5 QUALITIES to look for when RECRUITING HR staff...(with warning signs)

What is up? Today what I want to talk about is hiring your first HR manager generalist position in general. The reason this is top of mind is I'm actually helping 3 companies right now hire their first HR manager generalistic, you know, whatever role. And it made me think about the first time I hired someone from HR, and I kind of started putting together what I think you need to look for in an HR position or a person who is representing HR for your company. And what to avoid. And so I'll tell you two stories. The first one was of the first person I ever hired for human resources. And luckily, I think that I was already able to depict that this is an important role. Because if you think about it, right, just like a salesperson is the first impression that somebody's going to get of the business when they're a client, the HR general manager— I'm just gonna call them manager at this point— is the first impression that somebody's going to get if they're interviewing for the job. And so that person, I think, is often very overlooked in organizations. I think HR is typically thought of as administrative work, as compliance, etc. And I think that you're really missing out if that's the way you look at HR. So I want to start off by saying that you want to reframe what you believe HR to be. HR is the protector of the culture of the company, okay? If you have enough money and you're doing enough revenue that you need to hire someone from HR or for HR, then please do not think of them as an administrative role. Do You need to think of them as somebody who can truly take things off your plate and help protect the culture of the company as you scale, which is insanely important as you scale. So when I first hired someone from HR, I looked for someone who, you know, had candor, they weren't overly like in the paperwork admin stuff, they had a personality, I felt like they could represent the business well. But there were a few things that I didn't look for. And what it resulted in is the first person I actually hired ended up getting drunk on a plane with the rest of my employees and telling them about the conversation I had with someone when I was letting them go. That's the first rule of HR, which is an expectation, something that is not negotiable, is that this person must respect confidentiality. Okay? That is the number one thing that you must focus on when you are hiring for an HR role. You need somebody who's going to respect confidentiality. Think about all of the things that go on in the business, all of the personnel issues, all of the hard conversations. Firing, hiring, decision-making, et cetera. You need somebody who can be a confidant to you. And so that is the first thing, is that you have to make sure that that person respects confidentiality. And the way that I filter that in my mind now is I ask myself if they're loyal to me. Okay? So if somebody is in an HR role and they're loyal to people other than yourself, then when it comes down to who are they going to tell, who are they going to talk to about this, Who do you think it's going to be? Is it going to be you? Is it going to be the 3 employees that they're actually very close friends with? This happened in another example. I had somebody who was in an HR position. I actually think that they did a very good job for 2 years. Unfortunately, they had friends in the company. And if you remember the video that I talked about where we did a layoff, their friend was one of the people that we were going to lay off. And so the day before we had planned this layoff and their friend was part of this layoff, I got a message from one of my leaders and they said, "Hey, somehow it got leaked that we're doing a layoff tomorrow." And I was like, I mean, I can't even tell you the amount of anxiety I had over this. I was like, holy shit, like, this is the last thing I want to happen. I've read all the articles and like done all the stuff to try and at least do this right, even though it already feels so shitty. They send me a screenshot of text messages and it's between my HR manager and her friend. And she's telling her friend that her friend is going to get cut tomorrow. Not only that, she also told her friend who else was. So what did I have to do in that moment? I had to go in and I had to fire the person who was supposed to fire everybody. It was terrible. And so when I say confidentiality is important, I've had 2 times out of the 4 people that I've had in HR that that person has disrespected confidentiality and it has resulted in them not working for the company anymore. One, but two, I mean, it's completely damaged the culture. 'Cause can you imagine when you're on that plane with that HR manager and she's talking about what the CEOs did to fire someone? Like, what do you think of the company? Same with if you get a text message from an HR manager. What do you think about that? When they're telling you, what they're saying is, I actually respect you, I value our relationship more than I do with the CEO of the company. So that's the first thing that you have to look for. You have to look for somebody who respects confidentiality and they're loyal to you. Not more to others in the company than they are to the boss. Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is you want somebody to be able to have hard conversations. This is something I didn't look for in the very beginning, and actually the person I have in HR now in one of our companies, that was specifically the first thing I looked for because I think that we tend to, again, put HR in a box and we tend to think, okay, this person needs to onboard people, they need to hire people, they need to recruit. We don't think about the fact that they need to have extremely good candor with people. Because if they don't, if they cannot replicate or duplicate the candor that you as a CEO have, then every time there's a personnel issue, who are people going to go to? If the HR manager cannot have hard conversations, then they're going to go to you because you can. And so if you want somebody to take things off your plate and you always want to be thinking, how is this person going to move things from my plate, then you want someone who can have hard conversations. When I lacked this, I noticed in doing time studies of my own that the things that took the most time were I would get one person on a call and then another person on a call and it's like, "All right, let's mediate this out and get this problem resolved." And it wasn't even people that reported to me. Nonetheless, it was people who I hadn't talked to in months. Okay? And that's because they would go directly to me rather than the actual HR manager because that person couldn't have hard conversations. So that's the second thing you want to look for. Someone who can have hard conversations. The third thing is, I feel like this is obvious, but it might not be, which is you want someone who is 100% a culture match. And the reason for that is like what I said in the beginning, HR is the protector of culture of the company. And so when somebody's interviewing, when they're talking to somebody, their first impression of the company is that HR manager. And so if that person cannot represent the culture naturally, right, then the people are not going, you're not going to bring in the right people. And so there was one point in our business where, if you look back at my videos, I talk about when we sacrificed everything and I went and fired a bunch of people because they weren't a culture fit. I looked and I said, who's hiring everyone? And I looked at the HR manager and then I looked at one of the other managers who was actively hiring. And I said, no wonder nobody fits the culture because the two people that I'm allowing, I'm allowing to do the hiring, don't even fit the culture 100%. They're not even representing what I want. That is why it's so important. This person is the gatekeeper to the company. You have to take who you, who you allow on the bus and who you keep off the bus extremely seriously. And so that's why you really want that person in that HR role to be a fit for the company. A big way that you can look at this is I would have peers interview for that HR manager role so they can say, do I see that person as someone that I can, you know, rely on, that I could go to, that could have hard conversations, that could help me take some of this off my plate, and who could make sure that we're getting the right people into the company. And so having someone who is a very strong cultural fit, maybe do a peer interview for that HR manager, always a useful thing to do. Which is something I've done since I've learned from my mistakes in the beginning. The fourth thing is that, something that's often overlooked, is that you want someone in the HR role, like I said, they're the gatekeeper of the company. What goes hand in hand with that is they need to have recruiting strength. Okay, so what I mean by that is they need to at least know how to oversee recruiting if they cannot do it themselves. Okay, I would say I would prefer somebody to have more experience in recruiting than anything else if I'm hiring them for HR. And the reason for that is because if you're a small, self-made company and you're not relying on VC-backed, etc., etc., you're probably not going to want to pay for recruiters who are going to take 20-30% of an annual salary. And so you want somebody in-house who can help hire for those roles that are harder than the average manager can recruit for. And so having somebody with a recruiting background, with recruiting as one of their core 4 competencies and strengths, I think in a self-run company, and especially in one that's growing quickly, is the number 1 skill you want to look for in an HR person. Okay? And I say skill, not character trait or values. The last piece that I look for in an HR manager role is experience with HR. Here's the thing. You have— if you do not know HR, you don't understand compliance, you don't understand payroll, you don't understand onboarding and employee, uh, compensation and handbooks and all the regulations, then you have to have someone who has experience. I've seen too many times people that are inexperienced say that they're going to hire someone who's also inexperienced but good with people and put them in an HR role. And they're like, I'm sure they can learn it. And I'm like, you do not have the bandwidth to allow someone to make mistakes in HR. If somebody does not adhere to state and federal guidelines, your company is at risk. So this is one where it's a zero-sum decision. If you— if they mess up on any of those things, It could be detrimental to your company. And so the last piece is that they must have experience in HR if you don't. Unless you are running a recruiting firm and you have an extremely strong HR background, which even at that point, I don't know why you would hire someone who has zero experience. Because it is heavy in compliance, it's heavy in regulations, it's heavy in understanding how to deal with sensitive subjects. Okay? These people are going to have to deal with, you know, all of the political crap and social crap that's going on right now. They've got to know how to deal with it in a way that is compliant, that doesn't put your company at risk. Bonus if they know how to handle lawsuits, because you're going to get a lot of those, especially if you're going to scale quickly, which is just people who try to sue you for money after they leave your company, which is part of the game. First, they need to understand, respect confidentiality, and be loyal to just you, not to others in the company over you. That puts you at risk. The second is that they need to have hard conversations, because if you don't have hard conversations, if they cannot, then you're going to be the go-to, and they're not truly fulfilling and stepping into that HR role. The third is they need to be 100% a culture match for the company because they are the gatekeeper of the company. And so they are allowing other people who are or are not a culture fit come in. So you need to make sure that they are the absolute, one of the most potent people in the company when it comes to representing your culture. Fourth is they need to have recruiting as a strength. If you are a self-startup, if you are self-funded, if you are not VC-backed, you don't have money to have a 5-person HR department, then you want someone whose strength is recruiting so you don't have to constantly pay recruiters. And then lastly is you must hire someone who actually has experience in the field because if you don't and they don't, then you have a huge liability on your hands. I hope that you found this video useful. I think that a lot of people tend to overlook hiring for HR and then when they do, they do it blindly. And this is all the information that I have accumulated and I will probably make more videos on HR and the importance of it and the function itself, but all in all, do not underestimate the how impactful this role can be if you bring it into your company. And also do not underestimate the importance of hiring the right person for the role. So I hope that video was great. If it was, go ahead, hit subscribe. I will see you on the next one.