MBA1001 How to Find Great Talent Via Your Staff

Hey. Oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that gives you more business advice, tips, strategies in less time with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the hundred dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100. And in today's lesson, you will learn how to find great talent via your own staff. Finding a great hire on your team is not easy. Not only do you have to find somebody who has the skills to do the job, but also is a great cultural fit in your team. They have to have the right attitude and know what to expect. In today's lesson, I'm going to show you how you can find people like that through the people you already have on your team. Even if you only have one employee, that one employee can help you get other employees that are as good or better than them. In fact, that's exactly how we grew our team. Most of the hires that we've made through our staff, through the strategy I'll be sharing with you today are still with us today and have been with us for years. That's the kind of hire you want. You want somebody that's good, that's committed, that's in it for the long haul. Let me show you how to do it through through the staff you already have. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is brought to you by Long Tail Pro, a step by step system to help you quickly discover thousands of profitable, easy to rank keywords for almost any niche. Visit longtailpro.commba and use coupon code MB for a free trial and 30% off your subscription forever. Again, that's longtailpro.commba, and use code MBA. To start today's lesson, I want to share with you something that I've learned over the years to be very, very true. You can always train for skill, but you can't train for attitude. So when you're looking to hire a new staff member, their skills are important. You want somebody that's talented, that knows the job well, that can do a great job. But in my book, their attitude, their work ethic, their positivity and how they fit in with the team always trumps how skillful they are. Why? Because I can always train them. I can always train skill. Whatever they're being hired for, whether it's customer service or development or sales or whatever it is, they can learn new skills in the job. But an attitude is a choice. It's something that's really hard to turn around if they don't have a good one. So whenever you are hiring and you have to make a choice between somebody who's very skillful but their attitude is not as good as the other person with acceptable skills to do the job, not as good as the other one. Always go with the one with the better attitude, with the better outlook, with a better work ethic. And yes, that means with better references or the references have better things to say about them. All right, so let's get into how we can find this great hire. Through your own staff members. I like to see business teams as sports teams. If you look at a sports team, the players on the team, they work together towards a common goal, which is to win a championship, right? And the same goes in business. You have different players with different talents working together to have a successful business. But these are all individuals, right? And on a sports team, they have their own individual careers and they may leave teams, go to a different team, they might end their career at a different team. And the same thing goes with a business. You have great players, but sometimes they move around, they go to different companies and you get new players and you rebuild. And it's kind of like no hard feelings. The teams that do really well in sports, that win championships have great talent and great synergy. They work together, they all have a great attitude, they all share the same vision. And the same goes with business. Now, in your business, no matter how large your team is, even if you're a solopreneur and you've made one hire, and that one hire could be even a part time hire, a va, a virtual assistant. That's a team. Now, the person that is going to know exactly who you're looking for and knows exactly what you expect is the person that's already working with you. So you got to get these people on your side, you got to get your staff members understanding. We need more of you, more people like you on our team. This also cultivates the idea that this is our team, this is our company together. And this should encourage them to feel like, hey, this is my team, this is my company. I want to make it better with better talent, with people I know would do great here. And as you know, in sports and free agency and all that kind of stuff, other players call other players from other teams and say, hey, come play with us. We have a great team here. We have a lot of fun. Our coach is amazing. And usually those conversations are what make players move over to another team. Now, I'm not trying to tell you that you should poach other employees from other companies. These are people that are ready to move on, or maybe they're a free agent right there. They've left their job and they're looking for a new job. So you got to get your teammates, people that are already on your team, on your side. The second thing you got to do is that you have to make it very public in your organization who you're looking for. So anytime you have a job opening, even if it's just one job opening or if there are a hundred job openings, make sure the people on your team know what positions you're hiring for. Have a page on your website where your actual teammates can see the jobs and can refer other people to them. I would take it even a step further and I would put a message out with whatever communication tool you use in your team, whether it's Slack or Basecamp, and say, hey, we're hiring. Here are the positions. Here are the type of people that would be a great fit on our team. Tell them about the attitude that's important to you and phrase it in a way that they can totally get it. I like to just say, as you know, we like to have a lot of fun here. We want people that are flexible, we want people that are hard working, that will go the extra mile when needed, just like you guys. And what happens is that your staff will start thinking about, who do they know that would be good for these positions or this position? Because you've asked them. And most staff members, when the boss asks them to do something, they take it seriously. At the very least, they're going to take a moment to think, hey, do I know anybody who'd be good for this job? This job, this job? This is going to be especially easy if you're hiring for another position that's similar to their position. So say, for example, you're hiring a new customer service agent and they're a customer service agent. They know the job inside and out. They know what's required. It's easy for them to recruit somebody they know that's good. So say, for example, they go to a friend that they used to work with. They could say, hey, there's an opening in the company I work for. Let me tell a little bit about my day to day. This is what I do every day. This is why I like working there. This is why it's fun. This is why it's interesting. This is why it's challenging. There's an opening. I would love for you to apply. It'd be great if we could work together. So super simple for them to sell it to somebody else because they know the job inside and out. On top of that, we recognize that we all work on incentives, and there's nothing wrong with incentivizing your staff members for making or helping you make a great hire. So we like to offer a bonus to our staff members who refer a great hire a great employee, and they receive this bonus after the employee has passed their initial probation period. Some positions are three months probation, some positions are six months probation. But the point is that once they pass probation, that means, hey, they are a great hire, they're a keeper. You did a great job with that referral, and they get that bonus. And that bonus could be anything you choose. It could be cash, it could be time off, it could be even a prize. But the point here is that when they're incentivized, they're also going to feel like, hey, I'm not going to get this bonus if I don't make a good referral. They have to be good enough for the job, not get fired, pass probation with flying colors, then I get my bonus. On top of that, they don't want to look bad in front of their boss. They don't look bad in front of the organization. That they referred somebody that's really not that great. And for the most part, in our experience, all our referrals that have come from our staff have been winners again, because your staff knows your company, knows your expectations, knows the environment they're going to be working in, and they're able to translate that to somebody that is interested. So they're coming in with expectations. They're not surprised. They know how difficult it's going to be or as challenging it's going to be. They know that you're this type of manager. They understand the context of the environment they're coming into. Expectations are really important. So when they come in with those expectations in mind, they're ready. They already have a head start, so they know what kind of attitude they have to have to succeed. Guys, I got more on today's topic. 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You can have a beautiful, powerful online store up and running in hours. And because you listened to this podcast, the $100 MBA show, if you visit weebly.com mba, you'll get 15% off your first purchase. That's Weebly. W E e b l y.com MBA don't just build a beautiful website, build a successful online business with Weebly. So using the strategies that I mentioned today, making your positions public to your staff, making sure they feel like they have ownership over the fact that you can make this team better and make this business better by helping us hire, by communicating the type of attitude and the type of person you're looking for to your team as well as incentivizing them for finding somebody great. This is a formula that really has worked for us. And to be quite honest, it's become really cost effective because finding a hire through your staff member can be very, very cost effective compared to getting a recruiter or putting up really expensive job ads everywhere. But don't get me wrong, at times you're going to have to do both of those. You're going to have to get a recruiter or, you know, put up your jobs on job boards and really publicize these positions. Sometimes your staff just doesn't know somebody that'd be great for this position. Or it's a very specific position with a specific skill set. But when you get your staff involved, it makes it easier and you cover more ground. All right, I hope today's lesson helped. I hope you take on these strategies and hire great talent through your staff. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Make sure you hit subscribe so you do not miss an episode. In tomorrow's episode we talk about how to remove friction from your business. This is the concept of understanding that anything that causes friction in your business, friction for your staff, friction in any way that saves stops you from having a fluid, easy business to run, costs you Money, time and headaches. So you want to make sure you remove these things that are causing friction. Tomorrow's also free ride. Friday, we will give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. If you want to win a lifetime membership to one of our programs, this month we're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build an online course for yourself in 30 days. It's a $500 value. All you gotta do is leave us an itunes rating and review. When you leave us a review, enter our weekly random draw. Every Friday we announce a winner and you enter the draw automatically. If you left us a review every week until you win, it's our way to say thank you for your support and a way for us to give back and give away a free ride. Alright, before I go, I want to leave you with this. As you grow your company, as you build your company, the people that work with you, that work for you, a lot of the times, the relationship you have with them, stronger than even family. These people have your back. They help you build the dream that you always wanted. They put in the time, effort and care that is needed to make your business happen. Yes, you're paying them, yes, they're being compensated. But you go through ups and downs together. You go to battle together and you celebrate wins together. So part of including them in the hiring process, of hiring new staff is a way of saying, hey, I got you. You're one of us. We want more of people like you. I'm relying on you or asking you to help us find people like you because you're so cool, you're so great. So give them that. Give them that recognition. Alright, thank you so much and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Take. Sam.