Curt Janzen hired someone strong and confident who claimed expertise but broke equipment and lied to clients. His next hire had the right attitude and willingness to learn. That person outperformed everyone else after training, teaching him to hire for DNA, not existing skills.
It is way too easy to just hire people with 2 feet and a heartbeat and bring them in, but that was the most stressful thing we ever did. And when we realized that we could hire people for their DNA and train them the skill set, it made life so much easier. I remember, you know, hiring one guy who was a big strong dude, told us he could spray, told us he was good at what he did, and he would just break stuff. He would lie about it. Clients were unhappy with the quality and everything that was there, and I'm like, man, for a guy that's forced to be super skilled at what they're doing, they just cause so much problem. And when we were able to take the opposite of that and hire somebody that just wanted to grow and wanted to learn, it didn't take very long for that new person with the right DNA to surpass everybody else in our company.
