How to Hire the Right Person for Your Company

Hey, everybody. In today's episode, I am going to teach you some tips and tricks to hiring the right people for your company.

Hey everybody. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about hiring. I get this question all the time. They say, Dan, how do you hire for your company? How do you decide the right people? How do you decide people that aren't going to be a pain in the butt that are going to actually be productive employees, that aren't full of drama that is going to show up and not just show up to work, but really show up and be a part of your culture, not be toxic to your culture and just, you know, be a really good longterm employee? And so this is a great question. And let me just, just warn you that what I'm about to tell you, and these are in no particular order, they're just some tips and tricks I learned over the past several years, not just in my company that I have right now get clients.com, which is, you know consulting and online education.

But you know, I used to own a nightclub and I had a full staff of bartenders, cooks, bouncers, all that. So, you know, this is universal for really any type of business, but I warn you that you may not agree with some of the things that I'm about to tell you. And you may think some of them are you just, you just may not agree with them. And I just want to say that I'm okay with the fact that you don't agree. You don't have to agree and I'm okay with that, but I will just be sharing what has worked for me. So that said, these are in no particular order, but if you have a company that is, you know, you're an author, a coach, a speaker, a, you know, a, an influencer, any type of company where you have fans or followers.

What I like to do is I like to try to first source my, my audience, basically. And, and even if let's say you sold, sold, I don't know paper productivity products or something like you still have an audience, right? You could still hire from within your customers though. Some of the best people you can hire are people that already believe in your product and already believe in your product enough to pay money for your product. So, one, one thing I do is let's like, and this is, these are, I'll just give you two examples. One time we needed a customer service representative and somebody to answer support tickets, logging our tickets software, and just answer sports tickets. So I made a post. I said, Hey we are hiring a customer support representative, and you're gonna be answering support tickets. Anybody interested, I just kept it real.

And, and this is my design. I kept it vague by design. And, you know, you're always going to get comments like, you know, Dan, you really should put the hours and the, and the pay and the “this” and the “that”, and the details, otherwise, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, yeah, that's great. But I did this on purpose and I did it for a reason. And here's why, what will happen is you're going to get a bunch of people that come in, by the way, this would, even if you use ZipRecruiter, even if you use Craigslist, even the same thing is gonna happen, but you're gonna get a bunch of comments that say something like, how much, what are the hours? Can I work remotely? Is there, you know, do I have to work on weekends? And just all of these responses from people who are so lazy, so incredibly lazy that they would actually make the first interaction with you about a job by saying, how to watch two words, two words, why on earth would I yeah.

Ever hire somebody that, that, when I say, Hey, would anybody like a job? The only thing they respond with is how much one that tells me that all you care about is money. You, you, how much, what can you do? Like, you know, how good are you like, why you should be talking about your value first? Not about how much, because you have people who are transactional employees. And then you have people who are transformational employees. Transactional boys are people who only care about the paycheck and they only care about the hours. And they only care about that. Transformational employees are people who care about the cause the vision, the mission, they care about your message. They care about being a part of a winning team and growing with you. That's what they care about. They're transformational employees. You want transformational employees. You don't want transactional employees.

Transactional employees are people who are best served to work the drive-through at McDonald's or being a government clerk doing something, you know, working in a factory, doing a job that is the same every single day, over and over and over. And it's the same. It never changes. Transformational employees are more creative types, problem solvers, people that, you know, sales like people that, that need to use their brain a little bit more than, you know, click here, you know, press this button, that'll be five 95. Would you like fries with that? Like that, that doesn't take a lot of, of, of effort from the old noggin, right? And you want people that, that don't care just about the money, but they care about the mission. And so right there, if the first thing they ask is how much, or what are the hours you don't want to hire those people as well.

If they respond with one sentence, you don't want to hire those people either. I remember when we made this post about the customer service representative, this is a very, very nice woman by the name of Jess commented. And she says, hi, Dan, my name is Jess. And I've been, I'm a VA. And I've been doing customer service remotely for this many years. I've done customer service for Infusionsoft and this software. And that's all fine. I know how to use this. She gave me a bunch of information upfront about what she is capable of. She did not talk about money hours, any of that. And then she said, where can I send my resume? And how can I get more info on the job? And she was very clear and pleasant and, and so, and everybody else was honestly responded just terribly. And, you know, there were maybe 50 comments and out of, out of, well, there's more than 50, but there was 50 until I responded to somebody in the first person respond, was Jess that responded in a nice way, in an acceptable way.

Everybody else, it was just, it was terrible. It was Homewood's. Do you know, where are the hours? You know, can I work remotely? You know, and I just skipped over all of those people. I messaged her, we had a conversation. I hired her. She's been fantastic. She's worked with us for the past several months and she's been very, very good at her job. Very happy. Another time I posted on ZipRecruiter and ZipRecruiter's like sort of a premium it's, it's, it's, it's pretty expensive. It's like three or $500 for something per month. And it's for hiring and even on a platform where it's expensive, where you're supposed to be getting quality candidates. I put out a, and this was like three years ago. I put out a posting or maybe it was two years ago. I put out a posting for an assistant.

And I said, you know, I was very clear. I said, respond with your resume with a cover letter telling me why you're good for the job and any questions you have about the job. And so I got about 200 responses out of those 200 responses. Maybe like maybe a quarter of them, like maybe 30 to 50 actually included a resume. So right off the bat, right. They didn't follow instructions. So if you don't, if you can't follow instructions when you apply for a job, you ain't gonna follow instructions when you're hired, ain't gonna happen. Okay. So right off the bat, if they cannot, I recommend that you, you honestly, you know, make them jump through a little bit of hoops first to make sure that they can do it and to make sure that they can follow instructions. And so I immediately discounted everybody that didn't include a resume.

And then out of those, like 30 to 50 ish people that included a resume only about 10 actually provided a cover letter in any questions. And out of those 10, only about three looked good. And three, I got three interviews. One person came in very timid. I could tell right away that she would not be able to handle a difficult situation, like a difficult contractor or a difficult customer. I just could tell right away another woman came in and was, she just had a lot of restrictions. Like I can only work on these days and I can only do this on that day. It wasn't very flexible. So that's out. And then Alice came in and Alice came in and she answered all my questions and I'll tell you what questions I asked in a minute, but she has her, all my questions brilliantly.

She was flexible and I could tell she was a hard worker. And so I hired her and she's been my assistant for over two years now. And I can say that she has really, truly kept me together. I, I mean, to be honest, I was very disorganized before her and now I'm, my life is a lot smoother and, and a large portion of that is because of her. And I hate to trade. I hate to take just a little bit of, but I, it was part partly because I made a good hiring decision, but she is fantastic. And she's just great. There's I can't say enough good things about her. So, you know, how did this happen? How did I find these good people? Well, here are some questions you can ask when you, when you get to the phase where you have an interview now, by the way, there are obvious questions you ask, like, if you're hiring somebody to work with you for, for sales, right?

You might ask like, how long have you done sales or something like that? Or if you're hiring somebody to work with you for support, you might say, well, what support systems are you familiar with? Besides those obvious questions here? Here's one question you can ask. It's really good. You say, what did you not like about your last job now? What they didn't like, or what happened, however terrible it was, or how over unfair is irrelevant. It's how they express it to you. So if they say something like, Oh, it was terrible that my manager was such a jerk and [inaudible], and they just, they spew out drama. Then that tells you they are dramatic people, a person that is not full of drama, a person that can keep it together and be professional, even in the face of drama will not express that drama. Okay. Or they'll just say, Oh, you know, it just wasn't a fit, or, Oh, you know, it just, it didn't work out.

Or I just wanted something more or, you know, the hours weren't ideal. But if they say, you know, all the hours sucked in you know, they kept changing him on me and my boss was such a jerk. And there was this guy that worked there and he was always like, kind of creepy and, you know or, or, you know there was this girl there that was the that, you know, all, it never did the dishes and all, I always had to do it and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you know, all this just, it's just drama, then that's not somebody you want to hire. It's just not. So look for somebody that, when you ask that question, they respond to you without a bunch of drama. They they're professional and at best, or at worst in neutral. So there's that right?

And then, you know, again, there are obvious questions. Like, do you have a dependable car and all that jazz, but here's another great one. You, you know, I say, and I said, I said, this one, Alison, she was like, huh? At first, but I said, so a lot of people ask why we should hire you. Let me ask you why shouldn't we hire you now? Here's where it gets interesting. There are three possible scenarios. Scenario one is they, they say, Oh, you absolutely should hire me. There's no reason not to. You don't want to hire that person. Absolutely not. Because that person is not honest, period. There's always a, there's always a flaw. And if you think you're Jesus, if you think you're infallible, if you think you're perfect, well, then you're never, ever gonna be able to take constructive criticism. Do not hire that person.

Then, then there's the person that says, Oh, well, I used to be in prison. And I, I sometimes sleep till two and don't set my alarm clock. And, you know, I was in prison for beating up my boss or something. Oh, okay, great. Well, you know, we'll let you know, you know, I mean, if they just come out with something crazy, then, then you obviously don't wanna hire that person. But then there's the person that is honest and tells you a flaw. And that flaw is, is a flaw, but it's something that can be worked on. For instance, Alice said to me, she says, well, sometimes I can be a perfectionist and I can, you know, really want things to be perfect. And so sometimes it can slow me down a little bit. And I said, okay, now that right, there is something I can deal with.

And it's something that I can nurture and help fix. And, and, you know, that's, that's something that I can, I can cause you're, you're not gonna hire the perfect employee that doesn't exist. You're going to have to work on things with people. And, and the thing is, I want to know upfront what it is I have to work on with you. And if you say there's nothing, then you're lying and I don't hire a liar. So you're out. If you say it's something that I'm not willing to work with, like you, you know, you're, you're, you're somebody that has an anger problem and you tend to punch people when they don't agree with you. Okay. I don't want to deal with that. So you're out. But if you say, you know, well, I'm, I'm a perfectionist or, well sometimes, you know, I'm not good with pressure.

You know, if you're a salesperson, I probably wouldn't hire you, but if you're, you know, a video guy, then I'd, I'd probably hire you because when, you know, you don't really have to deal with a lot of pressure being a video guy as compared to like a sales or customer service. And so there's, there's that now these are just some things that you can do to weed out those people. Another thing you can do, and this is going to be a little bit, well, there are two more things you can do that I can think of off the top of my head that is a bit controversial. The first is the Myers-Briggs you can ask upfront for people to take the Myers Briggs, which is a very long like personality test. And it will give you a report of their personality type, and you can look at their career or workplace habits and just see if you can find anything that would not align with the job that you're hiring for.

Now, there's some controversy around this because some people say that it's not fair or that it's, you know I don't know. It's, it's, you know, it's not ethical to make them do that. I don't know. It's always worked for me. But honestly, what I get more out of that is more the fact that they're willing to fill it out, like, think about this. If I say to you before I've paid you before I've even had an interview with you. If I say, listen, will you fill out this like 50 question personality test, right? And send it to me, the fact that you agree to do it. And the fact that, especially if you do it and I get it an hour later shows that you, you have, you're willing to put in the effort, you're willing to do what needs to be done. You want that job.

You just went in and filled out a 50 question, personality test, and you did it in an hour and you got it over to me. That shows you got spunk that shows that you, you, you are aggressive and you want this. And that means way more to me than whatever the test results say. You know, though, I do take a peek, but so there's that. And finally, and this one is probably even more controversial. And this I, I mainly do with salespeople. I mainly do this with salespeople. I intentionally will not show up to the first appointment. And I probably shouldn't say this. Cause if any salespeople hear this and they apply, they're, they're not, they're gonna know my trick, but let's say you're a salesperson. And I said, all right, we're going to have a meeting at 10:00 AM on Wednesday.

I won't show up intentionally. And I'll see how you react to it. I'll see if you get angry, I'll see if you or, or, or at the worst or the best. I might say, I'm going to be 30 minutes, late five minutes after the tea or something, and I'll do it intentionally. And you might say, well, Dan, that's, you know, that's not respectful, but well, okay. Maybe it's not, but you know what, you know, how many, not non-respectful people, a salesperson, a closer is going to have to deal with. Do you know how many times somebody is not going to show up for a sales call? Do you know how many times somebody is going to be late? Do you know how many times that's going to happen? You're going to get a, no, I need to know how you react to that.

And so I won't show up and I'll reschedule. I might even do it twice. It just depends. And I'll see if the person remains to percent still persists. And then when I get on, on a call with them and I listened to them, I always say always every single time I say, yeah, it's going to be a no, I'm not going to hire you. I, whether I want to hire them or not, I always say no. And again, I want to see how they react. I want to see if they say, okay, and they walk away, or if they begin handling my objections. Right. So for instance, if, if we switch roles and I'm the salesperson, and they say, well, you know, I'm not going to hire you. I say, okay, I understand that. Would you mind telling me specifically what part of the city of you, or, or what I might have said that, that you know made you come to that conclusion?

Because I, you know, I'd like to improve for my next job or something like that. And I would try to figure out why they didn't hire me. And then if, if the, why is something that maybe was a misunderstanding miscommunication or that I could explain better, I would try to overcome that objection, just like you would on a sales call. So, you know, I would say no, and I'd see how they react. Okay. Have a nice day or, okay. Well, let me, you know, let me know if anything changes or if they actually try to overcome my objection and be persistent, and if they persist, here's the funny thing, even if I didn't want to hire them, even if I really truly genuinely said no, if they persist and overcome my objection, then I will hire them because what, what better person? And would there be to be a salesperson than somebody that can turn my genuine?

No, into a yes. So, you know, my salespeople, they're held to a lot higher standards and like an assistant or a customer service rep because they, they, they get they’re on the front lines. They, they get into the thick of it, you know, it's, it's like the difference between somebody who's, you know, got a nice desk job. And somebody that gets shot at every day, you know, like they’re getting shot at every day, you know, metaphorically, of course, they're going to be the ones, you know, dealing with angry customers, a lot, or customers that, that, you know, have doubt or, or what have you a lot more than pretty much anybody else in the company. And they're the ones that have to turn nos into yeses. So I want to give them as many nos as possible and see if they can make it through that.

So that's, that's a little bit more specific to sales, I suppose you could do that for other jobs, but, but then it kind of, depending on the job, maybe an assistant, you know, like if you've ever, here's the funny thing, if you've ever seen the movie, the devil wears Prada, right? Whenever I hire an assistant, I always say, have you seen the movie, the devil wears Prada? And they'll say, you know, yes or no. Usually, they say yes. And I say, okay, I imagine that, that, that the, you know, that situation where you have this very, very demanding boss, who's like, you know, run out and get me an early copy of Harry Potter before it hits the shelves and you got two hours and just something just completely nuts. That is just

Something that you will,

I didn't think anybody would expect that of anybody. But for some reason that I forget the name of the character she's like the owner or the editor in chief of a, of a fashion magazine. And but she's just very, very, very demanding, very difficult, very, very hard to work for. And so I say, that's the situation you're walking into. I'm, I'm very hard. You know, I'm going to sit here and tell you to do things that, that, you know, seem impossible and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the fact of the matter is, is that's not really true. I can be a little demanding, especially like if we're in the middle of a launch or, you know, something crazy like that, but, but Amy boss can be, you know, I mean, you're, you're, you're flying into the, into the stuff, you know, but I over-exaggerate how difficult I can be by comparing it to that movie.

And the woman in that movie who is that that editor in chief of that magazine is terrible to work for. She's just like a complete nightmare. And that is a level that I would not think is I think that's crossing the line like that movie illustrates a boss that I think pretty much anybody would, would walk out on and quit. But again, I say that just to see how that person will handle that. And if they'll go, Oh, no, I can't deal with that. Or if they go, I know I, I think I can handle it. And then of course, when they work for me and they realize I'm nowhere near that bad, it's like a pleasant surprise to them, you know, but if I say, Oh, I'm easy to work for. Then the first time I'm, I'm difficult just one day, then they're like, “Oh, I can't believe I took this job.”

But if I say I'm extremely difficult to work for. And then when you work for me, it's not that bad. Then, then, you know, they're, they're appreciative of that. You know, not, not that I don't have moments. I mean, I think all entrepreneurs, all, all, you know, a personality or A-type entrepreneurs can at times be difficult to work with, especially in times of stress launches, a product launches, you know, things like that. When, when the whole, you know, everybody's holding down the ship and you're, you're, you're driving right into a, a wave or a tsunami. I mean, things can get tense, but for the most part, I'm not that bad to work for it. I, but I always over-exaggerate to just see how they react. So I hope this episode was helpful. I hope just some of these ramblings of how to hire people have helped you. And again, some of them were controversial and if you don't agree with them you know, again, I don't, I don't expect you to agree with them. And I honestly am OK if you don't, but these are the principles that have worked for me. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will see you in the next.