Hiring Mistakes Small Businesses Make, the Candidate Experience, and the Future of Work From Home

James, thanks so much for taking the time to join me today. I appreciate it very much. And today's episode, we're going to be talking about all things hiring. You are obviously the guy to talk to about this with Hirewell and Careerwell. I mean, dare I say, nobody knows more about hiring than you, James. Is that right?

I think you might be overshooting a little bit, but we're gonna stick with that though.

Okay. Um, so nobody knows the difference. Uh, so, so So, so let's start there. You know, one of the things we talked about going into this, you guys obviously serve a variety of industries, a variety of different client sizes to help them to make hires. You guys recruit for them. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see small businesses make when they're trying to fill roles on their own? Um, and some of the ways that they can improve based on what you guys have implemented at your company?

I think the biggest challenge for small to medium-sized businesses is they underestimate how difficult it is. And how, how both time-consuming it is and both how costly it is, no matter how you do it. I'm not talking for like the guy at the recruiting firm saying, you know, this is going to cost you a lot to use us. I don't mean that at all. I mean, even if you're going to do everything internally, it's very time-intensive. And it's also building out a world-class talent acquisition team internally also has, has a lot more cost to it than I think most companies realize. So that's something we always notice is that Whenever you're a small business, no matter what your business is, any size, your employees are your most valuable asset. And I think that a lot of companies are so excited about their products, about what they're taking to market, about, you know, the other things that make them different, that they kind of, uh, they put blinders on and they want to focus just on those things because that's what got them excited to make whatever product, whatever it is, in the first place. So I totally get it. But it's— there's a lot of times there's a lack of awareness of just how challenging hiring is. And that, like, if you're a leader in the company, like, that's, that's going to be a big chunk of your day one way or another, whether you want it to or not, you know, like, great employees don't just randomly find you and randomly want to stay, you know what I mean? It's very much a process-oriented thing, both from a how we're going to find people, how we're going to attract people, then also how we're going to obviously retain them. So I think recognizing that first off is Usually when I see companies that struggle to hire, it always starts— there's a lot of different things that make them struggle, but the core issue is always there was kind of an underestimation and just how tricky it can be.

Yeah, it's a really good point, several good points. But the time-consuming part, and one of the biggest mistakes I see, and it obviously speaks to why your industry is booming and why your company is doing so well, is that too often people think they're just going to post a job or tell their team that, hey, we're looking for somebody, bring in your friends or whatever it might be, and then people people are going to find them. Whereas, you know, recruiting, the reason people pay a fee for your service and for so many other recruiting firms is the fact that you have to actually recruit to find the best talent. Like, you have to go get them. They are not actively surfing the job boards all day, every day. If you want the best people, you've got to pick up the phone or pick up LinkedIn or whatever it is and seek them out. Um, so when we look at that, let's, let's talk about, let's kind of start back there at the beginning. You know, I'm, I'm a Gen Xer, so I work sequentially through things. Like, let's talk about that attraction of talent. We talk about a lot with our clients of what can do to create an employer brand and the type of place where folks are seeking you out for employment. And I know employer branding is something that you're passionate about. What is employer branding? Share with our folks out there, what does this actually mean? I know it's a bit of a debate that you have online sometimes, James.

I mean, I'd say the simple way of thinking about employer brand, it's just like any other kind of brand. It's like, it's your product brand or anything else, except it's what, it's the aspect that would attract someone to want to work for you. So the perception the marketplace has about what kind of company you are to work for, you know, so it's, it's the net sum of all those things. I think that the key thing with employer brand is it has to be people-driven. I'm sorry, it has to be leadership-driven, I guess, to be more specific. I think that going further into the recruiting process, if I had a dollar for every single time that someone took a job based upon, oh, I met with a leader. He or she was really impressive. And that's what put me over the top. You know what I mean? Like people join your company typically when they're, when they're talking to a bunch of other firms. I mean, it always comes down to, I had a really good connection with the hiring manager or the executive I met with. I really dug their vision. They seem like a straight shooter. They really know what they're doing. All those aspects. It's taking that and putting it on the front end of the process, meaning the, the, the pre-sourcing, the marketing aspect of it. So, Instead of waiting until candidates who were talking to tons of other firms, like, you know, maybe meet with your executives and that's what wows them. Why not make that the thing that leads, make it something that the market knows about, that the job seekers know that got them to want to talk with you in the first place. And so when I think about employer brand, when I think about leadership-driven initiatives, employer brand specifically, I think there's such tremendous value in making sure your leadership team is vocal or outspoken on whichever platform is going to make the most sense. I see this a lot within technology. Like, developers love working for really smart, outspoken, opinionated tech executives. You know, the people who came from— they, they were developers and now they're driving kind of tech strategy. Same thing with marketing, same thing with HR. I think no matter what field you're in, everyone's biggest fear is they end up working for a yes man or yes woman, you know what I mean? Someone who's just kind of doing the same as everything else and not really challenging things. And that's why people are drawn to people that are more outspoken. I think from an employer brand standpoint, and I guess this kind of dovetails into the thing, I think that having vocal leadership who, you know, can share their knowledge base, it hits on a few angles. One, it's gonna attract talent. But if that's not enough for you to put your— it's also going to— it's also going to be your best marketing. It's also going to be, uh, it's also going to be back-ending your business development. Like, it has so much value, kind of all aspects. And that's why I really think that, um, the next level of kind of where things are headed and where companies should be doing, especially if they're small and the resources are limited, is making sure their, their leadership is vocal about what your company is doing, what you're passionate about, what your knowledge— you know, all those types of things. Um, there is some time investment obviously into that, but it's cheap. And if you're a small business, you know what I mean? And I know budgets are a lot, you know, being able to do these types of things, you know, it's not costly.

Well, you're also, I mean, you're documenting a lot of things that can be repurposed across, you know, multiple components of the hiring process when you do that. And I like where you're going with that. Right. So, so we struggle with this oftentimes as small business owners wearing so many hats, you know, last hat they're thinking about is being a thought leader in the online forum of their choice. Right. And so that can be something that's a struggle. But what are some of the ways, you know, and I, I cheated a little bit. I heard a podcast you did recently where you talked about your content marketing, some of the ways you develop content. And this is coming off the hiring process a little bit, but let's talk about that CEO of a 15, 20-man company. And he's, uh, I don't have time to create content. That's like a whole nother job for me. When we look at it from the employer branding perspective, what are some ways that they can kind of create content on the fly that's going to be impactful to their target audience?

So the last thing I would say on the previous point that I wanted to make sure I got out there is that thought leadership is the only thing that can't be outsourced. You know what I mean? You can get someone else to do the executional aspects. You can even get— if whatever you're passionate about in terms of your product, like, you can probably get someone who knows that space really well to help you develop that, whether it's dev, whether it's, you know, whatever your product or service is. But like, no one— you can't duplicate yourself. And that's why no one— that's why trying to have someone else do this wouldn't work.

Well, let me just interject one quick thing real quick. It's interesting because we have a marketing company as well, and we do social media posting as part of the service, and we'll do the company pages. Oftentimes, the business owners will say, "This is great. Can you write my personal post as well? Because I've got 5,000, 10,000 followers and it'll be much more impactful." Well, we tell them how much more impactful it will be, trying to encourage them to post more, and they say, "I don't have the time. I don't have the time." It's like, look, we can't We can't write content that comes from you. Like, we might be able to give you a list of possible things you can talk about, but you've got to keep that personal. It's got to be real because it's got to be about the vision of the company and where you're going and what's happening. And you can't outsource that. That's a great point.

Yeah. Back to your question, because I didn't answer it. What was it again?

Oh geez, we're already there. You forgot what it is and I forgot what it was. So, so well, so the tips on— okay, so to that person, giving them the example. Okay, so I'm the busy business owner. We're growing, we're continuing to add people every month and we're trying, you know, continue to add clients every month. Month, how do I find time in my day to create content that's actually meaningful and resonates with my audience, particularly from an employer branding perspective?

So the key things are, is I, I'm doing it actually right now. I record all the calls that I have, not every call, but most of the calls, anything that's, if I'm on a podcast or, but anything strategic focused, because the content people want to hear whether it's employer brand or product brand or whatever it is, is when you're answering someone's question. If someone has a question for you about, um, you know, your product or service, why it's a great fit, if someone just asks for your advice about something, if someone wants to know what the vision of your company is, if someone asks you, um, you know, why do people enjoy working there, what made you— makes you excited, how do you value the employee experience, like these answers that you're able to rattle off your head are excellent employer branding. Right. And it's not even something you have to think about. Like people, I think they, they, they think that we have to like take time out separately to create a bunch of stuff, you know, in terms of like new content for this stuff. But really you just have to find a way to capture what you're doing on a daily basis and repurpose that. So, um, what we're doing right now in terms of like doing a podcast or, or any kind of, you know, meetings and stuff like that, like just record those and get a digital specialist or someone to take clips out of that and repurpose that as video content. And then whatever things came out of your brain that day in those conversations, turn that into text-based content. That's the basis of a blog post or whatever else, you know. So it's kind of— it's realizing that you have— you don't have to sit down and brainstorm, you don't have to sit down and do all these things. It's just a matter of capturing everything you're already doing on a daily basis and using that. Um, like, I— it's, it's, it's actually less time. It might sound a little convoluted, but using those two things. So if you, if you're— if you have Zoom calls with someone on your management team right now, right, just record those. Something's going to come out of that that's brilliant, right, that you're going to love. If you have, uh, if you're doing calls externally, like I have a separate camera that can't pick up what my, what the client will be saying, it's just me talking, you know what I mean? That way you're not violating any kind of issues like that. Um, but there's probably something in that that's going to sound great for your employer brand. So for video-based content, those are the two things that I would do. Um, and then, you know, once, like I said, the leadership, the thought component is something that only you can do. But once you have all these things down, that's when you can get, um If you do, we need to hire a copywriter or content team or someone else to basically transcribe that and turn that into a blog post. That's the way you can do that while still kind of having the high quality, like getting your ideas across.

Yeah, that's great points. And we'll get off content soon, I'm sure. But it is something I find myself talking about frequently. But to kind of further that point of, you know, we're going to have this conversation, it's going to be video, it's going to be audio, it's going to become a blog post. You know, who knows if there's a guide that comes out of it, there's going to be most multiple social posts that come out of it. And one part of that might be good for our employer brand and talking about why this is such a great place to work. Other of it might be, to your point, whenever a client calls over here with a question and I, and I take the question, I go, okay, cool. Is that worth flipping on the camera and just answering it on a Zoom and recording it and posting it? Same thing. So, but you hit on something there for a minute. It's a mistake I see folks make all the time. And it's sort of an exercise we go through. When you talk about employer brand, you have to think about it the same way you think about it from a marketing perspective. And that's that, You're marketing explicitly to a buyer persona, right? And one of the things that I see people do all the time is you use the post the job on Indeed and pray for people to apply methodology. Like that's the same way as just posting an ad in the newspaper for what you do and just hoping that the calls start rolling in, right? You have to get very targeted. You know, we will go through what we call an employee persona exercise with our clients where we'll go through, you know, what do people look like with a successful background at this role? You know, Where do they hang out? What associations do they belong to? What are they? And we'll actually start to develop, okay, hey, here are a couple of different personas for that role. So you can be more targeted in your search and actually get on LinkedIn or, you know, write ads that speak to these individuals when you're trying to recruit for them. So attraction to talent is, is first of all, you have to be clear about who you're looking for before you can really attract those folks. And I think going back to the employer brand piece, I bring it up because if you're trying to attract a lot of younger folks or folks of Gen Y, Gen X, etc., and you're showing the ping pong tables and the beer kegs and all that, that might be compelling. But if you're trying to attract a more established crew that's got family and kids and all that, they're not worried about what's happening at the office after 5:00 PM. So just wanted to inject that there. Any thoughts on that? Yeah.

I guess this might be tangentially related. There are community groups for everything. Right, so, and we see this a lot like in the D&I space and like when companies want to increase the amount of, you know, increase the— further diversify their company, even if just like from a mindset standpoint. But, you know, understanding like what groups are out there that might one, have the type of skill sets that you're interested in, but then are there any, any, any that are related to certain locations? Are there any related to certain types of people, maybe with different types of backgrounds? It's— but in general, the, the community-based recruiting platform or community-based concept, I think, is extremely effective. Not enough places do it. I was talking to some people this, uh, just yesterday actually about utilizing Slack as a recruiting channel, right? Slack is— I think the challenge that people are having now with LinkedIn is that it's becoming extremely saturated, you know. It's— LinkedIn did this idea, this thing where they wanted to make it easy to apply. So the easy apply button. But the problem is that means like it's, it takes nothing for someone to apply to your job. You put a job out there, you get 200 people apply for it and you got to sift through it. But on the flip side, people are realizing that on, from the candidate side that like, right, this sucks. Yeah. I'm going to click apply because it's there, but I can't put any stock into this as like being a viable way of kind of job searching. Yet I think there's a lot of communities out there like Slack being one in particular where people have built their own community and they're therefore able to pipeline their own talent. People are, people are kind of using these as destinations because the job seekers who were in some, in some of these types of like tech platforms that are community-based realize it's an easier path to resistance. We're actually just, yes, applying to a job that was posted there actually might have more of a net return. And it's a better kind of networking. Like Facebook groups is another area too. People are having a lot of success with this where, um, getting involved in kind of in community-based things that you know, maybe these, um, where it's just you're able to build more of a one-to-one connection outside of just posting for a job. So you might see a job posting there, but you ever actually ask the person about it, you know, or the hiring company, you know, might— there might be someone actually getting involved in that community to kind of talk about it. Or you can ask somebody in that community, hey, I saw some other job posting, I see you work for XYZ company, can you tell me anything about it? Like, it's— there's still— there's better places at this point for kind of one-to-one connection which can be good for hiring or job seeking. If you're tuned into those types of things.

That's wonderful. And those are really good tips when we look at, you know, that attraction component, you know, how do we find out who we're looking for? Where do we find them? Where do we go? We create— get leadership creating quality content to shine a light on our brand. You know, that's, that's low-hanging fruit is like start posting in the communities and on the channels that where the people that you could potentially employ are hanging out and share a little bit more about your culture, your core values, what makes you who you are, what what makes you different. I know that's always a big challenge for small businesses. Let's transition into like, okay, now I've got some candidates in the pipe. I'm going to be interviewing them. And you look at that process. What are some of the things you see small business, uh, some of the mistakes you see small businesses make once they're actually interviewing folks and bringing them through?

So it all comes down to candidate experience. And I want to try to invent a definition for this off the top of my head here. So it's, it's looking at it, I think, um, companies look through things in terms of what's efficient for themselves. You know, we need to hire somebody, you know, they might be figuring things out. Um, here's our— they're thinking about their own time frame, but they're not always thinking of things in terms of the empathy side of it towards the candidate. You know, these might be candidates that are looking at lots of other places. Um, and, you know, I, I've had places say, you know, we're putting things on hold for a week. The HR manager, I'm busy this week, I'm just not going to do any recruiting or getting back to anybody. I'll punt that till next week. You know, which to me sounds absurd, right? Just because like, what, you're not going to follow up with a candidate for a week while they're interviewing other places? Um, and it's understanding that like, even now during COVID in, in a lot of areas in tech, marketing's picking up a ton, sales extremely hot. Like you've got a lot of competition still. Like this is not an employer's market. Um, it is more so than it was, you know, at the beginning of the year. But, um, if you want to be competitive in your process, you have to be setting a great impression with candidates throughout that process. Not just for them to get that yes at the end, but also the word gets out about if you're the kind of company that ghosts on people, if you're the kind of company that takes forever to make a decision, um, your, your, your pipeline is a leaky bucket, right? And it just kind of compounds on itself. Now, what the biggest— the biggest issue I see and what causes this is that disconnect between the HR or internal recruiter and the hiring manager. So there's a lot of times talent acquisition just frankly just isn't valued enough in most organizations where, um, the hiring manager, they're, they're again, like we're back to that example I was saying earlier, they're thinking about their product or they're thinking about their deliverables or whether that's their job and hiring. Okay, this is important, but it's fine. I have an HR manager or I have a TA person who's going to take care of this for me. So, uh, just deal with it, you know, but those people cannot do their job You know, if you're not giving them, you know, the, the, the true status on where things are, if you're not keeping them updated, they can't provide a positive candidate experience if it takes you forever to make a decision or you're not providing feedback or your feedback is kind of muddled. And that's how things kind of fall off process-wise. So there's a lot more intricate details than that, which I don't know if we want to get into in this process, but if I was in this podcast, but like if I was going to say What causes most of the issues? It's always that kind of undervaluement or undervalued nature that a lot of companies have towards their TA and HR, which causes the disconnect between those two groups. And that's why candidates feel like they're getting ghosted. They don't know what's happening and they lose interest and want to go to someplace that actually has, has their shit together, for lack of a better term. It's interesting.

I'm so glad we're talking about this. And I'm so glad for the perspective you're bringing because too often we're just worried about, you know, and I'm, include myself in this of, hey, we've, we've got to go through these steps to make sure we find the right person. And you know, they're lucky to come work here. Right. And it would like, they're, they're coming to interview with us and we hold all the cards. But to your point, and this is something we all forget all the time is like that candidate experience has to be balanced because the best candidates are going to have multiple options. And the smart ones, even if you started vetting them out of somewhere where they're working right now, and they weren't thinking about something else, as soon as they start thinking about something else, then they're going to bring other options to the table because they know that that's how you negotiate, right? And that's how you find— if I've been with this company for 5 years and now I decide I'm going to start to look at something else, I'm not just going to look at one option unless you've really sold me, going back to our earlier point, like I've got some commitment, some familiarity to the culture prior to coming on board. That's where the content becomes super valuable. That's where the word of mouth you just talked about. It's interesting because I kind of had a note here about the memory, the things we don't forget. There's a woman who reached out to me the other day who was interested in a job here, and she no-showed me probably 5 years ago, and I'll never forget it. And I'm petty like that. I will— I'm not gonna— I'm not bringing you back in because I remember that clear as day. You no-showed me. I don't even have to have that note in my ATS. But so the same way these people are— I, and I'll stop here and turn back over to you, but I know we've got clients that are dental practices as an example. Dental hygienist community is small. You go and start burning bridges with mistreating somebody even just during that candidate experience process, and, and then they're, you know, they're and they're influencing others now. So not only did they have a bad experience, but they're sharing that with others the same way you would with any other product or experience. So great stuff.

The one thing I would add there too, and I think, because I don't want to throw this entirely on hiring managers or business owners, because maybe this is kind of self-inflicted, but the one mistake I'll see a lot of places make is, because my initial point on this whole thing was that companies, they don't, they underestimate both the effort and time and cost of everything. Um, the, the, the very tactical mistake I see most often is when companies are growing, uh, we need someone to handle this, this, this HR, the hiring stuff. Let's just hire a really— just hire a 2-year recruiter or 2-year HR person to handle it. And then they think, okay, they'll handle it, we're fine. Um, and you're setting yourselves up to fail because, um, talent acquisition strategy is— you need someone who's very— if you want to do it right and do it well You need someone who's kind of familiar with the strategy aspect of it and can really— can tell you when you're screwing up, you know what I mean? Can inform you, the business owner or the senior executive, this is wrong, this is— this is where the process is bunk, um, this is what the candidate market really looks like, these things you're asking me to find are actually like— they don't exist in the real world, here's what the real market looks like. And not to say you can't find that in a more junior person, but it's a lot of— I mean, you imagine if you're— if you're someone who's a business owner and you've got someone who's maybe just a couple years out of school, they're not gonna— one, they might not know enough about business-wise how to approach you to tell you you're doing something stupid, right? Like, that's just not something people who are like in their early in their career comfortable with, you know. And that's really what kind of compounds the problem is that like it's, um, you need someone who can tell you when you're screwing up, who can advise you how to do things better. And junior recruiters and junior HR people have a lot of value. I'm not like dumping this on them. It's just that when you're— it's a lack of recognition, meaning that you need someone who's an experienced strategic hire running this stuff versus someone who might still be learning the ropes and doesn't know how to do those things yet.

So, well, and it's interesting because the first— the thing we always want to do as small business owners is delegate, right? So, so that's the first step in bringing others into your hiring process is to say, okay, I trust this individual. I'm going to have them start taking a role in the hiring process, whether that's the first interview, bringing them in the second interview, third interview, you know, maybe they just come in at the panel to start. And now, you know, over time, to your point, you're either moving it completely on to some other individuals where they're actually sifting through the resumes, or maybe they're recruiting, and then, you know, maybe you get so far as to even bring in that person. But ultimately, at the end of the day, you— and I used this example once where I sent one of my mentors what I thought was like a really well-defined, like, you know, 2-page sort of problem that was just like, oh goodness, this one's going to rack him. Hopefully he can help me out. Like, you know, this is so complicated.. And he responded back with a single sentence that answered every question I had in there and just was able to see around that corner on my behalf, which is the value you bring to the hiring process as the founder of the company or as the senior leadership. And so you can't leave that out of the process. You can't outsource it, going back to almost like the content thing. So, um, so, so we're bringing them through the interview process now. Now, one of the things I like to say all the time is, I don't know who I stole this quote from, but Even a donkey can act like a thoroughbred for 3 interviews. I mean, tactically, when you look at how long should I spend with somebody on that front end of bringing them into my organization, I don't know if there's a set answer for that because it's—

it's— you're— you're— there's a lot of different— it depends who you're hiring for, right? You know, like, you could be hiring for data scientists, you could be hiring for call center people, you know what I mean? So there's not really— I don't think there's a hard and fast answer for In fact, I'll even, I'll even take it the other way, is that one mistake I'll see some places make is they, they had a process they really liked for their first few hires that they think works well, and they try to say rubber stamp, okay, everyone's gonna be hired this way. We're gonna have everyone the same assessment. We're gonna give everyone the same process. And, you know, you have to realize, you have to recognize there's gonna be a difference in different skill sets. Like, you can't, you can't have the same— like, I don't like personality tests to begin with. You know, I think they're, I think they're garbage, but there might be— but here's the thing, the tests themselves are not garbage. It's trying to apply the same test to everybody across the board in your organization, I think, is a little, you know, when you have completely different skill sets, when you might be trying to measure different things, you know, or when you're trying to— okay, I'm getting way off tangent here.

Okay, we're going to assessments anyway.

So if you're hiring, if you're hiring one profile because, okay, this is a profile that worked for us before, Let's just hire everybody with that same profile. Okay, where's your— where's your thought diversity coming from at that point? You know what I mean? Like, I think there's a— there's a lack of understanding that even that's a tactic, not a strategy, where you need to kind of make your organization look a little different with hiring different types of people who might have done differently on the assessment versus— but I think again, it comes down to like the initial kind of point where I started is that when companies underestimate how complex it can be. They found one thing that worked, let's just keep doing that, and then eventually it can potentially become a problem when they don't realize that, okay, there is more strategy involved.

Anyway, now you, you sideswiped a lot of big topics in there, so I'm going to carefully pick which ones I want to double down on. Um, so yeah, so no, you hit on something that's really important to me, and that's especially— you won't typically see this across an organization where I say, hey, I'm going to hire everybody who looks, talks, and acts like this. But you will see it with roles. I remember I was in sales early in my career and I looked around the table and it was just like, oh, we're all former college athletes who are a certain age, who are all white males. And like, that's just like, that's it. And you look around the table and what new is going to come out of any of these conversations? Nothing new. It's going to be the same answers they had 5 years ago, the same answers they had 10 years ago because they were following that same blueprint of these are the people that succeed in these sales positions. And so that was an eye-opener. I remember very early in my career and something that we try to prevent. Against, and that comes from where people live, diversity of thought, diversity of background, all those things. And it's something that— I'll just finish this— where I always have to put that huge asterisk when we're doing the employee personas is like, look, this can't just always come back to like, Joe was the guy, let's replicate Joe, and we're going to make it be about that. But there are almost always positions where they have to have these certain skills, right? Like certain roles in your company you can hire based on aptitude and based on this side or the other, but other positions are purely about like, look, I need you to come in and be able to do this job. And, you know, data scientists might be one of them as an example where it's like, all right, look, they can't just be completely hiring based on what they could do in the future. So just limiting your ability for biases inside that process is critical. And that goes all ways, halo effect and all that. Once again, we won't sort of sideswipe a bunch of Really random topics here, but, um, well, where were you gonna go? I apologize.

Oh, I don't remember. I think you were gonna get me on some other, other topics there.

Yeah, let's, let's just bounce all around here, right?

Like your sales team. And so here's— I, I like to— the, the challenge where I think some people don't quite understand, okay, why is that a bad thing? Why can't you just— okay, this one profile worked. Um, it's recognizing that your clients a lot of times are going to be different and you're gonna have— they're gonna have different objections, they're gonna have different ways of viewing your product. And diversifying the thought and the makeup of your team is going to give you more people with different thoughts on different ammo and how to address those different types of sales situations. You know, if you've got, you know, 20 people who look exactly the same, think exactly the same from the same thinking background, they're gonna have the same, same responses, same way of looking at problems. And you're really leaving a lot on the table in terms of other ways you could be solving it. You know, it's, it's, I kind of, I, I have a hard time under— I have a hard time understanding why some people don't quite get it. Like, I'll think all it takes is like one brainstorming session with a collection of people who have nothing in common with you, and all of a sudden you realize, wow, there's a lot of, there's a lot of shit I don't know. You know, like there's a lot of things I never thought of before related to our product, related to our processing, or whatever it is. And that's why I think that— I guess where we go off this tangent when I was railing off on assessments, that's why I think that— so you and I, when we were talking, you were talking online, I think when you listen, maybe a couple weeks ago, talking about culture. Another thing is I realize that I hate the term company culture nowadays. Like, I think it's because of this reason, because I think culture gets kind of— it gets wrapped up in, okay, we want this type of person, when It really needs to be more of a values thing, you know, like I don't want people who look and think and act the same. I want people who respect each other the same way. I want people who are going to represent the company the same way, who, you know what I mean, are going to have the same type of values instilled in them and have the same maybe work ethic or whatever your values are, you know, as opposed to someone who fits a certain kind of identity profile, which I think is what's commonly— I would commonly associate with culture, but I also think it's important too because, um, it's— it opens up your talent pools. If you're too focused on one type of personality, well, there's, you know, you're inherently limiting other people who could do this job. Um, I think I, I'm gonna argue that companies that are more diverse in terms of their, you know, any way you want to define diversity, but have more viewpoints available are going to have an easier time retaining people. I think the more open and willing you are and the more introspective you can be as an organization with the more viewpoints, I think it hits— it's going to hit— it's going to add to your employee engagement. It's going to add to your retention. You're going to have more people who are, you know, the emotional intelligence and all the type of stuff. I think that's important too. We're still sideswiping more things here.

Yeah, right. So I'll touch on the assessments piece for for why I like them for small businesses, particularly small businesses. And it's because we sort of— so my company has about a dozen people, handful of contractors on top of that. So we don't have benchmark data here to compare, like, in contrast, what a successful sales professional might look like or what a successful HR manager might look like, etc. Personality assessments, when done properly, can tell us based on personality traits and characteristics, how does this person typically perform in this type of role? And that, that doesn't take into account any of the sort of, you know, diversity of background, etc., things that factor into that. What that does is gives me a little bit of a cheat code as a business owner to say, okay, hey, I can get access to some data that's going to help me to predict success based on a teammate, based on a particular role. If they're an accountant, let's face it, they think differently than I think, right? Like, that's just a different mindset and a different way. And anything I can do to kind of give myself a leg up in that process, I'm going to do it. And I suggest it. Now, one of the things you've kind of talked about, and we'll we'll touch on the big broad spectrum of culture here because that is a big part of this, is being values-driven is huge. And I love that you went right there because that's where it's going. Now, what we were talking about, and I'll bring everybody into it, we were going to work from home anyway, is there is this, you know, so work from home, we're seeing massive shifts in not only philosophies on work from home, but everybody's being forced to work from home. And, you know, so that's obviously driving some change that is sort of forced on people that maybe they're not as interested in. But here's what I'll say that I'll start with is that you have to be honest with your values and what your company is and what your company isn't, and that becomes your culture. And so when I say, I see, who was the other, a big study just came out this past week that was talking about a lot of CEOs just really bucking back against this despair of being on Zoom meetings, of like the just every day waking up and going, oh goodness, and I put myself into this category, even though my title CEO, it's just a self-given one, I wouldn't consider myself a real CEO, air quotes, but this sort of doom and despair of like, okay, great, another day of all online meetings, and I think that the luster is already starting to wear off, and some people are sort of selling stock early on this whole thing and going, We're selling our 60,000-square-foot corporate headquarters because we're going fully remote indefinitely. And to me, that's asinine because in 24 months, they're going to look back while they're shopping for a new office because all their employees want to be in the same place. I think the biggest thing about all this, and you're going to lean on flexibility, which I'm a big proponent of, which ironically, about half of our staff is remote already, is just being true to yourself. If you're the type of culture where you expect people to show up at 7:00 AM and be around at 7:00 PM, and you're telling them that during the process and they come in eyes wide open and you're compensating them for that type of an arrangement, great. That fits for a certain type of person. If you're the type of culture where, hey, we need flexibility because this is where I'm at in my life, this is what I enjoy, this is the type of work environment I want to be in, great. Be honest about your culture. Be honest about it. Once again, it kind of flows through that whole interview process. But what we're seeing is people kind of waffling back and forth on like, in reality, they want their people there 7 to 7, but they're not willing to admit it because it's not kosher and they feel like they're going to violate somebody or block off some people, which they should. If that's not the environment for you, you shouldn't be there. So a couple of things, and I'll turn it over to you. I know you got some hard opinions on the work from home thing.

So here's the thing. I'm definitely not in the camp of saying everyone should be working from home. So I want to get that kind of like everyone— We're coming together in the middle.

Yeah.

I think that the one thing that I think a lot of people don't have perspective on is this is this is not a new phenomenon, this kind of push towards remote. Like 20 years ago when I kind of got into business, like no one worked from home. Like there was no like work from home policies. Like I didn't— I mean, the only people who work from home maybe were like salespeople who like they worked a territory, right? You know, but like, um, you know, most jobs were 5 days a week in the office and that's because the internet was new. We didn't have like the collaboration tools and stuff we have now. So it's been a constant and push. I think there was always a hesitance even still to make things as relaxed as it could have been, or make, make things a little more— like, there were certain bleeding-edge companies that were already doing it. Um, I think what happened with the pandemic is we just kind of pushed things forward 5 years, you know? Like, it's, it's pushing forward where more companies realized, you know, we didn't realize how adaptable we are as a workforce, you know? And I think that was the biggest thing that it proved, because most places were in a panic in March and April because they just thought, wow, we're not gonna get anything done. Like, if we don't open these offices up by next month, like, we're out of business. And you realize, actually, no, we're fine. We, we were able to get by. It really wasn't as big of a deal as we thought. On the flip side, I guess kind of your point is that I do believe there is an innovation bleed that's hard to measure. You know, I think there's certain things in terms of collaboration which is just done better in person. And it's, it's really hard to, to quantify. Um, and we might, but I think it's, I think it's real though. I think there's definitely places out there where if you even look at your own day, you're probably, you're probably able to get more done in terms of sheer productivity, but there might be certain things in terms of bouncing ideas off people, which is just harder to do. Brainstorming is probably harder. There's that creative element, which is more difficult. So I do think that, to your point, places that are saying, "We're selling our headquarters and kind of going back," I think any company that takes that full on is going to have some other issues in terms of innovation. I guess the only other points I would have is I do think that companies that want to go back to 5 days a week in the office, I think it's a mistake. Just because I think you're greatly limiting the talent pool, especially when you don't need to. I guess was my point that I wanted to make before. Like, there may be some professions where you do need people to be there 5 days a week, but they're in the minority. And if that's your hard and fast opinion is, okay, once this is over, like, we're going back to the business way it was, like, you know, you're gonna, you know, like the talent pool might've been, you know, might've been big. I'm here on the podcast, they can't see me holding my hands out here. Might've been really wide, but as soon as you decide to, But the problem is, like, a lot of those people now, they realize, you know, I can find a job where I can get one day a week from home, which is all I really need, you know what I mean, to be able to take care of some dumb stuff, you know what I mean? But it makes a huge impact in the employee's life, or two days a week or whatever it is. And if you want to rule those people out from your hiring process, like, you're going to miss out on a ton of good talent. And we're seeing it now already. We're already seeing places that, for whatever reason, now during the pandemic decided, hey, we need to get people back as fast as possible. And, you know, these are employees that might have been there for a couple years, loved it there, to get one taste of, wait, I was actually able to do my job without being in the office every day. And they're like, yeah, I'm not sticking with this. Like, I'll find some other company that gets it, you know. So that was my take, I guess. And when we had that kind of disagreement, is just that, like, you're— the talent, the, the talent pool is going to be extremely limited for companies that don't, that don't have a good reason to go back to 5 days a week other than they just— the owner likes it.

Yes, and it's a very 2020 thing of us to have an online disagreement about HR. So the, uh, and I'll, I'll agree with the bulk of what you said there in that first and foremost, I, I'm ecstatic about this. So we've been Zoom with our clients no matter where they are in the country for the last 6 years. And it's been my face or one of my teammates' faces with a black image from the other side. You know, they never have their cameras on and now Now, you're the jerk if you don't turn your camera on. And so it's awesome in that we've been able to— I mean, once again, we're very fortunate and blessed to be able to serve companies all over the country based on what we do. And so now it's much easier to say, oh, great, James, I can see you. I can get to know you a little bit better. This helps. And so I think that's one of those little sort of minor wins of this pushing forward thing. But to your point, know that if you are looking for talent For me in Columbia, South Carolina, we're a small market. There are certain roles that I just struggle to fill here and have for the last 6 years. And so as soon as I open them up nationally, and I understand though going into that, that I have to find the right person who has experience working from home, who is set up for this kind of thing, who's kind of, it's not a first job you're going to work fully remote. I'm sorry, I hate to tell it to you. I'm sorry for you, Johnny 22-year-old out here listening to this, but I'm not hiring you for your first job to work 100% remote. But to add flexibility into the role, I go back to one of the presentations I give all the time is on generations in the workforce. One of the most valued benefits, the most valued benefit for millennials is flexibility. And so that opportunity, even if it's not, hey, a day remote, it's like, look, dude, I don't need to be here from 9:00 to 5:00. This isn't an old school punching the clock and being here at these specific hours. I'm a late sleeper, I'm an early riser. I've got to go and run and do this thing in the middle of the day. I don't need You need to check in with somebody. So, so adding flexibility doesn't, doesn't have to sort of break you in one direction or the other, but, but great points on, on that. And it sounds like we're mostly in agreement, which is a shame really.

The one thing, I mean, the one thing I would say too is that the challenge is not, the challenge is not working, it's onboarding. Like to your point about like junior employees and whatnot, that's where, I mean, that's where honestly where we're seeing the bigger struggle is that it's hard to train people when you're, when you're all remote, you know what I mean? What we do internally, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of shadowing, a lot of, you know, kind of collaborative, especially with the more junior people who are still learning their craft. And I think that's where the biggest, that's where the biggest challenge is with all this, is getting people kind of acclimated with your company as well as getting people kind of trained up where you want them to be. I'm sure there's people who are figuring it out slowly, but it's just, it's harder no matter what when you're just not in the same location. So, but for experienced employees, like You know, I just go back to getting the job done. Like, who cares?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big proponent of it. And quite frankly, it's, it's just opened up the, the whole world is our oyster, but once again, interviewing to know that you have to find a person who works well remote, like be pickier in that perspective. And don't just take the people who say, I would love to work remote. It has been a little bit of a key that we found as well. So, so the name of the podcast is HR Simplified. So let's simplify everything we just talked about here. James, because we went all over the map. So if I'm, if I'm hiring somebody, what do I need to do better than what I'm doing today? And how should I look at work from home going forward? Break this down for me. What the hell did we just talk about?

You want the entire podcast or just the last like 10 minutes?

Summarize this for me, James, write the description.

Alright, so first off, small, medium-sized businesses, the biggest challenge they have in hiring is under- underestimating how difficult the process is and how tricky it can be and how costly it can be. Um, you cannot— I, I, I'm a firm believer that content is the best way to hit all 3 points of attracting talent on the front end to your organization, marketing your product, as well as backing up your business development efforts, which is kind of marketing, but I think it's in terms more of a one-to-one thing. You can't outsource your thought leadership. That's the one thing that only you can convey. All the other support aspects are things you can get people to do. But one way or another, like, you as a small business owner, you have to take a vested interest in being vocal as a thought leader, as well as understanding that a hiring process is tricky. You need people who— you need to make sure you get experienced talent acquisition or HR people who can tell you when you're screwing up, who can tell you when your process is broken, because that's the other thing that really turns off candidates, gets the word out that you're not providing good candidate experience, that you guys don't know what you're doing when you're not able to when there's that disconnect between the hiring manager owner and the people on the front lines of the recruiting process. Um, what else do we get into? So, um, we talk a little bit about kind of, um, culture, which I hate calling it culture nowadays, but why diversity of thought and all kinds of diversity are important for kind of business deliverables. It's gonna be good for kind of employee retention. Then I think we skipped over to remote work from there and just talked about how I think we both have decided, despite the fact we thought we'd have more disagreements, that, um, it's not gonna— I, I think going fully remote is not something will be long-term, but I think having some flexibility, if you're not doing that and you're still stuck in your ways, you're gonna miss out on good talent. There are still some challenges out there, but this is a process that's been going for 20-plus years in terms of things slowly becoming more flexible.

True. And I love your comment on it just pushed it forward 5 years, if not more, which I think is tremendous for all of us. So, so tell us a little bit about Hirewell, Careerwell, and where people can find you.

Yeah, so Hirewell, I'm in Chicago. You can find me on LinkedIn. So James Hornick, easy to find. My email address is james@hirewell.com. Hirewell, we are a recruiting firm based in Chicago. I'm a partner with the firm, been there for 15 years now since 2005. We, when I joined, we were a tiny 4-person shop. We just did tech recruiting, but now we're about 50. So we're still a smaller business, but we We have dedicated practice areas to a bunch of parts. So technology, digital marketing, HR, finance, accounting, sales. That way, work with companies, we can solve a lot of different hiring challenges. We also do a lot of what we call managed recruiting, where for companies that do need to scale, we can actually— we don't just source candidates. We can have someone assigned, be your internal recruiter, or partner with your internal recruiters should you have a spike in hiring, which you're not able to deal with, but having the rest of the organization work with that person to get like ramp up hiring for all those 5 areas, tech, marketing, and whatnot quickly. And we can do it much more cost-effective than traditional hiring fees, which I could rattle off on about how bad contingent is as a business model. Um, CareerWell, uh, CareerWell was our passion project during the pandemic. I love recruiting and I love helping companies hire, but we wanted to do something was more people-focused, how to make people better job seekers. So CareerWell, we basically create a lot of core content around how to search for a job, that goes more about networking, informational interviews, not getting— falling into the trap of just applying to lots of jobs which you never hear back on. We also do one-to-one coaching because I think a lot of people have 80% of it down, it's just they still struggle with their job search because there's little tweaks they need to make. We're putting together some technology tools there too. So, um, I think I rattled it all off there in a minute.

So that's awesome, man. Yeah, definitely follow James on LinkedIn, he's a great follow, talking a lot about talent acquisition from all sides of the table, which I think is refreshing. You know, to your point, the candidate experience is one of the things I think we all forget about as small businesses and something that we need to be more conscious of. And so, look, I really appreciate the time. It's been a great conversation and appreciate you dropping some knowledge on us, man. Anything else you want to share?

Nah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to hear the podcast when you finally get everything kicked live. And yeah, appreciate taking the time with me.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate it.