Clay: This is Clay Stairs with leadership Tulsa with podcast number 11. This time we’re going to be talking about recruiting through the lens of culture. If you’re not for sure how to develop culture if you’re not sure what your culture is, you may want to go back and take a listen to podcast number 10 to discover what are the steps. How do you create a culture in a company? Today, once we have created that lens, what I get to do across the country as Clay Stairs leadership Tulsa, I get to spend time with leaders, with CEOs, with managers and even moms. As they are looking forward to creating this culture and how they can make sure that their people will nurture that culture, where they will accept the culture. And be willing to live in that culture. It all begins with the type of people that we let in the door. It’s so important.
This is something that I deal with all the time as Clay Stairs leadership Tulsa. I’m working with leaders across the country. It’s that they have let people in the door, not based on their fit, but solely based on their function. In other words what I mean by that, is this person, they look at their resume, they talked to them a little bit in the interview and unfortunately the interview is more of just looking at the resume. They say, “This person can do the job. This person has the experience. This person has the skill. They can do the job.” That’s wonderful. Obviously, we do not want to be hiring people that can’t do the job. But unfortunately what we overlook is, “Can this person fit in the company?” As we as we begin to answer that question, “Will these people fit?”, we have to have the model. We have to have a clear understanding of what that fit means. That is exactly where this culture comes from. That’s the value of having a clearly identified culture.
Now that we have a clearly identified lens of culture, now we are ready to go out and begin recruiting. Let’s talk about the steps involved in recruiting through the lens of a culture. With my company is a Clay Stairs leadership Tulsa. What I do when I when I raise the flag, when I throw out different advertisements to let people know that I am hiring. I always include in that information not just what the job description is. As a matter of fact, many times the initial call is not even about the specific job. It’s more about the culture. I talk about my ‘Why.’ Depending upon what the company is, I am talking about my ‘Why.’
You may have heard of the book by Simon Sinek, Start With Why. If you haven’t read that book as a leader, I’d strongly encourage you to do that. Because this is how you connect with people at a deeper level. If your ‘Why’ for your company does not connect with the people that you are looking for, with the people that you are recruiting. If there’s not a connection at that deeper level of your ‘why,’ then I promise you, you are setting yourself up and your new employee up for struggle, confrontation, conflict and probably termination. Which is going to be really difficult on everyone involved.
We start with the ‘Why.’ If my core values are integrity. If my core values are team. If my core values are production and results. Let’s just say it’s those three, right there. Then, the very first thing I want to do as I begin to describe what I’m looking for is, I want to talk about those three things: integrity, production, results, and team. Those three things that I’m focusing on. Are you looking for this type of place? Do you get excited when you hear these words? When you think of team, do you flourish in an environment where there is a strong team atmosphere? When you think about being pressed to produce, are you a producer? Have you always been a producer? Do people that don’t produce, do they frustrate you? Do you thrive on production? Do you find that you love to press through to get the result that you have desired? Do you love to work with people? These are all just phrases that you might use when you are pursuing.
But we are recruiting through a culture because I want the people that respond to this recruiting advertisement, I want these people to respond to my ‘Why,’ not just, “Hey, I’m giving away money.” Because many people will say, “Oh, you’re giving it away. I’ll take it.” It’s where– it gets frustrating sometimes when I see people that just put up the sign, “Help wanted.” When you put up that sign, you’re going to get anybody that’s looking for a paycheck. That can be a ton of folks. Unfortunately, the next thing you know, you’ve got like 30 applications that you’re looking at, you’re looking through resumes, trying to decide who you want to do the interview with and it’s taking you hours and hours. Actually, I have a client right here in Tulsa that’s an eye doctor. This was one of the things that was so frustrating for him. business speaker Tulsa
He hated hiring new people because it sucked up so much of his time. Because he knew that he would have to look through the applications. He’d have to look through resumes. He’d have to think about and make these choices. Try to figure out who he could interview. Then he bring people into interviewing. He didn’t feel confident about how to choose, How to make those decisions. He hated, he just hated going through this whole process of hiring new people, so he got in touch with me at Clay Stairs Leadership Tulsa. He said, “Hey Clay, help me put something together, where I can feel more confident in my decisions and I’ll be able to feel more confident with bringing people into my company.” business speaker Tulsa
We started with this very thing. We started with the culture. We started with the ‘Why’. In this recruiting through the lens, now that I’ve put out there, first of all, this filter of my culture, I promise you there will be people that will read that advertisement and go, “That doesn’t sound interesting to me at all. I don’t think I would enjoy working at that place at all.” So they won’t apply. Which is beautiful. It’s wonderful. Now you don’t have to filter them out. They filter themselves out. Because they see that is not a good fit for them. Your filters are already working. I’ve got a client down in Texas that did this in the very first time she did it, she was going, “Clay, man, I think something’s wrong. Usually, when I put out these advertisements, I get 15-20 different applications that come in. But this time, I only got four.” I went, “Fantastic. The filter is working.”
That is exactly what you want to see. That you don’t get as many because your filter of culture, your filter of fit is already filtering people out. We’re recruiting through this lens of culture. Once again, we want to be able to clearly identify what those expectations are. Be able to identify, have the language of your culture. business speaker Tulsa. As we said, comes down to this four to six words that you are going to emphasize. It’s important that people be able to function. That they be able to do the job, obviously. They’ve got to be able to do the job. But, maybe even more importantly, do they fit? Because I know that if you’re hearing this, if you’ve listened to this, if you are a leader, you have had people that have been a part of your organization that have been brilliant, they have been wonderful at their job. But they just made life miserable for everyone at the job. Every time there is a struggle, every time there is a difficulty, every time there is a conflict going on, this person just seemed to be right in the middle of it. business speaker Tulsa
I’ve got a company right now that I’m working with, that is in this very place. They came to me and said, “Clay, we need help with teamwork on our team.” Beautiful, I love doing that. I was a head coach for 15 years at the high school level and loved it. Had great success with my teams. Little did I know at that point, I was doing these things. I didn’t even know that as a teacher and high school coach that these principles were being worked into my life. I got their team together and I started talking, asking some questions and different things. I found out really quick, “You’re not going to be able to build a team with this group because they’re not willing.” Each of them have their own idea of what things should happen, how things should go. You’re not going to be able to build team.
In other words, you’ve got rotten wood. You’re not going to be able to build anything that’s lasting. Anything that is going to be able to withstand struggle. Because you’ve got a bunch of rotten wood. We’ve been walking together now for a year. There were eight primary people that they had, and of those eight people, there were six of them that we were saying, “We got to get rid of them.” These are six people that had been in the company for 10 years and more. It’s like, “We’ve got to get rid of them.” Over this last year, we have just gotten rid of the fifth one. Just today I was talking with him. We’ve gotten rid of the fifth one, which was huge. Now, we only have one more that we need to offload. They have been on a plan for a while. Little do they know, they’ve been on a plan for a while to offload them as well. Because they don’t fit. Yes, they have the talent. Yes, they have the skill, but they don’t fit into the company.
The new people that this company has brought in have all made it through the lens of culture, which has been beautiful. How they have been able to bring new people into the company through their recruiting efforts, through the lens of culture. These are some key things to help you as a business speaker Tulsa owner, as an entrepreneur, as a director, as a leader in your company, as a manager in your company. To be able to make sure that you are getting people that you enjoy working with on a daily basis. We recruit through the lens of culture. All of the advertisements, all of the wording, all of the conversation, everything that you’re putting out there to let people know that you’re hiring needs to have the fit language, needs to have your cultural language. Once again, this is Clay Stairs with Leadership Tulsa on podcast number 11, recruiting through the lens of culture. business speaker Tulsa
[00:11:16] [END OF AUDIO]

Clay Staires