Maximizing Your Career Opportunities (Ft. Josef Stetter) | Ep. #41

Welcome to HIRED! The Podcast, your go-to resource for career advancement and job market insights. Get ready to unlock the secrets to success with our guest, Josef Stetter, an esteemed Author and Career Coach Specialist from The Celebrate Group. Join us as we uncover Josef's unparalleled expertise in personal branding, interview techniques, and career development strategies that have helped thousands achieve their professional goals.

With over 16 years of experience, Josef Stetter is a seasoned expert in guiding individuals towards their dream careers. His innovative approach to resume crafting, mastering job interviews, and leveraging personal branding has revolutionized the way people approach the job market. Whether you're a recent graduate or a seasoned professional, Josef's insights will empower you to stand out in today's competitive landscape and secure the job of your dreams.

Don't miss out on this game-changing conversation! Subscribe now to HIRED! The Podcast and take the first step towards advancing your career and achieving your professional aspirations.

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Connect with Josef Stetter & The Celebrate Group
LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/49KgEeG
Website - https://josefstetter.com
The Celebrate Group - https://thecelebrategroup.com
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Transcript

Travis Miller: 0:00

You've teased something that's going to revolutionize the hiring industry.

Josef Stetter: 0:04

I'm building something for that. I'm building somebody for that.

Travis Miller: 0:12

Welcome to HIRED! The Podcast the conversation with the best and brightest hiring minds across the industry. And I'm Travis Miller. And today I'm talking with Josef Stetter. Josef is a resume whisperer, who's helped over 11,000 people land, their dream jobs. Also the author of 10 books, and a corporate colorist, who has worked with large and small companies to enhance their overall work culture, improving performance, and efficiencies. Plus, he's got a hell of a journey to get to where you are today, Josef, I wouldn't say that you have the most conventional path to your current position. But it kind of makes sense.

Josef Stetter: 0:57

Listen, I don't think that the the experts that really know what they're doing, have had a conventional path to anything. And thank you again, Travis, for having me on the show. At the end of the day, I think we live in a society where, you know, government tells you you need to study this, your parents and your cultural background, say, this is the path that you need to have. And we're not really taught to question it. So my path forced me to question it, I guess.

Travis Miller: 1:27

So let's talk a little bit about your path. How many jobs did you have? How many different careers did you have before you ended up where you were?

Josef Stetter: 1:35

So I've switched careers nine times, and jobs over 18 times, because I didn't know what I want to do when I grew up. So I got to a point where I became the best in the company. And I got bored. So I either quit, or I got fired. Because I stopped caring. In along the process kind of realized, you know, okay, let me start doing self development, try to figure out what my passion is what my purpose purpose is. And as I started doing self development courses, I kind of took a step back and went, how come nobody's applying this to a job? I was not How come no one is applying this to interviewing candidates to better understand them. So you know, from the candidates, I like, I remember doing the Tony Robbins walk a fire. And there's an exercise where to prepare you mentally, to walk across 40 feet of burning coals, he spends five or six hours, kind of getting all the fear out of you, and then building up that memory muscle of I can do anything. And, you know, it was a phenomenal experience. And an after the weekend was done. And I was home and I was on the highest sat and reflected I went How come no one's talking to people about you know, being different on your resume? How come interview still ask generic, you know, tell me about this job questions and getting the auto responder. And then I started building systems and formulas and, you know, volunteered my time at various government associations and various colleges, universities to lecture and kind of go, here's some ideas for you. And all of a sudden, I started getting people going, Oh, my God, this, even this little nugget of information makes such a difference. Thank you. And so that led me to the path of being a resume Whisperer in our corporate culturist.

Travis Miller: 3:26

You touched on something very interesting that I think is really important. And that's the the questioning in an interview. And I didn't plan to, to necessarily start here. But it's something that just just sticks with me. I mean, we're in the recruiting business. This is a business about curiosity. This is a business that's about asking questions. And if you think about it, most jobs, being curious and asking great questions is an incredibly imperative skill. And I can't fathom how many interviews I have with people. Where it's not, it's not an interview, even. It's, it's not a conversation. And I try and give people so many opportunities, to ask questions to find out more about me to find out more about the company. And they'll say, Tell me about a typical day. And I'll take the time to give them give them an A thoughtful answer. And then I asked if they have any more questions, and they say no. And the thought of taking a position without having curiosity about the organization you're going to be joining and the people you're going to be doing, doing it with blows my mind and I have I have such a difficult time. Hiring people who don't ask good questions tell me about Is your process for helping people in the interview process? ask good questions.

Josef Stetter: 5:08

So, as part of, you know, investing 30,000 hours to master everything, there's no about job finding. I've created a list of 300 questions that you could potentially ask an interviewer. And again, the beauty of it is I've bolded the ones that are really good. And I also explain when I coach people that, you know, don't be a robot that asking this exactly. So if your language palate is more simple, don't use the words in my questions, rephrase it, in your own words. So three of my favorite questions to teach people to ask at the end of the interview. The first question is, what would you say is the biggest obstacle for success in this position? And then whatever the interviewer tells me is the obstacle. Even if you've already spoken about an interview, you remind that interview of your experience with this and why this won't be a problem. Right? The second question that I have that I love to ask is, if I were hired tomorrow, what is the first thing I can do to make an immediate impact. And so when I emphasize the word immediate impact, the interviewer is also starting to go, okay, this person wants to produce results, rather than this person needs a paycheck, for example, and so it separates the the idea because when you go, Oh, you know, what, we're struggling, let's say with our, you know, Instagram response rates. So if you're hiring for somebody who's in the marketing world, they're going to start giving you strategies right then and there, if they're very good at what they're doing. And the third question that I love to ask is, you know, of other people that currently hold this position, or have held this position? What are some of the characteristics that you would like to see repeated? Now this is where you're also going to define to me, the corporate culture? Because if you say, well, we need someone who's very proactive. Again, when I teach this to people, so what is proactive mean to you? Because, like someone who goes to Sunday, here's me, here's a little bit, maybe too squirrely kind of thing. But there's a level of where there is a genuine interest in engagement in what's working, what's not working, because sometimes, it's a subtle thing. So going back to interviewing the candidate, you know, most interviewers will say, tell me about this job. And auto response for kicks in. My duties were my responsibilities were, I know how to do X, Y, and Zed. Or, you know, some of the more generic, I'm a really great team player, I love my job. Kind of there, your reaction is perfect to that.

Travis Miller: 8:04

Yeah, it's either already on the resume, or it's made up bullshit.

Josef Stetter: 8:06

Or it's all ChatGPT kind of thing. So I will adjust the question to say, let's say one to three versions. So what was your biggest accomplishment in your last job? And what give me the details on what made this such an accomplishment? And so now, whether they're using star aid smart, or any other formulaic version of answering, here's the situation, here's the task, here's the action, here's the result, in whatever order that they put that in there painting your clear picture of whether or not they know or, you know, what are your three biggest contributions? What are so I call it the nine power words of interview. So proud, significant success, contributions, achievements, accomplishments, results, importance and impact. So those nine words, at the end of the interview, I'm also asking questions with using those nine words to my interviewers. And that's kind of what I teach people. So, you know, if you're interviewing me, Travis, you know, so and you asked me what questions I had say, okay, you know, strategically speaking, what is one of the obstacles that you're facing right now, let's say, level up your podcast hired and take it to, you know, Joe Rogan level, for example, right, at which point, whether it's your own social media presence, whether it's the guests that you have, whether it's this, there's a kind of response, which, again, if I'm listening to you, and shattering your energy, I can then say, Have you thought of this or maybe thought of this now, even if you've done those strategies, the fact that I'm thinking about those for you, shows you that I'm now trying to process how to get you to the next level.

Travis Miller: 9:55

A framework that I've always liked for for this response is Is it we referred to it as as a FAB statement is an acronym you're familiar with, Yeah. Feature, achievement, benefit. So you have this problem. And the candidate then is able to say, so you have this problem, I have this feature, which I have achieved a result similar to the problem you're facing, I have solved it before, which means that if I were to come utilize this feature at your company, I could achieve this, which would directly benefit you this way. Very simple framework, and they start to subcon, subconsciously, in their mind, picture you at their company, when I'm at your company, I will utilize this feature to achieve this for you to directly benefit you, and they start to think of you as already working there, whether they like it or not.

Josef Stetter: 10:50

Right, and there's, you know, nuances to that, that again, make it about them, not about you. So, when you're being interviewed, no matter what they ask you, it's always about that, once you get hired, it's about you actually, proving that you can produce for them. But you know, like, when you have someone who's, let's say, going for their first job, typically speaking, they don't have work experience. So an employer will ask about their extracurriculars. Like, you know, if you play soccer, or football, depending on you know, the language that you use, and they go, Okay, tell me about soccer, they really don't care that you play soccer for 10 years, it care about that your commitment, your passion for soccer is the kind of commitment you're going to give Zed. And that's how you're going to come and approach the job. And so part of it is transitioning candidates and from, you know, I've been doing this for 20 years, I know what I'm doing to, here's how great I am. And here's what you lose, if you don't hire. Right, so I was talking to a CFO off LinkedIn. And literally looked at his LinkedIn profile. It's kind of said, CFO, this company, this dates of year, CFO, this company, this date of hire, and I looked at him said, Have you done any mergers and acquisitions? He said, Nope. I said, Have you done any complex financial simulations? He goes, nope. I said, have you? So I go, Okay, so just because you have a title that says CFO, doesn't mean you fit every CFO role that's posted. So if you've never done mergers and acquisitions, don't apply for a company that says, We need someone who has experienced with that, because we're in acquisition stage, for example. Right. And I think that, you know, we've become so used to kind of going, but I've done this for 20 years, no, you haven't done this for 20 years, you had a title for 20 years, the responsibilities of the title vary from one company to the next. And especially in North America. Now, we're in a generation where people love to give themselves titles. You know, I worked for a private college, where the receptionists were known as director of first impressions. So, so you're like, oh, Director, no, there was still a receptionist. But the title made it sound more important. I have a resume of a woman that worked in a grocery store as a cashier, but she wasn't a cashier, she was a financial transaction specialist. Right. So when you're reading some of these titles,-

Travis Miller: 13:38

You can have a lot of fun with this.

Josef Stetter: 13:40

Yeah. So this is where I said, it's very important that the interviewer gets away from the cookie cutter, you know, standard check mark, you said this word check, Mark, you said this word. And whether it's the fat method or any other acronym that you you've kind of learned over the time, at the end of the day, it's show me that you know, how to do this and produce results and, and, more importantly, that if I hire you, you should produce better results, and you did in your previous company, because you already had the learning curve there. And so now you're at that higher level of implementation.

Travis Miller: 14:21

So it sounds like you do a fair amount of coaching people on how to identify the jobs that they're most likely to be successful. Do you also help people optimize their brand, their social profiles, the output that they're putting out there so that they can be be approached by companies for positions that they're ideal for?

Josef Stetter: 14:51

Hence, the kind of title of resume whisperer because I can make a janitor sound like a brain surgeon. A lot of it is in the wording. So I was speaking to someone yesterday. And I said, Okay, look, if you've worked in it, for example, right. And you've worked on the field services, tech support as an example, okay? I don't care that you know how to use TeamViewer, to check if my computer is working or not. I need to know how you solve problems, I need to know how quickly how efficiently you can solve problems better than other people. So, you know, in kind of crafting his resume, he had a project for a fortune 500 company, where there was 18 technicians that couldn't figure out why the security cameras were not working. And then he explained to me how he traced the cabling, kind of camera by camera to see if there was any loose connections or any splits. And then he found kind of an old camera that was still plugged in, but not working. And so he came up with a creative solution to kind of bypass that camera in the circuit in order to make sure that all the security cameras worked. But again, the fact that he did it after three teams, and 18 other technicians came in, is what I care about, you know, the specifics of he did this or did that. Again, I'm not a techie guy that I need to know that specific, I just need to know that he had that problem solving ability or that, you know, ingenuity or curiosity, from a level of doing that. And so, a lot of times the first thing that I tell people, when you make statements on your resume, and then in an interview, there needs to be the so what, who cares? What's in it for them? Or what's the end result in your statement? So, you know, again, I'm going to go through a few kind of different professions. So, you know, if I look at my background, I say, Okay, I'm an excellent salesperson, I know how to do b2b, b2c account management, relationship building lead generation, I've worked retail, I've done door to door sales, I've done car sales, I've worked in private education, I've done recruiting, I'm an amazing salesperson. Great, I've given you a lot of lingo that is required for the algorithms for indeed and LinkedIn in terms of the technical. But I haven't told you whether or not I don't know how to sell, I just told you that I've worked in sales. So if I then quantify, and say, okay, as a sales leader, for example, I was asked to build a call center from scratch. And the expectation was for a company that owns multiple private colleges across Canada. And the expectation was that my team will generate an extra 300 to $350,000 for the year, with restrictions that my team is not allowed to call any leads that are less than four months old, and less than 5060 miles away from the nearest campus. In less than six months, my team did$2.25 million on a budget of 300,000 for the year. So now if you're gonna hire me as your salesperson, now I've been triggered to go, how did you do that. And as long as I can show you my leadership style that got those results, I've already shown you that if you hired me as your salesperson, these are the kinds of results you can expect, because I eight times the expectations. Because I implemented strategy, I created a culture and a follow through on both of them to make sure that the results spoke for themselves. Right. So and this is where most people when I speak to people when they come to me and you know, I've had the honor and the pleasure of helping almost 12,000 people. A lot of times, it's I don't know how to quantify what I do. I don't know. And I don't feel comfortable to say it. And I said, Listen, it doesn't have to be an exact, you can say over 10% over this. It doesn't. It's because again, if I use corporations like Google, the odds that anyone comes into Google and improve, let's say Google, by more than 20% is very small, because Google is already milliseconds of production when you do a Google search kind of thing. So I don't expect so you know, realistically, 20% at Google might be very, very hard. But if I take a company, like what's new, like FreshBooks it's an online accounting platform that exploded in five years. So in those five years, the likelihood that you could have created 20% improvements was very likely because of the level that they grew where they grew from, like 20 people to 150 people in about a year. And so it was expected that you were going to kind of if you were good produce certain levels of results. So it's not the number itself, it's that there is a number. And it's up to you to discern whether that number is enough. So if you're hiring a receptionist, rather than a receptionist, saying, I know how to answer the phone, really in North America, you know how to press the green button, go Hello, right? You can, if the receptionist says I'm capable of answering 60 calls a day with 12 different lines 60 calls a day with 12 lines, you know, well, I only have five lines, I generally get 30 calls, this person can handle more than double good, I'm confident that this person can do the work easily. And because they can do it so easily. Maybe give them other duties that will make the my my day more efficient or otherwise, things in the company more efficient, for example.

Travis Miller: 20:58

So it'd be fantastic if everybody was able to quantify their their talents and skills to make it easy for someone doing the hiring to understand what they're capable of. But we know they're not. Not yet Not yet. Well, you're only at 12,000-

Josef Stetter: 21:15

I'm building something for that. I'm building something for that.

Travis Miller: 21:19

So what can- in the meantime, what can the people doing the hiring, do to uncover a person's true talent in the specific areas that they need the most help? Again,

Josef Stetter: 21:33

so I think it's changing the wording of the conversation. So focus on the results, focus on the contributions focus on, like I said, the nine words where it's like, Okay, in this job, what was the most complicated thing that you had to solve? So if you ask what was the most complicated thing, and that is three times more complex, and what you're concerned about, that person can handle whatever you got to throw at them? Right? If that most complicated thing is significant, less than what you're, you know, what was the achievements, right? So in sales again, yes, there's a, what's the word I'm looking for? Kind of preconceived, oh, if you've done let's say, retail sales, that's different than doing recruiting sales, or it's different than doing, you know, it sales, the only difference is the cycle it takes to close a deal. Because in retail sales, you can close it right then and there. In recruiting, it might be 123 conversations, depending on how good you are at explaining your services, and so forth. If you're doing it sales, generally speaking, it sales are millions of dollars in revenue, so you're never going to close them on the first date kind of thing. It's always going to be like, Okay, let me take you out for dinner. Why don't we go golfing? Because you have C level executives that have to come together and agree to invest millions of dollars, for example. So to me sales, the sales is just a matter of, do you know, the processes? Do you know the systems? And so, again, when we get away from tell me about this job, what were your duties and get into? Okay, you were an engineer, let's say a mechanical engineer, right? What kind of calculations did you need to make? Why did you need to make them? What was the most complicated solution you solve? Or what was your biggest accomplishment? And all of a sudden, you're forcing people to kind of share more, because they don't think about it, but you're guiding them. So if someone says, Well, you know what, you know, I coded a website. Okay. How fast did you code this website? How extensive was the coding? How many layers? How many bits, like, I interviewed somebody that coded Amazon Prime? Right? So the moment is at Amazon Prime, where he's talking to me about getting a result in point 0001 of a second or whatever. I was like, damn, I don't need to ask much more, because Amazon prime gives you the credibility automatically, kind of thing,

Travis Miller: 24:23

kind of, but in a, in a huge organization in such a huge project like that. I'm curious. How much credit can they claim for that? Because there's got to be massive teams and checks and balances and too, how do you how does an individual or how does somebody interviewing that energy individual, how do they really discern what somebody what roles someone

Josef Stetter: 24:50

actually, what were their kind of projects that they were involved in? So was it the video side? Was it the picture side? Was it the auto response? This side of things. So one of them, a good friend of mine, he was one of the programmers for Bing. Right? And so, again, it's a massive undertaking, you know, take now the world's gone crazy with chatty BTS and the explosion of AI. Okay, so when you're quoting that, how are you kind of creating code that goes into the data lake and able to go, there's a million of this boom, this is your result kind of thing? In an instant, right? So there is ways of discerning what it is that you did, what is the specifications, because, again, even as new technologies comes out, like, as I mentioned, I hinted that I'm in the process of putting together something that will completely revolutionize not only corporate culture, but the hiring and the candidate side of experience, because I'm going to combine both the technical and the soft skills, right and have 360 views on it. Now, there's a lot of stuff that exists right now. So I don't necessarily need to reinvent everything that exists from scratch, you know, with API's and other ways, there's ways for me forming partnerships, joint ventures, access to their API's to be able to take what this data gives me and put it here to manipulate it, even further kind of thing. So if you look at something like Uber, Uber was first a market, and then Lyft came out of it, and a few others, you know, Airbnb was first to market and verbal came out and cottage rentals came out, same technology, just the manipulation of data is different. And the source of information or the use of information is different. So, again, a good interviewer will go, Okay, you worked on this, tell me the specifics that you worked on, that are not kind of restricted, confidential information that you can tell me at least, why you were involved? Or, you know, what elements were you responsible for? So you don't, I'm not asking you to tell me the, you know, code itself, I'm asking you to tell me the kind of process used to go from this to this and produce results, right, whether or not you can quantify each single result. Again, this is where individuals need to take ownership where, you know, a C level executive says, I was the visionary. A director says, I took the vision and created a strategy. A manager says, I took the strategy and created the teams, right. And then the individual said, I did this part of the strategy in the team and so forth. So as you go higher up, there's less of the day to day minutia, and more of here's the vision, here's the communication of the vision. And here's kind of what this vision will or where this vision will take us. Right. So if you're in an entry level position, your job is to execute whatever the layers above you have told you are necessary to get to the vision, for example, right. And we're in a kind of twist where, you know, millennials as part kind of feel that they're owed. So they graduated high school and go, I should start at$150,000 salary. Because, you know, I graduate high school, and I did call up. And then they haven't learned the responsibility. They haven't learned, like, just just because you have fear. And I see this a lot with some of my quitting clients where they'll go, we'll hire a fresh MBA, and save 50$60,000 on salary. Because we don't want to pay for someone who has 20 years of experience. But the person that has 20 years of experience has earned the right to say, I've dealt with this, not just the theory of it. Yeah,

Travis Miller: 29:06

you might save, save 20 to 50 grand, but what's it going to cost you?

Josef Stetter: 29:10

And you're seeing- look at how many recalls there is with automotive, look at how many recalls there is with, you know, products being pushed products being pushed, and then they kind of go, Yeah, we didn't do our due diligence. So the banking industry, like they're getting hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, because they don't know their client. They don't know their business. They don't know their investor. They don't do their due diligence on the paperwork on the ID verification on this. And they're like, we're a bank. But we're doing transactions internationally, but we don't care what's happening over there. We only care what's already happening here. And all of a sudden, all this fraud is happening. Right? So you have to do your due diligence. So now banks are starting to hire more and more regulatory compliance because they're understanding it's not you're building a soft For a platform right now, there are a multitude of compliance that you need to address in terms of, you know, web three, and how you access information, how you store and share information that again, I'm not a techie guy, but I surround myself with people that are smarter than me, that can tell me have you looked at this? No, or do I need to look at that? Oh, okay, did it. So I'm the visionary. I want this to happen. And here's how I want. Let's say, I did a flowchart, here's how information will be gathered. Then I go to my, you know, like, I have very smart people around me that go, have you considered this? Explain. And they explain, I go, No, that's why you're part of the team. Because I know this should happen. The layers below it is not where my brain is at, for example.

Travis Miller: 30:55

So a couple minutes ago, and a couple of times throughout this conversation, you've been playing coy, you've teased something that's going to revolutionize the hiring industry. I'm working on this. What is it, Josef? If he can't just drop that and leave it there? How- what are you doing to revolutionize the hiring industry.

Josef Stetter: 31:16

I'm, creating a platform that will force candidates to give me data that says, here's the results I produced? Here's the technical skills that I have. And they're ranked kind of thing, okay. And it's going to force companies to stop giving me cookie cutter job descriptions, because they went on Indeed, and copied somebody else's. And there's no information there that's relevant to me. You know, like, as a recruiter, my first question when I get a client is, Why have you not hired anybody? What's missing? So if I'm using coders as an example, there's a very big difference between a coder who's worked in a bank or in an Amazon where, like you said, it's such a massive vision, there's structures and documentation for everything, versus someone who's worked in a startup where there is no structure and they have to build the structure. Right? So there's a separation right there. It's a small separation. So it's not Java is Java, it's Java, but from scratch where nothing exists. Now, if you're resourceful to use some of the pre existing, you know, like, Vue js, or no JS, or whatever, that can make things easier, because you can integrate API's and do it. That's your genius. That's, you know, not my genius. But what I'm also going to do, and this is where there's a massive gap in, in this relates to kind of the interview is that the difference between let's say, being a engineer or software developer, and becoming a manager or becoming a director, are the character skills are the soft skills, right? So someone can say we need someone to be good presentations. Well, what standard are you using to create presentations? Right, because if I compare myself to Les Brown, one of my heroes I've admired and had the pleasure of meeting kind of thing, he's made 10s of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars as a motivational speaker, relative to his earning level. I don't have excellent communication skills. I teach communications, right, I teach people public speaking. So I've done Toastmasters, where one of the things that I appreciate about Toastmasters is that as part of their meetings, they count how many times you say filler words, um, and are like, you know, but so forth. And the more they counted, the more cognizant I became, of how much that becomes part of my conversation. So now, yes, I'll still have filler words, I'm not a robot, but I am cautious, or I'm aware of them so that it's not there. So, you know, in to tie that in, and this is where I'm going to if I may. I remember listening to Kenneth Cole, give a speech on how Kenneth Cole shoes came about. He pulled out a 36 page speech and read it word for word, and it was probably one of the worst speeches I've ever heard from integration side of things. But when he explained to me how simple his genius was, where basically, he just signed a contract with a leather manufacturer to make shoes, and there was this massive shoe conference where all the stores order their merchandise for the year in New York, and it was too late for him to get a booth. So he called the city and asked for a permit to have a truck On fifth and sacks there, and the representative of city started laughing and said nobody in New York gets a permit for that corner unless you're shooting a commercial or a movie. So he went to Kinko's and changed his business name from Kenneth Cole to Kenneth Cole productions, one word, and then called and said he needs a permit, to sit, Saks and Fifth Avenue to shoot a shoe commercial. And he brought, you know, a couple of directors chair, he had the cameras, like he rented the camera equipment, he had a few friends come in and pretend they're acting, he created so much buzz that every shoe store that was walking into this conference, came to his truck first, and he sold 350,000 pairs of shoes over the weekend. All from one word. Now listening to a 36 page speech, I was like holy smokes, and even joked at the end of the speech, that that's why he never presents, he hires marketers or people that know how to speak to do Kenneth Cole presentations. But the genius of one word was like, wow. And that was a Ha, so I'm taking my platform going. Okay, so here's 10 different standards for communication. So if you don't like any of these standards, you now can create your own training and development in house, for example, and you're going to do that through mentoring, you're going to do that through your current leaders, and you're gonna take what they're really good at, and bring it back into the co worker so that you can groom people. So someone who's proactive, someone who's problem solving someone that like the beginning of our conversation, Travis, you can kind of groom them to become the next director. And so even though they're currently entry level job, you're grooming their soft skills, you're grooming some of the technical skills of being a visionary, finding up strategy making decisions, because, again, the higher up you go, the less it's the day to day, it's more of the vision, the strategy and the ability to communicate that. Yeah, so I'm going to force people to, to focus in I'm going to have data that kind of shows, here's how people think, here's their communication style, here's their leadership style, so that you can tell where the gaps are. So if I'm going to replace you, Travis, and I need to work on speaking less, listening more, that's one of my one of the things that I'm aware of that always needs to be improved. Great, Travis, you're going to be my mentor, and you're going to teach me techniques to ask very precise questions, so that I can step in to replace you so that you are running a bigger conglomerate, for example. And that's where I think the conversation is changing, because the pandemic has proven that the world of elearning is exploding exponentially right now. The problem is there's no standard in the market. Okay. And so there's no standard, like, I've seen job descriptions for C level executives, where it says, We need a visionary and a strategist, that was the entire job description. For a C level executive, what

Travis Miller: 38:30

does that mean?

Josef Stetter: 38:32

Exactly right. And there's no specific of what experience, what background? What kind of skill sets do you want, so people go, and you know, companies, or at least their HR teams have started adding a lot of we're the best company ever since sliced bread, you know, working for us is heavenly. And so they start using catchy phrases like we need someone who is, you know, super passionate, and someone will go, I'm super passionate. About what? How does that relate to the job? How does that translate to you being able to perform? So I think the more we can hone in on job description says we need someone to solve these problems. Right? Yes, you know, America is all about competition, and so forth. But if I use other countries in the world, Germany, in high school, you start doing certain tests, and based on the scoring of a test, they change the path of high school, that you go, Oh, you're very creative. We're going to put you on the Creator app of high school. You're very analytical, let's put you like engineering path of high school. And so you can take some of that data and say, Okay, how can we centralize so I'm both left brain and right brain I can be very creative when I need to be but I'm also super analytical but If there's assessments that give insights that, you know, this is how I can solve things, or this is how my brain works, great. Now we can match more realistically, there, you know, there's an element of culture where, you know, someone who is from the Middle East generally speaks louder. Just because they're speaking louder doesn't mean you're in trouble. It's just the communication stuff. So what if there was a roadmap that said, here are certain things that you need to be aware of other cultures, so that, you know, if you come from another culture, and you're more soft spoken, or your more this, understand this kind of creates gaps for you. And so I'm trying to paint a complete picture, there's a lot of phenomenal tools out there. I'm not saying that there is. But to give a small piece of the puzzle, I'm actually trying to kind of go, let's take multiple, increase standardization and create levels where, let's say, the technical terms and engineering, you know, let's say there's 100 words that are technically associated with a mechanical engineer, let's force people to go how many of these hundreds that you have. But if I force you, Trevor to traverse sorry, to say, Here, let's say you have 80 of these 100 words, but the company only posted 60 words, now I can score you on 60 words, not an ad. Right. And if you rank the skills that you want, and I force companies to rank their skills, all of a sudden I can even more accurate go. Travis has, let's say, 50 of the 60 skills that you're looking for, but of your top 10. He actually has nine. So do you care about the other 40? As much? Or do you want the nine first.

Travis Miller: 41:52

Probably not. Well, it's all about putting together the puzzle. And it's sorry that we didn't get time to talk about the culture piece of it, because that's a huge piece of the puzzle. But if companies could do a better job of truly understanding the problems that they need solved and searching for that, and people could do a better job of assessing-

Josef Stetter: 42:09

Well again, this where I'm gonna use the analogy, if I may, sorry for cutting you off. But like, Undercover Boss, it's one of my favorite shows. At the end of every episode, the executives go, Oh, my God, I should speak to the people some work here might get some insights. Because a lot of the executives sit in their, quote unquote, Ivory Tower, look at an Excel spreadsheet and say, We need to make this number bigger or better. And they forget the human factor. They forget the human beings need the watercooler conversations to talk about TV, and music and Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl, because it allows the mind to refresh. You know, I'll just finish with this. And this is where part of culture and part of what I'm building is, is that I was speaking to my uncle who it was the president of spar aerospace, which is the equivalent of NASA in Canada. We're having dinner and he was telling me how his software developers and engineers sometimes get so focused on solving a problem that they forget to eat. I said, I want you to do a little bit experiment, I want you to send somebody from a company once a week to Costco and buy fruits, granola bars, cookies, gummy bears, chocolate, whatever, and leave it in the office, leave it in the lunchroom. And I want you to track productivity, productivity increased by 20%. Because the engineers went, grabbed a few cookies and went back to their desk to solve the problem. But because of the fact that they stopped and went to eat something, their brain function clear. And so a lot of companies forget the importance of having free coffee, for example, as much as people might love their Starbucks, the level of knowing that it's free in the office and knowing that you don't need to spend money, even if you still prefer to go across the street and get your coffee will increase productivity. And so it's not just about the profits and losses, you know, or KPIs that are, you know, this is what drives a company. It's the behind the scenes of, okay, you need to group like, you're going to be a C level executive, you need to groom the next director, what are the gaps that exist between a C level and a director, that you need to start mentoring your replacement, to make sure that there's very little learning transition errors kind of thing. And this is where we have a big gap, because a lot of companies just kind of go, oh, you're a really good worker, let's promote you. Yeah. And there's no support structure to kind of go, are you ready for the promotion? You might be ready in terms of strategy, but you don't know how to communicate to your co workers. Right? And this is where culture plays a big factor in having data that can go, oh, instead of just donating money to feed the homeless and getting a tax receipt, why don't we ask our employees what they actually care about? And donate the same money, get the same tax receipt, get the same PR, but now we've engaged our employees. Now employees want to work here, rather than feel miserable and hate their job. Which sadly 80 to 90% of people hate in North America.

Travis Miller: 45:23

Yeah. Well, all the CEOs listening, go grab a cookie and figure it all out in a quiet moment. Josef, this has been great. I really appreciate it. If people want to reach out to you what's the best way for them to find you?

Josef Stetter: 45:35

So Josef Stetter is my name on all social media? It's the same. So there's josefstetter.com. And then there's thecelebrategroup.com The both websites you know are there but LinkedIn and Facebook are where I'm most active in terms of social media. And I'm the only Josef Stetter there and if you're not sure because there is a duplicate of my profile, just click on the profile between the podcast that the books the articles, it's all there you'll you'll find me pretty easily.

Travis Miller: 46:04

Josef Stetter. This has been great. This has been HIRED! The Podcast, please subscribe to get notified of all future episodes when they come big. Thank you to Noah Cuff, our producer, and we'll talk to you all soon.

Josef Stetter: 46:17

Thank you very much, everybody, and thank you for the opportunity.

Travis Miller: 46:19

Thanks, Josef.