How COOs Can Improve the Hiring Process

Cameron and I got a chance to kind of noodle around last week before this, and I was griping about how, you know, nobody teaches entrepreneurs or business leaders, let alone just entrepreneur, but like the CEOs, to be great at hiring. And even worse, nobody teaches them how to interview or select or to assess talent. It's just there's minimal opportunities in business school and even in within organizations to learn these things. And I wanted to frame that problem up a little bit. I think, Cameron, you'd appreciate this. I think of it as a multimillion dollar problem.

Oh, billion dollar problem.

Yeah. For any one organization. I mean, it might be tens to hundreds of millions of dollars just for that one company, right?

Yeah. There was actually a data point that I saw recently that says the cost of the wrong hire is one times the salary, but the cost of having that person in the role can be 15 times their salary. So it costs you one times the salary just to do it again, to restart the recruiting process, rehiring. But if you have the wrong person in the role, it's actually costing you 15 times your salary because of the problems, the opportunity cost, the negativity, the mistakes. Yeah, it's a really, really expensive problem.

And, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I mean, I've spent literally my entire life, I mean, since I was a teenager thinking about hiring and building great team, getting the right people on the bus. And I don't know, many years ago, when I. When I started this business or took over this business for my father, you know, about eight years ago, you know, I was going through that and I, you know, I understood this concept, you know, of, like, you know, it's. It costs a lot, but I start, like, breaking it down, like, start to think about it logically, like, well, you know, it costs my computer, and I spend all this money on ads and interviewing and training, and I'm like, adding it all up and it's like, oh, yeah, I've got like five grand or ten grand invested into this thing. I was like, okay, well, that's not that much. It's the opportunity cost.

It's the opportunity cost.

And then it's also, if you actually.

Took your effective hourly rate that you were actually spending on doing interviews, scanning through the resumes, setting up the interviews, following up on interviews, thinking about the candidates, the effective hourly rate that we actually waste multiplied by those hours, we.

Often don't think about that.

We think about the hard cost, but we don't think about our time. And there's a Huge cost in there.

As well if you're not getting the job done. I think about salespeople, I mean this is the easiest equation, but you can use this equation for any role, right? Salesperson had worked with a handful of in home sales type folks and that's, I mean 1-800-got junk, right? In home sales or you know, B2C type of, type of environment. And I mean, what's a sales quota for a good salesperson at 1, 800 got junk. What are they producing in revenue annually for you guys?

Well, our franchise partners at 1-800-GOTTEN JUNK do you know, a million dollars. Plus the guys out in the truck are earning 40,000 dol thousand dollars a year. So, you know, you get the wrong guy out in the truck and they're not landing the, you know, all the additional jobs. They're not stopping to hustle and knock on doors. They're not upselling the customer, they're not wowing the customer on site. So there's all the spin off problems. It can cost the franchisee, you know, a half million bucks because the, the guy in the truck isn't doing the job or isn't wowing the customers and they flip it. If you have the right people, they're wowing the customers. They're amazing when they talk to the media because we get a lot of media coverage. They attract other employees to come and work there. You know, they're driving to the dump. But they spot junk on the side of, you know, at some business, they stop and they do a quick cold call and you multiply one job a day times 250, there's five grand generated or lost.

Right.

It's huge. Right? It's huge over the course of the year.

Yeah. And so is hiring the most important thing that we do as leaders and businesses or is it something else?

I think, I think there's two. I think the most important job for a leader is to grow people. So once you have the right people, our job is to grow their skills and their confidence. Skills and confidence.

But yes, if you can get ahead.

Of the curve and hire the solid A's and B players, it's easier to grow. You know, even the best athletes have a coach, right? So even if you hire a bunch of A's, you're still going to grow their skills and confidence. But yeah, I think the two are intertwined. The thing that's always blown me away, I can't imagine being a company today who has a manager that has to do job interviews that hasn't had at least 20 or 30 hours of training on how to do job interviews. You know, you consider the cost of that wrong person. Why would you ever allow a manager.

A leader, they don't know how to.

Screen a resume if they don't know how to set up the actual interview itself? If they don't know how to open the interview, if they don't know how to do the probing, if they don't do the follow up questions, if they don't know how to sell without your selling, if they don't know how to use the pregnant pauses and open questions and close questions and torque, they have.

No business doing an interview, let alone.

If they're not sure what behavioral traits to look for and what skills to look for and how to analyze the personality profiles being used. How can you possibly say you have.

A solid team and you just listed like 15 different skills and strategies and techniques that you ultimately have to master to become good at interviewing? Right. So that's not like I can't. You can't just. We're not going to teach you on this podcast and all of a sudden you're gonna be great at it.

That was even why I said at.

Least 20 hours of training was you probably need about an hour of training at minimum just to become competent. Let's say you had a bronze, silver or gold.

Become aware, right?

Yeah.

Is anybody even aware that you should.

Have a system for analyzing or for reviewing a resume before you set up an interview? Probably not. Then do they know how to review a resume? Is everyone in your company reviewing it the same way?

Do you know how to look at.

The gaps in the resume? Do you know how to know how to look for. For precision? Like they don't even know what to look for.

How do you match the resume to the ideal candidate profile? What is your. Who is your ideal candidate? Right. I think a lot of people can't even, can barely answer that question.

I'm lucky because at a very, very.

Early age, I was a part of an organization called College Pro Painters, which.

A lot of people know of.

But College Pro went on to become the largest residential house painting company on the planet. And every year there were 60 of us at the head office that had to go out and recruit, hire and train 800 franchisees. And then in one month, we had to train those 800 franchisees how to go out and recruit, interview, hire and train 8,000 painters.

So imagine being a company that had.

To recruit, interview, hire and train 8,800 people every year.

You better have a bulletproof System, you.

Become operationally world class at interviewing. Right?

Yeah. We put systems into our businesses for all different types of activities that we do, whether it's sales or operations or service. Right. You know, and so we're constantly, you know, thinking about, just implement and then let alone execute an amazing hiring system. So what did you learn at college, pro painters back then? What were they teaching you that taught you how to be better at recruiting and hiring?

So I'll give you a few that kind of ring or that still, I guess, are part of my system to this day. The first one is, as Stephen Covey used to say, to begin with the end in mind. So the first part is, what are you looking for in a successful hire? What are the behavioral traits that they have to exhibit? What are the core values in your company that they already have to live? And what are the skills or the roles that they're going to have to do?

And have they done it before? I don't want to.

I don't want to hire someone that knows how to do something. I want to hire someone that has done it.

A good example would be I know.

How to break a world record, but I've never done it.

Right.

So would you rather hire someone who's.

Broken a world record or someone who knows how to break a world record? Well, I know how to manage teams.

Have I ever managed teams?

Right. So that's the starting point. The next one is to define in layman's terms, in very simple English, a definition for each of the skills or traits that you're looking for. And then if everyone has the same definition in your company, then start off with a list of questions to at least start with. To start the interview to see if you can rate people. It kind of goes on from there. Really start with what you're looking for.

Yeah. And I find myself talking to clients day in and day out, and it always begins there. So I consider that's a candidate profile. Right. What qualities, experiences do they have and do they align with what I. What I need? But what I need starts with the job description, ideally, and we see this very often is not a great Is actually has not been thought through. Right. We haven't really truly figured out what are the key measurable activities or outcomes that I'm hoping this person will achieve.

Right, the measurable ones. Right.

Yeah, the measurable is the key. Right.

Here's something that I just stumbled on about a year or so ago with job postings that now has blown me away for the most part. There's not A single hiring manager or a VP of a business area. The people that are typically writing the job postings or even the people in hr. Most of those people have zero training at copywriting. Yeah, most of them aren't good writers. So think of your job posting as a sales letter or as a marketing team advertisement. Literally you got to get your job posting rewritten by a copywriter to make it pop off the page to attract the right people. And I was like, I never even.

Thought of that before.

Well, so here's how it all comes together for me. Right. So you, I mean, you nailed it. You know, let's have the ideal candidate profile, let's have a scorecard and let's define those. So it starts with the job description. And I'm okay with the job description being boring as long as it is smart.

Right.

Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound in the key things that I want them to achieve. Right. I'm gonna hire a salesperson. There's a certain revenue. I don't care so much about the paperwork. Sure, it's on there, but you need to be good at paperwork. But you know, I'll deal with that. So I've got a smart that specifically generate a million dollars in revenue. Okay, great. Now your profile. Well, who's likely to be able to do that? Following your recipe, what kind of behavioral qualities and past experiences that they have that will match or prove that they can do it. Now then you create your scorecard. So now that's a way to assess them. We haven't even begun advertising for a job yet. Right, right. Done all these things first because we've clearly thought through it. Now you create a job advertisement. There's really these four key pieces that are the foundation of your hiring system that you really have to think through. And that advertising being the last piece, differentiating the difference between the job description and a job advertisement are huge. And so I challenge anybody who's listening to this. Go on. Indeed. And just look up whatever job you're hiring for and look at all your competitors ads. And my guess is what 7 to 9 out of 10 of them will look like a boring old job description.

Which is what you're going to end up recruiting as well. You're going to end up getting boring old job candidates.

Yep, exactly. And a handful of them will be these remarkable copywritten pieces that are inspiring and really generate interest with, you know. You think a players like boring?

No. And the other thing for me about job postings is I actually want to push some people away I want to make it very polarizing so that everyone who reads it thinks this is absolutely for me or there's no way I'd ever want to work there.

Yeah.

But I really don't want to leave anything up for interpretation. Like, they have to know this is going to be the hardest job they've ever had, but they're going to love doing it. They're going to work with an extremely bipolar, manic ADD CEO, but they're also going to know I'll go through brick walls for them. Like, what's weird is most companies a don't do this. And we're not even yet talking about reviewing the resume or doing the interview.

Yep. I mean, we could sit here and talk for an hour just about getting this part right. Okay. So they taught you how to really properly identify the ideal candidate and really, you know, got you the fundamentals of hiring ingrained in your systems. Then how did you master hiring? You must have been pretty good at it then. But I imagine this didn't just happen overnight for you.

No.

Back in the day, we had a couple of different trainers who came in to train us on doing interviews. So we were trained on, you know, using the pregnant pause and open ended questions and closed questions, and we called it the reverse sell and setting up the interview. And we were trained on all aspects of the job interview. We videoed ourselves interviewing candidates using the old. We had a VHS camera on a tripod. I remember when I was getting certified in interviewing, I was interviewing Kimbal Musk, who was Elon's brother, and I had a video camera set up of me interviewing Kimball on interview. And I sent that VHS to my vp and he went through the resume and the scorecard and my questions and watched the interview and gave me feedback on an entire process.

Yeah.

And then I went back and I practiced it again. Right. What was I doing? Well, what wasn't I doing well? And that kind of constant coaching and feedback loop allowed me to get better. And then we would debrief. We would also debrief if I ended up with a shitty candidate six months later, I had this candidate who was like, how did this guy ever get hired? And my VP pulled me aside and he goes, how did this guy ever get hired? Let's go back and look at your notes. Let's look at your prep, because we had to keep them all. And I went through. I'm like, oh, wow. I knew when I interviewed him that he wasn't good. Like, how did I let. Right. So you just, you work at that.

Yeah, yeah. It's that practice. I mean, you know, my father always taught me, when you want to teach somebody how to do something, see, one, do one, teach one is a basic rule of thumb. Right. You observe somebody doing it. Well, you. You do it yourself. Right. You practice and you fail and you digest. Right. And the teach one part's kind interesting. Right. Is regurgitating the information that you have, you know, mastered or that you've learned and having to. Then, you know, maybe it's not you maybe don't. I mean, it's great if you can actually take what you've learned and then teach somebody how to do it. That's where mastery occurs. Right?

Yeah.

We called it duragi. It was demonstrate. So you would demonstrate the task. Let's say I was going to demonstrate how to do closed questions. And then I would observe during a role practice, and then I would redemonstrate. So you'd show them again. So they could use reflective observation. And then I would give them a task and then inspect. So then I would inspect how they did. And then we would cycle it back again.

Yeah. Over. Over and over again. Yeah, yeah. And I think we miss that so often. I mean, I think this is applicable to anything we do in our businesses. Like when you're onboarding and teaching them the task. Right. But I think in interviewing, that's the big part.

Let's forget about managers and leaders for a second. What? How many entrepreneurs have ever been trained, like the square root of 9? Most entrepreneurs have had no training in this.

Yeah, we just wing it. You know, it's all gut feeling, and we're just fumbling around trying to figure it out.

I like them. Right. I like that guy.

I like that one.

Well, yeah. Yeah. But why do you like them? Well, I don't know.

Too often the entrepreneurs are doing all. Or the leaders are doing all the talking in the interview. You know, the candidate should be speaking 90 to 95% of the time.

Oh, you know, what I love about mastering interviewing is it teaches you to be a better salesperson.

I've learned what we called the reverse sell, and we use this very well at College Pro painters and at 1, 800, got junk. So the reverse sell was asking the candidate questions that get them to sell themselves on the job, and they get them selling you on why they'd be good for the job. Instead of me telling them how good a company is, I'll say to them, so what was it about our vivid vision that has you excited? What is it that from our company from your research, that has you really wanting to work here and it reinforces for them. But if I sell them on it, especially as a franchisee, they tend to run away because they feel like I'm trying to sell them a franchise. So it's the art of selling without selling.

Yeah. It's the same thing you do when you sell anything else, though, Right. You're asking questions, you're uncovering what their personal and professional goals are. Right. And, you know, once you better understand that I can't sell you anything until I understand what problem I'm trying to help solve. Right.

Yeah, we were. We were trained in that as well. It was called the personal selling model. Once you understand the person's goals and their career goals, you pretend that that's the roof and they're trying to get up on the roof. And then your company is the ladder to get up on the roof. But if you don't know what the roof looks like, the ladder can go anywhere.

Yeah. As I've been lucky enough to build two growing companies, and I'm still relatively in my infant stages here, I didn't want a job.

Right.

I wasn't like creating a business in order to have a job. I mean, most entrepreneurs, that's our goal is not to have the job, but we find ourselves having, but to allow them to stand on their own so that I could do the things that I want. And what that's opened up for us is one, we do professional search, and the other side of this is talent assessment is I found these opportunities to do consulting. And so we've increasingly been doing more and more of these. And everything we're talking about are the things that we talk about, folks. The exact like, do one, see one, teach one, or approach or that you were talking about here. I think it's just amazing. And I think we need to spend more time on it. But let's say we're just, you know, we're an entrepreneur. You know, this is becoming increasingly a bigger part of our world. Don't have time to hire a coach, you know, necessarily. What would you start doing today differently? What are three things that you would begin with to start improving your ability to hire?

So what's interesting is, you know, in the school system, I think the school system messed us up because the school system taught us that we were supposed to be good at every subject. And if we weren't good at every subject, we were supposed to get a.

Coach or a tutor to help us.

Get better at that subject. And we were supposed to work harder at that subject. The reality is most of us still.

Suck at those subjects that we were bad at.

Instead of trying to get good at something you suck at, try to find some people in your organization who already have some excitement around that and have some competency and let's get them better at it. So I think for the entrepreneur is to be aware of the parts of the interviewing and recruiting system that exist and then to find some people that can help your managers and leaders get better at those. It doesn't necessarily have to be the blind leading the blind. You know, the entrepreneur doesn't have to get good at interviewing to then teach. I would have all of your managers.

And leaders read chapter two from my book Double double. It talks about the interviewing process that we used at 1,800 got junk in college pro.

I would maybe find two or three videos on YouTube that are free on the interviewing side of the business and have your people look at that. I have a course coming out called invest in your leaders and one of 12 modules is the interviewing module where people can actually learn how to interview. But that would be the starting point I think would be there. You know, get, get a consultant to come in and teach you over zoom or in person read the book.

Who.

That kind of stuff that gives you some competency, that gives you like a base level of maybe bronze.

Well where. And that's the awareness part. Right.

What's interesting about adult learning is there's four stages of the adult learning cycle. The first one is what's called abstract conceptualization. So that's when you're learning a concept that's by listening to us talk or reading the book. You're getting the abstract and then there's the active experimentation which is practicing. So maybe have three or four of your managers read the book or read my chapter from Double Double. And then practice it and role play it with each other. Do pretend interviews with each other. So now you're getting the active experimentation and then actually do the concrete experience. So do some interviews, maybe record them using your iPhone or record on video, tell the candidate you're doing it for training purposes. They're all okay with it because they want the job anyway. And then watch what you've done. And that's reflective observation. Observation. After you've done two or three interviews, go back and read the book a second time. And then it's going to start reading. I was like, oh shit. I didn't do.

I missed that part. Or I could enhance it this way or that way.

Yeah, you don't read the book once and think you're at a goal. Like Tiger woods has been practicing the same shots for 30 years.

I'm a Malcolm Gladwell guy. 10,000 hours of excellence.

You know, read the book who three times over the next 12 months. You know, read it once a quarter and then practice it and then watch the videos over. And that's where the, that reinforcement of that learning will start to stick in.

Reread the book first. Break all the rules. You familiar with that one? Like, as an early manager, I was like 26 or something and I took over sort of managing a pretty large operation and I kept rereading it and the different chapters and the 12 things that you got to do to be a better, effective leader. Right. And I read it the first time, and then I'd go back and I'd read it again and again. And so with interviewing, you know, I recommend people, like, do exactly what you said, and it's the practice part. And I guess one of the things that always gets me is that leaders often complain they don't have the time.

I think you don't have the time not to. Like, I had someone the other day and they were saying, well, what if I train all my employees and they quit? And I said, well, what if you don't train them and they stay?

Yeah, like it's absurd.

Doesn't have time to learn how to interview, but he has time to then manage.

See players, chaos. Hold him accountable. Like you have to. I'd rather work hard and do it.

Right than not work hard and do it six times.

Yeah. If I interview 10 people this week, that's five hours of my working life. Right. I mean, that's palatable. I can manage that. And I just got 10 reps. I'm going to be that much stronger when I get my next 10 reps. Right. It doesn't take that much time and energy to really practice this stuff.

Well, what really takes the time and energy is to manage and hold accountable and deal with the crap of all the ones that you miss, hire or.

Not achieve your goals.

Right, yeah.

The cost of all that, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, I always think about it that way, especially in the sales side. I mean, I got a million dollar producer. If I misfire on that, I just literally lost a million dollars. I have to reset. It's another three to six months before I get someone hired, get them trained, get them back on track. If I'm l for them to maybe not make their goals again.

Right, Got it.