's actually going on rather than our general nature to back ourselves as particularly as senior decision makers and say, I can pick a winner. I'm going to use my gut feel here. Our confidence, it does not reflect the accuracy of our predictions and it's borne out after study after study after study. You can pick your number in terms of what you look at, but roughly around the best decision makers who sit down and interview. Just sit with a person and talk with them and then say yes or no. They strike at 50%. Most people are well below that. That's a pretty horrible strike rate on something that is both really impactful to your business and takes a lot of resource to actually put in the process. Takes resource to put into place.

So the best, most experienced gut feel hirers that have multiple people align in interview process are running at about 50%. About one in two. Yeah.

That's the absolute best. So most of us are well below that.

Yeah. Right. So we are receiving similar odds to when we go to the casino and not a gambler and put our bet on red or black as to when we go through a standard interview process. Yeah.

Except you can just spin the casino wheel once rather than having to go through an entire process to get there.

For each spin, I might agonize for an hour after I burn my $50 I take in to spend. But let me then ask you, so that's a real struggle. What does work? And I'd really love to know a little bit around how we could use data to help with that process.

Yeah, it won't shock you, Ben, given that I raved about this and this was probably. There's a lot of decisions that go into creating a good team and making a company successful. But at reform, the one single decision that we made that got us to where we went was using psychometric testing, which then improved our selection, which then improved our team, which then improved the results we got. So the psychometrics and I Can talk for Saville. They're the ones that I use, so I'll talk for those. But there's many out there that really add a dimension to your process. It's both unbiased, but it's got this real differential to what you normally look at. You look at a person, you say what have you done? And try and use that to understand them. But what these tests actually do is they look at it from a different perspective and go what's the potential of this person? And it's a really different angle to be looking at a person that gives you more nuance in who you're actually bringing on board and can help you uncover some nuggets of gold that don't necessarily stand out just from talking to them. So they do some really cool things like identify how you're likely to act when you're not under pressure and how that's likely to change when you are under pressure. Important for sales teams. They also do things like understand where your motivation so what you'd like to do is different from what you're good at. So you raise questions like if someone is good at something but not necessarily motivated, how sustainable is that? And vice versa. It gives you real insights and nuance to add to what you found from the recruitment process. So the unbiased nature and just the insights that are forward looking something that I've found really adds to your decision.

Making and more and more attainable now to the average business. Certainly a lot simpler and more cost effective exercise I think than perhaps 15 to 20 years ago.

Yeah, I'm not sure what it cost 15 to 20 years ago. But I know our rule was that every single person that came into the company went through that process because it was such a powerful influence on our selection and the culture that we were trying to build and probably a bit beyond the scope of what we're talking today. But we had a quite a unique culture that needed some people to be really sharp in a few specific attributes. And those tests really helped confirm some people, but were really, they're a better risk mitigation tool. So you get more no hires than you do hires from using psychometric testing. It stopped us making what otherwise would have been some pretty costly mistakes.

Yeah. And I think for me a lot of hiring is actually made from that risk profiling point of view. Particularly for smaller businesses you put significant hires in. If they do don't work, they can do serious, serious damage to your business. So I like it.

Yeah.

Okay, well so every business that I work with within That I start, that I champion for we try and talk process. Could you step us through a process that works from a recruitment and hiring point of view that you think is something we could all understand just by listening to your dulcet tones here today.

So in terms of attracting quality candidates and getting them into the top of the funnel, which can be a major challenge for smaller businesses or those that don't have a strong recruitment brand, if you take a challenge based approach to defining the role, you're likely to open up other industries that you can see candidates that you wouldn't have otherwise considered. That your opportunity can look really interesting and stand out to those candidates because it's different to what they would normally see. Also one of the things that I've seen really help is job ads are so full of jargon and meaningless words. If you write an authentic job ad that talks about what's great about the role, but what are the really hard things about that role and about your culture and be honest with them and help people not only self select out but identify you as someone whose job ad explains the role in a really real world way you will stand out. Then you get into the real meat and potatoes, the selection part of it. So the designing and the conducting of your interviews. We would always sit down after everyone had their criteria and work out which interviews that we're going to be part of and how they were going to be assessed. You don't go through this every time. You generally just settle into a cadence of how it works in your organization. It's pretty easy. Once you're up and running the psychometric part we will be really clear before the tests what are the important parts of this test and what do we not care about. Then we would have a final interview which was however many interviews there were. The last interview would always be a really flexible interview where you've already assessed skills in the start of the process and that's generally where that resides. So you've accepted skills are there and then you're looking for culture fit. But most importantly, giving yourself the flex where evidence doesn't add up or you don't have enough to go after. What are the missing pieces. So you can make a decision at the end of the process and reference checking. So not just tick the box. If you go deep, you've got a really good understanding of a specific part of candidates experience. You can then go out and ask people who are involved in that experience about what the candidate said and important decisions that they make and get different perspectives on that that really gives you insight into what happened. Rather than just calling someone where they gave you a phone number, who they've said tell them nice things and you call them and what do you know they say nice things. Doesn't really give you any more information. Last part, closing and turning what you learn into performance won't go through the entire process, but a couple of things that you can do well. When you give the candidate an offer, write to them why you have given them the offer. Like really, why have you given them the offer? What is great about them? What do you see their potential being? Where do you see the challenges? Optional interview process is designed to get you information. Let the candidate choose if they want to do an interview and they can go find out anything they want about your company. Because most of what's on that offer, most of what's on the paper isn't really what the offer is, it's the company. And then you've learned so much about this candidate. Use that to just like to help drive them to be successful in the role. Inform their manager, with their permission, inform their team about some of the findings from this interview process where they really perform well on what they bring to the table and how to best use their talents within your team.

Okay, so quite a bit in there. Are you able to bullet point each of those? I think there are seven or eight sections in there for me. When you're listening to podcasts, we're often on the go. We can bullet point those. Again, all of this will be available in the show notes in a transcript as normal for everyone listening. But let's just hit those topics one lines again.

Yep. So define the role and candidate criteria, design the process based on that, use that to attract quality candidates. Then you move into selection, which is designing and conducting those interviews. How are you going to leverage psychometrics, how the final interview is going to work and therefore how you're going to check your references and then moving into closing, the pre closing actually starts in that final interview. But how to present and close your offer, the optional candidate interview and everything that you've learned from that interview process to then go and drive that candidate to be successful in the role. Because the only thing that matters in the interview process is a successful person in the role. That's the only reason you do it.

Okay, so grant lots in their heaps. In fact, we could probably talk all day around lots of areas around recruitment and perhaps we get you back one day to do that. But for now, cultural fit has really come up, particularly during the COVID period. As one that's been more difficult to work through. How do you see the best organizations you work with really nail that cultural fit element? Yep.

There's probably a few key parts. The easiest one to do is people often express culture fit as values. Values are really hard to interpret and mean different things to different people. What behaviors would be considered in your organization to reflect living the values that you care about and distill them down into behaviors. And that's what you should assess because they're more tangible and they're more consistently able to be interpreted across the interview process. Second one, listen for people who authentically behave that way, don't ask them. Candidates are generally really well prepared to answer those cultural questions. But again, the interview environment is artificial. So if you're able to go deep dive on their experience, if they authentically believe and behave in the way that's in accordance with your culture, you will be able to hear it when you're going through examples in that level of detail. And you can perhaps prompt the candidate if you're not hearing it. But that's where the information resides, not the artificial interview environments. And the last one, everyone talks about how amazing their culture is. Every culture has downsides. Talk about them as well and allow unsuitable candidates to self select out and that way you don't have to deal with it once it's on board and they're surprised because most people don't want to work in an environment they're not going to enjoy. So they will save you and then the trouble by doing that.

Mm. We focused quite a lot today on giving candidates the opportunity to self select out. I think that's really important. Not always not putting yourself forward as something that you aren't because that will result in potential conflict and exit of your relationship later on. But the behaviours piece is so impactful and for those businesses out there. I know we have a lot of listeners that I'm working with at the moment. We spend a lot of time on behaviours and sometimes you can cue eye roll when you start to talk about behaviours. But what I have seen is immense impacts to how leaders in particular show up when they get their behaviours right because it gives them something to focus on, front of mind as to what's important to that business. So if you're a business out there that hasn't actually determined what your behaviours are that get the best out of your team and the best for your customers, the best for your organisation, then that is a great place to start. Even before you go down this recruitment process, let alone the benefits it can have to that recruitment and hiring process. So, Grant, thank you. Lots and lots of little nuggets in there today and, and we can be a bit jovial around a couple of areas, but I genuinely, genuinely respect your approach to data psychometrics and this recruitment process in particular because you just have so much experience in there. So for others who also see the respect I do in you, where can they find you and the butterfly affect easily?

Yep, I'm on LinkedIn, so you find me there or you can see my website, butterflyaffect.net easy.

Excellent. Nice way to end the podcast today, Grant. Thank you very much. We will get you back on one day and we'll start to talk about some of the recruitment or the onboarding of talent. I think that's really important. But for now, everyone who's listening, please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're onger sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales teams.