Your team isn't underperforming. They're misaligned.

If you've ever hired someone who looked perfect on paper and interviewed beautifully, only to be having "the conversation" about performance managing them out three months later, this one's for you. Andy and Jacinta are mid hiring process themselves right now and pulling back the curtain on the exact question, the red flags, and the mindset shift that separates a shiny candidate from a real fit.

In This Episode:

• Discover the one pattern-interrupting question that gets candidates to out themselves in the interview
• Learn why the interview process is just like a first date, and what that means for how you read a candidate
• Find out how to build a non-negotiables list before you start hiring, so you're not blinded by "shiny object" performance
• Hear the real story behind the answer that's an instant red flag, no matter how good the rest of the interview went
• Understand why technique can be trained but attitude and values never can
• Learn why "hire slowly, fire quickly" is the mantra that protects your team and your business
• Discover how to use application steps (like a subject line test) to filter out low detail candidates before you even get on a call
• Get permission to trust the quiet inkling that tells you someone isn't the right fit, before it costs you

Key Quote: "Candidates that join your team should be a full body yes, and if they're not a full body yes, then they are a hell no in my book." - Andy

Mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I want to preface as well, Jo, that if somebody is actually sitting in front of us, they have gone through.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome back to another episode of the Wealthy Wellness Business Podcast. This one is for those of you who are hiring, and the interview moment that is going to be the dead giveaway as to whether or not this is a right match candidate for you or not. This is a short, punchy episode. It's actually come from a place of us currently being in the hiring process ourselves and going through this exact process. So I'm really excited to take you through this moment with you guys. Really, I want you to think about the fact that the interview process is like a first date. And I don't know about you, but if you've been on the dating scene, maybe some of you are in Tinder. I haven't been, I haven't dated for like 15 years. I have no idea what that whole thing looks like. I don't know. 23 years since I've been on the data. The word on the street. Yeah. The word on the street. Oh, yeah, tell me. Usually first date is fine and then all goes to shit after that, right? And that is because obviously people are bringing their best foot forward on the first date. They're curating themselves. Your interview candidates are doing exactly the same thing. So, really, what a lot of you may be hiring is someone who's a really great performer. And you are dismissing someone who just can't handle some nerves but is your ideal fit. And so, this is the thing that we want to make sure that we are totally on top of with this one sentence that I'm going to give you. So, what is this one sentence? Well, the one sentence that I would recommend that you ask all of the candidates that are in front of you is what would we have to do to make you quit this position? Now, it's so funny when we ask this question, especially to those people who are really like they're good at interviewing. They're staged, they've got an answer for everything. You kind of see them go, because it's a pattern interrupting question. But what this will actually do, it will get people to out themselves as to what is truly important in the role. And so you may hear things like if there's no career progression, then I probably would quit. And so straight away you're like, ah, this person's ambitious, they're looking for something that they can grow in. And you can then decide whether or not that is the right fit for you. There's no right or wrong with that scenario, it's just whether or not it's a good fit. Or if they say something like, if I don't feel appreciated. Now, this could be someone who genuinely just knows what their values are, or who has had funny issues in the past with past employers, that would actually make me go, oh, is this a yellow or even red flag that someone needs validation all the time in order to do a good job? And maybe that's something that happened at their last employment that kind of that didn't um they didn't like in that way. And so it uh provides you this space to dig a little deeper and to have people really show you who they are. On the contrary to that, we also ask the question: if you had to look back on the year that you just had and you were successful in this position, what would make you say that is the best job I've ever had? They're going to give you usually the things that they that are really important to them in that role. And so by asking these questions, you really can wade through so many potential candidates that may be submitting applications to you or that you're interviewing, and lean less away, lean, lean more towards the values of what they're speaking into and lean away from how well they say the thing in the in the interview.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Yeah, so so important. And I I want to preface as well, Joe, that if somebody is actually sitting in front of us, they have gone through some massive hoops to be in front of us. So often when we advertise for a position, we have hundreds of applications. But honestly, maybe I don't know, 5% or so will actually even offer a phone interview to because they haven't replied and um to the email and applied to the position in the way that we have asked them to. So for example, with our manager position right now, we ask them to um send a picture of their pet, um, to title the subject line superstar. Um if they haven't done that, well they're not even they're not even getting an email.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Because they're already demonstrating that they're not detail oriented and the role itself needs someone who's detail-oriented. So there's a lot of things that you can do in the actual application process of your interviews that can weed out so much of the noise.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Absolutely. And you know, for other positions, we've even asked for video applications because communication and the way that they present is so important and vital to that role. So you can get creative with this as well. Um, so they've gone through so much to be in front of us. And one thing that you didn't cover, like another answer that some people have shared when asked with that question of what would actually make you want to leave the position. Some people have actually said nothing.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

As in, they they they didn't, they weren't silent, they said nothing would make me leave the position. Yeah. And I was like, well, you're not getting this job, are you? Because that's not very truthful.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, yeah. So again, that's information. Yeah and a massive, massive red flag. Because obviously we know that's not true. And so then what else? What else are they not being truthful about? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Real story just happened last week.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

So we're not just going to leave you with one line. I want to value pack this episode, and talk to you about the the real mistakes that people make in the interview process and in the hiring process. And that is ignoring the red flags. Like so often the red flag is right in front of people's faces, but we ignore it as the person hiring, often because you're hiring out of a place of desperation. So if you are in a position where you're like convincing yourself that this person is right for the role, even though, no, there is no even though. Candidates that join your team should be a full body yes. And if they're not a full body yes, then they are a hell no, in my book. The way in which you get around this is making sure you map out what your non-negotiables are before the hiring process even starts. So you're not blinded by the shiny object of the performance in front of you. And in actual fact, so often of the time, it's not that they're even performing, it's just that they look really shiny because they may have a lot of other really great skills, but they're not filling the gap that you are currently having in your business. And so you might hire them, but then there's still a role that needs to be filled. And so it's not freeing up your time and it's not getting the job done. And so writing that non-negotiables list, and then once you have someone in front of you that you think you would like to offer a position to, go back to that list and making sure that they are ticking off every one of those things. Now, please make sure you are putting the things down that are the absolute non-negotiables and then the things that are the maybe negotiables. Because what will often happen is when you have someone who looks shiny and you're kind of desperate, you'll go back over that non-negotiable list and you're like, maybe that one was negotiable. Because you'll make that person fit, you'll make that peg fit into that round hole. What I'm asking you to do is be so clear ahead of time what it is that you need and back yourself in that. I promise you, everyone's replaceable, that right candidate is out there. It is so much less expensive and less of a headache to just wait a little longer for the right fit and stay in the mess for a little longer than to hire the wrong person. I cannot tell you how many times I've had Academy members that we go through a hiring process, they talk about this is a person they're really good in this way, but maybe not the right fit in the other way. But I want to put them on, I always give them the same advice. A hundred percent we are having a conversation months down the road about how to performance manage that person out of their team. It is just not worth it.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah. And then think about all of the time and like money, resource, lost opportunity, investment uh that a wrong hire costs you. It's so expensive. It's so expensive. And then potential reputation as well. Um, one thing that I think it's really important to point out because I'm so with you with the whole body yes, like this person's a whole body yes. Actually, the last two hires that we've made have been a bit different to the whole body yes. It was a it was a whole body yes, but a bit uncomfortable. There was a bit of discomfort, and the reason for that discomfort was because they weren't exactly like us in our mannerisms, in the you know, our extrovertedness, but you're not an extrovert. Um I appear to be.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

I'm an introvert in disguise. Don't talk to me outside of uh in public.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

So, so uh and they weren't like fully like us, right? So there is that there was that hesitancy. However, they still ticked all of the boxes and and were like a yes, a full-body yes. However, there was that little bit of trepidation.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, yeah. And if it's the first I'm thinking of, we actually had my other half on the panel of interviewers there at the time, and he was he was like, Yeah, she's good. And that is a tick to actually having multiple different types of people on your panel, not just you interviewing, because people are gonna pick up different things. And for him, because he's nothing like me, he didn't pick up any of what I was feeling because he saw something completely different, and yeah, an amazing fit. And it does remind me of one thing that we never well, sometimes, but quite often we won't put on our non-negotiables list anything around too specific around technique, and that is because techniques can be taught, but values and culture can't be. I know that if someone is open to learning and they have a growth set mindset, and which we had would have screened for in the interview process, and they're willing and able to be on board with our processes and systems, that we can train anyone on technique. It's not like that's what universities are for, right? Like you can get training on that, but you can never train an attitude. And so sometimes it's even in the weeks after the hiring process that you need to refine things a little. Because if you hire someone and then you onboard them, and then you are managing them to whatever you have set as your expectation for that role, and there is a pushback there, or is there there's some friction there, then that is your red flag to get them out of your space, ASAP, because they will just it'll be like cancer, yeah? Versus someone who's having a little of a harder time following your system but really wants to, I have so much more leniency towards that because it's an attitude, right? If they're not, okay, maybe they're not getting it straight away, but like, do they have the willingness and the want and the drive to get it right? If yes, then that's a tick in my book.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

So to wrap up this episode, if you haven't already got this message, then we are suggesting that you hire slowly and you fire quickly. You move people on. And I want to preface here that because it's such like a negative connotation with firing, you're not firing them because they're a bad person or they're terrible or they suck. You're firing them, you're letting them go because you're not a right match. And so by keeping them on, it's doing a disservice to not only your business, however, it's doing a disservice to them because they could thrive in another business. So you by retaining them, you're blocking this amazing person who's just waiting there to join your team, but there's no space, there's no vacuum. So hire slowly, fire quickly. Okay, okay. And trust yourself. So trust your intuition. You know if somebody is not going to work out. There's this little voice in your head, an inkling, a tap on the shoulder, you know. So when you see action, so something happening in the business that that person is doing in their role that confirms that intuition, that knowing, then let them go. Because guaranteed, and this happen has happened to us in all of these um instances that I'm thinking about, when we haven't trusted our intuition, when we have put the blinkers on and not gone with what we knew we probably should have done and given people so much rope and so much benefit of the doubt, it's really come back to bite us and to burn us. So learn from our mistakes, trust your intuition, and take action on that. And if you are in the hiring process right now, yay, we're in it together. So we have a free resource for you. It's our pre-hire template so that you can map out and figure out okay, what are your non-negotiables? What gap do you need so that you can hire correctly your API the first time round. We'll see you back here next week for the next episode. Bing! Bye, Ferner.