How I Hire The Best People (Steal My Methods So You Can Too)
In this solo episode Omar Zenhom shares the hiring framework that turned his worst hiring mistakes—costing him $500,000—into a series of successful hires (Cindy, Carl, Sonny). He argues that hiring is the highest‑leverage decision for a business owner and quantifies the cost of a mediocre hire (≈30% of salary). He warns against hiring out of desperation and instead recommends building a hiring system before a seat is vacant. The core of the episode is a seven‑step method: (1) prioritize attitude over skill, (2) craft job posts as advertisements that attract the right people and repel the wrong ones, (3) use a pre‑interview task to filter candidates, (4) run interviews as genuine conversations rather than interrogations, (5) conduct deep, texture‑rich reference checks, (6) “hire slow, fire fast” – take extra time to verify a hire and act quickly to remove a bad fit, and (7) implement a 90‑day test/onboarding plan that serves as a mutual fit assessment. He also stresses that while frameworks are essential, gut instinct and intuition play a role when evidence aligns. The episode ends with a call to subscribe and a teaser for related content on hiring women.
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When it comes to hiring, I've made some of the worst decisions of my life. Like, really bad. Like, losing $500,000 bad. That one hurt me so much that I said to myself, I've had it. I'm going to do everything I can to be the best recruiter I can be. And since then, I've made some amazing hires. The best ones are still with me today. Cindy, Carl, Sonny. These people are rock stars on my team. People who've made my business better in ways I didn't even know were possible. So what's the difference between the great hires and the disasters? It was a solid hiring process. And in this episode, I'm going to give you mine. The exact methods I use to find, evaluate, and hire people who build a great business for you. This is all the stuff I had to learn the hard way so you don't have to. Now, before I get into how, I want to say something that most people will never say to you. I wish, I absolutely wish somebody explained this to me earlier. And here it is. Hiring is the highest leverage decision you can make as a business owner. It's not marketing. It's not product. It's not pricing. It's hiring. A great hire, a great team member will do things you never asked them to do, will solve problems you never knew even existed in your business. They will make the people around you better. A great hire will make you money. They'll save you time. They'll save you headaches. And guess what? A bad hire will do the exact opposite. They'll create problems everywhere they go. They drain everyone's energy. They stay longer than they should because letting somebody go is uncomfortable and very difficult to do. And most business owners just really avoid discomfort. Here's a number I want you to hear with both your ears. Okay? Seriously. I found that a mediocre hire can cost you on average 30% of a person's annual salary, 30%. That's when you factor in lost productivity, the time spent managing the situation at hand, the toll it takes on the team, uh, the cost of starting the hiring process all over again. And that's just the average. A really bad hire can cost you your business. The first thing I want you to do is to avoid the most common mistake that I see. Business owners, when they wanna hire, they are desperate. You know what I'm talking about. They wait until the pain is unbearable, until they're so overwhelmed and so behind and so burnt out that they'll take anyone with a pulse just to get some relief. And desperation is the worst possible state to hire from. Why? Because when you're desperate, you overlook red flags. You are over-forgiving. You convince yourself the small concerns, the small things that you're kinda noticing that are not right are not a big deal. You basically hire the person who's available rather than the right person for your business. And then after 3 months, uh, you find out that, oh my gosh, this person is actually the worst person I could have hired. And now you have a performance problem on top of everything else. So the rule I follow is start hiring before you need to. I'm going to give you a perfect example. Right now I'm shooting this episode in my studio office. Okay. We're hiring a video producer, somebody to run all our cameras, do the editing, be our video person. I don't actually need to hire this person. Okay. I'm doing this fine, but I want to level up my game. I want to take the production to the next level. I want to produce more content. Guess what? This week, this Thursday, we have 7 interviews lined up for this position that we put out. I'm in a position right now where I can be picky. I don't need to to just choose the first person that is willing to do the job. I have a pipeline of candidates that have applied for this position. I have their CVs, I have their resumes. They shot a video talking about themselves. I have the luxury to be selective now because being selective is the most powerful tool in hiring. Being able to say, hey, who's the best person? Not who's the good enough person. So keep this in mind, hire before you need them because you don't want to hire from a position of desperation. Bad position to be in. So let me give you my methods. Here we go. Method number 1, hire for attitude first and skill second. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but in 20 years of building teams, I have never once regretted hiring someone with an exceptional attitude and teachable skills. But guess what? I've regretted plenty of times of hiring people that are highly skilled with a questionable attitude. Listen, skills can be taught. Anybody can be taught anything. Anybody who has a skill was taught it. That's just how it happens. Okay? Attitude, on the other hand, cannot be taught. It's a choice. Somebody's attitude is something that comes within. Work ethic can't be taught. The willingness to take ownership when things go wrong, that can be taught. The integrity that they must have and tell you the truth when something is not going right. When it's inconvenient for them to kind of, kind of fess up, "Hey, there's something that's not so good with what I just did right now." That can't be taught. The humility to say, "I don't know, but I'll find out," or "I need help," that can't be taught. These things are either there or they're not. In the interview, I always ask this question: "Tell me about a time you made a serious mistake at work. What happened and what did you do?" In the interview, one of two things happen. Either some people go quiet and give a very vague answer, or they suddenly blame someone else for their mistake. And obviously that's a red flag. And others will look you in the eye, own it completely, describe exactly what they did to fix it. And they tell you what they learned in the process. That second person is the person we call back. That's the person that gets shortlisted. That's the person that we really are considering hiring. And 9 times out of 10, we hire them every single time because the way someone handles their own failure is the most accurate preview you ever will get. Method number 2, the job post is an advertisement, not just a form they fill out. I have to say that most job descriptions are terrible. How do I know this? Because my job descriptions used to be terrible, just like everybody else's. But we worked very hard on improving our job descriptions and making them more than just a list of requirements and bullet points and some corporate language that reads like a legal document, right? Nobody great is going to be excited by a job description that starts with like, you must have 3 to 5 years experience and strong communication skills. Your job post is not a form. It's an advertisement. And if you want to see an example, by the way, you can go to our job posts, just go to 100mba.net/jobs and you can see our available jobs right now. And you can see how we write our job posts. Why do I say this? Why do I say it should be an advertisement? Because it's the first impression a great candidate will have of your business. It's the first signal if they want to work there or not. And it needs to do two things simultaneously. First, it needs to attract the right people. And then second, it needs to repel the wrong ones to save you time and headaches because you don't want people applying that are just not right for you. The way you do both is to be specific and honest. Be specific about the role and what it requires, the day-to-day. You know, on top of our job description, we also include a video. Right? And in the video, I say, "Hey, this is going to be hard work. OK? If you don't like hard work, I'm sorry, this is not the job for you." And that's OK. There's plenty of fish in the sea. You want to attract the people that are like, "Yeah, I like hard work. I like to grow. I like to roll up my sleeves and take responsibility." And be honest about what working with you is actually like. The pace, the expectations, the culture. We're very clear that we're not going to give you and spoon-feed every answer. You're going to have to figure out some things on your own. And that's part of you having ownership of your role. And this is why it's really helpful to just describe the kind of person who will thrive in your company and the kind of person who won't. You can even include a small specific task or question that the candidate has to complete as a part of the application. So they get a taste of what it's like to do work in this position in your business. Something short, something specific. For example, we ask our candidates to shoot a video to answer a few questions. We give them some questions, they answer it on a video. That one additional cut cuts our applicant pool by 70%. Method number 3, the pre-interview filter. I don't start with a full interview, I start with a short task. Uh, this is a good way to do this, especially with highly technical roles, like when we were hiring engineers and developers and designers at Webinar Ninja, our software company. A brief task or a simple problem to solve is a good way to find out how they think, how they problem solve. And we used to do this like, for example, for developers, where we would get them to code a part of a software, like, you know, like sign in with your username and password. And we really didn't care the way they coded it or what the language they use. We just want to understand how they actually work. And it would be a live call, like a live Zoom call. And we'd go through the interview and they would have like an hour to do this. And this whole thing was recorded. And Go ahead and work, and it could be like an open book test. We just want to understand how they actually function. Listen, the resume will never reveal this, so you need to actually trust but verify. Verify they can actually do what you want them to do, and how they do it is just as important. We also look to see, is there any extra thought or any extra effort they're making in their task, in completing the task? Because that's exactly what they need to bring to the job— their own personality, their own approach. The ones who do the minimum on the task and don't really try to go above and beyond or add their own flair, we're not really interested in them. We're looking for somebody who's exceptional. Hey, if you're finding today's episode useful, I highly recommend you subscribe to the show if you're not subscribed already, because we have an upcoming episode I'm working on right now that I think you're going to absolutely love. And it's about the truth of running two businesses at once. I did this for a decade and I'm going to talk about what are the trade-offs, what are the difficult things you're going to face and what are some of the joys of running two businesses successfully at the same time. And would I advise it? Uh, you know, I did it for 10 years. I don't do it anymore. I just focus on this business now since we sold Webinar Ninja, but I want to share with you what I learned along the way so that if you're thinking about jumping into a new business, or maybe you want to do two at the same time, you have some data points. You have some information that you can use as you navigate that journey. So hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Method number 4: The interview is a conversation. Not an interrogation. You're not some sort of KGB agent trying to like squeeze information out of them. The candidate is going to be nervous naturally because their livelihood is on the line here. They want this job. So you don't want to make this a rigid conversation. You want to make this a fluid conversation. You want to make it a conversation just like you would have a conversation with them when they're in the job. Because if you don't make it a conversation and you just do rapid-fire questions, you're not going to really learn anything about them. You're going to learn about how they interview. Okay? You don't want that. How somebody interviews, some people are really good at interviewing. That's a completely different skill. Okay. You want to try instead to have a genuine conversation, just like you're meeting somebody at a party and you want to get to know them. Be curious about the person, where they came from, what drives them, why are they doing this career, right? Why are they applying for this job? What's going on right now? Why are you unhappy in your current job? Where did you fail in life and where are you at right now in your life? Like, are you on the rebound? Are you, in a different season now? Did you just have a child and now you're trying to get back into the workforce? What, what's the situation? By understanding who they are, you really get a full picture to understand what their motivations are, what drives them, what motivates them, what lights them up. So I like to ask open-ended questions and then I shut my mouth. Most interviewers, they talk too much. They want to fill in the silence. They want to make them feel comfortable by just talking. No, you need to lead by allowing them the space to talk. Just ask the question and wait. The silence is uncomfortable, but in that discomfort is useful information because guess what? The job, it's going to be uncomfortable sometimes. And how they handle silence in the interview is how they'll handle pressure in the role. Some of my favorite questions are, what are you genuinely not good at? I want a real answer here, not a strength dressed up as a weakness, like, "I work too hard and, you know, I'm an overachiever." Another question I like to ask is, "What did you think of this role when you first read the description?" I want their honest first impression. Here's another question. What would your last employer say your biggest area for growth is? This allows me to understand if they're self-aware, if they're honest, or if they're just going to be vague and kind of protect themselves. I'm trying to understand who they are. I'm listening to how they relate to their own gaps or failures and their own reality. I'm also looking for how they answer. I love it when a candidate hears one of my questions and says to me, "Huh, let me think of that for a moment. Hmm, never thought about that, or I haven't thought about that in a while, but off the top of my head, here it is." That's somebody being honest. That's not somebody who's like rushing to give me the answer I want to hear. Method number 5, check references like you mean it. Okay. Most reference checks, people treat them like a formality, a 5-minute call where they ask a soft question just to make sure that, hey, this person actually work here. That tells you almost nothing. It just tells you that the person's not a liar. Here's how we like to check references. We call, we never email, and I don't lead with, can you tell me about working with this person? This person is in a job, they're working, they're busy. I got to be a little bit more specific if I want to pull out the answer I'm looking for. So I lead with something like, I love your honest opinion. We're thinking seriously about bringing this person on. What should I know going into this relationship? How do I set them up for success? That question is completely different. It assumes that the hire is happening, and it gives the reference permission to really share information rather than just a sales pitch. Oh yeah, this guy is great, wonderful. Because now they're helping their former colleagues succeed and not protecting themselves by saying, hey, the best way to kind of ramp them up is 1, 2, 3, 4. They're good listener. If you give them, you know, exact instructions, they'll follow it. 9 times out of 10, the reference will tell you something real. They'll give you like a working style note, a growth area, a situation where things were difficult and how to avoid them. That information is gold. And if a reference gives you 3 minutes of nothing but glowing superlatives and zero texture or zero specificity, that's a signal too. Okay. Real relationships have nuances. Even when you talk about your best friends, you know, they're not perfect. If there's no nuance in the reference, it means the relationship was either not real or they're choosing not to tell you something. I'm not saying they need to badmouth them, but they got to be honest. A good example of this is like, "Oh, so-and-so, she's fantastic. And I really loved working with her. She was really hardworking. I got to say, though, sometimes her internet was kind of shoddy. So if there's a way that you can help her get better internet connection, I think that she'll be more reliable because that's the only thing I can really think of that, you know, stopped us from communicating constantly." Now I know that she's a super hard worker, that she has a lot of potential, but she's got this one problem where her internet connection is just horrible. So if I solve that problem for this person, there's a good chance they're going to be an amazing hire. Method number 6: Hire slow, fire fast. This is the hardest one to actually do. I'm going to be honest with you, but it's probably the most important one. Hire slow means resist the urge, resist to move quickly when you find someone you like. Sometimes we just like people. We're excited. They're a good candidate. They feel like the right fit. They're fun to hang out with and it feels like momentum. It's not. It's just dopamine. Okay. Take an extra few days. Have a second conversation with them. Do the reference check like we talked about. Get them to do the task. I love the phrase trust but verify. That extra time you're putting in is going to verify you're making the right decision. Now, what does fire fast mean? Well, it means when things are not working, Don't wait. I gotta say, 95% of the time when I have a hire that just is not working out, even when I put them on a plan, even when I try to train them up, months go by and 95% of the time they don't get better. It's just a bad hiring mistake. That's on me. It's my failure. This is why, in my experience, as soon as we see that this hire is not working out and is not able to be salvaged, we fire immediately. We usually give them another month to see if there's any way they can get to where they need to be. We have a conversation so they know that this is what's going to happen if things don't change. But in my experience, it almost never does. It happened once, but it's pretty rare. The moment your gut tells you that someone is not right for the role or the team, trust that feeling. That feeling is powerful. Have an honest conversation with them. Give them clarity. Let them know that they're not winning right now. Let them know that because when they know that, they know that their back's against the wall. They need to change. Things have to happen. By the way, nothing destroys team morale faster than them watching the leader keep someone around that clearly isn't performing well. And they're kind of just not picking up their weight. You know, it's just not good for the team. It also signals that your standards don't matter anymore. Okay. That you don't really care about the standards of the company. And one more thing, whoever hired the person is responsible for firing them. So if that's you, you must do the firing. If that's your manager, they must do the firing. Why do I say this? Because when you have to fire somebody, it's never comfortable, it never gets easy, and you need to experience that pain so that when you go to hire again, you are reminded, hey, I don't want to experience that again, I don't want to have to do that firing again. So I better take my time and make the right hire. Method number 7, my final one, the 90-day test. Every hire I make comes with a clear 90-day framework, not a formal probation, a genuine onboarding plan that makes sure that we're a good fit for each other. It's a chance for us to find out, hey, are you good for our team? And if you are happy to work for us, by the end of the 90 days, we have a clear answer. You have a clear answer as the candidate, right? There's no feeling, there's no hoping. You know exactly what the job is like, and it's your chance within those 90 days as the team member to say, hey, this is not a good fit for me, I gotta go. And that's okay, but we have that right too. So we basically have like a contracted role for 90 days. And the reason why we do this, and I say this point blank in the interview, hey, you look great on paper and you're interviewing great, and I love the conversation we're having. But that doesn't tell me how you're going to work in the team. That doesn't tell me how you're going to perform with the actual customers we have and the actual work that we're going to embark on. I need to see you in action to know for sure you're the right person. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to do a 90-day plan. And then after the 90 days, we can have an honest conversation with each other. If you are like, yep, I love working here and we're like, yep, we love having you, then it's long-term. Now, before I wrap up today's episode, I want to push back on myself just for a moment. Got to be honest, because everything I just shared is a framework, and frameworks are useful, but they're not the whole story. Some of the best hires I've made broke most of my rules. Okay? The resume wasn't polished. The interview was a little bit awkward. The reference check was, you know, thin just because the people they work with were just as awkward as them. And it was really hard to get the answers I was looking for. But something was there. There was a hunger in them, a clarity about who they are and what they wanted to build. In the interview, I felt like I was having a conversation with somebody that was going somewhere with their life. Hiring is as much as an art as it is a science. Okay? So trust your gut. Trust your intuition. The frameworks are there to protect you from the obvious mistakes. But I found the best hires require Trusting something you can't fully articulate. I can't put my finger on it, but this person's got something. The key is this: when your gut overrides the process, know that it's happening. Be conscious of it and make the call. Be conscious about it. Not because you're rushed, not because you're desperate. It's because you found the person. This is the person. I know it. That distinction between conscious judgment and lazy shortcutting, like just trying to rush this situation, is the difference between a great instinct hire and a disaster, right? When your gut can be proven by the evidence you see in the interview and in the whole process, then you know for sure you got the right person. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Hiring is not a task you do when a seat is empty or you're desperate for a position. It's a system that you build before you actually need it. A great team doesn't just happen because you got lucky. It happens because you took hiring seriously. You saw it as a priority as the founder, as the leader of your business. You were deliberate about finding somebody with a great attitude. You were honest with the job post. Okay? You were clear about who you're looking for and who you're not looking for. You filtered out early the people that you're not looking for. You asked the questions in the interview that really revealed the real person that's in front of you. You took references seriously and you checked what actually mattered about this person so that you can make sure that you win with this new candidate. You take your time and you make a deliberate decision. And every new person that you hire has a 90-day plan. So you make sure you verify that this person is perfect for you and the team. If you do these things consistently and you build that system, you will build that dream team. You've always imagined. And it starts with one hire. Hey, if this episode has been helpful for you, if it's given you some clarity, I think it'll pair well with an episode that I published recently called Why I've Always Hired More Women. I don't wanna share too much. I want you to listen to the episode to hear why I say this and why this has been my experience. I believe that these two episodes together will give you a very complete picture of how I think about building a great team. Go check it out. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you in the next one.
