The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
scaled up nation
how vulnerable are you and how secure
are your
passwords this is a question that i
think a lot of us
are asking more and more with all of the
reports that we’re hearing
on the news one of the easiest things
that you can do
is use a program for your passwords like
lastpass lastpass allows you to randomly
generate
passwords it will store it behind a
master password
it will allow you to share it with
people without actually giving them your
passwords
it even will autofill on websites
there’s so many features that lastpass
offers that makes your online experience
so much safer i’ve been using lastpass
for years and you can start using it too
by going to scaling up h2o.com
forward slash lastpass to see if one of
their offerings is right for you
and folks they even have free programs
so don’t leave yourself vulnerable any
longer than you have to go to
scaling up h2o.com forward slash
lastpass
[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast where
we scale up on our knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems my name is
trace blackmore
your host for scaling up h2o and i hope
you joined us for last week because
we did our 200th episode we heard from
many of you out there
in the scaling up nation that was a fun
episode to record and i have to tell you
if you asked me
four years ago 199 episodes ago
if i thought that the scaling up podcast
was going to
mean so much to everybody it was going
to be in so many countries have so many
downloads
and just just get such great feedback
when i go to any event and people like
yourself in the scaling up nation
come up to me and thank me for certain
episodes or give me some ideas
i would have just not thought that that
would have been
possible and it’s been an incredible
ride
i’m going to continue this ride i always
talk about this and it sounds like i’m
saying that we’re going away we’re not
going anywhere we are just
getting started i am just again
very humbled by all the episodes that we
have and all the great
members of the scaling up nation that we
have gathered along the way this podcast
would not be
possible if it were not for you and of
course on episodes like pinks and blues
where
they are all about you you all call in
you write in you get me
however you get me your question your
concern
and then we use an entire episode to
talk about it
well just because this is episode 201
it doesn’t mean we don’t need your help
anymore
more than ever 200 episodes folks we
have run out of everything
possible i know what to talk about so
now it is
definitely up to you so do not keep
whatever you want us to talk about to
yourself
let us know what that is go to
scalinguph2o.com
and go to our show ideas page or
record a voicemail and we will play
your voice on the air asking a question
and as i mentioned at the top of the
show we heard from
several of the scaled up members we
heard their
actual voices on the podcast
last week talking about what the podcast
has meant to them so again thank you for
all those people that did that
and additionally we even had several
people
that did james’s challenge last week and
they went
on the scaling up h2o facebook page
and they played bingo well you know
if you’re the winner of that because
i’ve already contacted you
so your t-shirt is on the way i hope
you wear that with pride that is your
uniform
that you are part of the scaling up
nation and
speaking of james’s challenge we have
another one
hot off the press for you right now
[Music]
hello scaling up nation the next james’s
challenge as we grow as an industrial
water treatment professional
drop by drop is
[Music]
use your test kit to test your home’s
water you may have done this when you
first got your test kit but have you
done it lately
if you have a home water softener do you
know the hardness of your home’s water
now
have you tested the disinfectant in your
water have you shown your family and
friends your adept skills at testing
water
even better have you shown them the
results of running a microbiological dip
slide on their drinking water
it could be interesting be sure to share
your experience on linkedin by tagging
it with
jc 21 and hashtag scalinguph2o
this is james mcdonald and i look
forward to seeing what you share
james i remember when i first started
working with my dad
i was at the kitchen table and i would
run samples for him i had no idea what i
was doing
i was counting drops i was telling him
how many drops it took for
one color to change into another color
and then when my
dad started training me on how to run
service
i had to learn how to work from a test
kit
and one of the things my dad had me do
was test
every water i could find so i tested our
house water i tested the cold water the
hot water
i tested water outside coming out of the
spigot
i went to our neighborhood pool i tested
that i went to our neighbor’s house i
tested that water
i would find every single water sample i
could find
and then i would test it now most of
them were fairly similar
but what that allowed me to do was
create a rhythm to
find out how long the test took and
what was more advantageous for me to do
before
a certain test i think you’ve heard me
talk on another show
where i’ve made the comment we test and
the test should be waiting on us
not the other way around if we’re going
to be efficient well i would not have
been able to
set up a system on how to run tests had
my dad
not originally got me to test
our home’s water so i hope that’s
helpful for all the new people out there
and
i’m also surprised for the water
treaters out there that really don’t
know what their home
water is like you might want to put a
carbon filter on that you might want to
put a softener on that folks we’re the
water professionals
and that’s why the cobbler’s kids have
no shoes
so hopefully today with james’s
challenge you will learn
what is in your water there’s no doubt
about it
we are in a hiring crisis
in the united states i’m not sure how
that looks outside the united states but
there are so many people that just
aren’t part
of the labor pool right now and that
means
restaurants aren’t opening or they’re
opening late or
the seating times are incredibly long
because they don’t have servers for us
water treaters
it means that as we grow we can’t find
the valuable people that we need
to make sure that our customers get the
service that they’ve come
to expect so because there’s a hiring
shortage we need to make sure
that we use our time properly
that every second that we put into
hiring that we are
using a system good friend of mine
mike hill is going to join us today and
he’s going to talk about
what is a good procedure for us to use
during hiring
and what are some barometers that we can
put around it to make sure that
what we are doing is actually working
please welcome
mike hill
[Music]
my lab partner today is mike hill of
trenton consulting welcome to the
podcast mike
well thanks trace good to be here
exciting to do your podcast heard a lot
about it
well we we appreciate you being here and
we’re going to be talking about a topic
today
that everybody has on their mind and i’m
sure glad you’re here because we all
have questions about it of course
that topic is hiring but before we get
to that do you mind telling the scaling
up nation
a little about yourself sure um trace
early in my career i worked for ernst
and young
i did so in a consulting capacity i
did a lot of technology work system
selections
implementations went on from ernst
young and worked and became the national
director of internal consulting for
prudential
from there i was on the merger
integration team that formed verizon
in that role i got a fun event to
head up the spinoff companies when that
merger was complete
it was shortly after that had a major
life event uh
occur uh unfortunately my first wife
passed away and
so i stepped out of my normal corporate
career
and that’s when i started trenton
consulting then known as mike helm
associates
and began my journey as a consultant in
that role
i’ve had a chance to do a lot of things
uh
served as a ceo ceo cfo
more recently i’ve had the fun event of
writing a book and uh creating a
youtube channel so a little bit about me
well
we’re going to be talking about
something that you know a lot about as i
alluded to we’re
talking about hiring so i’m just going
to start off right out of the bat
why is hiring so hard yeah it is a one
of the frustrations for all of us is
executives and one of the reasons
it’s hard uh is because it’s not
our sweet spot it’s not uh the thing
that we love to do the most we got into
the business we’re in
because we’re either good mechanically
in the business or we’re good at sales
and so we’d rather be doing that uh
that’s what
all of us are wired to do is what we
like do what we like to do best and
hiring is just not one of those things
it
becomes sort of a nuisance for us and so
i can tell you a story in fact of a
business
that uh was a client that hiring was a
nuisance this was a multi-million dollar
commercial real estate company
very successful financially but the
founder
hired me his sons were starting in the
business were taking over the business
and he hired me because when the suns
took over turnover went
through the roof and so i began
to do some analysis and one of the
things i do when i do
uh work with clients is i’ll begin to
meet with people personally and so i set
up meetings with probably 10 or 15
people
and the the anger in the room was just
palpable it was just
you just realized there was such a high
frustration
rate in the company and they all talked
about they were looking for jobs and
this that and the other
and ultimately the
ceo the new ceo was a super
salesman a charismatic guy great guy
but hiram was because he was a super
salesman
hiring was just not a priority and as a
result
they had a turnover rate of 10 20
percent
so this gets to sort of the why if i can
carry on
of why hiring is so important because
you know the obvious reasons we think
about hiring
uh is the effect the negative effect it
can have on customer service
or other employees in the building but
one of the
unspoken things about hiring
is the cost sherm the
society for human resource management
did a study i think in 2015 or 16
where they actually studied the cost of
uh lost cost of hiring or
the cost of turnover and they
essentially
report in this article that the cost of
turnover is about 33
of the annual wage of the employee and
so if you take a an annual wage of 45
000
and think about a turnover cost of 15
000
it’s one of those things that executives
don’t think about
the real cost to them about a third of
that five thousand dollars is in
hard fees recruiting fees training cost
specific things you have to spend in the
company the other
67 percent is soft cost the
loss in productivity the time that you
and your executive management team have
to spend
hiring and so one of the things i talked
to about
to companies about is why and
uh hiring is so important is because you
want to do it right you want to keep
that turnover rate as low as possible
to keep those expenses down and
obviously
as a result keep customer service
employee satisfaction high
well you mentioned training i know
that’s huge in any industry
i know our industry so i can say
especially in ours
and in order for somebody to truly know
what it is that
they need to do on this new job that
they were hired for
somebody who’s doing that job at a very
high level
now needs to reduce their output because
they’re training that person
so we’re reducing the output we’re
doubling the payroll
and oh my goodness what happens if they
don’t work out
and so that’s exactly the point that
person will now
has lack of productivity because they’re
training the other person
and now if that person leaves now that
person is
working twice as many hours to maintain
that
same level of quality assurance you have
for your clients
when you started your business whatever
business you’re in
you had high standards and it’s the
reason your business is successful
because
people recognize the quality of the work
that you do
and every person that you hire is going
to represent or not represent that same
quality and so that training becomes
critical
in not only training the person on the
physical aspects of the job
but certainly the values that you impart
the things that drive you
to create a high quality company that
you started
how do we even start this process i know
a lot of people
hire but they just hire because somebody
needed a job
or somebody knew somebody that knew
somebody i’m sure there’s a better
process
out there what should we be doing to
start the process
here’s a motivational speaker he’s
deceased now but people will remember
zig ziglar from back in the day
well known and one of the things he
always said is if you aim for nothing
you’ll hit it every time
there you go and so the concept is
we have to know first of all that step
one is we know we need to know what
we’re hiring for
and you as a ceo or whatever your role
is in the company you may not know that
position
specifically and so you’ve got to do the
intelligence
to find out the details of that position
so that you have
a good quality hiring process you have a
good job description
so you can make sure that you know what
you’re aiming for so that’s
sort of the starter place a good job
description is going to have description
relational skills decision
responsibilities
management skills certifications
technical skills
those types of things that you need to
detail out
because for both sides the person
applying needs to understand the job
and you certainly need to understand
what you’re hiring for
let’s fast forward a little bit let’s
say we wrote the job description
we hired the person it worked out very
well
of the people that you work with how
often do people use that job description
to evaluate the success of that person
or make sure that the expectations are
being met
so a a good performance review process
certainly needs to be in line with the
responsibilities of the job but
if you think about the typical job
responsibilities
you even as a ceo or whatever your
responsibility is in the company
you’re probably only going to get it
about 80 percent right most of the time
so
we know that most job descriptions it’s
the 80 20 rule that 80
is going to describe 80 20 it’s not so
we’re not going to refer back to that
job description very often but that
instrument we’re going to use to
evaluate should embody
the responsibilities of that employee
for a good evaluation so now we’ve got a
good job description written what do we
do with it
i’d put it in their hr file and uh focus
on
the quality of the job that they’re
doing now make sure that someone is
mentoring them
when you bring somebody in if let’s go
that direction when you bring somebody
in
for the first day we need to be prepared
as a company
to have that person on board so often
and i would say more than 50 percent of
the companies i work with when the
employee shows up
they’re completely unready for that new
employee
they don’t have their log on set up they
don’t have the equipment that the
employee needs
they don’t have the training prepared
the rest of the staff they’re going to
be
working with often don’t even know that
the employee is starting that day
and so it can be a very uncomfortable
experience for a new hire
if a company shows that lack of
preparedness
on that first day so moving towards
making sure that you have the right
processes and checklist in place
to embrace that new employee even
potentially have a mentor
i always suggest you take people out
their first day at work just those
little things will create somebody that
wants to stay
for a lifetime is there a better way
than another to find
applicants there’s really not but i’m
going to
tell you the suite of tools and
approaches out there to find employees
and so
when we use them and how we use them it
depends and so
there’s recruiters executive recruiters
and staffing agencies s1
cloud services we’re all familiar uh zip
recruiting
uh indeed those types of tools and then
there’s something that a lot of
companies use called an
applicant tracking system and that’s
when you’re a little larger company
you have an hr department and you
actually have software that walks you
through the processes
of recruiting all the way through
onboarding training
and evaluating that employee applicant
tracking systems
are very worthwhile it takes a bit of an
investment
both in time and money but for most
companies
the cloud service have gotten so good
now
that they’ll do some of the pre-testing
one of the things
you’ll hear me talk about i write about
in the book is
assessments of employee assessments and
during the interview process
one of the things that i recommend is
that you do a career assessment
so many people apply for jobs that
they’re not really a good fit for
but they just need a job need the money
and a career assessment will align their
personality type with
the job description and make sure
that person is a fit for that particular
position so
i do recommend assessments also along
the way and some of these
cloud services actually do some of those
assessments so those are the three major
sources
recruiters are very helpful but you have
to make sure that you
filter your recruiters a true executive
recruiter you only want to use for your
c-suite jobs
the it’s going to cost you
35 of that first year salary to pay a
recruiter it’s pretty expensive
and uh there’s good recruiters and bad
recruiters out there like in every
industry
and there’s good staffing agencies and
bad staffing agencies but
the good ones really want to know you
personally
your personality type as a ceo whoever
the manager is hiring for that
so that they understand both what the
company is looking for from a
personality point of view
what the cultural fit is and they
clearly understand the job
responsibilities
so many of these firms today all they
are is pushing paper
they’re just going to throw as many
resumes out there as possible
and so you’re not going to get the
quality you want so
i recommend those recruiting agencies
and staffing agencies
but do your homework i’ve heard many of
them offer a guarantee
but then from individuals that i know
when they’ve
tried to enact that guarantee there’s
always been some stipulation
where it didn’t apply to that yeah yeah
i’ve never seen
one uh actually pay off so good
observation so we’ve got the job
description
we’ve got some good candidates for that
job description
uh we’ve done an assessment so we’ve
narrowed down some of those candidates
and now we’ve got say
six really good candidates for that
position
how should we go through the interview
process this really is the most
important part of the process so
let’s assume we’ve got a good filtering
process either through our staffing
agency or
our internal processes to narrow the
candidates down
and one of the things i like to mention
to people when you’re looking at resumes
don’t only look for the content of what
the person has done
in their career look at the style style
in this case is important is
content it always frustrates me i use
the example when i
see a delivery service or any kind of
service to my home or business
and somebody pulls up in a dirty truck
it speaks volumes to me about what
the quality that company is and so it is
with
an employee resume if there’s typos in
there
or it’s not organized or sentences
aren’t brief and clear really speaks
loudly about the employees so that
begin with that but once you invite
somebody
you begin to narrow the list to you say
six begin with phone interviews
not a video conference and the reason
for this is
you don’t want to bring any of your
stereotypes in
to what the person is wearing or the
color they’re here
or any other stereotype you might have
in an interview process
all you want to hear is the content of
what they have to say about their
experiences
and what they’ve done so that you can
really focus in on that content
and have no other distractions usually
through that process you’re going to
then narrow down your six
to three and once you have those three
the obvious next step is to have them in
the office
and so when you do that set up
interviews with multiple people
we all have different experiences in
life i talk about
when for example if the different
perspectives people have if there’s a
car accident in an intersection
and the police officer goes to one
corner and
asks somebody what they’ve observed
he’ll get one opinion
but if he goes to the four corners of
that intersection
he’ll get four different opinions and so
having a perspective of several people
is very very helpful i recommend
behavioral interview questions
behavioral interview questions are
simply questions that talk about
as the name implies their behaviors not
what they’ve done
so a standard question would be tell me
what you did at xyz corporation
well that that really doesn’t add a lot
of meaning because
you’ve already seen their resume what
you really want to know is how did you
behave in a certain situation
so a good behavioral interview question
is uh
trace tell me about a time that you had
a negative customer service experience
and
with a customer and what you did to
resolve it as an employee
and so then they get to talk about how
they behave
tell me about a time that you were anger
at a boss or
an employee or a co-worker and what you
did to resolve that
we all get frustrated at work right so
behavioral interview questions
allow us to really understand the
applicant
i then uh suggest that people have a
grading system
we have them out on our website you can
download these tools
but a grading system allows everybody at
the table those
two or three or four perspectives of
this candidate
to individually grade the candidate from
their perspective
and offer their notes and then
cumulatively
uh that information together with an
assessment a personality assessment
is going to help you identify the best
candidate
a friend of mine will bring his top
candidates into a conference room
all together and group interview them
what do you think about that
i’m not as big on group interviews
because
people can prejudge other people’s
answers and so
uh you said this then i bounce that off
and you can have dominant uh
interviewers and somebody that so
someone else
doesn’t get a full perspective so it’s
not my favorite style i’d rather be
one-on-one it’s easier for the candidate
and the interviewer you have clear
results
people do group interviews to economize
on time
and you just don’t get as good of
outcomes
you mentioned grading so say we’re going
to have this candidate meet with three
of our executives
how subjective is that grading because i
might see
something and grade it a certain way
where somebody else is going to grade it
totally different
it is subjective absolutely but you want
to make it as objective as possible and
so
the grading tool i use grades candidates
in five different categories and so
each of those five categories you rank
from one to five and then make your
personal notes
but it’s a cumulative effect of your
perspective versus my perspective
versus sally’s perspective when you add
those together
then you get a cumulative score that
will grade and rank this candidate
versus
other candidates the fact is i’m not a
perfect candidate and you’re not a
perfect candidate
no one is but what we want to do is find
the best candidate for this job that is
available
right now and so when we take the time
and that’s the biggest mistake employers
make is not
taking the time to spend because it is
laborious what we’re talking about doing
is lavoris right
but when you take the time you don’t
have the turnover
and when you don’t have the turnover you
save time
so it’s slow but it’s a lot faster in
the long run
it is good observation i think i stole
that from
stephen covey he probably said it better
too you mentioned personality
assessments are there certain
personalities that are better fits for
certain jobs
absolutely so we use a and there’s
various tools out there we use
one i’ll mention by name i don’t get any
endorsement money so
it doesn’t matter what tool you use but
we our company uses career fitter
so what careerfitter has done is they’ve
gone out into industries and
compiled a database of people that are
happy in their career
and so they say okay and they then they
find out their personality type and so
they match the personality type
with somebody who’s happy in their
career and so when they do these
assessments
it gives you grades back on people with
your personality type
tend to like these 10 or 15 types of
careers
and it gives you a lot of other rich
information as a new employer
but i i find it very very helpful
i use the illustration a lot if you went
into accounting
and you’ve got a sales personality type
you’re going to be miserable
and if you went into sales but you’re
really an accountant
you’re going to be miserable and so
matching that job
with experience 60 of americans are
unhappy in their careers
that’s sad and some people get stuck in
that career
and so these types of assessments i used
one when i was in college i was going to
be a dentist trace
and fortunately it directed me
to being a consultant being a business
manager
doing what i do for a living so it
redirected me in a positive way
before i started my career well let’s go
back to
the process where you myself and sally
interviewed this person how should that
meeting go where the three of us get
together and we’re now discussing
candidates
well first of all i’ve talked about this
grading instrument so
hopefully somebody has taken the time to
compile that information
and so that’s the objective part
and then the subjective part comes in
and there’s there’s things that aren’t
measured on a piece of paper
on an analytic that observations and
conversations
could be had well you know they’ve got
to work with so and so
and they have this personality type or
you have those conversations
so now those subjective conversations
about
the variety of things that may not have
gone into the grade
and remember you’re selecting from your
top three candidates so you
probably are maybe uh discussing between
the top two
at this point and why in some cases
maybe two
graded lower but for subjective reasons
you really feel like they’re better fit
well mike our committee of three has met
we’ve selected steve for this job
but the problem is we don’t know
anything about steve’s background
steve’s going to be doing some driving
for us we don’t know if he’s got a good
driving background we don’t know if he
can drive a company vehicle
so how do we protect ourselves and offer
a job when it’s contingent on him being
able to come back
with clean reports and you do that
either through a
written communication or an email
communication but it does need to be in
writing
that we are offering this job but you do
have to
pass these other items a background
check
drug test driving test whatever those
specific criteria are
but it does need to be in writing is the
recommendation as we have them
sign something while we offer them the
job that they understand that
you do want to make sure that they
received it and so that
uh signature means that they’ve actually
seen the
the document you can do it through an
email
electronically and and know that they
opened it and we can have
that as record too but uh signatures are
probably the very best way to go and i
say that’s good advice
we had a candidate and he was fantastic
on paper he interviewed well
we hired him he was going to be doing a
lot of driving
and our insurance agent said there is no
way
you can put this guy into a company
vehicle
so we had to back pedal so the
information you just gave would have
been
great about three years ago i’ve seen a
similar situation
one of my clients before i got involved
hired an employee my first week in
consulting with this client
this particular employee that they hired
was leaving the client side had gotten
into a fight with one of their customers
and spun out in the parking lot and spit
dirt all over the
customer believe it or not the customer
stayed but
they had made a bad hire so we’ve hired
steve
now the true work begins we have to
onboard him properly how should we start
that process
yeah i mentioned it before we need to be
prepared so
generally somebody doesn’t start for a
couple of weeks
after they’re hired sometimes we have a
short runway and we bring them on in the
next day or two
that’s rare but whatever gap in time
we have we need to be wise and spend the
time to prepare
i usually recommend a checklist what are
the things that we need to get ready for
them
do i need to order some tools do i need
to
set them up on a computer do i need to
get them on an insurance policy what are
the things that we want them to be
fully prepared when they the day they
start that they can hit the ground
running
and i’ve done this so many times in my
career i can’t tell you
how special it makes an employee
feel when they get there that day and
their equipment’s on their desk
there’s a welcome package there the team
is here to greet them
and take them around to introduce them
to co-workers
they take them to lunch that day they
feel like
that they’re a rock star because they
just started with this company they’re
the most important
agenda item for that company that day
and when you do that with employees
they’re going to start on such a great
foot with your company that they’re
going to want to stay
i think that’s great advice somebody
told me a long time ago is to always
make them
feel welcome on the first day and since
that time i
always pre-order their business cards oh
great idea
yeah they know we’re wet ready for them
right those little details
so steve came in we had a great
onboarding day
or a couple of days and now the true
training for the position starts how
should we be doing that
so some thoughts here uh you know like
anything else
there’s uh is many ways to train as
there are
companies out there here’s what i think
have become best practices and as you
and i are speaking today trace we’re
winding down
on a pandemic that’s occurred for the
last year
and so why that’s important for training
as a lot of our clients are now
asking for virtual training they’ve
realized that
for years they’ve offered uh training
classes
in their facilities a group of 5
ten twenty thirty employees at one time
that they’re training
and they’ve had to think differently now
and the win
is here is if we invest as companies in
uh training video training for our
employees
those employees can do that on their off
time they can do it on their personal
time where
they can spend more time quality time
and often have
better benefit from the training so it
offers you as an employer
an opportunity to have a much wider
suite of training options for them
that they can train at their own pace
when they’re ready and when they’re
available
the common things that we do as
companies is mentoring right
so one driver trains another driver one
secretary
trains another secretary one customer
service representative trains another
one
and so in that process uh they get to
learn the values and processes
that your company use so certainly
would not ignore a mentor process
i would think that would also give the
person that’s doing the mentoring
some ownership and the success of this
new person
yeah no doubt about it and it’s a pride
factor for them because
the the mentor obviously knows policy
they know processes they know the
customers often
that they’re going to meet along the way
or whatever the uh process
that the job is and so it is a point of
pride for them to be
assigned to this role of mentoring
somebody else
people respond to feedback if they don’t
know how they’re doing they don’t know
what they need to improve they don’t
know what they’re doing well at
how should we be giving this feedback to
this new hire
during this process so these are
traditional things companies have done
i do recommend a 90-day review
so that people have that opportunity for
feedback
i do like the fact that many companies
have a 90-day
evaluation period if you will for new
new hires that allows both the employee
and the employer
an opportunity to reassess things
but that 90 day gives the new employee
very tactical feedback
on how they’re performing and what they
need to achieve in the next year
outside of that we as employers too
often take the annual performance review
process too much for granted
it’s the greatest opportunity we have as
employers to give
valid tactical feedback to employees
and we need to take advantage of it
spend the time it’s laborious but spend
the time do it right
give them good feedback so they’ll know
what steps they need to take to improve
when you don’t do that often bad habits
develop
and worsen that is sort of like passive
aggressive behaviors
we begin to get angry as an employee
because we haven’t given feedback and
they continue to repeat
processes that we’re unhappy with
hopefully this hire does great
and he’s with us for years but let’s
just say
that wasn’t the cards that we were dealt
and
we did a 90-day review and things
weren’t up to par we probably met with
steve a couple of times and he just
wasn’t doing the things to the level
that we needed him to do them
and now we set him free to go find
a job elsewhere how should that process
go to make sure that both sides are
getting what they need
well one of the things i tell clients is
be slow to hire
quick to fire this is a terminology
that’s been out there for a few years
and what that essentially means is we’ve
talked about
being intentional and elaborate in our
hiring process
but when we make a determination that
somebody’s not a fit
we need to act quickly because it’s in
that employee’s best interest
and it’s certainly in our customers and
our fellow employees best interest
to let that person find the position for
them outside of our company
that’s a great fit for them so we want
to be compassionate
we want to make sure that we take care
of them not necessarily
financially just give them a nice little
severance whatever
is reasonable and correct because
remember that
former employee could be a customer one
day we want to
treat everybody with grace and
compassion so
they’ve got a family they’ve got needs
too
so be thoughtful be compassionate but be
quick
mike you’ve worked with a lot of
customers throughout the years
let’s learn from some of your stories so
what is the best hiring practice you’ve
ever seen from a company
and what’s one of the worst hiring
practices you’ve ever seen
so i’m going to mention a couple of good
examples
and surprisingly i write about this in
the book
one was a church that had the best
hiring
practice that i had ever seen and they
took people through
a very slow methodical process of
interviewing several people
they not only did one assessment they
did several assessments
no matter how great the need was they
always took
two to three months to fill that
position to make sure
that culturally and in a lot of
different ways
that employee was going to be a fit so a
lot of people got to meet the
new employee and there was a lot of
testing so
a church was probably the best practice
the
worst practices i’ve seen i mentioned to
you the story of uh
the employee that spun out of the
parking lot and this is
the same company that had some of the
worst hiring practices
they didn’t take the time first of all
they paid whatever the going rate was
for all their jobs
and i don’t necessarily recommend
everybody has to pay more
but if you want better employees you’re
probably going to
want to pay a little bit more and if you
save the money
on the turnover cost of your competitors
you can afford to pay more and so if you
pay more you’re going to get a better
quality employee well this particular
company
paid just the minimum what they had when
i was involved
with them they had one that was a prison
release
and that was great to he’s actually
still there today
that sounds scary but it was a rebuild
process
but they had such some really challenges
and a lot of
turnover at that lower level so if you
want to
do it right you have to take the time as
we’ve talked about
spend the time make sure that your
salaries
are competitive or better than your
competitors
and you have a process that makes people
feel special
when you’re like that the reputation
will get around for your company
and employers are going to want to work
there mike if you can only get
one message across to the scaling up
nation today about hiring what do you
want it to be
i think we’ve already mentioned it
before is to take your time
be slow be deliberate make hiring a
priority for your company
i mentioned it earlier in our discussion
that we didn’t get into our business to
be
professional hiring agents we like
selling we like building we like
servicing we like doing all these other
things
but if you want this company to grow
into
the jewel that you wanted to be you’re
going to have to
replicate what you’ve created because
you’re motivated
as a ceo we’re all motivated to create a
great company well we’ve got to hire
that and replicate that because we’re
not always going to be around one day
we’ll leave the company and we’ve got to
create
a legacy in those employees of what we
believe
our values and our qualities and our
processes so
take your time do it right well mike
before we get to the lightning round
i’ve got one more question for you
somebody leaves the company and then
later
they decide they want to come back i’ve
got a friend of mine that says that’s
the worst decision a business owner can
ever make how do you feel about that
i disagree if they were a good employee
and you had a good experience with them
i’d hire them back
uh in a minute now where i would say the
opposite is true
is when i see employees leverage their
current company for a salary increase
when somebody says well i’ve been out
interviewing i found out i can get this
salary
you’ve got somebody that’s not loyal
it’s not
wrong for them to ask for a pay increase
but to do it under the circumstances of
well essentially what a equivalent of a
threat
if if you don’t give me this raise i’m
leaving
even if you do give them the raise
they’re probably going to leave down the
road
anyway because you’re never going to be
able to satisfy them
through just a salary increase so for
somebody that’s listening today and they
are thinking about approaching
their boss for a salary increase how
should they have that conversation
ah it’s a good question just be frank
about it you know here’s the
accomplishments i’ve achieved
you had set these goals for me boss and
this is what i’ve accomplished in the
time that i’ve been here
here’s what industry standards are for
this position
i’d like you to consider that this might
be a more appropriate salary for me at
this stage
and do it in a collaborative way not a
threatening way
so that your boss sees the numbers and
sees well you know this is a great
employee i don’t want to lose them
so i want to invest in them and if you
do it in a collaborative way not a
threatening way they’re going to usually
collaborate and
and you’re going to win that argument
that is great advice well let’s move on
to the lightning round questions these
are questions that i ask of all of my
guests and we just kind of compare to
see how people answer
so i’m going to give you a super power
and that superpower is you can go back
in time and you can talk to your former
self
on your first day as a business
consultant
what advice would you give yourself it’s
really to trust my instincts and
and be confident in the knowledge that
i’ve acquired
i go back to the first day when i was
with ernst
young and i got a business card and the
business card said senior consultant and
i thought to myself senior to what
i didn’t have that confidence at that
time but i had a lot more
knowledge than i thought i did and so
trust your instincts
and be confident in the knowledge and
experience you do have
and i hear that in speakers a lot
find your voice and when you do that
you’ll do a great job so that’s what i
would tell myself
what are the last few books that you’ve
read good question um
i love reading and so i read business
books
but i i read a lot of history and i read
historical fiction or my
three favorite genres so i’m going to
give you a couple
of books uh speed of trust by stephen r
covey uh stephen covey jr was a great
book
uh about the collateral of trust that we
build in the in in our workplaces and
how important
both with employees and co-workers but
with our customers how important trust
is
i read a book by brian kilamid
called george washington secret six
they actually turned it i believe into a
tv show called turn but it was about the
spies that george washington
used in the revolutionary war trenton
consulting
was based on the war at trenton that’s
where the name comes from i love
early american history and so that’s why
it was a turning point for the war and
engaging trenton is often
a turning point for my clients and so
anyway i love all things early american
history that’s a great book
and then historical fiction was the
toronto initiative
by joel rosenstein and it talks about
the middle east nuclear arms and he is
so
intelligent about his knowledge of
the middle east and cultures and
americans and europeans
and world observations about the middle
east and what’s fascinating he’s got a
series of books
he’s written out there so those are the
recent reads of mine
well they will be added to my reading
list except for the first one i actually
uh i read the speed of trust i’ve i’ve
been a facilitator for that program i
actually got to meet
covey jr he was at a speaking event
and have you read seven habits oh
absolutely uh he was
at our table we had a bunch of different
round tables
and i think everybody had like eight
people or ten people
we had four so he got off stage he came
over he sat
down with us and kind of did our project
with us and then he ate lunch with me
wow and it was it was right before his
father passed away
and i asked him i said okay you’re the
guy in the green
and clean story if you remember that
from seven habits that’s where
he was seven years old and he had to
take care
of the lawn and his father said you can
do it however you want
but the goal the end result is we want
green
we want clean and then he goes on to say
he did nothing
so i asked covey junior i said what is
your take of this story and he looked at
me square in the eye and he said
i was seven so but that was just a
really
really fun time to to talk i always
resonated with stephen cover
senior because i i’m a cyclist too and
uh
he unfortunately died cycling but uh
brilliant mind and uh
i hope i’m privileged to meet the sun
sometime myself
well before we get off the book topic
you’ve just recently written a book it’s
doing extremely well
tell us a little bit about that so i
called my covert book trace uh
i wrote wrote it during the covet crisis
when uh
we were all locked in at home and it’s
the old lemonade out of lemons i
had extra time and it’s something i
always contemplated i think a lot of us
think well one day i might write a book
and so i was one of those
never thought i would get around to it
especially at this age i thought i would
be
much older when i got around to writing
a book
i put the process together i just
started assembling topics on a piece of
paper
then assembled in the chapters and i
said well write the introduction
then chapter one and it rolled out it
i wrote it in about six months it’s a
fun experience except for the editing
part that was another three or four
months of
pretty arduous work but now you know i
it’s a proud accomplishment to say
you’ve written a book
and so yeah i’m really excited about
it’s called the extraordinary business
and uh it’s about moving beyond what is
ordinary for a business and so
we talk about a whole suite of topics in
the book
from human resources that we just talked
about management
governance finance and accounting sales
and marketing branding
so it’s a wide suite of topics for a
typical
business leader well mike hollywood
listens to the scaling up h2o podcast
all the time to figure out what the next
hit movie is going to be about
they’re going to hear this they’re going
to want to make a movie about
your life who plays you
funny question you know i i don’t know
that
anybody would want to play me but if
somebody that i respect
a lot in hollywood uh four’s values and
uh what he stands for
both on and off screen is kirk cameron
and so
i would probably be most honored if kurt
cameron
played me because of the quality of his
character
well i got to say sitting across from
you i could see clint eastwood
i think clint eastwood wouldn’t say that
but uh i appreciate that
all right my final question you now have
the power to speak with
anybody throughout history who to be
with and why
i’m not good at the one person so
answering the one person but certainly
the first on the list is
jesus i mean who wouldn’t want to talk
to god right so going back in that time
and that period when he was on earth i
would love to
spend some time with him you’ve already
mentioned heard me mention george
washington
one of the most fascinating characters
in history proud forefather and first
president of our nation would love to
meet him and then abraham lincoln is
another
great character that was so astute
and such a great leader that he truly
was as we talked about in the book
an extraordinary leader that those three
are the ones that i would love
well mike i want to thank you for coming
on the scaling up h2o podcast
i know i learned a tremendous amount of
some things we could be doing a little
bit better
in our hiring practice and i want to
thank you
for that and we’ll be sure to put an
affiliate link so people can go
straight to amazon and get your book
sure
and they can go to our website
trentonconsulting.com
we have resources out there they can
download
we’ve got a youtube channel that they
can connect with and learn
very tactical uh how to’s
in business so all those resources thank
you trace
[Music]
well i know we all love to hire people
we
never enjoy the process to find the
right candidate so it’s my hope
that mike has taught us all something
that you
are probably going to go back and
re-listen to this episode and take some
notes and make sure that whatever your
hiring procedure is
you’re utilizing some of these options
so you
can take advantage of every single
second that you are spending trying to
hire
that it is getting traction many of you
join the hang each and every time that
we do it
it’s one of my favorite things to do we
get to
meet a bunch of new water treaters and
several people they are
on each and every time that we do the
hang
well folks i’m sure you want to know
when the next hang is going to be
well it’s going to be on august 12th
of course we start that at 6 pm eastern
time
folks there have been as many as 139
people on the hang you never know
who is going to be on the hang and you
never know who you’re going to meet
that has the answer to that question
that you need to get answered you might
meet somebody who sells
a piece of equipment that you need
to solve the issue that you are trying
to solve
the hang is fun we get to do some
networking
and you get to carry that forward in
your day-to-day business so
i hope to see you on august 12th
at 6 pm eastern time if you want to
register and why wouldn’t you want to
register
go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash
hang someone once told me you always
want to hire slow and fire quick
and although that’s a great thing to say
what i really think that they meant to
say
was you need to do your due diligence in
the hiring process so the things that
mike mentioned
the things that you’re probably already
doing already
make sure you do them if you have an
urgent need to hire somebody right now
it does not
mean that you need to
speed up your process to get somebody in
that seat in fact probably what that’s
going to do
is that’s going to slow down your entire
company because if you don’t get the
right
person in that seat the first time
it is going to take more effort it is
going to take
more time and it is going to put you
further behind the eight ball than where
you
are right now so please
make sure that you are following
everything that you need to do
and hopefully you will get the right
person on the first try
but make sure that that person doesn’t
get to stay
just because you hired them that person
gets to stay
because they earn the right to stay
trust me keeping a bad person in your
company
will not do anything but upset the other
good people in your company well i hope
you got some great information on
today’s episode and i’ll be sure to have
a brand new one
for you next week on scaling up
h2o
one of the things i hear so often about
the rising tide mastermind is about
how well the members in the rising tide
mastermind
listen to other people folks we are
programmed to give
quick advice even if we don’t have
all the information through the issue
solving track that we practice in the
rising tide mastermind
you will learn how to ask better
questions
so you can give better advice and
that will shorten the road for whatever
issue
you’re trying to solve to find out more
go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind