How I Hire The Best People (Steal My Methods So You Can Too)

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0:37As a small business owner, you wear many hats. You're the owner, you're the marketer, you're the seller, you're the hirer. I remember in the early days, I was doing pretty much everything. I was writing, I was bookkeeping, I was selling, I was marketing, I was doing a lot. But lucky for you, you have LinkedIn. They have the tools to help you boost your visibility, find prospective customers, and find the best team for your small business. All in one place. So while LinkedIn can hang up all of your hats, it makes it easier to wear them all. Learn more at linkedin.com slash MBA show. When it comes to hiring, I've made some of the worst decisions of my life.

1:16Like really bad. Like losing$500 ,000 bad. That one hurt me so much that I said to myself, I've had it. I'm going to do everything I can to be the best recruiter I can be. And since then, I've made some amazing hires. The best ones are still with me today. Cindy, Carl, Sonny, these people are rock stars on my team. People who've made my business better in ways I didn't even know were possible. So what's the difference between the great hires and the disasters? It was a solid hiring process. And in this episode, I'm going to give you mine, the exact methods I use to find, evaluate, and hire people who build a great business for you.

1:58This is all the stuff I had to learn the hard way so you don't have to.

2:08Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. I got a quick favor to ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey.

2:45Now, before I get into how, I want to say something that most people will never say to you. I wish, I absolutely wish somebody explained this to me earlier. And here it is. Hiring is the highest leverage decision you can make as a business owner. It's not marketing. It's not product. It's not pricing. It's hiring. A great hire, a great team member will do things you never asked them to do, will solve problems you never knew even existed in your business. they will make the people around you better. A great hire will make you money. They'll save you time. They'll save you headaches. And guess what?

3:22A bad hire will do the exact opposite. They'll create problems everywhere they go. They drain everyone's energy. They stay longer than they should because letting somebody go is uncomfortable and very difficult to do. And most business owners just really avoid discomfort. Here's a number I want you to hear with both your ears, okay? Seriously. I found that a mediocre hire can cost you on average 30 % of a person's annual salary. 30%. That's when you factor in lost productivity, the time spent managing the situation at hand, the toll it takes on the team, the cost of starting the hiring process all over again.

4:00And that's just the average. A really bad hire can cost you your business. Seriously, a bad hire can cost you everything. For small businesses that are listening to this episode right now, one bad hire doesn't just cost you money, cost you reputation, cost you time, cost you energy. This is why it's so high leverage. Get it right and it can do wonders. Get it wrong and it could be a nightmare. So let's talk about how to get it right. The first thing I want you do is to avoid the most common mistake that I see. Business owners, when they want to hire, they are desperate. You know what I'm talking about.

4:39They wait until the pain is unbearable, until they're so overwhelmed and so behind and so burnt out that they'll take anyone with a pulse just to get some relief. And desperation is the worst possible state to hire from. Why? Because when you're desperate, you overlook red flags. You are over-forgiving. You convince yourself the small concerns, the small things that you're kind of noticing that are not right are not a big deal. You basically hire the person who's available rather than the right person for your business. And then after three months, you find out that, well, my gosh, this person's actually the worst person I could have hired.

5:16And now you have a performance problem on top of everything else. So the rule I follow is start hiring before you need to. I'm going to give you a perfect example. Right now, I'm shooting this episode in my studio office. We're hiring a video producer, somebody to run all our cameras, do the editing, be our video person. I don't actually need to hire this person. I'm doing this fine, but I want to level up my game. I want to take the production to the next level. I want to produce more content. Guess what? This week, this Thursday, we have seven interviews lined up for this position that we put out.

5:52I'm in a position right now where I can be picky. I don't need to just choose the first person that is willing to do the job. I have a pipeline of candidates that have applied for this position. I have their CVs, I have their resumes. I have them, they shot a video talking about themselves. I have the luxury to be selective now because being selective is the most powerful tool in hiring. Being able to say, hey, who's the best person, not who's the good enough person. So keep this in mind, hire before you need them because you don't want to hire from a position of desperation, bad position to be in.

6:25So let me give you my methods. Here we go. Method number one, hire for attitude first and skill second. I know this sounds counterintuitive, but in 20 years of building teams, I have never once regretted hiring someone with an exceptional attitude and teachable skills. But guess what? I've regretted plenty of times of hiring people that are highly skilled with a questionable attitude. Listen, skills can be taught. Anybody can be taught anything. Anybody who has a skill was taught it. That's just how it happens, okay? Attitude, on the other hand, cannot be taught. It's a choice. Somebody's attitude is something that comes within.

7:06Work ethic can't be taught. The willingness to take ownership when things go wrong, that can't be taught. The integrity that they must have and tell you the truth when something is not going right, when it's inconvenient for them to kind of kind of fess up, hey, there's something that's not so good with what I just did right now. That can't be taught. The humility to say, I don't know, but I'll find out or I need help. That can't be taught. These things are either there or they're not. Guess what? I've hired people who didn't know how to do these things. And I was foolish enough to think I can teach them how to raise their hand and talk to me when there's something wrong or to ask a question when they need to.

7:48Personally, I think it's impossible. I've never seen it done. Either they're able to do it and it comes within and they just show up that way or they don't have that gene. In the interview, I always ask this question. Tell me about a time you made a serious mistake at work. What happened and what did you do? In the interview, one of two things happened. Either some people go quiet and give a very vague answer or they subtly blame someone else for their mistake. And obviously that's a red flag. And others will look you in the eye, own it completely, describe exactly what they did to fix it. And they tell you what they learned in the process.

8:26That second person is the person we call back. That's the person that gets shortlisted. That's the person that we really are considering hiring. And nine times out of 10, we hire them every single time. Because the way someone handles their own failure is the most accurate preview you ever will get. Because listen, the resume, the CV, the way they're presenting themselves, you're seeing the best version of them. Okay? You've never worked with this person before. You don't know their flaws. You only know all their positive points. This is why I always say that if you're going to hire somebody for a position and there's somebody in your team that is qualified for that position, maybe for a promotion, I say the new person, the person that's coming from outside has to be at least 30 % better than the person that's in your team because you already know all the flaws of the person that's in your team, right?

9:17You already know them. You've worked with them. You know their ins and outs. You know how they operate. So remember, you're seeing the best version of them. So your job is to try to get as honest as possible to find out how they handle the situation and what their attitude is towards their work. If you're selling online or out of a storefront, full-time or as a side hustle, you already know the challenge. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in. Lucky for you, there's Whatnot, one of our proud sponsors. Whatnot flips that. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time.

9:52I'm a huge fan of live video. As you know, we built and sold a webinar software for over 10 years. The great thing about live video is that they see what you've got, they can ask questions and buy, and they keep coming back. Anyone can sell. whether your business is big, small, or yet to even exist. People selling on Whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because they're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. I'm a big fan of Whatnot, a big user of Whatnot. I've bought products on Whatnot because it's a lot of fun, actually. You get to interact with the seller as well as the fact that you get a great deal.

10:30It's super easy to use, it's intuitive, which means your buyers are going to find it easy to buy. Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search W-H-A-T-N-O-T, Whatnot, in the App Store and start scoring amazing deals. This episode of the$100 MBA show is brought to you by Booking.com. If you're looking to grow your vacation rental business, this is the place to be. Booking.com is one of the most downloaded travel apps in the world, and for good reason. Since 2010, they've helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay. But here's the thing, most vacation rental hosts don't even realize they can list their properties on Booking.com.

11:17And if you're not on the platform, your rental is basically invisible to millions of Booking.com travelers worldwide. After all, they can't book what they can't see, right? I book all my travel, personal and business through Booking.com. And it's for good reason. I love their Genius program. So because I'm loyal and I use Booking.com, I'm a genius level three. Yeah, I say it with pride because it gets me the best prices. I also love the fact that they give you all the details about all the hotels or the apartments that you're booking. So I know exactly what I'm getting before I check in. Does the place have a gym?

11:52Does it have a hairdryer? Does it have a fridge. What about a washing machine? I know because the listing is always accurate. And their app is easy to use. So when I'm dead tired after a long flight and I'm trying to check into my accommodation, it's super simple. Just pull up my booking and show it to the host. So if your vacation rental isn't listed on booking.com, it could be invisible to millions of travelers searching the platform. Don't miss out on consistent bookings and global reach. Head over to booking.com and start your listing today. Get seen, get booked on booking.com. Method number two, the job post is an advertisement, not just a form they fill out.

12:35I have to say that most job descriptions are terrible. How do I know this? Because my job descriptions used to be terrible, just like everybody else's. But we worked very hard on improving our job descriptions and making them more than just a list of requirements and bullet points and some corporate language that reads like a legal document. Nobody great is going to be excited by a job description that starts with like, you must have three to five years experience and strong communication skills. Your job post is not a form. It's an advertisement. And if you want to see an example, by the way, you can go to our job posts, just go to 100mba.net slash jobs, and you can see our available jobs right now.

13:10And you can see how we write our job posts. Why do I say this? Why do I say it should be an advertisement? Because it's the first impression a great candidate will have of your business. It's the first signal if they want to work there or not. And it needs to do two things simultaneously. First, it needs to attract the right people. And then second, it needs to repel the wrong ones to save you time and headaches because you don't want people applying that are just not right for you. The way you do both is to be specific and honest. Be specific about the role and what it requires, the day-to-day.

13:43You know, on top of our job description, we also include a video, right? And in the video, I say, hey, this is going to be hard work, okay? If you don't like hard work, I'm sorry, this is not the job for you. And that's okay. There's plenty of fish in the sea. You want to attract the people that are like, yeah, I like hard work. I like to grow. I like to roll with my seeds and take responsibility. And be honest about what working with you is actually like. The pace, the expectations, the culture. We're very clear that we're not going to give you and spoon feed every answer. You're going to have to figure out some things on your own.

14:15And that's part of you having ownership of your role. And this is why it's so important to write your job posts in a voice that sounds like a human being. And this is why it's really helpful to just describe the kind of person who will thrive in your company and the kind of person who won't. You can even include a small specific task or question that the candidate has to complete as a part of the application. So they get a taste of what it's like to do work in this position in your business? Something short, something specific. For example, we ask our candidates to shoot a video to answer a few questions.

14:49We give them some questions, they answer it on a video. Why do we do this? Well, because we are a media company and you will at some point be on video, whether on a video call or you'll be in one of our episodes maybe by chance or you'll be shooting a video if you're a video person and we wanna know how you are as a communicator. Can you communicate efficiently? Can you express yourself? Can you also show your personality? That one additional cut, that one thing they have to do, submit a video for us, it cuts our applicant pool by 70%. And make sure it filters out the people that are lazy or don't want to do that.

15:23Or maybe they just think, I don't want to be on video. What is this? If you don't like video, then you're in the wrong place. Okay. This is what we do for a living. Even if you've never been on video, if you're not willing to stretch yourself a little bit and put yourself out of the comfort zone and, you know, do a selfie video, do a quick, you know, face the camera and answer some questions. If you're not willing to do that, then you're definitely not going to do well in our company. The people who complete it thoughtfully and well, and don't look like they're reading when they're shooting the video, these are the people that get filtered in and get an interview.

15:54Those are worth our time. And those are the type of people are going to be worth your time. Method number three, the pre-interview filter. I don't start with a full interview. I start with a short task. This is a good way to do this, especially with highly technical roles, like when we were hiring engineers and developers and designers at Webinar Ninja, our software company, a brief task or a simple problem to solve is a good way to find out how they think, how they problem solve. And we used to do this, like, for example, for developers, where we would get them to code a part of a software, like a login or something, or like, you know, like sign and you're using your password.

16:32And we really didn't care the way they decoded it or what the language they use. We just want to understand how they actually work. And it would be a live call, like a live Zoom call. And we'd go through the interview and they would have like an hour to do this. And this whole thing was recorded and go ahead and work. And it could be like an open book test. We just want to understand how they actually function. Listen, the resume will never reveal this. So you need to actually trust, but verify, verify they can actually do what you want them to do and how they do it is just as important. We do this with customer support for customer support agents.

17:08We get them to answer customer support tickets. And by the way, they're not real customer tickets or customer chats or messages. It's somebody from our team pretending that they are a customer and they're asking them questions and they have, it's like an open boat test. They can go to the knowledge base. They can, they look it up. They go to our website. Again, the actual answer doesn't matter. It's how they actually approach the problem and the way they communicate to the customer that really matters. We also look to see, is there any extra thought or any extra effort they're making in their task, in completing the task?

17:42Because that's exactly what they need to bring to the job, their own personality, their own approach. The ones who do the minimum on the task and don't really try to go above and beyond or add their own flair, we're not really interested in them. We're looking for somebody who's exceptional. Hey, if you're finding today's episode useful, I highly recommend you subscribe to the show if you're not subscribed already, because we have an upcoming episode I'm working on right now that I think you're going to absolutely love. And it's about the truth of running two businesses at once. I did this for a decade, and I'm going to talk about what are the trade-offs?

18:16What are the difficult things you're going to face? And what are some of the joys of running two businesses successfully at the same time? And would I advise it? You know, I did it for 10 years. I don't do it anymore. I just focus on this business now since we sold Whoopener Ninja. But I want to share with you what I learned along the way so that if you're thinking about jumping into a new business or maybe you want to do two at the same time, you have some data points. You have some information that you can use as you navigate that journey. So hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Method number four.

18:47The interview is a conversation, not an interrogation. You're not some sort a KGB agent trying to squeeze information out of them. The candidate is going to be nervous, naturally, because their livelihood is on the line here. They want this job. So you don't want to make this a rigid conversation. You want to make this a fluid conversation. You want to make it a conversation just like you would have a conversation with them when they're in the job. Because if you don't make it a conversation and you just do rapid-fire questions, you're not going to really learn anything about them. You're going to learn about how they interview, okay?

19:17You don't want that. How somebody interviews, some people are really good at interviewing, that's a completely different skill. You want to try instead to have a genuine conversation, just like you're meeting somebody at a party and you want to get to know them. Be curious about the person, where they came from, what drives them, why are they doing this career? Why are they applying for this job? What's going on right now? Why are you unhappy in your current job? Where did you fail in life and where are you at right now in your life? Are you on the rebound? Are you in a different season now? Did you just have a child and now you're trying to get back into the workforce.

19:49What? What's the situation? By understanding who they are, you really get a full picture to understand what their motivations are, what drives them, what motivates them, what lights them up. So I like to ask open-ended questions, and then I shut my mouth. Most interviewers, they talk too much. They want to fill in the silence. They want to make them feel comfortable by just talking. No, you need to lead by allowing them the space to talk. Don't lead to witness like in a court case, right? A lot of people, they tell the candidate in front of them what they want to hear, and then they ask whether they agree.

20:23Just ask the question and wait. The silence is uncomfortable, but in that discomfort is useful information. Because guess what? The job, it's going to be uncomfortable sometimes. And how they handle silence in the interview is how they'll handle pressure in the role. Some of my favorite questions are, what are you genuinely not good at? I want a real answer here, not a strength dressed up as a weakness, like I work too hard and, you know, I'm an overachiever. Another question I like to ask is, what did you think of this role when you first read the description? I want their honest first impression.

20:58Here's another question. What would your last employer say your biggest area for growth is? This allows me to understand if they're self-aware, if they're honest, or if they're just going to be vague and kind of protect themselves. I'm trying to understand who they are. I'm listening to how they relate to their own gaps or failures and their own reality. I'm also looking for how they answer. I love it when a candidate hears one of my questions and says to me, huh, let me think of that for the moment. Never thought about that or haven't thought about that in a while. But off the top of my head, here it is.

21:33That's somebody being honest. That's not somebody who's like rushing to give me the answer I want to hear. Method number five, check references like you mean it. Okay. Most reference checks, people treat them like a formality, a five minute call where they ask a soft question just to make sure that, hey, this person actually work here. That tells you almost nothing. It just tells you that the person's not a liar. Here's how we like to check references. We call, we never email. And I don't lead with, can you tell me about working with this person? This person is in a job, they're working, they're busy.

22:09I got to be a little bit more specific if I want to pull out the answer I'm looking for. So I lead with something like, I love your honest opinion. We're thinking seriously about bringing this person on. What should I know going in to this relationship? How do I set it up for success? That question is completely different. It assumes that the hire is happening. And it gives the reference permission to really share information rather than just a sales pitch. Oh yeah, this guy is great. Wonderful. Because now they're helping their former colleagues succeed and not protecting themselves by saying, hey, the best way to kind of ramp them up is one, two, three, four.

22:46They're a good listener. If you give them exact instructions, they'll follow it. Nine times out of 10, the reference will tell you something real. They'll give you like a working style note, a growth area, a situation where things were difficult and how to avoid them. That information is gold. And if a reference gives you three minutes of nothing but glowing superlatives and zero texture or zero specificity, that's a signal too. Real relationships have nuances. Even when you talk about your best friends, you know they're not perfect. If there's no nuance in the reference, it means the relationship was either not real or they're choosing not to tell you something.

23:26I'm not saying they need to badmouth them, but they got to be honest. A good example of this is like, oh, so-and-so, she's fantastic, and I really loved working with her. She was really hardworking. I got to say, though, sometimes her internet was kind of shoddy. So if there's a way that you can help her get better internet connection, I think that she'll be more reliable. because that's the only thing I can really think of that stopped us from communicating constantly. Now I know that she's a super hard worker, that she has a lot of potential, but she's got this one problem where her internet connection is just horrible.