Crafting a Winning Hiring Process for Your Agency – Lessons Learned From Our Recent COO Recruitment

Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome back to Agency Journey. Wow. I'm gonna disclose I'm saying this for the first time as Agency Journey host today. Super stoked that this is happening. And my guest today is Gray Mackenzie, Zenpilot co founder, previous Agency Journey host. Gray, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great. I'm excited to dig in. This is our first one where you're. You're sitting in the host seat and I'm in the hot seat, so this should be great adventure.

Exactly, exactly. So this is what's happening. In case you missed one of our previous episodes where we talked about how I'm taking over as the host of Agency Journey. By the way, hi, I'm Kuba Jakub Kreitzer, content marketing manager here at Zenpilots. Should have probably started with that, but we'll work it out as we go. So, yes, Gray is our guest today in the hot seat. And going forward, you can expect to hear a lot more from Gray as we'll be having him on regularly to. To share his agency insights, his huge agency experience. And we'll be starting with a topic that, you know, based on my podcasting experience, experience interviewing leaders in general. This is one of the biggest topics. You know, as I was interviewing, you know, when I was hosting my previous show, I was talking with CTOs, VPs of engineering. One of the topics that always came up is this one, getting the right people on board. Today we'll be talking about hiring and. Great. Why don't you tell us why we're talking about hiring today? What recently transpired at Zenpilot that prompted this conversation?

Yeah, well, this is all very fresh in my mind. We just made the hire of an integrator and coo. So integrator. For anyone who's not familiar with eos, it's the EOS term for the person who's pulling together, wrangling the leadership team in the organization to all be on the same page in lockstep and working together. And so we just went through that hiring process process that was an intense couple months process, but it was really helpful for me. Made a couple tweaks to our hiring process, which has been like all processes, a work in progress and had a ton of really positive feedback from folks who did and folks who did not, you know, largely, overwhelmingly folks who did not get the ultimate role. And so I just wanted to share some of what worked maybe within what would be different in a different situation. Because this is something I have a lot of conversations with agency owners and leaders about is, boy, I'd love to grow this. I know that I need somebody to come in and lead operations or lead delivery for me so I can spend my time out growing the business. But I don't have that person. I'm not sure how to find that person. And so thought we could just do one core episode on this and conversation around it. And I'm sure there's a whole series we could do on it, but try and put some of the core pieces in one place for folks to reference.

Okay, so before we dig into everything we did to find our integrator, why don't you tell me a little bit about kind of the challenge ahead. The integrator, it's a big role, right. In the EOS framework. So what kind of person were you looking for here? What made this a challenging hire? Kind of describe the mountain before we talk about how we climbed it.

Right? Yeah. So for me, this is not, you'll see integrators sometimes in kind of two different forms or fashion. One is like the business leader who's actually a killer of an operator, and they happen to also be into EOs and they're also running the company's kind of implementation of that operating system. Then you get the second one, which is like a lower level. I don't know what to call this, but this is typically someone who's an operations assistant or something, and they're facilitating a lot of the roll up. But they're not primarily the one running the P and L or running the, you know, what, the actual business units, how they function. And so as I approach this hiring process, I wanted much more the former than the latter. I want, I would take somebody who is not familiar with EOS I at all, but they can fulfill that function if, if we had to train them on it. But I need somebody who's got a proven track record operating businesses and understanding the world that we exist in and having success in that. In that realm. So that was, that's a, that's a, A super key role for us to hire for. You know, if you look at the accountability chart in our organization, I'm sitting in the visionary seat. Sean, who's our new hire, will, I'm sure be announcing that depending on when this comes out. This is probably long, you know, has been announced for a while, but she's sitting in that integrator seat and she's leading the rest of the leadership team. And so, and, you know, responsible for P and L and, you know, how we're actually performing As a business and so. And making sure our clients are served well and our team is served well. So yeah, that was a big role to hire for.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, so let's start unwrapping this and talking about the process of hiring. There's a lot of different details to dig into here. A lot of stuff that I'm curious about. First of all, I know that here at zenpilot we follow a particular framework for hiring. There's a particular school of thought that we like to follow. Could you say a couple things about that? Because I think that will set the stage for everything that follows.

Yeah. So we primarily follow who the a method for hiring. There's a book, Jeff Smart, he's not the only author on it, but. And then there's a whole bunch of training and other frameworks around it. This is not because I think. And there's a million books that would be helpful on this topic. Top grading is a super helpful one to read. There's a. I mean there's a whole like library that you could go to. The same reason that we use elsa, instead of taking stuff from scaling up and taking stuff from system and tool and taking stuff from okrs that Google has and all these different frameworks and trying to piece it together is the same reason we use who the A method. We're just trying to find what seems the most stage efficient or stage appropriate for where we are. And then let's take one framework and follow that. It's way easier to scale by using that. And then you figure out, hey, what are the tweaks? What are the things that we maybe we'll do differently that looks slightly different than the most out of the box one. But we're trying to take a proven process as much as possible and run it. So that's the core method that we're following.

So this framework, could you say a little bit about what sets it apart? And personally I wasn't familiar with it when I was joining zenpilot, so maybe for the listeners who aren't familiar, could you say a couple things?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm trying to go back and remember what would I say sets it apart from other methodologies? Can you think of any other. Have been exposed to any other methodologies for hiring?

Not that comes to mind necessarily. I was looking more at kind of management leadership methodologies, but for hiring? No, not necessarily. Which is part of the reason why I'm curious actually.

Yeah, well, I think most people are in the same boat when you Say, what do you follow for hiring? I have maybe like 2% of the time gotten, oh, we have a framework that we're following. Most of the time it's, I don't know, I needed somebody and I happen to know this person or, you know, I posted a job. We went through all these things. We did this recruiting. I had conversations, they seemed great. Sometimes we did a test project together. We. We did something on our way in. But it's exceedingly rare that anybody's got a framework for how we hire. So who the A method is all about? How are we finding folks and using past performance the best indicator of, you know, future success or non success? Past performance is the best indicator of future performance. How are we using that in the context around it to try to identify, hopefully, folks who will be A players moving forward and run a really thorough process so we can talk about what those steps look like. And if that's helpful right now, we can jump right to that or if you want to push that to a little bit later. But that's the, you know, it's largely predicated around kind of all the core pieces of information gathering and then screening and the conversations that you have and multiple people on your side, multiple people on the candidate side to get to a thorough outcome and give yourself the best probability of the right candidate.

Okay, so what I'm hearing is one of the most important pieces is past performance as an indicator of future performance.

Yep.

Okay. Okay, I get that. All right, let's dig into the process then. And I think, you know, to give our listeners as much as possible to steal from this episode, let's start unveiling, you know, what we went through. So there's a lot of different ways to approach the hiring process. Can you lay out, first of all, high level, what were the stages in this hiring process that we had?

Yeah, maybe if I could widen it out a little bit farther. As I went to hire, like, first thing is taking a framework and using that as the main thing. Then I made a commitment to myself. This is not described in who the A method, but I made a commitment to myself that for this specific role, I wanted to protect my just own, like, mental state. And so I didn't want to interview anybody who was not, from the information that I'd gathered about them before, talking to them was not clearly like a 9 out of 10 or a 10 out of 10 fit for the role. Stuff is like, oh, you know, I don't know, I don't see it necessarily on the resume, but this person Seems great. We know some people in common. That was not a conversation that I'd go pursue if there wasn't a natural, like, oh yeah, I could definitely see this making sense and fitting. And then I think the starting point of the hiring process, everyone's. I don't know if folks have different opinions or just follow. There's certainly different opinions. I think a lot of folks just follow whatever example they've seen before. But how wide, like, how do you recruit for roles? And then what's the, how large is the door that people can get through to get into the hiring process? So you'll see some roles that have, you know, 47 different fields you need to fill out on an application in order to apply for a role. And you'll see some where it's like, hey, throw in your LinkedIn and a quick note. And so from that perspective, my approach is I want to keep the initial stage as simple as possible. I'd rather have a wider aperture, let more folks through and we'll do the screening. I don't want to miss out on somebody who would be a great fit, but they're maybe not. They're not looking super hard right now. And I don't want to jump through 47 different steps to initiate a conversation or at least know a little bit more about the opportunity. I'd rather have that information that we can screen off the back end. With that though, I think if you're going to line that up, I don't like taking that approach and then blasting this out via ads or indeed or you know, all the, like just the job posting sites. I then like to take that application and put it in the communities where this would make sense. So there's a EOS self implementers community. There are obviously other networks of folks who've been in the agency space. There's masterminds that I'm a part of and slack communities that I'm a part of. And so I just tried to pick where. And there's obviously influencers, folks who've been exposed to these people. So other business coaches, specifically in the agency space, know a lot of these folks and might have a handle on who's looking or who's not looking or at least some folks to float it to. And so I tried to be really selective about going out and promoting this role. Obviously we promoted it to our list. This went on our careers page and that kind of thing, but tried to be more strategic in terms of where to go promote this and what to lean on. And I think that's one of the, one of the key takeaways for anyone who's trying to hire is figure out where you can call in a favor and ask somebody who's likely to have more connections than you are or, you know, a high number of quality connections in that space. You know, how they could see if there's an opportunity for them to help promote what you're doing.

So what I'm hearing is you made it rather easy to put your name in the hat, so to speak. But in terms of where you put the hat so people can put their name in it, you were selective about, you know, where you actually distributed, you know, word about the role so that you didn't get, you know, a lot of applications that weren't viable. Am I getting that correctly?

Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to put it.

Okay, and tell me. So one of the things that you mentioned is that you wanted these people, before you schedule a conversation, to look really, really good on paper. So this, to my mind brings screening CVs. What was your approach towards that? What were you looking for on these CVs? Are you one of the people who are like two typos and you're out or was that something else?

There are rules for sure where that's, you know, a hiring tactic. And I think that's, that's become common in high. Like this really got popularized in hiring vas, you know, probably a decade ago was, hey, write why you want to work here in four sentences, no sentence longer than eight words. And you know, then do a second paragraph that has your favorite color and restaurant and then, you know, sign off in italics or something like that. And you're just, you put in all these random things to just try to screen. You know, you're just trying to screen for who's actually got attention to detail because that's a core thing that you need in this role. I didn't use it there. Cvs for me are generally not that helpful. Like, I'm looking for someone who lives and breathes in the digital space. So I'm assuming they've got an up to date LinkedIn. Like that's got to be a. Okay, that's, that's not for sure a sign that's not like, oh, I will reject this person if they have Nothing on their LinkedIn without doing any further evaluation. But it's definitely a, you know, a caution flag if I'm looking for somebody who's tied into this space and you know, their LinkedIn was last updated in 2017 or something. So yeah, I think putting it out there. We asked for. So one of the things that I did in the job post is there's a loom video itself. I'm not sure if that job post is still. It's not still live on the site. I'm trying to think if people could still access it or not. But you can see the loom video that I put in and tried to like spent a lot of time writing the job description and then sharing a loom video to give people a personal like feel for who I am. The real genuine context behind why we're hiring for this right now. The real genuine what I'm looking for and then call to apply. And in that application we did ask for a quick intro video as well. And so that was helpful to get, get a first sense of, of folks and you know, is also these are. There's a lot of smaller signals amid the bigger signals. So smaller signals are, you know, did somebody record something and then email you an attachment of what that looked like or did they use loom or, you know, a tool like that? Some tell of, hey, how comfortable are they with the types of tools that we're interfacing with every. Every day?

So I wanted to dig a little bit deeper here before we move on to the other stages in the process because I feel like it's good to begin well and the screening part is really important. You mentioned activity on their LinkedIn. Can you say a little bit more about what specifically were you looking for? Okay, you mentioned maybe LinkedIn over CVS, but whatever you're looking at before you meet the person, what else do you scan for?

Great question. So up to date profile, does their LinkedIn match their CV is one of the first things. More activity is not necessarily better than less activity. You know, I think there's plenty of people out there who spend all day on LinkedIn and that's not the, the person who I'm needing for this role either. But up to date do they have, you know, certainly. Are there any network like I'm taking note of, Are there connections in Comet that might be worth reaching out to at some point as we're, as we're into the vetting process? That's certainly not a first step of.

The.

Screening process step to look for. But yeah, I think those types of signals from LinkedIn are helpful.

Okay, gotcha. And is there anything else that you did that you recall from the job posting that you think drove success here or it was like a conscious choice that our job posting is going to be different in this or that way that you thought was important here?

I think no. The short answer is no. I think I already shared this and we could do a whole, like, we just try and break that down in another episode if we wanted to go super deep on it, but try to be really upfront about where. Where are we as a company and, and in a way that, you know, this is going out to everyone. So you're not going to say, you know, here's all the metrics that we don't share publicly right now, but everyone's got super strengths and super weaknesses and those things are just opposite sides of the same coin. So the fact that we are so detail oriented and process oriented at Zenpilot means that we need to work harder than a typical organization does at cleaning up old process. Because the tendency across the team is, I want to go build a process for that. Oh, I want to build a process for that. Well, somewhere. Like, we can't just have 500 processes floating around. And so trying to be as upfront as possible about, here's what's good about, you know, in our sales process, are we more consultative or are we more transactional? Consultative is great for the impression and the taste that it leaves in people's mouths. Transactional is great for accelerating deal velocity and often getting more deals into the door. And you're just trying to figure out where we are, well, what reflects Zenpilot more. And we lean towards the consultative side. And so we just need to be aware of that. We've got to work extra hard to say, hey, we got to keep the process moving forward here. It's not helping people figure out that one thing when there's this whole huge, massive problem that we should be solving in an actual engagement with them isn't ultimately serving them best. So I think just trying to be super open about what are those strengths and what are the weaknesses was really helpful.

Yeah. I remember even as I was applying to Zenpilot, there were certain signals there basically to the extent of if you're not excited about being process driven, probably not the place for you. If you don't like to nerd out about project management systems, might be a little bit difficult to fit in. And it's great to get that information kind of at the door. It's a great filter to actually talk with the right people.

Yep.

So next I wanted to ask you about, you know, what happens after somebody applied, you know, what was the process on our end? What were they tasked with or what were they facing as the next step.

So in the past, and this is the, if you read the WHO method book, this is the next thing that pops UP is a 15 minute, you know, screening interview. And there's folks who say, hey, you should just call people, try and catch them, you know, unprepared and see how they respond on the spot. Say, schedule it. Because we do a ton of async work, we use a ton of recorded video, we're on loom a lot. For my documentation, everything else, I used loom and we move quickly. And so I used loom and I had a second. So first step is all these applicants come in. I'm screening them every single day, even over the weekend. For the most part. I would try to screen folks as they came in because I'm looking for super high caliber people. Those folks are often not on the market for a super long time. And so I want to be able to move quickly and have speed be a part of the benefit that if someone's not getting a role here, they'd much rather know that a couple days in than a couple of weeks later. So I'd go through and if folks made it to the, you know, beyond that initial step, I had a second loom and canned templated message kind of ready to go that was sharing more of what I was specifically looking for that I didn't have out there publicly posted. One of those things that wound up being in there was something that I didn't have clear in the original job post. So when you say the word integrator, you'll get flooded with about 150 fractional integrator candidates. They're folks who are running either as a freelancer or with a small team. Hey, we'll take on five different shops at a time and we'll be there. Fractional integrator. And so I was just super clear, I don't want this. This is how comp is structured. This is. And kind of like more specifics around the breakdown of what's variable and base. Any of the deal breakers. Hey, right now for our stage, here's the benefits we do have and the benefits that we don't have. I need somebody to work, you know, the hours can be flexible, but generally I need this availability during our standard business hours. So some of the mechanics of the role and then just more, a little bit more in depth into like what does our vision Traction organizer look like? Basically, what's the high level business plan? Where are we? Where are we going? So that was sharing more context with them as, hey, Weed yourself out if none of this is a fit for you. And then asked four specific questions in that loom video as well, and asked them to respond to reply with a video message as well. And I specifically asked for a loom video, which not everybody did. I think loom is one of those weird words now that, you know, does that mean I'm actually using a Loom.com video, or is that just, you know, is this a Google? And it just search with whatever search engine you want to use. And so that was really helpful as basically the screening interview. So that next step was then getting those back. And so some of the signals that, you know, 90% of it was, what's the content of that reply when they sent it? And the 10% signals is how long did it take people to respond? To respond. And totally fine if it's like, hey, I've got this going on at home, or I've got whatever else. But do you get that message from them saying, hey, I can't. Like, I thought that was really. There were a good chunk of folks who left a really good impression on me by saying, saw this come through. You know, I've got this trip. I can't reply for three days. I'll have something to you on Friday. And that's the type of communication that I want out of this person, not the person who lets it sit for three days and then follows up with me.

Exactly. I feel like a lot of people might have it in their minds that it's like, it's unfair and it prioritizes people who have more time available, you know, to assess them on the basis of how quickly they get back to you. But like you said, it's not about getting back, like, with a substantive reply. You know, you're ready to wait a little bit for that, especially from the right person who has other stuff going on in their life. But it's about that initial message. I will get back to you in X amount of time. And then keeping that promise, that makes a huge positive impression. Right. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. So the way I'm understanding this, and tell me if I'm summarizing it right, is it's almost as if, you know, that second loom, the kind of insider loom that you get from the, you know, after you pass the initial screening, it's like, it's a. It's another filter where you share more information that can filter people out. You know, the mechanics of the role. As you mentioned, the expectations around availability. It's like it's another opportunity for them to, well, get excited that they're fit, but also filter themselves out if they're not. So did you see a big drop off at that stage?

Actually there was a good amount of drop off. Um, there were certainly folks who said, you know, who didn't even watch the loan video who said, I just want to talk to somebody to see if this is a fit and that's totally fine. Like that's, that's just a different working style. There's going to be lots of times in my working style with our integrator where I don't have time and I don't want to get on a call to just get the ball started and process through things live. I want to be able to use Loom and go back and forth Async. And so that's a little bit of a filter to. It's not that they're wrong and I'm right, it's just what's the right working style for us and for them beyond that, I don't think, like, it's not like half the people dropped out in that screening phase. A lot of folks did share, but yeah, it's probably 30, 40% of folks kind of weeded themselves out based either on the qualifications of what I was looking for. So being super clear, I don't want somebody who's fractional. I don't want somebody who hasn't actually led a business before. But yeah, a lot of folks did still follow through with the Loom video.

Okay. And you mentioned the four questions that you asked at the end of that video. Is it okay for you to disclose them or some of them so that, you know, I'm looking for, you know, for people to be able to steal our way to some extent. So probably a lot of the listeners are curious about that.

Yeah. So this has looked different for every role. Um, and so there's probably a couple to keep held back for right now based on this. But a couple that I asked is like, what specifically are you looking for at this stage in your career, like your next, the next chapter of your career. And I was clear. I want somebody who's in this. This is not a, there's no long term contract or commitment I'm going to force you to sign. Like you envision yourself going on this journey with us for the next three, five plus years. Like, this is a, a key role. So this should not be a jump to, you know, I'll jump in with Zen Pilot and then I'll go do something Else, somewhere else. But. But what specifically do they want out of a team? I asked about the most effective and also the team size of the teams that they've led before and specifically what that looked like. So I was looking for who's led a leadership team. And there were answers all across the board, from folks who had not been managers before to folks who've led. You know, they're in charge of hundreds of people in a department and they're directly managing 10 different people and a lot of folks who are in the middle. And hey, I've managed four people. I've managed a leadership team of eight people like that, that type of thing.

Yeah. And managing leaders is really, you know, a totally separate beast. You know, I remember even from my experience as I was a manager having my own team leads, it's very delicate because you want to give them. This is just a tiny tangent. Right. But you want to give them a lot of space to kind of be their own leader, exercise their own management style. At the same time, you're also that kind of. That level of escalation sometimes. And it's an art to know when to step in and when to actually let your leaders resolve issues themselves, etc. So I think it's very relevant to ask about that experience because you really have to learn it, you know, through experience, like you mentioned.

Yep, for sure.

Okay.

So we moved. We moved from that screening interview or you know, like screening loom into then a direct conversation with me. So again had an email template to send and push. Obviously filtered folks out. Anytime we're filtering folks out. There was a personal. Also built off of a template, but personal note. And for a handful of folks, I was able to make personal connections to other organizations or positions where there's something that they had that was certainly not a fit for what we needed right now. But yeah, there's something specific him in this geography. And I know someone else is hired. Like there was a. A shop out of Michigan, um, where I was able to make a connection. They wanted somebody in person. This person their preference was to be in. We're totally open and knew it was a remote job obviously, but had a preference to work in house and roles just kind of matched up. But then move folks into a direct. It's called the who interview with me. Again, who. Who. The. A method for hiring details what that conversation looks like and really just trying to understand who is this person, what drives them, what motivates them, what are they after, an overview of what they've done. We moved into Focused interviews as the next step. And in the WHO methodology, there was, you know, that's one longer conversation. We broke it up, and I pulled in other members of the leadership team to help with that. You know, folks who made it through that phase and. And had good, good grades then moved on to a live working session with me. And so we picked a real issue in the business. This was deep into the process and still only a couple folks, but we ran through, like, a live working session together. And just, hey, what does it feel like when we have to solve an issue together? Realizing that I know a whole bunch of the context and, you know, none of the context. Like, let's just walk through what this would be like for their benefit to know who's this maniac, who I'd have to work with. And then for my benefit to know, like, hey, do our working styles. And what I was looking for there is how efficiently did we get to a good outcome? So can we work together? Can we work together at the speed and pace that's gonna be super important in this specific relationship for me? Um, and then secondly, was it fun at all? Like, this is probably a dumb filter, and everyone's probably got slightly different filters, but do we both enjoy the experience? Or, like is fine, but, you know, I wouldn't want to do that every day or every week. So for a lot of other roles, we'll do a live kind of test engagement, and that was. Or we'll do a, like, take home, and then a live review of that. In this case, we did the live version of it.

Okay, so I'm curious about a lot of things regarding what you just said. You basically laid out, you know, three stages, one after the other. The WHO interview, the focus interview, and then the work session. Of those, the work session sounds like the one that, at least personally, I've encountered the least before. We get into that, though, because I wanted to set aside some time for that. During the WHO interview and the focus interview, I mean, we could probably talk about the questions, you know, a whole separate session about that. But could you tell me about one or two that were particularly productive, they were particularly good filter, or they were just, you know, surprising to the candidates and made an impression. Does anything come to mind?

So one of the questions would be probably common to anyone who's read through anything you're pretty much always asking or applying is commonly said as torque, like the threat of a reference check. And this is the question, Kuba, you know, on a scale 1 to 10, how would your two past employers or bosses or managers rate your performance. And so that's always a helpful question to ask. You're looking for two different things. Well, three different things. I think you're setting the stage for people to be more honest. And I, I even said, I said that wrong as I said it. So the question is actually, Kuba, when I speak to your two last managers, how will they rate your performance on a scale of 1 to 10? And that's the threat of the reference check. We're just trying to get you to answer. I want you to answer honestly and know and also communicate from my side. I hate the word torque or the acronym torque because it's like it's not meant to be a threat. It's just a setting the stage that I will do my homework. I will talk to the folks who you've worked with in the past. And also communicating, I want you to be honest. Don't like, just tell me the. Tell me the truth about how they'd rate your performance. And so that is helpful. Just saying when I speak to how they rate your performance, that has been helpful to then open up a conversation about, you know, this one would rate me as a 10 out of 10 because XYZ. This one would rate me as a 6 out of 10 because they didn't like me. Why didn't you like. You know, it's just a conversation starter around. What did that look like? So there were several conversations in the who interview that, you know, it just kind of validated that there was no, there's not a successful track record here. Whoever's fault it was, there's not the track record that I'm looking for of proven success. And that's not, you know, there's plenty of people who have not had success yet and they'll be plenty successful in the next phase. I wasn't trying to take that bet in this specific hiring process. Focus interview, real deep dive into their work history and kind of going, you know, roll by roll, walk me through what you've been through. How did you handle this situation? A lot of situational type questions and. But real life situation type questions to understand what happened. And then obviously all that you're trying to take notes on and then reference check that back when you're, when you're doing the reference interviews, which we didn't get to.

Okay, so that seems like a key piece of it to actually do the reference check and to see what the references say. That's clear to me. And now another piece that may be on the periphery of the Focus interview. But I'm really curious is you mentioned at that stage that more people joined the call right from our side. So can you tell me about how you briefed the other people so they were also successful on the call?

Yeah. There's a script for those conversations, like, hey, here's the questions that we're trying to ask. And that's where having a methodology is helpful. I'm not making that up from scratch. It's kind of, hey, here's the starting point and here's outside of that. I would try not to give too large of a brief. But hey, here's some specific things that seem like strengths. Here's some specific things that I have question marks about. You know, you can push on these areas or try to get some clarity there. I think that group interview is really helpful for, like, for our team. Part of it is just, just like anything else. You know, we do the team survey with teams when we're starting an engagement together, and we get feedback from the entire team about what's working, what's not working in project management. And, you know, the, the driving force behind that is we need those answers so we know what problems to solve or what, what pains to dig into to figure out what the core problem is that we then ultimately need to solve. But the second huge benefit from that is everyone gets a chance to buy in and they're, they've been listened to and heard. And so you're going to get a different level of commitment to that solution because of that. So the same thing happens that's the secondary benefit to us is the, the other team members who got to be part of it now know and get to influence. Obviously we're getting different perspectives. The candidate is getting to know different people on the team and knowing, like, I don't just have to talk to every founder is going to be an optimist. And I might be the least optimistic of all the founders out there, but even I have rose cold glasses about some things in the business. And yeah, just being able to have a more balanced perspective as a candidate into who would I be working with? What do they, you know, how well do these stories line up? We're just trying to triangulate. This is why we talk to references, is trying to triangulate. What's the actual truth here.

Yeah, pulling in other people is so key. When I think of my own hiring, hiring experience, there were candidates that I'll admit I was willing to dismiss them and they were some of the best hires ever because I got a second opinion and a different perspective. And that made all of the different, which is why I wanted to ask a little bit more about that. And then finally, let's talk a little bit more about the focus session and then try to start wrapping up here the lessons learned, et cetera. So for the focus session, what I'm curious about and do tell me if there's something that's more key to this than what I'm about to ask about. But the question that comes to my mind is how did you pick what to work on the problem to tackle together? The content of the session, how did you pick that?

Yeah, so I picked three different options and I let folks then select from those options. And so I tried to just pick what would be exemplary. Hey, we're rebuilding our scorecards and so help me understand how you think about what metrics would be useful or not. Totally don't really care that you get to the right answer because how would you on, you know, day negative three with no context and no behind the scenes of what it looks like. But it's like, you know, a data type analytics and decision making type topic for us to dig into a people issue. How do you deal when there's tension between this area and this area or there's a performance issue here or whatever that looks like, like what are the, what's the process that you go through to figure out how you solve that? And then I'm blanking on the third type of problem. Oh, like an offer problem. So hey, we're switching up the offer. Here's some of the things that we're thinking through. How do you design or figure out what your monetization model, revenue model and customer service model ought to look like as a, as a company? And they were scaled down. That's kind of like the, the super broad version of them. But those are the types of problems that I had selected and then kind of like walk through, hey, here's the options, here's what seems to res. And even figuring out which one they gravitated to was helpful for me. Understanding like where do they see their strengths? Or you know, obviously you're going to pick what you feel most comfortable conquering. And so that leads into then story or example or you know, here's here's how I handled this type of problem at a, at a previous organization.

That's great. I was just going to ask, you know, you just addressed one of my follow up questions because it seemed like just the choice of problem would in itself be a signal about what they gravitate towards. That's great. So again, probably this could be a deeper conversation in itself, but to keep things a little bit more compressed here, tell me about what happened after this work session together and throughout the rest of the process. What turned out to be important, especially in hindsight, what were the right moves to make here?

Yeah, so the final step is the reference, or almost final step is the reference stage before you make an offer. And if it's helpful to get into any of the offer stuff and onboarding, we could hit that or hit that in a future episode. But the reference check piece is huge. Obviously earlier in the process we'd collect references from folks and then at that point, obviously you're speaking to their on script, on paper references. But the other piece, really for any position, and especially a key position, is talking to the folks who they've had a relationship, who they didn't list as well. And that's one of the trickiest ones. I mean, that feels the most like cold calling. You're finding folks who you hope fit into the market. Not going to pick up and call somebody who's at the current employer of someone who doesn't know that they're actively looking for a job. The people who do know that they're actively looking for another role probably are already on the, you know, they're already on paper as proposed references. And, and so now you're trying to take past folks who they've worked with. And so that's using a number of different tools like LinkedIn's one of the ones to look at, hey, what's their job history in the past? Who else worked there? Does it seem like there might have been a relationship here between them? And you're essentially calling folks and saying, hey, do you happen to know this person? Why do you need to know? It's just a little bit of like I'm trying to get information from you. For somebody who you don't know exactly why, it can be an awkward, awkward interaction the first couple times that you go through it. But it is super telling to know. You know, as you scraping through a number of different folks, you know, are you finding people who have very different impressions of the candidate than, than what you've heard so far? Someone's been trickier for different, you know, someone's super early in their career, they've had one rule that's extremely difficult to do. That's where hiring someone like in this role, you know, a COO is going to be a little bit easier to do. They generally have a little Bit more of a track record. Yeah, but that was the next step. Was that the reference stage? If you're asking folks, obviously you're going to ask, you know, there's a series of questions, five key questions that we'd ask every single reference. But the kind of the starting point for that conversation, not the ex. Actual starting point, but one of the key questions that you're digging into is on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate this candidate's performance, whatever, in their role at your organization? And if there's, you know, anything below a nine, that's a. That's at least something to dig into.

Right.

If you're actually trying to hire an A player, everyone generally knows an A player and they're going to get extremely high grades.

Okay, yeah. All right. I was curious about the questions themselves. Are these questions for the reference calls also kind of dictated by the framework? People can look into that to learn the rest of them.

Yeah, so that's one area that I've modified it a little bit. But yeah, there are questions to ask directly from that, from the who method as well.

Okay, so then tell me about the last stages of the process. After the reference calls, what happens?

It's decision time, and then it's making offer time, and then we're into. And this is something that I think everyone has commented on. Well, obviously along. Along the way here, there have been a lot of conversations in filtering folks down and trying to be super honest and upfront with as early as possible saying, especially with folks who you don't know until the end of the process. This is one of the key pieces I want to pull out. You don't know until the end of the process that someone has said yes. And the typical approach is, I don't want to give you any negative signals that I might be moving forward from anyone else. So I just won't say anything to you. And I hate that from, you know, from the other side of that experience, I'd much rather know where this stuff stand. So I sent notes to folks saying, hey, we've got this other candidate who's got these unfair, you know, just kind of like, obviously not super specific, but they have these unfair advantages that we are pursuing first. And, you know, I'll keep you in the loop as this plays out, but I just want to let you know where things stand for right now. Let's put this process on hold and I'll close the loop and sending that and all, you know, I didn't know that's a little bit of a risk of you're selling someone, hey, let's put this on hold and let's not keep going forward with it is a risk if you actually might want that person on your team. If you know choices one and two or whoever's that's narrowed down to work out. But that was probably the thing that got the most positive feedback was, oh, it's great, thank you for letting me know. I hope that process goes well and I would love to have a conversation if that doesn't go well and often. And some of my favorite responses were like, when do you think you'll know? Because it's the type of people who pester and ask the questions to get the information that they need to get the job done or move their life forward. And so that's what I'm looking for in this role. So yeah, so that was helpful. And then the other key step then is as we made an offer, had an offer accepted and employment agreement and all that, all the details signed, following up with all those folks and letting them know, hey, we did wind up moving forward with someone else looking for, you know, are there opportunities to make connections or anything else. And I think that's totally a bonus if you do that. That's not at all a requirement or an expectation for anybody. So don't take that on if you don't have the bandwidth to do it. But if you do to be able to help folks out in the process, that goes a long way almost. You know, anybody who's at that phase in the process is somebody who could totally be successful in all likelihood at Zen Pilot and there may be a role for at some point down the road. And so that's played out a long, a lot of times in my career so far. And I still think there's a, there's like the philosophical, hey, is this just the right thing to do? Then do it. And then there's the very practical, hey, this could for sure work in our favor at some point down the road, leaving this taste in people's mouths. And I think one of those reasons is enough by itself to be a motivation to do it. And both of those reasons is like a, a no brainer where you can't make connections.

So it's like 50% self interest. I might need that person in the future. But the other 50% is golden rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. I love that, I love that, that's great. And did anyone, just curious, did anyone use that, you know, as they got this email that, you know that is, I think everybody would appreciate that, you know, as they're looking for a job, you know, there's this other person. These are the advantages they have over, you know, over you or certain other candidates. Did anybody use that as an opportunity to like, counter, argue to make a case for themselves?

Very few. Which actually is very different depending on which role you're hiring for. So I think if you're hiring in sales, there's times where you'll intentionally put a hurdle in front of somebody and say no or say, contact me, figure out how to call me and call me. If you can't find my phone number somewhere on the Internet, then you're not going to be very good at sales. So you've got to be resourceful to do that. And I've gotten a lot more pushback when hiring for a sales role, which I think is a good sign. I actually would have been probably more impressed if I'd gotten more pushback for this. There was not a ton. There were certainly folks who said, you know, and sometimes those responses are quite rude compared to others. Like the, how can you say that without even having a 30 minute conversation with me? Like, you never talked to me. So how could you decide that I'm not the perfect candidate? Like, I've got way more experience than whatever else. But no, for the most part, that was not the reply.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. It makes sense that this would be dependent on the role. And certainly in sales, they're used to getting no's. Right? They're looking for the no so they can start doing arguably their job. Getting from the no to a yes or finding a fit. Glad I asked. That was very interesting what you just added there. All righty. So we went through the whole process, did we? Is there anything else left? I do not want to.

I know we're already long. There is a lot of other like bits and pieces, sure.

Yeah.

But no, I think that's a pretty high level overview of like job description through to making an offer. I think at some point I'd love to do another conversation around the onboarding process and how to set people up for success. But no, I think this was. This is a really good overview. I. One thing I failed to mention early on was getting ready to hire for this. Just like any other role. Start with a, with a role scorecard. What does this person ultimately own? And that will shape then the job description and the loom video that you create and all that stuff.

Okay, awesome. So before I let you go, I wanted to get a little Bit. Let's do clip fodder. You know, I want to get, get some good clips out of you. So first of all, and remember, because this is clip fodder, you need to say something at the beginning, right. That makes for a good hook. No pressure. So first of all, for this particular process, what would you say to past Gray, you know, as a tip for making this particular process, looking for the integrator run smoother.

Continue to be as quick as is reasonable in follow up with folks. Candidate expectations have certainly accelerated. There's a difference today versus 10 years ago in terms of what people's expectations are and how fast other processes are going. And so moving quickly is an advantage in a hiring process. And figuring out how to move quickly without sacrificing on the process is a little bit of an art and partially just moving faster while following the exact same process.

Okay, awesome. And I wanted to ask you about kind of mistakes that people are making here in this hiring process. So I'm hearing one kind of flipping what you just said. One mistake is moving slowly. Right. So anybody looking to hire to make good hires to get a players, they don't want to move slowly. Other than that, what is one mistake that you hope agency leaders, after listening to this episode, will no longer make in their hiring process?

This is going to be ironic. Obviously not ironic at all coming from me. But have a process, have a defined process to run through. It gives you a totally different level of confidence as you show up in the hiring process, say, hey, I've got my stuff together. I know what the process is going to look like. It also makes your candidates feel a lot more at ease to be able to map out for them. Here's what the process looks like you're going to do. The screening interview from that second loom that I shared, there's a who interview, there's a focus interview, there's a work session together, and there's a reference interview and then ultimately an offer. And so now you can know what to expect on the other side. And having aligned expectations is the key to pretty much every great relationship.

Okay, awesome. Awesome. Well, Gray, I mean, this is the first time I've interviewed you as the guest on Agency Journey here, and I think we just recorded a really packed episode. Thank you so much for the insights here. Was there anything else that you wanted to add in here? Any way people can contact you if they want to pick your brain about this a little bit more?

I think to go back to what I just said about sales, if you want to Contact me, email me, and figure it out how to get in touch with me and if you can, specifically if you're hiring for an integrator as well. Obviously, this would be more timely if it's closer to this, but there may be folks where I can make a connection for you already. And otherwise, if there's assistance that I can help out with in terms of the process, that's not a forever and ever open offer. I don't necessarily promise. There's a lot of different emails floating through, so I don't necessarily promise to do free consulting for anybody, but if I can help, I'm happy to help.

Okay. Awesome. Yeah. As of as of the time of recording, Gray, you've got, what, 11,000 followers on LinkedIn? So you could say there's a bit of a network there to tap into if you can find a way to email Gray. Awesome. Well, Gray, thank you so much for this episode. And dear watchers and listeners, we'll see you in the next one. Don't forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platforms. And yeah, thanks again, Gray. We'll see everyone here in the next one.