The Most Important Funnel in ANY Modern Business

I'm the marketing guy behind a tax firm that scaled from 0 to 3 million a year in three years. And as I've begun focusing in on my own business and kind of learning the other aspects of business these past 18 months, I've come to realize that marketing may not actually be the most important funnel your business needs in order to scale. Now, if you don't know who I am, my name is Peter Vanderwaal and I own Social Club Studios where we help seven figure service based businesses scale to multiple seven and soon eight figures per year. And I think about it this way, right? Like marketing is kind of the lifeblood of the business. It's how you get new dollars in the door and if you're not getting sales dollars in the door, then you are inevitably going to die. It's the old saying, if you're not growing, then you're shrinking. But the flip side of that coin is people, especially in a business that's based around a service. A lot of the business content creators who teach how to scale your business, they strictly pretty much teach marketing and a lot of them come from an info background. So that actually makes a ton of sense because people are not as important in an info business. But Layla Hormozi did a really great keynote on this a couple of years ago. I think it was called the Secret Funnel and it's about how your hiring and recruitment pipeline is actually just as important, if not more important than your marketing and sales pipeline. Now, I am by no means an expert on this, but I am an expert in marketing. And so what I've done is I've taken those marketing skills, I've flipped them towards this recruitment and hiring and I've actually brought some really amazing people onto my team the past three to six months. And so I just want to share with you the process that I use. Hopefully it's helpful for you and ultimately just use this video to put together the structure. I won't say I'm doing everything perfectly right here, but I think this structure in this process that I'm following is probably what most of us who are sub 5 million a year need to do. So just to outline kind of the steps in this hiring pipeline. So I was putting out job ads on LinkedIn and a few other platforms. I had an application form that applicants would go and fill out to give me all the necessary information out of those applications. Some of them I would invite to a screening interview. Out of those screening interviews, some of them I would invite to perform a skills test. This is particular to technical talent. Obviously I'm hiring technical talent at the moment. So I don't exactly know how this would work for a manager or like a more software soft skill based role. But then after the skills test, we'd invite a portion of those candidates to final interview and then we'd go ahead and select the person that we actually want to hire. And so what I did going into this was I actually built out a pipeline for this inside of ClickUp, which is like the main project management software that we use at my company. You could also do this in Notion, you could probably do this in Airtable, and there's a good chance you have a software you're already using that is capable of this. But on the off chance that it's not, I'm going to be showing you ClickUp. It's going to look very similar in Notion or Airtable if you built it out there. So first thing is obviously the job ad. And so what I did is I actually had the job ad in two different places. So first off, I had it on the actual platforms. So think LinkedIn. Indeed. I actually, for a couple of these roles, I posted the job ad on my Instagram because I have actually a lot of creative technical talent following me. A lot of video editors, a lot of copywriters, like people like that. And so for one of these roles, I was hiring a new video editor. And so I literally just posted on my Instagram story, hey, I'm looking for a new video editor. Here's what we're looking for. DM me the word apply if you want to learn more. And so from this Instagram post that I made, I probably got like 200 people DMing me the word apply and clicking the link. To be honest, a surprisingly low amount of them actually filled out the application form. But I think that's fine because there's a lot of friction. I actually built into the application form on purpose to make sure that we're only getting a very specific type of candidate. And the cool thing is, one of the guys who came through this is actually a really talented creative video editor and he's going to be joining the team here very soon. But typically in the past, the majority of my candidates have just come from regular job ads on LinkedIn where, you know, you put the job description on there and then you spend a certain amount of dollars per day to get it in front of candidates. So here's what I did to actually come up with the job ad itself, like the actual sales copy, so to speak. So Going into this, I kind of didn't know what I was doing. And so A, I watched a few videos on it to get a general direction, but B, the more important thing and the more helpful thing, the more tactical thing, so to speak, was I actually used ChatGPT to create a framework for this. And the way I usually do this for anytime I'm trying something new or something that I'm not necessarily an expert at, I'll have Chat GPT create a framework for me, and then I'll have another instance of ChatGPT actually create the job post based on that framework. So what I did, I opened CHAT GPT and I said, hey, I need you to create a job description framework for my intern to use for writing job posts. My intern is not the most creative, but they're really, really good at following directions. And so I just need everything that they would need to know to be contained inside of this framework. And so from that it'll generate a two or three page long framework that you could put into another chat. But what I found a lot of times is that the first output is like kind of vague and not super helpful. And so what I'll actually do to refine this is I'll say, okay, great, now make it even more comprehensive with more examples. And so from this I'll get the ultimate framework for creating job descriptions. And so what I'll do then is I'll copy that ENT framework, I'll create a new instance of Chat GPT, you know, open up a new conversation, and I'll say, you are my intern responsible for writing job descriptions for my HR department. I'm going to give you a framework for writing these job descriptions and I need you to give me an output for it. And then you'll paste the framework in there. And then what I do before hitting enter, the very last thing I'll put in there is what information do you need about a particular role we're hiring in order to create a good job description for it? So drop that in there and it's gonna ask you a bunch of questions then about this specific role. There's a tool I like to use, it's called Super Whisper. It's really handy if you're using ChatGPT a lot, actually, because what it'll do is it opens this little window on your computer where you can speak into your computer's microphone. It'll transcribe the audio, it's very accurate audio transcription. And then you can just copy that audio into ChatGPT. And so you could literally just open Super Whisper in one tab and have ChatGPT open next to it so you can just answer through all those questions and in 60 seconds just rattle it off. So much faster than typing it. Pro tip. And so now you've given ChatGPT all the information about this specific role. You drop it in there and you'll get a pretty good job description. Now, before we hit publish on any job ad, I'll also create like a presentation style loom video. Basically like a video sales letter for this role. All right, so basically I'll just put together a slide deck, walk through this in a loom video. It's very raw. There's a lot of like me stumbling or like, you know, ums and uhs. It doesn't need to be polished. But basically what I went over for this was why work with us? What are the pros and what are the cons of working with us? What does our company do? So they know exactly what we do and how their role fits into that. Our core values are you a perfect fit? And then I went over a few qualifications where if you meet these, then you are a perfect fit for this role. Required skills and experience that we want to see from candidates and then next step. So what do they do after watching this video? Essentially just going through the job description in video format. So I'll put this link on the job ad kind of fairly high up so people actually get to it. They can watch the video or they could just read the job description and then I'm going to send them to my application form. So before you hit publish on the ad, you want to make sure you got the application form dialed in. So obviously don't hit publish yet, make your application form and then you'll know. You know, you can just go back to this step and hit publish on the ad. But the application form, I actually built this out in ClickUp and I have the following questions on it. So first off, I've got a video editor application for Social Club Studios. One thing that I would do differently in the future is I would actually include the full job description on here that I have on the other platforms. Because I also send people this if they DM me, if they email me, or for example, if they follow me on Instagram and they find this job description. But the thing I include in here is I'm asking them for an application video. Every single candidate. This is particularly important for remote roles, but I would still probably do it for in person roles. And I just asked them three questions. Okay, So I asked them, what's your name? What are you looking for in a new role? And why do you think you're a good fit for this role? Okay. So the reason I'm asking for this application video is not necessarily because I need the answers to these questions, because I'm also actually going to ask these questions on the screening interview. But the reason I'm asking this is because I want to get a feeling for their communication style, particularly for my company. Some of these technical roles we hire overseas, we tend to go Philippines and South America. And so it gives me a chance too to like judge their verbal communication abilities in English. And the other thing is they have to link this video. They can't like, upload it directly. So they have to actually know how to like upload it to Google Drive or upload it to Loom or somewhere where they can link it out to me. So it kind of gets a very basic baseline of like computer and technological literacy. The other thing I included on here is I asked for an EF set English score. Okay. This is like a standardized English scoring system. You can actually create a free company profile with them and offer this complimentary to your candidates. But this is like a must have for overseas hiring. Okay. Obviously, if you're hiring US or Canada, it's not that big of a deal. Maybe a words per minute test would be a better gauge depending on the role. And I was honestly astonished by how many people just like didn't include this. A lot of people put in like N A or they just put in a period into this or something because they didn't want to take 45 minutes to take this English examination and give me an actual certification for their English level. Wild. But this is why putting friction into this process is so important. Just like you would do this from a marketing standpoint to kind of qualify a lead and like gauge how hot they are or how ready to buy they are. You do this for a job application to kind of gauge how interested are they in this role. So the people who are just like applying to a million different roles and like, you know, who knows what they're actually doing or looking for or whatever, they're not going to fill out this application because it's too much work or they're going to fill it out wrong. And I can immediately filter their application out, but the people who are bought in are actually going to take the 45 minutes to take the English exam, get their certification level and drop it in this application here. And that's what we actually Found. So the rest of this stuff on this application form is actually super basic. So I just have name email in this case. This form specifically was for a video editing role. And so I wanted links showcasing their video editing experience. An application video link which we talked about, the resume, slash cv, right. Obviously EF set, English score and then attached certification of this score. And then where did you find out about this role? Because obviously we've got it on LinkedIn, we've got it on Instagram and indeed. And I'm not, I'm not installing Hiros on this or something to try to track where these people are coming from automatically. So from here, as soon as somebody fills out this application, they automatically end up in this application phase here in my pipeline. And you can see this actually looks just like a sales pipeline in a CRM. We've got these different stages, we've got people organized by stage and people are moving down the stages as they get closer and closer to actually receiving an offer and getting onboarded with our company. And so just to walk you through this, we've got application. Then if I like their application, I'll move them to screening and I'll go ahead and schedule a short, like 10 minute screening call with them. Basically just ask them a couple questions. And honestly, I want to weed out about 3, 50% of the good applications through this screening process. From there, anybody who makes it through the screening process at my company, every single technical role is going to do a skills test before they come and join our team. And a lot of times that will be a paid skills test because I want to compensate them for their time. I want to be reasonable here and like actually get them to go through the process. So I'll pay them like a, basically a project rate for that skills test. Just keep it simple. For a video editor, it's like, hey, I want you to edit three videos for me. For an IT specialist, it's like, hey, set up this class CRM account, like something simple that they can do in just a couple of days and you can kind of gauge how well they do it. We'll talk about that step in the process in a moment here. But then the people who do the skills test, and you like their approach to the skills test, they did a good job. Then you can move them to a final interview, you talk to them and then out of those you pick, who do you want to make an offer to? And then obviously go ahead and onboard them. Right? And something that I did that I will definitely keep doing in the future is I have a five star rating system for each of these stages in the pipeline. So for the application for the screening interview, for the skills test, and for the final interview I have a five star rating. And so then each candidate will get a cumulative score of how many out of 20 stars? Basically they got on all those stages. And so it makes it really easy to kind of at a glance, kind of just like rate and rank each candidate at each stage in the process. Okay, let's talk screening interview. Right, so these are super, super short. I keep them to like five to 10 minutes. And basically what I'm trying to gauge here is like, do they meet the minimum requirements for this role and do they kind of, generally speaking, align with the type of culture I'm trying to build at my company? And so a couple of things I'm going to try to figure out here are how does this person show up in a face to face conversation? Right, we hop on zoom or we talk on the phone. How do they show up? How do they communicate? Do they seem like super nervous and uptight? Do they seem casual and confident? Next, I want to get kind of a general feel for their technical expertise. Obviously a lot of that is going to be shown in the skills test. So I don't need to get too crazy here, but I just kind of like cherry pick a couple of technical questions that would relate to this role. And basically what I'm looking for is like, how specific is their answer? I'm not necessarily a technical expert in every part of my own business. I shouldn't be realistically. And so I don't even necessarily know if these answers are right or if these are like the best answers that they could give. But generally speaking, a more specific answer, a more clear answer is going to be indicative of a higher level of expertise than a less specific, more general answer. If they're able to answer very clearly, very quickly, very specifically, then it kind of seems like they know their stuff. And if they kind of take a little bit to figure out what to say, if they're kind of like vague and nonspecific, then it's like, okay, they probably don't have a real good grasp on this part of the technical process, maybe they're not a good fit. And then the last thing I want to gauge here is just like their interest and their enthusiasm about this role and about our company. So like, are they actually interested in this role and working at this company or are they just kind of like looking for a new place to get a paycheck from? And so again, I'm just cherry picking a couple of questions related to kind of culture and values to try to figure out are they a good fit here? One of our core values here is extreme ownership. And so a lot of times I'll ask them a question related to that, right? Like, if something goes wrong in a project, it's not necessarily clear who's to blame. Like, how do you handle that situation? If they start talking about, like, figuring out who went wrong where, then I know that maybe it's not the greatest culture fit. But if they start talking with, you know, I want to figure out where I'm responsible or where I could have done better, then I know that actually this person is probably a really good candidate for the role, at least from a culture and values standpoint. Okay, so next we've got the skills test. And so for here, I kind of have the mantra of, like, throw them into the fire and see what happens. I remember my first job back in high school was at a bicycle store. Like a high end, like a Trek bike store, if you're familiar with the brand. But they, you know, their, their cheapest bike was like $500, all the way up to, like, you know, $20,000 custom bicycles. And when I got hired there is like the very beginning of their busiest season of the year. This is like beginning of April, right? Like, that's the start of kind of the season where people are actually, like, spending time outside. They're bringing in their bikes to get them tuned up and ready for the season, all that kind of stuff. They didn't really have the time or the manpower to properly train me. And so they kind of did the best they could. But it was basically my responsibility to just, like, figure it out. So I spent my first, like two weeks just assembling a couple bikes, learning the product catalog, and just talking to customers and being very open about the fact that I was new and had no idea what I was doing. And within about two or three months, I was kind of crushing it. And so I look at that as an example of, like, hey, I was able to find the resources I need to figure it out, but nobody was really there holding my hand to do it for me. And it ended up working out. And that was a great job for a couple years. And the cool thing with a skills test is oftentimes you'll find out how well a candidate actually aligns with your core values. Right? So one of our core values is extreme ownership. And recently we were hiring like an IT specialist to kind of Handle the technical side of our client CRM accounts and our automations and softwares and everything. And so the skills test for this was just to set up a fake client CRM account. Here's all the materials you would have in the role, and here's no instructions on how to do it. Here's access to the software. Figure it out now. I actually got these candidates started on this skills test, and I went out of town for a couple of days. And so I was off of slack for like three days probably. And so when I came back, I had messages from two of the candidates telling me that they needed a credit card attached to the CRM account to, you know, kind of finalize the setup. In the meantime, one candidate just kind of sat around and waited for me to go in there, attach a credit card, and then let him kind of finish the setup. But the other candidate actually attached her own credit card and completed the setup and then was just like, I hope he reimburses me for doing this. But I look at that as, hey, she took the outcome into her own hands. That shows me this is really a great candidate for the role. Also, she did a great job on the technical aspect of it. And so that was kind of the moment when I was like, okay, this is probably the person I'm going to hire. So moving on to the final interview. Okay. And for me, this is just to like, debrief the skills test again. I'm mostly hiring technical roles at this point in time, so there's less of that, like, soft skills kind of stuff you have to figure out less of that personality type stuff you have to figure out. So this would probably look completely different hiring a manager or a sales director or something like that. And so probably a lot of, you know, way better than me, and you'll tell me I'm doing this all wrong, but here's basically what I do for these. So first off, I'm asking specific questions about the skills test and about their approach to it. Basically, I just want to, like, understand why they made the decisions that they did. And a lot of times I'll find out, like, ways we could be doing things better internally. And by the way, the more I learned from this part of the interview, I kind of the higher up that candidate goes in my ranking because that shows that they have technical knowledge beyond my own, which is super, super important for these technical roles. From there, I'll kind of lay out the specifics of the job and I'll ask questions related to those to kind of make sure that this is actually going to work out. And then based on all the information they have about the company and about the role, at this point I want to kind of assess their understanding of how they fit into the bigger picture at the company. One of my favorite questions here is like, how does your role make the company more money? If they have a good understanding of that, then they've probably got a decent feel on how to prioritize tasks, how to gauge when something's going wrong, you know, what does success look like in this role? And if they don't understand that, and I've given the information they would need to kind of figure that out, then it's probably not going to work out long term. They're probably going to be focused on all the wrong stuff and it's just not going to be good. And then from there we'll just get into like comp hours, kind of, you know, expectations, their questions about the role and then we'll go into next steps. So last thing I want to cover here is just the job offer itself. Okay, so again, I just wrote this with chat GPT. I think I did a pretty good job. I think it covers all my bases. And so I want to show this to you here as this is not the expert way of doing it, right. But this works well for me and you know, maybe you can borrow from it. So I just have this intro section here basically with position details, you know, title, employment type, start date, all that kind of stuff. And then going on from here, compensation, we'll cover that and then responsibilities. And so we want to bullet point a couple things. We want to make it clear that this is not exhaustive. And then we want to make it clear what the ultimate goal out of this role is. And so for this one, this was a technical like IT specialist. The ultimate goal is to get me completely out of day to day operational tasks related to our IT now contingencies. This is important especially for technical work. Okay? So this offer is contingent upon the following conditions. Okay? Number one, work for hire. All work created during your employment with Social Club Studios will remain the sole property of the company. And then number two is I have a probationary period where the first 30 days I can terminate the agreement or they can terminate the agreement with no notice, no consequences, no harm done, you know, no hurt feelings. Right? Now I do not consider this offer letter like a contract, right? I have a separate employment agreement that I have everybody sign that has all the legalese in there. But this is just designed so they can read this and they can know kind of the basics of them, because I'm kind of assuming most of them don't actually read and fully understand everything inside the employment agreement, because just like nobody does. Right. So, moving on to next steps, this is just the last thing. If you choose to accept this offer, please sign and return a copy by whatever date. And then upon acceptance, we'll go ahead and onboard you, which includes X, Y and Z. Okay. Again, setting expectations. What should they expect? Right. And then this has all kind of the, the formal language and, and all that kind of stuff in there that makes it feel legit, but that's basically it.