Never Make These Interviewing Mistakes!

Hey everyone, it's Mike over@landscapebusinesscourse.com and today I'm going to have some important announcements at the end of the day show. But today I wanted to talk about interviewing. And so we had a great conference, but that's in the past and we're moving forward and going to do some great things. And so I want to hit it right off the bat back to kind of our normally scheduled programming in terms of just tips and hard tactics that you can apply in your business. So I want to talk about interviewing and there's four takeaways I want to share with you when it comes to interviewing. Right now we're coming into the spring season. Many of you are going to be hiring a bunch of new team members, new employees, new office staff, new crew leads, project managers, estimators, people out in the field. And so I wanted to share some of the tactics that I use, things I think about when it comes to interviewing. The reason it's on my mind right now is I've interviewed over 20 people in the past couple days. And so seeing that volume of individuals, screening them out and then finding two or three good ones has been really rewarding. And something I've been thinking about, obviously a lot as I've been doing it the past couple days. And so a couple things before I even get into my four tips in terms of interviewing is like, you gotta remember the labor market, it's very, very tight right now. If you have a great candidate, there's a good chance, if they have other interviews and other jobs that they are looking for, prospective employers, there's a good chance they're gonna get gobbled up pretty fast. So you need to have a system in place that is going to quickly screen them, interview them, or give them a job offer, onboard them, train them. Like, you gotta get through that process efficiently and quickly. And also effectively, I can actually get things done, especially when it comes to the training side of things. So you don't want to speed through it? By no means. We probably lean towards actually taking too much time on many aspects of our system for hiring. However, that being said, the balance to that is that the labor market is very, very tough. And if you have a players that you're interviewing, there's a good chance they have five, six other jobs they could walk out and get tomorrow, no problem whatsoever. And so I want to share four things that I really believe in when it comes to interviewing process and finding great talent. Finding, finding great team members for your organization. Number one is you have to Have a screening process. So too many of you are just getting any applicant and immediately you're setting up an interview. You've got to have a screening process. So I really recommend that be a phone call, that be something you don't want to waste your time with a whole bunch of interviews. We are very fortunate to have a lot of people applying to work for us. I know that's not like for everybody, that's not the way it is. I know that. However, for us, we have a ton of people applying and if I just interviewed every single one, I wouldn't get anything done, especially come this time of year, spring when we're hiring up. And so I'd really recommend getting a screening process that might be an online form that might be an office assistant, if you have one that is screening people out over the phone, looking for how they talk on the phone, what they talk about, their last employer. Just a couple key indicators that they can quickly pick up on and screen out individuals that you know aren't going to work for your organization. Maybe if you have a no smoke smoking policy or no drugs, or you know that they're going to be in a background check, those are things you can quickly screen people out before they even have to get in front of you. And take your time. You print off the resume, you have to talk and all of that. So before you do any of the interviewing, you should have a screening process. Online forms are great. Talking to an actual employee of yours, an office staff member, and looking for a few different check marks. Very important screening process can be looking through people's resumes before they actually come to the interview to see are they just hopping from job to job, are they traveling all over the place and never really settling down, etc. So that's the first tip, is have a screening process. Number two is don't waste their time and don't waste your time. If I know a candidate is not going to be a good fit for our organization, and I know that early in the interviewing process, I'm going to get that interview done as fast as possible. I've done some of the interviews in less than five minutes in the past few days. Others have taken almost an hour. Those ones that are five minutes, I am not going to waste their time pretending as if we might be interested in them when they might have other job offers lined up or other.

Interviews that day. I'm going to quickly get them out. If I know that they're not working for the organization. It's not going to work for Our culture. I'm not going to waste my time. I'm not going to actually even call the references if I know right from the get go that they're not going to work for our organization. And so what I will do to get through an interview is basically to tell them, look, my job here is to just get your references and the office will contact you if they're interested in you coming back. And so I just get the references and they're done. So I can get those in like five minutes. Usually I get the phone number, I ask them what, you know, might ask them what they think that employer is going to say about them when I call. However, it's very, very quick. If I know early in the interview process that their demeanor, their level of professionalism, whatever it is, if I don't feel like that's going to be a good fit and I follow my gut on this one, if I don't feel like that's going to be the case, it's just get those references, let them know that we'll call them and contact them if we want them to come back and then they're out the door. We do not contact those references. We don't make any attempt to continue down that road. If they're not going to make a really good first impression, they're not even on the waiting list. And so they're off, they're gone and, and we move on. Don't waste their time, don't waste your time. That's number two. Number three is references do matter. We have lost even the past few days one very good candidate. And we offered them a job, but they had already gone and got another job. Because again, a players do have multiple jobs, they can quickly go and find those. However, we were not going to relinquish the ability that we have in terms of getting references. We were not going to speed that process up. Their references didn't get back to us for over like six, seven days, almost a week. And so it caused us to not be able to hire that employee because by the time we called them back and offered a job, they had already got a job elsewhere. So that hurt. That stings. But by no means should you hire someone without references, in my opinion. If a previous employer cannot tell us that they are the best employee they've ever had, or they would hire them back in a heartbeat or can't have some raving review in terms of a reference, there's no way I'm going to hire them. If it's mediocre, if it's that they were okay. It kind of seemed like they're. They're just kind of like they're hiding something or that it was an inconsistent performance. There's just no question about it. They're done. There has to be at least two or three raving references and reviews from previous employers or managers to make us even. Continue them in the interview process and then offer them a job. So that's the third thing. References matter. Do not think they're a thing of the past or that you can just look at someone's resume. Resumes lie. People lie. References and people that they have worked with over the course of time. Getting two, three of those is very, very important to me. And something. We will not hire someone. I don't care how great I think they are, how good of an impression they made in the interview, no matter how good their resume is, how professional and all well dressed like that's all good and fine, but those can come back to sting you pretty fast. Definitely get references. Definitely, definitely me. That should be a massive percentage of the weight in the scale of whether or not you hire someone is those references. And if they work great for another employer, there's a good chance they'll work good for you. If they didn't and they were lazy or they were entitled, they didn't show up to work on time or they had a bad attitude, there's a very good chance they're going to carry that over into your organization. And you can hear that straight from the horse's mouth. If you call the references, make sure those references are actual direct reports. Make sure the references are previous employers. If a potential employee and applicant says anything derogatory, not negative, but derogatory about their previous employer, immediately they lose a lot of credibility in my mind. Because if they're going to talk behind their previous employer's back, regardless of how bad they were, there's a really good chance they're going to find fault with me. There's a really good chance they're going to find fault with others in the team. And there's a really good chance they're going to start spreading that behind everyone's back. So I also am watching that. So number four is be efficient. And that's when I would come back to the recommendation that you have a career fair. So I've done 20 some odd in the past couple days, but I'm done with that. We got some of the key hires I needed right away. And so what we're going to do now is we are Going into career fair mode. So every couple weeks for the next few months, we will be having a career fair. And at that career fair we might have 30, 40 people come in an evening, do a presentation. And maybe out of those 40, 50 people, five, six of them I'm going to interview and now maybe three or four of those I hire. And so we can weed a huge amount of people out at that career fair by telling them about the job, explaining what's going to be expected of them, what the working conditions are going to be, what our culture is like. Some people that's just not going to work for them. And so we can weed them out without having to spend time in the interview, waste their time, waste our time, don't want to do that. So career fairs are great. I can get 40, 50 people instantly, weed them down to 10%. It's. And then find a few good applicants in that range. The great, the great team players, they're going to like the fact that you have a system in place to weed out all the BNC players. They are going to enjoy the fact that they are background checked and screened and drug tested because they know that you have a system in place to keep out all the bad turnover that usually is in all of the landscaping businesses. And so you're going to attract great talent there. It has to be efficient, it has to be fast because you can't have days on end, weeks on end, where they, those great, great people can go find other jobs. So make that system tight and efficient. So those are the four things I would recommend as we go into the spring for interviewing. Number one, get a screening process. Don't be hiring every single person that wants to work at your job, at your place or is referred to you or you see, like, don't, you know, screen people out, become more efficient. Don't waste time. That leads right in. Number two is don't waste their time. Don't waste your time. If you know they're not going to be a good applicant early in the process, early in that interview, don't spend 30 minutes with them, 40 minutes with them, and that's a waste of your time. Get rid of it out the door and get on to what you need to be doing as a business owner, growing your business. That's number two. Don't waste their time. Don't waste your time. Number three is references matter. At least two minimum. Three is preferable. Get three glaringly amazing reviews that people like, literally would stand up and applaud them and absolutely say that they're the best employee that everyone loved them, everyone got along with them. They're great team leader. They were able to learn fast. They were fast and efficient. They never slacked on the job. They best employee I've ever had. Words like that is what I'm looking for in a reference. I'm not even doing my reference checks anymore. I've handed that down to my office manager and she does a fantastic job of again screening people out and maybe they have to come back again if certain things in that in those references need to be clarified. Number four is be efficient and have a career fair. Get a bunch of people together, a bunch of applicants together and weed out 80, 90% of the people you are never going to work for your company. Never going to. They can't show up to a second appointment. They can't show up to an interview. They're just not going to be on time. Like if someone shows up late to a career fair, they're instantly done. And so those are the four things I would recommend you do as you scale up for the spring. Now I want to say a big thank you publicly. I put it on the person on the on the Facebook group that we have now for landscape Business course which if you're not a part of it, definitely want to join that just search Landscape business course as part of the Facebook group. Join the group. I said my thanks on there for everyone that came to the conference and I want to publicly say that it was, I feel a pivotal moment for me, pivotal moment for all the businesses that attended and I'm looking forward so much to the future, even more so for landscape business course and the future of what we're trying to do in the industry. And so my heartfelt thanks to everyone that was there. It was three days. It was a marathon. It was exhausting. It was 10 to 12 hours every single day of just absolute hardcore business. Small breaks, smart, small lunch breaks and just really digging into the meat of business marketing, hiring, project management. It was fantastic. And the big announcement is that we have already booked next year's event and we're going to try to book out the entire hotel. I'm looking for a much larger event in terms of number of people and because the amount of applications are registrants that we got the last couple days is enormous. But the hotel had already closed us down because they didn't have any more rooms since there was I never slotted rooms. I didn't know how many people were going to show up to this event. So this past year was great. There's like 50 businesses represented.

It blew my mind and far exceeded my expectations. And a lot of people stepped up to the plate, joined Pro plus and got behind the vision of what we're trying to do at Landscape Business course. And so I'm just going to quickly go over what that was. So Pro plus, if you haven't seen already, it's on the website, you can get information there. And what we did at the conference is open it up for the first time to the public and it was just for the people there at the conference. And we were able to get 14 or 15 companies to sign up for ProPlus. It's $379 a month and they get some fantastic content in terms of webinars, hot seats, live phone calls with myself a couple times a year and kind of content I can't share here just because I have my own business. I can't put my, the jobs and my team in jeopardy. I can't show certain things just because I can't control who watches these videos and listen to these episodes. And so it's a lot of behind the scenes stuff I couldn't even show at the conference maybe that I'm going to be able to share in Pro plus. So that's really cool. But what I really appreciated that these 1450s, 14 or 15 companies step to the plate is because we are starting a training facility. So it's something I've always wanted to do. It was pretty emotional for me when it all happened last night and people stepped up to the plate because it's something I've always wanted to do. I knew it was like the first step in getting to where we went with the industry and what we're trying to do in the industry. And so we are designing a training facility for landscapers, for the business owners, for their office managers, for their project managers and for their estimators. That's who we're building this facility for. It's a facility, it's a real place that you actually come. It's right next to the gym that I currently own. I signed the lease yesterday. And so Pro plus members, I'm going to be sending out a bunch of information next couple days, later this weekend. But by the way, I just need to clarify, it's not open registration. I know some people have already registered for ProPlus in the past few days, but if you are not at the conference, you can't get in. You can join the waiting list and if people fall out, I'm going to let people in. But we're going to cap it at 15 for now, and then at the next conference we'll let more people in. So if you want to join, that's fine. You can definitely go on the website, put your information in. But we're not going to allow any more people in more than 15. So if some people fall off or something happens, maybe we'll let a couple more in. But I would recommend if you want to join at the next year's conference or sometime later this year, if someone drops out, do fill application out. You can get in the waiting list. But I do want to say a big thank you to those that did step up. They're buying into the vision of what we're trying to do. We're trying to change the industry and we're trying to systematize and standardize the training for project managers, for estimators, for you as owners and for your office staff. And I'm going to use my staff to basically embred that into your people. So you can send your office manager and Liz, my office manager, can duplicate herself over the course of 2, 3 days with your office staff and make them into exactly what she has become. So I did that to her. She is now going to do that to your office staff. Same thing with my project managers. I'm going to have them teach your office, your project managers. I'm going to have them take your project managers out on jobs and teach them. We're going to have in class, we're going to have out in the field. Same thing with the estimators. We're going to walk them through our jobs and take them out in the field with our estimators and then we're gonna take them in the classroom at the facility and do training with them. So it's super awesome. There's gonna be a studio in this facility. And so within just a few months, the studio, what you see behind me is a super simple up against the wall, the whiteboard and this thing. It's not. I can't move very much. There's not much room for interviews. I don't have much. There's not much mobility here. I don't have a screen that I can show pictures or videos on. So it's going to be an actual real studio, video studio. So construction is going to be starting a couple weeks. I've signed the lease starting in February. We're going to get access. We're going to be able to start building it out. And it really comes down to those who stepped up at the conference and signed up for that monthly commitment. And so I am eternally grateful to them. And I really do believe this is the first step of something really great and awesome. And I just want to say thank you to those people. So I really do appreciate that. I hope something that I said today in terms of the interviewing process and did help you. We're all scaling up, getting a bunch of people this year. It's going to be harder than ever in this labor market. It's going to be harder than ever to compete with other industries, harder than ever to find good, hard working individuals and a team that is cohesive and a culture that is like a community. And so I really would encourage you to use these interviewing tips to get that culture, get those team members. And if you're at the conference, you know just how passionate I am about my team and how we hire people and the culture you create within your organization. And it's not because your Mother Teresa, it's because it's a great culture, makes a great profit. We talked the conference about the three things that make your business systems, people and cash. Those are the three pillars of your business. And people by far is the greatest, most important and probably Achilles heel of our industry. So I encourage you, use these interview tips, hire great people and by all means become a great leader that really cultivates that great culture within your business. I'm Mike andes. Check out landscapebusinesscourse.com we're doing some edits and revisions. So if you go there in the next few days, you might see a few little things off. But we're making a little bit faster improving the website and so I hope it is helpful to you all. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.