116: Geoff Smart Discusses Finding the Right ‘Who’ for the Job

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing? But you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatalent.com Bill g. One more time. Docsatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Well, people are certainly the hardest part of scaling up a business. Trickiest, thorniest, least rational. And you want to get the right people, want to get the right people on your team. So we want to prove the odds from 50% to 90% or better. And, and the best way to do that is with the recruiting methods of who we have Jeff Smart on the show this week. So listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host, growth coach Bill Gallagher. So today's show is all about getting the right decisions around people done. We're talking with Jeff Smart of who and before we get into that, I want to let you know that Jeff's got a video piece. He'll be an upcoming speaker at the summit that we're doing. We also have a video piece in the work at the Growth Institute and he's part of the MBD the Master's in Business Dynamics program that we're offering on the Growth Institute to get info about that program, special deal and all that. For more on this, go to growthinstitute.com scalingcoach and you'll get a link to learn more about the MBD program there. So Jeff is, he's, he, he co created the top gating program with his dad years ago and today he's the chairman and founder of GH Smart. He's the co author of the New York Times best selling book who and we're going to talk all about the a method for hiring. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Well, thanks, Bill. It's good to be here.

Yeah. So you're in Denver today and we're just talking about our mutual interests. We're going to see you at the show. Depending on when you listen to this podcast, it's either before or after the summit in Denver. But you'll be one of our keynote speakers there.

Please do. And it's so kind of you to organize this global event one block from my office. Appreciate it.

Yeah, it's a little longer for me coming from the Bay Area, but. So anyway, guys. Jeff, all of our followers know that we use the who and the top grading. Who is the evolution of type grading. We'll get into all that, but with all of our clients and all of the tools that. So we're going to go into those today, and I'm really glad to have you on the show. Why don't you tell us about, like, your evolution in this business, how you got started, what you've learned along the way, and let's. So let's start there before we dive into the tools themselves.

Sure. So I always wanted to become an entrepreneur as early as I can remember. And then I had an insight for the firm that I was to start. When I was 17 years old. My mother scored me an internship in my freshman year of college at this venture capital firm. So one of her friends was a venture capitalist. I. I help these folks look at entrepreneurial businesses. So the whole job was helping do due diligence and look at these products and meet with these entrepreneurs, run the financial analysis. All this, and what struck me as weird was these venture capitalists would tell you that they either make a lot of money or lose a lot of money based, not really always what they invest in, but who they invest in and then pair that with. As you mentioned, my father is an industrial psychologist and I have a bunch of shrinks in the family. So I thought, all right, if there is a way to help entrepreneurs themselves as well as help the venture capitalists who invest in them make better bets on people, well, boy, that would be a really interesting business to build. So my delusion of grandeur way back when was to create a McKinsey like consulting firm that worked with CEOs and boards and influential leaders and helped them make better people decisions rather than better decisions about execution and product and financial decisions.

That's awesome. Why don't we go into what it is? It's funny. This is the core of it. The people. Decisions are the hard part. People. People are the. We think it's like getting the strategy right, but it's people that make the strategy and set it off in weird decisions. And if we're honest, although we often feel like money is the tricky bit, the part that makes us uncomfortable, especially entrepreneur founder types, it's really people that are the most complex, that are not rational that are difficult to figure out. So we. Well, let's talk about first of all, what are the problems? And before we go into the solutions.

I think the biggest problem, and I'm not the only one who thinks this. If you look at global surveys of what's on the minds of entrepreneurs, I know Harvard Business School does a big survey every year on top issues on the minds of CEOs globally. Talent or who's on your team generally is number one or two out of about 30 different topics. So this topic of like how to get the right people on your team is one of or if not the most sort of popular topic in business these days. So there are lots of elements to leadership, the part that I think folks struggle the most with and. Or if you get it right, you can have the most solid improvement in your revenue and profitability, in your, in your own enjoyment of your work, and frankly, in your ability to have more time in your life. If you're good at hiring, you can delegate, you can scale your business. If you stink at hiring, you're kind of dead in the water. I'd say for this session, let's focus really on this task of hiring the right people into your business. Whether it's a startup or an elephant, as you call it, it's still the number one problem we see business leaders facing.

And at least at the time we're recording right now, labor market's extremely tight. We started this call a little bit late. Cause I was on with the CEO who's just like, I'm so short staffed, I can't hire enough people. And people don't show up for work and they just don't care. Cause they've got other jobs.

Yes.

I'm like, oh, I got it.

It's tough. The people stuff's hard. An engineer friend of mine who's an entrepreneur mentioned over a beer once, he said, yeah, ever since I built started my company, I realized that managing is easy. Except for the people part.

Except for that, it's all cool, right? I put things in my calendar. So talk. What is Vudu hiring?

Voodoo hiring is just following bad hiring practices. So there are lots of different flavors of bad hiring practices. The one that we mentioned in the who book is most common. We call the art critic. So, you know, if Bill. If you're watching an art critic appraise a painting, it takes almost no time. You know, they can, they can suss it out and boom, they give you an appraisal. A lot of hiring managers or entrepreneurs evaluate people. The Same way, you know, I got this good gut feel about Bill. Seems like a good guy, or she seems talented. You know, I spent three seconds talking with her. There's a lot of this sort of first impression, gut feel instinct that goes into hiring. And unfortunately, if you look at a 50 years of research and interviewing and hiring, which I had to do during my graduate school program, and then putting those ideas into practice for the last 20 years, the reality is you can't judge a person based instantly on gut feel. It's going to be wrong. You're going to make a hiring mistake, and it's going to cost you a lot of money. So the art critic approach, flawed assumptions, flawed process. The prosecutor approach is another fun one. I was at an entrepreneurship conference at mit and I remember this muscle shirt guy came up to me on break and he's like, I'm an entrepreneur and I'm having the toughest time hiring people. I said, well, what are you doing? What's your process? He said, well, what I like to do is intimidate them in the interviewing process. I said, really? And this guy had huge guns. I mean, his massive bulk going on there. Muscle shirt. And. And he said, yeah, I like to, you know, for a salesperson, I'll say, sell me this pen or for anyone. He'll literally. He told me this, hold up the resume and say, I don't see anything impressive on this resume that would make me want to hire you. So I said, well, how's that working for you? And he said, well, it's terrible. People end up, you know, whom we even want to invite back to our interview process, end up just leaving and never coming back. So that we call that the prosecutor approach. You know, where you're intimidating the witness kind of thing. There are a hundred different bad styles of interviewing and hiring, but Randy street and I, in the who book, we just summarize them all as voodoo methods.

Yeah, I used to do something like that, and then I evolved it to something that feels good. I'll tell you what it is. You can, you can give me your feedback, please. So I used to hire people that I liked. Right. And so I lost. Spent a lot of time on the, like, the personal connection because I'm like, well, I got to work with this person. I don't think that's totally wrong, except because you do have to work with them. Right. I do need to have some rapport. Except that I ended up hiring people who were like me and often not as good at some of the things anyway, or not understanding what I want. And so I ended up with organizations that kind of sucked, that weren't really great. Right. They were too like me. And I realized I was like auditioning friends and I'm like, yeah, but I need them to be different than me. I need them to do different things than I do and I need to compliment me and I need them to at the most simplistic level. Right. Immediate team kind of sitting. But I don't need another person to date or exercise buddy. So it's nice that we have some hobbies in common or I can find a way to relate to them, but that doesn't matter at all. So what that evolved to. And I realized that was a mistake, right? Clearly a mistake. But it took me a lot longer to learn that than it should have. And then what that evolved to though now is kind of a blank thing. So I try to do either like an in person or a video screening rather than a phone screening because I realize there are some people that I know in like 60 seconds that I can't possibly stomach like a whole interview with this individual. And there's no way that. And so I will cut them off on kind of that gut thing a little bit like the vudu. But this is just the screening round. I also wouldn't hire them. It just about the decision to move them forward. So I'm doing a kind of a blank assessment there mostly after the resume screening. But it's really about are you going to get to continue in the process?

Yep. Well, being quick to rule out candidates because they don't seem to fit isn't a bad approach. So I don't have a critique with that as much. And as you mentioned, just going for do I like them. It's funny, you are very likable, Bill. And my guess is the pool of candidates who would like you and you might like them is actually quite large. And so the evolution that you went from looking to seeing whether you like the person as the litmus test to then wanting to hire them to be different and uniquely talented in a certain area, I think a wise one. A lot of managers, big and small companies will tell me a similar story. In fact, even when we hired our own CFO for the first time. So it's nerve wracking hiring a CFO for a small business. It's an expensive hire. I remember someone saying, just find someone you can really get along with chemistry wise. And I thought, well, that doesn't make sense to me. I want someone who's going to be really good at Doing the financial work. And they might not be the same personality as me. In fact, that would be horrible if they were. So we ended up hiring someone introverted, a fantastic practitioner of the craft of financial management. And you know what? I grew to like, appreciate and respect this person as a colleague. But it's almost like going for the talent first and then do you like them later? Well, guess what? If you hire an A player who's really just nailing performance in a role, I kind of guarantee you're going to enjoy having them on your team and you're going to like them plenty.

Well, right, so like hiring analysts, hiring program managers, hiring collections people. There are a variety of roles that like some of the best people in those roles I don't have easy chemistry with. Right. They're not verbal, they're internal. They're very sort of rule focused. I'm like, not that I'm totally verbal, I'm maybe a little aggressive, verbally dominant sometimes. And I am irreverent and informal. And I don't want somebody like that running my books or doing analysis.

Exactly. That's it. In the who book, we say overcome your interest in hiring a generalist or someone you really like and instead really hire the right specialist for the right job. And if you do that, you'll have your salary dollars go farther. You'll be more happy with people's performance. And that really then kind of begs the question, what is the job? And then how do we know if someone's good at that or not? And that becomes the art and science of good hiring.

Yeah, well, that's great. I. My current client coordinator, who does all the prep before and after all of our client sessions is like, we have some good rapport at a basic level, but she's so different. Like she's hyper organized and structured and things just naturally. I'm like, oh, it's great, because I'm terrible at that. Once I've designed something, I never want to do it again.

There you go.

So. Okay, good. So let's talk about the. The solution. The who. The four step who method. The A method.

Yeah, well, sure. Wouldn't it stink if the solution to your number one problem of hiring took like 56 steps or something? That'd be really hard to implement.

We're a member. Yeah, right.

Exactly. How do I remember 56 things? Instead, we're here to say, hey, leave the voodoo hiring methods aside and just focus on doing these four things really well. And if you do these four things, you will for sure improve your hiring. Success rate from the average is about 50%. So that was back in the Peter Drucker days. 50%. 50%. Every couple decades we do another study of like, how accurate are people at hiring? 50% is the norm. So one in two hires, folks regret. And that's a horrible number. That's a horrible number. You can improve your hiring success rate from 50% to 90% if you follow these four steps.

All right, now pause, pause there before you go. Right, yeah. Pausing, pause, dramatic pause. So I want people to get and just consider the bad hires they've made and think about not just the wasted recruitment time and expense, but the impact on the organization of a bad hire, especially at the leadership team level. It's extraordinary when you consider what damage a bad hire can do to what you're up to, right?

Absolutely. Our back of the envelope estimate is that a bad hire costs you 15 times their annual salary if you fully cost in not only their salary and training costs, the ripple effect on culture, opportunity, cost of having a really good one in there as a VP of sales or whatever. So yeah, the number is huge. So basically it begs the question, like, well, okay, I do anything to improve my hiring success rate. So expensive to get wrong. What do I have to do to avoid the pain and to get it right 9 out of 10 times.

The other thing, for people who've only ever been exposed to top grading and either tried it and gave up or didn't try it because they were overwhelmed by the book, we're talking about four steps here. Four pretty simple digestible things. So, yes, we're going to break it down. All right, so there you go. Resume, resume.

All right, so here you go. You want to, you want to make more money, have more time, and amplify your positive impact on the world as a leader. Here are the four steps to good hiring. So the first steps called the scorecard. So you have to sit down and write out basically like, what is the set of criteria that matters most? We can talk more about that. But many, many entrepreneurs move too quickly to sit down and have a good think about what are the criteria that really matter here for this role? The second step we call source.

So the scorecard is a simple kind of document. We'll give people a link to a template for it. But it's got, what's the point of the job, the mission. It's got things like, what outcomes am I looking for, so what am I trying to produce? And then what do I have to be good at in order to produce those outcomes?

Right, that's right. It sounds so simple when you say it. But like, to not do that is a crime against humanity. To just sort of gut feel your way into a hire. And the hardest part, I'd say, Bill, on writing one of these scorecards is writing numerical goals under those outcomes that you mentioned. A lot of entrepreneurs struggle, you know, goodness. I think we want to you grow 100% a year. Why not 500% a year if I'm hiring a sales manager? Well, simmer down. The point is put doable targets in there that are measurable. That'll really help you once you move into the interview stage, being able to ask for stories and examples and data to see whether someone's able to do the kind of work that you've identified. But simple scorecard, it's a litmus test and it's very fair. You can use it apples to apples to compare different candidates. And it's also helpful once you hire them and they come on board, use as an onboarding tool. Hey, remember we talked about this stuff? Here is the scorecard. Here's what we need to do in the first year on the job. Here's what data we're going to gather to measure your performance, that kind of thing. So it really blends from hiring into performance management. The same document, you know, stays with the person.

So we, so we use the scorecard in the posting of the job, in this, in the screening of the candidates through the interview process. And then every two weeks in the one on one performance review where we're looking at how things going and we each, we each score the scorecard and then we compare it and we just think and we talk about what actions could we do the next two weeks.

Right.

Simple, quick, easy structure for the use of the scorecard.

You bet.

I think the key is keeping it simple. I had an assistant once who worked with a client on scorecards and they ended up creating these multiple page document. And I'm like, oh, okay, no, this is one page.

Yes.

Okay, good. We'll put a link to the tool and the thing. All right, great.

Yeah, we offered that somehow a long time ago or when the who book came out, we weren't revealing, we weren't sending leaks around of scorecard templates and examples and that kind of thing. We just decided, let's share this with the world. So yeah, the link that you provide, folks can get their very own scorecard template for free.

It's awesome. All right, and then number two, number.

Two is how do you source talent? This is the Most common question I get asked at conferences, they go, okay, I get it, I get it. It's all about talent. I want to have best people on my team. Jim Collins, where do we get them? And so we did this huge study. I got to Talk to over 20 self made billionaire entrepreneurs for the who book. It was really, really fun. It was crazy fun. We interviewed another 20 Fortune 500 CEOs. We interviewed over 100 very successful people for a very targeted question, which is this exact question. We said, where did you find your best talent? And what we found was two ways that these super successful entrepreneurs and CEOs found their best talent. And one of them, I'll tell you my favorite one, Employee referrals that you pay for. So we weren't doing this at ghsmart. I didn't even know this was like a tactic until we learned this for the who book. Ever since then, 90% of the people we've hired at GH Smart have been through paid referrals. So if you ask an audience, hey, does anyone do this? Only about 10% of the entrepreneurs pay their employees to refer other employees. And then I always call on them, hoping to gosh, that they'd say nice things because I'm like pitching this as a concept. And they always say, it's the best money we spend. It's 1,000 bucks here, it's 500 bucks there. Maybe it's even 2,000 bucks for a key hire. And we have plenty of flow talent. And the other folks are in the room. We're going, oh my gosh, we don't have a flow of talent. And we're like, well, you should think about paying your employees. Referral bonuses celebrate the success of someone referring someone into the company. That's a fabulously actionable suggestion that probably only 10% of your listener audience does today.

Well, you know, I'm just about to do it because I. Some of our best clients do it. And I realize, oh, I'm not doing that one, and I've got to hire somebody right now. I'm like, oh, I need to put out the. I have a pretty small team, right? I have four people with me. But yeah, yeah, okay, great.

There you go. Paid employee referrals. Yeah. Ninja tactic number one.

So paid. And I've heard this done a couple ways. So the first one is like, you give me somebody and we interview them, you get something. And the other one that I really like is the person's still with us six months in the future or something like that. Right?

That's Pretty smart. I think that's a good way to get your money. That's right. Yeah. It's kind of a pay for performance.

You get a bigger check, you bet.

I think that makes a ton of sense. And then, by the way, your employee who referred the person is going to work extra hard for those first six months to help the new person get up to speed and get plugged in and make sure that it works out.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

The other one for sourcing is just sourcing people yourself and making a list of 10. I call it the list of 10 where you go, oh, we want to hire right now at GH Smart, we're hiring our first chief marketing officer. So a few of us who are on the team that's hiring the chief marketing officer, we all sat down, make, make a list of 10 people we all know, and then boom, then you leap into action. But it's not like broadcasting out on LinkedIn to your 5,000 followers. We find it's better if you really think deeply. What's a diverse background set of referral sources who most certainly know who are Mr. Or Ms. Wright is for a certain role. So we call that the list of 10 exercise. Pretty simple to do, but very targeted in getting good referrals quickly.

So those people were calling and were saying, hey, who do you think I should consider for this role? Or who do you think should work with me in general?

Right, Yep, exactly.

Okay, great. So that's the sourcing. Right. And we're talking then about the people that know us, our employees and our close friends being the best, most untapped source of that. Right. The one we're not thinking about. You know, I just did a hiring a few months ago and it went really, really well. And I put a scorecard in as well as the purpose, values and the bhag of the company in the thing. And we ended up looking like a bigger, more interesting company than we really are. We're like, oh, these guys, you know, that's kind of what are they. They're up to something. Right? Not just, you know, looking for clerical blah, blah.

Right, right. Yeah. You guys are on a mission. You're building something special. You know, it makes it we entrepreneurs that really sell the vision of what we're building to attract the best people.

Yeah. All right, then select.

So select is hard and takes way too long to explain in depth, but this is the step where you have lots of candidates thanks to the previous step, and you need to pick the right one. So we have. There are four interviews in There. The interview guides are super straightforward and it's basically like, just offers you insight into what should you talk about the first time you meet a candidate, whether it's on the phone or on Skype or in person. We call it the screening interview. And you should definitely not just go for like, do I like this person? Like your first evolution. You should go for your second evolution, which is really trying to zero in on what their career goals are, what their biggest strengths are. Get examples, what their biggest weaker areas are. Get examples and then you can pull this fun tactic out. We like to ask people in this very first screening interview, hey, let's talk about your most recent few bosses you've had. You know, how high would they rate your performance, why? And if we get a chance to talk with them, like, what will they say were your biggest strengths and weaknesses? It's just a wonderful way very early on to kind of cut, cut to the chase and make sure you're dealing with people who have performed really well in their, in their previous role.

So that's in the screening.

Okay, yeah, screening short, 30 minutes, no big deal. The big deal one comes when we wheel out the who interview, which this is for a senior team hire. You're down to the final two candidates and you do this three hour interview where you step them through their whole life chronology. And it's really a simple structure. You're mostly just asking for their biggest accomplishments and low points at every step of their career. You're talking about people they've worked for, why they left, those sorts of things. But it just gives you a much better sense for who they really are and what they're really good at and what they're not so good at. Reference interviews is pretty straightforward. So these four interviews give you the data you need to make a good hiring decision.

So when I have done, when I do the screening interview, I'm usually trying to do it in five or 10 minutes because I feel like I kind of know whether I want to advance somebody at that point. And a lot of what I'm looking for is does the picture make sense? The way the person speak, the resume flow, does it tie together? Or is there something off? And if there's something off, I asked that like standout question right early off, like, yes, you know, what about this 10 year gap in here? Or how did you go from this to that? That's a funny jump. Like, you know, a couple, like whatever, real standout things. And I'm looking for it all to kind of click and then I move Them on to that who interview.

Yeah, there you go. That sounds great.

In the who interview, one of the things that I'm asking, weaved in there is the best boss, the worst boss and why, the best job or company and the worst one and why. And I always am as curious in the worst as not. But not everybody really likes to answer that truthfully or fully. Especially the younger they are, the less. At this point I know what I'm not good at and I would never try to interview for that.

Yes.

But I'm a little older.

Sure.

And a lot, you know that early career interview that's like, oh, I'm a self starting, communicative team player.

Right.

Okay, sure you are.

Right. I'm everything. And it's just, it's a lot of spin and a lot of hesitation to talk about negative stuff. That's why if you, you know, if you just sort of use a tone, we call it of intense curiosity, you know, forward leaning, intense curiosity, like I want to hear your story kind of tone, you can get people to, you know, feel comfortable giving you more of the full balanced truth of strengths and accomplishments and, you know, great bosses and what they'd say about you and weaker areas and things that didn't go well and what those, you know, were the struggle points with bosses. And you know what, if you find someone struggled with a boss who isn't like you, that might not be a big deal. Right. It's like not a big deal. But if you find someone freaking hated working with someone who, as they describe them, sounds a lot like you, then you got to worry.

Right, Right, right, right. Well, I had somebody once and, and they were telling me, oh, they, they, they really hated working for this company because of their training and development program. And then they started laying out with the training and development. I'm like, oh, that sounds exactly like what we do. Yeah.

Right? Yes. Yeah, that's awesome.

You know, you probably shouldn't. Yeah. We say maybe not the right fit for you.

Everyone can be an A player at something. Right. Somewhere doing something. Right. So the key is help folks, you know, find their way where they can really be successful and feel fulfilled in their careers. And if there's not a good match, it is immoral, I think, to hire people into, into roles for which they're not well designed.

Yeah. I had an A team once for a period of time in a stage of growth of a particular company and you wouldn't look at any of the resumes there and go, oh, those are A players. Right. There's no Ivy League anything anywhere on there and like that. But they were outstanding. They worked together well and everybody was perfect at their job, performing very well. Right. So. And that's kind of a picture of a player team, right?

There you go. You bet.

But it was situational and I've had a couple people with fantastic resumes where investors, board of directors said, oh, you guys got to hire that person. And our clients hired them and they didn't work out because they really weren't suited to a smaller company, an entrepreneurial, faster growing company. They belonged in a very large, many thousand person firm where they could play a different sort of game.

You bet. That's one of the biggest regrets I hear entrepreneurs tell us, which is the referral by a trusted source, a board member, a friend, or even a client or customer can be very dangerous just because someone did well in a different context. Michael Jordan was a heck of a basketball player, but he struggled to make it in baseball. Right. You know, it is extremely, as you mentioned, situationally dependent where people's, you know, really good groove is and where they're going to be a good fit.

Yeah, we've seen that a few times and I think especially for the scaling companies, consider carefully, are you a 50 person firm or are you a couple hundred people? Are you 1000, 5000? How many people are in the firm? What's the dynamic? There are people who thrive in each of those environments. And as the company scales up, we find people don't necessarily continue to thrive in the new environment.

That's right. It's almost like we have a saying where people slide down the Alphabet. So as the company scales, someone who might have been an A player sales manager turns into a B turns into a C as carrying a bag around and aggressively pounding the pavement, the job turns into hiring and managing at a more strategic level. Do you want the fourth and final step we just called? Yeah, it's called the, it's called sell. And this is like, okay, great, you've decided who you want to hire. You're not done yet. You still have to sell the person on saying yes to your offer. So we identified five things that make people say yes to your job offer, which are fit, family, freedom, fortune and fun. Those are just like some of the things that kind of keep in the back of your mind as an entrepreneur as you're trying to woo someone away from another company and have them accept your offer.

The fit to the job and the company. Right, Yep. What it means to your family.

That's right, yeah. Yep. So you don't ask any illegal family planning questions. But you do say something at some point like, hey, oh, you know, you mentioned you have a significant other. You know, does that person support your joining my company or not? I've gotten burned myself by identifying a great hire. But then, you know, sort of naively not even asking the question, you know, is, you know, in one case, I remember a guy just got married, and I failed to ask the question, does your new wife feel comfortable with your changing jobs? And as it turned out, she didn't. And he accepted his offer and then canceled it after we sent him all this cool champagne and stuff. So you got to watch that and make sure you sort of sell right up at the end and close the deal and actually hire the person.

And then freedom is the room to operate.

Or there you go. Yeah. A lot of millennials, a lot of folks these days, want more flexibility in how the work gets done. As long as there's agreement on what.

Work needs to be done and then fortunes, what money they're going to make and fund what the experience will be like.

You got it. It's those five things that seem to make people say yes to a job offer.

So in that last bit, we're down to the last two candidates. I usually like to ask this, so do you want us to make you an offer? Is this of interest to you? We've been talking for a while now, and.

But.

But. And we got two candidates now, and do you want this job?

Yes.

And because I don't want to go and excuse the other one and pick you and then, you know, you're lukewarm about it. I want them at that point to say, yes, please.

You bet. We have a saying which is skill means nil without will. You know, you. They have to want it and really be passionate about it to see us. I'd say early on in the interviews, don't ask people if they really want the job because they might not have even heard of your company. That's happened to us. So let's not weed out, folks, early on in the interview process, in the hiring process, just because they haven't heard of your company. But towards the end, once they've gotten to know everybody and they know the culture, the strategy, the vision. Yeah, you hope that they are pumped to say yes. And frankly, if both candidates were equally qualified, but one was just, like, super excited to come, the other wasn't, you'd obviously want to pick the super excited one.

You didn't talk about this at all. And we've Kind of gone through the four steps now. I always try to price the person early on, not late. So I try to find out in sourcing and selecting like in the screening of the resumes in the online questionnaire and in the early maybe the screening interview. I like to find out kind of what they need to make whether we're even in the ballpark so that I don't get too in love with someone and find out I can't afford them.

Agreed. I had a screening call with a marketing candidate. We wanted to pay about 300 grand ish for this person and this guy was fantastic. He's telling me all this really impressive stuff. About halfway through our half hour long intro call, I just said, hey, just tell me how much money you want to make in this next gig. And he said, well, I was making 1.2 in my last gig. I was thinking, oh my gosh, that's terrible. So yeah, I'm with you. Finding out early on people's salary expectations is important just because you want to be respectful to their time and to yours.

Yeah. Awesome. All right, so we've got a lot of things there for you. The four step process to avoid the voodoo hiring and develop an A team. Get your scorecard developed early. It's simple and easy. We're going to give you that source. The folks go through a a range of interviews from screening through the deeper interview focused interview and reference interview and then be selling all the way through on the five Fs and you'll go from 50% success rate to 90% in your hiring. The link that we want to give you is jeffsmart.com we'll put this in the show notes as well. So that's Jeff G E o f f smart.com smarttools and and then of course if you want to see Jeff's longer form class at the Growth Institute and in the MBD program, you can go check out growthinstitute.com scalingcoach and we've got a link there for you. We're here every week, so go to scalingcoach.com, check out our blog. Subscribe there. Not only do we have a podcast like this every week, we also have lots of free tools and we'll give you a copy of the book if you pay for shipping and handling for the Scaling up book. So you can get all that@scalingcoach.com thanks again Jeff for being with us and we'll see you in Denver.

Yeah, pleasure. Thanks, Bill.

I want to give special thanks as always to our original growth guru Vern Harnish. Our show is produced by Nye Obaid. Audio production is by Podfly Productions with audio editing by Albert Burge. The show notes are compiled by Ayn Codena and proofreading is by Tim McGowan. If you got some value out of our show today, please share it with somebody else and let us know the parts that you loved. Thanks again for listening and Keep Scaling up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With alignment, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill Gates one more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.