Hiring is an essential part of any business and can be, as I’m sure you probably know, an extraordinarily frustrating one.
It seems like no matter how many interviews you conduct, how well recommended a candidate comes or how decent they are as a person, many still don’t work out. We understand this well as we’ve sure made our share of errors in hiring, but data shows we aren’t alone. In fact, some research suggests that 81% of new hires fail…. But why?
The answer is actually quite simple, it’s the fit. Either individuals are put in the wrong role, it’s the wrong company, they didn’t know what they wanted or they weren’t properly vetted in the first place…
In addition to discussing our company process, today I’ll share a tool we’ve developed to assess fit; a tool that arose as a result of conservations I had with individuals we’ve mentored in communication and leadership training (see artofcoaching.com/mentoring for more) and of course, our own trial and error.
Tools like these will feature prominently at our upcoming Brand Building Workshop. This two day workshop is NOT the same as our Apprenticeship. This will be an intimate, intensive gathering of professionals who want to learn and practice tools and strategies for clarifying and growing a brand, and to understand the nuances of building a business in a way that works for them.
Head to artofcoaching.com/brand for more information and to apply!
Speaking of brands, I want to give a massive thank you to Chad Nelson and Yeti. We appreciate juggernauts like them rooting for underdogs like us trying to make a difference at the grassroot level. Be on the lookout for more collaboration between us and if you do come to one of our workshops or join the Coalition, don’t be surprised if you see their stuff well represented or in your hands…
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Learn More About My Courses, Clinics, and Live Events At: www.ArtofCoaching.com
TRANSCRIPT
Brett Bartholomew 00:07
Welcome to the Art of coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom, and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew, I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker, and the author of the book conscious coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior, and communication. I want to thank you for joining me. And now let’s dive into today’s episode.
Brett Bartholomew 00:38
What is going on everybody? Welcome back. I appreciate you taking time for another solo sit down with me. And today we’re going to talk on a subject that impacts pretty much everybody at some point in their life or another, right is hiring, recruiting, trying to figure out how do I get the right people? How do I find the right people to scale what I’m doing to improve my staff to make my life easier, whatever those things are. Now, in the context of today’s episode, specifically, we’re going to talk about sticking points that happen when trying to find a recruit viable candidates and a tool, there’s going to kind of be the bell cow of the episode, a tool that we now use at art of coaching to help us navigate fit, because there have been a lot of mistakes that we’ve learned from. And there is a lot of information that we are trying to sort through when we are trying to strengthen our hiring process. Some of it didn’t make sense for us, maybe it makes sense for you. But ultimately, we really Whittle things down to a process that has helped us and not even just in the sense of hiring because we’re still a small company. But more filtering, because it’s one thing to just get more people it’s it’s not hard to actually hire, it is hard to find fit. So that is really what we’re going to do. And what we’re going to talk about is, you know, we want to break our process down for you piece by piece, so you can steal it and adapt it for your own purposes.
Brett Bartholomew 01:59
This is also something we’re going to be expanding upon on an upcoming live event that we’re doing that you can learn more about, by going to artofcoaching.com/brand, that’s B R A N D I know some people don’t like the word brand, don’t know what to tell you. Right? Like, if you want to make an impact, or if you have a reputation, you have a brand. It’s an indelible mark. Yes, your reputation even in your neighborhood or amongst friends, that is part of your brand. So I understand that the media out there influences things and oh god, you know, even the term influencer, and all these things, but get past the words you have a brand, your brand is an extension of your reputation. And again, artofcoaching.com/brand. So if you’re somebody who generally ask themselves some version of the following, no, you know, I really want to make an impact, but who will even care about what I have to talk about? How will I find people to help me scale it and really build some of the services? And how do I juggle this with everything that I have to manage already, definitely go to artofcoaching.com/brand, it’s a two day thing, we’re going to host a dinner at my house, we keep all of these things very, very, very small, so that they can be extremely tactical and detailed. And we’re not just speaking to a room of several 100 people about vagaries. So if you like those kinds of things, and you like you know, just more in depth, communication and tactics, and you want to branch out and build something that lasts, check that out, do not miss it whatsoever. You know, another thing too, all of our workshops can always be found at artofcoaching.com, pretty straightforward. One to One, mentoring, group mentoring, all that stuff is there. So just spend a couple moments on the site, you can find those things. Part of that is me just trying to get something off my chest, because oftentimes, we’ll get people on social media that will say, hey, you know, I went to your site, where’s this and it’s like, oh, it’s if you want live events, just click on live events, if you want resources, go to resources. So So take some time, and lock into that. Lastly, I want to thank Chad Nelson at Yeti, you know, guys, art of coaching is a family owned small business. And despite the fact that we’ve worked with a wide variety of larger organizations, sports teams, athletes, government agencies, and what have you, we’ve been overlooked plenty in our day, just like many of you, there’s there’s always moments in time where it feels like no matter what you accomplish, that you’re still kind of a nobody, right? At least sometimes in your own eyes, if not other people’s, but it can feel like that. And certain companies have been great partners and supporters of ours and we’re super thankful for that. But like many of you can relate to breaking through the noise is a hard and long road. Even when you’ve done things at a multinational level, you can still be left feeling like an underdog. But there was a conversation I had last week with Yeti that really reinvigorated me on many fronts because it lets you know that there are juggernaut organizations out there like them who still root for people like us at art of coaching and many of you listening who are trying to do things different. So be on the lookout for more news on what we may do. With Tim Yeti in the future, for now,
Brett Bartholomew 05:02
just know that if you do come to the workshop that I mentioned earlier, or you join our coalition, which you can find at artofcoaching.com/coalition, you should not be surprised to see them while represented, you should also not be surprised to see some of their stuff get into your hands.
Brett Bartholomew 05:17
Okay. Now, to the meat of this, every company has a slightly different hiring process. And I don’t want to waste a lot of time here. So I’m not going to talk about different things I’ve experienced when I, when I went through interviews and what have you, that could be a whole episode on its own. I remember one organization when I was just pretty much out of grad school and my and really my first job saying, Well, you moved around a lot. I’m like, what? Yeah, you know, I went to undergrad, and I did an internship, then I went to grad school, then I got a full time job, then I got a promotion these things, required moves, I didn’t move around, because I just been here a year there a year and what have you. I’ve also had an interview experience where somebody was literally asking me some wild question got lost in the middle of the question. And I was like, hang tight, let me grab this, this book, I’ve been reading it, it will help remind me and then proceeds to whiteboard something out. And it was just one of these ridiculous questions that made no sense. He had to read it from a book. And I remember later on, when I asked you for feedback on how the interview went, it was like, Well, you didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about. And I was like, Dude, you had to get a reference book for what you were talking about. But we’ve all had our own idiosyncrasies, either on one end, or the other of it.
Brett Bartholomew 06:35
And, you know, one common theme across the board, no matter the industry, or the size of the organization is that, listen, interviews carry a lot of weight. And many companies even conduct more than one interview for every open position. It’s pretty standard practice. But a lot of these things don’t work, you know, when somebody walks into your office, or virtually, or what have you, as a potential new hire you, you definitely want to make sure you make the best unbiased decision for your company. But we’re humans, and we can’t just be unbiased because we want to be we, you know, we’ve hired friends, we’ve done this other companies have their versions of nepotism, it’s a reality, whether it’s right, wrong or indifferent. And, you know, sometimes these, these processes can linger so long, that, you know, you end up with a candidate who didn’t really fit perfectly, but you need to keep the wheels in motion. And you know, it can feel like an exhausting process. I mean, some research suggests that 81% of new hires fail. 81%. And how often does that happen, because they’ve been placed in the wrong role, or they’re at the wrong company. They didn’t know what they wanted, or they weren’t effectively vetted in the first place. So that’s what we’re gonna focus on specifically is vetting people vetting them. Because you can get recommendations, you can do this, but you don’t always know if it’s going to be a fit. So there’s so much to cover on this, I can talk I’m gonna give one example from when, you know, I was mainly just in strength and conditioning. And then I’ll give an example of what we’re doing now. And then I’ll talk to you about the tool. So one thing that we had done is in streaming vision, the hiring process is always a gong show. And everybody wants to tell you about their certifications and all this and their resume and their references. Everybody can do those things. But here’s the thing, we wanted something that was going to attract people that kind of went the extra mile, they were go getters, so to speak, right? And not just go getters in terms of, you know, what they had done in their career and what they had pursued, but mainly because they they paid attention to the details. And this is why you want to have what are called trip wires in what you do from a vetting process. So you know, quick story with this is there was a brilliant reason why Van Halen asked for a bowl of m&ms with all the brown candies removed for every show. And if you haven’t heard of this, it’s pretty it’s pretty cool rock rock band Van Halen, legendary rock band. recipes to Eddie Van Halen had one of the most oddly specific requests whenever they had this runner for their show. And it was a bowl of m&m candies with all the brown ones removed. Now for years, it was always kind of seen as a folly and you know, megalomaniacs is just like what, you know, what are you doing? Like, why are you making this ridiculous demand of these things? But it was actually a pretty shrewd business move.
Brett Bartholomew 09:24
If you know the story. You know, they talked about this the this clause was buried deep in this contract. I mean, it was buried really, really deep in the contract and lead singer David Lee Roth explained in an interview in 2012, the bowl of m&ms was actually an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band’s complicated contract because if they had it gave them a little bit more insight as to whether they could trust the setup. They had a really complex setup in terms of pyrotechnics and everything like that way more complex than the average band and You know this, this idea to give you to give you an example, Van Halen was the first to take 850, what are called par lamp lights, these huge lights across the country, it was it was a huge production if he went to see them. And a lot of these venues were too outdated or inadequately prepared to set up their stage. And so we had said, you know, if I come back stage, you know, and having been one of the architects of, you know, the lighting and the staging design, and I saw m&ms and the catering table, the brown ones, then you could almost guarantee the promoter hadn’t even read the contract writer, and we’d have to do a line check. It was a tripwire, he’s like, we have to check the entire stage. Because if they couldn’t remember this little thing, you know, that’s really worrisome.
Brett Bartholomew 10:41
And, and I’ve experienced this, you know, just to give you relat, you know, when when we go do our apprenticeship communication workshops, there are plenty of times we try to be very clear, we’re like, Hey, here’s a one page PDF, very clean, double space, just some simple bullets, we need to make sure there’s Wi Fi, you know, is there audio, video, all these basic things. We also have a redundancy on that, where if you host our apprenticeship, you know, you generally you’re gonna meet with my wife or a member of my team. And they’re gonna just go through operations and say, Hey, what questions do you have? What promotional materials you need? Once again, can you give us an idea of this space? And what have you, and there are still times guys where we go, and there’s been situations where there is no Wi Fi or, oops, we forgot, you know, the snacks they were on the hook for or, you know, there’s some other issue or Oh, no, sorry, we know that you asked for a whiteboard. Oops, sorry about that, oh, we were supposed to pick up the chairs. We lay these things out for people. And it’s also happened when I’ve just gone to speak. I remember one situation, you know, organization in a foreign country had me out. And I got there. I mean, I was speaking to nearly 1000 people. And they were like, Do you have a projector? And I’m like, a projector for you know, 1000 people? No, like, I don’t I don’t have a projector, you know, I have every hookup imaginable. I have everything in case just about anything else went wrong. But, you know, I would imagine that this organization would so they literally had to go get somebody to get a projector. And it left me wondering like, what are the other speakers gonna do? You know, there are three other people were they all planning on me, bringing a projector and so the point is, is goofy stuff happens all the time. That’s why you got to vet it. So even when I was just doing strength and conditioning, one thing I would have people do is we’d say hey, if you’re interested, you know, submit, yes, your classic stuff, your resume, your references, all that that’s fine. But in that same email, and we’d make it very clear, sometimes it would be red print, we wouldn’t try to sneak it in there. We’d say in that same email in one email, we also need for video links, and the video links because we we needed to see that person’s personality because people can look good on paper, all they want, we need to see a video of you coaching a movement in the weight room. It can be any movement you want. We need to see a video of you coaching somebody through or situation like in movement, so speed, agility, change of direction, de sel, Plyometrics, what have you, we need to see something on the court or the field. And it could literally just be a demonstration, then we need to see a video of you. It’s just two minutes of basic improv, you can do whatever you want, you can tell stories, you can tell us about your background, you could make a joke, we had one guy oh my god, I was phenomenal. He did a great job just showing his sense of humor and what have you, literally, and then there were a couple other things.
Brett Bartholomew 12:21
So what we could guarantee as if we just asked for a resume. And you know them to fill out an application cool. You’d get like 100 candidates, and I’m just giving you a general number, right? If we then said these things all had to be in one email. Well, the majority of them didn’t do that. Or they didn’t include everything in there. Most people would include something about them in the weight room, but they’d forget something on the field or if they did the field and the weight room they wouldn’t do they’d be like, Well, I don’t understand what you mean with the two minute you know, improv and we would be like, it’s exactly what we said. It can literally be a video about anything, and we gave some examples, what have you. And then we would have some people who would be like, Why don’t know how to send a video link and you see all these trip wires. If I have to teach a candidate how to just upload a video to Vimeo or YouTube and make it private. We had one person that’s like Well, I’m not on YouTube. You don’t have to be if you have a Gmail account, you can upload a video and make it private nobody will ever see it except the person with the link in the passcode so these were things that saved us a lot of time and trouble because guys you know as a strength coach and I’m not to downplay this right like yes, you should have an understanding physiology and biomechanics or what have you, but I can teach you how to run a weight room. I can teach you how to do plyometrics multi directional mechanics all this what I can’t teach is accountability and attention to detail and you just being resourceful I can’t.
Brett Bartholomew 13:35
So you know, that was a huge time saver for us of just who has attention to detail. And it was kind of sad, because again, you might have 100 people that otherwise would have normally applied, and then maybe three even made it through with the instructions. So, you know, when we started art of coaching, and we do so much more now, right, everything that we do is, is based around communication. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, or you’re new here, essentially, you know, we took the lessons we learned from coaching, which a lot of that is interpersonal. And we said, hey, when you’re trying to build buy in, and you’re trying to connect with people, you know, there’s a lot of messy things that can happen, right? There’s people with complex personalities, there’s some times where you’re in, you know, just a situation where time is tight, or somebody maybe had a bad interaction with somebody in the past, we all know what it’s like when communication gets difficult with somebody. So we really have, you know, two core elements of our business, we help organizations or coaches and coaches is synonymous with leaders in our context, who are trying to learn how to build buy in become more effective communicators lead their teams more efficiently, all those kinds of things. So like leadership and buy in is one side of that.
Brett Bartholomew 16:06
The other side of what we do is some stuff with marketing and helping companies build brands and and helping them understand and coaches figure out, Hey, you want to help people? Great, we’ll help you get really clear on that. And then I guess, really a third part we just don’t talk about it much publicly, is we work with organizations, sometimes on retainer who, you know, they’re trying to almost kind of have a pseudo communications director on staff or on retainer, which might sound weird to some of you, but it’s, you know, when you consider that there’s companies like peloton that keep a litany of lawyers on retainer in case something happens? Well, there are companies out there that will also have communications managers, communications directors that say, Hey, whether it’s an advertisement, or whether it’s a staff email, or whether it’s how we deal with conflict, you know, we need help dealing with the interpersonal sides of our company. And a lot of this is just people in the C suite, a lot of times not being on the same page, or staff and, and other people not being on the same page. So we kind of go in and do what we call the AOC SWAT team, where, you know, we work with those organizations to clean that up.
Brett Bartholomew 17:06
So anyway, you know, we’re, we’re growing, we’re scaling, what have you. And we’ve made some misfires, really good people, but just weren’t a fit. So one thing that we started doing, and I think many of you have taken this, if you followed up for a while, is we created a quiz and basic right, it’s it’s the artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou. And it could be perceived by some as a personality assessment. It’s not, you know, drives and personality are a bit different. Again, that’s context for another episode, otherwise, I’ll black out. But the idea here is that we want to know, we want a general understanding of what drives somebody. Now, we’ve talked about this ad nauseam when you take this quiz, nothing is static, you could we recommend people to get three to four times in different mood states, because our emotions are going to change and our answers are going to change and we self monitor and what have you. But the bottom line is, if you applied for a job at art of coaching today, you would literally have to first go to artofcoaching.com/joinourteam. And, you know, periodically, we update some things there. There are some stuff on that page that we’re not currently hiring for. But we always stockpile resumes for because we may hire for that in the future. But they’ll fill out that form. And then we’ll say, Hey, thank you, we need you to take this drives quiz. And then there’s also something that we learned about, you know, it’s not enough to know about their personality, it’s not enough to know about their background. What was huge for us is figuring out like, what kind of workplace environment do they want.
Brett Bartholomew 17:10
And guys, think about this. This is crazy. There are some organizations when I was researching this, where they swear they’ll help you hire the right people. And you’ll have to pay like $1,200 for some personality assessment that’s supposed to help you learn who’s the best hire? Well. Personality is one piece, but environment dictates behavior to a large degree. So what we had learned is we were even still getting some, you know, some folks that slipped through the cracks, you know, with the drives quiz and join our team and what have you. So eventually what we had to start doing is we said Alright, we’re going to create this guide that is getting clear about what kind of work environment do these people want? Because there needs to be a fit in those kinds of expectations as well. Now stay with me, okay. And we’ll list these things off a little bit. And if you if you’ve listened before or even if you haven’t, you know you can go to artofcoaching.com/podcastreflections will have these terms listed there. And we’re going to dive deeper on this in our workshop like I mentioned, but what we do is we tell somebody to rank in accordance with desire, so listen carefully. Alright, so I’ll go through the what they’re going to rank and then how they rank it and then how we use it and what have you. I know this is tough if you don’t know it visually. So we asked them, Hey, are you looking for more investigative based work, or creative base work? Meaning investigative, you’re somebody that really likes gathering evidence studying information, you really want to dive deep into learning things, and you’re super analytical and what have you. And investigated base work can be really good for executive assistants, when you need to get more information, research assistants, you know, a wide variety of things. Somebody that’s more creative base work, right? This is somebody that really wants to innovate, kind of metaphorically break things, they’re good being put in positions where they have to experiment, you know, and, and things like that, it’s a little bit more open. And this is great. If you are somebody that you know, that role means it’s a little bit more entrepreneurial. Or maybe there’s going to be a little bit more outreach, and it’s going to be a little bit more front facing or even even back face, you just have to create, you have to be able to to break some stuff. One, do you? And then another one is do you want to work in a complex environment, something that’s fast paced, it’s flexible, it can be ambiguous, right? Think of a startup, think of a startup and what have you, there’s going to be autonomy, but within boundaries, and then there’s a conventional environment. So with that there’s a clear order. It’s specific, it’s predictable, it’s stable, it’s frequent, you know, every single day, what your job is going to be, there’s almost no variance. Okay, then the other two categories, the final two, and then I’ll repeat them and and talk to you about this scoring, is we say, Hey, do you want to work as part of a collective? Are you somebody where nearly every project you work on, you, you very much need in depth guidance, you want a high frequency of feedback, and you really need immersive team collaboration during almost every stage of development. You really you have to work with a team? Or is it more you looking for, like, do you like independent base work?
Brett Bartholomew 21:57
So you might be given projects, they require a lot of self education, you will get targeted feedback at checkpoints, and there’s accountability of deadlines and what have you, but there’s a lot of individual effort, but it’s kind of like you’re getting dropped in the middle of the ocean, we can assure you, there’s a shoreline, but you’re gonna have to find it, because everybody’s kind of working crazy. So you know, we had a situation and actually, I’ll tell you about a client of ours, they had a situation where they’re trying to figure out how to manage this, you know, they loved this individual that worked for them. But it just wasn’t working out. And, you know, she was really she, she, she was open minded, she was really locked in, in a lot of ways. But she was really struggling in their position. And they had tried working with or for a number of months, and it just wasn’t. And so I brought this up with them, because they were doing some of our mentoring. And I said, Well, have you have you ever had them kind of score this?
Brett Bartholomew 22:50
And they go, Well, why would I do that they knew what the job was coming in. We told them what the environment was, it just seems redundant. I go, we’ll just try this. So what I coached them to do is the same thing I would coach a you to do, we give them this graphic. And again, in the graphic, it says, Hey, rank in accordance with desire, one to six, one is most desirable, this is what I want in the job in the position, this is what I need, right as a person that’s, that’s thinking about taking this role and what have you, and six being least desirable. Now, what’s nice is you also need to take this if you’re hiring, right, what you need to do is you need to score what is needed for that role in the moment. And then this is where this thing works wonders because you compare it. So I said, Do this rank what you need and her role, rank what you need. And and I go, let’s do this together, what is most desirable in the role that she’s supposed to be fulfilling? And he said, well, first off, one, we need somebody that can work in a complex environment, or growing this is fast paced and what have you. So that’s, that’s by far number one, most desirable. And what this role needs Two is, she needs to be independent, there is way too much hand holding, she’s incredibly intelligent. But you know, it’s almost every step of the way they have to check in or if we don’t tell them to do something, they won’t get it done. And they know that this was supposed to be an independent kind of base role. So that’s the number two as opposed to collective right, where everything is hand guidance, you know, super, super tight, high frequency of feedback. And then I said, Okay, well, great is is that roll, you know, do you need more creative based work than or investigative based work? And they said, creative. So that’s number three. So the most important things to us in this role is somebody that can work in a complex environment is very independent and can find solutions creatively. I said, Great. So then what are four five and six then you know, they said, Well, this environment will never be conventional. So that’s a definite six investigative is this and collective is that they rounded it out. I said, Great. So score that and email it to yourself. So it’s time stamped. And they said, Well, why would I do that I go, because when you go over this with them, you don’t want them thinking you’ve changed your scores, you don’t want them thinking you may. And so if you email it to yourself, and it’s time stamped, especially before you even have this meeting before you ever see their scores, it’s just more honest. Okay. So they had sent this to the employee as part of their performance improvement program, and wouldn’t you know it, the employee came back with the exact opposite. So as where this individual, the gentleman that owned and ran the company, one, two, and three, where we need somebody in a complex environment who can work independently and does creative base work. One, two, and three for their employee that they’re struggling with, was, I need a conventional environment, collective guidance, and I want to do investigative base work. And so they got on the call, they went back and forth, we kind of helped mediate some stuff. And you know, he felt defeated, I said, What’s wrong? And he said, I just don’t understand when we did when we talked to them about the job. They knew this. And so while I’m really happy that we know, great, we have the talk of like, man, isn’t it a relief? This, we both felt really awful about this, we love you as a person, we respect you as a, you know, worker and what have you. And it’s clearly just there’s not a fit, but he was really frustrated, because he just goes I don’t I don’t know why that that couldn’t have been done at the onset. And I go, well, now it can. So the essence of what I’m telling you, the listener, is what we make people do now is if we’re hiring, we send them to a page, they fill out a form, they say, this is what we’re looking for job wise, we’re, we’re interested in this position, what have you, we meet when we send an email, it says great, awesome. Step two of this is please fill out the drives quiz, send us your result, Please rank in accordance of your desire with the workplace environment side of things, just score one through six, and send us your result, just send those two things in one email. And so what we do as a company is we know all right, if we’re hiring, and I’m making this up, okay, so don’t hear this, like, oh my god, they’re hiring for this.
Brett Bartholomew 26:37
If we’re hiring for a podcast engineer, or a Content Manager, or a sales director, or what have you, if we’re hiring for that, if we’re hiring for those things, we’ll score what they need, what that what we want out of that role, okay? This, this dictates that we need somebody who is definitely comfortable in a complex environment, this role is going to require more investigative work. And then we actually need this person to work as part of the collective. Okay, so those are one, two, and three, because maybe they’re working as part of a team. But that might look very different than what we’d score for another role. Somebody that’s more on the operation side is going to have a different score for what we need in that role, what we’re looking for fit wise, versus somebody on the sales side, or the education side, or what have you. And you guys can appreciate that. All I’m saying is think of your company or your organization, there are going to be different fits in different people for different parts of what you do you do need it that’s the thing. It’s not that creative base people are better than investigative, conventional environments are boring and complex is better. It’s what does your role and what does your organization need right now score it. And then when you get a candidate, see how what they want, and what they desire, lines up with what you need, I’ll say that again, they submitted their application, they’ve submitted their resume, they’ve submitted their drives, quiz. And like I said, you can lift all this, you can steal it, steal it. And then you need to see if what you need as an organization for a particular role matches up with what they need or want from a workplace. That’s the thing guys, you cannot hire on personality alone. You cannot hire just based on Oh, you know, your your job title or your past experience, because they’re going to be working in an environment every day that is going to be very unique and different. And if that environment is not a fit for what they want, or the nature of the job, or what you need, and all that their personality and their previous work experience doesn’t really matter. It’s all about those expectations.
Brett Bartholomew 27:21
Now, other things you can do, you put them in situations will do this, we light bulbs went off for us. You know, we just ran our communication workshop in Chicago, and a lot of times people will come to us because they want to be better leaders and they want to be better at thinking on their feet. And, you know, maybe they’re not communicating well with their significant other and we just put people in tough situations. But it was one person came and said I want to send my putter I want to send potential staff to you, or I want to onboard I want to create a deal with you guys where you’re part of our onboarding process, you’re part of our vetting. So I thought about this. And I’m like, Why didn’t we think of that. And so we had a situation where this organization had, you know, some candidates, and they were trying to figure out which one was the best fit. And so they had sent them to this thing. And we had put them in situations, these these role playing in probably situations where they had either manage a conflict, maybe they were dealing with an unethical coworker, and they had to come up with contingencies and a certain amount of time. Well, we didn’t grade them on perfection, because that’s relative, but it was mainly their approach, we were trying to observe how they behaved in the context of when the pressure was, was set up, and then we, you know, we’re able to report back to that individual, Hey, these are the situations, we did some video breakdowns of it, you can take a look at these. And the people that came knew what they were a part of, right? It’s no different than when companies are trying to decide between a pool of candidates and they’re like, hey, we want you to submit a project for us. So that we want you to do this. That’s very common, we don’t work with any contractors. If somebody’s like, oh, we do video great, you need to send us examples of your work, we have to see that. And you’ve got to get away from these just resumes and references. You can put them in situations you can have them do our drives, quiz, you can have them do the work environment fit, you know, and then some people are also a lot of work. Listen, Google asked people, if they had to eat an elephant, how would they do it? That is what’s crazy to me, is people don’t think abstractly. They have these boring hiring processes, they get overwhelmed, and they don’t make PBS I’m telling you make people jump through hoops. Because if you don’t have somebody willing to do that, in the interview process, you’re not going to have somebody willing to do that when you’re in your organization. They’re going to want things easy. They’re going to want to be spoon fed. And this applies even close friends. We had somebody the other day, I love him to death. And he said, you know, if you’re ever hiring for art of coaching, let me know. And I said, Well, man, I’m really flattered, because I respect this person tremendously. But are you sure you want to do that? I almost scare people out of that. I said, you know, this is a very self competitive company, meaning,
Brett Bartholomew 32:03
you know, we all have high expectations of ourselves, we were just very much like that we’re very into the craft of what we do. And there’s a lot of times where things pop up in the middle of the week, we’ve got to adapt. And I’m like, Are you sure you would even really like that? I’m like, because this isn’t an easy job. And he was like, Nah, oh, you know, you make a good point. And I said, so I’ve just had a curiosity. You know, I love you, brother. But why ask that? And I knew the answer. They were trying to escape their their former job, their current job. And I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had that to people being like, love what you’re doing, let us know. And what, what it turns out is they’re just not happy where they’re at. So now I’m going to switch and talk to people that are looking for jobs looking for the next step guys, do not apply for a job somewhere else, simply because you’re tired of where you’re at. That is not a good enough reason. We want people to apply at art of coaching, because they are super locked into what we do. They love what we do. And they excel, they want to go into an environment where they expect more of themselves. I mean, this is like the thing, right? athletes get traded to teams, they generally want to be on teams, where everybody there’s a challenge there, right where they either get to work with other highly competitive people, or you know, the more is on their shoulders.
Brett Bartholomew 33:21
We want people like that at art of coaching true problem solvers. People that it’s like, alright, it’s on, I don’t need Brett everyday telling me exactly what I need to do. You know, they can work within a team, they can definitely play by the rules. But you’ve got to be a goat, you’ve got to be a craftsman. You’ve got to be a craftsman. And I mean, that is an inclusive term. So you know, I hope this gives you guys some stuff. If there’s nothing else you take from it, please understand what I’m saying you need to have trip wires when you’re recruiting when you’re hiring all these things. And, you know, it is just, I think there’s a middle ground. You know, you don’t have to be ridiculous, like if you’re telling if you’re not, if you’re not in graphic design, and you’re telling somebody let’s say it’s an engineer or whatever, hey, submit this in InDesign, along with a 4k professionally produced video, whatever, like make your tasks actually relevant to what you’re hiring for. Don’t make somebody buy some, like $500 program so they can put together this crazy thing. But on the other hand, you know, applicants don’t shy away from that. One of the first jobs I ever applied for, you know, they asked me to put together a year’s worth of programming. I went and bind it, it got this glossy manual cover. Like let’s bring some professionalism back to this stuff. I mean, it is awful what people think, Oh, I’m just going to submit a resume. I’m going to do this and hey, we know a guy who knows a guy. Ah, no, no, and it’s okay. Those of you that are hiring to even be a little fickle. What I mean by that is I’ll be transparent again and you guys can roast me at the stake. I’m not gonna hire somebody that hasn’t been through some of our programs, I mean, why would I you? How do I even know you know what the product is? If you haven’t been to one of our apprenticeship programs, you haven’t been through our mentoring stuff on artofcoaching.com/mentoring, you haven’t gone through any of our online courses. You know, if all you’ve done is kind of read my book, I’m super grateful for that. But there’s more, right? There’s levels to this. Don’t apply for jobs and organizations that you are not 100% all in on, because they’ll sniff it out. And if you don’t think they will, the smart ones, then we’ll take these tripwires we’ve created and use them to help sniff it out. We even just saw with some contracting work we did recently, we had like, Yeah, I can’t remember. And I don’t want somebody to be like, Oh, this wasn’t the exact number. We had, like 50 people send in applications, hey, we’re interested on this. And this and this. By the time they had to do the workplace or the the what drives you quiz, the environment fit assessment? And then answer, you know, to the like, a small little questionnaire we sent them or a project they had to finish, guys, we’re down to like four candidates. And then out of those four, two didn’t even follow up on the call that was scheduled. One didn’t even show up. And then a week later was like, Hey, are you so? Are we so good for this? We’re like, oh, did you not get that? Oh, well, I did, but I thought you’re gonna send another air. So if you want to learn more about this stuff, here’s the sales pitch, go to art of coaching.com/brand. We will talk about this and a host of other things because it is a part of strengthening your organization. You can always go faster alone, but you’re gonna go further together rah, rah, we’ve heard that before, right? It is true. But go further together with people that actually do their due diligence and don’t need their handheld. Guys, that’s it. Short, tight to the point. Hope it helps. Please, if anything we’ve done has helped. Leave us a review on the podcast app of your choice.
Brett Bartholomew 37:02
I’m going to tell you to leave five stars because we really try super hard. I know I’m not a perfect host. What have you but listen, we don’t script this stuff. This is all raw ad hoc or real stuff in the moment. I’m giving you stuff that I mean, I’ve bad hiring is cost me upwards of $75,000 my life. I mean, probably more. Because you have somebody on salary or you have somebody that you paid through contracting work that just isn’t a good fit, doesn’t mean they’re not a good person, just not a good fit. So there’s what 3740 minute podcast episode can potentially save you 3040 5060 $70,000 If you actually implement it and figure it out, share it with a friend. Spread the word. Appreciate you guys, Brett Bartholomew Art of Coaching podcast Talk soon
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