The Hiring Process: Attracting, Vetting and Interviewing

The Small business show episode 320 here at businessshow.co for Wednesday, March 24, 2021. Greetings folks and welcome to or welcome back to the Small Business show. The show by, for and about small business owners who are small business ing here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton and in Lafayette, California.

I am Shannon Jean. Welcome to another episode 320. That's cool. It's got a good ring to it.

I know it does. I don't know why. Yeah. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, I know sometimes our interview shows aren't the most interesting or aren't the ones in which you folks are the most interested, which is why we're doing less of them. But last week's. If you haven't listened, go listen. The, the Tom Lumenthal from Geary's.

Yeah, he was great.

Really a heartwarming story. Really great. Yeah. Just go. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah. And it was cool because I think it, it really in addition to a bunch of cool lessons and things that about longevity and overcoming obstacles, but also how a. A small bit waste really medium sized business now. Right. 80, 80 plus employees, but how they are such an important part of the community if they're, if you have that mentality, how you can play a part in your local community. Which was great. I really enjoyed talking with Tom.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Today. Shannon, I want to talk. I have. So business therapy succeeded. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously, like we talked about that I was delayed in procrastinating this hiring process. And really when I'm procrastinating something, it's, it's because I'm not confident in doing it. That's almost always the reason.

That's pretty, I would say, you know, widespread amongst all of us.

It's not certainly there have been other, there are other reasons, but that's a common one at the very least for me. And our business therapy really helped me get through it. So if you want business therapy feedback at BusinessShow Co, we are happy to go through your stuff for you. But you listen a few episodes ago, Shannon helped coach me a little bit on the hiring process. And so we, we did well. We haven't hired someone yet, but we are. The train has left the station. In fact, we're far closer to the finish line than we are at the beginning. But. And that's why I want to talk about what we've done. So the idea is we here at Backbeat Media, the company that I have that sells all the advertising and manages a lot of things for our podcasters and websites. We have some great shows, some of which that I've been involved in creating, some of which are just our partners have created. We are all very good at attracting and maintaining a loyal audience. Okay. What we are terrible at, and it's really not even fair to say we're terrible because we mainly haven't even put the effort into try. But what we have not done is grow those audiences and Ah, sure. So. So the idea is I want to bring on a podcast publisher slash producer that can help us take bits and pieces of our show. Well, first identify where these potential audiences are. And we've already done some of that. And, and then go and speak to those potential audience members in their language, wherever they are, and then hopefully bring them in. And so the idea will be to chop up the shows. We'll start with our Matt Geek Gab show, because that is 1A. It's one of my shows, so I can experiment with it without one of our partners getting mad if I do bad things. Yep. And. And man, it's also a show that's very compartmentalized. We do segments of, you know, sometimes they're 30 seconds, sometimes they're five minutes about, you know, little tech support things. So very much lends itself to this kind of thing. We just haven't been doing it. So, So I described this job and I put it out on my personal Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Let me interrupt you real quick. I want to highlight something that we've talked about on the show before, but I think you recognized in this instance as well, is that there just are things in your business that you're not going to be good at. Right. We're all good at certain things and not others. And I, I, you know, just again, want to recognize that. Identifying those things and then figuring out, okay, how do we get over that hurdle? Who do I get in here to do that? As oftentimes as a small business owner, it's tough to do because you think, well, I can handle it. I can do these Facebook ads. I can do whatever. I can, you know, do that kind of thing. So I think that's a great, just, just a great thing to point out that you stopped and said, this is what we need, and, and I'm gonna put the effort into solving the problem.

Well, the reality is that we have this sales engine and there's overnight Success takes about 20 years. Right. But we have this sales engine that is really able to sell ads. And for many of our shows Completely sell them out almost all the time. And so the idea is, well, wait a minute, if we could double our audience, we can double our revenue. Like, it's a really amazing thing to have built and be able to say that. But. But now the trick is, well, dude, go double your audience.

You gotta find it. Yeah.

You gotta figure it out. So you started.

Yeah. And you started, like, looking on posting on Facebook. I saw LinkedIn. You were doing some generic posts and stuff about that.

I did. I posted it to my personal pages on, you know, various social platforms and, and shared it with friends and, you know, anybody that would listen. And from that I got about five candidates. And then I remembered, you know, we at times, they aren't an active sponsor now, but we have used or we had as a sponsor, LinkedIn jobs. And, and I think the coupon code, I think you can get 50 bucks to start off, is still good@LinkedIn.com SBS Again, they're not the sponsor of this episode. Uber is. And we will talk about that in a minute. But so I went there and in total, I spent $133 on LinkedIn jobs. Okay. So in my opinion, short money because I got 70 candidates out of this.

Wow.

And they, like, more than half of them were, like, very well suited to the job that I needed, you know, that I need to fill.

How long? Over what time period did you get those?

Five days.

Okay.

Yeah.

So less than two bucks a person. Correct. That's cool. Over five years.

And then I took your advice. I gave them each a questionnaire and I gave them instructions. Yep. And the questionnaire, you can see it. I'll find one of the posts and link it here. But it's public. I made it public. And it's, it's. I think it was nine questions, basically. Look, you know what, you know, you've seen our description for the job, describe which of your skill sets and, and bits of experience is relevant. Things like that going through asking some sort of very procedural questions. One of which that I feel is super important to ask up front is what are your salary requirements?

Absolutely.

Because we're paying about 50k a year for this job. You know, if somebody's making 120k, I want to address that right up front.

Yeah.

Like, you know, you can walk everybody some time. You can walk down this path with us. But, but you gotta know, like, this is probably going to be really disappointing if we get to the end together. So. So I, I put that out there and I, I gave the instruction email jobs@backbeatmedia.com and I did that for two reasons. One, you know, to get some of that relevant information. But two, it's a great litmus test. Can you follow my.

Exactly.

Requests and directions? You know, because that's probably more.

Oftentimes that's more important than the questions that you're asking.

Way more important.

Because so many people fail at it.

Way more important. Yes. I mean, because I know that I need to be able to work with this person. It doesn't matter if my style is the problem in this mix. I am the at the moment irreplaceable person in this scenario. Eventually I'd like to replace myself too, but, but at the moment I can't replace myself. I'm the host of these shows. Like, it's just how it's going to be. So like if that, if a. Any given candidate cannot follow my directions, it's simply like it's a bad fit right out of the gate. I know this. So the, of the people that I sent the questionnaire to, and of course some of them probably didn't send it in because they got offers somewhere else and you know, or didn't like the, the position. And that's fine. You know, this is a, this is. The interview process is a two way street, you know.

Right.

And, and that's all good. So we wound up interviewing 29 people. And that was, that was interesting, Shannon. We did it over the course of four days and there was.

Okay.

And that's not ent. True. There was one person we did a few days before the bulk started, one that we did a few days after because of some scheduling issues. But, you know, we did 27 people in four days over the phone or with.

Via Zoom.

Yeah.

Or some other sort of thing.

This is one of the, the benefits of COVID is, you know, well, a, we're a remote company and always have been. So we would have been doing this over Zoom regardless. Right. But you know, everybody's really comfortable with Zoom these days. And the really nice thing about interviewing over Zoom is I don't feel obligated to give someone two hours of my time because they've, you know, carved out half a day to come to my office and meet me. I can do 20 minutes. And so I did it with, we had, with one of my other companies, we'd hired a virtual assistant. I hate the term virtual assistant. They're. They're an actual human. They just happened to be in the Philippines. And we worked through the hire smart virtual assistant folks that we had interviewed on the show last week.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. And that process worked out great, but they did all the hard work of the vetting, because that's what you pay them for. And then they brought us four candidates. But even with those four, and we did 15 minutes with each of the four of them, they told us a very valuable piece of information. They said, look, by the end of the fourth one, you will forget who the first one is. So they actually sent us a little form and they said, print this out, and when you finish with each one, use a pen and write down the person's name and your thoughts about them. And they had some, you know, prompts on the form with good things about this person, bad things, you know, speaking skills, et cetera, et cetera. I like it.

Yeah.

And so we. And we found it valuable for that. And so we found it. We did it for this. And I say we. Jeff Questad, who has been with us at backbeat for almost 17 years, mostly on the sales side, he and I did all of the interviews together, and it was very good to have someone else to, you know, present asking questions, but also to bounce things off of at the end of the day.

Did you ask the. That, you know, the question I always would ask at the end, because I have the same problem where you interview a bunch of people and you, you kind of like, okay, what am I going to remember? So I always would ask them, hey, what is the most important thing I should remember about you?

Oh, that's my.

That's my last question that I asked them.

Did not. I like that question. What?

Because. Because I. There's always something. I mentioned this before. You know, I had a gu. You know, may not have the best tech experience in the world, but he, he was a model train guy, and I thought, well, that guy's, you know, he's working on small things and precision and this kind of stuff. And we wound up hiring him, and I think he worked for us for over a decade. Wow. I just love that question because it gives them a chance to tell you something that sticks out.

Yes, I like it. That's really. Okay, so that's going on the list for the, for the next round. No, we had. We had five questions that we prompted people through. You know, a couple of them were specifics about the position, sort of describing it in depth for them and letting them. And then letting them talk. We asked whether they were what their home office remote work setup and experience was like, because, like I said, we're a remote company and that will never change. So really Important for us to. To have someone who's super comfortable. You know, the people that said, oh, well, I can convert my bedroom into. It's like, okay. Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, again, if they were perfect, maybe we'd overlook it. But we want to know, like, what are the hurdles? There is no truly perfect candidate in that. There's lots of people that are perfect and each of them is, Is, you know, better at some things than others. That's just how it goes. We're all humans.

Yep.

So, so we, we did this eval sheet, which was good. Oh, and the questions. And. And one of them was, you know, Mac versus PC, just so we knew what, what tech they were having and whether or not that would make a difference for us. And, uh, and then we. And then we asked them at the end, we would give them the opportunity to ask us questions, which is, I think, really important.

I like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is. There's a lot when you say that. Hey, you know, what do you want to know about us?

What do you want to know about us? Here we are. Yeah, this is a two way street. Yep. So we went through this and we were doing, you know, approximately seven people a day. That was a hefty barrel to stare down on a Monday morning, knowing that there were 27 appointments booked for the rest of the week. But it was, you know, we got to the end of the first day and we were exhausted, but also energized. It, you know, it's. It's really nice actually meeting a bunch of new people. We haven't been doing that during COVID Yeah. Right. So. So it really, it was fine. And, and we would. At the end of each day, Jeff and I would sit down and go through the candidates of the day and rule out people and rule in people. And, you know, each day we wound up with about two people that were like that, that floated to the top for that particular day. We were not comparing them day by day yet. It was just who were the best ones from today. And that was a very easy way to be efficient. It's a little bit ruthless, but you have to, you know, we're only going to hire one person. So, yes, you got to main. You got to maintain that focus. Right. So we did that daily processing. And then we got to the end of the fourth day, and it was time to figure out, okay, what do we do next? And I want to tell you what we did next. But what I want to do next is I want to tell you about our sponsor, which is Uber for business. So, and this really lends itself to what we're talking about here in the show. Finding simple and effective ways to keep your employees or your customers engaged and happy is something we all worry about all the time. And that's especially true right now and challenging right now when face to face interaction is limited. Well, we trust Uber as a way to request rides and order meals from restaurants that we love. But did you know about Uber's platform designed specifically for businesses? Over 160,000 companies use Uber for Business to improve customer and employee satisfaction. And the way they do it is with these vouchers from Uber for Business. And I've used these. So what you can do with a voucher is send it to someone and say, hey, let's have a lunch meeting, go and order lunch. It's on me. Here's the voucher. They can order UberEats. The lunch is delivered to them. They've selected what they wanted from their local options. I don't have to figure out what they want and what's available there, but I get to pay the bill. And that way we can do these, you know, luncheons that work together. And you could do that if you had like a longer interview with someone you want to show. Like we're saying here, you know, this is interviewing for a candidate is or for a new position is a two way street. You've got to convince them they want to work for you just as much as they need to convince you you want them to work for you. And so this really can work. And it can work with your vendors and even your employees. If you're doing an all day thing or something and you just want to pull together lunch for people or whatever, it works great. And you get total control over who gets the vouchers when they expire and what portion of the ride. Because you can use them for ride or the meal you want to cover. You can share them via email or text. And right now Uber for Business is offering your company a $50 voucher credit. When you spend your first $200 with vouchers and all you have to do to get it is go to uber.comsbs that's uber.comsbs for a 50 voucher credit, uber.comsbs just because you're a small business show listener, terms and conditions apply, of course. And our thanks to Uber for Business for sponsoring this episode. It's a pretty cool thing, man.

Yeah, that is cool. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So the next thing that we did and this came up, Shannon, after it was on the first day, I was filling out my little eval sheet of one of the people and I, I wrote down on the thing, you know, there's a section for pros and cons, which is great, you know, sort of open ended, but lets you process from your, you know, from your, your short term memory, which is about to go away. And I, I wrote crap. I don't know if this person has the skills to do what we need them to do. Like, we didn't. It was one of our first interviews. You know, we were getting our rhythm with how to ask questions and, you know, making sure we got what we needed answered. I was like, man, like, I know from the resume and stuff, probably, but do they have the video editing skills? Like, can they do the things that we need them to do? And I thought, huh, well, that's fine. I can always ask them at a second interview or whatever. But okay, I made a note of that. And then it hit me later in the day, like, wait a minute, I want these people to be able, I want to know if I can work with these people. So once we narrow this down, I want to do an audition. I want to give them a little task to do.

Okay.

I want to have them make one of these clips and tell me where they would share it. Right. And this gives me the opportunity to A, see if they can do it and B, far more importantly, see how we can work together.

And are you going to provide instruction on how to do it or. Let's figure it out. Okay, so you'll give them like, here, here's, here's what to use. Here's the tools.

Well, I didn't tell them what tools to use. I said, look, you know, you understand the gist of the gig. We want to chop these things up. So here's the two most recent episodes of macgeek Gab. Here are, feel free to pick whatever segment or segments you want. But here's some ideas from us so that you don't have to go and watch like, you know, three hours of a show just to do this. Like, you know, I'll give you some ideas of things that I think would chop up. And they were different sizes. One of them was, you know, a few of them were like two minutes or one minute even, and a few were like five minutes and you know, things that I thought would compartmentalize well. And, and I said, you know, just send me the thing and send me what your social post would be, what platform or platforms you would target with this particular thing, because what fits on Instagram is very different than what's going to fit on YouTube. Right. You know, like, it'll tell me how they know, how they know the audience's sort of in general in those places. And like I said, most importantly, it tells me, is this someone I can work with? And I decided, I did a little research on this idea. I'm not the first person to have it, it turns out. And I was trying to figure out, you know, should I be paying these people for this or not? And the idea, this audition, for this audition.

Okay.

Because I'm asking them to produce work for me, you know.

Yeah, right.

And, and you know, the, the, honestly, the guidance out there was split as to whether, you know, at what point an audition should be paid versus not paid. And I decided to pay people for this. I, I figured this is also part of the negotiation process. Right. They, I want to show them that, that, you know, we're, we're here to like, be fair and take care of.

Value their time. Right?

Value their time, exactly. Yeah. Which I do, you know, and so, so we probably in the end overpaid them for it. But I'm told, I was told, I knew that going in. We offered him 250 bucks to, to do this. And I. One of the questions I asked was, you know, do it. Tell me where you'd put it, all that stuff. Tell me how long this took you. And no answer is incorrect. Because if, if one person comes in with, you know, a. It a passable thing that shows me they have the skills and they say, oh, it took me 45 minutes. And, and compare that to somebody else who does this like fully blown out thing that took him 10 hours. It's like, well, the guy that did the thing in 45 minutes, he can do more. Right. Like, you know, those kinds. I just wanted to know how much time did you spend? Wouldn't change the amount of money I was giving him. Like, that was all done, you know, set in stone and they knew that, you know, so if they could choose whether they wanted to earn 250 bucks an hour or 25 bucks an hour, you know, this. That was on them. Yep. And.

Okay.

And. And we've got a bunch of those back and are starting to kind of sort through scheduling.

That's great.

Interviews.

Yeah, I think it's a great idea and I love the terminology the. An audition. I like that using that across different genres and things because. Yeah, it's just different. I think it's a great way to, Great way to explain it.

Yeah. It worked out, really, people understood it and it was just fascinating. Some of the people, immediate. Most of the people, I will say, immediately replied, you know, as soon as they got the email saying, hey, you've made it to the next round. And here's what the next round is. Most of them immediately replied and said, great, thank you, I'm going to get to work on this. And to that I replied saying, awesome. If you, you know, if you need, I'm here. Like, this is us working together now. If you need anything from me, let me know, you know, if you need assets or whatever. A few people were radio silent for a few days and then suddenly returned with their submissions completed.

And that's okay.

That was an interesting. Like, that tells me something, you know. Yes, okay.

Yes.

Like, they're fully. Those people are totally fine being autonomous. But also, I had no idea if they got my email.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, yeah.

And I thought about following up with. With those few people that didn't reply immediately with the confirmation. I thought, no, no, I got it. Like, these people, I mean, yes, I'm paying them, so technically they're working for me on this one little project. But I need to, I need to stay out of this. I need to see, you know, not prod them. Like, I would like one of my employees if I had sent them something like, hey, dude, you get it? You know.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. And so it really, like, we learned that. Well, no great surprise, every single one of them could do the, the, the job, which was great. Okay. You know, so we confirmed their skills. That was fine. But, you know, we learned a lot about their soft skills, how they communicate, how they think, you know, what they're. I mean, one guy actually, like, learned our theme. He's a guitar player, and so he learned our theme song to the show and played it on an acoustic guitar. At one point in the middle of one of his clips, which I impressive. It was like, oh, look at this. Like, that's pretty cool. Yeah. You know, so it was just interesting to see. Okay, look, some. And some people took it in completely different directions. Was very, very good. And so from that we have. We made the very difficult decision. The reason it was very difficult is because all of these people that we. We kind of brought to the second round of this were really talented people. And any of them really could do the job. Like, there was nothing in it that said, great, we can weed these people out. But there was something that we saw. And I would say half of the people that we, that we Brought down to the end. There were six at the end, technically seven. Now, half of them were Mac people and half were PC people. Okay, the Mac people, you know, this is a Mac show, the one that we have them focused on at first. And the Mac people were able to take screenshots of their Macs, some of them, not all of them, and incorporate those into the videos. It's like, yes, well, that's going to be happening no matter what. Like whether or not someone did it in their, you know, they weren't given instructions to do that. I really wanted to give them just free reign and I process the videos with that in mind, you know, that I did not give them specific instructions. So I can't fault them for not doing a thing that I didn't ask them to do.

Okay, yeah, but you like that. You like the ones that did that, that did that.

Now all of them could do that, but with the PC ones, I'd have to be creating those assets and sending them to them and then have them put them in. It's like, well, do I want to give myself another job?

No, you did not.

No, I do not. Like, I, I, this hasn't been done because I don't have time to do this job. I definitely don't want to be the guy on the hook for keeping them from doing their job. Right. So, so we made the difficult decision to rule out PC people, which, I mean, makes sense. We needed to go through this to know that it needed to be the way we move forward. But it, you know, there were some really, really talented people on that side of things. But I need them to speak Mac as their, as their primary language. You know, that needs to be their daily driver. They just need to know how to do that stuff. So. Yeah, but, but now we'll do second interviews with the, you know, the handful that are left will confirm their skills. So this is where I could actually use a little more advice, Shannon, because we haven't done these second interviews yet, but these are the ones after which we will be prioritizing and, you know, making offers or, and offer, hopefully the first one's accepted, but you know how that can go, you know, so we will confirm their skills. I'm going to need to talk salaries and benefits or lack thereof with them. We have, we have never offered health insurance company wide being remote. It's a bear to have one health plan that covers people in multiple states.

Very, very much so, yes.

And so when ACA came out, that was the bit that was one of the best things for us because no longer were our employees like, you know, we would help our employees figure out how to get their own insurance in their states. But even that was easier and cheaper than trying to do it with one blanket plan. ACA solved a lot of those problems because, you know, took away all the pre existing condition, you know, exclusions and all of that stuff.

Yeah. And I think as if you're a small business owner, I think the cap is 50 employees or something like that. That's correct. Tying your, your business to the increases in healthcare is really tough, the expenses. But if you can find a way to, you know, get, step aside from that and help your people or get them on, you know, some other plan that, you know, unfortunately, like I said, if tying yourself and we, we eventually went to look, this is our, our base price that we will pay and it's like a medium level plan and then anything above that, you could do it. But the difference would, you know, would come out of you. Yeah, it's on you.

But your people were all in one state, so you were able.

They were, yes. Yes, they were.

Yeah. And so that, that's. The multi state thing was just. It's nuts. Yeah. So that's going to be a negotiation, a thing I'm gonna have to negotiate with them like keeping them okay with us and not offering them health insurance. And I, it won't surprise me if that becomes a sticking point, you know, for certain people. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. One of the questions I want to ask them is what is. So this is very similar to your. What's the most important thing I should remember about you? I want to ask these people at the second interview, what are you a nerd about? You know, I'm a nerd about computers and music. Like that. That's my thing. Everybody's a nerd about something. I want to know more about who you are and I like, I think asking that kind of question.

I like that too.

Softens the blow a little bit. Like, you know, we're all nerds. It's all good.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a good thing. I used to ask what did you do on your last vacation? Because I think that tells a lot about the kind of person you are. You're an adventurer, you went and sat on the beach. You're a history buff, you went to in some Washington D.C. or you know, who knows. But I like it. It was, you know, I, I would kind of leave all the detail to the supervisor, manager or general manager that was, you know, going to Be in charge person. And I got to sit in there and then dip in and out with these kinds of questions. That really kind of told me a lot about the personality, because to me it's all personality.

I need to know if they're a team fit. Like.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and I know that for sure. I know that, you know, we are a small company, Right. Like, they all told less than 10 people. I know because I've seen it happen that each person that comes in will change the definition of what our team is like. That's a, That's a given. So the question is, do I want this per. You know, am I comfortable with this person making their impact on our team? And, and, and I've. I've made mistakes with that before. And it. That is perhaps, you know, we talk about how we love mistakes. I don't know that I love that one. That's a, That's a tough one to love.

It's. Yeah.

You know, because. Because it can all, you know, it handled incorrectly. It can crater your business.

Oh, it's brutal. We. We handled a few different ways, you know, technicians. We finally got to the point where, you know, we set up an internship program and they had to go through that and it was a hundred hours. And you really get to learn about people in that timeframe. And then for a lot of other kind of. I hate to use the word low level, but mid to low level folks, for a long time, years, I had an employment agency and I hired him through them. And so if it's just went south, all I had to do is make a call to them and say, hey, this is not working out. You know, so, you know, we didn't keep doing that forever. Yeah, like, but it did help at times. And it is true. You just don't know someone until you start working with them day in and day out.

You don't even. The audition doesn't tell me enough.

And we always, even after we were not using this employment company. And in our offer letter.

Yeah.

We always said the first 90 days are an introductory period where you get to decide that you are a good fit or that we are a good fit for you. And we get to decide whether you are good for us. Even though it's at will in California, you can kind of let anybody go. But it.

No, but it sets the tone.

Yeah, it sets the tone. It's like, hey, we're going to be evaluating you for all kinds of stuff for this first three months. Make sure everything's cool. And that way if you And I've had to do it a number of times at, you know, a month in. You sit down and go, hey, it doesn't seem like this is the right job for you and, you know, kind of end things, but so you've. You kind of set the tone of looks. It's going to be great. But there's an out for you if you just. You decide that you don't like it, and it's an out for us.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I. I like it. I like it. Yeah. So.

But it's a great experience. It looks like you went through a lot of. Of, you know, I learned so much tips. Yeah, that's. That's a big deal. And I, I think that's fascinating and definitely one of. You know, I'm looking at your notes here in Slack as we go through, and this is just a great outline of the things you went through. And, you know, we'll share those in the. In the show notes. That questionnaire is just huge. And I don't know why more people don't do it, more small businesses, but it just eliminates a lot of folks that don't want to take instruction. And I fell in love with it because you would post it, and then you start getting all these resumes fired at you. It's like, well, I didn't ask you for that.

Right.

Yeah, you could send your resume, but I need this questionnaire. And if you didn't answer those questions.

Okay, well, then you're just not even up for consideration. Yeah.

Right off the top. Because, you know, it's going to be a battle.

It doesn't matter what the questions are. Well, I say that I wouldn't go. I would make sure to make the questions simple. Like, the questionnaire should be answerable in, you know, three minutes. It's. It should not.

Yeah.

An exhaustive thing, because you don't want someone to start and pause. Right. Because if they've started, they've already fought. Like, that's your litmus test. So you don't want them to feel like, oh, I got to come back to that, this stupid job, you know, like they, they don't know enough about you to be committed to spend even 15 minutes on you yet.

No, you're right. Yeah, you're right. Use it for the exercise, you know, that it, that it is to just make sure someone understands and is willing to follow, you know, those instructions for you.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. Then you can, you can get deeper with them if and when necessary. But. But yeah, that questionnaire and the interview eval sheet. If I could, you know, if I could highlight three things that were super important, it's the questionnaire, the interview eval sheet, and the paid audition. Those. Those are really the things that let me do. I mean, it was a. It was a heck of a week doing that in four days. But, you know, it without that. Without that interview eval sheet, like, I. I would. It would have been terrible at the end of the first day, we would have realized we had a major problem is we're going like, yeah, that's really smart, you know. All right, we love Timmy. Oh, crap. We almost let him go, you know, like.

Yeah, I always fell back on. Who was that person? What was that? That was the train guy. Oh, that was the guy. That was the.

The.

The woman that was a. Dental hygiene. You know, whatever it was, that one question. Because I could never. It's like, you know when you're going to look at. If you ever buy a house and you start looking at a bunch of houses in your mind, you start combining things. You're like, well, that place had that cool bathroom in the living room. And then usually your spouse or someone says, no, those are two different houses, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's really valuable tool to use.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's good stuff, man.

It's crazy. It's great. No, it was really good. And we're not at the end of it yet. Like I said, we have. We truly haven't selected. I don't even know who we're going to select. I have. I have a feeling, but I'm not. I'm not. I'm not putting too much stock in it yet. The second interviews could change things for sure. But. But I'd be happy with any people. Yeah, yeah. No, it's great.

And you're hiring. Hiring slowly. Right. Which is what you're supposed to do and fire quickly when things don't work out. So I think that's great. I'm looking forward to you coming back on and telling us how part two went and continuing on the. On the journey and see how this new role works out for you guys.

Thanks.

Great.

Yeah, man. Yep, it's. It's good. Thanks for the initial help. I need. I definitely need that business therapy just to like folks, the value of that business therapy is huge. And please use us for. Really. It was the thing that kind of got me off the couch, if you will, on this particular project, especially for those. Action. Action like that. We're so we have so much to do that I. I have a zillion actions that I can take and. And not only feel productive, but be productive. But, you know, this working on the business versus working in the business, you know, those actions on the business can really make a difference, but a lot of times they are things that I haven't done before, you know, at least not in this way. I mean, I've hired people before, but this was a very different thing, that today's world is very different things. So. Yeah. Yeah.

Getting you out of where you're working on the business, I mean, it's the whole key to the E. Myth. And if you haven't read that book, you know, you need to. The E. Myth revisited should be on your desk on your nightstand. You should be dipping out of that. In and out of that book all the time. It's so powerful.

Yeah.

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing. You know, we'd love to hear your stories, give you some feedback on what's going on with your small business feedbackus show.co if you enjoy the show, please go leave us a review. It really helps us at businessshow Co Reviews.

That's it. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We. I've had a blast doing this one, and if you have your questions. Yeah. Let us know. Otherwise, you know, keep living that charmed life. And we'll see you next week.

See you next week.

Thanks, Shannon.

Thank you, Dave.