Stop Hiring Resumes and Start Hiring People

In this episode, Jim Krigbaum dives into the real art of hiring, leadership, team building, and organizational culture in today’s AI-driven business world. While AI tools can help screen resumes and identify skills, Jim explains why great hiring decisions still come down to understanding people, communication, leadership, and long-term alignment.

Drawing from decades of experience in business strategy, leadership, and organizational transformation, Jim shares why so many companies hire based on credentials instead of character, culture fit, goals, and team dynamics. He explores leadership communication, employee motivation, hiring strategies, workplace culture, SWOT analysis, emotional intelligence, team collaboration, and why the best leaders focus on helping people achieve their personal goals while building stronger organizations.

This episode also dives into toxic leadership, peer review systems, company politics, employee engagement, leadership development, and how great teams are built through trust, listening, collaboration, accountability, and open communication instead of fear based management. Through real world stories and practical leadership lessons, Jim reveals how businesses can avoid costly hiring mistakes, strengthen workplace culture, and build teams that thrive together.

If you are an entrepreneur, executive, business owner, or leader looking to improve hiring, leadership, communication, and organizational growth, this episode delivers practical wisdom that can transform the way you build and lead your team.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today we've got a quick session. We're going to talk about hiring people. Hiring people has become a little bit simpler these days with the help of AI. It'll screen people, screen resumes. It can actually do background research on people. So if you utilize AI as a tool, not as a deciding factor, but as a tool to gather your research on people, it can be very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Are you sick and tired of spinning wheels, wasting time and money in your business, but getting nowhere fast? With the 10 Keys to Thrive podcast, it's your masterclass in momentum by International Business Strategist and your host, Jim Kraigbaum.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

If you're applying for a job, understanding that AI is going to be the first one to look at your resume. It's going to be the first one to review who you are. So you need to make sure that you have the keywords in place that AI is going to be able to identify those and say these are the skills that the person has. Going back to the old school, my father, who had a business, and he says, I never hire somebody that knows less about what they're doing than I do. It's a great principle. I'm hiring somebody to do a job. I want them to be an expert. I want them to be a pro. He had a situation, he had been a CEO and was always looked over. He had many jobs throughout his career. And one of the challenges he had is that he was always pushing to the top. He was an entrepreneur, so he's always trying to get outside the envelope. Business owners and entrepreneurs and CEOs don't always like that. They're looking for somebody that's going to fit in and somebody that's not going to challenge them. They don't want somebody that's going to look for their job, somebody that's going to look to take over their position. So a lot of times companies and individuals won't hire the best person. The individual will hire the person they have less fear from, the person they feel less challenged, that's not going to challenge them in their situation. One of the challenges I had is in hiring people. I hired people based on who they were. I looked at their profile, I looked at their background, I looked at what they'd achieved. One of the weaknesses I had is I didn't always look at where they wanted to go. I asked them, after I'd hired them, what their goals were. I brought them into my office and said, give me your five-year goal. And though a lot of these people had achieved great academic success, they didn't have a new goal. They didn't set their new goal. So they weren't able to say, here's where I want to be in five years. One of the things, and I've said this in all of my podcasts, is that the best way for you to get what you want is to help other people get what they want. So if I'm hiring somebody, I need to understand what they want. And I need to fit them into a program that fits for them. For example, if I hired somebody and they spoke Japanese, I could sit down with them and say, what is your objective? And then if they said, gee, I want to move to Japan, I want to be able to utilize my Japanese. Or they say, Yeah, I might have thought I wanted to move to Japan and they don't want to. So you need to understand that. You need to sit down with them and say, what is your objective? Where do you see yourself in five years? I would ask people that and they'd scratch their head. I'd say, come back to me later. Come back to me in three days and we'll talk about it. Have a goal, have a specific goal on what you want to do. So when I hire people, I need to make sure that I know where they're at, I know what they want to accomplish and where they want to go. I worked for a company where I was working with the founder, and the founder had sold part of the company to an investor. So the investor got a majority of the shares. That investor then went out and sold again, diluting my friend's equity in the company and decreasing this clout. At some point in time, they decided to bring in a whole new administrative team because that administrative team, they needed to take them to the next level, in their opinion. And they wanted to change kind of their focus from being an asset management company, which has a small multiplier on the value, to a technology company, which has a larger multiplier. So they made a shift in the business. They brought in a whole new team. And when they brought in the whole new team, these people were all paid lots of dollars. They were paid big value to bring them in to attract them to this business. And they had great credentials and they did great publicity and great visibility, but they didn't always have the skills. One of the problems they had is I had a boss who came in and he didn't bother to ask me what my skills were. He didn't bother to ask me what we'd tried, didn't bother to ask me where we had gone, what had succeeded, and what had failed. This guy had been a special forces director, captain, I believe, maybe even a major in the special forces, and he didn't understand what the expertise of a specialist were. He didn't come to me and ask me, what do you do? What is the best thing you do? What is your challenge? What are your strengths? And I told him, I said, this would be like you going in and taking over a company of soldiers and not figuring out who your communicator is, who your sharpshooter is, who your strategist is. If you don't know these things, you can't lead the team. You have to understand what skills your team has. So they hired these people, they brought them in, but they didn't do the backwards hire. They didn't go back to the people and say, okay, what is it that you can add to our business? What are the strengths? What have you done? They tried a lot of things that we'd already tried, and they failed. We'd failed because those things weren't achievable. They looked good on paper, but when they actually tried to execute them, they didn't work. They would have saved a lot of time, a lot of money if they would have come to us and said, What have you done over the last five years? What did you accomplish? What succeeded and what failed? The interesting thing is these people all had high-paying jobs for a short period of time. Eventually, they all failed. They were all kicked out. The owners of the company brought in new people again to try and build the business. They ultimately sold the business because they weren't able to get the management team in place. Management team is important that you have people to work together and communicate together. You don't want an echo chamber. You don't want to have a situation where everybody repeats what I say and everybody says what I want to hear. You want people to feel free to talk about their ideas. You want people to feel free to challenge you. That's why one of the things I say when we do our SWOT analysis on people is we go away from the office. We take down the walls, we take down the barriers, so that the janitor can talk and challenge the executive, so that the line operator can challenge the production manager, so the accounting people can challenge the administration because you want them all to challenge it. You have to understand that going into it, we're going to have conflicts. You're going to see things one way and you're going to see things another way. And everybody sees things from their own perspective, from where they sit and from what their history is and from their background. I need to understand what their background is. I need to understand how they see things. I need to stand in their position, walk a mile in their shoes, put myself in their moccasins, understand what it is. You do that through communicating. You do that through listening. And when we talk about communicating and see the first letter of charm dance, you have to communicate, you have to listen. You have to listen to what their issues are, what their concerns are, what their problems are. So in dealing with people, you have to put yourself in their position. What made them make this decision? Why did they think this way? If they're wrong, you can't just say you're wrong. You can say you're wrong, but you have to show them why, and you have to show them the right way. My first job was as a bus boy at a steak restaurant. And I was told to bust the tables. I did bust the tables. I took the dishes off the table, I brought them into the kitchen. I thought that was my job. It wasn't until the owner's son came and said, no, no, no, no. You bust the table, do you take things off the table, but you also clean the seats, you also clean the floor. You also put the new napkins back in the holder. There's a lot of things beyond that. I didn't understand what the job was. I wasn't taught the right way. When he came in and taught me the right way, it was easy for me to do it. It wasn't a challenge. I got paid the same whether I did it or not. But by doing it right, I was able to do more effectively. I was able to move up within the organization because I was doing it right, because I cared about the situation. People need to be shown and told what to expect. The best way for them to understand what to expect is to show them and to quantify what they're doing. I expect you to do X, Y, and Z. And if you do X, Y, and Z, and you have an easier way of doing those, let me know. Let's talk about it. And I'm not going to treat you as if your ideas are stupid. I'm going to listen to what your ideas are. If they are stupid, I'm going to say, that's great. This is the way we're going to do it. I always said my business, I ran a democratic monarchy, which meant that everybody had a voice. Everybody had a voice in what they wanted. Everybody had a voice from their perspective. But as a monarchy, because at the end of the day, I was the one at risk. When the bank came to the company, it was me who had to come up with the money. When the customer had a problem, it was me who had to answer the questions. My employees could leave. They could quit. And I had several of them that had. They would make mistakes and I would invest in them. I'd scratch my head and say, okay, what did you learn from this? That was great. I was investing in them. But they didn't always show that same loyalty back to me. I had one employee, I couldn't use a carrot, and I couldn't use a stick. I couldn't get him to do beyond what he had to do. I tried to penalize him for not doing it. I tried to reward him for doing it. I didn't understand what made him tick. To this day, I don't know what made him tick. He quit and went on to another business. And when I actually left the industry, maybe that was it. But I sat down with him and tried to figure that out. You can't always figure it out. Sometimes there's just not a natural fit. One of the things that happens is people are hired sometimes to make change. I worked for an organization, very large organization, and I had peer-to-peer review, which meant that everybody that I came in contact had the ability to review me before my raise or before my promotion, my review with the executives. I was brought in to make change within the organization. By making change, I was forcing people to do things differently. I was showing them a different light. They didn't always like to do that. They didn't want to hear that what they'd done and what they thought for years was wrong. So when they came to review me, they said, Oh, we don't like Jim. Jim is always pushing. Jim is always trying to change me. Well, that's what I was hired to do. Unfortunately, in this situation, the company understood why I was hired. They told me that's why I was hired. But when it came to my compensation, said, look at all these people you don't get along with. It wasn't that I didn't get along with them. It was that I was trying to change them because that was what I was paid to. I wasn't compensated for that. Because when they reviewed me in the peer review, because it was almost a socialist system, everybody had a voice. But the voice at some point in time, somebody had to say, Yeah, you feel this, but here's the reason why we're doing it that way. So when you look at your business, when you look at yourself, when you look to hire somebody, make sure you understand them. One of the things we did when we hired somebody is we all went to lunch. We would all go to a tire because that put everybody a little bit out of their comfort zone with the heat of the food or the use of chopsticks in some cases, wherever we went, but it brought everybody to the same level. And then we'd have the new person introduce themselves and talk to our people. They had to fit in. There's a company here on the West Coast called Dutch Brothers. They've recently gone public a couple years ago. And when I go to them, they're always happy. The employees are always amazingly good. And they talk to me. And I don't like a lot of times when the salesperson is too friendly, particularly when they're fake friendly. You know, when I'd walk into Wells Fargo years ago, as soon as I walk through the door, every clerk would say, Hello, how are you today? What are you doing this weekend? It's none of your business what I'm doing this weekend. I'd get cash from them and say, What are you going to use the cash for? Something fun? That wasn't their business. When I go to this company, Dutch Brothers, and I buy their coffee and they ask me how my day is, it's sincere. And I asked them one time, I said, How do you guys keep this joy? How do you guys keep this teamwork? And they said, Well, what we do when we hire somebody, we all interview them. Ultimately, the boss has the decision on who gets hired, but we all interview them so we all know where they're coming from. We all work together to accomplish the goals. And that goes down to the philosophy of the strength of the individual is the pack. The strength of the pack is the individual. Nobody stands alone. You need support of others. And the best way to get that again is to help them get what they want. When you're hiring people, hire people that you can help them get what they want, and in the process, they will help you get what you want. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

So that's it for today's episode of Ten Keys to Thrive. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Be sure to head on over to tenkeystotrive.com to pick up a free copy of Jim's Gift and join us on the next episode.