Hiring & Getting Hired

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In this episode, we talk about the "Great Resignation."

Whether you're needing to hire, or trying to get hired, we're going over 3 overarching themes to help make the process start on the right note.

1. Assessments
2. Networks
3. Preparation

Listen to this episode to hear more about some low effort, high impact solutions that will set you up for success!

For more on Common Leaders, check out at commonleaders.com

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Transcript

0:43

Hello, and welcome to common leaders. My name is Trevor, your normal host and facilitator over here. And what a facilitator is, is I am here to help you. I don't claim to be super special at much of anything in particular, but I do have a wide variety of experience and training, hiring, coaching and in general facilitating. Facilitating ia one of my favorite words, when I talk about myself, because I hope to work with technical and special experts like yourselves and people in general and be somebody to bounce ideas off of and help where I can today. We're going to talk about the great resignation of 2021, which has been the last few months. And maybe you've heard that term and maybe you haven't, depending on how you follow the news. I don't follow the news in terms of the popular ways, a ton of myself, but the great resignation is real on the ground floor of the job that I currently have as the director of operations at Milestone Pediatric Therapy in San Diego, we have experienced a great deal of turnover in the last couple of months after many successful months and years of facing very little and almost no turnover prior. And I attribute the lack of turnover until that point, really to the culture and the great leadership of the owner, Corey Roan. Who's done really, really phenomenal job at putting a core of trust and care and empathy towards people and that's made people want to stay. Of course, that comes along with the other things that it takes to retain good help, which are things like raises and promotions, where you can, and in a small company of 30 people, there's only so much of that you can provide, but she's done a really, really nice job of making it sustainable. However, like many people across many industries over the last several months, we've experienced turnover. And I wanted to talk about it from two perspectives that have the employee error, which I have been fortunate to be on that side of it with Corey to help interview and screen and draft job descriptions and figure out what the next best fit might be. And also as the employee, because I find myself on. Also in the past and probably in the future. And I have friends, I have former coworkers. I have people that have left milestone who now I find myself on, I suppose, quote unquote, their side, which is that of the potential employee or the candidate. I wanted to talk again a little bit about both, because I think can provide some insight into both. So before you listen to me, you probably want to know why should I bother listening to you about this topic? Well, if I have one passion area within this whole realm, it is the screening and hiring and interview process. I truly, truly love it. It's something I've been fortunate to get a great deal of mentorship and training in from my graduate school at Buffalo State and from my previous employers, both in Yates County, New York in the workforce development team and also as a consultant at Bartell and Bartell in central Pennsylvania. And then of course, getting to roll that into what I do at Milestone has been the core of what I love to do. I have helped hire in the vicinity of 20 plus people at Milestone over the last few years. Which, when you talk about percentages like 80, 90% of our, staff I've been a part of helping with hiring through that process. Almost every person we've ever hired I've screened. And then also been a part of the ongoing hiring and reference check process. So I've had a chance to, to really meet and learn a lot along the way. In addition to all the training that I had before. Which I'm truly grateful for. And it's, it's why I'm good at it from a technical standpoint. But I also love to engage with people, which I think is really the connection of what makes me good at that process is loving to connect with people and having some skill to put with it. And I have seen good candidates fail in the interview process I've also seen people who aren't going to be successful, long-term really nail the interview process. So, I've also been both those people in fairness. So I hope that my experience will, will speak a little bit to why this is worth listening to, I'm not the foremost expert in hiring or an employee coaching or in candidate coaching. I am not the foremost expert by any stretch of the imagination. I just have a lot of on the ground experience. So I wanted to talk a little bit about. Kind of what I've seen out there and maybe provide a few tips to both employers who are screening and hiring and also to employees or future employees or candidates who are looking to get a job. Let's start with the business side of things and talk about what businesses we're looking for and what it is to be on the side of screening. Screening is where it all starts for a good business. You put out a posting, you have a job description, you have some goals. You've really, most of the time, almost no idea how many applicants you're going to get until about 12 to 24 hours in, and then you have a pretty good idea am I going to get a bunch, or am I going to get a few? Are they going to be high quality? They're going to be low quality? But really that first day to day and a half is, is your key indicator of how this process is going to go. Sometimes the first three to four to five candidates, which maybe is a lot, depending on the job is, are really, really high quality. And then other times maybe they're like the type of people that didn't read the job description and aren't even qualified. Both of those you're going to know really fast because you're going to get them right out of the bat Really the process starts with these, your description and also how you post it. And that leads to our first tip for the employer-side, when you're posting a job. This applies, especially to small businesses that don't have, have the bandwidth to, I don't want to say waste time, but really you don't have a whole lot of extra time to screen every person that comes in. So you want to do the best job you can on the front. To screen out the people that you don't want to talk to in the best way to do that for most people, because most employers are not looking for non detail oriented people. They're not looking for people who don't care about the interview process because as an employee, What you expect at the very bare minimum is that you're going to get the person's very best during the interview process. And again, once you, once they start, like it's all all up to chance, to some extent and training and things like that. But if you don't get a person's best in the interview process, you're definitely not going to get the best once they start working for you. So there's a couple of things you can do when post. First of all I want to, this is I don't have any endorsements in terms of where to post indeed as the most popular. It's not my personal favorite. I don't love using indeed because it's platform. It's a little janky. As they say, it's, it's not super well put together. It's not the most user-friendly it gets the job done, but it's got some glitches. They've made some improvements in the messaging system, which I appreciate, but it's not the greatest in terms of user experience. What they have going for them. And I'm going to talk mostly about indeed, because that's where most people look is screening questions. They have experienced questions that are required to answer like a yes, no, to, and they also have like this series of evaluations or assessments that you can put along with your posting. Now, before you go and push all the buttons and add all the assessments, please don't do that unless you're ready to be super picky. It's not the best way to do it, but adding at least a few of those that are the most pertinent to what you need. In, in maybe if you look at it from the flip side are going to scare people who aren't serious about the position enough not to apply. So basically. You'll want to find a balance of adding a couple assessments and a couple of screener questions that are going to make people think twice before they just one tap apply on your, on your posting. In that rate out of the gate, just adding a couple of screener questions and maybe one, depending on the job, two assessments through indeed is going to be. Wonders for you in terms of not getting overwhelmed with a budget applicants, 10% of whom are maybe worth having a conversation with, for you. So off the bat. Definitely do that. Don't add too many because then you're going to start weeding out candidates. Quality or potentially quality, but also are busy people that may have a job in a family. So you don't want to do the opposite and weed them out. Not putting a screener question or at least one assessment in is I think one of the worst mistakes that you can make as an employer. And it's one of the best ways to get an inbox full of people that you aren't ready to talk to. That's not fair to them. So again, tip one is make sure you add a couple of screeners, so you can for lack of a better term, weed out the people who aren't truly dedicated to what you might be offering. That leads to a really easy step one for employees or candidates. We're looking for jobs. If you see those screeners and assessment, Flip and take them. They don't usually take too long. They're not extremely detailed. I've looked at them. They're not really tough. They're not tests like you had in high school. They're just basic questionnaires. Give it your best, take a little time to do it and put it out there. It's really disappointing to me as someone who does a lot of screening to see that I put a couple of really basic or even one basic assessment in some of the most qualified candidates with a resume, choose not to take them. And it puts you in this really awkward position of. Is this person dedicated or is this person like just really skilled and maybe a little bit cocky and doesn't think they need to do that. And those questions are not the kind of questions you want to give to potential employers. You want to check the easy boxes because the hard boxes will come in the interview. So tip one for potential employees or potential candidates is make sure you take the time to do the easy stuff. Don't skip over things that are only gonna take five or 10 minutes and are for a job that you may really, really be interested in. You're going to set yourself apart right away by doing that moving on to step two for businesses. Now that you've posted the job, you've gotten a couple of assessments. You got a couple of screener questions. Now come the applications. If you have 10 applicants versus a hundred applicants, it's going to immediately change how you decide to move forward. If you have a couple applicants, you better treat them like royalty because they might be the only thing you're going to get. And don't kid yourself about that. You don't want to get yourself in a position where you need to hire someone in the next three weeks, so you can start onboarding them before the neck, the person who's outgoing leaves. You don't want to get yourself in a position where you don't have somebody who's ready to learn that. So. Again, if you only have a couple of employees, make sure your treat them like excuse me, candidates, treat them like royalty and ensure that they get your best. Make sure you're selling your company when you talk to them. But again, like really starting to diagnose the situation in the next 12 to 18 to 24 hours of how many applicants am I going to get? And if you're not getting the number that you feel like you need immediately start reaching out to the people that work for you. The supervisors, the managers, the lead. And even groups that you're in and ask those people, ask your network to share the posting that you have one of the best ways to get quality applicants that you don't have to worry as much about as if they're a friend of somebody that already works for you. Obviously that's low hanging fruit, but don't avoid the low hanging fruit. My goodness. If you have a good crew of people that you trust. Don't ignore them, let them help you. And if it gets to the point where you don't have enough applicants, you might need to beg them to help you. And that's okay too. They work for you. And they like working there. So at least they ought to be able to do to help out. And if you end up hiring a friend, that's kind of cool too. On the flip side of that as. Do the same thing, reach out to your friends, put a posting on Facebook, say you're looking for a job. What better way to interview somebody who already works there. Then when it's somebody, you know, reach out to find quality companies and quality teams. To try to join. There are a lot of positions in the world, and right now there is a record number of positions open. So if you're a candidate looking for a job, there's, I don't want to say there's never been a better time because I don't know that right now is the best time for much of anything in 2021 with COVID. Politics and news and fill in the blank here. I don't know if it's the best time for anything, but it is a really, really good time if you're looking for a job. So an entry level job, a little bit above entry level job. There is a lot out there. There's also a lot of technical jobs. The place that I currently work at Milestone Pediatric Therapy, we're hiring therapists, we're hiring billing professionals. There's a variety of positions open. I can tell you firsthand that if Milestone is hiring like that, everybody is hiring like that. And the data bears it out. Whether you look at the Harvard business review or just the front page of whatever newspaper you get, there is a lot of hiring going on right now. So get out there on social media and ask your friends where you should work. He was the network you already have, you should trust them at least enough to get some insight. And then I would go a step further and ask them some questions about where they work and why they might like it. Don't just take them at their word that there's an opening. Most people, if you cut down to it, want to be more than a warm body. And this advice is for employers to most people would prefer to be more than warmed by. One of the greatest things I ever learned along my travels and training was that there is no way that an employer can pay a person enough to fulfill them. How are you going to fill that gap? You have to treat people well. And that out of starting the interview, just like it starts for the candidates in the interview. So do yourselves a favor and lean into the networks that you know, that is step two. So step one is fill out the assessments and provide the assessments to fill. Step two is lean into your network. Those are really, really critical keys that as an employer, make the hiring process. Not extremely easy, that's an exaggeration, but certainly make it much easier. And as a candidate, it makes it a lot easier to know that you're walking into a situation where you may know someone and you may have a little bit of insight into what's going on in that business. It's a big deal. Step three for the interview, this is for both sides. Also prepare. As an employer, go through your questions and have a few boiler plates, but also have some other questions. I typically, when I go into an interview that I prepared for, I have double as many questions as to actually plan to ask. Of course, if I had all the time in the world, maybe I get to them all. But you want to have some to choose from because not every candidate is the same, not every set of communication circumstances, the same. We had an interview yesterday. At work with a candidate who is a really, really excellent candidate, no doubt, but myself and the two other people in the interview were not in sync. It was the first interview we had done of that round for a position we'd never hired for. And it was like a little awkward and having some extra questions ready for me at least helped smooth some of that over I think. Hm. Especially if you're kind of new to interviewing, it's really, really critical to prepare based on the person's resume based on the job description, which you better have up and look at before you go into that interview and then you can choose and pick and choose your way through it. So you can ask your logistical questions like availability You know, the basic qualifications for the job, get that boiler plate out of the way early. And then you can sort of meander your way through the questions that are going to be catered to finding out as much as you need to know about that person. And again, every candidate is different and every circumstance is different in some communications and conversations are going to request and require different questions. If you ask the same questions over and over again, you'll probably be okay if they're really good questions, but you're not going to get the best out of the case. And in my opinion, that's what you should be trying to do is get the best out of every single candidate. Give yourself a hard decision. Cause they all see maxilla. On the candidate side, PR it sounds silly to say out loud, prepare for the interview, go to the company's website, check out their social media. Are they active there? Are they not? And if they are active, write down what they posted last one of the best ways to get a big brownie point going into an interview and coming out of an interview is to compliment something that company has done. Even if it's face level. I love that core value that I read or that post that you put up yesterday. That was really, really interesting. And I thought it was well done. You don't even have to get super specific, best case scenario. You connect with something that they're doing or something that they've posted, and they're going to feel so validated. If it's them that posted it, or if the company paid for somebody to post it, that's going to be gold. So prepare, do your homework on the company, doing your homework on the company, I would say is nearly as important as doing your homework on the actual job description again, because you can get so much farther and connecting with the interviewer as a person. If there's something. The job or the posting or the company that you can connect on, or you can validate their efforts on like, gosh, it must be awful hard to screen 3000 people a day. If you're talking to somebody in a corporate environment, if you say something simple like that, you might get them to open up and talk to you a little bit about it. You're going to get insights into how the company operates and at the very, very bare minimum, you're going to validate the effort that person is putting in, which is definitely going to help your case. So again, to review the three steps that we've talked about that are really, really critical, low input, not very hard things to do that are going to help you both as an employer who is looking for a candidate or a candidate who is looking for their next great move in their career, or just another job.

Trevor: 18:23

To recap this episode on hiring in 2021 after the great resignation, which is probably still going to be going on for awhile are a few really key points in terms of getting started. This is not the whole nine yards as they say it is probably the first four. But the first four yards are really, really important when it comes to hiring and you can make the rest of the process go a lot easier, but putting in some time early on in these. Fairly low effort, high impact type of tips. Based on my experience, the first of those is assessments as an employer when you're posting a job, make sure you're thinking about who you don't want to apply as much as you are about who you do want to apply. Give yourself a little bit of a heads up when you're going into the screening process by screening people out before they ever apply. I wouldn't say. Overly scare people, but maybe scare people a little bit. If you don't want everybody, their brother, their nephew, their niece, and their cousin to apply. Make sure you don't set yourself up for that. Put some assessments in if you're using indeed put a couple of qualifiers in just to make sure that you are adding just a little bit of extra effort into the application because those one click applies. I've done it. I've got a really great job. I would suggest to you though, as the employer that you don't want to get your inbox filled with hundreds and hundreds of applications of people who aren't actually ready to throw down and prepare for interviews, and probably aren't ready to prepare for work as the candidate, if you see those screeners, take them. Certainly there are going to be screeners out there where they put every qualification and every set of assessments on there that they. You can do what you want with that. Certainly if you really want the job, go ahead and do it. But if there's a couple of easy ones, definitely don't skip because there's 10 minutes worth of work there. Show the employer that you're ready to go and put in the time, honest to goodness. When I look at those screeners and I'm not everybody, but when I look at those screeners 70 for 5% of what I'm looking for is did you take it. Whether you've got a 75 or a hundred on it is almost irrelevant to me. If you are one of 10 people that actually decided to take it, just the fact that you put in the effort means a lot. I put a lot of effort into the post. The fact that you put some effort into an app applying for it is helpful. Number two, lean into your network as an employee. Ask your employees to share your post unless you don't trust your employees. In which case, please call me and I'll help you find some employees you can trust. But if you have a set of employees that you already love, or at least like, and trust, please by all means, ask them to share your posts. And if you get in a position where you're not getting many applicants to a position you really need to fill, you might have. Not straight, get on your knees, but bag for help. And that's okay. Don't be too proud to ask for a little bit of help from your staff, because again, like they're already there and they are sometimes your best advertisers. And it's really honest to goodness. It's really fun to hire people's friends in my experience, this is a conversation for a different day to go down that rabbit hole, but you end up having to be almost more, more tough on candidates that are friends of current employees, because you don't want to show favoritism. Those employees though, if they make it through that process, you're going to feel really, really good about it because they're already half in the culture by knowing somebody there as an employee again, or a candidate, don't be too proud to post on Facebook or wherever you do social media or just your friends and family, the next family gathering to let people know you're looking around for a new job and not in like that. Whiny. I hate my job. I'm looking for something new. If you are serious about getting a new. Ask your people, if they have a place or a team or a company or a type of job they do, and they love it, or at least like it enough to do it, let them know that you're looking. And you may excuse me that you may want to get in and talk to someone about that. Again, you just, I can't emphasize that enough. Talk to your network. They're there for you or hopefully are in the last one, which I almost feel silly saying, but, but I see it all the time where employers haven't prepared in candidates, haven't prepared do some homework ahead of time, review your post before you get on the interview. So you make sure, you know what you're actually looking for. Sounds silly. I have seen it before and It's just a basic thing to do, make sure you know what you're looking for. So if the perfect candidate walks up, you don't ignore them as an employee. Do your homework as a candidate, do your homework. Check out the company, social media, check out their website, check out their Glassdoor rating. Glassdoor is not my favorite place to post jobs, but there are some good reviews there sometime indeed is not super useful. If you're an employee trying to learn about a company, but LinkedIn and Glassdoor are certainly great places. LinkedIn is a different, a different rabbit hole for a different day in terms of how you can utilize that as a candidate. But there are plenty of resources just poke around and do a little homework. And again, make sure you have the posting pulled up when you're preparing for the interview. And while you're in the interview. If you have one thing that's on the posting and you're hearing a totally different set when they're explaining what the job is going to be, that's a big red flag. Hopefully you don't have that and you're just ready to go by knowing what they're looking for. So again, assessment network and prepare. Those are really, really key things. Please do them in terms of getting yourself started in this really, really wild job market. That is the great resignation and the fallout. The great resignation almost sounds a little bit silly to me, but the reality on the ground is there's a lot of employers who are looking for good employees. And there are a lot of employees who are without jobs looking for a good place to work. In another episode, in the future, we will go into what people are looking for in terms of why they've left, because there's a ton of at least popular research right now. It hasn't been around long enough. Really have a ton of in-depth research over all the reasons why people are leaving and all the reasons why people are looking for new employers. But it's real and it's out there. So do a little homework and prepare yourself because it's a great chance to stand out. If you're a business that's hemorrhaging employees and looking to hire new ones, it's a great time to rebuild your. As good as it's ever been or better than it's ever been. And if you are a candidate, it's a chance to join a company that could truly appreciate you. You could truly make a difference. So know what you're getting into and do a little extra homework per this podcast per this conversation. If you have something to share by all means, hop on the website, our Facebook page, share something that's going on in your world, that you might be able to help someone. Big part of common leaders is that it's not all about me. I want to start the conversation via the podcast, and I'm really, really hoping that you all can help me continue it on all the things that our social media and all the all the ways that we have to communicate now and share what is on our mind. Again, please consider subscribing to this podcast. I really appreciate it in advance. I'm learning my way through the production, the recording, all the different things. And I'm really, really passionate about this topic in particular. So if you know somebody that hasn't. Either, who's looking for a job and maybe needs a little extra boost and a little extra help or a year, an employer, a small business. Who's looking to replenish the good help, the good staff that you're needing. Let me know. I'm super duper cheap because I'm brand new to the world, but I am extremely passionate about this. So a little bit of self promoting. I, I really do love the hiring process and especially the screening process, because I do think the first chunk of it is extremely important and can do wonders for you once you get down the road. I love, I also love the in-depth interviewing again. I've had some great experience and great training. But the key is really to get started and to get started, do these things that we talked about today and let me know how it goes. Give me some feedback if it worked like trash for you, please tell me. I hope it doesn't and if it does, I apologize. And I want to know, so I never say it again. So I'm not too ashamed when. Made a mistake. I hope that you, if you're, again, a business looking for employees, I hope your interview process goes well. I hope these help. If you're a candidate looking for the next great job, I hope that all of your interviews go really, really great. I hope you at least learn and make some good connections. And if either side of that coin, you need some help. Let me know. And other than that, yeah. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing this. If you know somebody who's looking for a job or somebody who's trying to hire, please share this with them. And yeah, good luck out on that, on that wild job market that we're in. Thank you for being here.