What If Everything We Know About Hiring Is Wrong?, with William Vanderbloemen

26:28Because if they're wired that way, they won't be able to help it. They're just going to. Right. If I were looking for thorough, thoughtful, reflective, conversant, and I texted you and you got back to me in a minute or two, I'd have to sit and think about that. Because I think you're right where you should be. Exactly.

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28:03The Pacers and Cavs. The Nuggets and Rockets. Coverage starts tonight at 6.30 p.m. Eastern. Only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com slash Amazon Prime for details. Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. But not this one. Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. That's their best deal of the year, a.k.a. the only holiday gift you'll actually use every single day. Mint Mobile's best deal of the year is happening right now. You can get a 3, 6, or 12-month unlimited plan for$15 a month.

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29:54Okay, we've talked about fast as one of the 12 ways that people are wired. There's another one, self-aware. Yeah, we're all pretty bad at being self-aware. But there's some that develop it. You remember the first time you heard your voice recorded? Yes. Yeah, I do. It's awful, isn't it? Anybody listening get that? I mean, I remember hearing my voice recorded for the first time. I'm like, who is that? Yeah. I don't even like that voice. It's terrible. That is the human lack of self-awareness epitomized. We surveyed a quarter million people, force-ranked these 12 things. Where do you think you're good or not?

30:36These 12 habits and 12 lanes. What are you best at and what are you worst at? Okay. So we surveyed 30 ,000 unicorns and then a quarter million people just at large. Unicorns, what are you best at? Well, one and two were different because there was no one answer that everybody said, I'm really good at that. There was one that they all said, I'm terrible at. Last place was self-awareness. Gosh, I've got to get better at that. And they're actually the ones that are better at it. The general survey, the quarter million people, we said each of the 12 habits, and we asked them to force rank whether they're one to five.

31:12Not good at all, sort of not good, average, good, really good. Get to self-awareness, 250 ,000 people. 93 % of them said they were very good at self-awareness, way above average. I don't have a math degree, but I'm pretty sure there's not a group on the planet where 93 % are above average. Right. Yeah. So, you know, unless it's parents talking about their kids, all our kids are above average, right? But the normal people in the world, all of us think we're great at it, but when we hear a voice recorder, we go crazy. The people who are really good at it know they need to keep working on it. The self-aware are these sort of reflective people.

31:54They're observers. They watch a lot of things. They're watching themselves and how they're probably, you have any friends that are really quiet, but when they say something. Yeah, exactly. It's brilliant. That's the self-aware. You don't want them in sales. Right. You don't want them doing your marketing. Well, maybe your marketing, if they're aware enough to feel pain points. Don Draper was probably a good marketer that lacked complete self-awareness, but there are some that observe. But to me, you find someone who's really self-aware, they'll tell you whether they belong in the job or not because they already know, you know, I'm good at this.

32:32I'm not good at this. In fact, once you know your lane, this is a little off topic, but it's pretty cool. It's like an icebreaker question people use in interviews and it really paralyzes the person being interviewed. And it's the question. So tell me about yourself. Exactly. It's too broad. Oh, well, I started walking at 11 months. So that was, you know, I ate my first solid food at six months. Right. Is that what we're after? Or, I mean, I think you're probably just trying to kill time to get us all talking, but, but what would happen if you're interviewing me for a job and it's for a head of marketing and your company's growing really fast.

33:09And I say, well, let me tell you about myself. Here's what I'm learning about myself. I took this thing called the disc inventory. I'm a high I. I love to find and plan the next party. I'm a seven on the Enneagram. I'm always onto the new project. That's who I am. I love doing things quickly. I love doing things where we don't know how to do them yet. I love doing things that require someone that wants to respond quickly. And that's what I'm learning about myself as a high I and an Enneagram seven. That means if you want to hire me to be head of compliance, don't. You want a bookkeeper, please don't hire me.

33:48I could probably figure out how to do it. But that's not what I'm wired to do. What I'm wired to do is to go down this road of marketing with you maybe and figure out the new frontier that it is with AI, with outsourced things. It's a whole new ballgame. And if you look at my last three jobs, the reference letters I have are for projects I worked on where we didn't know what we were doing when we started and we figured it out. So what I'm learning about myself is I love that kind of challenge. And I look at your company and I see the growth you've gone through. And I'm guessing you're jumping out of planes, building parachutes on the way down.

34:21And for this particular role, you need someone that is actually looking forward to that, not paralyzed by it. And I think I can be that person. So here's what I'm learning about myself. I think I'm wired in a way that might work with this job. It's a pretty cool answer. Right, right. It also prevents the interviewer from then going to the worst interview question on the planet. And that is, tell me about your weaknesses. is, well, I never ask for a raise. I don't use my PTO. How do you answer that? Well, I already did. Don't ask me to do repetitive tasks over and over with thoroughness. That is not who I am.

34:59But put me in a job like marketing right now, 100%. And when you learn that about yourself, you will interview so well, you won't even have to think about whether you're getting the job. Right. When you're answering about how you're wired, it inherently answers the question, what are your weaknesses? I mean, I've literally just told you mine. Right. And we didn't have to go through that nasty exercise because no one knows how to do good interviews. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Agile is also one of the 12. What does it mean to be agile? Do you have a friend when you say, what's your favorite book you've ever read?

35:34And it's like, I just finished it. Yeah. And it's always the most recent book. It's always the best book every time. They're learning new things. The shadow side of agility is ADD, you know, and shiny object syndrome. And I'm not, I've got a kid with ADD. Like I'm not, please don't send me. No, I have an ADHD diagnosis. It's fine. But the value side is people who can multitask, people who love to try new things. Yeah. And we were doing a chief marketing search for a very large organization that is a nonprofit and communicates across probably six different generations. So the chief communications officer had to figure out how to carry the same message to the elderly couple who wanted printed materials delivered via U.S.

36:24mail. That's a thing. And then they had to figure out how to carry that same message to TikTok. So this is omni-channel communications. As we looked, we figured this is all changing so fast. We need someone agile. So we started interviewing. And here's a perfect example of agility. And when you're interviewing, what's a new hobby? It doesn't have to be a favorite one, but what's a cool new thing you're doing right now? Agile people will have that. The lady that we interviewed for this chief communications role, I said, what's something new you're doing? She said, I'm learning French. She's in Southern California.

37:00I'm in South Texas. I'm like, listen, that's great. I took French, but you live in California. I live in Texas. If we're going to learn something other than English, I have a different suggestion for you. You know, it would be far more useful to learn Spanish, right? And she said, yeah, yeah, but that's not the point. I said, well, okay, why are you learning French? She said, well, this was 2020. She said, my daughter's a class of 2020. I thought, I've got one of those two. She said, yeah, this is college. Oh, mine's high school. She said, well, my college graduate, I had promised I'd take her to Paris for a week.

37:31and now we can't go anywhere. Right. And I don't think we're going anywhere for a while. So I said, tell you what, let's play a game. Who can become fluent in French before we go? If you can pass a fluency exam and I can pass one, we'll stay for two weeks. Wow. So they're learning French because of a thing they're doing together. It's bringing them together. It's not just wasted, shiny object. I've got to go do this kind of pointless energy. Right. And it shows an amazing agility. So I'm like, well, do you want to learn TikTok? Well, I'd love to learn TikTok. I know the U.S. mail thing worked out great as a chief communications officer, but it was all based in agility because that particular sector is going through so much change right now so quickly.

38:14And people who are agile, a lot of people will say the future belongs to the fast. I think the future belongs to the agile as well. Do you know what five years from now looks like? I don't know what five months from now looks like. That's even better said. I mean, it is just the rate of change is not going to slow down. And if you are in any kind of business, it's going to be impacted by AI, which is all of them. But like it really impacted. I'd be looking for agile people over everything. We've never done it that way before or we've never done that before. They say that's the seven last words of the church.

38:47It's going to be the seven last words of a lot of businesses. And it's not too late to start hiring agile people and adopting some change. But man, agility is going to be, I think, more sought after than anything in the next phase of the world that we're entering. There are going to be people listening to this who hear that and think, all right, then I would like to become a more agile person. But as we already established, some dogs are Pomeranians and some dogs are Great Danes. Some people are wired to be agile and some are not. Some are not. So if you are not naturally wired to be agile, can you become more agile in a future that's going to demand it?

39:26Or can you find a job that doesn't require as much agility? I'm the HR department for all my friends' kids too. We've got some dear friends who have a kid who's going to set the world on fire with some kind of research. And another one who just really is not interested in books as much. And they were so worried about it. And my wife actually gave me advice. Why don't you send them to pipe fitting school or electrician? And your parents think, how do you win a Nobel Prize in that? It's not a real job. Yeah, yeah. Parents think it has to be this magnanimous thing. But if you look at what jobs are really going to be around over the next, I mean, the trade skills are bulletproof for a long time.

40:06And if you're not agile and you're worried, well, maybe you learn to do a trade skill that you like doing. That's okay. But can you learn agility? Well, sure. And agility, even if it's how you're wired. The interesting thing about agility, unlike any of the other 12 lanes or habits, agility atrophies naturally. Really? Well, you ever try stretching? Yep. Yeah. Is it easier or harder than when you were 10 years old? Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I try and run. I was up here two weeks ago and ran the marathon. Oh, the New York marathon? Yeah, we were raising money for cancer research. Wow. Yeah, my daughter, my son, and my daughter's boyfriend ran with us.

40:45which was good because they've been dating long enough and we need to know if he's a finisher or a quitter. Right. So he finished. So that's a good sign. But we're up here running. And so I'm a runner and I have had to start stretching to keep from getting injured. Right. And I remember when our youngest was however old, three and a half feet tall is, you know, she came in one day, I was trying to stretch. I was sweating more during the stretching than during the run because I'm just not a super flexible person. She didn't say a word to me. She just looked at me. And then she sat down on the floor, tied herself into a human knot like only a little kid can, looked up at me and smiled, untied herself, got up and left the room without saying a word.

41:29And it dawned on me, Paul, it dawned on me, William, every day you're alive, you get less flexible. That's true of business teams too. It's true of podcast studios. Right. It's just natural. It's biologically what happens. The longer you're around, the more you get stiff, the less agile you are, the more you calcify. So even the agile, it's the one habit that you have to feed and work on every single day or it will go away. And I would say no matter how you're wired, everyone should be working on stretching in some way. And that might mean learn how to play a new instrument. It might be that simple.

42:11Develop a new hobby. Develop a new hobby. Take up a new sport. Play Mahjong with your wife. Like learn how to do that. Learn something new. It will teach you that curiosity, the agility, the thing that keeps us from calcifying. But it takes daily work, even if you're good at it. So another one of the 12 lanes, perfectionist or perfectionism. Now, that seems to me like a, in some ways, a character deficiency. You would think. Years ago, I was a pastor in a previous life, a long time ago. That's why all these answers are so long-winded, sorry. I was going out to eat with a guy in our church. I'd just gotten to the church.

42:52And he is a world-renowned neurosurgeon. Houston has a lot of medicine. We're sitting at the table. I'll call him Paula just to protect identities. But we sat down at a really nice restaurant to have lunch. And he spent, and I watched my watch, he spent three full minutes, which is a long time. Three minutes takes a while. Three minutes arranging the silverware so it was lined up just right. So he finishes and he looks up and he's not dumb. He saw me watching him and he said, what? And I said, Paula, have you ever looked into obsessive compulsive disorder? And he looked at me and said, William, you want your brain surgeon to be OCD.

43:38Oh, that's right. I don't care if the guy that flies me back to Houston today is nice or not, but I want him to be detail oriented and be a pilot for United that is super highly attentive. I don't know that I want to go out to eat with him, but get me home. So there are some jobs that require, whether you call it perfectionism, thoroughness, diligence. I mean, anytime we were running over those bridges during the marathon, I'm like, golly, this probably took a while to figure out how to build. And it probably took a perfectionist. I walked and ran across the Brooklyn Bridge this morning. 13 years it took to build that thing.

44:14That was a bunch of perfectionists. And thank goodness it was. You can't raise a suspended bridge with a road without paying attention to detail. Right, right. Edith Roebling. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So what types of jobs, other than neurosurgeon, are good fits for perfectionists? Well, I think anything where it has to be right. Accountants, that's a great job. And I don't know what the AI forecast for accountants is, but I tell my accountant I have two rules in order. First rule, I don't look good in orange jumpsuits. So that's the first rule. Second rule is I don't want to pay any more tax than I legally have to.

44:58In that order. Right. She has to be right or I go to jail. Any job, if you think about it, is that something that has to be done exactly right? Then that's a perfectionist. I was a horrible house painter because I don't take the time to go over it carefully. Right. So any job that requires that level of getting the detail just right. And so what should a perfectionist not do? art because you'll never be finished right things that don't get finished fiction writing consulting i mean you do all this work tell a client follow this this and this and then they don't do any of it that's what consulting is usually so you'll get very frustrated if you spend all this time working up this perfect plan and people don't follow it right might be other little jobs like jobs that you should not take if you're a perfectionist probably a fitness trainer because people who know how to stay in shape generally don't have to hire a fitness trainer.

45:57So you can't be with it. You're telling them what to do and they just don't do it. So any place that's going to frustrate you that things aren't perfect, speedy delivery, FedEx driver, all the engineers that work in any oil and gas field better be perfectionists. Right. One of the ones you haven't mentioned, Paul, that's really interesting and we're seeing as a growing trend is we thought it'd just be one lane. And it is one lane, but it's called purpose-driven. Some people are wired to want to do work that they believe deeply matters. And we've seen in millennials to some extent, Gen Zs, I read a study that said 76 % of Gen Zs that were surveyed wouldn't even consider a job until they knew why the company existed.

46:42You know, the Simon Sinek talk, start with why. I think it might be one of the most popular TED Talks ever. And it's a thing right now. I want to know the why. I want to know what's fine. Well, some people are actually driven by that. I have one life to live. I want to make it count. Or they've had something happen. My wife has kidney cancer. And so that's what we were running for. We were raising money for that. And it wasn't about finishing a marathon. It was we're running. We were the A team. Adrienne is her name. So yeah, my kids don't have any idea what the A-team is, but old, old show. But that was more than just a race.

47:20It was going to be a marathon. Then we get this diagnosis. It's like, no, no, no. Now it's for some people are wired that way, that if they don't know that their work is going to last beyond them, create a meaningful ripple, do some good in the world, they're not going to be happy. I think most people who are accomplished have some form of North Star. It could be the sales guy who sees last year's, last year's October was this number, I'm going to beat it. And that's the North Star. It's a pretty low North Star. But the higher the North Star, the farther people actually go. But even evil people in the world had a North Star that they were following, a wrong one, but a North Star.

47:58And the people who are wired for that really need to consider careers that, I mean, it's pretty hard to figure out how working at Perrier is changing the world. You kind of dig a little bit. No shade on Perrier. No shade on Perrier. I've supported them individually. I probably have kept their business alive. But it's pretty hard to get to what's the nobility behind that. There's that famous quote. Was it Steve Jobs? It was somebody who was recruiting someone to come work for him. And he was recruiting a high-level executive at Pepsi. Yes. And he said, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water?

48:37Yes. That was his pitch. And Gates had a similar one. I think he said, well, you can keep doing that or you can come change the world with us. Yeah. So he would be one that's driven by, I don't think Bill's driven by money. I think it was a change the world, computer in every house, that whole dream. And if you're wired that way, it's a great time to go into business because AI is not going to replace nonprofits. And you can make a living running a nonprofit. It sounds kind of contrary, but if you need meaningful work or you go to work for Tom's Shoes or for, you name it, Chick-fil-A, something that falls in whatever you think you're calling for a higher purpose is.

49:16If you're wired that way, it's important to know because you will get very frustrated in a whole lot of jobs. Manufacturing, don't do it, unless you're manufacturing something like Bibles or something that's going to make a lasting impact. So really interesting to see how that has become more of something that the majority of young workers are interested in. I don't know that they're all wired for it, but it's, I think, a pretty cool sign of what our future leaders look like. Right. And that actually opens up, there are probably people who are listening to this who are thinking, well, I am very purpose-driven, but I'm also very agile.

49:55How many of these different lanes can a person fit into? I would say two or three. You can't say all of them. If you say all of them, you're probably just fast or agile and you just like them all. But they're two or three. And the cool thing is when you start to overlay those things, I think we put in the book on, I think in the chapter on agility and purpose-driven, we both listed run FEMA. That's the ER vet. That's the, okay, you woke up and there was a flood or an earthquake or a hurricane or whatever. Somebody needs to get boots on the ground and solve this real fast. And you're doing it for a purpose.

50:30Well, that's a great job. Right. I noticed that executive assistant was written under many of those. Many, many, many of those. Yes. Yes. Of course, executive assistant, to be fair, completely depends on who you're assisting. Right. Your executive assistant probably needs a different skill set than mine. Right. You're probably easier to work for too. Well, but bosses can be hard in different ways. With my team, what I provide is a lack of structure. Yes. That some people thrive in that environment and other people chafe against that environment. You know, the lack of structure stresses them out.

51:08And especially in a very small business, the requirement to wear so many hats means necessarily that they don't have a highly specific job description that they hew closely to. No, it's very specific. It's other duties as necessary. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And for some people, that's a blessing. And for others, it's a curse. Total curse. And I was thinking that when you were describing purpose-driven as well, you know, what a person values, person A versus person B might have two totally different values. That's right. And so persons A and B can both be purpose-driven, but they could actually be working in opposition to one another.

51:48100%. And you just described Washington, D.C. Right. Right. Good people on both sides, and they're both working for causes, but they're not always seeing it the same way. Right. Right. But our society needs both so long as we don't get too polarized or entrenched or tribal. I think the society needs both in order to determine where the boundaries of that Overton window exists. You hit on a great thing that we did not touch on in the book. And so maybe as bonus material, we could talk about it a little bit. Size of the company also determines how much agility is needed. Just as I said, agility atrophies.

52:23Every day I'm alive, I get less flex. Every day a company is alive, especially if it's a growing company, it gets less flexible. and we need a young company with small headcount agility everybody better be agile or you're not going to make it we've even found i'm yet to be able to hire someone well i have one our coo but i think that's the only time i've hired someone that's worked for a fortune 500 that has worked out at our company and i've always thought well they worked at that big company it's great totally different atmosphere right you know and more agility required so be sure when you're looking, I know how I'm wired.

52:56I know what kind of job. Make sure it also matches, you know, the, the, there's a guy that works for Exxon in Texas. I don't know if he still have the job, but 20 years ago, all he did was change light bulbs in the office building. Like that's all he did. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So you can say, well, I'm going to, I'm super agile and I'll be the agile guy at Exxon. Well, there's very little agility at Exxon. They have one guy to change the light bulbs. They have one guy to do it. So look at the size and age of the company when you're figuring out where to go. And if you're managing people, read this book because there is a little section in every chapter.

53:35If you have a person like this on your team, here are tips for what to do and what not to do when you're trying to motivate or manage this type of person.

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56:06we briefly had an employee whose entire career prior to coming to work for us she had worked for her local government and so it was a very rigid work environment sure with a parks and rec yeah yeah yeah very very specific job description a lot of card rails a lot of boundaries a lot of red tape and the shift from doing something like that to coming and working for a hyper small business, you know, a team of five. Where you have a goal, just go get it done. You'll figure it out. Yeah, exactly. And we're like, all right, welcome. Figure it out. Yeah. That's right. So the podcast studio that we built, I told my son, I go get on YouTube and figure out how to do it.

56:50That was in 15 or 14, whenever we started. Right. One we haven't talked about is there's some people who are just naturally curious, their jobs were, that's not a cool thing. You're not supposed to ask questions. You're just supposed to do the job. But there are other jobs that if you are always saying, why, why is that? Why do they make it this shape instead of that shape? I mean, is it better packaging? Does it sell better? If you're that kind of person, there are so many great jobs where people really need human discernment about how things go together. And the curious are the ones who can do that.

57:27They're the best management consultants. They're the ones who can spot a problem and figure out a pathway to solve the problem. And right now, while you can send out an email newsletter and AI can generate the whole thing, or you don't, but that is an option for people now, or you need a slide deck put together, AI can do that. The ability to say, how do all these dots actually connect and affect our business, we're not there yet. And if we do get there, then we're probably all out of a job. But until that day, people who are curious by nature are going to be highly valuable because they're always asking the why underneath the what.

58:07They're always trying to figure out, well, how does this work? How do we get better at that? The curious people have a bright, bright future in the workplace. And so what types of jobs, if somebody's listening to this and they Thank you. You know what? That's me. I'm inquisitive. Yeah. I'm curious. I like to connect. I like to synthesize, right? Yes. If that resonates with someone who's listening, what are some types of ideal jobs for them? Yeah. Well, you don't have to be a doctor, but that's the first thing that comes to mind. Tell me what's wrong. That's what the doctor does. It could be a physician's assistant.

58:38You know what kind of shortage we have in the nursing industry right now? And that's not going to change. Particularly as the population ages. Population ages, but lives longer. So it's getting more health care. And you're not going to talk to a robot. So there will be changes in the nursing industry. But if you're curious and you're wondering why people, why can't they sleep at night? Well, maybe they need to sleep. Maybe a health care job. Maybe a researcher. Maybe you could do deep level research, like an analyst for a consulting firm. But the curious have a high value. especially if they're curious about things they've never been curious about before.

59:18Like, I've never seen that. That's exciting. If you're wired like that, you have a very bright future in the job market. What should the curious not do? They should not go to a job where they can't ask questions. We don't ask questions here. We just do this manufacturing. You do what you're told. Do what you're told and don't ask any questions. And a lot of companies just have that vibe. Well, it's working, so don't ask any questions. You know, 3M up in Minneapolis used to have a mandate. They invented, I mean, they had more patents, probably more patents than anybody. They had a rule for a while that if you were in management or above, 15 % of your day was set aside to figure out things you hadn't thought of.

59:5915 % of the workday. I mean, that's a lot. In an eight-hour day, one hour is, what, 12.5%. That's right. So that would be a little over an hour a day. I want you to just sit and think about things you hadn't thought about yet and come up with new stuff. Find somewhere like that to work. We've talked about a number of attributes so far, agility, curiosity, being purpose-driven. Do these change over time? I think agility, we've mentioned actually atrophies. It will go away if you don't tend to it. I don't know that the others do. I'm not as fast as I used to be. I have to be a little more discerning about getting back to people quickly because I can't get back to everybody within a minute.

1:00:36I used to say, we'll always get back to you within a minute. And my team just hated it when I was on a podcast like this because they would get flooded with calls from people saying, just want to see if you get back to me in a minute. So I think as your life changes, you have to steward your wiring differently. But I don't know that they fundamentally change. I don't know that you will have a clear vision of what that lifelong lane for you is until your frontal cortex is developed. and for females who have it together more than men, I think you're done at 24 with your frontal cortex. So it's at least a year.

1:01:12So if you're 20, 21, 22, I don't know yet. I don't know yet. That's fine. That's fine. Your first job is not your last job. Ask any successful person what their first job was. I bet it's not at the company they're at right now. So it's okay, as long as you're treating your employers well, to kind of test the waters for a while. But once you get to 25, I think your natural preferences are going to fall in one of these 12 lanes. How you use it will change over time. And the one that will go away is agility. But I think we are who we are. I mean, you're either Pomeranian or you're not. Right, right.

1:01:48We've been talking about how these various traits reflect the type of work that you do. But the other thing that strikes me is, in addition to the type of work that you do, There's also more broadly company culture. 100%. And you mentioned company size and that plays a role in it. But outside of size itself, there's also simply company culture. How can a person assess that as they're trying to figure out what's going to be a good fit for them? Yeah, well, the internet's your friend. You mean, let me see if I understand correctly. If you're thinking of, I'm done with podcasting. I'm going to look for something else to do.

1:02:26I'm going to interview around. I'm going to get a new job. how do you learn about the company culture at the company you're interviewing with? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, first of all, hopefully they have it spelled out and it's real. So in 2018, we wrote a book. We kept winning all these Best Places to Work awards. It was getting kind of stupid. We won Best Office Dog. Best Office Dog? Yeah, it got out of hand. That's amazing. Well, he was an amazing dog, but Moses is one of a kind. What kind of a dog? Standard poodle. Ah. When we got married, Adrian said, I'm allergic to large dogs or I'm allergic to dogs that shed.

1:03:04And I said, well, I'm allergic to small dogs. So we ended up with a large standard poodle. Yeah. Yeah. But when we won all these awards, we ended up getting asked over and over, write a book, write a book about your culture. I'm like, I'm not going to write a book about that. So we studied 150 different companies that were winning the similar awards. And we said, what do they have in common? And this is how I don't write books. I do research projects. And then they turn into a book. And it turned into a book called Culture Wins. And when we were writing it, we were studying places that do culture well.

1:03:31They do the hard work of figuring it out. And you'll see their cultural values everywhere. You'll see ours plastered on the wall when you walk in. And the biggest one of the nine, we did it as a word cloud of our nine values, is ridiculous responsiveness. So you would probably not like working. I would be terrible at that. But it's been great for us. Because we now can interview and say, we know we're crazy. Here are nine markers of how we behave. Because workplace culture, if your vision is what you're trying to get done, workplace culture is how does this team behave as we're getting that done?

1:04:05Like what are the family rules? That's what I see culture as. And if culture's strong, you'll pick up on it. And, you know, you would run away from our company and, you know, sorry, but we're crazy. We get back to people right away. Okay. So what I'm hearing is it's the responsibility of the company to really clearly convey. It's the responsibility of the company to clearly convey. So we studied places that were not winning the award that had their cultural values. We found one big elevator lobby, a company in Houston, and the four walls of the elevator lobby to go up to the office building had the four values written on it.

1:04:41Integrity, trust, I think reliability. I don't forget what. Well, that was the elevator lobby for a company called Enron, which was massive fraud. It's like you can write it on the board all day, but it's who you are when you are working there. You can ask AI, though. I mean, I would verify what it finds for you, but you can ask AI about the churn rate of a company, how much turnover do they have, how does that stack up against the industry, what do Glassdoor reviews say about working there. And you'll start to hear, I mean, people who take time to fill out reviews are usually very positive or very negative.

1:05:18Right, yeah, exactly. It's either your mother or your mother-in-law that's writing.

1:05:25So you can use the internet to find out as much as you can as a future employee about the company culture. I wouldn't necessarily trust what's written on the wall. But when you talk to people and you say, well, how do you, you know, when you interview with them, you can say, well, I've studied and I see your four values are this. How does that play out here? Or is it just words on a, you know, on a piece of paper or what? And people will tell you, and if it's good, they will immediately start telling stories. And if it's a small company like yours, structureless structure is one of our values.

1:05:56If you can articulate how you behave, you will naturally attract people who behave the same way. And that doesn't mean same age, same gender. This goes across generations. Right. How does remote work play a role in all of this? Because both of the stories that you told involve physically coming into a space and seeing something written on the wall. ridiculous responsiveness written on the wall what happens for a remote team when there are no physical walls very very difficult very very difficult an old curmudgeon and i think that being able to zoom with somebody's great but there's a reason we're sitting in the same room together today yeah there's something different when humans interact with humans and i know there'll be hybrid work will continue there's some work that needs to be remote but i think people coming back into the office is going to be more and more of a thing.

1:06:49I'm seeing it with Gen Zs that are my kids. They're like, I had a daughter who worked up here two summers for a company and they wanted her to come back after graduation and work. And she didn't want a job that was remote. She wanted to be in an office. So it's harder to do culture when it's remote. It's harder to be a part of things when it's remote. I FaceTime with our kids who don't live in Houston every night, but it's way better to see them face to face. So I'm not very bullish on that. Sorry. Right. For the people who are listening, who are entrepreneurs or who are managers, who are hiring, how do you balance the desire to capture nationwide talent, to expand that search pool to talent nationwide, particularly if you're looking for that unicorn, you're looking for somebody who's excellent at a very, very niche skill.

1:07:40You want to expand that talent search nationwide rather than curtail it to just your locality. But you also would prefer an in-person team. How do you balance those two? You should write a book about it. I don't have any answers. I have only questions. It's attention to manage for sure. It's attention to manage. And there's some jobs that are just so skill specific that you have to throw other considerations out the window. I mean, I think as an employer, if you're looking to hire people, your first job is to know your company, know what works and what doesn't. You know, if you are, use your company, I don't know the first thing about it.

1:08:18So let's say it's 20 people. We're five people. Okay, you're five people. Where are you guys located? We're fully remote. Okay, well, then it shouldn't be a problem at all. But if you had five people who were coming in here every day and there's this one person, I don't know what they are. They're like a back-end coder for the one thing you need in your company. and you're willing to take someone from Alaska, well, these five people that are coming in every day are going to be like, well. Why are we coming in? Yeah. Right. I mean, so it's the employer's job to know what works at our company and what doesn't, you know, and what above everything else matters.

1:08:53And if it's talent and skill and we don't care where you live, that's great. But stated up front, where I see managers get in trouble is when they see talent and then break all the rules they use to hire the people that they have to go get the talent. And it just, it can be advisable in rare circumstances, but usually it costs the team more than you gain. Right. Inconsistency is where people get into trouble. I think that's right. Authenticity. The authentic manager knows what's going to be good for the team. When you hire a person, you change the chemistry of the team. Right. Every time. That's why people are afraid of it.

1:09:30That's why I have a job as an exec search guy. It's really disruptive. So I think managers who do the best job of hiring are the ones who really know who their company is and how much change they can tolerate. And then they hire thinking of the whole team and not just getting the rock star that's out there. Right. You know, we briefly mentioned authenticity as one of the lanes. I don't think we actually dove into it. Authenticity is also one of the lanes. But what was interesting when I was looking at the list of, hey, if you are not authentic. If you're at all a chameleon. Yeah. A lot of really great salespeople can become whatever they need to walk into whatever room they're walking into to make a human connection and sell a good.

1:10:11Right. So it's not a bad thing. I think the people who really value authenticity and they're people of principle, they're people who won't do, I don't do that, you know, that wouldn't be who my true self is. There is a very specific place in the world for jobs that need that kind of authenticity. Law enforcement comes to mind. be the good cop right authenticity matters there authenticity matters in religious leadership whether it's a synagogue or a temple or a mosque or a church what what have you people need to know that the person they're looking at actually is who they say they are when they're off the stage and up close and personal and if you're not that kind of person there's a place for you it's not a you should probably find another word than authentic because it makes it sound like you're a bad person if you're not authentic.

1:11:03If you're inauthentic. Yeah, yeah. But if you can change skins quickly, which is not a... Adaptable. Politicians. I do not know. I've traveled this country so much since I started this work 17 years ago. I don't know how you win the presidency. You know, when I go to Eastern Washington, and it's different than Western Washington, which is different than Ohio, which is different than some other swing state, you know, you You have to be able to adapt to the crowd to get the thing done. And I guess we need a different word than authenticity. But if you have to behave according to who you know who you are, there's a place for you to.

1:11:40It's one of the 12 lanes and there's lots of good jobs that are listed in there that you can find. Right. It sounds as though there's almost a certain degree of rigidity that's incumbent with authenticity. I think that's right. Whereas the opposite would have flexibility. I think that's probably a fair statement. And usually, you know, in healthy marriages, there's usually one of each of those kind of people, you know, law and order and a little bit looser in the saddle. There are many people who are listening to this who are in their 40s or 50s. Yes. And they're thinking, I'm not in the right career.

1:12:10Yes. I'm not in the right job. I don't love what I do. and at this phase in my life, I could retrain, but that would be just a huge pain in the butt to go back to school at the age of 49 or 52 and be in school for another X number of years. So I could retrain or I could try to retire early, but even if I did, I'd be 55 and I'd still have all of this energy and life and vigor and I want to make a contribution to the world and I don't exactly know what that would look like. Yes. And that's the position that they're in. And what words of wisdom would you have? Yeah, well, it's right where I'm living.

1:12:49I don't think many people would do very well just retiring. Even if you retire, I would bet if you're energy, if you worked hard enough to be able to retire at 55, you're not good at sitting still. Yeah, yeah. Unless you invented something, right? Even if you retire and go volunteer, you don't need to be volunteering at a volunteer job that is misery. You need to know how you're wired so you can volunteer in a place that's like, I know how to do this. I can do this. You know, of all the things that this cancer journey we're on, I know how to raise money. I can't solve cancer, but I can go raise money.

1:13:26And that's a volunteer thing. And it's how I'm wired. I've enjoyed doing it. I'm good at it. And that makes it fulfilling. So even if you're going to retire at 55, you're probably going to have to find something to volunteer. Better to know how you're wired. so you're volunteering in a lane that would match how you're wired. Because when you're in your lane, you'll go farther and faster at your job or your volunteer work or however you're filling your day. But what if working how you're wired requires retraining? What do you do then? I don't think it does. I don't think it does. If you looked through the book, I'm making a bet without knowing the book by heart, you will find in every one of those chapters job options that don't require technical training.

1:14:09I think the future of human work is humans talking to other humans about human issues. So if you discover your wiring is, I should go learn how to be a coder. Now I have to go, don't do that because coding's over. That's going to be automated. Most of the technical jobs, aside from masonry, pipe fitting, electrician that we talked about before, the labor intensive trade skills, those you do need to go learn. But learning how to be a volunteer coordinator learning how to be, I mean, a good COO can run anything. My wife's the best COO on the planet. She's managed to get seven kids and me functioning as adults and running the place.

1:14:50She could run any company in the world. So I don't know that the training of a skill-specific thing is necessary. If you're looking at changing your career completely and you've got some financial security, I think you will find a job that fits your wiring that focuses on human-to-human skills. And yeah, who knows? It might not be a job in five years. Right. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? Yeah, unfortunately, our company is named after me. And the only reason is back when SEO was a thing, Vanderbloomen, you can misspell into Google about a hundred different ways.

1:15:29And you'll find our site. And you'll find the site. And if you're running a team on our site, it's not just executive search. There's probably 6 ,000 free resources for leaders on how to build and run and keep their team. So just type Vanderbloom in however you want. Same with the book. Just go to Amazon and try spelling Vanderbloom and all the things will come up. That is actually nice to know that people don't have to spell it correctly. Just type any interpretation of Vanderbloom. Yeah, Vanderpump was a TV thing for a while. Right. Yeah, Vanderpump rules. Yeah, you might get Vanderbilt, but you get past those two, it's pretty much going to drive to us.

1:16:07Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's a real pleasure. Appreciate what you're doing through this podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much to William Vander Blumen. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, your response time to emails and texts reveals more about your career potential than your resume. So if you're hiring someone, don't just focus on the formal interview. watch how quickly they respond to your texts or emails, because this is a window into their mental wiring that predicts performance. William discovered that the response time, it's not about politeness.

1:16:45It's about how some people are fundamentally wired to process information and act on it. Some people are fast. And if you're hiring for a role that demands fast and demands responsiveness, then you need somebody who shows this, who demonstrates this. If they get back to you within 24 hours, that's a pretty good marker. People in general don't return calls. Inbound marketing, you know, where people fill out a form, somebody will contact you. You fill out the form and how quickly whoever receives the form responds determines how likely it is you're going to talk to the person. Massive studies have been done on this.

1:17:23And the question is how quick a response time matters when you get to fill out a form and somebody will get back to you. So if the form comes in and you get back to them within 60 seconds, you have a 98 % chance or better of talking to that person. If you wait 20 minutes, it drops to 60%. If you wait 24 hours, it drops to 1%. Now that being said, not all roles demand responsiveness. For people like myself, what am I good at? I'm good at reading a book, thinking very, very deeply about it, and then having a one-on-one conversation with the author about the ideas and concepts from that book so that we can create a long-form interview, a long-form piece of content that can educate people.

1:18:14That's more in the Cal Newport deep work vein. And so what that means is that I need to hire somebody to be responsive on my behalf so that I can focus on deep work. Different people are wired in ways that make them succeed or stagnate in different roles. And the key to top performance is putting the right people in the right roles. So that's key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two, test for agility by changing plans at the last minute. That will reveal who thrives and who doesn't when everything shifts. Certain fields change rapidly. Marketing changes every day. Tech evolves constantly.

1:18:56People who succeed in those fields can pivot without breaking a sweat. So you need to know whether or not someone's truly agile if you are hiring for one of those roles, or if you're applying for one of those roles, if you think you might want to go into one of those roles. Again, you need to determine if you yourself would thrive in something that requires agility. Throw them a curveball during the hiring process. Watch what happens. If you're interviewing and you want to know if the person you're interviewing is agile, change the interview location about 30 minutes before. I drove by that Starbucks.

1:19:31It is so crowded. Do you mind if we meet at Pete's four blocks away? Maybe they get mad. Okay, fine. But I mean, don't be fooled into thinking the 45-minute formal interview is the interview time. That's all I'm saying. Use all the time from when you start considering hiring somebody to when you make your decision. That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. Some workers need a mission and others need a measurable win. Knowing which type of worker you are changes everything because not everyone is motivated by the same things. William found that high performers fall into two camps.

1:20:10There are people who are driven by purpose. They need to know that their work matters beyond just a paycheck. And there are people who are driven by progress, measurable progress, and they thrive on beating last month's numbers. And neither is better or worse. They're just different wiring. And this is all about working in the way in which you personally are wired. Some people are wired to want to do work that they believe deeply matters. And we've seen in millennials to some extent, Gen Zs, I read a study that said 76 % of Gen Zs that were surveyed wouldn't even consider a job until they knew why the company existed.

1:20:51You know the Simon Sinek talk, Start With Why? I think it might be one of the most popular TED Talks ever. And it's a thing right now. I want to know the why. I want to know what's happening. Well, some people are actually driven by that. I have one life to live. I want to make it count. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with William Vanderbloomen. Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. If you got value from today's episode, please share it with a friend. Share it with someone in marketing, in tech. Share it with the people who are really super fast at responding to emails and texts.

1:21:26And share it with the people who, like me, are very slow at that. Share it with the people who thrive when plans change and share it with the people who prefer stability and predictability. Share it with people who are looking for a job, people who are thinking about a career change, people who are wondering what they're going to be when they grow up, regardless of how old they currently are, because you can wonder that even in your 50s and 60s. Share this with all of those people and more, because that is the single most important way that you can spread the message of F-I-I-R-E. Also, please subscribe to our newsletter, affordanything.com slash newsletter, where we send out thoughts, ideas, learnings that we don't discuss on this podcast.

1:22:06So for special content that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe to that newsletter. It's totally free, affordanything.com slash newsletter. Also open up your favorite podcast playing app, hit the follow button so that you don't miss any of our amazing upcoming episodes. And while you're there, please leave us up to and including a five-star review. You can also watch us on YouTube. Watch these videos at youtube.com slash afford anything. Subscribe to the channel, like one of our videos, leave a comment, tell us about what you thought about any of these interviews. Again, that's youtube.com slash afford anything.

1:22:43Thank you again for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.