2.151 How to Run a Simple Recruitment Process for Small Business with Daniel Moussa

In this episode, Karen is  joined by Dan Moussa from Third Way Advisory, and we unpack what really makes recruitment work in a small business. We talk about why so many hiring processes go off track before you even post the job ad, how to spot the early warning signs, and how to keep your process simple without being sloppy.  

In today’s episode, you will learn about 

• The most common leadership hiring mistake Dan sees, and why it usually comes down to skipping the preparation stage.  
• The two biggest red flags your recruitment process is off track, including what it means when you are drowning in CVs or interviewing too many people without making a decision.  
• Why internal alignment matters more than the job description, and what to discuss with stakeholders before you brief a recruiter or go to market.  
• The referral trap, and how to keep your process consistent even when someone comes recommended.  
• How to think about hiring a “superstar” versus hiring the “glue” and what that means for culture, performance, and retention over the long term.  
• The reality of AI in recruitment, from AI written CVs to candidates using tools during video interviews, and how businesses can respond without panic.  
• What great onboarding and retention looks like in practice, including why monthly feedback loops in the first six months can make a big difference.  

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Visit https://www.amplifyhr.com.au/ for more insights and resources.  

Connect with Dan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-moussa-1307a522/

Transcript

Karen Kirton   

Would like to start with what is probably most recruiters pet peeve, what's the most common leadership hiring mistake that you see that owners take and they don't actually realise that they're making that mistake? 

Dan Moussa   

Quite simply, I think it's a preparation stage. It's that internal alignment piece. It's understanding why exactly are you hiring? What are you hiring? How you're going to do it, and what's the person we need, rather than the technical abilities of job description. That's the most important thing. I think you have to get right for a successful recruitment piece. But most of not, it's a piece that's not done, never looked at and forgotten about. So yeah, to me, it's quite a simple one, just that preparation piece of a starter process. So we know that, because we work in this kind of space, but why do you think people just still don't do it, even when they've made those issues areas before, and they've had hiring issues, and yet they still is it just a time thing? Is it actually just not really understanding what the preparation looks I think it's an element of them, time panic, because often someone's resigned, or you've won a major project, and you have to get the role filled. So do you think we have to get this done immediately? So the job advert goes up. It's panic, panic, panic. It's find someone to fill a hole. But you could also think it's a real lack of education and recruitment and hiring is one of these things, and you've probably seen it is. It's always just been done a certain way, because that's the way it's been done, and no one's really ever challenged it or not. Many people have presented different ways of doing things or challenging ideas. And I often talk about high performance sport as an example, because teams that win, teams that create legacies and have multiple successes, or even individuals, they've all done something a little bit different. They've changed something in their preparation. They've tweaked the way they train. They've gone and done high altitude, they've, you know, they've looked at new ways of doing things to find a lot of one percenters to get the best results. And that's actually something you can really relate to business as a whole. But I think definitely to acquiring talent and recruiting. 

Karen Kirton   

Desperation is never a good thing when it comes to recruitment. Yeah, and it's so often reactive rather than proactive, right? 

Yes. So what do you see as those early warning signs that the process has gone off track before someone's even got a candidate in the door? 

Dan Moussa   

Yeah, there's, there's big, there's big ones. The first one is, you're screening hundreds and hundreds of CVS, because if you've gone to that wider audience, and people do because they think, Oh, we want to cover the market. But if you're whittling through 50, 100 150 CVS, you've probably been a bit too broad in your in your search and your advert and your your process, because that's too big a number of CVS to actively work through and manage. And I also think it's really hard to make a good decision just off a CV, because what's behind the CV? So that's the first that's one of the first red flags. The second, really obvious one, is we've interviewed 7,8,9, people, and we're going to go to market again. That means there's an issue, not of a talent pool. That means there's an issue internally in terms of alignment, because whoever is making the decision, everyone's got different needs, different expectations of why they will exist, and probably a different idea of who they want. So unless you address that, that becomes that challenge, because everyone's trying to hire for their own needs. There's no consistency in an interview. There's no consistency in assessment of candidate. So they're probably the two earliest warning signs that you need to sort of just stop, take a breath, go back and actually look at your recruitment process and what you're trying to achieve, and actually work back from the end goal of Who do you want in that position? 

Karen Kirton   

Yeah, because sometimes it's actually accepting that maybe it's not the market, maybe it's you, maybe it's the process.  

Dan Moussa   

Maybe, as you said, Not everyone's got the same idea of what they want, and that's always self acceptance and self awareness is always difficult. And I think that's there's a constant battle, right? You try and recruit yourself for certain roles, or do you go to an expert and get help? And I think sometimes that's a value, if you go for right partner saying, Well, let's look at the process itself first, because the process itself is always overlooked. It's just you put your job, advert up, you interview, you hire someone. It's not really a great process, is it to have a really specific result, particularly when you know it's a big investment of time, it's a big investment of money. But equally, you want to return an investment. You want somebody who's going to come in and turn it around your organisation. 

Karen Kirton   

And one thing that I do hear from people is about referrals. We love it when we get referrals, but and I've seen referrals work really well, and I've also seen them work terribly, because the process goes out the window because I've been referred this person, so therefore they must be great. So what are your thoughts on referral candidates? And I guess that whole. Idea of just having a coffee and going off gut feel versus having a recruitment process, 

Dan Moussa   

And I've been guilty of making those hires myself, and it hasn't always worked. So referral candidates are good, right? Because you tend to getting a like for like. You think someone knows a culture. But there's also a risk in that when you look at sort of diversity of team and diversity of problem you're trying to solve, because quickly, you can just be hiring carbon copies of your team. Now, for some organisations, that works, because they're very much well, this is our organisation. This is our culture. They own that, and it's fine tune that. So therefore maybe that's a good way of doing it. However, the challenge is, to your point, you forget to interview, you forget to assess. There's no consistency of what's happening against the talent pool. So for me, I'd always encourage referrals, but I think any referral has to go through the same process as any other candidate in that recruitment process to make sure that you're not missing the thoroughness of the process. So you're not this consistency in the question is consistency in assessment, because what often happens is, and we've all done it, is great. Person, lovely. Personality, gut feel, feels good. And you hire them in six months, and you're like, Oh, we're actually under performing, but they're great. Person, yeah. So you give them another six months under performing, still. Are, but we're still and so's friend. So it's great, but you can actually create far more issues down the line. Three years later, you've still got someone not performing, yeah, but they're a great person 

Karen Kirton   

so you talked about having that alignment earlier in terms of the people that are making the decision around the role. So what does that look like in practice? How do you get alignment across the people that make a decision? 

Dan Moussa   

I think in practice, you actually have to have the discussion, and I think that's often the bit that's missing. So a founder, an owner, a leadership team, will agree they have to hire they'll draft a job description. Or if a talent team of HR function draft a job description, it goes around and everyone signs it off. You know, you go to market or you brief your recruiter. No one actually sort of sits down. I don't see it with individual stakeholders in information of that position description, listen, we're going to market for this role. We're agreed on budget, we're agreed on the responsibilities. But actually, what's your individual expectations of a person coming into the CEO. Now you might have two stakeholders, you might have three stakeholders, and guaranteed the answers will be different, and that's fine, because everyone's got their own expectations, but that's a golden opportunity to say, well, listen before we just rush to market, before we brief someone, let's just look at all our expectations and agree on what we're not willing to to give up on and what we can what we can concede on, then suddenly you've got, actually a real alignment of non negotiables when it comes to ability, personality, culture, that you can assess on. So it's just putting the brakes on and actually asking the questions like, Well, what do you think we need, or what you're looking for in a person? It's just a step that I don't know how often you see it. But this never seems to happen, because it's become everyone in terms of a process, job description, budget, fill the seat, whereas there's more to it. 

Karen Kirton   

And I think often people focus on that, just what do we want them to do? Yeah, so yes, we need them to do this particular objective or this particular thing, but they're not looking at, well, what's the kind of behaviours that we need to see out of the role, though? Because, yeah, you might have two completely different ideas. Like, if you're hiring a senior sales manager, for example, some person might say, well, we want someone that's going to go on, you know, pound down the doors and, you know, push people out of the way, be real pushy salesperson. The other person's like, Well, no, I want someone that's going to be, you know, quite soft in relationship building, and that's going to be a huge issue, but they're not talking about it. 

Dan Moussa   

Yeah, and I often talk about the way you hire. You talk about hiring the superstar versus hiring the glue. So you can go and hire a superstar, and you see it in sport, you hire a superstar striker, score million goals, but pull the dressing room apart. No, you know, no culture, no team spirit, all about themselves. And so that's great. Listen, the revenue numbers will spike. Will have new clients, but actually sort of killing your business in the background, versus how you hiring, maybe for the glue someone that's going to come in and actually glue things together, stick a team, stick a process, and you see much more. You might see slow returns on revenue, perhaps in the first 12 months, but over a period of 2-3-5, years, you've bought on a far more significant hire than a superstar who will ultimately leave for the next thing, probably anyway, yeah, and everyone else will leave in the meantime. and they've blown the place up on the way out.  

Karen Kirton   

Now it's hard to talk about recruitment and not talk about the rise of AI in recruitment. What's your experience with people's resumes, cover letters, even interviewing, and how are people, how candidates using AI now to kind of try and get themselves forward? 

Dan Moussa   

I it's twofold. I think definitely people are using AI to write your cover letters and people using AI to write your CV. And why wouldn't. Some of the tools are fantastic. You can have your CV polished. The only thing I would say is make sure you go back and redraft it like if you're writing you've ever written a CV for 10 years and you need a CV. AI is a great starting point, but you must go back in and personalise it, make sure it's accurate, make sure it's relevant. What we are seeing is, I've seen it more into NASA. Is probably lower level rules people are using AI during during interviews, particularly video interviews, you can actually, you can watch yourself ask a question. You can see a bit of pause. You can actually follow our eyes tracking. Now that is becoming an issue. I'm not sure how you combat, other than going to like sort of face to face to face interviews, assessment centres, additional things, but that's AI. AI on teams interviews is definitely be becoming a challenge, that's for sure. But I also think that AI is creating almost a victim mentality for many candidates too, because the first thing they blame as well, my CV is great, and my cover letter is great, and I'm getting blocked by AI filters within organisations. Now that's a challenge to a degree, but actually, I think the number of times I speak to really good candidates, and I have half an hour an hour of them, and I'm like, Oh, this is awesome candidate. Incredible experience, like great culturally, very self aware, and I get the CV, and I have to say to them, like, your CV doesn't read like the person I've just spoken to. And that's a challenge first, so people can be quick to blame the AI filters, but actually, just take a step back, and it's hard, because humans don't naturally like selling themselves, particularly Australians, Brits, you know, tall poppy syndrome, and everyone's too humble. Well, actually, you know, you see the I always say, you almost have to poke someone in the face with two fingers. This is what I've done. This is what I'm good. So there's a challenge around that as 

Karen Kirton   

well, yeah, and I think I've heard that from people, they're finding candidates that they believe are using AI in the video interviews. And it's tough because it's like, but the person might be using it because perhaps they're super nervous, or English as a second language, but there could be a lot of reasons why they're using it. Doesn't mean they can't do the job. But then from a business perspective, it's like, Well, who am I actually hiring? Yeah, yeah. 

Dan Moussa   

Well, covid has got a lot to blame for that, because some everyone was like, well, screens, like, interviews, face to face, teams, meetings, it's gone so digital, actually, you know, something you still need to be done in person, and I think you have to, or an element, you know, you can have a first stage  interview, but like, I mean, people get hired for jobs, and they've never been to the office, and they've never seen everyone to work with, and they've never been to a team event. And it's like, equally as a candidate, like, That's nuts. Yeah, it's like buying a car you've never driven, a test driven, or anything. You know, you people need to give a bit more thought back to these processes. AI is fantastic, and I think AI's change the game and recruitment in terms of its the best thing about AI is just level the playing field. So before, particularly as an external consultant, it was always about who had the black book or the network. But everyone now, Owner, internal HR team, internal talent team, external team. Everyone's got access to the same tools, the same systems, the same candidates. So it's become a really big level playing field. So now it becomes back to those things of, well, how do we engage a market? How do we ensure we're getting the right person who is the right person? So it's almost made recruitment come back to a skill again, if that makes sense, not just a CV flicking, transactional exercise, which, for the last decade, it feels like that's what's become, 

Karen Kirton   

and I've done a few podcasts, actually, on my belief that recruitment is much more marketing than it is HR. And people sometimes sort of do a bit of a strange look at me when I say that, because in people's minds it's an HR function. It's actually not an HR function. Is a marketing function. And what you're just mentioning is that it's like, how are we going to market? How do we, you know, show up, what's our employer brand look like? And, you know, often it's particularly in smaller businesses, we don't have that skill set internally, so that's where someone like yourself that can do that recruitment process, you know, really adds that value because you're selling something. That's the other thing I find is it's not often seen as a two way process.  

Dan Moussa   

So much power is with the candidate now, and I think particularly as you come up the food chain and your senior roles, key hires on the whole, and it's a it's a bit of a broad brush, but on the whole, the candidates you want are generally always in jobs because they're in demand. They excel at what they do. So you have to go and give them some compelling say. Actually, we know who you are. We know your skill set. Just check out this information. We think we might have something that works really well. But I also see two types of leaders. Some leaders are exceptional at continuing to stay in touch with the market, right? They know who the best candidates are in the market. They meet them for a coffee once a quarter, they always say hello at industry events for. Are engaged. So actually, when they have that hole to fill in their own business, they've done the hard work because they can actually listen, we might have an opportunity, and they've got the relationship. Or when a candidate said to them, I'm getting at your feet, they're going to find out first. Whereas the other group who never engage in social media never engage in the market, and once every 1-2 years, put a really blunt job ad up on LinkedIn say, Hey, we're hiring come and join a great team who's going to get the best candidate. Yeah, yeah. 

Karen Kirton   

And sometimes people think that having a recruitment process is just adding red tape. It's bureaucratic. So, you know, is there something that you can go here? Here are the four or five steps of what a simple recruitment process should 

Dan Moussa   

look like, Yeah, I think just to break it up to me is just refer it to any sort of sports process. So if you look at any successful sporting team campaign, individual, once you win the trophy of a competition in the press conference, you always hear three things. We had an incredible offseason preseason preparation. There was really strong alignment across the whole organisation, from the physio to the nutritionist to the coaches to the receptionist, and we left no stone unturned into preparation. Everyone forgets that in recruitment, and we just tend to sort of jump into the season piece of campaign and try someone. So just keep that in your mind before you go to market for any process. Have a preseason, have a preparation stage that's going to lead to a much better sort of campaign process, and I'll lead to a much better result. 

Karen Kirton   

I think that's awesome. Never heard it described that way before. It makes more relatable, right? Excellent. Okay, so we've had the preseason. We've got the trophy, we've hired. What do we do? What's the first 30-90, days? How do we build trust? How do we build momentum? How do we try and make sure that we're getting our return on that investment? 

Dan Moussa   

So the biggest failing, or the biggest weak point in that, I think, is feedback loops. And you'll be all across in your resume. But generally, what happens is someone comes in and they have a really great first week of onboarding. And, you know, it's high touch point, it's feedback. How have you settled in? Have you got what you need? If you're good organisation, you might have a 30 day feedback loop then suddenly written in the next one's at six months. So in that four or five months, what's happened? How's the candidate felt? Has the role been what we what we're assault? Have a blended in. Have you struggling? To me, that's too long. So the most important thing I'd be having is that consistent feedback loop sort of month, 123456, all the way through probation. Me as an external consultant, I actually encourage my clients now to get me back in after eight weeks, and we want to sit with the hiring manager if the HR team was involved in the candidate. And I said the feedback is just like we came to you, we head down to you, we sold you this business. We sold you as opportunity. Is it, you know what you're in now? Is it what we sold you? And that does two things. One, it says, Yeah, you did. It was really accurate. And you can say, well, so we've got pretty good process here. Let's refine this and take it again. But it's also, if it's not kind of 80% is, but you talked about these values, I don't really see it or I was told this, told that eight weeks, that's an early enough point to say, you know, oh, cool, sorry you're feeling that way. We can fix it and you can start to put things in place. But if you leave it to six months, someone's made a decision up, right? And actually, we're going to go and bad mouth your business and do more damage. I think the biggest one is feedback. But then if that's something you'd see as well in terms of retention, 

Karen Kirton   

Oh, absolutely. You know, all anyone really wants is to feel listened to and cared for. And sometimes people forget that when you start a new job, it's actually really anxiety inducing for many people who maybe don't want to use that word on it, but you know, it's completely new. And even worse, if I should say they've never even been into the building before, and you're looking for all the reasons why it's wrong and different and worse than where you were before, 100% so yeah, so then if you're getting that 30 day check in with any getting nothing for another four or five months, that's that whole time to make up all these, you know, what Brene Brown calls S word first drafts in your head about all the things that are wrong. And so that's where you can just decide, okay, you know, I'll do my two years and then I'm done, or I'm just going to leave.  

Dan Moussa   

And a lot of people actually make the decision on when they're going to leave, in the first six months, even then I walk out the door, in my experience, and then during the 18 months, we're not a brand ambassador for you, the opposite. And I think the other cool thing about if you instil that feedback loop, then that actually becomes part of your culture across the business. So the people you've hired start actually having frequent feedback sessions of their own team and so on and so forth. And you actually create this amazing feedback culture, which is so important. How do you know what's going on? Well, you don't, and it's amazing how many organisers always like, yeah, we do like, we're really good. We do feedback once a year, have an employee engagement survey. I'm like, that's a long time to have no touch points and no feedback. 

Karen Kirton   

Yeah, absolutely. The time is going really quickly. But I do want to ask you one more thing. I. Which is looking back over your career, what's one thing that you wish that you knew earlier about running the business or being a leader? 

Dan Moussa   

To me, it's I wish I'd worked out earlier that people who run businesses or businesses don't have all the answers. Because I remember being in my 20s, and I think, yeah, a big CBER II in Asia. And I remember looking at the CEO, and I remember thinking, like, how do these guys know everything? Like, because they had that, like, we just, how do we know the answer to everything? We might have so much knowledge, but actually, we don't. They just really good at problem solving, finding answers, willingness to make a decision. And I think that's the one thing I wish I'd learned. Wish I'd learned earlier, is that you don't have to know everything to be a leader. You just have to be able to self aware, be able to work with people, be able to build good teams, and I think, be able to go in the search of answers and take on different viewpoints. But yeah, if only I learned earlier, we probably just started a business earlier. 

Karen Kirton   

I love it. Great answer. Now, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way? 

Dan Moussa   

LinkedIn? Website, yeah, LinkedIn is amazing. Website, thirdwayadvisory.com.au, Instagram, YouTube as well. We're pretty present, so yeah, but LinkedIn is probably the best, 

Karen Kirton   

awesome, and I'll put the links to those in our show notes along with your podcast. So if anyone wants to connect with Dan, you can do it that way. So thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed the conversation, 

Dan Moussa   

likewise, and looking forward to having you in my podcast. 

Karen Kirton   

Thank you. And for those listening, if you receive value from this episode, I'd love it if you can leave a rating or a review over Apple podcasts or Spotify, so someone else can find the episodes to help with their business. Episodes released on Mondays, so click subscribe, and you'll be notified when it's available. Thanks so much for joining me. If you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, head on over to amplifyhr.com.au, or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.