How To Be Good at Hiring People

How To Be Good at Hiring People

Sean: And I’m wondering, you mentioned earlier that twenty-five percent of people are not really that happy with where they are, and those are the ones who are happy to continue a conversation with you. What will be some of the most common reasons why they’re not happy?

Ugis: Yeah. So I’d love to hear when a candidate says, Oh, I used to have this big challenge, now I solved this and it got kind of boring. And if I hear it from a candidate, I love to hear it because it means they’re not just sitting there, when you know, things are easy, they’re looking for something to do. And typically the first person they’ll approach is their boss and they’ll say, “OK, well, what’s next? What’s the next big thing?” So if I hear things like that, I’m really happy to hear them.

Ugis: More kind of neutral things that the people might mention is if they have a schedule, that’s not really that flexible. So if they have to work during the night, no one loves that. If they have to work more than they want to work, you know, more than 40 hours or whatever the norm is, most people don’t enjoy that, and that’s going to make sense to me. So I accept that as a valid reason to look for something new.

Ugis: Yeah, there are kind of red flags as well when people mention that’s why they’re looking for something, if they say “I can’t get along with my boss,” Okay, it can happen. Not all bosses are terrific, but you know, you want to check, was there another boss he or she didn’t get along with and maybe another one? And if there are three, what are the odds you’re not going to be the next one? For sure, they’re not going to get along with you.

Ugis: So you know, these can be like a scale almost, you know, from things that are really awesome signs, if they’re saying and giving as a reason for leaving, to really – really bad signs, and you kind of try and judge those and put them in context.

Sean: So you mentioned that you also want to figure out if they’re not all right with two other bosses. Do you do a background check for you to be able to figure that out?

Ugis: So I did for a while, and that didn’t prove to be very efficient. And again, it’s one of those things where it’s really nice information to have, but it makes things harder.

Ugis: And at one point I just thought, “OK, I’m not doing this anymore.” And the reason is – not because of laziness or anything like that. It just takes a long time also for the candidate to organize these reference calls or anything like that. So we have – typically, if you’re hiring, you need the help and you need it soon. So you don’t want to do unnecessary things that just prolong the entire process. So I’ve stopped doing that. But how I found out about these relationships, the candidates tell me, I don’t think it’s a trick method because, you know, you’re just having an open conversation.

Ugis: The final step in my process is a really long conversation. If the listeners are interested they can Google “topgrading”. The book that describes it really well is “Who?” by Geoff Smart. And that interview you go through every single job experience they’ve had and you ask them the same questions, as to how did you get this job? What were your expectations? What did you actually have to do? Your successes, your mistakes? What did you like the most? What did you like the least? And also about the relationship with the boss? So what would they say about you and what can you say about them? And then you ask for the reason for leaving.

Ugis: And if you go through their entire job history this way it takes, you know, for less experienced people, maybe around 60 to 90 minutes. For average experience, maybe two hours. For really experience people, maybe three hours. It’s impossible to pretend for three hours straight, even for an hour straight. And when things don’t add up, you just honestly ask, “how did this really work? Because in my mind what you’re saying doesn’t really add up from before, but I’m just asking to clarify?”

Ugis: And you’re being non-judgmental, just letting them talk. Most people will tell you exactly how they see the situation, and your job is just to listen. And if it makes sense, it signals that they’ve achieved in past roles. They’ve been really constructive. If they didn’t have the structure, do they figure out what structure they should be in and create for themselves?

Ugis: That’s an A-player type of trait. If things, they never like things, if they had bad relationships if they didn’t succeed. And of course, they’re going to say, yeah, there were a ton of excuses, but you know, they didn’t succeed in the end. That’s the important thing. You know that those are things that you know you should be careful about. Maybe say that they’re not A-players. And but one thing I’ll caution everybody and I also tell this to all my candidates, don’t take just one thing and start focusing on it. Everyone has missteps, mistakes, you know, things they’re not proud of. And, you know, don’t expect perfection, but they expect honesty from people, and you’re going to get a really good picture of who they really are before you take them on the team.

Ugis: And the other thing I tell my candidates is, “okay, this is going to take two or three hours. It sounds like a ton. It’s much more than what most businesses do. But in reality, you’re changing a job, you’re basically changing your life. We’re taking you on our team and especially if it’s a small team, this is really changing things for us. So it’s a huge step for us. So let’s spend some time together and make sure that it’s a good idea for you. Good idea for us to continue this.” And if you phrased it that way, people are like, “okay, this makes perfect sense” and they actually enjoy the conversation. Everyone loves talking about themselves, so they like going through it.

Sean: For sure, for sure. That’s a really good introduction to what you’re doing. And I’m wondering, aren’t a lot of companies good at hiring people? A lot of companies have their HR team?

Ugis: Oh, they’re terrible. Terrible. They don’t know what they’re doing.

Sean: Why  is it?

Ugis: I don’t know. That’s why I have my business. I really don’t know. Well, first of all, you have to try. And a lot of people just think, “okay, you know, for some reason, this is not that important. I’ll never understand it. But outside of sales, I mean, I struggle, maybe product – I struggle to think, what’s anything else that’s more important than the business? And if you don’t hire right, most likely your sales team is not going to be right. Your product is not going to be right.

Ugis: So you know, you can’t even separate those two few things. For some reason, people just don’t prioritize it. They think, Yeah, it’s going to happen. It’s going to be fine. That’s, you know, if you want to create a nice business, that’s just not how you do it. And then okay, let’s say you have the first step down. You’re trying and that’s already good and it’s already more than what most people do. You just need repetition. You need to do it a few times. Make some mistakes. Learn from them. Get better.

Ugis: And you know, being a business owner, everyone wants the kind of overnight success. But in reality, it just takes some years to get there. Read books, listen to other people. Tried to shortcut some of those years, so you don’t have to take like six or seven years like I had to. Maybe, maybe you’ll get there in a year or two, but still, you know, go out there and try, and that’s the only way to get good, really.

Sean: I’m interested in the two to three hours that you mentioned earlier. What happens there? Why does it take two to three hours? So we do have our hiring process at SEO-Hacker, which is my company, and I tell my H.R. personnel the very first interview is just to drive by a 30-minute interview, don’t make it longer.

Sean: But we don’t have an interview that lasts that long. So I’m curious now what happens there? What do you ask them?

Sean: No, I mean, first of all, I completely agree that you don’t want to spend absolutely more time than necessary as soon as you realize, “okay, this person is not going to be fit.” Find a polite way to kind of get out of the call, and I sometimes say, “OK, well, this was just a call for us to get to know each other.” You can judge if a person is kind of straightforward and honest, you can just kind of explain your reasoning and make sure that you’re not making a mistake. If you feel like, you know, they’re going to be receptive to that. Sometimes they’re just not going to be. And that’s what you read and you can kind of make up an excuse. I don’t like lying to people or kind of pretending, but sometimes with these short-term encounters, it’s what you do just out of politeness.

Sean: But anyway, yeah, but my bigger point is you don’t want to spend too much time on the candidates you’re not sure about. But once you’re – and you only do this two and three-hour interview, if you think, “OK, this person is really good, I really like them. They can do everything I want them to do.” Let’s make sure that it’s still a good idea, and it’s kind of like taking a step back and making sure you’re reasonable. And in those two or three hours, I listed all the questions I ask from how they got the job to all the way, why they’re leaving, and you just walk through every single job it takes about maybe 30 minutes per position. They usually ask a little bit about the university. You ask them about their future plans. What’s the ideal position, how does it compare to your position?

Ugis: You know, if they’ve had two jobs already, that’s already 90 minutes. If they had four jobs, that’s already two and a half hours. So it just kind of adds up. And you don’t ask if someone was, you know, a babysitter 20 years ago. You don’t ask about that or if you want to ask, you can just kind of ask the things you’re really interested in. But I usually focus on their career over the last 10 years, and that’s what I care about the most. Because, you know, I have things 20 years ago that had nothing to do with what I’m doing today. So why would we talk about it?

Sean: Well, Ugis we learned a lot. I sure have. Where’s the best place where people can get in touch with you?

Ugis: Yeah, just go to recruitermill.com and see, first of all, what you can learn from that and what you can take away. And if you think we could be a good fit in terms of working together, feel free to book a time for a call.

Ugis: Happy to help you out. As I mentioned, I am mostly focusing on seven and eight-figure businesses. That’s kind of my niche and my specialty. But yeah, even if you feel like you want some help or advice, feel free to shoot me a message and I’ll do my best to help.

Sean: Perfect we’ll have that in the show notes. And of course, you’re on LinkedIn.

Ugis: Yes, absolutely.

Sean: All right. Ugis thank you so much for your thoughts, we are better for it. Again, this is Leadership Stack, guys. You can follow Ugis on LinkedIn and add him up there, shoot him a message, and if not, and you’re interested to work with him instead, you can go to his website recruitermill.com – thank you so much, take care.

Ugis: Thank you, Sean. It was really fun.