Tag Archives: hiring

April 24, 2012

Hiring Done Right!

By Chris LoCurto
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Two hiring posts back to back? Well…yes. Yesterday, I talked about things not to do in the hiring process. (Which were all signs to those actually hiring.) Today on the EntreLeadership Podcast, I have an incredible guest discussing hiring the right way.

If you can’t see the image, click here.

Clint Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Emma, the web-based email marketing and communications service. Emma has done an incredible job with its hiring process and getting the right people onboard. On top of that, Clint’s a really good air hockey player. (Just so you know.)

If you missed 4 Things You Should Never Do In A Job Interview, go back and read it. Not just the post, but the amazing comments, which are full of even more great information.

Here are just a few things from today’s podcast:

  • Revamp Quickly - In Interviewing, Why Do You Still Do It The Same Way? Clint explained that they learned early on that their hiring process was broken. Most companies continue making the same mistakes—short interviews that turn into short term hires. They never change the process. You have to see the mistake and make adjustments before you waste any more time.
  • Don’t Shop Hungry - When I asked Clint what differences they’ve noticed since making the change, he said the quality of candidates went up dramatically. The reason? The longer the process, the more you learn about the interviewee. Before, it was like shopping hungry. They overbought and were unhappy with what they ended up throwing out. (OK, he didn’t say it quite like that. It’s my take.)
  • 30-day Trial - So many leaders feel that they have to make a full-time hire. You don’t. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with allowing someone to work as a temp for 30-90 days to see if they work out. If they don’t, then you don’t hire the person. This is a little more difficult for high-paying jobs. But if you have a question about your prospect, give it a try and see.

These were just a few tidbits from this solid podcast. We also spent a few minutes after the podcast discussing things that you will only get here:

Podcast: Download | Embed

Question: What lessons have you learned that have made your hiring process better?

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30 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

April 23, 2012

4 Things You Should Never Do In A Job Interview

By Chris LoCurto
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Interviews are never really fun. I don’t know anyone who says, “I love going on interviews.”  If they did, I would be seriously worried about them. They are probably a career interviewer.

Most people dread the interview because they aren’t sure exactly what they should or shouldn’t say. I completely understand this. I’ve been on a few myself. But I have a lot of experience doing the actual interviews. And since I’ve been behind the desk more than in front of it, I’ve had plenty of time to discover the things I don’t want to hear from a candidate.

Here are just a few interview downfalls: (Leaders, pay attention. You should be looking out for these.)

  • Do you sail? - Growing up in Lake Tahoe, I spent many of my summers sailing. In my old office, I had two pictures of old wooden sailboats and a model of a wooden sailboat. It wasn’t uncommon for and interviewee (or a salesperson) to ask if I sail. That alone, no problem. But when you try to talk like an expert on sailing and you have no clue about sailing, I’m done with the discussion. Taking that tack (sorry) is great when you know about a subject. It’s a bad choice when you don’t.
  • Do you have dental? - I have absolutely no problem with you wanting to know what our company benefits are. But when you ask me early on in the interview about them, you show me one very important thing: You’re all about getting a j.o.b. instead of being on fire for the opportunity I’m offering. I’m still doing the interview, but I’ve also gone on to doing other work in my head.
  • No, I’m good. - No matter how much you feel like you know about the position you’re interviewing for, remember to ask some questions.  Have at least three ready. If not, then once again, it tells me that you’re not really going after something you’re passionate about. It’s just a j.o.b.
  • I can do that - Never tell me that you can do the job that I have available. Show me how excited you are about the position and that you would be so lucky to have it. It’s crazy how many people I’ve interviewed say, “Yeah, I can do that.”  No you can’t–at least not for me. I want someone who wants the job.

These are just four of the many things you shouldn’t do on a job interview. But if there’s one thing I know about my commenters, you’re about to get more incredible advice.

Question: What other things should someone not do in a job interview?

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111 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

September 19, 2011

Leadership Question: Interviews And Core Values

By Chris LoCurto
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I believe it all starts with you defining your core values. If you don’t know what those are to begin with, you have no clue what you’re looking for in the interview. Without them, only talent really matters. If you want someone who doesn’t gossip, or someone who has integrity, then you have a place to start. I asked our HR Director Rick Perry to jump in and give a little insight on this question:

I try to determine if a person is a match by explaining specific examples of our culture and the “why” (core value) behind doing it that way. Simple process:

  • Explain specifically how our culture works and the core value behind the “how.” For example, if the person is applying for a sales position, we will expect you to leave the cave, kill something and drag it home; that takes focused intensity over time and that translates into making a lot of phone calls every day.
  • Using this example allows the person to respond to that type of cultural mindset; if they don’t take me somewhere that convinces me they have focus, intensity, never-give-up attitude, etc. in their DNA, then I don’t see a match for this specific core value.

I try to cover everything from passion, work ethics, integrity, character, etc. using this process.

Always remember that you can ask as many questions as you would like, it’s your interview. Have a list of what your core values in front of you and throw out situations that would require each value. See how they respond. The process will become easier the more you do it.

Question: How do you discover if someone is a fit for your company?

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25 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

August 26, 2011

How To Be A Stronger Leader

By Chris LoCurto
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There are two types of leader: those that are willing to discover their strengths and weaknesses and openly share them, and those who are only willing to share their strengths.

I believe both types know their weaknesses, but only one is mature enough and secure enough to point them out. As far as I have experienced, all leaders go through a time in their lives when they don’t want anyone to know that they aren’t strong in an area. They try so hard to keep up an image of someone who can do anything.

But those that are more mature understand that discovering your weaknesses can only enhance your strengths. How? It’s simple. Once you understand the areas you struggle in, you can support yourself with people who are considerably strong than you in those same areas. The problem is, people become afraid that if a weakness is apparent, then their leadership must be flawed. Which is a view taken only by other immature leaders.

The truth is, if you can stay more focused in your strengths, you can accomplish greater things. I was talking with one of the coolest members of our team, Charlie Allen, about how he has a job because his leader, Michael Reddish, spoke up about areas that he was weak in. As Michael realized that he was strong in being a big picture and visionary guy, and weaker in extensive research, he discovered the best way for him to continue to grow his area was to bring in someone who was really strong in research area and details.

Charlie mentioned that if it wasn’t for Michael’s revelation, Charlie wouldn’t have a job with us. I partially disagree…Charlie’s a champion, he would’ve found his way in. But it really raises a great question. Do you recognize your areas of strength and weakness? if not, here are a few things you can do discover them:

  • Write yourself up – Start by writing a lists of both strengths and weaknesses to the best of your recognition. The important thing here is to be brutally honest with yourself. It’s okay to not be great at everything. Trust me when I say that you will be much happier spending your time doing what you love, instead of what you can.
  • Humble yourself – Ask your spouse or best friend to weigh in. I know, this is way harder than it sounds for some people. But who knows you better? Let them know what you’re wanting them to do and give them time to process it. Then, when they are ready, LISTEN! Take what they have to say and process it yourself. You may not agree with it all, but as you continue leading, you may begin to see some of those stand out.
  • It’s your turn – Talk with team members that you trust and respect and ask their opinion. These are the people who work with you the closest. They get to see your strengths and weaknesses played out everyday, even if you don’t think so. Again, give them time to process the question before they answer.

You’re ultimate goal should be to grow as a leader. If you don’t support your weaknesses with people who are strong, then you’ll continue spending time in those areas. Get some courage and tackle this process as soon as you can. You’ll be amazed at what you find out.

Question: Have you seen leaders do this, or leaders who need to?

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

August 25, 2011

How To Attract The Talent You Need

By Chris LoCurto
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Hiring is always one of the most daunting tasks for a leader. Obviously you have work that’s not getting done, or you’re stretching your current staff beyond acceptable long-term limits. You have to spend a ton of time going through resumes of people who don’t fit the position.

Someone will spend a lot of time making initial calls, calls on past employers, calls on references, etc. And that’s before you begin the process of sitting down with strangers, asking tons of questions, hearing….interesting answers, and hoping that you find a gem! Then, if you’ve made the same mistake as most leaders, you hire someone only to find out later that they weren’t right for the position. Thus starting the process all over again.

If that’s ever been you, you’re not alone. I don’t know of a single leader who doesn’t have some hiring war stories. It happens to us all. The key is to do everything you can to fix the process. Tim Sanders was doing our devotional one day and he said it’s okay to make mistakes, just don’t make the same one twice.

We have a pretty good track record of hiring people at Dave Ramsey‘s office due to the massively long hiring process we have. I’ve written a few posts on how to do it right, but I wanted to take this time to tell you about an important element of your job posting that should save you a decent amount of time. It should be obvious that you need to write your job description in such a way as to attract the talent that you need.

However, you should write your posting in such a way as to attract the personality style that you’re looking for. For example, we have a ton of families that take their vacation to come to Financial Peace Plaza. Some to celebrate getting debt free, some just to get an extra shot of enthusiasm in their arm. Either way, we wanted to do something special for those folks when they came in. Our thought? Taking our book store and expanding it to add a large coffee shop with cakes and cookies and someone incredible to run it.

Now, if I posted a job listing for the person to run that, and I didn’t explain what we were looking for in that person, we would have had a ton of resumes from hard charging driver personalities with a goal of expanding our coffee-house empire by adding five more stores within the first year. But that’s not what we were looking for.

Instead, we wanted to give coffee, cakes, and cookies away for free. Yes, free. If these folks were going to take their hard-earned vacation to come see us, we wanted to bless them in the process. Also, we wanted someone with the heart of a servant, the heart of a host/hostess, not someone who was interested in watching the bottom line. Therefore, we needed to post this listing in a way that asked for someone who had hospitality running through their veins.

Luckily, one person stood out immensely and that was Martha Thompson. If you’ve been to FPP, and interacted with Martha, you know she is the exact fit for what we needed. She bakes the most insanely good stuff, makes a great cup of coffee, but more than anything she treats people like kings and queens. She listens to their financial journeys and tells the stories of how we got to where we are. Again, something we most likely wouldn’t have received with a generic posting.

Question: How have you seen job posting fail?

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

August 16, 2011

First Ever EntreLeadership Podcast!

By Chris LoCurto
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Here it is folks! So many of you have asked us to do a podcast on EntreLeadership. Well now we have. Today you can listen to the first ever EntreLeadership podcast on iTunes. All you have to do is click the picture below. Don’t forget to also click subscribe to receive each new podcast.

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17 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

August 2, 2011

Bio vs Resume

By Chris LoCurto
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Here is a great question from Colin Haas sent to me on Twitter:

As a leader, I love this question. Because, really, what Colin is asking is, “How do I stand out bigger and better than anyone else in your HR inbox?” That’s the kind of Go-Getter attitude I like to see. So I want something that makes him stand out so HR doesn’t miss him when he comes through our pipeline — a pipeline that had 3,000 resumes in three months.

So is a bio better than a resume to stand out? Well, I think we first have to look at the difference between the two. Barbara Sudquist says it this way:

A bio is a short summary of the most impressive highlights of your background, whereas a resume gives a comprehensive picture of your education and work experience year by year. Both describe your background but the intended purpose, level of detail and presentation are different.

With that understanding, it makes sense to send a bio of the great things you’ve done instead of a list of jobs on a resume. However, as a leader, it’s not enough for me. If I personally saw just a bio, I would immediately think this person was very arrogant to send me something showing how great they are. I want to know more than that. I would also suspect they were hiding something if that’s all they sent.

So what I would like to see is…both! Yep, send me the resume because I want to see your work history, and I want to dig into it if I like you. But a bio would be a great opportunity to show me what else you’ve done, as long as it has something to do with impressing me in a way that makes me want to hire you. If you share how you made it to the last round of the kite surfing finals, I’m probably not going to care. But if I’m hiring for a sales position, and you won a sales competition in your local market, now I want to talk.

Keep in mind, not all leaders are as progressive as me. So if you don’t explain why you’ve included a bio, they might think it’s an action of arrogance. Let them know you added the bio to show how great a fit you’ll be in their position.

Question: Would a resume and bio catch your eye in a good way?

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14 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Leadership, Small Business

July 28, 2011

You’re Fired!

By Chris LoCurto
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Here is another excellent guest post by Jon Edlin. Jon is the Marketing Manager for the Nazarene Publishing House. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook. You should guest post! Read about it here.

I am the type of person who always sees the glass as half-full.   I can usually dismiss a person’s character flaws because I am so hopeful about helping them reach their full potential. Although my wife says she finds this personality trait of mine endearing, it has recently brought difficulty for me in the workplace.  In fact, when I had a difficult employee, I was so busy trying to develop that employee that I did not notice the rest of my team was suffering.

In March, I had the opportunity to attend Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership 1-Day Event in Kansas City.  I took away a wealth of information from that event, but what Dave said about building the right team really caught my attention.   Dave mentioned that when visitors meet his team, they are often amazed at how nice everyone is.

Dave went on to explain that of course he has nice people working for him.  He fires the ones who aren’t.  He explained that if you have a team member working for you who you don’t like, there is probably a good reason for that.  Chances are that person could be bringing everyone on your team down.

As soon as those words came out of his mouth, something clicked for me.  My attempts at developing my difficult employee had been unsuccessful and all the while, the morale of my team had been steadily decreasing.  I wish I could say I went back to my office ready to defeat the virus that was plaguing my team, but I didn’t.

I continued to give my difficult employee chance after chance until I lost a perfectly good team member due to the unbearable environment I had allowed.  It was too late to prevent him from moving on, but it was then that I decided to keep the rest of my team from the same fate.  So I did it.  With good reason, I fired the employee that was holding my team back.

Since then, there has been a complete 180-degree shift.  My team is now working on all cylinders. A cloud has been lifted, and for the first time I can see a bright future.

Questions: Who’s holding your team back? If you don’t like them, why are they working for you?

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7 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

July 25, 2011

Why You Must Hire Correctly!

By Chris LoCurto
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It is a great honor and a privilege to be able to help so many people with their businesses. And because I love it so much, I always encourage my readers to ask me questions. Doesn’t matter what it is, I will do my best to answer it. So many great questions turn into posts that I’m able to share with everyone else.

Here is one of those posts. David Branch has attended both our EntreLeadership Master Series Dave taught in Cancun, and the EntreLeadership I taught here in Nashville. He brought three of his top guys along with him to my event. Let me say, that was the right thing for him to do with his business. Getting those guys on board gave him a huge advantage.

In Q & A On Profit-sharing and Q & A On Profit-sharing Pt. 2, David and I discussed how he could pay his team more money from profit-sharing than from high salaries, which were killing his bottom-line. After we talked that through, we discussed his need to offer lower salaries and the opportunity to make a lot of money through bonuses to potential new team members. We also talked about the importance of taking the time to find right people, not just offering a high salary to get someone on-board.

Below are two emails that I received from David. The first was not too long after we discussed his need to change his interview process. And the second is one month to the day later. Enjoy:

6/12/11

CLo: What are your thoughts on what we talked about?

DB: In my view I will pass up a whole lot of potentially great people because they have past financial sins that do not allow them to take a risk.  What about the guy who feels the risk is worth it, but has a mortgage, car loan and three kids and a wife, and has to make $50k or more to just meet his bills?  Not knowing enough about our company, he may not be in a position to take that chance.  

I know it may be worth it, but hiring has gone from what used to be a single interview to see if I liked the candidate, and if I did I made them a salary or hourly wage offer.  This new way will prove to be better, but it’s a total “pain in the butt.”  I have thrown away hundreds of resumes and had numerous interviews and hired nobody. Am I asking too much? It’s almost as if I’m looking for someone who doesn’t exist.

Thanks again for the therapy session !!

7/12/11

CLo: How are things down there?

DB: After a lot of prayer and endurance, I have finally found some qualified candidates to hire.  We have been stretched so thin for so long and are getting a bit burned out.  Stewart and I met for prayer a time or two, and we prayed specifically for great people.  We have been hiring for three positions and out of hundreds found NONE.  Then in one week we found people for all the positions. 

Definitely GOD!  Thanks for stressing the importance of being patient and waiting. I found myself wanting to compromise just to get relief, and now I am so glad I held the line. Now I have to pray that our work load sustains and bonuses are good. 

Three keys to David’s success:

  • The right compensations calculation
  • Prayer
  • Lots of patience

We can have the first two, but without the last one, you will find yourself in trouble.

Question: How has hiring the wrong way affected your company?

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16 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

January 25, 2011

Please Help Me!

By Chris LoCurto
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I have to say that I used to have the best personal assistant on the planet: Marybeth. “Used” being the operative word since she left me! Yep, you’re on your own, c-ya, ga’bye! I’m sorry, give me a second….*tears*…..ohhhh gaaaaaaaa!!!! WHY?!!!!!…..*snif*….ok I’m back. Sorry about that, where was I, oh yeah, she had to get married to this really cool, funny, charming, (Dare I say handsome…no, that’s crossing a line) great guy Joel and moved to DC. But I’m not bitter. At least I got to dance with her at her beautiful wedding…which again is why she left me. Did I already mention that?

The greatest gift that I got from Marybeth was her friendship. And the fact that she laughs at my jokes; even when I don’t pay her anymore. She knows I would take a bullet for her, and I know she would for me. Marybeth made my life easier! She took care of me like nobody’s business…or…like it was her business. Whatever, it’s a saying. But I can say that it wasn’t always that way. Not with MB, but before she got there. Before MB I had GREAT assistants who did fabulous jobs taking care of my department. But there’s a difference between an assistant, and a personal assistant.

I realized this when life was getting so busy that I couldn’t even get to the emissions place to have my car….emissioned. I don’t know. As I looked around my life, things were getting missed. A lot of personal time was being taken up with work. Everyday became slammed with meetings, every lunch was a meeting, most nights were meetings, or dinner interviews, or connecting time with team members, and then I traveled a ton on the weekends (still do) as well.

I would be in my office realizing that I needed water or a snack, since I had been nailed down to my desk for hours straight, and I couldn’t take the time to get up to get it. Many times I would work straight through lunch and would miss it because there just wasn’t time to go get something. There were times I would miss a birthday, or forget to send flowers to someone in the hospital, or I would leave work too late to pick up my dry cleaning…or…or… And it was these things that would then take up the personal I time needed in my life. Instead of living life outside of the office, I was spending time doing all the “chores” instead of enjoying the down time that was so needed.

I discovered that my personal time was too important to lose doing menial things. That’s when I hired a “personal”  assistant. Someone who took care of my department, but also did all of the personal stuff needed so I could have a balanced work and personal life. That’s when a bunch of stress left my body.

Does everybody need a personal assistant? Oh gosh no. Most leaders I know don’t have to travel, don’t have to work through lunch, don’t have evening meetings. And I’m SURELY not suggesting that you start working like that so you can have one. What I am saying is you need to look at what balance is. If you have a position that requires more of you that can’t be passed off to someone else, and it has an effect on your personal life, then you might need reevaluate your needs.

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7 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Leadership, Small Business

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