Speaker: Today we’re talking about the five-step hiring process. We’ve been in this series of talking about how to create a culture and then everything that we do in our company we’re taking it through the filter of our culture. Another way that I call that is we’re going to filter for fit and we have gone through how to recruit through the filter of culture. We’ve also talked about how to– From recruiting– We talked about how to do the interview process.
Today we are diving into the five-step hiring process. Again, we’re using our culture. Our core values, what was it we said? The three to five words or three to five phrases principles, core values that we have for our company. The why behind our company. You were using that as a filter for how we’re going to hire people. I want to walk through this process before we dive into that just you may have heard of the company’s Zappos before. If you haven’t heard of Zappos you might want to look at it.
I’ve spent a lot of time studying Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos and at Clay Staires leadership Tulsa. We use a lot of the principles of culture that Tony Hsieh has learned in his company. But one of the things that in article in Ink Magazine and they asked him a question. If you could start Zappos all over again what would you do differently? And he said I would do one thing differently. The article goes on to talk about how he would hire and fire based on whether employees live up to the company core values or not. Independent of how they do their job it’s how do they live up to the company’s core values. Again, just want you to know, that these core values are so important.
At Clay Staires leadership Tulsa we spend time with business leaders entrepreneurs across the country. Helping them to develop, helping them to lead their companies through these principles rather than through personality. That is beautiful. Leading by principles, and not just personality.
I was just speaking with one of my clients just earlier this week and we were talking to them. We had gotten to the point where we’re looking at their overall management of their company and my question of them was, “Tell me what are your core values?” And the two leaders that I was talking with looked at one another and these are the two owners of the company. They looked at one another and they’re kind of, “Didn’t we a few years ago have that meeting?” And all over sudden they’re gradually remembering a meeting where they got together and came up with these core values. But of course, they have no idea what they were and they have no idea where they were.
We’re starting from the beginning with them just like we would be starting from the beginning with any other company. We start with the Why? What is the core value? What are we going to build? What principles are we going to build this company on? Because once again, if we don’t build on principles, we will be doomed to building on personality. And I’ll let you know right now as a business speaker Tulsa owner if you build on personality, you will limit the growth and capacity of your company. Because your company can only get as big as you. So we want to create principles that transcend humans and go much much bigger and allow us to grow our company infinitely. business speaker Tulsa
The five-step hiring process. I want to give you these five steps, first of all, and then we’ll come back and walk through them. Once again at Clay Staires leadership Tulsa we spent time with each of our clients, walking through each of these steps to make sure they have a strong system in place for their hiring. To make sure that they are hiring for fit and not just hiring in a hurry or hiring under fire or hiring under pressure but hiring for fit. business speaker Tulsa
The first thing that we’re going to do in this process, as we do a group interview, we’re going to spend a little time talking about the group interview today. Next of all our second step is from the group interview we choose people to move to step number two, which is the personal interview. From the personal interview we move to the next. Those people that do well in the personal interview we take them to the next step, which is what I call the shadowing experience. We’re going to have a lot of fun talking about that today.
And then step number four is, once we’ve gone through once they have made it through the shadowing experience in the different interviews, now we come in. We have the meeting on the job description and the expectations. So we will be talking a bit about what that meeting is all about. Finally as we have gone through each of these filters. Then we’re finally at a point, what is step number five, which is formally hiring and communicating the next steps for them. This is where we’re headed today, the five steps of the hiring process when we are hiring through the filter of fit or through the filter of your culture. business speaker Tulsa
In a couple podcasts ago we were talking about recruiting through your culture, through the filter of culture. This was when we were using our cultural language our core values as bait. That was the bait that we were leading with. We aren’t leading with, “Hey, we’re looking for a job or looking for employees.” We’re not leading with, “Hey you’re looking for money” Or not leading with, “Hey, here’s a job description.” We are leading with our culture, we are leading with who we are and why we are, rather than, leading with what the job is. business speaker Tulsa
Now that people have responded to that recruiting add, they’re going to be sending in applications. They are going to be sending in resumes, they are going to be sending in emails, phone calls. How ever you have instructed them to respond to your recruiting at. You’re going to be getting a flood of information from different people. What we want to do is we want to set up a group interview with all of these folks. Again this is very different than most people are considering. They’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got all these applications, we got all these resumes, I going to look at all these, I’m going to be up late tonight, after hours looking through resumes and I’m trying to decide–”
And you’re trying to read all of these and be some kind of some kind of Svengali. Wow, didn’t know I was going to use that word today. But we have to be some kind of Svengali that’s going to be able to figure out, who’s the best one simply by reading these resumes. business speaker Tulsa
I don’t read resumes I do not start with a resume at all. When people respond to the recruiting add, I have a pre-written email, that I send to people that informs them that I have gotten their resume or I’ve gotten their application and I give them a time to come in for a group interview. This is what we want to do, we’re going to throw out that ask, tell people how to respond and then when they respond don’t look at the resumes, don’t look at the applications, don’t worry about going through that. Just have a pre-written email that you send out to each respondent.
In this email you’re going to tell them where to be, what time to be there, and here, this is key. You want to give them some instruction to do something before they show up. It could be something as easy as bring a copy of your resume, or bring a copy of the application. But you want to give them some instruction to bring something with them. And then, once they get there, once everybody shows up and it depending upon how you want to greet them and show them into the room and where you’re going to be and all that stuff. But what we’re going to do is hold the group interview. And again this is the time where we’re going to be checking to see if they did what you asked them to do.
If you ask them to bring a resume and somebody doesn’t bring a resume. Then from the get-go they are telling you, “I don’t really do what you tell me to do but if you hire me I sure would appreciate taking your money.” You want to ask them to do something to see if they will be able to do the simple things of just showing up on time, or showing up at all, or bringing the resume that you have asked them to bring, or any small thing you want them to bring with them. You want to give them that instruction. We hold the interview and in this interview what we’re going to do is go over your core values, lead with that sucker. Start right out with that. This is who we are and this is why we are here.
Tell them what you’re hiring for go, ahead let them know this is the position or these are the positions that we are looking to hire for. And then go around the room, feel free to take the time to go around the room and ask them to introduce themselves. Tell them just a two-sentence description of where they have been in the work world? I don’t really want your personal history when, “I was born a poor young black child” Type of thing but you want to ask them, where have you been in the workforce? I’ve worked here have been in this industry done that for 15 years, boom, that’s all we need. Introduce themselves tell us where they have been.
That will give you enough opportunity to see them speak in front of a crowd. To see how well they speak, to see how they represent themselves. They don’t need to go into a five-minute spiel, just a short two sentence thing. If they go on and on and on didn’t let you know, they are not doing what I’ve asked them to do. Once again at Clay Staires Leadership Tulsa, this has been something that we’ve trained, probably, close to over 100. Over 100 different business owners to do in their hiring process is this group interview. As you have brought people in, I promise you as soon as people begin to show up, as soon as you walk into the room and everybody is sitting there, you will be able to look around the room and there will be some of the people in the room that immediately you say, “No. Not going to–” They’re just not fit, they don’t have the look. They don’t have the feel, it’s just no, right off the bat.
Trust your instinct, it’s important to trust your instinct. Then, after you have gone through your spiel of telling them your core values and telling them what you’re hiring for, as you’re going around the room and people are introducing themselves, some of the people that you were thinking okay, this might work. When they introduce themselves, they will filter themselves out again. They will not make eye contact with anybody. They’ll look down, they’ll mumble. They won’t be able to represent themselves well, they will filter themselves out.
You still have not looked at anybody’s resume or anybody’s application. I call this group interview the interview of first impressions, and it’s so important to go through this filter. Finish this whole thing and this whole meeting should be no longer than 30 minutes, even 30 minutes is a long group interview. Somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes is a good amount of time. Now they may be going, “Wait a minute I thought we were going to be able to do XYZ” That’s okay if they were thinking that. But that’s not your process, it’s the group interview, it’s the interview of first impressions.
Finish with saying, “Thank you so much everybody for coming. Taking the time out of your schedule to come out and take a look at this opportunity here with our company. We will contact you. After having everybody here, we will contact you in the next three to six hours” And what you’re going to want to do is find out what that time frame is going to be for you. It needs to be short, please do not tell people, “Will get in touch with you in the next three days.” That’s too long, you’re going to have people calling you, you’re going to have people dropping by the office, “Hey do you know if you guys made a decision yet?”
Let them know it could be in the next 35 minutes, you’re going to receive a phone call from us, and we will let you know if you are going to the next level of our interview process. If you don’t hear from us don’t call us, we will contact you. If you give them too much time like two or three days or next week, that’s just too much time and people are going to start calling you. But if you tell them in the next 35 minutes or the next couple hours, then you’ll be able to cut out all of those phone calls and people trying to contact you.
Then finally, before they leave you want to get a resume from each person. Pay attention as they are filing out and giving you resumes. Pay attention to the ones that you’re specifically wanting to get in touch with. Be sure to catch their names, put a mark on their resume or something like that so that you know who these people are. Each time I’ve done this, I’ve known immediately before they have left the building. I know who I want to get in touch with, and many times I’ve called these people or contacted these people in their car on their way, away from the interview. That is the group interview.
Step number two is the personal interview. At this point now you have contacted the ones from the group interview that you want to move to the next level. Now you’ve very possibly gone from 15 to 20 people in the group interview, to just probably two or three. Now I usually look at the resume in the application. I’m not having to look at 20, I’m just looking at a few. I bring them in for the personal interview, and what we do is we take them through our interview questions and this is what we talked about in our podcast number 12, interviewing through the lens of culture. If you’re looking for those types of questions you’ll probably want to listen to that podcast.
Step number three is called the shadowing experience. This is when it’s not a formal interview, it’s not anything formal, it’s just you asking them to come in and shadow you, or shadow their manager for a day. I do not pay them to come in and shadow. This is not a formal training, I’m not asking them to come in and work, I’m just wanting them to come in and follow me, or follow my manager around for the day to get a feel of what the place is like. What the work is like, what the pace is like, what the culture is like, what the energy is like.
I’ve found many times that after that shadowing experience, I have a much better idea of who this person is, and what they’re capable of, and they have a very good idea now of what they’re getting into. It’s not uncommon at all that after that shadowing experience, you’ve found that this person isn’t going to fit. They looked really good in the interview but now that they are here, it’s not really working out for me. The great thing is you haven’t hired them, you haven’t gone through any kind of HR department yet, they’ve just been shadowing. You can simply say you know I think we’re done here, and that’s it. You don’t invite them to the next level, or to the next step in the interview process.
However, I’ve just completed doing this last week with an employee where they came and shadowed me. It went great, 12 hours. My first meeting was at 6.00 in the morning, and my last meeting finished at about 6.00-6.30 that night, and this person shadowed me the entire day. I think we had eight different client meetings that day, and they just went with me from meeting to meeting to meeting. They were able to see the pace, they were able to see the culture, how I worked with clients what my clients were like, and at the end of that experience which for me was very positive being able to see how this person handle themselves, how they carried themselves. It was a very positive experience for me, and come to find out it was for them as well.
We had a very good shadowing experience and then we move to the next level, which is step number four, which is coming in for a short meeting to talk about the job description and going over expectations. What this looks like. This does not have to be a long meeting, and it can be the same day, this doesn’t have to be separate days. I’m thinking all five of these steps are easily put together in three to four days without any problem. But if you’re in a position where you have to hire in a hurry, you can do them all in one day, if you need to. Kind of scrunch them all up. But at Clay Staires Leadership Tulsa, what we do here, is we take them to the next level, level four where we’re doing the job description meeting and the expectations. In this meeting I want to show them a picture of the organization chart. I want to show them where they fit.
In this interview that I just did last last week, it was in one of my companies where we’ve just had one employee. Just had one employee and that one employee had been me, because it was an up and going company. This was going to be the first employee that I was bringing on other than myself, and I know because over the weekend they were negotiating with me on their salary, they wanted to talk about, “Hey can we change this and change this?” And I knew immediately that they didn’t really know their place in the company. They were thinking hey it’s me and Clay I think I need to get paid more than $10 an hour if I’m going to be the right-hand guy.
So what I did, I knew that in their mind they saw an organizational chart that had two boxes on it. I brought them in, showed them the organizational chart that actually has 36 boxes. Yes I know that I’m the only employee right now, but I actually have 36 boxes on this, and I showed them where they fit in those boxes, and what do you know it was all the way down at the very bottom of the organizational chart where we pay people $10 an hour.
They were interested in making more, which was no problem. I showed them where they needed to go on the organizational chart to make that amount of money. Now all of a sudden, because they see the organizational chart, they see where they are, and they see a growth path for them to move forward in the company. Also in this meeting of the job description and the expectation, you want to fire before you hire. In other words be very serious in this conversation and let them know, “Here’s what we’ll get you fired really quickly. If you do this, if you do that then you will be fired immediately.”
Be very serious. Even to the point of uncomfortableness, “I will fire you immediately if you do XYZ. If this ever happens, you will be fired immediately.” As a matter of fact, let me tell you an example of a person that did this, and how quickly we had their stuff packed up, and how quickly they were in their car driving away. Promoting them to customer status, so fire before you hire in this meeting.
Finally what you’re looking for here in this job description and expectation meeting is, you want to make sure that they are accepting the culture, accepting the offer that you have for them in that they are nodding their head, you want to make sure that they agree with your culture and your why and your core values, meaning they are actually saying words out of their mouth. Saying, “Yes”.
Finally you want to make sure you get the alignment. So they are putting their name on something, it doesn’t have to be in an official contract, or in an official document, but they are signing something, they are putting their name on something that has your core values, because if they sign it, they can own it. But, they will never own it, if they don’t put their name on it. So, I always want to do that in that meeting.
And then finally the fifth step of the five step hiring process, of hiring through your filter of culture, is doing your formal hire and communicating the next steps. So, again, now you are actually having a letter for them, explaining, “Here’s the job that you are going to be doing and here is the pay they we are going to give you for doing that, the compensation or the benefits that you are going to get for that.” Its an official formal letter of intent to hire them, and there’s also explanation of here is what is going to happen next.
So again, these five steps will give you an opportunity all along the way, gives you an opportunity to check for agreement, acceptance and alignment. So what do you think about this? Do You like what you see? What do you like? You know you say you like what you see, what is it that you are seeing that you really like? How does this fit you? You are saying you really like this, why do you really like this? How does it fit you? All along the way you are getting this information, and then also feel free to ask him, is there anything here that you see that is giving you concern, that we need to talk about? To make sure you have an opportunity to clarify.
These are the five steps of hiring through culture. I think its very important, you want to learn this upfront rather than going through the struggles that Tony Hsieh did at Zappos, having to learn this on down the road. We want t make sure that we hire and fire based whether an employee lives up to the company’s core values independent of how they are actually able to do their job.
This is, the podcast number thirteen, the five steps of the hiring process with Clay Staires at Leadership Tulsa.
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