Hire The Best People For Your Business With Guest Susan Feniger Of Border Grill

Oh, you want to get a kiss?

Oh, pull it for me. Pull it, baby. Oh, yeah, pull it for me. Pull it for me.

Can you see this little scratch right there on my eye?

Yeah. Tequila. Thought I was a footrest earlier. Just playing soccer with my face.

Your breath is like warm trash sitting in the sun all day.

One more time.

Play that soul. Hi, this is Chris Collins, and I'm coming to you from my downtown Los Angeles office. I'm here with Lola, my girlfriend here, and my son Tequila. Now, Tequila is working with his lawyer to actually legally change his name to Breakfast Burrito, because he resembles a breakfast burrito more than he does a bottle of tequila, huh, buddy? Yeah.

There's a business here in downtown Los Angeles called Border Grill. They're a restaurant, and the owner, Susan, she's the owners chef, got to speak to my elite group the other day, and we learned a lot from her. She was really generous with her time. But one thing that's always impressed me about her business is the culture that they have there. They're unbelievably attentive. Their customer service is amazing. And it's rare that you'd find a restaurant that has amazing food and also has an amazing culture and just hard to balance both out. It's rare that you see a company do that. And I understand that more than anybody, being an artist and understanding the difference between the artistic brain and the business brain. And usually they don't match in a lot of people, but they really nail it on the head there, and they really get it right, which is so impressive. I have four tips. They're going to save you making some serious hiring mistakes and some mistakes that I made early on in my career. But first, let's go see what chef Susan says about hiring chefs.

So what is the process for hiring a new chef? And I guess there's two parts of this question. One is, do you promote from within more or do you hire from the outside? And do you put them through a test? Is there a hazing? Do you make them cook a chicken breast? Or what is your. What are you looking for?

Let's say our. Our managers and chefs meet someone, and then, you know, our director of ops meets them. So now you've got two interviews, and then they. They get through that process of, okay, this is the right fit. Then I meet him to see, like, are they the right culture? Are they the right. You know, and I maybe approach it from a different place and sort of.

How do you test that? You know, like, one thing I found is I Take them out to dinner.

Yeah.

And I try to get their spouse to join. Yeah, because you can learn a lot from the spouse too.

Yeah.

Because you know, you're making. They're joining your family. So.

Yeah, I mean, higher level, we do too. So higher level, if it's, you know, director of ops, a regional manager, CEO, a controller, we go, we would do something more similar to that where we go through our interview process. And then in addition, then we'll go have dinner either with their partner or their spouse to see them socially, just sort of see how that feels. Usually what I try to do is say to our chefs or to our GMs, send me people that you're going to interview, let me look at their resume, because if I know someone, I might save you a ton of time. So I make a call, someone who's gotten all the way through that they want to hire, I make one call and find out, do not hire that person. Of course they can't say that to the headhunter. They're not going to put that in writing. But it is invaluable. I mean, I'm sure you guys do the same if they've worked for a friend. So that is for sure the best.

Four key points that I want to make that I want you to understand. The first one is that whenever you're hiring somebody in, the best indicator of future performance is past performance. And so if somebody has been jumping around from job to job, or if somebody was the worst salesperson at the last company they were at, there's absolutely no way they're going to be the top salesperson for you. And so it's really important to ask them to bring their numbers so you can see their results. If they were one or two in sales in the previous company they worked at, or if they were the top programmer or the top receptionist, whatever they were the best at, and customer satisfaction numbers, then there's a pretty good chance they're going to be top. For you, a winner is a winner. The second one is, and I know that this gets missed more than anything, but I've had more luck with this is actually doing something social with them before you hire them. So take them to lunch or to dinner. And it seems like a big step, but it's so important that you know how they treat other people and how they act in a social situation. So anybody from mid management up, I like to take them to lunch or to dinner and see how they treat waiters, see how they act in a social situation. A lot of times somebody Interviews really well, but in social situations, they're super awkward or they're rude to waiters. And if they're gonna be rude to waiters, they're gonna be rude to your customers. And then the next one, which piggybacks right on that one, is if you can invite their spouse, if they have a spouse. Because you learn a lot from somebody when you get to meet their spouse. You get to know a lot about them. You know, I had an employee not that long ago who, he was a really good performer and had all the right stuff and his spouse just wouldn't let the. Wouldn't let him succeed. It's funny, but he. We had a bet for an Armani suit and he actually won the bet just to get home. And instead of celebrating him, his spouse said, you know, we're not those kind of people, and totally took the wind out of his sails and tried to belittle him into thinking that he wasn't a performer and he didn't deserve an Armani suit, which was really awkward and weird, but he never recovered from it. And so if you can meet the spouse and see him in a social situation, you're going to learn a lot about them and that will tell you a lot about a person before you hire them.

I'm going to do that part again.

And the fourth tip is do some sort of personality profile. We use the Burk assessment and they're great because they actually will write questions and then they put a filter over the top of it that can tell you, hey, is the person good in a sales position? Are they good with customer service? But it tells you a lot about their makeup, their drive, and if they can deal with tough situations, if they're self motivated. And so I use those for about 25% of the decision making, but they really can help you hedge putting the wrong person on the wrong seat on the bus. So any sort of assessment like that, there's a lot of good ones out there. But that's the one we use and we've had a lot of luck with it.

Two of my friends, one is Eric Habasad and Ben Alexander. We, we were tired of going places and ordering margaritas, cuz yes, the sweet and sour and just terrible everywhere you go. So we dedicated a summer to make our own mix. And this is called E Rocks Famous because Eric had the idea. So we called it E Rocks Famous. And I served this at all the parties I have and people had offered money for the recipe, but really it's just lime and agave. Yeah. And it's different than yours, but your margaritas are really good. But I want to get your opinion. So part of the trick is everything about this is thought out, right? So part of the trick is the ice has to go to the very top. And then we gotta put one of these dudes in here.

Okay. A line.

And then the best part, the tequila.

So. And there's no.

We're gonna go one and a half of these.

That will definitely make my board meeting more interesting.

We can get one of these to.

Go.

Serve the whole board meeting in. Be fun.

Okay. And then the trick. Oh, thanks, Doug. The trick here is you got to do one of these. Yeah. So back and forth.

That's the Rock's famous.

Thanks you guys, for being here.

Is anybody else drinking a margarita? Oh, they're all good kids. That's funny.

Yum. Good.

Quite yummy.

Little sweeter than yours, right? Just a little different.

Yeah. Not too sweet though.

That's great.

That was really fun. And I learned a lot from Chef Susan and I hope you learned a lot from this video. And I want to leave you with one thought. Early on in my career, I read something about Henry Ford that I found fascinating. And it taught me that you really have to have a system for hiring employees. And before he would hire an executive, he needed his executives to have an open mind. And so he would find the candidates that he liked. And then before he made the final offer and said yes, he would take them to lunch. And his test was to see if they were open minded and the kind of executive that he wanted was once they ordered lunch and the food was delivered, if they salt and peppered their food before they tasted it, he wouldn't hire him because he told them that they were just pre programmed and they didn't try things before they made decisions. And I thought that was genius and that that's inspired me to have better interview questions and really put people through. Through some tests before you hire him so you don't make hiring mistakes. And I hope you got that from this video and it inspired you with some great ideas.

Math.