Success Secrets and Stories
To share management leadership concepts that actually work.
You are responsible for your development as a leader. Don't expect the boss to invest the training budget in your career. Consider this podcast as an investment of time in your career, with a bit of management humor added at the same time.
Success Secrets and Stories
Crafting a Resilient Workforce through Creative Recruitment
Unlock the secrets to building a powerhouse team with insights from Greg Powell, an HR professional and co-host of Success Secrets and Stories. We promise you'll come away with a fresh perspective on the hiring process, learning how leaders can shape a resilient team by hiring people who surpass their own skills. Greg shares his extensive experience from the IT sector, revealing how strategic collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters is not just beneficial but essential. Drawing from Christina Pavlo's article in Inside HR, we uncover how shared responsibilities and effective communication can transform hiring practices and lead to successful, long-term outcomes.
Join us as we explore Management by Responsibility (MBR) and the art of team-based hiring. Discover the critical role of recruiters in managing the process and ensuring a diverse and strong candidate pool, while hiring managers make the final call. Hear about creative hiring solutions, like signing bonuses, and how they can attract top talent even when budgets are tight. Greg's narrative about hiring a director illustrates how finding the right cultural fit and skill set can propel an organization forward. This episode is your guide to mastering strategic hires and building an employer brand that attracts exceptional talent, fostering growth and innovation within your team.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Welcome to Success Secrets and Stories. I'm your host, john Wanoloski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell.
Speaker 1:Greg, hey, everybody, yeah with my co-host and friend, Brett Powell. Brett, hey everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So today this podcast we wanted to talk about the leadership's role in hiring. So the leadership role in hiring is, in my opinion, of hiring supervisors or managers, really an exercise in finding your replacement, which is probably a hard thing for a lot of people to think about. But hiring somebody that is better than you, that has experiences or specific skills that would help the organization that possibly you don't have, that is kind of a challenge for a lot of directors, a lot of VPs. I personally think it creates a stronger team and if you're not worried about how you're perceiving yourself when you're hiring someone and you're talking about the organization, there's a different way that you will find rewards. There's a different way that you will find rewards, especially if the organization sees that, understands that and it is part of what I think would be a responsible management team. They understand you're building a team and you're finding ways to make that group a successful group.
Speaker 2:Now, whenever you're talking about hiring Greg, you're in your experiences as an HR manager, director, senior VP, all those things. When I was looking at this article, I thought it was interesting and it may give a little bit more structure to what I'm talking about as far as taking responsibility for hiring. You want to take it from there. Is taking responsibility for hiring. You want to take it from there.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. Yes, interestingly enough, my very first role in human resources was that of recruiter and I was hiring folks in what we used to call data processing I'll date myself here, but in the IT organization. So let's start off with Christina Pavlo. She's an experienced recruiter and HR professional and she had a nice article in Inside HR September of 2023, talking about recruiter versus the hiring manager who is really responsible for hiring. So let's talk about that. Who is really responsible?
Speaker 1:The responsibility for hiring lies with both the hiring manager and the recruiter. The recruiter runs the process. The hiring manager is going to take and develop and continue to get work done with this new hire. The hiring manager makes a final decision because they do own the individual that they're going to be hiring. Both rules are crucial and their collaboration ensures the efficiency and effectiveness of the hiring process goes on. So you've probably heard before the soul saying, hey, you know, I hired so-and-so. They're a star. That was me. Yeah, you know, I know how to hire really good people. Or so-and-so says, yeah, that was a dog who hired that person. You know my gosh.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about responsibility again. When a new hire turns out to be a star, both the recruiter and the hiring manager can pat themselves on the back. They can both take credit, especially if they've worked collaboratively together. Conversely, for some reason, that hire doesn't work well, then both individuals take responsibility for, hey, what could we have done differently to get a better outcome? What did we miss in our process? And so again, the shared responsibility of when things go well, the shared responsibility when things don't go quite as well. So what does it mean to be responsible for hiring? We have an illustration. John comes up with some really good ones, so I'm going to go backwards with this. The illustration is closing the deal Two guys shaking hands, two gals shaking hands, two individuals, two professionals, one being a recruiter, one being the hiring manager. We got this done.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about responsibility and hiring, we're actually referring to the outcome who gets hired, not the entire process. We know we've got to have that, but who gets hired? And while the recruiter manages the process, really that hiring manager closes the deal because that person is going to report to them. They're going to do their pay increase recommendations. They're going to do their performance reviews. They're going to do their pay increase recommendations. They're going to do their performance reviews. They're going to get involved in promoting them as a recruiter. I wish I could tell you we had responsibility for that. We did not. Hiring manager owns those activities. So the hiring managers are the real decision makers and they have the final say who gets hired and who gets rejected, and they have to live with that.
Speaker 1:When there's a bad hire, the hiring manager is the one who should investigate what went wrong and work their process back through with the recruiter. So the role of the hiring manager in recruiting. Hiring managers have several duties throughout every recruiting stage and those duties can only be tackled by hiring managers. Even if the recruiter had provided a short list of very promising candidates, it's still up to the hiring managers to dig into the candidates' abilities and identify who fits the bill. Only the hiring manager is able to do a couple of things here. One, because they're technically astute.
Speaker 1:The hiring manager can evaluate candidates, uncover the potential, recheck those that look good on paper, some of those they have a great resume but they interview, they just bomb. It doesn't come together. This person can also inform recruiters what they need to continue looking for, like hey, thanks for that first batch of resumes Looking pretty good, we need a few more on the technical side, some skills that are coming up in our industry that we need to make sure are covered. So look for folks with some of these skills as well. And then also impacting the winning candidate's decision to accept the job offer. Because even once you've hired, you've got to the point where you've got a great candidate and you're ready to extend that offer, both parties really are selling this candidate to come to work for you. So it's not done until the offer's been accepted and their person being processed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the recruiter's share of responsibility. Let's talk again about the hiring managers. Take responsibility for the outcome, but it doesn't let the recruiter off the hook. Their role is not a minor. It's definitely not simple. Some of the things they need to do the recruiter build a strong pool of candidates where hiring managers will look for their next hire. Next thing they need to do is train that hiring manager on certain interview techniques and skills that'll keep them on track so they don't get caught up in bias or something because a candidate responds a certain way. Have you seen that, john?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have, and I think the challenge is to make sure that you have as broad of a pool as possible and not to be happy with three candidates and then move on. And if there's some way that you can make as much of a first contact with as many qualified people as you can, the bigger the pool that you have to look at, the more likely you're going to find those diamonds in the rough. Maybe they aren't the greatest on paper, but maybe they're really good in person. You know that whole thing about having the ability to meet the candidates before you go to the second stage of interviewing is really really an important stage.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. So, again, recapping the recruiters' responsibilities are to build, as John mentioned, a strong pool of candidates where the hiring managers will be able to look for the next hire. Training that hiring manager on interviewing techniques and skills so that they don't get caught up in biases and they can keep the process moving. And then, finally, recommend and implement effective assessment methods that help evaluate candidates objectively. So good recruiters will play a vital role in hiring. They're dedicated to finding the best of their of the best candidates. So they're not trying to just fill a job.
Speaker 1:That's not really what their role is. It's trying to get the best candidate possible, because that way you have a candidate pool rich with great talent and you also want to build a strong employer brand. That's what that recruiter does, whether it's ads that they may be running or job fairs that they might be going to or now, of course, things like tools like Indeed and other online recruitment sources helping build that company's brand so that that helps when it comes time to closing the deal. Right, right, also, that's how they make the manager's job easier and supporting the hiring manager all the way. So you shake hands at the beginning. You shake hands at the end, but you connect it all the way through the process. But ultimately, again, it's the hiring manager who makes that final decision who gets hired and who doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've seen the blame game being part of that process, because the hiring manager is waiting for the magical candidate that comes in that can part water in the seas and that's not the kind of candidate that, yeah, if it was that easy and it would be a very I don't know simplistic job to find good candidates. It doesn't exist nowadays. You really do have to put the work in in order to make sure that you find people that are qualified, but finger pointing and having marginal results and putting it on somebody else. I've seen it where they blame the HR people for not giving us good candidates. It's like it doesn't work that way. It isn't just one organization or one person that is supposed to be working on developing your department If you're not engaged in that process as a hiring manager and looking for people that you know that have the skill sets that you can contact, for people that you know that have the skill sets that you can contact.
Speaker 2:That whole thing about engagement it isn't pushing it on somebody else. It has to be everybody, not just a single individual sitting in an HR department. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. And one way for that hiring manager to show that they understand responsibilities and perhaps raise their hand and say you know what? I need help to interview candidates better, I can do something better, right, or I'm not happy with the candidates. Let's sit together and review our hiring criteria Again, taking an active role, taking a responsible role in the process, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then when I think about how does MBR kind of fit into being responsible for a good hire? The elements that I thought are kind of straightforward is clearly the hiring manager has to be involved in the process of the decision and clearly has to be engaged with the candidates. It isn't something that you can do or pawn off on somebody else. You can't ask the recruiter to find a person, tell me when you're done, it doesn't work that way. And a recruiter has to be involved in the process to find the right person. Understand the pay scales that are available? Do market surveys? They're engaged in the mechanics of how to hire, the things that are behind the scene. The other two of that I think are kind of interesting is you have to keep in mind who is the client, who behind the scene. The other two of that I think are kind of interesting is you have to keep in mind who is the client, who's the customer that you're trying to work with as far as the department, and do these new hires actually integrate with those customers? The last point that I think is interesting is an organization's approach in terms of hiring is a company approach to understand their expectations. They create the marketplace, they create the environment in which these employees are going to be working in, and they do have problems in terms of how their image is coming across versus what it is in reality of working for the company.
Speaker 2:Um, I can, I can think of some very good examples, like Google is noted for being very employee friendly and they do a lot of things that that try to encourage it, but it's not for every position. Not every position is playing ping pong and he has a basketball uh net in their in their dining room, with their dining room, with catered food. It doesn't work that way, especially if you're hiring for positions like my position. When you're hiring for somebody in a facilities organization, you're not code developing, you're not going to get a basketball rim in the facility shop. It's just not going to happen. Ballroom in the facility shop it's just not going to happen. The last point on, I think this one particular discussion about good hires is it's 30%. I think it's higher than 30% in terms of wages in the first year that are lost with poor candidates, especially if you have to fire the candidate and look for another candidate. I think 30% is just a portion of what's lost.
Speaker 2:But again, there's other things that you can do whenever you're hiring, and some of the mechanics of it are done by the recruiter, sometimes it's the hiring manager but you can't leave them out altogether. There's things like having a standardized procedure in interviewing so that the questions are the same. I personally find that not the best system, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. No-transcript assessing soft skills. As far as how they handle communication, how do they handle body language? How are the things that are there that aren't on paper? How's that interviewing going? You have to also do something as simple as checking references, and that kind of approach isn't something that you put on somebody else. The hiring manager should be engaged in that process, not the recruiter. Sometimes it's a cooperative approach, but you have to ask questions and not make assumptions. That's usually the mechanics of how you do a good hire.
Speaker 2:The one part that I thought was the most interesting that is not as clear is the job description. That makes sense and that may sound like it's not that big of a deal, but read your job description. Tell me, is it even close to what you do? Is it one of those shots in the dark where you just had to write something in and you got your 500-word essay and they were done, or does it really describe it? Or, like I've seen on the engineering side, it's explained to the point of ad nauseum. There's just so much in there that I don't know if anybody can have a conversation and cover all the points. It's just insane.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to talk about the next part that I think is my favorite approach, and that's hiring as far as a team, putting together your colleagues, putting together your peers, putting together the staff that they're going to be working with you want to put in the particular employees that directly report to them, that don't directly report to them, but you want to try to create a team of individuals and professionals that understand what the organization looks like. When you're hiring, when I think about the MBR process and hiring new managers, I think about putting together a team of people that this manager would be working with, hopefully peers, not subordinates, but peers, and even peers from other departments, so that there would be that opportunity for everyone to kind of work together and see whether these candidates have a connection. And, greg, I think you have a story that talks about that kind of approach. Why don't you share that story?
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. As I said earlier, my first job in human resources was as a recruiter and I worked my way into training in some other areas. But when I became a generalist again, recruiting was part of my role and I had one example that I wanted to share. That was a very positive example of the hiring manager and recruiter working collaboratively to make a very good hire. So you can imagine we're looking for a director of tax. This is many years ago and you know a specialized position right, kind of have really good credentials. And so I sat down with the CFO and we had what we call an intake meeting where we said what are you looking for? What kind of resources do you have? We use a third party. We keep it internal. I like to tap an internal candidate if we have any.
Speaker 1:But we actually sat down and discussed how we were going to roll this process out and then, once we decided we got those items together, then we actually put it to pencil and paper to make sure we were following the steps so that at any time during the the process we could make corrections or course corrections. We also described what the roles were. What was my role as recruiter? What was my role, working inside, maybe with an outside recruiter as well. What was the role of the CFO? Were they going to get involved, as well as other people that might be involved, as John talked about team or even panel interviews? So we went through the process, generated lots of resumes, which we culled down to an appropriate number of interviews, and we reported out on what we discovered. What were the trends, what were we seeing for this role, and then we got it down to top three candidates, three candidates that we thought yes, they meet or exceed the criteria we were looking for. One candidate, though, was clearly above the other two, and this person had the culture, fit, a sense of humor, curious.
Speaker 1:We knew this was a candidate that we wanted, and so we were getting ready to make the offer, but we also knew what the candidate's salary expectations were. It's like, oh my gosh, here we go. We're going to lose this candidate for a few thousand dollars $5,000 a year because it's not in the budget right now. This person would be what we used to call red circle. You know they'll get maybe an increase every year, a lump sum or something.
Speaker 1:So we put our heads together and said let's go up to the ladder here and talk to our respective leaders about some wiggle rooms, some ideas, and I had a couple of ideas and he actually had a couple of ideas on what we could do to land this great talent and fortunately, we were able to do something. It was in a form of a signing bonus and some other things on long-term bonuses and we were able to make the offer. And when I say we, I was able to tell the candidate hey, we're coming your way, buddy, just want you to be prepared. And, of course, the hiring manager made the offer and the candidate was excited.
Speaker 1:We were all excited, but the story doesn't really end there. We brought the person on board and our expectations were exceeded. This individual was a great developer of people, a great mentor, worked well with interns, was good in the community and also helped our brand, was out there pumping up our company and our brand, and so this was a very successful situation. It wasn't without a lot of work. It took a lot of effort on both of our parts, but we brought talent to the organization and I think the payback was multiple folds, john.
Speaker 2:But really that's the essence of MBR it's engaging in the process and I think what you just described is what you're hoping people will do when they find those candidates that you know this is a grade seven job and they don't pay that high in a grade seven. It's a it's a grade six and you're having a great conversation instead of a person's conversation what the role needs to do and how that role can develop. And it's probably another very good case of why you want to hire people that are maybe better than yourself, maybe better than the director or the VP or the president that is in a subordinate position but has the potential of actually doing more and growing in that position. If you don't have the freedom to do that, maybe you're not working for an organization that has that management by responsibility kind of approach. It isn't a responsible organization and that's usually the first discussion. A $3,000 amount I know the salary was a reasonable salary, but I know that $3,000 was not a lot to try to make a difference for that hire. And I've had those conversations Whenever you can have leadership, actually think out of the box and work with the recruiter, work with the hiring manager. The one dynamic that you were talking about is that it's a team, and how many times that organizations that really don't understand that say it's not my job to do your job, figure it out and toss you back out of the office. We've had that experience too. So hopefully this gives you a little bit of an idea of what we've been talking about as far as an MBR approach to leadership and to leadership hiring, and I thought it was important to take time to step back and talk about where you know an organization's actually doing that and implementing an MBR mentality and what that means.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you've gained a little bit of what we're talking about in this podcast. So, if you like what we have been talking about, yeah, my book is available. My e-book is also available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites. The podcast is what you're listening to, thank you. It's also available on other formats like Apple, google and Spotify. Mbr the process that we were just talking about today, which is Dr Durst's process. He has his books and his programs that are available in wwwsuccessgrowthacademycom. Check into it. It's a very good program. If you want to contact us, my Gmail account is wand075 at gmailcom and Greg.
Speaker 1:I can be reached at gpowell374 at gmailcom reached at gpowell374 at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and music is brought to you by my grandson, so we want to hear from you. We appreciate people who have contacted us and have given us a few ideas in order to try to put together a podcast that you would find interesting, and we appreciate the input. So, greg, thanks.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john, as always Next time.