Camille Rapacz: George is already making a face looking at today's topic.
George Drapeau: I am looking at one of the things in one of these sections for tips for hiring. Well, your tips for hiring well are exactly my tips for hiring well.
Camille Rapacz: Well, did you read the part where I said it's okay if we have the same tips?
Cuz I think, that will say something. So stop reading mine so you can come up with your own.
George Drapeau: But they're the same.
And they didn't come from our mom like, this is interesting. We've talked about hiring before and I think we've think very much alike, but not because of how we grew up or where we grew up.
It's some other way that it got us to thinking the same way about hiring. Never really thought about why that is, but we are.
Camille Rapacz: I know this is one of the reasons that I thought us doing this podcast would be so interesting is that when you and I do talk about leadership, we've never worked together, worked in the same company. Not really even in the same industry except kind of adjacent maybe for a brief period of time and when I was doing tech stuff.
But we really do align on leadership approach. So I find that to be kind of fascinating.
George Drapeau: Fascinating.
Camille Rapacz: Let's kick this off with hopefully people already know what the topic is today since we just started talking about it, but we are talking about hiring today. How to do your best, hiring, your best job at hiring.
INTRO
---
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille Rapacz: Here's my intro question for you, George.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Can you recall, you can answer either one of these questions. Either your worst experience as a candidate for hire in a hiring process, or your biggest hiring fail as the hiring manager.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: A big mistake,
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: big fail.
George Drapeau: I remember most or all of my hiring mistakes, going back to when I was hiring grad students at Stanford when I used to work there, and that's the late eighties, early nineties. I remember, one of my worst hiring mistakes was from them.
Yeah, I remember. And as a candidate, sure.
Although I will say as a candidate, I'm gonna distinguish here some people might think of as failure, as a bad experience in interviewing, and I do not.
If I come prepared for an interview and I don't win the job, but I feel like I did reasonably well, it doesn't really matter to me if I fail, I don't like losing, but I don't feel bad about myself. If somebody else got the job or they decided not to go with me for some other reason, that's different to me than if I'd not prepared or I just blundered somehow.
Camille Rapacz: What about the flip of this? Like you've been the candidate and their process was horrible. You were like, I don't even think I want this job because this experience is so bad.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. That's happened. I can think about a story about how this happened recently to my wife, where she got recruited and actually offered a job and they bungled the process the whole way through, and she almost took it because the job itself was so juicy, but they just, ugh, it was horrible.
And I have been on the receiving end of bad hiring practice. I'm sensitive to it now. So sometimes when I'm in an interview, if I feel like they're not doing a good job of asking me questions. I've only done this a couple times, and I might prompt them like, would you like to hear about such and such?
Cuz you're not getting any real information from me.
Or I'll orient my story to try to give them information that I know that they're trying to ask for, but they're not.
Camille Rapacz: You are bringing up such a good reason for us to have this conversation today because we do not want any of our small business owners who are listening to be that guy, to need the person being interviewed to help us in the process. Right?
We wanna be on top of it. We also don't wanna be that company that maybe finds this great candidate who really loves us, but we're so bad at the hiring process that they're doubting whether they should come work for us.
Cuz we're bungling it, that's a horrible experience.
We want neither one of those things to happen. Not to mention just the mistake of, I'm just not well organized in this process, so I'm not clear on what I want, like we're gonna get into this, but just being able to do the best job that you can and getting the best candidate you can and getting them on board, that's what we wanna do for people.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: it can go wrong in so many ways. So let's get into this and help people avoid the disasters that could potentially happen so they can really optimize this hiring process. Cuz it's so essential to running a business, right? You gotta have the right people on the team.
I personally think when you do it right, it's one of the best, most rewarding parts of running a business. Like having a great team, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: But when it goes wrong, whew. It can go really wrong.
It just can create so much anxiety and stress and in ways that are set aside just the, it's hindering progress in the business.
It can also just be really personally stressful when you have a bad hire, cuz there's this interpersonal thing I have to deal with now and that's always stressful, right? I have to deal with conflict and nobody wants to do that. So we wanna avoid that, especially you, especially most of us, I think you're pretty good at conflict. Nobody likes it though.
George Drapeau: You and I have both heard over and over and over and over and over again. Hiring is the most important thing you will do and I mostly agree with it and it's hiring mistakes are the worst mistakes you'll make. I personally slightly disagree with that.
I think legal exposure, legal problems are the worst mistakes you can make. If you have actually exposed yourself to legal action, though that's bad news, but hiring is a very close second. You could still do things to correct hiring mistakes. Legal problems are, ugh.
Camille Rapacz: It's easier to fix hiring mistakes than legal mistakes.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: I would agree with that. I also think that we are more likely to make hiring mistakes than legal mistakes like, Those are gonna show up more often, that's what we're doing more frequently.
We are not legal experts, so I have no advice for you on that side of the fence, but we are hiring experts so we can speak to that.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: I do wanna be clear about something though, cuz some people out there might be thinking, look, I don't wanna grow my business and hire a big team and do all of that kind of stuff. And you know what, you don't have to, you do not have to hire a team of people in order to run a high performance business.
However, I would say that however simple, you wanna keep things, you wanna remain a solopreneur, you don't wanna have big team, all of that. I'm totally here for that.
But you should still consider hiring part-time support in the form of a virtual assistant or a bookkeeper so that you can stay focused on those revenue generating activities as much as possible, while also staying sane.
And not trying to do every single aspect of running a business by yourself.
So even if that's you, those hires count too. So we are speaking to that level of hire as well, not just the grandiose hiring a big team, but this speaks to even just the, I just need a few hours of help a week. It's critical that that's right, too, right?
Because if you get the wrong person, you've only got a few hours a week, you're trying to get the benefit from, and it becomes really critical when that doesn't go well.
George Drapeau: Right.
Camille Rapacz: So regardless of how big or small you want your team or non-team to be, I think this applies for both business owners.
So let's talk about how we're gonna get the best results.
We're gonna do this in three parts. So first we're gonna talk about biggest mistakes, cuz that's kind of the fun parts. Talk about.
Then we're gonna talk about our top tips, and these are just years in mine from years of, I don't know. How many people do you think you've hired over your lifetime?
George Drapeau: I've sourced hundreds or thousands of resumes. I've hired, I don't know. Fewer than a hundred people. More than 50.
Camille Rapacz: Wow.
George Drapeau: I'm guessing, I don't know.
How about you?
Camille Rapacz: I was trying to think about this too. And I'm thinking, gosh, not as much as you, but probably. Yeah, you've been at this longer and you didn't quit your day job yet.
I don't know. I was thinking like 50, but, you know, looked at hundreds. You look at so many resumes when you do that, like vetting the resume, so interviewing people definitely in the hundred, over a hundred.
Whether it was actually me as a hiring manager or helping another hiring manager.
So that's also what we do, right? So interviewing people, tons of experience doing that.
Probably hired 50 people and had to fire a handful,
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Which is also not fun. That could maybe even be another pod. What do you do when you find you have to let somebody go?
George Drapeau: I think that's a good one.
A lot of people get that wrong.
Camille Rapacz: I know but not today. Today. we're just going to talk about getting the right people on board. So we'll do the biggest mistakes, our top tips for hiring, and then also how do you know if you've hired the right people? Like once they're on board, what are our indicators for that?
So here we go. So, biggest mistakes in hiring. I first wanna hear your top three and then I'll share some of mine. And we'll also, I think it'll be fun to see back to what we were saying before, like where we have the same, where we overlap on this.
Top Mistakes When Hiring
---
Camille Rapacz: Be kind of fun. So what are your top three mistakes that you think people make when they're hiring?
George Drapeau: Mistake number one, not having a clear, consistent process upfront.
So, for example, Being clear with the whole interview team, what you're looking for, assigning roles to the interview team and having each person have the same role for everybody. So you're doing apples to apples comparison.
Not being consistent is problem number one in my mind, and that's very easy to correct.
Problem number two, nepotism. I mean, well, so I shouldn't say nepotism. Not just hiring family, but somebody on your team says, oh man, I got a great candidate. I work with them, blah, blah, blah. They're a really good person, and you trust your team member. And so you just take in that person without really fully vetting them.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
George Drapeau: That's another big problem that I still have to remind myself, don't let that happen no matter how much I trust the person who's recommending me. Still do your own verification. Those are two of the two of them.
And then I guess the third one would be, that I see that I don't really make this mistake, but I see that may happen a long time.
People hiring or vetting only for the functional skills, like in my field, hiring for technical stuff. How well can you write code, and not vetting for the non-functional skills fit, cultural fit, personality, the other attributes that are non-functional. I guess this would be my top three.
How about you?
Camille Rapacz: Like it. Yes. So my top three we do have some considerable overlap and maybe just also some nuance in how we talk about it. I know, imagine that.
My number one was not considering the cultural or attitude fit.
George Drapeau: Oh yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Just being skills only, like you said, just only looking at can they technically do the job, but not looking at do they actually fit with the way that we do work here?
So do they prefer to work independently, but my team is highly collaborative or vice versa.
Just things like that.
That's number one is just not paying enough attention to the approach and the way of working. I usually just sum that up as cultural fit, but it means lots of stuff.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: My second one was ignoring your gut.
Every hiring mistake I ever made, I could point to, you know what? I did have doubts and I couldn't pinpoint exactly why, and so I went for it anyways, either cuz the rest of my team thought it was good, or they just looked so good on paper, or for whatever reason, I overrode my own gut instinct to not hire them and I hired them anyhow.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: This is something that when you have hired a lot, your gut instinct gets better. So this is something that if you're interviewing, the more that you do it, the more you start to get a really good gut feel for good candidates. And when you ignore that, it's to your detriment.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: Then my last one was your comment about nepotism. I call it hiring friendlies.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: Hiring the friendlies without doing the same level of vetting as your unknown candidate. Whether it's a referral, a friend, a family member. These might seem like they're shortcuts to finding good candidates, but they really aren't.
You're the only one who knows what you need in a candidate to do this job and to fit in with your team, like what you're actually looking for. And again, some of that might be hard for you to articulate, but can only be like, Understood in conversation with somebody and from that gut feel of like, yeah this is gonna be a good fit, this is gonna feel right.
Nobody can know that from outside. And when we assume that that's gonna all be fine, when we hire friends and family, that can also go badly because there's different agreements that you have when you're friends with somebody, there's a way of being together that's different than how you need to be. We've talked about this before, your company, it's not a family.
Like this is a business arrangement and some people can do that separation really well, and some people it completely blows up in their face. have to be really careful about that.
George Drapeau: All makes sense to me. Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I really liked your number one that clear process. That's a big one too.
George's Tips
---
Camille Rapacz: We're gonna talk about that more on our next part of this, which is the top tips for hiring. Let's get into that. what are your top three tips?
George Drapeau: My top three tips are, most of them could be put in the process category, but have a clear, consistent process that you use for your hiring.
But I have, I actually have a hiring book. I have a hiring book that has a guidebook that I go through to help me think about what are the attributes I want for a new hire. And then I teach the interview team what we're gonna do if it's new people to the interview team. Otherwise we all know the process, but get everybody on board with the standard process.
That's probably the first thing.
Second is trust but verify, like old Ronald Reagan. This really helps
Camille Rapacz: really, we're gonna reference Ronald Reagan on our podcast.
George Drapeau: You know, give credit where credits due. Mm-hmm. I mean, that did stop nuclear warhead proliferation to work for that. It can work for this too.
You can have a positive attitude when you're interviewing, but you still need the data. You know, you still need the data. And so, yeah, look, I'll take your word for it. That's a great candidate. And we're gonna put 'em through the standard vetting process. That'll be great.
And we'll, we'll know for sure. We'll all know what you see. And then I guess my third one would be do what I can to make sure, I'm gonna give you three A and three b. Make sure that the candidates we're hiring, especially the finalists, are getting the information they need through the interview process, not just what we're getting, what we need about the candidates.
So I want them to come into this well-informed. I want them to make a good decision about whether they want to join the team, if we make them an offer or not. I don't wanna just be one way, asking, asking, asking. We don't reveal anything that's not helpful, some relationship that's three A. Making sure the candidate is getting the info they need about the job.
And three B, we've briefly touched on this in our previous episode, do what we can to make sure the candidate is able to show herself at her best light during the interview process. I don't want nervous candidates. I want happy, comfortable candidates. We'll throw 'em off, but I wanna see them at their best.
I want the best quality information possible. So that's two parts of the same thing, I think.
Camille Rapacz: Oh, that's a great one.
George Drapeau: A lot of times I will get a comment from somebody who interviewed that says these two things, like, wow, I really had a great time interviewing with your team.
It was a real, I've never had a process like that before. It was great. And two is, oof. That really hurt. But I liked it. You really got me thinking about things I had not thought about before or you'd asked me questions that I've not heard an interview before. But that was really interesting.
So they come through being beaten and they're happy to have been beaten by the interview team.
Camille Rapacz: Well, I think it's a difference in just the way that you're coming into the conversation. This sort of connects back to when we were talking about the importance of really making genuine human connections in business, and I think that this is one of these core critical places, right? You're making a connection with somebody and you're not thinking of, I'm just gonna put them, I'm gonna torture them and put them on the hot seat.
You're approaching it as like, I wanna get the best out of them, which is a completely different approach to, you might do some of the same things in challenging them, but how you approach that matters and how they're able to then show up.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And I think if you just come at it as you know, we've said this before, if you just come at this as, I'm just here to just make them as uncomfortable as possible to see if they can handle the pressure.
That just makes me think, well, if your business is constantly operating in that mode, then I guess that makes sense, but then also what's wrong with your business?
Like it should not be operating in that mode. You should be trying to develop an environment that does come more from a place of positive challenge.
There is such a thing as I think this positive stress, like I'm stressed out, but in a good way.
Like I have just the right amount of tension going on, but it's for good reasons and I'm motivated to go do stuff. That's the kind of stress and challenge and problem statements you wanna be working through.
George Drapeau: I'm gonna put a visual in the audience's mind. Everybody, do you think that Dog Sled Huskies are stressed when they're pulling that sled? They're not stressed.
They're barking and they're running.
They're working really hard. They're very happy doing it. We wanna be dog sled huskies, right?
Camille Rapacz: But they're working really hard!
George Drapeau: Really hard for miles and miles and miles.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I hope those dogs are happy. They sure look happy.
George Drapeau: They're happy.
Camille Rapacz: I thought you were gonna reference then the dog that's sliding down the hill and the snow on his side and then kicking his little legs to keep going down the, oh my gosh, that's the best video. People have probably seen that video before, but it's the best.
All right.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: So I'm gonna cheat because this is sort of the big, like, bulk of this conversation. I'm gonna have more than top three tips, so I'm glad you gave your top three cuz they definitely feed into my longer list.
George Drapeau: My list is your list that you're gonna show. It's the same.
Camille's Tips
---
Camille Rapacz: I'm just gonna expand on it. but my number one is your number one, so this is great. Have a clear process, like
George Drapeau: Why is it number one for you?
Camille Rapacz: Because I think we just, I, I think that having a process for things is highly undervalued, in general in the world. We just want to wing it all the time. Like, I'm just gonna put this out there and do this thing and whatever. And we just constantly underestimate the value of thinking about a process to get a specific outcome.
Again, process over outcomes as well. Wow, this touches on so many belief shifts, right?
It's so important to have a thoughtful process because especially in hiring, this is not a one-time thing. You will have to repeat it. Even when you hire the best candidate, someday they're gonna move on and you will have to repeat that process.
Yeah.
Designing a process is the first step to being able to improve on a process. If I haven't stated how it should go to get a specific outcome, then I can't go back later and go, well, I didn't get the outcome I wanted.
I wonder what I should change in my process. maybe I should add x type of interview into my process.
There's so many things that you can do to make it better, but you can't if you didn't actually say, this is what I plan to do. Plus, you're gonna involve other people and you need to be able to tell them what to expect.
Whether it's people who are doing interviewing with you or the candidates. Many reasons to have a process. So yes, gotta do it.
George Drapeau: I think so too, and it's surprisingly easy to do this part. You can make a process that's as thorough as you want or as lightweight as you want.
Either way it works as long as you're clear each time. It really, it's true. It's true. I think that a lot of people don't have a process because, and I know this, this feeling when, ah, someone just quit. I gotta hire somebody, I gotta get a backfill.
How am I gonna make time to do this?
I'm running and I don't have time. You do have a little bit of time to define the process and it won't take long, and it's gonna save you a lot of time. Immediately.
Camille Rapacz: Of all the things you should not do quickly in your business, this is at the top of the list.
Do not do this fast.
You can quick fix and then come back and adjust later on lots of things in your business, but this one, if you quick fix it and it's not a good choice long term.
It's really painful to deal with.
George Drapeau: It really is
Camille Rapacz: So it's worth taking the time to do it. So, yeah. So I wanna be clear that the process for me starts with my number two on this list, which is you must define the role clearly.
That job description has got to be spot on, and small business owners are at risk of kitchen sinking this, which means these are all the things I want somebody to do and they just pile all of that work into a job description without thinking about like, is this actually the job of one human or is this two different roles?
So you really need to define what work do I want them to do. Define it really clearly. And when you're small, you are trying to be, lots of people wearing lots of hats. You can't afford to hire in the way that a bigger business can, where there's much more distinct roles going on because you have enough work to cover that.
A small business is, I need to hire somebody who can do, you know, some bookkeeping and some social media marketing and some, you know, managing my emails and you're coming up with this whole list of stuff, right?
You need to be really careful that that actually is something one person can have the level of experience and expertise in to actually do. And you're not setting them up for failure.
Also, you might just end up with just Joe Schmo saying like, sure, I can do all those things, and they have no experience.
And then you're really in a tight spot, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: So be really clear about the work and then be really discerning about if this is just one role, or maybe I need just two part-time people, or two lesser time people. Maybe you thought I want one person to work half-time and do all these things. But maybe it actually makes more sense that it's two. So you've gotta define that work clearly . If you want somebody who has expertise in accounting that you don't have, hire that person to do that. Don't also ask them to then do your social media marketing on the side.
That's my tip.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: I do wanna be clear, like if you're hiring a virtual assistant who you want to kind of be a catchall for lots of admin stuff, you should be asking them to do work that you know how to do and can train them to do.
So I'm talking about like, I want an accountant to do a level of accounting that's maybe above what I'm good at as a small business owner. That's an area of expertise above me. So I should specifically hire somebody with those skills.
Or I can hire an assistant to just do the day-to-day stuff that I'm already doing, and I'm gonna teach them how to do that.
Then you can start to blur the boundaries. Does that make sense?
George Drapeau: Yes, it does make sense. That's a great point,
Camille Rapacz: And it's a tricky spot, especially for small business owners. So I just wanna call out this taking the time to really define the job description, I think is a critical step.
George Drapeau: Yeah, me too.
Camille Rapacz: My number three is something we've already talked about, which is that make sure you're interviewing for fit and potential and not just skills.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: Consider what skills you can teach them versus what you want them to bring to the table. I want somebody who is better, smarter about social media marketing than I am. Or I want somebody who is better and smarter at accounting and bookkeeping than I am.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: If that's what you want, know that you want that.
But also make sure that you're not just hiring for that and you are hiring for, and then will they also be able to work well? Like if, are we a close-knit team? Is it just me and them? Do I want them to be highly collaborative? Do I want them to be independent? How do they approach problem solving? All these kinds of things become really important to make sure that you've got the right person.
George Drapeau: I have an example for me, something I go to from time to time. So between the two of us, you're much better planner.
I can do it. I can be a good planner when I need to be, when that role is needed of me. But it's not where I go naturally. It's not my core. And so sometimes I'll look for somebody who's a natural planner. I hire somebody who's better at it. They like doing it, and that is great.
Great to have that kind of capability on the team. Somebody with a natural drive to do that. I mean, there are other things like that, that I look for all the time as well. But that's one.
Camille Rapacz: Another thing I like to think about in this space is think about if clients met this person, would it make them more confident in working with your company?
George Drapeau: Yeah. Oh, awesome.
Camille Rapacz: I always like to think in that way, and you can think the same way with vendors. If you're working with vendors a lot, is this somebody that my vendors are gonna enjoy working with? So thinking outside of just you, but this little ecosystem of your business.
George Drapeau: Man. That's awesome.
Camille Rapacz: All right. Number four.
Don't just talk. Do.
Give them something to do.
Some of my best hiring experiences, both as a candidate and as a hiring manager is when I got to do some sort of activity that really demonstrated my skills. So for me in project management, it was help them build a project plan in real time.
To show them how I approach that, right? You can give them some simple skill to do or a problem to solve, or, anything that's relevant to the actual job they do that helps them actually demonstrate their skills and expertise. And when you do this, it's really important back to what you talked about earlier.
Make sure you give them a heads up. Don't surprise them with this in the interview. Like, by the way, we're now gonna ask you to get up to the whiteboard and whiteboard something out. Make sure they know coming in that that's part of the process what you're gonna ask them to do. I've even had interviews where I've said, Hey, I'm giving you the problem or the challenge or the activity to do.
Come in prepared with it done to present.
George Drapeau: That's great.
Camille Rapacz: Give them something to do so they can really show off their skills in a way, and this varies, this actually applies more to the higher level skills that they have. But especially if you're hiring somebody who's gonna demonstrate expertise in an area you're not as good at.
It's a great way to see like, oh, are they good at talking about this in a way that I can understand what they're doing even though I'm not an expert?
George Drapeau: Yeah. That's awesome. Tech does this a lot too. You look in tech right now, you can look up standard Google interview questions, standard Facebook interview questions.
Standard Microsoft interview questions. All the big folks tend to have these standard processes and you could look up the kinds of programming tasks they're gonna ask you to do in the interview or tech questions. You're right. We do a lot of that in my field. It's great.
What I really like is you're giving the candidate the heads up and giving them the opportunity to show their best self. There's, you're right. There's no reason to surprise them with that.
Camille Rapacz: Right.
George Drapeau: There's no need.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. there's no reason to surprise them and give them a chance to gather their thoughts. It's not gonna be surprise work when they're doing it in real life, in the job. Like you're laying out what they're gonna do.
So if you're thinking, you know, maybe the skills that you're gonna hire for aren't high enough to do this. I challenge you to think differently. Even if you're just hiring somebody who you want to just sort of admin manage your email and you know, those kinds of things, you can still set them up with like, Hey, I've got, let's say X, Y, Z happens in the day. How would you handle that? Show me what you would do.
You can see if they're actually proficient in using word or outlook or any of the things that you need them to be proficient in.
You can still test these very basic skills. So I think giving people a chance to do your best candidates will shine when that moment comes up. It's a great way to weed them out.
Or if they're just saying they know how to do stuff, but they don't, it'll be really clear.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Awesome.
Camille Rapacz: All right, number five: involve other people in the process.
And even if you don't have a team, so if you're a solopreneur and you're like, I don't have anybody else. Find somebody else. I've had other business owners talk to clients of mine just to get someone else's perspective. As a hiring manager, I've had other hiring managers.
There's always somebody you can find to just, and they don't have to do a formal asking about skillsets interview. They could just have a 20 minute conversation to just see what they learn about them. Just get somebody else's perspective. It's really helpful.
George Drapeau: Interesting. This is one where, you know, working in enterprise land, I've got a team, I've got a bunch of people I can always call on an interview and really thought about it from a solopreneur perspective.
Completely agree with you.
Get somebody,
Camille Rapacz: It's not as easy and obvious a thing to do. I think as a small business owner, like, well, who am I really gonna ask?
What if it's the first person I'm hiring on my team, it can be a little bit challenging to think about how to do it. You might have to get a little creative, but it really is helpful.
Like I said, it doesn't have to be a lot of time, 20 minutes of somebody that you trust. That has good insight about people to just have a conversation with them and get to know them and give you their input about them. I can't tell you how many times somebody has said, I have this one little red flag in the conversation though, and I'll be like, oh, I didn't get that at all.
All right. I'm gonna add another interview on and see if I can flush that out.
Sometimes it, means something and sometimes it's, it's nothing. But it gives you some other layer of what to, ask questions about.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: All right, number six,
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Check those referrals and don't just do it as a formality, like really, check.
Referrals are tough because the referral is gonna be somebody that that person has chosen to be their referral. So of course they're gonna say nice things. But when you do have those discussions, you can definitely get a feel.
What you're trying to do is get a feel for whether this person is genuinely over the moon about that person, the way they're talking about.
Or whether there's any hesitation. And so you do wanna ask them some tough questions, right? So don't just be like, Hey, do you. Think this person is good. Why do you like them?
That sounds great. Thank you very much. It's not that kind. You wanna really dig in and ask some good questions about, have you ever experienced them have a really tough day at work. Or depending on what their relationship is, right? But try to see what they have to say about where this person has maybe had some challenges or some difficulties.
If this person doesn't know any of that, that's a little bit of a red flag for me. Like, oh, this referral is very like cursory. They don't really know this person that well.
Cuz everybody's had a bad day.
How do you approach the referral process.
George Drapeau: Similarly.
And I think about it actually on both sides. I have guidance for both telling people how to check referrals and for interview candidates who are picking whom they're gonna use referrals. And I want to talk of both, both of those, if
Camille Rapacz: yes, I like this. Yes.
George Drapeau: So, yeah, we're checking referrals.
Similarly for you, I have a standard set of questions. I don't need more than five minutes personally to do that, and I'll tell the person up front, hi, my name is so and so. I'm in this role. This person listed you as a referral. That's a script, for this role.
When you are calling somebody for a referral, you're calling them as a stranger at random. So you really gotta give 'em the context upfront and go, oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I know. Okay. You're, you're that person. I just told I was gonna be a referral. I didn't know it was you, but Fine.
And I'll start up by saying, tell me how you know Jane Doe. How long have you known this person in, in what, what was the nature of your relationship?
You find out about that and say, well, you know, we really like the person in the interview.
What do you have to say about this person? You can tell me anything you want. Just positive.
They'll usually talk about glowing things and they'll say, okay, great. From what you know of the candidate, is there anything you think you would want them to learn or grow or change something you think we should think of?
Growing them when we hire them on. I mean, I put that, you know, that's a, a positive spin on a weaknesses question. Maybe just to give the referral, a comfort level that, Hey, we're gonna bring 'em on. It's all good. Don't worry about that. But look, look, I gotta work on something. What would you want us to help them with?
So pretty much those are the only questions, but I do ask the same questions and I try to make the, I don't take the referral person's time very much. Five minutes is a lot of time for that kind of task, I think. And I'm not asking them trick questions, easy questions to get them to talk. I'll stop there cuz the other side is different.
How do you do it? How do you think about it?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, very much the same. Like I think of it as it should be a quick conversation, but not so cursory that I don't actually get some insight into this person. Like I shouldn't just ask dummy questions that are basically just saying, well, yep, this person does actually know them, and they like them, so yay.
You know what I mean? Like there has to be just a little bit more to that conversation, but it should be quick. You're not interviewing them. Right?
George Drapeau: No.
Camille Rapacz: So you have to go a little bit beyond that. It's just the formality of Yeah, I checked that they gave me real people that they've worked with before.
I wanna hear about your flip side of it.
George Drapeau: So it, when I tell people to give me references, or when I'm giving guidance to people about collecting references, here's how I think about it.
You, if you're lucky enough, get two to three references. One personal, the other one's professional, depending on the job.
Sometimes it'll all be professional references, but if it's, With some of each, then be clear. When you're asking somebody, Hey, will you be a reference for me? First of all, tell 'em. I want you to be a personal reference. You're gonna be called to ask about my character, not about how I do on the job, just about how I'm as a person.
Be clear about that, or professional reference. And then you're telling the people who are agreeing to be a reference for you. Several things. You can tell 'em, here's the role I'm going for. You can expect a call from this person with this title. You're giving the references much advantage as possible.
And you're saying, here's where I'm using you as a reference. You can say whatever you want, but the reason I thought of you is because you know of this aspect of my performance. I think you can uniquely speak well to my planning capability or my customer service attitude. That's what I think you know about me well. Can you do that?
And if there's like, look, God, no, you got me wrong. I don't know that about you. Just make sure you're clear with them why you're using that person as a reference because that's what you want them to talk about during the referral. You don't want the referral to just kind of say general platitudes at random.
The more specific they can be, the more powerful a reference they are. That's it.
Camille Rapacz: Oh, I love this. This relates to my last number seven on my list of what to do, which is: communicate. Set people up for success, and that includes this. Don't just say, Hey, gimme some referrals. Right? Ask for a specific, I want one personal and one business or, or all business or whatever it is that you specifically want.
Make sure you're clear about that because you wanna get the best information you can get, and this person is still getting to know you. This candidate is still trying to figure out what you're really looking for, but you're the only one that knows. So the more clear you can be about that, it's a better chance this person has of being able to deliver on that genuinely, as opposed to they just got lucky and made a good guess,
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: as to what you wanted.
You don't want that. And sometimes I see candidates get set up for that all the time where it's just like, well, maybe they magically gave the right answer, but they didn't really know where you were going. I've, I've seen, like when I've had interview teams, some interview teams that went in a direction, I was like, but do you think that candidate was really clear what you wanted from them? And it turns out they didn't set them up well. Right. I could see like, well look, I think we should give them another chance. Like, I would've been confused by that. You know, I would've confused by the type of answer you were looking for. You were asking them to read your mind.
And I don't think that that's a fair thing to do. And I think that happens a lot in interviews. Like, well, if they can get this right, which is basically like if they get lucky and can read my mind and guess exactly what answer I'm looking for, then they're the right candidate, which is really stupid.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Communicate about what you want in the process.
Communicate about how the process is going. Communicate about the next every interaction with that candidate should include, here's what you can expect next, and then follow through. Again, back to why you have a process you can point to. The next step in the process is, I have X discussion with my team, and we will g we'll hear from us in a week.
Give them timelines. There's nothing, I mean, the most frustrating I think, I think as a candidate is to just be left hanging. Like, I don't know when I'm gonna hear from them again.
And even if you can't meet your timeline of, I said I would get back to him in a week at least respond in a week and say, Sorry, I don't have an answer yet.
We got a little delayed. It'll be another week. Communicate something, be kind to the other person on the other side of this. This isn't an adversarial relationship. Right.
And I think oftentimes we approach it that way. Or like, because I'm the hiring person, I can just do whatever I want and they're at my mercy, and that's just so unkind and miserable.
Just don't do it. Over communicate to those candidates.
George Drapeau: Actually right now with US unemployment at around the 3% level, you cannot afford to be rude to candidates. Everybody has options today. Everybody.
Camille Rapacz: And even if not, even if that wasn't the marketplace, your best candidates that you want, they always have options.
So if you are not responding well, and this turns out to be somebody you actually really want to hire, they have other interviews happening, and if you are not willing to respond, this other offer, which maybe they don't even want as much, but is on top of things and is being respectful and gives them an offer, they might be compelled to say.
Yes, because you took too long or you didn't communicate and tell them what to expect next.
Because what happens is as a candidate, you assume, I guess they're not really interested in me cuz I haven't heard from them. That's the first thing you assume.
You have to stay on top of those conversations.
If you're gonna get the best candidates, that's your job.
Did I Hire Well?
---
Camille Rapacz: All right, so our last part of this is how do we know, so we've got our people on board, but how do we actually know if we have hired well?
So George, what would be your top three indicators that you have, in general, that you've hired well?
George Drapeau: One of them, I'm gonna say I will know this a few months after they've been in the job.
So not right away, but a little bit. and I noticed that they know the team, they're part of the team, knows them. They've done well in integrating, and there's good, positive feelings. I mean, that's a fluffy, fuzzy thing, but hey, it's for real. You feel it.
If there's no cultural fit, you see that pretty quickly.
If there is a cultural fit, you see that pretty quickly.
For me if I've seen them, they seem to be energized about getting up to speed about doing stuff. Then they're showing initiative on their own. I don't mind if they ask me a bunch of questions, but if they're proactively asking me questions, you could see they're driving their own learning.
That's a great indicator for me.
I'm gonna stop there. Top two. How about for you?
Camille Rapacz: Like it. Just two. Yeah. So of course we will overlap. So my list looks like this. Similar to one thing you said, I put it as you look forward to working with them.
George Drapeau: Oh yeah. Yes.
Camille Rapacz: You just like generally will look forward to talking to them and working with them.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Of course.
Camille Rapacz: In most cases they have no, in all cases, I take that back.
In all cases, they have some expertise about something that you do not.
George Drapeau: Mm-hmm.
Camille Rapacz: Even a virtual assistant,
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: They know how to run the email better than you do. Like they're better at the technical aspects of that because that's their job as an example.
So they have expertise in areas that you do not. You do feel confident handing work off to them.
They make you wanna be a better leader or boss.
George Drapeau: Huh, interesting. I like that.
Camille Rapacz: I think of this as like, oh, I see potential in them and I wanna coach and develop them more. I wanna be a better leader with them.
Your business starts operating a little more smoothly because of them.
You can see that the work that they're involved in is like, oh, that's, that's, that's actually going a little better.
This is good. They're improving things, right?
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: And then any tensions or problems that do come up in the workplace, They're not bringing drama into it.
Like they're being handled with minimal drama, minimal like we can handle cuz it's gonna happen, right? Problems are gonna come up, tensions will arise, conflict will show up.
They don't gin up drama when that happens. At best, they're actually helping to resolve, not avoid, but also calm tensions down.
They're that kind of person.
George Drapeau: I love all of these.
Camille Rapacz: Shall we wrap this puppy up?
George Drapeau: Yes.
Final Thoguhts
---
Camille Rapacz: In closing, hiring takes time and I know it's a little eye rolly, like, do I really have to Yes, you do. You have to take time to do this well. Especially if you're just getting started, it's gonna take more time than you think or you want it to.
But when you slow this process down, of any process that you're ever gonna slow down on, this one will pay dividends. Forever. If you slow it down and do it well.
And the more you do it, the more people you interview, the better you'll get at this. You will get more efficient at it over time. So if the first time you do it, you think, oh my gosh, I hope it doesn't take this long every single time, you will get better at it.
You'll get better at vetting resumes. You'll get better at vetting people in that first interview. All that stuff.
And you'll get better at making better choices, but you're gonna have a bad hire here and there, and you kind of need to, again, that whole idea of we do need to fail in order to improve.
Like I said, for me it was always, I ignored my gut. I couldn't pinpoint the thing enough to get me to say no. But just as long as you're learning from those experiences, it'll get better. It'll get easier.
And again, just take the time to do it right the first time around. So much better to hire slow and accurately than it is to hire fast and have to keep rehiring because you keep making the mistakes or you just, you know, you get the wrong people on the team.
And it's really disruptive. It's disruptive to your business, it's disruptive to the team. It's demo, you know, all the stuff. Everybody's had a bad hire or been in a company with a bad hire, and you've had some experience of this from one angle or another. Being part of a team with a bad hire. It's horrible, so you wanna avoid it at all costs, so take time to do it well.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna say that I think anybody can get good at this.
And you can be almost mistake proof if you follow process as well.
You can get pretty close to mistake proof. You can have a high success rate. You can get better at all this stuff. And this is also an opportunity to teach your people how to do it, which itself is a team building theme. And if they get involved in this process, then they can see the fruits of their labor working on this, which again, is better. And this is all kinds of benefits of feed on each other.
I agree with you, you're gonna make mistakes, but you get pretty close to mistake proof if you pay attention to it.
Camille Rapacz: I totally agree with that and you just made me think of something else that is worth, I think calling out, which is for some people, for some small businesses that do have, like either for seasonality or you know, where you, you always staff up a certain time of the year or you just have those types of positions that are high turnover, just because that means some businesses just operate that way.
If that's your business, you wanna design a process that you are constantly running. This one should just be standard operating function in your business. You shouldn't do it just when you need to find good candidates. You should always be looking through resumes, running that process, checking people, because when somebody quits, you need them fast, right?
When you have that high turnover, you need to hire really quickly. So you want that process already going. So build that into your business. If that is, you make this part of how your business just operates is we're also constantly have a pipeline of candidates so that we're closer to that, hiring decision than having to start from the very beginning when we need it.
George Drapeau: Yeah. That's awesome I like that.
Camille Rapacz: That's all our tips on hiring today.
George Drapeau: Cool.
Camille Rapacz: I mean, there were plenty more we could have talked about, but in the time, hopefully this was really helpful for people who are trying to either up their game on hiring or just starting to get into hiring a team.
And if you have questions about hiring or anything that we talk about on this podcast, you can leave us a voicemail and we will answer those questions on air.
I mean, the really good ones, I mean, we'll answer any question, we will only answer the ones we have expertise about. Or I will look it up if I don't know the answer.
That's also, I love doing that. I love it when people ask questions I have to go research. So ask us questions.
Leave us a voicemail.
Just go to thebeliefshift.com.
There's a link to that site in the show notes. You can click there. There's a little widget where you can say, leave a voicemail and leave us your questions about hiring or anything that you might want us to address.
Also, please do rate and review us on Apple podcasts.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: Or just share us with people.
Maybe you know, somebody who's thinking about, you know, working on hiring and they need a few tips and tricks.
George Drapeau: Tell them, have talk to us.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
That's all I have.
George Drapeau: That was fun. Thanks Camille.
Camille Rapacz: You are so welcome. I'm so glad you're still having fun on the Pod, George.
George Drapeau: I am.
Camille Rapacz: All right. Thanks everybody, and we'll be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See ya.
