The New Talent Playbook with Rob Levin

In this episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I sit down with Rob Levin, entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of Work Better Now, to talk about the dramatic shift happening in talent, hiring, and leadership.

We explore why hiring great people feels harder than ever, what today’s workforce expects from leadership, and why culture has become one of the biggest competitive advantages a business can have.

Rob shares practical insights on building a culture that attracts top talent, making core values actually matter, managing remote teams effectively, and how AI is changing the hiring process.

If you’re leading a team, hiring talent, or trying to build a stronger organization in today’s evolving workplace, this conversation is packed with actionable ideas.

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Transcript

Rob 0:02

the speed in which candidates are expecting you to turn things around is now compressed. And you can actually-- you can be the better company for them, but you will lose out 'cause the company works quickly. By the way, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have two, two or more people interview. You should, absolutely. All I'm saying is compress the timeline. You gotta reevaluate your entire hiring process. So these are a few things, Oh, by the way, the biggest element of the talent shift is it's harder and harder to find people than it ever has been, especially good people.

Mike Goldman 0:39

You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.

Meet Rob Levin

Mike 1:13

Rob Levin is a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience helping small and mid-sized businesses run their businesses better. In 2018, he co-founded Work Better Now, a game-changing venture that provides US-based small and mid-sized businesses with exceptional talent from Latin America. WBN has already empowered hundreds of businesses to thrive in the face of the talent crisis. He's also the author of "The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide for Building Your Dream Team." He's got a podcast, and I was on his podcast not too long ago. Rob, welcome to the show.

Rob 1:52

Thanks for having me, Mike, and great to see you.

Mike 1:54

looking

Culture First Leadership

Mike 1:55

forward to it. Rob, from all of your experience, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?

Rob 2:04

It's a great question. I think the-- it's the relentless focus on having a great culture. I'll stop there because that really leads itself up to a million different follow-up questions.

Mike 2:17

Well, I'm not gonna stop there, though. So when you when you say culture, when you say great culture, dig us at least one level deeper on, on what do you mean by culture, and what's a great culture?

Rob 2:27

Yeah, I wanted to see which direction you wanted to go in. So, A friend of mine, Sean Bussey, gave me a great way to describe culture. It's the water that your team swims in. it's what dictates who joins the company, who leaves the company, who doesn't join the company, and how the team works. So, that's the way I kind of look at what a culture is. A great culture is a culture, I think of high productivity, where, you know, results are getting done and it's hard work, but there's something fun about it. There's something very rewarding about it too That's kinda how I would describe a great culture in a nutshell.

Mike 3:03

Great. I love that the water your team swims in is such a cool way to look at it. I've never heard it described that way. I will probably steal that and give, just say I didn't make it up, but, give some credit for it, but I

Rob 3:17

Sean Bussey, awesome

Mike 3:18

Bussey, I'll give Sean credit.

Talent Shift Explained

Mike 3:20

Rob, you say and we say it right in your intro, you say there's a talent crisis. Say more about that.

Rob 3:27

Yeah, I'm actually... You got me at a transitionary period where I'm now starting to call it a talent shift because a crisis implies that it's gonna, it's gonna go away at some point, and it's not. So there's many different elements of this talent shift, and the way I would, the way I would start out talking about it-- Sorry for the sirens in the background. I'm in New York City with a fire-

Mike 3:44

are they coming to get you, Rob? Do we have

Rob 3:46

it's possible, but, you know, if it happens, it'll happen you know It'll happen

Mike 3:51

this is gonna go viral if you get arrested on air.

Rob 3:56

Part of me kind of wants to see that myself. anyway, the way I like to talk about this talent shift is the way that people were managing and leading teams just five, six, ten years ago has dramatically shifted, and if you're still doing things the old way, you're gonna have a lot of challenges. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about the way people wanna be recruited, the way people wanna be managed and led. All of this has changed. Yes, it was gradual, but there's been a major shift really ever since the pandemic. So let's come up with some examples, of Just to illustrate this. in no particular order, there was a survey done, and I forgot who it was, but they s-- And this is a couple of years ago already. They said thirty percent of the younger generation in the workforce, I think they said twenty-five to thirty-four, have said that they're doing the bare minimum at work. Okay? Now, they did-- They're not just doing the bare minimum at work, but whoever asked them, they actually said, "Yeah, I go in and I do the bare minimum." Now, Mike, my guess is that you and I, we're probably both Gen Xers.

Mike 5:05

Yes, but I'm-- depending on what you look at, I'm Gen X or baby boomer. I just turned 61 this year, so I'm right on the border.

Rob 5:12

Yeah. Okay. So you got a few years on me. Now, w-- You know, I can't imagine when I was twenty-five to thirty-four, or even older than that, ever admitting that I'm gonna do the bare minimum work. Not to mention that I was never that type of person. So That's one, one little element of the shift. another element of the shift is culture is now much more important than it used to be. Why is it? Because the younger generations in the workforce, and no, they're not all doing the bare minimum at work, by the way. They're-- They want this. They're looking for companies with a great culture. And by the way, spoiler alert, they can check you out. They're checking your co- your company out before they're even deciding to apply. If you haven't heard of a site called Glassdoor, you might wanna wait till right after you, you listen or watch this podcast. Type in, you know, go into Google or your AI

Mike 6:05

a drink

Rob 6:06

Yeah, you're gonna need

Mike 6:07

then do it.

Rob 6:09

I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail there, but it's basically your employer brand on display. Your employer brand is another way of essentially describing your culture. and, you know, if you're hiring-- A lot of hiring processes have multiple people interviewing a candidate, which is I think, which is great, right? For people who make it down, down to that, to that stage. And there are still companies out there that will do You know, the first interview on a Monday and the sec-- the next interview will be a week later or maybe even that Friday. You can't do that because the speed in which candidates are expecting you to turn things around is now compressed. And you can actually-- you can be the better company for them, but you will lose out 'cause the company works quickly. By the way, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have two, two or more people interview. You should, absolutely. All I'm saying is compress the timeline. You gotta reevaluate your entire hiring process. So these are a few things, Oh, by the way, the biggest, the big-- Sorry. the biggest element of the talent shift is it's harder and harder to find people than it ever has been, especially good people. It's always been hard. It's now much, much harder. There's, in a sense, there's fewer of them in the workforce today. so those are just a few elements of how the talent game has changed.

Why Hiring Feels Harder

Mike 7:27

Rob, how do you-- I have trouble... I'm with you on all those, by the way. By the way, a quick example on the bare minimum kind of mentality, and I'll call it a mentality 'cause it may not literally be I'm gonna do the bare minimum, but, 'cause I'm about to give an example of my daughter, and she's a hard worker. But she just turned 30 years old this year, and she said to me about six months ago, we were with a group of folks, and she was all pissed off that her manager scheduled a meeting for four o'clock on a Friday. She said, "Could you believe that?" I'm like, "What? I don't understand what the problem is." "On a Friday at four o'clock." I'm like, I heard you." I'm like, "What else would you be doing at fr- you're working, right?" And then I spoke to someone who was in their 40s, and I was saying it like I'm saying it now kind of sarcasm "Could you believe that?" And they went, "Yeah, I can't believe... Four o'clock on a Friday? Why would you do that?" And I'm like, "I don't understand that." what's wrong with scheduling a meeting at four o'clock on a Friday? So the mentality is different. but I wanna get back to you. You said it's hard to find, it's hard to find good people. What I have trouble connecting are, you know, on the one hand, you've got like these kids come out of college, and if you look at the statistics, are having a harder time than ever finding a job. You've got all these people say it's so hard to find a job, and at the same time, all the leaders I know are saying exactly what you said, "It's so hard to find good people." But you've got a lot of good people out there that are looking for work and having a hard time finding a job. And because so many of us are hybrid or remote, or at least willing to be hybrid remo-remote with folks, whereas 10 or 15 years ago, we were looking locally for a lot of our folks. Now we're looking across the country I would think that would make it easier to find great people, but I keep seeing and hearing exactly, Rob, what you're saying, that it's harder. why is it so much harder?

Rob 9:33

Yeah. By the way, the data backs that up. it particular-- So let me put a caveat out there, which is what I know very well is the small and mid-sized business world, okay? Which is-- Which has nothing to do with the large business world. Two different worlds, and certainly nothing to do with the world of government employment, right? So it... and, you know, it would be normal for somebody to say, "Wait a second, there's gotta be plenty of people out there." I'm reading-- Like, I'm a Wall Street Journal reader for practically my entire life. And if you-- when you read the Journal every week, you're hearing about some layoffs going on, right? You gotta remember, these layoffs are large company layoffs, right? if small and mid-sized business companies are doing some sort of layoffs, you're not gonna read about in the paper, and you're just not seeing those, right? These are large companies that are public that really need to button down, et cetera. Those people don't always make for great employees in a small or mid-sized business, right? They have different skill sets, and, you know, like I'll leave it at that. So, that's the first thing people have to realize is that y-you might-- If you just look at, you know, social media or the news, wherever you're getting your information from, you might think, "There should be plenty of people out there." But when you look at, a small or mid-sized business, you're looking for somebody with not only a unique skill set, but also a unique, attitude, like an owner's type of mentality. Maybe not full ownership-- owner mentality, but somebody who's gonna be flexible in how they work, right? They might need to do different things at the company. because every seat sounds-- every seat counts whether you have five people in your company or three hundred people in your company. Every seat still counts. and a-as far as remote goes, you know, when I, when I do my talks or if you read my book, I think this is a huge opportunity for small and mid-sized businesses that if not o-offering remote options now, and they're not looking remotely for talent, they're missing out because all of a sudden, you can a hundred x, if not a thousand x your talent pool, not only in the rest of the country, but actually in the rest of the world. i-it's, it-- You know, and as large companies-- And again, if you're reading the news, it's all about, oh, it's return to office, return to the o-- return to office. And by the way, I'm here in Manhattan, and Class A office space is really hard to come by right now. I have friends in the commercial real estate business and, you know, their business is booming but again, that's a large company thing. Small or mid-sized businesses should absolutely be looking to hire people remotely, if for no other reason, you're gonna widen your talent pool.

Mike 12:08

So in, in addition to hiring remotely, you know, given, and I'm gonna kind of read back to you what you just said, given that there's this, you know, 30% and probably in actuality more of these folks at a certain age wanna do the bare minimum of work, culture is more important, and maybe those go together because if you've got a great culture, maybe they're willing to do a lot more than the bare minimum. Crappy culture, it's just a job, and I'm gonna do the bare minimum. And the fact that it's harder to find great people, as you said.

Culture Attracts Talent

Mike 12:42

what are some of the things that small and mid-sized businesses should be doing differently when it comes to, sourcing, recruiting, evaluating, hiring great talent? What are a couple of things folks need to be thinking about or doing differently than maybe they would've 10 years ago?

Rob 13:04

Yeah. So I'll come back to what I said earlier. I wanna start there 'cause I-- it is by far the most important thing. it's a big focus on the culture. Okay? Now, when I-- i-in, in my book and when I do my talks, I talk about the first company I started of my own after I worked for other people. it was a, a company called the New York Enterprise Reporter Magazine in the New York area for business owners. And that company was not very successful, and everybody thought it was very successful. We had national advertisers, local advertisers, big events, all of that stuff. and I tell the story on how I never focused on culture in that company. And I had a good team, but I didn't have a great team. And we certainly didn't have-- We had a culture that, where everything with a big decision, the business all revolved around me. Big mistake, right? And so on and so forth. I just never focused on culture. When I started Work Better Now with my partner-- In fact, I remember the day in a bar in Portland, Oregon, when my partner-- when I told my partner I was starting this business. He wasn't my partner, he was my friend then. And he goes, "How about if I do it with you?" And, I was a few drinks in, so I was like, "Sure." I said, "But Like, culture's gonna be really important, and we're gonna, we're gonna put our talent first," and all of... and I went on and on, and I said, "Now are you in?" And he said, "Yeah, absolutely." My, my point here is that I-- learning from past mistakes, I had a relentless focus, and then he did too, and he's the really the one who made it happen, 'cause he's more on the operational side of the business, on dr- on building a company with a great culture. Because when you have a great culture, companies with great cultures are not complaining that it's really hard to find people, right? They're attracting people by the way, we mentioned Sean Bussey. he's the one who taught, taught me this maybe twelve years, ten, twelve years ago. when you have a great culture, it's not as hard to find people. They want the good, the really good, the great players, they want to work for you. So that-- if there's one lever to pull in order to get great people, it's to have a big focus on your culture. Now, you might say, "Hey, Rob, my company's been around for twenty years. You focused on culture from day one. Good for you. I have an okay culture here." What I'll say to them is, "It's never too late to improve your culture. Ever. You can..."

Mike 15:16

so let's dig into that. Let's dig into that, and it's kinda going back to your answer to the first question about what it takes to build a great leadership team and continuing to dig into that. So, so I'm gonna take the scenario you just gave us, which is for the senior leader of a company that's been around 20 years, they've got an okay culture. You know, it's nothing great. they're not talent magnets because of their culture, but they also don't have people leaving in droves because it's horrible. It's just okay.

Rob 15:45

Yeah.

Mission and Values Reset

Mike 15:50

one or two things they ought to do to take an okay culture and make it a great culture?

Rob 15:57

Yeah. So what I'm gonna say is gonna get some eye rolls, and I'm expecting that already, and that's okay. And it's, I-- where I think that they should start, and I've seen this work, is, a-and I know eye rolls are coming, is a revisit of your mission and your values. And you're like, "Come on, Rob, like these are just words on a, on a..."

Mike 16:19

by the way, you did not see my eyes roll there. For tho- for those listening, my eyes aren't rolling 'cause I'm with him, so keep going.

Rob 16:26

Did not roll one, one bit. So first of all-- also, remember what I said. The younger generations in the workforce, they're looking for companies that are mission-focused. They're looking for companies that have great cultures. And by the way, this is spreading to the older generations in the workforce now too, right? It's something that the younger generations brought in, and now it's spreading. So you gotta start with mission and values because... And you-- and by the way, if they're just words on a wall, there's your first clue. Your values should be... Your values are what help people in your company make a decision when they need to make a decision, and they're not sure what to do. They should literally look at the values and go, "All right, based on those values now, what should I ma-- what decision should I make?" For example, some of ours are around transparency and excellence, right? And things like that which... and having an owner's mentality, and I told everybody what that means. Having an owner's mentality means you will sacrifice something in the short term- For something better in the long term, right? For example, when you see a problem, find the underlying solution. Solve that as opposed to the surface level problem. If there's an issue with a client and it might cost us some money in the first month, but we're gonna have a happy client, then you ma-- that's the decision you make. those are the things that compose your co-core values, and then you live those. You hire based on those. You fire based on those. You recognize people based on those. if you remind me, we'll come back to recognition i- in a few minutes. so then the next part is well, all right, well, what should my core values be and who-- should I do this on my own? Take your top players and have a little offsite with them and say, "Hey, look, guys, we wanna reevaluate," or, "We wanna come up with our-- we wanna come up with core values," and get your A players' involvement in that. They're gonna have buy-in, and they're gonna have some-- they're gonna have better ideas than you will because they're the ones doing the work, and they're the ones managing the people. So you start there. at the same time, you might wanna reevaluate your mission.

Mike 18:26

before we go to mission, before we go to mission, Rob, I, and I absolutely wanna get there and we're gonna come back to recognition as well. One of the things I've seen with core values, because so often, I see core values start off with a lot of enthusiasm, and they don't want it to be just a poster on the wall. But very often that's exactly what it is a poster. In fact, I remember, you know, through most of my management consulting career, which was ma- way back late '80s into the '90s and early 2000s, I thought that stuff was bullshit because I saw so many Fortune 500s with the plaque on the wall and no one knew what it was. In fact, I was working with a client, not a Fortune 500. One of my, one of my early coaching clients about, God, it must've been about 14 or 15 years ago, I was having a session with them and on the agenda was talk about core values. And the VP of administration stops and goes, "Wait a minute, we have these. We could save some time on the agenda." She runs out of the room, comes back with the framed Core values. I took them out of her hand, I put them against the wall with the core values facing the wall. The six top leaders of the organization were in the room, and I said, "What are your core values?" And I got answers like, I think we have one around collaboration or maybe it's teamwork. We've got what..." they didn't know what their core values were. So one of the things I've seen that is really helpful is when you use the core values informally to give feedback, and part of that may get to the-- 'cause some of the feedback could be recognition. but Rob, if you're in a meeting and we've got a, a core value that's we lift each other up. That's one of our core values. If you're in a meeting and you say y- you're really helpful to someone else on the team, even when it had nothing to do with your job, I may pull you aside and go, "Rob, that was a great example

Rob 20:28

I would

Mike 20:28

lift each other up." Yeah, go

Recognition Makes Values Real

Mike 20:30

ahead.

Rob 20:30

let's jump to recognition there because that's where I wanted it, you know. I would say that would be great, Mike. Do that in front of everybody. Now you're reinforcing the core values. So the best way for me to describe this is to give you an example of what we do at Work Better Now. So we're a hundred percent remote company. We have people spread on, I don't know, fifteen, sixteen countries, North and South America. and every week we have a team meeting on Microsoft Teams, every Monday. And one of the things we do... Sorry, let me take a step back. We have something called the W Awards, right? Name of the company is Work Better Now, W Awards. And that is where anybody can recognize anybody underneath the leadership team For going above and beyond the call of duty, consistent with one of our-- or more of our core values. So every week-- and then somebody goes through the nominations and checks them and, you know, we don't always grant them, but we usually do, 'cause you don't want them to become just worthless, right? They have to mean something. Every week, who-whoever was getting a core value, we have that section in the meeting where the person who nominated them said, tells why they're ge-getting their core value, why they're giving somebody the core value, and mentions the, sorry, the W award, and then mentions the core values that, that, that were lived, to get that core value. So every week that's being reinforced. And by the way, you should see the look on people's faces when they get recognized, We give everybody fifty bucks when they get a W award. It's not about the fifty bucks, right? You should see the look on everybody's face when they get recognized in front of their peers, even if they got one a few weeks earlier, which sometimes happens. So that's how you, that's how you bring the core values to life. Our review process, those core values are discussed, right? So that is... And that's, by the way, that's how you get to the culture that you want. That's why core values are a big pa-part of the culture.

Mike 22:23

Yeah, love that. 'Cause it's so easy to make that a poster on the wall. It's also easy-- I had one client where we were-- the leadership team was kind of evaluating the next level down, and their top salesperson was blatantly and rep- top from a revenue standpoint, but they were blatantly and repeatedly violating two out of four of their core values and just frustrating everybody. And the CEO said, "We're not talking about it. This is my number one salesperson. We're leaving this

Rob 22:56

Yeah, there you go.

Mike 22:57

It takes years to build a culture with something like core values being one of the anchors. It took years to build that culture. The whole thing came crashing down because the CEO not only didn't model it, but modeled the opposite, modeled that it really was a bunch of crap. So, so I'm with you. Core values are so

Mission Beyond Profit

Mike 23:18

important. Now let's switch over to mission. Talk about mission and start by defining what you mean by mission.

Rob 23:26

Mission is, like, why are we here? And, I-- sorry, just to circle back. Core values, the one thing I wanted to r-also mention to people is it's okay to be a little aspirational with the core values. In other words, to go just a little bit higher where you are now, where you wanna be. And your mission is this is why we're here. This is your why, right? And, I'll tell you what our mission is because-- and then I'm gonna tell you how we use it practically or how, how I've used it practically last week. Our mission at Work Better Now, is To help awesome companies and awesome talent fulfill their dreams. So that's inspiring, right? and by the way, we do that. and I can go-- I can elaborate about that, but I don't wanna make it about Work Better Now. It's inspiring, and it's exactly what we do. And you know what's really cool about it? Last week, a friend of mine who's a recent-- just recently became a client, I saw him at an event, and he literally grabbed my arm and he goes, "Rob, the two certified professionals," that's what we call them, that I hired from your company, they're knocking it out of the park. I mean, they way exceeded my expectations. They did this, the other." And, I won't say the person's name. I said, "Hey, thanks so much for sharing that. That's awesome." I said, "We're on a mission to help great companies and, fulfill their dreams and for the business owners to fulfill their dreams. Do you know anybody else that we can help?" Right? What did I just do? I just asked for a referral by using our mission, right? I got-- Not only is it inspiring for my team, it's inspiring for, you know, people that we work with, our clients, our certified professionals, et cetera.

Mike 25:08

How do you answer the senior leader, and I typic- I typically get one of these on a leadership team when I talk, and what you call mission, I call core purpose, but it's the same thing. It's the reason why. And typically, there's somebody on the team that's kinda making faces when we talk about that, and they're like, "Come on, let's be real. Our why is making money. Our why is profitability." How do you-- You probably hear that as well from folks. how do you push back on that, or do you push back on that?

Rob 25:40

I don't really... I don't-- I try not to focus on the people that might be... I might-- By the way, that person might not be negative, right? They're just maybe a little too pragmatic. I don't know. but they're, what I would say about something like that is those things are not mutually exclusive. You can try to be doing great things for your company, for your community, for your people, and you can make a lot of money in the process. In fact, I'll actually say it's a lot more fun to make money that way. I don't know. That's kind of how

Mike 26:10

I like that. the way I get to that too is I'm like, "Of course money..." You know, money's the fuel that makes the car go. We need that, but money is the result of us adding some value. money is the result of us achieving our why,

Rob 26:23

Yeah. If the strategy is right and the culture is right, then money is the output of, of fulfilling your mission

AI and Modern Hiring

Mike 26:31

How do you... I wanna ask one more question back to hiring, and then I wanna get into what you do and, a little bit more of how that may help other companies in thinking about, you know, when offshoring makes sense and when it's the right time to hire an assistant, that kind of thing. So I wanna make sure to hit that. But one thing specifically about hiring, how have you seen AI impact the hiring process in these days where everybody can create the perfect customized cover letter, the perfect resume, which means nobody's differentiating. It makes it hard for everybody. how have you seen AI impact the hiring process, either if it's making it easier or harder?

Rob 27:18

Yeah. So, I don't-- I can't give you the Work Better Now answer on that because we have our whole recruiting department. We get thousands of applications every month, and I know they're using AI. I know they're-- I know two things. I know they're using AI in the process, right? And I know that, we're very concerned about how, you know, AI resumes and stuff, AI-generated resumes, right? what I will say is this, is that the things that companies should have been doing even five years ago pre-AI, apply even more today, which is, assessment, right? Because, a-again, your resume-- your, the resume really doesn't mean much anymore. You gotta give people assessments. We have a whole testing protocol. We have to

Mike 28:00

What assessments like Myers-Briggs or DiSC or more skill-based kinds of assessments

Rob 28:07

Both, I think you want, you want-- You certainly have to evaluate somebody's skills because your res-- the resumes, you don't know-- you just don't know if you can believe the resume. you have to evaluate people's skills, and you have to get a sense of, what drives them. So, I don't know if you can u-- And I'm actually pretty sure you can't use an assessment like a Kolbe in hiring, I think. But there are assessments that you can u-- that you can use to get a sense of what really drives that person, right? Or what are the-- what type of work are they likely to be good for, right? So, for example, I'm somebody who's not gonna, I don't get turned on by spending a lot of time in detail, right? That, that doesn't energize me, right? I'm an ideas person. I would not be good for a lot of different types of roles, right? but yet there's plenty of people who are great at details, but they're just not-- they don't have the creative mindset that I might have, right? The-- You gotta look at the role that you have, and I think you have to assess, is this person right for the role, not only based on skills but based upon who they are as a person and how they show up every day. So I think assessments are more important than ever. And I think you're gonna start to see a trend now, I don't know how big of a trend, where you give people assignments, mini assignments if they make it to a certain point. And then, of course, you have to have th-those interviews. Those interviews are crucial. and by the way, where I think, and I don't know what the laws are on this, so check with your local attorney, but, what AI can help you do is if, if this was an interview, Mike, and you were interviewing me, like you might say, "I like Rob because, he's got, you know, the meters and the stones back there and, you know, he's a music guy and I might like him." That, that creates a bias, right? You're like, "It doesn't almost-- It matters what I say, but you already like me." That doesn't mean that I'm gonna necessarily be the right person for you at your company for a specific role. AI can actually go through a transcript and re-- kind of look at it from a, from a-- without a bias. Now, there's plen-- probably plenty of people in government who will say, no, AI is gonna have implicit biases." I'm not gonna get into that. But, AI, I think AI, in one way or another, can be a very helpful tool, to help you really understand what a candidate's about. But I think you have to do assessments, and if you can give a homework project or something, even better.

Mike 30:29

Yeah, I like the assessments and I like AI. I actually owned a staffing and recruiting company for three years, and it was a miserable failure, so I'm no expert there. and what I found is even though I owned a staffing and recruiting company, I was horrible at interviewing, 'cause it-- Rob, exactly what you said. I would meet someone and probably within 90 seconds it would click in my brain whether I liked them or I didn't like them. And if I liked them, it was just this confirmation bias where anything they said after that, I was just looking for confirmation why I thought they were a good person. So, so it's interesting.

Work Better Now Overview

Mike 31:06

Rob, talk a little bit more, tell me a little bit more about what you do at Work Better Now. How do you help companies, the kinds of folks, you hire? 'Cause I-I'm gonna have some questions and wanna dig a little deeper on that. So give me the 10,000-foot view of what you do.

Rob 31:22

elevator, pitch. So we provide high-performing talent from Latin America f-- that they work out of their homes for US small and mid-sized businesses. We don't work with large companies. We do that in five different categories: sales, so inside sales support, marketing, like marketing coordinators, finance, like bookkeeping or receivables or payables, customer service, and then what we call admin, which also includes one of our biggest categories, which is our executive and other assistants.

Mike 31:57

because it is less expensive, but still same or similar time zone?

Rob 32:05

So the way I'll answer that is you have same time zone. You have not everybody, but the people who we screen through these crazy processes that the recruiting department has, people who perform at a really high level. These are people who wanna work, who wanna contribute. so you're getting great talent. Some of our clients will say, "These are like my best team members." And then, by the way, yes, because the cost of living is the cost of living is far less throughout Latin America than it is here. Yes, you're gonna, you're gonna save some money too. But I'm very cautious about saying that it's cheaper first because, then everybody thinks that the quality is going down. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Nearshore vs Local Hiring

Mike 32:46

When does it make sense if I'm a leader and I've got to hire a few salespeople, or I'm looking for an assistant, or I need five customer service reps, what's the right-- whe-when should I be thinking about, you know, offshoring and hiring from Latin America versus hiring locally? how do I make that decision?

Rob 33:09

So the f- the first question is, do you need to hire locally? So for example, we just-- we now have seven, you can call them outside salespeople. They're local because they're s- they're selling locally. They're actually going to meetings and all of that stuff. Those are people we have in the United States. Now, we have, what we call our talent partners. These are like success people, but they also do what we call expansion sales when a client needs to hire additional people. All of those people are based in Latin America. They don't need to be here, right? Because everything's done over, over Zoom. So the, the-- what I really want people to think about is we're getting to the point now where if you can find the right talent and that you can either do it yourself or you can work with companies like Work Better Now, offshore is just an extension of remote. I want-- That's the way I really want people to think about this. It's... And the-- As you go remote and as you go into different regions, you're expanding your talent pool. it's as simple as that. so if you need somebody in the office, you need somebody in the office. If you need somebody that has to be based somewhere in the United States, you do. Then you have to hire that, you know, in that area. Other than that, there's no reason you can't hire people who are offshore or in our case, nearshore.

Managing Remote Teams

Mike 34:29

And then once, once you hire them, and now you've got, you know, t-talking about this specific kind of category of remote, what have you seen, and maybe I'll start with the negative, what mistakes have you seen, right? You gotta hire people, but then you gotta retain them as well. What mistakes have you seen leaders make in managing and retaining remote people? For a lot of leaders, that's a different world, you know, from pre-COVID, that, that's a different world than we grew up in.

Rob 35:03

Yeah. So two, two mistakes that they make. one is they don't integrate them with their in-office team. It's one company, everybody. It's one company, right? Which means if you have, a meeting in the, you know, in the conference room every week, well, then that meeting's now also on Zoom, and anybody who's not in the office is a part of that meeting. When I say a part, that means that, you know, you're looking to see if they're raising their hand and they're just a part-- they're fully integrated into the company meetings, et cetera. Actually, th-there's three mistakes. Mistake number two is they don't communicate enough. When you have remote people, I call it over-communicate. We just reiterate things. We reiterate things on Microsoft Teams. We back it up with an email. We mention it, we, we mention it in the meeting. And then the third mistake, and sometimes people make this mistake within office teams, is they micromanage or they struggle because they can't micromanage. They feel like they need to track... Like I-- We've, we have-- I hate to say it, but there's been like a few clients who are like, "Yeah, we need, we need everybody in the office and out of the office, we need to track their keyboards," like their, you know, what they're typing in on their keyboards, and they're not in a regulated industry or anything like that. That to me is nuts. If you're micromanaging like that, you certainly don't have a good culture. You're probably not hiring good people, or you just have trust issues that probably go back to childhood and you need to seek some help. So, you know, I-- when you have people-- when you have remote, it's probably a better idea than even if you're in person to use an operating system like an EOS or a scaling up, something where people have KPIs and you have a way of talking about performance that doesn't involve micromanaging.

Mike 36:54

Yeah, you just hit on something critical, I think it's critical, where I could remember back in 2020 when all of a sudden, you know, COVID hits and now everybody's forced to go remote. I had leaders say to me, and it amazed me but it shouldn't have amazed me, say, "Mike, if I'm not seeing what people are doing, if they're not in the office, how do I know they're productive?" I was like, "Are you shitting me?" you have to see what they're doing? Like- You know they're productive because they're working long and they're working... They may be working long and hard because they're not productive. Like, how are you measuring productivity? and I get blank stares. So, so it becomes super important to, to, as you said, have some kind of operating system and a set of KPIs where people understand exactly what's expected of them, and that's not how often they're typing on a keyboard or, you know, how often they've got the away message on, or it's are they achieving the results you want them to achieve? And I think too many lead- too many leaders aren't really sure of what results they wanna see. they haven't really thought through it.

Rob 38:08

if you're not sure about the results that you're expecting somebody to deliver, then how are you evaluating them? And by the way, there w-- there was a big article, I think it was like maybe eight months ago, and I think it was in The Wall Street Journal, where there are, there are people who work in an office who've perfected the art of looking busy, right? So,

Mike 38:35

I remember back in, God, this would've been like 1995, I was working for a CFO, wonderful guy, but he was in every weekend, and if he didn't see you every once in a while on a Saturday, then you weren't working hard enough. Now, I got everything I needed done by Friday, but once or twice a month, I would go in for a couple of hours on a Saturday, which was a pain in the ass 'cause it was about an hour drive from where I lived. I go in for a couple hours on a Saturday, show my face, read The Wall Street Journal, and then go home.

Rob 39:11

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the people who have those mentalities, not like take the Saturday example away, but just those people who think that they need to see people working and stuff, you're-- Whatever A players you have, they're gonna leave if they haven't left already, or they're not truly A players because they don't wanna be a part of that. They wanna be evaluated on what they do, and they wanna be surrounded by other high performers, as opposed to being in a culture where the leadership thinks that they need to see people, see like visually see people working. It, this in a way, it's part of the, it, in a way, it's part of the talent shift, but the truth is if you were managing that way even thirty years ago, you were missing the boat.

Mike 39:57

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Where to Learn More

Mike 39:59

Rob, this is great. If people wanna find out more about, about your book, to learn more about all the things you talked about around culture and mission and hiring. but also, just as importantly, if people wanna find out about Work Better Now and maybe entertain hiring, some folks from, Latin America, where should they go to find out more about you and Work Better Now?

Rob 40:20

Yeah, thanks for asking, Mike. So Work Better Now is workbetternow.com, and you can learn about, our offerings, how we can help your business. And then for me, whether it's the book, the podcast, or the Substack, just type in "New Talent Playbook" and "Substack," and it'll take you to my Substack page where you can find all about the book, which is also available on Amazon, of course, as well as sign up for the Substack, or the podcast. so y-you can, you know-- Every-everything's changing. things change. just a few months ago, I was calling it the talent crisis. I'm now calling it the talent shift, and now I'm talking a little bit more about AI and sharing about our AI-first journey and stuff like that. So if you wanna stay up on that stuff, then the Substack's a great place to do that.

Mike 41:01

Yeah, and I will vouch for, for Rob's podcast. He has amazing guests on that podcast. li- oh yeah, I was a guest. Oh,

Rob 41:10

that Mike Goldman guy, yeah.

Mike 41:11

Yes, it was amazing. Listen to that episode, and then you'll wanna listen to the rest, too. But Rob, thanks so much for doing this. I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. our discussion today I'm sure helped some leaders get there, so thank you

Rob 41:26

I hope so, and thanks for having me on the show, Mike.