The Secret To Hiring Well

I want to talk about the secret to hiring well. Everything that you've done in the last, especially the last, call it 7, 8 years or so with NP Digital and whatever I've seen success with, we've been very intentional with how we hired. And maybe we'll start off with probably the highest leverage thing that I learned from you in the last year or so is the 2 promotions at 2 different jobs. Because especially in the agency world, people follow you around, people follow great people around. And when you have someone with 2 promotions at 2 different companies, that means they're actually really good.

2 competitors.

2 competitors. Okay. Why don't you elaborate on this thinking? Sure.

So if you're hiring someone in an industry that has been around for a long time, like a marketing agency, if you go look for people that worked at multiple competitors, ideally ones that are your size, if not bigger, and we tend to prefer ones that are bigger, they typically know all the roadblocks that you're going to face and how to overcome them from that job. that you're trying to hire for. So the reason we like 2 competitors is one company may view someone who's really talented and you've seen this as well. And you talk to them and you're like, this person sucks.

Uh-huh.

Like how the heck did they think this person was amazing? So if they work for 2 competitors, there's less likelihood that they were amazing at one company and shitty at the other company if they got promoted multiple times at that organization. So someone worked for 2 competitors, continually got promoted, And then the next, or they worked at one company, they continued, got promoted, went to another one, and then had a similar entry position or maybe even a better one than, you know, where they left off on the previous company. And then they got promoted multiple times. That means that person is usually really good.

Yep.

And then we go and look to get those people and we'll reach out to them being like, hey, so-and-so, love what you've done in your career. We're actually looking for someone like you. Do you know anyone that may be interested? We never hit them up directly and say, we're looking to hire you, because it usually doesn't work as well. And then you interview them for culture fit. Keep in mind, if it's C-level, they're not going to get as many promotions. And when we're doing this, we actually look for people who don't just hop around jobs, because if someone hops around jobs, you can get promotions quicker a lot of times with title. We want people who stay loyal to a business. And of course you want them to change jobs eventually, but if they keep getting promoted and they've been at businesses for like 5, 6, 7, 8 years, They're usually pretty good.

C-level, you're looking for tenure for sure.

C-level, we're definitely looking for tenure, but even for mid-level, we're looking for tenure.

Yeah, but mid-level, you're, you're, you're looking for more promotions. C-level, you're looking for tenure.

Yeah, but you go back in time to all their job history and you want them to have multiple promotions.

For sure. You're looking at the, you're looking at the history as well to see if they have the promotions that you're looking for, for a more mid-senior level role. But all right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital. And they work with a whole host of global companies or global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more and we'll see you on the other side. It's important, especially in a people, like a services type business, because it all comes down to people. And the thing is, clients will follow them, but people will also follow them too.

Yeah, people will also follow them. There's rules on poaching and stuff like that because typically they're working for large corporations. So you got to make sure you're not breaking any laws and it's going to vary company by company who you poach from and potentially even state by state. And the other thing we do is when we're interviewing them, we expect them to be cultural fits or else it won't work out. We expect them to be player coaches if it's executive levels, like if you're looking for a VP of marketing, they need to be able to get their hands dirty and do a lot of the grunt work, but they also need to manage and bring up their team and help them improve. And then we expect them to work a lot of hours. and obsess about work and the quality and be passionate because if they're not, it's not going to do well. We love executives that we have to tell them to take a break. A great example is my CEO right now is in Cuba. I genuinely tell him to take breaks and he needs more vacations. Our CFO, same problem. And he'll be like, oh, I'm going to Ireland for a week. And we have unlimited PTO, so it's not like I'm counting if the CFO takes more than 2 weeks or 3 weeks or 4 weeks. The guy just works so hard. We had to tell him to stop working. And I remember one time I was talking to him and he was at his daughter's, no joke, because it was during business hours, at his daughter's swim meet for a state championship. And I was so pissed off. I'm like, you're talking on the phone when your daughter's swimming in a state championship? And I said, stop talking and working, go watch your daughter. And same with when he was at dinner one time and his wife was there, I said, put on speakers. He put on speaker and I told his wife, I'm like, don't let him do calls while he's eating dinner with the family.

But we talked about this on Monday. I don't believe the breaks do that much. We've talked about this with the burnout thing, right? So with burnout, it's not, because remember the Boom guy was like, I gave everyone a week off and then everyone was still complaining. it's because there weren't enough— people didn't feel like they were winning. The milestones were too far out. So I think in my mind, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, that's a good way to break down burnout because you and I don't think about milestones, but you have to set the milestones in front of people where they feel like they're winning. And at least for me or you, I know when you're on a break, you're still working. I'm on a break. I can't help but to not work. And so the people, your executives can't help but because it's so fun, right?

Yeah, but it has nothing to do with burnout. It's more so people need to maintain relationships with their family and have a balance.

I agree with you on that. That piece, I agree with you. But I think the The fallacy here is thinking that— I'm not saying you're thinking this, but people that think going on vacations actually stops you from—

Oh no, it doesn't do it.

The vacations won't save you. No. Yeah.

But when people have like family issues, like their brother being sick or their kids— Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you want to spend them on that.

And like surgery. And it's just like, dude, stop this. There's more important things in life than our revenue for the month or whatever, right? Like your kids are more important. I would never ask someone to choose our business over their kids being sick and dying.

The family and the friends are number one. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we'll catch you later, guys.