Terri Noah with Work Force Strategies

We welcomed Terri to our podcast to showcase how her business can help assist you hire the right employees. 

Workforce Strategies 

Terri Noah

terri@workforcestrategies.biz

(615) 681-1322

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi hubsters, it's Carrie Ann, and today I have Terry Noah with me, and she is with Workforce Strategies. And what she does is she connects employers with the right employees by focusing on culture, skills, personality, and long-term fit. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be with you today. We are very excited to have you on. So why don't you tell us? I gave a little brief synopsis of Workforce Strategies, but tell us, tell us what Workforce Strategies actually is.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

So Workforce Strategies is an organization here in White House. We've been in business now for 12 years, and we really partner with employers and companies in the area. We help them find the right talent, but the thing we really do is we give them their time back. Small and mid-sized businesses, the emplo the owners, the managers, they really struggle to keep up with filling critical job roles. And the complaint we hear most often is I run an ad and I get 25 applications. I don't have time to go through all those. I don't have time to call all those people. And then they no-show on me when we schedule interviews. And it just takes so much of my time. And so we really give them that time back because we create the ads, we pre-screen all of the candidates. We only give them the top pre-qualified applicants that we've already interviewed twice. We've checked their work histories, we've made sure they align culturally with the organization we're hiring for. So they get an employee that's pre-qualified. They get to do one or two interviews with them and then make a decision. So instead of spending 40 to 80 hours on a hire, they're spending two to five hours on a hire.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Oh my gosh, that saves them so much time. It it sounds like you take a lot of that work off the plate for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

We do. And and the best part of it for them is that we try to make it affordable for businesses of all sizes. I like that too. It's very common for recruiters to charge 28 to 32% of first year salary. Our fees are significantly lower because a few years ago I decided to move my business out of a public office and into my home. I have employees that work with me in my office, but I save myself a ton of overhead. And by doing that, I don't have to have as high prices for myself.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

That's nice, because then smaller businesses can afford your services too. That's exactly right. So what is what do you think is one of the major mistakes you see that a lot of small businesses make most often when it comes to hiring? Is it not having someone to assist them?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

They there's two things that they do. They hire people that they know. Okay. Now, sometimes that works out great, but oftentimes it winds up being an emotional hire, and that doesn't work out so well. And a lot of times the relationship will be out of balance, or maybe the person really doesn't have the skill or the personality to fit the culture or the needs of the role. But there's an emotional attachment there, so they may have a hard time getting rid of them or giving them direction. So oftentimes it's really best to make sure that when you're hiring, that you're looking at someone's skills, but you're also looking at do they fit the culture, do they fit the personality of your company? And every organization has its own personality. And when you build a team that fits that, it helps you be represented well in the community.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Oh, I like that. The personality is a big one.

unknown 3:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

What do you what have you discovered makes great employees?

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Oh gosh. You know what I like? There's a couple of things I like that people don't look at much. If someone was a student athlete, they often make great employees. We do. And you know, the reason is they learn to work with others. Yep. They learn to follow structure, they learn work ethic, and that carries forward. I see that in my own son who was a student athlete, and he's a really, really hard worker and a dedicated employee, and that makes me really proud of him. But I see that in the applicants that I talk to and the people that I hire. Um, the other thing is people who have a conscience, meaning that they want to do the right thing even when people aren't looking. So when you hire somebody that shows up and just goes, Oh, this needs to be done, and they don't do it, they take that initiative. Yes, that started, that is a skill that we don't find as often as we once did. And so when we find people that you can tell have that, I'm gonna do what needs to be done, the floor needs to be sweeped and I'm here and I'm getting paid, so I'm gonna go do that. Yes. So those people are really important to organizations, especially the small and mid-sized organizations.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

I totally agree, totally agree with that one. Ugh, I hate when you walk by like in an office and you see something that you just pick it up and put it back where it belongs.

unknown 5:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Or you walk by an employee and they refuse to make eye contact.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Because they're they don't quite have that understanding that that customer or that guest that is in their business is the reason they have a job. One of the key things that people need to train their employees to do is make eye contact with their customers and their visitors. It matters. Welcome that's a good thing. That's how you get people to come back.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Well, that's probably another one is like the question that can piggyback off this like, how important are first impressions?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

You know, you hear the cliche, you get one chance to make a first impression. That's not always true. Sometimes you can make a bad first impression and you can recover that. There are ways to do that. But you always want to put your best foot forward in life, whether it's your personal life or your business life, right? And you want your customers to feel welcome in your business and you want them to feel like they belong there and that you want them there. Have you ever been in a business where you walked in and you were trying to ask a question or you were doing business and you felt like you were bothering that person? Yes, like I was annoying them just coming in. Yes, you're not gonna be inclined to go back there. But if I ask you to think right now, where is your favorite place to do business? You know you've got to go to this place. It may not be your favorite thing to do, but you know when you go there that they're gonna treat you well. Everybody knows that place when I ask that question. I know that place, and you want to go back there.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Yes, you want to feel welcome, you want to feel wanted as I don't know, even when you're going shopping, I want to feel wanted in the store.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I want to spend my money where people are nice to me.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

What is one thing you think employers should focus on when hiring?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I think they really should focus on, well, they need to know the personality of their business, they need to know the culture that they're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Do you have like homework for them to do first?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yes, yeah. Figure out what you want your culture to be. If you decide that you're just gonna let it develop as you're in the role of doing your work, nothing will develop. You'll end up with an employee or two that have really strong personalities, and they will end up building your culture instead of you as the owner or as the operations manager building the culture of the organization. So if you have an idea of what you want it to look like, Jill Kelly Odin here in town, everybody knows her. Her business motto is people over profits. And she's worked really hard to build that culture within her organization, but she's been purposeful about the steps she took to do that. Decide what your motto is gonna be, decide what your personality of your organization is gonna be, and then create steps that support that. So a lot of times we see those in business as pillars, they call them pillars. It might be character, it might be financial responsibility, it might be something like people over profits that Jill chose, whatever that is. Then you build your training of your employees. Everything has to fall under those pillars or those character things that you put in place to support that. Then you end up building the team that you really want that's gonna represent you the way you want them to.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

I like that a lot. You know, you get the you get like my same mindset. I was just gonna say the same mindset in there. Yes. What workplace trends are you seeing today? I know it's probably changed many times since you've been in business. It has, it certainly has.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So COVID, 2020 changed everything, right? Everybody left their office and they went home and they worked from home because you know, the fear of spreading illness, but continuing to do business. So everybody went and worked remotely. Well, now all of a sudden, businesses are wanting to bring people back to the office. But guess what? Job seekers don't want to, they don't want to go back. If they're looking for new jobs, people don't want to so we get a lot of people who are looking for hybrid or remote only positions, and they are like dug in on that. And we'll get people that'll call us in a panic. I've got to have a job, I've got to have a job, but I'm only gonna work remote. It limits the opportunity. Yeah, you can't you can't lead with that mindset because employers are now bringing their people back because it has affected their cultures, it is, it has affected their productivity in some ways, um, it certainly has affected their customer service in a number of ways, hours of access and things like that. So people, when they are looking for jobs, kind of have to get out of their own ways. If you if you're having trouble finding a job, you may need to ask yourself, are you setting too many boundaries on what you're willing to do or not do? And create, figure out where you can be flexible on those things. Yes. Because the trend is going back the other way.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

That's but I I feel personally like it goes back to culture for me. If the company has a good culture and a good like office environment and it's enjoyable, like it it should be still an easy, easy place to go to it.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

It should be a place you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

That's a place you want to go to, yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

And you know, that's one of the things we do when we are pre-screening candidates, and I say we send people who are pre-qualified. It is always our goal to pair a candidate and an employer that match. And that doesn't just mean that somebody knows how to weld and this company's hiring a welder or that somebody is a great receptionist and this company's hiring a receptionist. If I pair them up because they have aligning ideals, yeah, it's gonna create a longer employer-employee relationship. I interviewed a guy one time, he had applied for a particular job, and I sat down with him and we began to talk. And as we talked and he talked about the things he enjoyed doing in his previous jobs and his personal goals. I told him, I said, I can send you to interview for this job and they're gonna hire you. And you're gonna hate it. You are absolutely gonna hate this job, and you're gonna stay three months, maybe six months, if you just really need the job. I said, but you're not gonna stay long term, which doesn't help you, it doesn't help my client, and it doesn't help me. So let me talk to you about another job that I have opened. So I began to talk with him about a different job that I had opened that he had not applied for. And as we talked, his eyes grew wider, his smile got bigger, and I said, This is the job for you. Let me send you to interview. And he's like, Yes. I said, now it's a further drive. He's like, I don't care. Because it was the right fit for him. So I sent him to interview, and of course they hired him. That was five years ago, and he's still there.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

He's still there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Awesome. Because it was the right fit, and that matters.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

And I was just gonna ask, I guess that's something that is a benefit for even applying through jobs through a company like Workforce Strategy, is you have all this other knowledge behind the scenes, like if they don't apply apply for the right job right off the bat, you may have something else for them. And we do that a lot.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

A lot of times somebody will apply for a position that we've advertised, and they may not be really fit the qualifications the way we would like for them to, but we'll call them and talk with them because they may fit something else and we'll propose that to them. And oftentimes that ends up working out for them and for our other clients. So, you know, it works out, it always works itself out, right? It always does. Um, one of the things that I do a lot of times when I'm interviewing, I end up doing career coaching or interview coaching with the people that I'm talking with. Because when they're interviewing with me, I can give them some guidance. People sometimes tend to overshare personal details. And so I will give them some guidance on hey, if I if you go to enter to an interview, you may want to hold back on a little bit of that information, first of all, because it doesn't affect one way or the other whether you can do the job, but it could prejudice somebody unintentionally toward hiring you. They may not even realize they're doing it, but it could happen. So I'll end up just in the course of that interview giving them a little interview coaching as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

That's awesome. Yeah, that's definitely awesome. So then the last question I like to ask people is if you could go back to when Terry started this company so many years ago, what advice would you give yourself?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Oh my gosh, to not be so scared. So I have a health care care background. I spent my degrees in radiology. I spent 23 years managing urgent care clinics and occupational medicine programs. And when I left my last health care job, it was scary. And I went to work for a a small recruiting firm, and they tried to starve me to death. That's what I always tell people. I went from a pretty nice salary to a very small paycheck, but I needed the job. And so I did it. Well, ultimately, the owner of that business was deployed through the US Navy and came to me and said, Hey, how would you like to buy my business? And I was like, Oh, what? What are you talking about? I said, Can I sleep on that? And I did, and I went back to him and we had a conversation because I wasn't really comfortable buying his business. So he came back to me the next day after that conversation and he goes, I tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna close this down, you're gonna open something new, and I'm gonna give you my contracts and I'm gonna work for you. So I spent the next six months starving him to death after he had starved me until his deployment. But that's how Workforce Strategies was born. That path chose me, I didn't choose it, and I was terrified. But the thing that I've learned along the way is when your path chooses you, it's usually the right path. So true. So it's it's been a great experience, you know. As my son went through high school and I mentioned that he was a an athlete, being self-employed gave me some flexibility to really be present for those things, and that was really meaningful to me. But it has also allowed me to serve close to 2,000 families and help them find jobs and careers that have helped support their dreams because we believe that when we help businesses grow with good employees, we help families grow with great jobs, communities are going to be stronger because both are going to pour back in.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yes, I totally believe that too.

unknown 15:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Well, Terry, thank you for being on the episode today. We'll definitely have you on again because I'm sure there's so much more we can talk about. Lots more.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

We need to talk about some HR management for small and mid sized businesses. We will definitely do that. That's something that's really a difficult thing for small business owners. And I would love to be able to help support them in that.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Awesome. Well, thanks again, Terry. Yeah, thank you. We'll see you next time.