MBA2477 Q&A Wednesday: I need to hire a developer. How do I make the right hire without stressing out?

0:08Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, helping you build a better business with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenhom. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday, where we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Michelle, and Michelle asks, I need to hire a full-time developer. How do I make the right hire for an engineer without stressing out and getting overwhelmed? Fantastic question, Michelle. And you're in luck because I have interviewed and hired literally dozens of engineers as I was building my software company, Webinar Ninja, which I grew to over 30 ,000 users and then just recently sold and had an exit.

0:57In today's episode, I'll be sharing with you my exact process for hiring any employee and then also specifically how to hire a developer. Whenever you're hiring anybody, but especially a technical role, maybe a role that you're not familiar with or have technical knowledge in, things can get risky. You need to know how to evaluate people and attract the right people for the job. I'm going to show you how in today's lesson, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. making the right hire in your business, especially in a critical position, a critical hire, like an engineer, like a developer who's going to help you develop your software or your app, their impact on your business is going to be crucial.

1:38It's actually going to make a huge difference in your bottom line because you're improving your product and therefore you're able to really demand higher prices and a better experience for your customers. But on the flip side, making the wrong hire can cost you a lot. I know firsthand because I made it higher in the technical space in my software company that cost me nearly half a million dollars. So in today's episode, I'm going to go through the process that I went through and refined so I don't make that mistake again and how to attract the right people to your business so that you don't make a costly mistake.

2:16The first thing I want to start with is you should have the mentality of taking your time with hiring. I'm not saying slow walk it or procrastinate. I'm saying that it's better to hire slowly, to take your time to find the best person, not anybody who could do it. Because getting it wrong can be quite costly, like I mentioned. They say in business, it's best to hire slowly and fire quickly, to stop the bleeding as soon as you notice it's not working out. So it's actually better to take your time with hiring, even if it takes a few months to make that hire. That's a more strategic move. I know that sounds, you know, a little bit not attractive.

2:54Maybe you want to make this hire quickly so you can get some work off your table or to move a project forward, but you should allow enough time to make the right hire. Sometimes you get lucky and the right person comes earlier than you expect, but plan to take your time. Don't rush this. This is not something you rush. Trusting people in your business. When you hire somebody, you're trusting them to take care of your baby, the thing that you built, and to make it better. Next, I believe that 50 % of all the hassles and the stress and the risk of hiring can be solved through the application process.

3:31You want to make sure you're attracting the right people. And how do you attract them? Well, through that application process. So what we'd like to do is when we post a job, we have a very clear job description. I don't recommend you look at other job descriptions that have a similar role that you're hiring for and trying to kind of copy it or borrow from it. I like a three-part job description that is written in layman's terms, in just conversational language. So the three parts of this job description is talking about what the job is, what your responsibilities are, and what you're expected to do.

4:06Like literally, what is the day-to-day actions they're going to do? What are they going to be responsible for? what they're actually going to be doing every day. So for an engineer, it could be pushing weekly code to improve and update our software, solving bugs every single Thursday, whatever it is. Okay, be specific, get real. Don't try to sugarcoat it. It's better for you to set people up with the right expectation. Part two is why. Why should you work here? This is where you actually sell the job to the applicant. They're going to sell themselves because they want the job, but you have to also sell why they should work there.

4:43One of the things that we say is, we're gonna challenge you to grow. And most of the people that work at our company say that they do their best work of their careers with us. You might wanna say, hey, we only hire A players, so you're gonna be working with other talented people. Again, this part is all about why they would want to work there. Third part, a bit about the company, the story behind why you started it, and the vision, the mission, what you're really doing this for, the why behind your purpose and the reason why you get up in the morning to do your business. They need to be sold on what they're joining, the mission they're about to take on.

5:19So this is really important. This is something that you should include in your job description. Now, you might be saying, what about qualifications? What about experiences? What are you looking for here? I mean, you can include that if you'd like in your job description, but honestly, anytime somebody applies, and we'll talk about the application process, they're going to include their LinkedIn, they're going to include their CV, they're going to include their resume. And you can find out, you can filter what their experience is and then you can choose. Okay. But if you write what they actually have to do, that really matters.

5:48If they haven't done it before, then they're going to apply. Next is the application process. So at the bottom of the job description, we say apply here. And there's a link to a Google form. Very simple. A Google form is easy to create. It's free to create. And basically, this is a form that we ask them a bunch of questions about that job role to give us examples of when they solved certain problems we'll need them to solve in the future, in the job. So this is basically a chance for them to tell us stories about their past. If this is a remote job, we ask questions like, what's your home setup?

6:22What does your office look like? We like to ask questions like, give us an example of when you had a conflict with a fellow employee or even your manager and how you resolved it. I know that they can think about this and script this and even use chat dbt if they want to, but that's okay. I'm okay with them trying to make an effort to answer those questions. And then I can reiterate or ask them in a different way in the interview if they get through. But I want to get some answers from them. I want to learn about how they approach this question or these problems rather than the actual answer. Lastly, and this is very important, especially for a job like an engineer, we ask people to send us a video.

6:57They shoot a two minute video answering a question or a prompt that we give them. This could be something so simple, something like share a project or something that you built that you're really proud of. And what was the outcome? Or sometimes we get a little deeper and say, share a time where you failed at something horribly. And what did you learn from it? Now, this part of the whole process is critical because it actually filters out so many people. Number one, many people, you'll be surprised. I would say most people don't do this part. We make it optional for a reason. We don't make it required because we want to see who has the initiative to do it.

7:32But if they're not willing to go on camera and talk about themselves, then for us, this is not a good fit because we're going to be talking to each other all the time on video, on Zoom calls. I need to see how this person communicates. I need to see in their face how they feel about this job, how they speak about their experience in life and in business or in work. So when they do submit a video, any kind of video, even if it doesn't really, you know, win my heart, it usually means I want to speak to them again. It usually means they're worth an interview. And this is a huge filter, especially for engineers, because engineers for some reason think that their job is just technical and they just are supposed to code.

8:15No, they got to communicate. Engineers, the best engineers are great communicators that communicate their ideas and explain why they're doing something and argue for their craft. And that's okay. I need somebody that can communicate with me and the rest of the team, the designers, the support team, the QA, all that. So this part of the application is a huge filter. And I love watching these videos because it gives me an understanding of their personality, how they're approaching the question. I haven't interviewed anybody yet in this process. Right now, I'm just taking in applications and I filter for those who submitted a video first.

8:49I want to see these people first. I want to see these people qualify for an interview first. And if they do, they move on to the next step, which is a initial chat or cultural interview. This is an interview to see if they're a good cultural fit for the company. I like to do this as the initial interview, because if they're not a good fit, if there's somebody I don't think would jive with our team, would really enjoy being part of our team, or we would enjoy them being part of our team, then there's no point in doing a technical interview. There's no point in finding out if they actually could do the job if they're not a good cultural fit.

9:23A lot of people do the reverse. They do the technical type of interview or assessment, and then they do the cultural. I don't like to do that. I like to do the cultural first because this is a quick chat and I can quickly evaluate this in 15, 20, 30 minutes max. A technical interview is a lot more of an investment and it could take a couple of meetings. It could take two, three hours, especially an engineering position. So usually I like to do this with Nicole, my founder, and we just stack them back to back in a day. So we might do, you know, about 10 cultural interviews in one shot. And we'll have a quick 10 minute discussion after we get off the call and say, Hey, how do you feel about this?

10:00If we get off the call and we feel like, Oh, we want to keep on talking to this person. This person seems interesting. This seems person would fit with our team or has a unique perspective that we don't have right now on our team. Then they are checked off and we say, pass them to the next step. If we get off the call and we just feel kind of down or feel like maybe kind of nothing really that's special or they really didn't make an effort in the conversation, then we usually say it's a no. And of course, there's a total mismatch. They are not a good fit for our team. And you'll know that because you know your own team and your own culture.

10:34At that point, you can just email them and say, hey, sorry, seems like we're not a good fit, but thanks so much for applying. There is no point in saying will reach out if anything else opens up because didn't pass the cultural fit. Even if something does open up, they're not a good cultural fit. All right, they pass a cultural interview. Now it's time for the technical interview. Now, depending on the position, you're going to want to assess them in a real world example if they can actually do this job. And literally some of our technical interviews are two, three hours. And it's okay. We tell them beforehand.

11:06The next step is a technical interview with so-and-so on our team. and this could take up to 90 minutes, could be 120 minutes, whatever it might be. And you get them to do it live. So for example, let's say you're hiring for a customer service agent and we get somebody on our customer service team to be on this call to assess this person. And usually it's the manager, somebody who's been around for a while. And we create a mock situation where they are answering customer service support questions. So obviously they don't know the company and all the policies, but you can give them resources like your knowledge base and your website and say, hey, we're gonna get on chat right now.

11:39And it's actually they're on the support chat and they're going back and forth with this person on your team. And this is basically like a role play. And we want to see how they're thinking, how they're coming up with solutions, how they're researching answers. And this is all done over Zoom. And the candidate is sharing their screen as well as their video. So they're actually showing their screen and it's OK. They can browse the web. They can find answers. But we want to just see how they work. We do the same exact thing for hiring an engineer. We give them a task. We tell them to set up their environment.

12:12We show them what we want them to do. Something that is maybe commonplace in our software, maybe creating a table in a database or a login page or whatever it might be. Again, the point here is not for them to have a perfect result, but more about how they work through the problem and how they work and use their resources, whether it's certain websites or tools to be able to do the task. Everything here gets recorded. Okay, we have it recorded so that you can review it later. And if your team is large enough, you don't even need to be this year, okay? You can just have the person on your team do the evaluation.

12:47They record it. You can review it if you ever want to. But at the end of the evaluation, your team member can make a recommendation. Yep, they know what they're doing. Yes, they did a great job. They didn't have the perfect result, but I like the way they think. They're going to be a good fit on the team. Or this person really embellished on their CV and they can't do basic tasks. And I've seen both and I've seen something in between as well. Sometimes after both the cultural interview and the technical interview, we want a third interview just to double check. Some people are kind of closed off.

13:18They don't talk. They're very introverted. And you just want to kind of just make sure we're making the right hire. Now, when it's time to actually hire them, there's nothing wrong with putting them on a trial, trying, verifying before you actually commit. So it's okay for you to say, hey, we're going to give you a three-month contract that's renewable at the end of three months if you pass our three-month probation. This is very reasonable. Hey, in those three months, they can leave whenever they want. You can leave them whenever you want. You can say, hey, this is not a good fit. But basically, this says we need to extend the amount of time we see and work with each other before we make a commitment, before we get married, right?

13:57This is sort of like an engagement, right? So in those three months, your job is to support them so that they can make sure that they're doing the best job possible. Their job is to prove that they belong there. And then upon the three months, you can have a chat with this person to see if they want to continue to work with you and vice versa. And then from there, you can then extend that for a longer period of time. You might want to do an annual contract or two-year contract or whatever it might be, whatever suits you. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not an expert in contracts. I encourage you to speak to a lawyer or somebody who understands contract work that you can come up with your terms of employment.

14:32And this process takes time. I think by just admitting that and accepting that, that lowers the stress. There's no rush here. Two, you have a process in place that's going to filter out a whole bunch of people that don't deserve your time for an interview. Second, the cultural interview allows you to know, hey, do I want to hang out with this person more? Because you're going to hang out with them every day, right? Everybody on your team is going to have to work with them and deal with them, right? Or get to enjoy their presence, right? The technical interview, really make sure that they can do the work that you're asking them to do.

15:02You're not just trusting them and you're not just asking them questions. They're not answering questions. They're doing the work. And then lastly, the trial period allows you to mitigate your risk a little bit. Now, another thing you can do that I've done in the past that works really well is to over hire, meaning you're going to train this person anyway, and you're going to spend that time. You might as well train more than one person, hire two or three people for this position, and then commit to whoever is the best person. You're going to get a lot of work done in those three months, but then at the end of the three months, you can then say, hey, I want to commit to this person.

15:34They're the best person for the job. And you can be totally transparent about this with the new hires. And you might find that, hey, two of them are great. And you keep both of them because you're producing amazing work that's allowing you to produce better results for your business. Well, there you have it. Michelle, thank you so much for your question. If you got a question you want to ask, I can answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday. Just email me over at Omar at 100mba.net. It's my pleasure. It's my job to help you and make sure that you benefit from the experiences I've had over 20 years of entrepreneurship.

16:05So you don't make the same mistakes I did and you don't have to bear the burden of the headaches I did. So I want to make sure that you have an easier path, a smoother path and a more successful one, faster, easier, and with minimal heartache. Thanks so much for listening to the$100 MBA show. If you're on Apple Podcasts, you can give us a written review and a star rating. On Spotify, you can give us a star rating. So thanks so much in advance for just taking one second to do that. Thank you so much. It promotes the show in a big way. We appreciate it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this.

16:34The reason why you want to hire the best person for this job is because the best person is going to be worth whatever you have to pay them. What I found is that if you get experienced, well-rounded, easy to work with people, they produce so much more results. Like they 10x the results that you get with an average person and therefore they're worth whatever they need to get paid. So even if let's say, for example, you're hiring for a position that normally is$100 ,000 a year, but this person's really good and they're demanding 140, they're worth it because they're going to actually get you 10 times as much work in my experience, up to 10 times as much as somebody as one employee that you're paying$100 ,000.

17:17They're more efficient and they're going to just be worth it. At the end of the day, the way you're going to out-compete your competition is with your team. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

17:48Thank you.