How to Recruit Top Talent Like A Pro | Ep 42

Speaker A

00:00:00.560 - 00:22:48.440

This is episode 42, and on it, I go over my entire recruiting system that works better than every recruiting agency my clients have worked with to deliver top performers. This is the Bottleneck Breakthrough podcast.

I'm Josh Long, and this is all about helping you find and fix the biggest challenges in your business to unlock growth and profits that last. Hey. Hey. So today I'm going to give you my entire playbook on recruiting so that you can go out and get top talent without having to hire me.

I'm going to go in detail of every step, talk about what differentiates the average recruiter, average company from the greats, and why I think the Fortune 500 do this so well and spend so much time on building out HR departments and why they invest so heavily in people. Because getting the right people makes all the difference in the world, especially when you're small. So let's kick it off.

You want to hire somebody, you need somebody on your team. First things first. What are they going to do and what role do they fit in the organization?

I know this may seem obvious, but so many small business owners are just like, I just need help. Oh, that person seems good. Maybe I'll put them in the team. We'll figure it out. They're great. Let's just get going.

And if you don't have an org chart, if you don't know what roles are needed, what capacity your team's at, then hiring anybody to fill that role is just going to be slapping mud on the wall and seeing if it sticks. And you'll get the same results every other business owner that falls into that category gets, which is probably about a 20% success rate.

So you got to start out with, what are they going to be doing and why are they a fit? Why is this role needed long term? How are you going to keep them busy? What are they going to be doing? So, obviously, I recruit a lot of salespeople.

And so number one thing I ask business owners is, do you have enough leads or do you have people that can be reached out to that are potential prospects that are actually capable of being contacted? Because business owners may say, oh, yeah, I get deals all day long. And it's like.

But it's only from their Rolodex, from their past industry experience or huge network, and they could just call anybody and they'll get their call answered. But you bring in a new sales rep, they don't have that same credibility, relationships, the authority, contacts, all that stuff.

So do you have lead flow number one for salespeople? Any other job? Do they have enough activities to do? Do you have it defined? Then get into what are you gonna pay them?

Now, when I deal with salespeople, the dream position that every business owner wishes we could fill is just a commission only eat what you kill kind of situation. But in today's market, there's no way you're going to get anybody reasonable that's on a commission only model.

And most business owners I deal with wouldn't expect that. But what are you going to pay them? Obviously they need a base and then they need a commission model. And how are you going to structure that?

If you've not been paying sales commissions, then you've got to figure out, okay, what percentage of our profit are we going to give to that? Typically I say that you want to be up in the 6 to 10, 8 to 10% total cost of sales if you can.

15 is even better if your business model can support it. But that includes the salary bonus, all in management, everything to get that cost of sales in the 10 to 15% range. And that's not counting marketing.

If you rely heavily on marketing, then that changes your business model and whatnot. We can get into the situation if you have any questions.

But for all intents and purposes, how much are you going to pay them and what are the odds that they're actually going to be able to make six figures or more? Because if you're recruiting top salespeople, they gotta be able to make at least 120, 150 in today's market.

Doesn't matter where they live, they need that because it's too easy to go somewhere else and get paid that. If they're good salespeople, so what are you going to pay them? How are they going to be measured if they're not salespeople?

What's their measurement of success? What are the KPIs that they're responsible for? How does their role impact the business and how are you defining that and measuring it?

So you'll see here that we're getting into a lot of management rigor and most small business owners really don't want to deal with this stuff.

So if this is too tedious, if you're like, man, there's just no way I'm going to do any of this, then you can save yourself the headache and not listen to the rest of the audio session because there's just so much detail when it comes to managing and bringing on talent and getting them to perform at their best. So next thing you move into is the Job ad. Now I really like indeed. Indeed.com right now is the 800 pound gorilla in the recruiting space.

It gets so much traffic. There are so many talented people looking there. You can look elsewhere. Ziprecruiter.

I don't even know all the others but Indeed is just the greatest place. So now you got to put a job title. And I look at this like headline writing.

I just did a project for a client and we were filling a few different roles, a couple roles in a few different markets I should say. And I tried different titles and I found that changing the title got better results. So this was an outside kind of account manager rep situation.

So I tried one was business development rep and the other one I did account executive. The account executive got more applications. So then I tried senior account executive and that was fantastic.

And, and that I went back and changed the original business development rep to senior account executive got even more applications. So treat the job ad, the title like a headline in an ad and play around with it.

I did one years ago where we were essentially had an onboarding role for marketing service and so we called it a marketing assistant dash client facing.

And so that way they could understand like oh, I'm getting marketing done for this agency but it's going to be dealing directly with clients so I've got to be sociable, friendly, like working with people. And we talked about that in the ad and they had before used, they had called it internally client onboarder.

When we used that in the job ad we got zero, maybe 12 applications. But when we called it marketing assistant client facing we got like 150 applications in just a few days.

So treat the job ad, the title of it like a headline. Then comes the job ad itself. Write a compelling story, talk about the company, talk about what this role fills.

Don't just say we're looking for a customer service executive or customer service rep that can help our clients handle their daily needs. Must have bachelor's degree, four years experience, good references, be self motivated and all that stuff.

Like stop talking about like what you want, talk about what's in it for them. This is an advertisement to bring in top talent.

So talk about the culture, talk about what makes your company different and why everybody loves it and why your clients love it. Just tell a story that draws people in and tie it to the role. Talk about the role's opportunities. Does it have chance for growth, expansion?

Top people want to grow. They don't want to just get in and have a job and be a cog in a wheel.

They Want to expand, they want to increase responsibility, they want to increase pay. So you could talk about some of that stuff and get into the details of what the compensation is like.

I skew on the high side, so I put the salary or the pay range on the higher end of base plus commission. So like this last one, I put the pay range was 100 to 175,000.

And really quota for this business development rep is going to be right around 110 to 120, which is just keeps you getting the job next month, keeps you in the job from month to month. So anybody that's just shooting for quota, they're going to be above 100 grand.

And anybody that wants to perform better than that is going to be above that. So I put the range 100 to 175, which was a stretch.

And we did get one applicant that misread it and thought that it was $100,000 a year salary plus commission.

But I'd rather deal with that situation than the other where you're attracting people on the bottom end of the spectrum that are just hoping to get to 50 or 60 and are intimidated by the high range. So put the pay in there, put it as a range and talk about that. This is a base plus performance to get into this range, then filter the applicants.

I put required questions on every application.

And there are a number of questions that I focus on that really cause people to reveal their capabilities in the application process and in the job ad. I say you have to answer the questions to be considered because there's a lot of people that'll just apply, submit their resume and move on.

I'm not interested in them. If they can't take a minute or two to answer questions, I'm not going to waste my time. I've never found it to pay off.

Even if they have a fantastic resume, if there's no commitment out of the gate, they've never panned out for me. So I don't chase people. It's a mutually beneficial engagement to find out if this is a fit. So I have a handful of questions.

On the sales side, I do ask what's the most they've ever made in a year? And that reveals so much just in that one question.

The next is I ask what's their sales style and what are their top three things they're looking for in this role? I ask what's their favorite thing they've ever sold?

And then I get into the nitty gritty about the business and the details of what we're trying to sell and their experience with that.

So I really love it when they take their time and answer questions here because it reveals so much from their ability to communicate in the written format, their attention to detail. The more capable they are, the more direct their communication is.

I find that lower level employees, lower level, effective people just ramble and ramble and ramble in their writing. And so it reveals a lot by having them answer the questions.

So when I'm filtering, I go through the questions, I go through their resume and I start making shortlists. And so anybody that doesn't answer the questions, I disqualify. I typically disqualify people that are coming from big corporate.

If they've bounced around from like Geico to Target to other Fortune 500 companies, I find that they just typically can't transition into small businesses. So that's one of the bigger filters.

I'm sure I'm missing out on a few people that could be gems, but the culture is just so different in big corporate versus small business.

And unless they say something about really loving small business and they want to get back to working in small businesses or they're done with big corporate in their questions that they've answered, I tend to skip them. Other things I look for post Covid longevity is really hard.

There's a lot of people that have been bouncing around the last three, four years, so I give them a little grace, but I want to see some consistency somewhere.

Obviously, if they're young and they haven't had a lot of jobs before COVID then I'm willing to look through that, but I want to see some consistency. I don't expect them to stay somewhere 10, 20 years, but I really hate it when they bounce around every six months.

The other thing, and this is really rough, but my standard is I typically don't hire people who are currently unemployed. I know you may say, well, but there's a lot of good people that have been laid off or whatever. Good people always find a way to get to work.

And even if they're just doing freelancing or consulting or they're doing multiple part time jobs, good people work. And so that is a standard.

I just, I had an applicant that had a good resume, looked like it could fit, but he hadn't worked since July and it's February right now.

And I asked him about that and he could not give me a good answer and he just bumbled around and it was obvious why he hasn't found work, in my opinion.

So I'm not In the business of giving people a hand up in these roles, I'm in the business of finding the best talent for the role and getting them in and having them win and succeed because the company succeeds, they succeed and everybody wins. So as I go through those resumes, making short lists, I over communicate with everybody through the process. I set up an automatic response.

If I shortlist them and say, hey, you've been shortlisted, we're going to be following up to schedule interviews in the next few days, just want to let you know. And then if I disqualify them, it sends a message at the end of the day, hey, we looked at your resume, unfortunately you're not a fit.

Best of luck with your search elsewhere.

And so then from the short list, I like to get somewhere between 10 and 15 applicants on that and I go into my calendly and I make 15 minute blocks of interviews in a tight, tight block. A two to three hour window, one day, the next day or in two days. And I email all the people on the shortlist.

I try to start with the people that I want first, give them a chance, maybe an hour head start to get booked, because when it runs out then they got to follow up and say, hey, the calendar didn't work, can you get me extra access?

And for those people that take the time to message me and they usually are last getting to it because they're working, they're busy and all the spots were taken up, I always make room for them and just add a little buffer in the calendar. They say, hey, go use the link again, I'll get you booked. Or I manually schedule it with them.

I typically give the option of zoom or phone for the interview.

I prefer phone personally because I just want to get it done and don't want to deal with zoom and making people feel awkward on zoom on the first talk.

But if the job requires zoom, like they're going to be a remote sales rep or the remote customer support and they're on zoom regularly, I make zoom the only option. I want them to show me that they can get on Zoom and that they've got the technology set up and able to do it.

It's just a nice filter to judge them for that interview.

So then I have the initial interviews, they're rapid fire, 15 minutes and I typically have the top three picked out just from these before I get to anything else. And on it I say, hey, great to meet you.

My goal is to get to know each other, go over the role, answer questions and outline next steps and from there we just dive right in. And I just put their feet to the fire. I'm like, so you're at ABC Company right now. Why are you looking? What are you missing? What's going on?

And I just forced them to talk, force them to tell me what's why they're looking for change, why this role stood out to them. I ask them what caught your attention and more often than not the top talent say, that ad was written right to me.

I've never read an ad like that before. It spoke to me, it was ringing in my ears kind of thing. And so that's the typical alignment of copywriting.

You want the message in the market to match and so those people always stand out. I go over the role, I talk about just the position, what we're looking at, the base pay, the comp plan, then we just answer questions.

And the best talent will just take up the whole 15 minutes. They've got great questions, they're thinking of solutions, they're connecting dots.

It's so obvious when you're talking to them and the mediocre and poor performers.

When you get done without outlining the role and based on the job ad and you say what questions you have, they always go, you know, you really have answered all of them. This is really great, I appreciate it. And I'm like, yeah, you bet, I'll follow up with you and blah blah, blah.

And I wrap up the call and I'm usually done in five to seven minutes with them and they're typically disqualified just from that process. So then I tell everybody at the end of the call, look, next steps are, I'm going to shortlist, make a short list of two to three people.

I will get you an email by the end of the day or tomorrow, whatever the timeline. I'm working on letting you know whether you made that short list or not. If you did, I will send you a link to take a personality assessment.

And this is a comprehensive, just an aside here, I don't tell them this, but this is a comprehensive personality assessment I've used for 10 years that goes over the disc personality profile as well as their motivators as well as their internal and external skills with the world like their confidence and ability to deal with the world and their intelligence and self care direction to deal with themselves. And so I tell them I'm going to send that it'll take about a half an hour and they need to get that done before we can schedule the next interview.

And I say that we'll have an interview with me and the client, the owner. And it'll probably be a half an hour to 45 minutes. And then from there, if they are chosen as the top candidate, we will check references.

And then if they pass the references, we'll go over the comp plan and extend an offer for them to start. And by spelling all of that out, everybody loves it. They love me for that clarity.

Because recruiters and HR directors are so lazy and so entitled and don't communicate with people. And so I send that message out the next day or at the end of the day.

And the people that were on the bubble that are like the fourth or fifth short list candidate, they will always say, thanks, I really would love this opportunity. I know I can do well with it. Keep me posted if anything changes.

And then you want to see that where they get rejected in sales and they still want to fight for it. So then I go through the assessments. I've got my own scoring process. I've been doing this.

I've done about 3,500 people over the last 10 years, 12 years. And I can see the pattern so clearly for any role of what the company needs and what you need in that role to succeed.

So I narrow it down to the top two. We have interviews with the owner and me. And in that, it's just to get to know you.

Owners share the background of the company, their vision for where it's going, get the person excited that there's a future here, that they can make an impact.

Ask them about their background, ask questions related to their experience, get a perspective of, like, how hungry are they, how capable are they, how smart are they to partner with this owner, to strategize, to put pressure on the organization, because top salespeople do that. They put pressure on. On every part of the organization in all the best ways.

And so from there, then we wrap up the calls and I meet with the owner, and we just have a gut check and figure out which one of the top two to hire. And more often than not, the owner, my client, is frustrated because they want to hire both of them.

And so in those cases, I'll make a recommendation, but then oftentimes I'll say, have them come out, visit the facility, spend an hour with you, pay them, take them to lunch, whatever. And by then, after that session, they're able to pick who they want.

And so then we go into reference checks, and I call everybody they give me, and the first thing I ask is, hey, so and so listed you as a reference. I'm just checking in really just want to know that they're not an axe murderer. And that makes everybody laugh. And it kind of takes the edge off.

And the great employees that have references, the people just rave and rave and rave about them. And from there I just ask a couple questions like, why'd they leave? What was the. Any issues you had if you could hire them over again, would you?

Things like that.

And it's just real quick checks that we're verifying that everything that I've seen so far, from the interviews, from the assessments, from their background, that it all matches up. And from there, then we make the offer.

And a lot of times people have to give their two weeks notice because again, we don't hire unemployed people and we work out the timing of their start date.

And at this point, I tell the candidate, hey, you may go back and put in your two weeks notice and your employer's going to make an offer to try to keep you.

They're going to throw everything at you and you're going to be like, well, where was this before when I was asking for a pay raise or promotion or whatever? And a lot of companies, they just manage by this, only promoting when people threaten to leave. And it works because people stick around.

They'd rather just not deal with the change. And so I talk them through, like, okay, what are you going to do when they make this offer?

And nine times out of 10, they're like, oh, I won't be tempted by it because they've already burned me or I've already moved on or they wouldn't offer that. But that once in a blue moon, the employee, the candidate says, gosh, I haven't thought about that.

And so I walk them through and I kind of coach them through, hey, what needs to happen for you to keep moving forward with my client versus staying in your current role?

And so I had one of these last year where we hired an operations manager and the company was leaving, threw everything at him, promotion, new shop, new place, and increased his pay by like 50%. And it was outrageous. And thankfully my client was already offering like 40% more pay. So he matched. It was a little irritated, but.

And he thought that the client was. Or the employee was playing us. I was like, no, he doesn't have the skills for it. And we ended up getting him online over the line.

And he's been a great fit. But you got to make sure that you've got that sorted out before it happens to you, because it happens so often and you just want to be.

You want to anticipate it so that you're not at the 11th hour and you got somebody that you're ready to bring on and then you lose them and then you got to go back all the way through this process and start all over.

And unfortunately some of the top candidates that you saw a week or two earlier may have already taken another job because top candidates are always getting jobs and they're not around. So you got to go through this process all over again. So that's my process obviously.

Then you get into onboarding and I won't get into any of those details.

That's a whole separate subject around making sure that employees get started in their first 90 days well and how to keep them happy and around so that they don't have regret of gosh, was this just a timeshare pitch that I came over to and now I'm duped and frustrated that I got got suckered by another malicious or fast talking business owner. So reach out if you have any questions. Obviously if you want me to run this for you, happy to. This is what I'm doing all day, every day for clients.

It is the differentiator for so many businesses to get top talent, whether it's salespeople, operations, marketing.

That kind of leadership role is so critical when you're in that two to $10 million range and and can make such a difference to free you up and unlock growth in your business. So hope this was useful. Shoot me a note podcastottleneckbreakthrough.com if you have any questions.

Obviously I'm not going to give you my documents or checklists directly. That is my business. But happy to share this process in this episode and hope you got a ton of value from it. Take care.

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