MBA2420 Q&A Wednesday: Should I hire someone underqualified that has potential?

0:08Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, the business podcast that's always got your back. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And in today's lesson, we answer a question from one of our listeners on Q &A Wednesday. And today's question is from Mike. And Mike asks, should I hire somebody who is underqualified but has potential? I'm looking to make my third hire in my new business. And I found a candidate that has a great attitude, seems to be a hard worker, but doesn't have exactly what I'm looking for. They haven't done what I need them to do in the job, but I think they have potential to learn.

0:46Should I hire them? Would love your advice. Thanks, Mike. In my 20 years of entrepreneurship experience, one of the hardest things you have to do as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, is hiring, is recruitment, finding great talent. It's really hard because you don't have a lot to go on. You have your CV, your resume, their LinkedIn. Maybe you can call the references. You can do a couple of interviews, but that's pretty much all you got to make a decision and to trust this person to do the job you need them to do. So in today's lesson, I'm going to share with you how important is talent, experience, qualifications.

1:21Can you train somebody who has potential? Is it worth you training them? Or is it a risk or are you going to waste more time and money than it's worth? I've been in Mike's position several times and I'll let you know how it went down. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. One of my first hires for this podcast, the$100 MBA, was an administrative assistant. We interviewed so many people for the position, and we always had somebody in the back of our mind that we interviewed that we thought maybe would work out. The only problem is that they didn't have a lot of experience doing the job we needed them to do.

1:55But they had an incredible attitude. They were a hard worker. And frankly, just straight up honest, they were like, hey, I really need a job, and I will learn what I need to learn to do this job. Given that this was an early hire with the podcast and the$100 MBA brand, I was a little bit tentative because I didn't want to take the risk and build on a bad foundation. But their attitude and their willingness to work hard was so strong. I just said, I need to take this chance. I need to give this person a chance because it's so rare to have that kind of attitude. We've interviewed so many people, we just didn't see anybody like this.

2:31And boy, am I glad I rolled the dice and took that chance because that hire that we made 10 years ago is still with the company today, doing amazing things, helping us grow. Let me share another story back when I was running Webinar Ninja. We really needed a great software engineer to add to our team. We were growing fast and we really rushing through the hiring process to find somebody quickly. We found somebody with a pretty decent portfolio, okay experience, but they really wowed us in the interview. They had a really good attitude, very positive, easy to get along with, would be a great cultural fit for our team.

3:07So we hired them. As the weeks and the months went by, we started to realize that their output was actually not that great and their velocity of work was pretty slow. But we kind of coached them and helped them and they were receptive. They're super nice, great team player. But things didn't progress. Weeks turned into months and a month became a year, two years. and we realized, I don't think we made the right hire. And boy, is it hard to fire somebody who's a nice person, who is a great team player that adds a really positive energy to the culture of your team. But we had to because they weren't giving us what we needed.

3:45When you are running a business, you are competing with every other business that is offering what you're offering. The only difference between you and them is the output of your team. So you need the best team members possible so you can compete with anybody out there in the marketplace. Your loyalty, your alliance, your duty is towards the customer. You have to serve the customer. That's what you do as a business owner. They come first. And if they're not being served properly, you need to do something about that. And we had to just absorb the sunk costs of two years and, you know, the opportunity costs and the damage that was done because of, you know, a less than perfect hire or less than perfect work.

4:29And we just had to cut our losses and part ways with this person. So I learned a lot of hard lessons along the way that I want to share with you that's going to help you dictate, should I make this hire based on great attitude and potential, or should I just stick to the facts, stick to the experience, and if they actually can do the work? And here's a rule of thumb I like to use. First of all, not all hires are created equal, meaning it depends on the position. If your position is high stakes, high cost, meaning let's say you're spending a lot of money on salary, on benefits, on all this kind of stuff, the package that you're offering this person, it's a lot more risky because obviously this person is doing important work, high value work, high impact work.

5:15Meaning if they don't do it right, it's really going to impact your customer in a big way in your business as a result. So the risk is much higher. So with a high risk hire, like an engineer in my case with the software company, you want to err on the side of being cautious, of really sticking towards the actual experience and what they actually can pull off. They should easily do what you need them to do so that they can expand and do even more. It may cost you a little bit more to get that kind of hire, but you're going to get more output and it's going to cost you less in the long run in terms of mistakes and issues down the line in terms of poor work.

5:54So if they're in a high position that's going to impact the business in a big way, a manager, a decision maker, my number one priority is skills and output. That doesn't mean the attitude doesn't matter. That's just the first thing I look at. If they pass that criteria, if I can check that box, I then look at the next criteria, which is attitude, which is cultural fit. They have to check this box too. They can't be a jerk. They can't be horrible to work with, right? So we want to make sure that they are, you know, a good team player, pleasant. They're able to work with others. They're able to communicate with others.

6:29They don't need to be this positive rock star, but they have to be able to mesh with the team seamlessly. Now, let's say the role is not that significant. It's something that maybe won't impact the customers directly or in a big way, or even the cost of this hire is not super expensive and therefore the risk is low. In this case, I switch the priorities, meaning if they have a great attitude, if they're positive, if they're trainable, if they're a quick learner, if they want to learn, if they're hungry. These are all things that are hard to actually train. You can't train somebody to want something.

7:07You can't train somebody to have a good attitude, to be positive, to be a go-getter, to take initiative. That's a come from them. So if they have that, that gets ticked for me. The second box, qualifications, able to do it. If they haven't done this job before, they haven't done the tasks or the things you need them to do in this job before, they haven't done it in the past, then they need to have some sort of skills or have done something that's transferable. So for example, let's say you're hiring somebody who's a customer service agent. and they've never done chat support, but they've done phone support.

7:39So they know how to deal with customers. They know how to communicate with customers and they've done a good job with that. They never actually done it on a keyboard or right through chat back and forth. It's still live support, but that is a skill they can transfer and just be trained on chat support, help them with their typing skills, help them with the communication via the word, the written word or the typed word. So they have some, you know, I would say parallel experience to what you're looking for. If they do have that and they have a winning attitude, I will go and make that hire. Remember, this is a low risk hire.

8:12So if it doesn't work out, you can part ways and find somebody else to replace them. I have one caveat, though. When you are hiring mainly on attitude and potential, you need to have some sort of extended interview or probation plan. What does this mean? Anybody can seem pleasant in a couple of interviews, right? Some people are just really good at interviews. They're really good at showing their best self. They're positive. They're prepared. Maybe they've done a lot of interviews. The point here is that that's not enough to commit to this person. So if they are lacking the skills a little bit and you're not sure they can actually do the work, but they really wowed you in the interview, then agree to some sort of extended trial period.

8:57This could be a month. This could be two months. But the point here is that you're giving each other a chance to feel each other out and see if you actually are a good fit for each other. In this period, you can terminate the agreement at any time and they can terminate the agreement at any time if they don't feel like this is a good fit too. But the point here is that you get to actually see them work with your team for an extended period of time. It's not just a flash in the pan interview kind of trial where you get to see them be their best self for 30 minutes or an hour. No, you actually see them do the work, see if they actually are trainable, if they have potential, if they are a positive influence on the team.

9:32And in this period, you can actually see for yourself if they can actually do the job. Now, in that period, I wouldn't stop interviewing people. I would continue to screen people, find people because they may not work out sooner than later. They might not work out after a week and you realize, oh, I need to find somebody to replace them. So don't put your foot off the gas in the recruitment when you hire somebody in this situation. Keep interviewing, keep searching because you might need somebody to replace them in the short term. Like I mentioned in the beginning, recruitment is the hardest part of business.

10:04You've got to evaluate talent very quickly and hopefully make the right hire. Before we wrap up, I want to give you a tip that I think a lot of people overlook. A lot of people do not do this, and it's actually the most powerful tool you can use to make the right hire. And that is speaking to references. I don't say check references. Check references just means check if they actually worked at some place or they actually worked for that period of time. No, I want you to speak to the people that worked with them before. It could be a line manager. It could be a colleague. The point here is that you want to learn from them through a quick chat.

10:42It could be a phone chat. It could be on a video call. The point here is this is the best barometer. This is the best test to really find out who this person is because you can hear in their voice. You could see in their face if it's a video call. if this person genuinely is a rock star, is really good, is what they say they are on the interview, right? And all my questions is give me an example, right? So can you tell me of a time when person X was on a short deadline and was able to actually pull it off and save the project? Can you give me an example when they couldn't do something on time and had to communicate to you and say, hey, I need more time or I need more resources?

11:24I also like to ask questions like, when we hire people, we like to train them and give them new skills. What are some things you think our candidate would be great at if we hired them? What do you think is an area that this person that we're looking to hire would need to improve where we can train them and invest in them when they get started at our company? This is a kind of nice way to find out what are some areas that might be weaknesses that you can shore up in the future. Listen, a lot of references, they'll ignore you. They're not going to respond to you. That's why you have to reach out to maybe five, six, seven references, and maybe you'll get one or two.

11:59And ask for them. Ask for as many references as possible from the candidate and say, hey, this is just a procedure, and this is going to help you tremendously to get to the truth about this hire. Thank you so much for listening to The$100 MBA Show. If you love what you hear, why don't you hit follow on your favorite podcast app? That way you don't miss a beat. by hitting follow on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use right now. You get our next episode automatically and you get all our back catalog episodes, over 2000 business lessons for you to devour. Go ahead and follow us right now.

12:33Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of my favorite things I like to use as a judgment, as a barometer, as an indication if I want to hire this person, this person is good for us and the team, is after the interview, do I want to continue to talk to this person or am I just happy the call is over? If I felt like, wow, that was short. I wish I had more time to talk to this person. That means that I probably am going to enjoy working with them, that they're not boring. They're not uninteresting. They actually can add value in a lot of ways that I didn't maybe perceive or imagine. This is similar to meeting a friend or meeting somebody at a meetup and be like, oh, that person's cool.

13:11I hope we meet each other again. I hope we can meet up for coffee sometime soon. This is a good sign they're a good fit for you and your team. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

13:44Thank you.