EntreLeadership - Proven Strategies for Recruiting Great Employees with Julia Pollak

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, starts this episode with a new segment. He’s joined by Kacy Maxwell—the executive director of marketing for EntreLeadership. They react to a Forbes article, Five Tips On Recruiting The Best Talent For Your Small Business. Is this the same advice EntreLeaders like you should be taking? Tune in to find out! Later in the episode, George Kamel talks to Julia Pollak. Julia is a bestselling author and the chief economist at ZipRecruiter. Her team uses data from the ZipRecruiter marketplace to measure the health of the labor market, identify hiring trends, and help employers like you. Julia shares the research her team has done so we can find and hire the best people for the positions we’re looking to fill. You’ll learn: •      How to fill those open spots on your team •      The key to hiring great people •      If employees are less loyal today •      Whether you should you use Forbes’ hiring advice Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Julia Pollak on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3q69iNt •      12 Components to a Good Hire: https://bit.ly/3qx7DAw •      Get your Master Series livestream ticket today: https://bit.ly/3wQcBfg Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, we react to Forbes five tips on recruiting the best talent for your small business. And then, where do you find good people? Where are they? We're going to let you know in this episode. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast from the Ramsey Network where we help you learn the proven principles for winning as a business leader. I'm your host, George Camel, and each week here on the podcast, I sit down with some of the best leadership minds out there to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. Now we're trying something new today on the podcast, and it's a new segment where we react to the advice out there on the internet, which, as you know, there's some good and there's lots of bad. And today's is Forbes article five tips on recruiting the best talent for your small business. Is this the same advice entree leaders like you should be taking? Well, to find out, I'll be joined by Casey Maxwell, our executive director of marketing for entree leadership.

I'm going to read through these five tips from Forbes, get Casey's reaction on if these are entree leaders, approved or not. So check it out afterwards. I'll tell you how you can share your feedback on this new segment. Let's jump right in. Casey, welcome back to the podcast. How are you? Thanks, George. I'm really well. We're doing a new segment today. You know about it? Yeah, I got some notes on it. Yeah. Good. We are reacting to an article out there. This one's from Forbes. Five tips on recruiting the best talent for your small business. Feels apropos for our entree leaders out there. Well, yeah, hiring is probably one of the most difficult things that leaders do. I mean, we talk to leaders every day. Our coaches talk to them, and one of the biggest problems that they have is hiring people. A lot of people

don't know how to hire people, right? But they are drowning and they need to. So they just run out and find somebody really, really quickly, right? They don't spend the time to actually bring the right people in. And so we actually have a framework. We have 12 components of a good hire. We'll talk about some of those today. We're not going to do all 12. We'll put a link in the show notes so that you can get all 12 of those. You ready to get into it? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, I'm going to read you the tip and some context, and we're going to get your take on it. Okay, great. First tip, find people whose work you admire. To find talented people, all you need to do is scour around the internet. That's a small corner of the world, define awesome marketing talent, make a list of companies you think are crushing it,

do a little sleuthing to find out who worked at those companies or on the campaign. And it's that easy. What are your thoughts on that? When it comes to, when it comes to that, like, go out and find people that are killing it. There's kind of like a misunderstanding of where and what role skill plays in who you hire, right? Skill is extremely important. If you're going to hire someone to do something, they need to at least have some context and have some skill about how to do it. But if you only hire for skill, what you're going to do is you're going to have to hire again because what's going to happen? They're going to find another position out there where somebody's going to pay them a little bit more and then they're going to jump at that and they're going to leave. And then you're

going to have to go through the entire process again. So talent alone is not enough. It's got to be a bigger picture than that. Exactly. Exactly. I've got a story. I had a team member. I was hiring for a position, and it was a young person. She was really, really excited. And I kind of posed a question in the interview, ask her, how would you, tell me how you would walk through a strategy to launch this product. She, the next day, sent me a 26 slide presentation about how she would do it. So the first thing I did is, I looked on the internet to make sure she didn't just find that somewhere else. Blagerism. Right? She didn't. She didn't. She actually spent the time and did that. And it was amazing.

And it was a really good strategy. And at that point, my eyes kind of glazed over, and I was like, she's the one. She's the one. And so there were red flags that came as we continued to go. But I'm like, no, she's so good. And so we brought her in. And she worked for us for about eight months. And then she went to find another amazing job, right?

And so a lot of people would say, well, hey, you got eight great months. That's great. And I'm like, no, I actually didn't get eight months, right? I had a couple months where I was trying to hire. Then she got in, and there was a couple months of training. Onboarding. Onboarding, getting them ready, understanding what our culture is. And then when she left, I had to go through all of that again.

So I actually lost more time because I was just so focused on her being able to do the job. Yeah. Great story that paints the picture there. So we can't just hire for talent. Nope. All right. Tip number two from Forbes. Find people who like you.

Again, the Internet's a great source of potential talent. look through your followers on social media, email subscribers, customer database. Does anyone with relevant skills jump out at you? So what are your thoughts on just finding people who like you? I think that's part of the equation, right? And I think most of this article, it's not that it's bad. It's just incomplete. It's just parts of the picture.

So you want to find somebody who likes you, but you really want to find people that are passionate about what you're doing. You don't want somebody that's going to come in and, you know, we say, want a J-O-B, right? We want somebody who wants to join the mission and get excited about about coming to work every day, right? And so if they just like what you do, that's one thing. But if they're passionate about pushing it forward, that's the kind of person that you need to hire. But we have another principle. I'd love for you to talk about it, George. It's do you like them? Ooh, that's big. Yeah, it's a two-way street here because we have a lot of fans, and I love our fans. They're amazing. We have a lot of fans. We have a lot of fans. We have a

a lot of Entree leadership fans, but it doesn't mean that they would be a great hire here just because of passion. And, you know, we have Ken Coleman, one of our Ramsey personalities, and he talks about talent, passion, and mission. And there's a, you want, we want to find the sweet spot of someone who has all three. Do they have the skills? Do they care deeply? Do they care about the results? And that is what you're really looking for. So when you just find people who love you, they could be crazy. Yeah. And we tell people it's okay to fire your, your customers. if they're crazy. Yes.

And so that's a part of the equation. You've got to like me in a relationship, but I have to like you too. Yeah, you're going to be around these people all the time. You can't just hire someone that you absolutely hate being around just because they're really good at a job. That will make every day terrible for you. So make sure that you like them as much as they like you. That's a good starting point, but it can't end there. Good.

All right. Tip number three, ask the top people in your industry for referrals. It's unlikely you'll recruit the head of SEO. at Shopify to join your small startup, but you can't ask him for a referral. Most people at the top of their game are well-connected, and you can get some great referrals. What are your thoughts on that? That's great if you are just looking for talent. Again, back to the first one, if you're just looking to get somebody who's really good at the thing that they do, asking for referrals from people, that's what they'll send you, right? We go about it a different way where we are looking for

referrals, but we look in-house for those referrals. So we, We look among our team for referring people like us to come work with us, right? We talk about the people that we want to work with, we call them thoroughbreds, right? They're the ones that care about the organization, they care about the mission, and they're good at what they do, right? It's all of that together. The ones that we don't want in the organization, we call them donkeys, right? They're the ones that are just looking for a J.O.B. They don't really care.

They're the ones that... They just heard Ramsey's a good place to work. Entree leadership is a great team. Exactly, exactly. And the minute the work is done, they immediately jump on YouTube. They're not saying, oh, what else can we do to push this forward? They're like, nope, hey, I did all you asked. So making sure you get the right people in, and the people that know that the best are the people that you brought in.

So if you're hiring the right people up front, those people are going to be able to find their friends. We say thoroughbreds run with thoroughbreds, right? So they're going to be able to refer other people in. Now, one of the ways you can do that is incentivize them. So we have, we incentivize people if somebody refers somebody and they come in and they get $500 if that person stays 90 days. And if it's a developer, they get two grand, right? And we count it in front of everybody. And so we make it a big production because we know they're going to bring the right people in and they're going to bring in people that they like and that want to work with us.

Yeah. And we're clear that this is not the guy you ran into at a coffee shop and you barely remember his name. This is someone who you have a relationship with. You know their integrity, their character. You know those pieces. You know they'd be a fit. So just to qualify this. Yes.

Not just any stranger you run into on the street. Yes, exactly. All right. Number four, hire a recruitment specialist. Just because I didn't have much luck with the recruitment agencies, doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. It depends on who you use. And they go on here.

What are your thoughts about hiring recruiting specialists? If you are a larger organization, like we have in-house recruiters. The best thing about in-house recruiting or having somebody on your staff that is going to be recruiting is that they know your business intimately. They know what culture you're trying to create.

They know the people that you are trying to bring in. If you go out and get a recruiter, a lot of times they won't understand that or they won't know that. So if you are going to do that and some small businesses are just going to have to do that, make sure they understand the whole picture of the person that you're,

hiring, not just what skills they have. It can't just be, we check the boxes off. You said they needed to have two years of experience and a bachelor's degree. It's got to be more than that. You've got to talk about the culture, the mission, the values, all of those things. Exactly. Love it. Number five, last but not least, create a sexy job posting. I'm uncomfortable just saying that out loud, Casey, in front of you, but that is, that's the tip. We've all yawned our way through dull job ads. They probably don't inspire you to want to apply. Boring job ads can give the wrong impression their company's boring and talented people don't want to work for a boring company. There's a lot of truth in that.

It is. It is. I'm still frustrated that Forbes needs to put the word sexy in this business article just to get people to click on it. But I can guarantee you that none of our job descriptions would fall into the sexy world, right? But there is a principle in there. Like, you have to make sure your job description and your listing. embodies the personality that you want to come in. Sometimes people go way to the other side where it's just this boring. Here is 50 things that you need to do, right? And then the other son goes to all the way to the other side where it's like, we're just a bunch of cool people that like to do fun things. Oh, and maybe we work sometimes. Like, you don't want to go to that extreme. Yeah. So I can

spectrum here. Yes. So I'll read you at the beginning of one of ours. The marketing team at Entree leadership is a powerhouse team that focuses on SEO, SEM, email, social media, and website optimization, all while building real, life-changing connections with our customers. We're looking for a content marketer to ensure we're creating the right content at the right time for the right channels with the goal of super serving our customers. So you see, even in that, there's a healthy mix of here are the skills we need, but we also want you to be on mission and care about our customers.

And by the way, we are hiring for that position, and there are some other positions. Wow, way to sneak in a pitch there, Casey. Right, right. So, hey, if you want to come work on the Entry leadership team, please come. We would love for you to join this mission. And that starts with people who like us. If you're listening to this podcast, I would hope you aren't hate listening to this podcast. Yes.

That's good. Or listening to it to go on your podcast and record what you disagree with that. But the key here is communicate very clearly, but be a person. Yes. Be yourself. you know, capture the culture of the place without going overboard and overselling it to where, you know, it's Seattle's best coffee. And it's like, is it the best coffee? Is it the most amazing place on planet Earth to work? Then I go, I don't believe them. Yeah. But if you're

authentic, you know, this is, we've, you know, Ramsey has been rated one of the top places to work and that's on an actual rating scale outside of here, not just hearsay in our opinion. Yes. So there are ways that you can leverage your own authority in the marketplace and go, no, we are nationally known as one of the best places to work. Yeah. And here's living proof of how we do that. Exactly. Don't oversell it because the worst thing you're going to do is get people in there expecting something else.

Exactly. And then they'll leave. So there's a lot of good truth in these tips. But again, like you mentioned, it's just a little incomplete. And we filled in the gaps here today. Exactly. So thank you for helping me do that, Casey. Definitely.

And you mentioned our 12 components to a good hire. And we actually have a course in Entree Leadership Elite on that. People can start a free trial, which is great. We do. Yep, yep. You can go just to ramsysolutions.com slash entre leadership, and you can find it there. Sweet. Well, Casey, thanks so much for being on with us for this new segment. Always a pleasure to have you. It was fun. Thanks so much, Casey. That was a lot of fun. And we want to know what you think. Did you like that new segment? Did you not like it? We want to know. Call and leave us a voicemail at 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070. Can't wait to hear from you guys. All right, up next, how do you find good people?

And I mean it, how do you find good people that you want to work with that you can hire to help you make an impact? We're going to have a conversation about that right after this. All right, coming up, I am joined by our guest, Julia Pollock. She's the chief economist at ZipRecruiter, and what she does every day is measure the health of the labor market, identify hiring trends, and help employers like you. One of our principles here at Entree leadership is that we believe in the power of a unified team. And that starts with hiring people that not only can do the job, but also care deeply and are a great fit for the team culture. So I'm excited to have Julia on to help us hire those kinds of people so that we can have the impact we want to have. Let's get to it.

Here's our conversation. Julia, thanks so much for being on the podcast with us. Thank you so much for inviting me. So you are the chief economist as ZipRecruiter, which is a very fancy title. What does your day-to-day look like there? I analyze our data inside the company and our huge marketplace to measure the health of the labor market and to supplement our understanding of the national employment data, which is very high level, top line and doesn't really tell you what's happening in specific occupations and locations.

And I use those insights and that data to help job seekers and employers figure out how to succeed, how to get ahead, how to do what they need to do in this labor market. I love it. Well, that last part is exactly why we're having you on today to help our leaders out there find good people, which is surprisingly hard in today's world. Even with a great job market, you're looking in your own city going, where are the good people? How do we find them? And right now there's more jobs out there than people looking for jobs. And that puts leaders in a tough spot.

So where do you find good people these days? Sure. This is the year, the first year on record that the U.S., that businesses exhausted the available support. of labor. You know, there are all kinds of fancy ways to measure labor demand and labor supply, but basically labor demand fully caught up to labor supply this year, and that's why it's so hard. It's right there in the numbers. It's very clear. You're not alone if you're struggling to hire people. It is sort of a nationwide problem. So what do you do? Where do you go? Well, when hiring for leadership positions, I think internally is always the best place to start. It's great for attention.

It's great for morale. You know, there's a saying, train your people so that that they can leave and treat them so they don't want to. And when you promote people internally, you actually meet both of those goals. You tell them that there is a reward for them growing, for them investing in their skills. So they end up investing more of their own time in becoming better and working harder. And you tell them that they don't need to leave, that they can get career growth right there. When it comes to entry-level jobs, obviously, it's a totally different game. And when you need specialized skills that don't exist in your company.

And then there are a couple things you need to do. The first is post your jobs across multiple channels. And the most important ones, of course, ZipRecruiter Indeed and LinkedIn. You've got to be there. The other thing is, don't only attract active talent. Right now, this very little active talent. There aren't that many people actively seeking jobs. And so use the tools that those kinds of platforms give you to find and reach out to passive talent.

We have a tool called Invite to Apply, for example, that allows you to look through a resume database, find the best matched candidates, and then proactively reach out to them and invite them to apply. Candidates love that experience. They love being told, we need you. Uncle Sam needs you. It's a tool been used in recruiting and the military and all over forever, and it really works. People love to feel wanted and needed. So that's the other thing I would suggest.

So the companies that are doing this well, who out there is hiring successfully, and what are they doing to combat this kind of job climate that we're in? You can find hundreds of testimonials of customers who, say, that they have had huge success on ZipRecruiter and then saying exactly why, which tools they use successfully. So ZipRecruiter for several years was not quite meeting as hiring goals. We were struggling to attract top tech talent, for example. In the last year or so, we've been completely crushing it. And there are a number of reasons why. One, we've embraced flexibility. So with huge expansion of remote opportunities, many people now have completely

flexibility around where they work. Of course, in most companies, like 63% of the jobs in America, you can't offer that opportunity to people. Jobs have to be done in the hospital, at the restaurant, you know, at the construction site, in the warehouse. But you can offer greater flexibility around scheduling. And there are all these great apps today that allow employees to trade shifts, to swap shifts without you even being involved, right? That save you a lot of time, give people a lot of autonomy. The other thing is, we've really expanded our employee referral program. So your employees are your best recruiters. Use them, get them, you know, involved. And then lastly, we have made a big investment in hiring fantastic,

top-notch TA professionals who give candidates the personalized sort of white-glove experience that they have come to expect. Yeah, we're big on referrals here at Ramsey. We talk about donkeys and thoroughbreds. We want to hire thoroughbreds and keep the donkeys out. And so we say if you've got thoroughbred friends, which we hire high-quality people here. high quality talent, and that means you probably hang around other people who are high quality. And so we always encourage that. We do, you know, cash referral bonuses of $500 for referring a team member or $2,000 for someone in the tech space, web developers, people like that. And so that's a huge incentive for our team, but those are some of our best hires as well. Have you found that to be

the case? Yes. And there is data to show that people hired that way stay longer, possibly because they have a friend. They have a buddy on the inside. And one of the big values of coming to a workplace is the people you hang out with. When we ask people, what's the number one reason you love being as a recruiter? They say, the people. It's always the number one answer. Well, I want to talk about those postings that you mentioned earlier that's so important. You know, if a tree falls in a forest and no one's around here, it did it fall. That's how it is when you have a great company, but you're not out there. You don't have an online presence. You're not posting across these platforms like you mentioned. So let's talk about the job description. We believe here at Entrez.

leadership that it is vital in the job description to communicate your culture. That's one of the most important parts to kind of vet the people and go, hey, this is who we are. If you're not about that, let's not waste anyone's time. And if we are about that, this is the place for you. So what do you think makes a job description stand out in a sea of job postings? Compelling copyrighting. I mean, make that description of your company delectable. Make it interesting. Communicate clearly what the company's goals and values are. You have to develop an employee value proposition. What do you give to employees? When they have so many options right now, not just other companies, but also freelancing platforms, gig work, people have so many options right now. They also just are coming out

of one of the best environments for starting their own companies ever. So there are lots of people joining these brand new companies. Why should they come to you? We need to make that really clear. And then, yes, you need to post those jobs widely and you need to post them on social media. You need to have a great careers page that's compelling. And you know, the great thing is it's not that difficult to do these things these days. There are so many online platforms that allow you to create a website very, very quickly that allow you to pay a little extra to get advice or design assistance. You can you can spend up a very professional looking website with a great careers page overnight. Now, on top of that job description, obviously you're there to, you know, he wanted to

kind of sell yourself. You're not there to just have a bunch of bullet points about here's the job, here's the role. You want to get people excited about working at your company and investing their time, you know, their career into this place. And one of the other pieces of that is the compensation and benefits. One of the main things job seekers look for are those comp and benefits. And that can range from, you know, the 401k plan to pizza Fridays. There's a wide range of things you can put in there. In your experience, what are the benefits that truly matter to job seekers? So pay is always number one, right? We saw during the pandemic that the share of jobs offering signing bonuses went up from under 3% to about almost 13%.

Wow. And we surveyed people hired in the last six months and asked them whether they'd received a signing bonus. And 22% of the people hired in the last six months have received a signing bonus. I mean, a huge number, right, compared to 4%, which is the historical average in the United States. But we also asked people whether they'd received a raise, and we asked them how long they expected to stay in their new job. And they were about three times as likely to say that they would stay in the job for more than two years. If they got a big pay increase, then if they got a signing bonus. So the signing bonus helps you for hiring. It doesn't help for attention.

So ideally, you want to look at the whole pay structure, the entire comp package, and you want to make that attractive, long-term pay. So obviously base pay is the number one most important thing, but then benefits like healthcare and 401K plans also help a lot. And then people like flexibility, as I said. So invest in the kinds of tools that allow you to offer more schedule flexibility to help people get access to pay early, you know, before payday. Those kinds of things are hugely, hugely helpful. They help people manage their daily lives. They help them avoid, you know, costly overdraft fees. They help them avoid payday loans.

So people are very, very happy when you give them these tools that make their lives a bit easier. Now, you mentioned signing bonuses, and I'm curious because we don't do that around here. I think we find that creates an incentive for people to come on board, to get a check, and then it's a stepping stone to the other place, you know, a year from now. And they're always looking for, if they can get four cents more, they're out the door. And we talk about how we want work to be more than a J-O-B. We don't want you to leave because of four cents more. And so obviously we want to pay competitively and pay market rate and not be underpaying people.

But do you find that a signing bonus can create that kind of environment where people are just looking for the next signing bonus and the next place to work? It definitely can. I mean, it can be a very effective tool to bring people in the door. But, you know, it's not a substitute for a great pay structure that gives people incentives to stick around. that shows them there's a growth path within the company. That's really where you need to focus. And also, you know, in every industry, there's a very different worker profile, right? In teaching, it's mostly women, in, you know, in different jobs and restaurants.

They're hugely different breakdowns in this sort of racial makeup of the workers, the gender breakdown. So tailor the benefits you offer to the great. groups of workers who are attracted to your roles. People want career growth, but many people are in industries where there is no real career growth, right? They're in roles that are kind of low-paid roles and they aren't really a stepping stone to anything. Even there, though, you can offer people career growth outside the job or beyond the job by giving them, you know, tuition assistance and transferable tuition assistance so that if they are not going to get career growth,

perhaps they can hand that opportunity over to their children. So, you know, figure out who your core demographic is, find out what things drive them the most, and then offer those things. It reminds me of, you know, seeing Chipotle or Starbucks, while having many hourly workers, they also offer tuition assistance and they'll cover, you know, the cost of college. And so there are some amazing benefits even for those hourly workers. But for for, for the small business owner who may be looking to hire hourly workers, entry-level positions, you know, they're up against a different kind of fight. So for those maybe first-time job seekers, what are they looking for in those hourly jobs, those entry-level jobs? Well, so, you know,

I think many small businesses actually can provide an almost enterprise-level quality sort of benefit package these days. There are so many companies that are cropping up to help companies do that and to provide benefits that often are at very little cost to the company that are basically, you know, providing discounts that they'll give to the company based on its size and that employees can benefit from if the employer just sort of decides to kind of, you know, participate. But employees don't actually have to pay that much. So there are wonderful companies emerging, like Gratify, for example. It allows you to give people tuition benefits and student loan benefits. It involves just a little bit of payment from the company, but it actually

helps employees kind of structure a whole plan through which some of their pay goes directly into their student loans. When you have a tool like that, that doesn't cost you that much, but that helps people manage their lives a lot, it can be hugely effective for attention, right? Because once people have their loan paid through their job and everything done through their job, it's so costly to leave and set that all up somewhere else. You may as well just stick around. So I would encourage people to look into all of these wonderful companies, these startups, these innovative companies that are emerging, you know, carrots to provide fertility benefits, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, see what there are, what opportunities there are for you to provide something of value to your

employees without making the bank yourself. What do you say to the small business? What do you say to the small business owner who maybe is worried about investing all the time and money into the new hire, all for them to just up and leave six months later. Is that a real fear? It's a real fear. So in our survey of people hired in the last six months, 90% said that they did not regret their decision. They were glad, you know, that they switched from their previous job to their new job. 85% said they were satisfied with their current job. And yet, more than half, said they expected to leave before the two-year mark. So people are on the move. It is very hard to retain people in this kind of environment. That said, I'll go back to that line before. Train people, invest in

them so that they can leave and treat them so that they want to stay. And there are all these little tools that people like so much, that make their lives so much easier that they don't want to lose them. They don't want to give them up. Daily pay is one example. Just, a simple app that allows people to access their their paychecks before payday. But, you know, it's no sweat off your back to give people that opportunity. It can make an enormous difference to employees, and it can make them much more loyal to you as well. Yeah. I've been on the Ramsey Solutions team now for over nine years, which is shocking for, you know, a millennial like me, because I'm seeing with millennials and Gen Z, they're moving to the next thing year after year and they're

trying to climb the ladder faster and faster. They don't want to, and part of it I understand, because they don't want to do what their parents did, which is work 30 years at a job they hate to get very little recognition, very little raise, all to have nothing to show for it at retirement. And so I understand that piece, but what do you say to those who you think maybe need a little more patience and go, you need to invest yourself in a place for a while and really plant some roots? So, you know, I think one really sad thing about the last two years about this pandemic is that it severed the link between effort and reward. during the pandemic everyone got laid off at many businesses the doors were shuttered right you know the best employees along with the worst employees and so that was hugely demoralizing to the people who had been you know who had never taken a day off who had been there at six in the morning and closed out at midnight you know the people who worked really hard who got treated the same way as the people who were slacking and you know just got hired two days ago uh i think that was extremely upsetting to people and many people then developed the attitude huh if they're just going to dump me the minute things because you know

turn bad, why should I care? Why should I have any kind of attachment to my next job? Why should I make an investment? Since then, we've had a different situation, which is that in this very, very tight labor market, companies aren't wanting to fire anybody. We've talked to companies that have said, you know, we used to have a one-strike-year-out policy if people were no-shows for work. Now it's more like a 10-strikes-year-out policy. You basically can't get fired at many restaurants because they can't afford to cut you because they can't afford to replace you. And so that also is having a demoralizing effect where people are saying, you know, I'm working really hard. This person next to me keeps, you know, not being around or standing around talking instead

of working. And they're getting the same paycheck as me and there are going to be no consequences. So why should I, why should I care? And I think there's a huge challenge now for leaders to sort of reset the culture and their organizations and reestablish kind of a performance-based culture and a culture where people feel valued and appreciated and rewarded for their hard work. It's going to be extremely challenging work. This is not something that is easy. A culture of complacency sets in, and it's very difficult to turn around. But that's sort of the leadership crisis, I think.

Many, many, many companies are in right now, and they need to do something about it fast. And we're seeing that, almost like the real estate market, where you have a seller's market and a buyer's market. It was an employer's market, and now it's turning into an employee market, where employers have to bend over backwards to keep their team. We're seeing this trend of quiet quitting, where people are just kind of giving up and still clocking in. It's becoming like office space in a real way

where we're just going, I'm just not going to try, and they're not going to do anything about it. And that's a huge problem when you want people who care deeply, who do great work, who want to be there, and that's a huge challenge for our small business owners out there. What encouragement would you give to them as they battle against that? So I think people love recognition. They love to feel appreciated. So start with small things. You know, set little attainable goals for your employees and reward them for meeting those goals and hope that it leads to more good things.

I mean, it's kind of almost like the challenge that the parents deal with every day. You know, how do you encourage your kids to be sort of independently motivated to do good things? At first, they're not going to be independently motivated, and you have to provide some kind of external sticks and carrots. So I would encourage companies to have high expectations and to sort of expect that their employees will meet those and then to reward and recognize those who do. Yeah, and that's a huge part of culture,

which we talked about, you know, comp and benefits and experience in the role. But when it comes to culture, that seems to be something that companies can't see. seem to wrap their heads around and they're trying and they're going, hey, what if we did a pizza Friday? That's going to be culture. What is the right way to build culture that is actually authentic and not just we checked off the culture box? You know, it's a very tough one. For companies like ours, it's a recruiter that have gone pretty much fully hybrid and remote at the corporate level. It's, it's, you know, even more

of a challenge. We used to have the physical workplace was the place where culture was. We had, We have these really fun office buildings with their little, you know, putting lawns and their ping pong tables and their events and their video game rooms. And, you know, such fun places to be, wonderful meals, breakfasts with, you know, chefs making pancakes. Now all that's basically gone because most people are working from home. And we've also hired people from everywhere now. So you couldn't even bring everyone into the office if you wanted to because they live all over the place. what do you do? My advice is to take whatever risk you see, like the risk that people would become disconnected from one another. And you need to respond to every sort of negative action with a five

times greater opposite reaction. So when COVID hit and suddenly we weren't having our office get-togethers anymore, our CEO said, yikes, you know, I usually do four all-hands meetings a year. I'm going to move that up and do a weekly all-hands meeting. And in that all-hands meeting, I'm going to give people way, way, way more visibility into the operations of the company. I'm going to show them every dashboard that I look at every morning when I wake up that shows performance.

I'm going to show them the measures that motivate me. I'm going to talk to them about the questions that keep me up at night about the future of the company. And that's what he did. And suddenly you had the whole company from all over the country and the world, the Israel team and the UK team and the Canada team all in the same meetings at once. People were encouraged to participate in the chat, getting far more information about the company

and feeling far more connected to the daily operations, to the goals, to the values, to the mission. And so I think often if you identify a risk, you know, the concern that there's not going to be enough culture, not going to be enough glue to bind people together, you should really sit with that problem for a while and think, what would I do if I wanted this to be the most connected company on the planet? What would I do if I wanted people to know everything, to feel like they're on the same page, and then do that, whether it's lots of events, whether it's even just creating voluntary things on the weekends, like telling everyone, hey, there's this game happening. you know, we're going to be buying a block of tickets and you can contribute if you want,

and we'd love to see employees and their families come to the football game this weekend. Small things like that can be so hugely, hugely beneficial. And I encourage people to share their pictures afterwards. You know, that's one small example. We just recently tried, and it was such fun. If you're a little creative about it, I think you can go really far. Oh, absolutely. And our Entree leadership team is great at that.

always meeting regularly, having fun together, celebrating together. And our entire staff here, Ramsey Solutions, we meet every single week, all 1,100 of us in the same room somehow. It's getting tight. And just to communicate and celebrate and share what's going on with the company and share the hard things and share the wins. And that really is a powerful way to build culture that anyone can do regardless of how much money you have, how big your team is.

So great reminders there. Exactly. So, Julia, as we wrap here, what encouragement would you give to those small business owners who are scratching their heads, trying to find a needle in a haystack, finding people who care deeply, who have the skills and experience who want to work. How do you do that? Well, you know, if you are spending time you don't have on this problem, and it's taking you away from your day-to-day functions at your work, well, then you need to hire a recruiter, right? And if recruiting tasks of sort of distracting you from your primary goals of kind of building widgets and selling them,

then you need to hire the best and you need to work with someone who knows this like at the back of their hand and who can help you with all of those things that are part of that problem, employer branding, you know, internal community building, culture, all the rest of it. It's a really important thing. It can have huge benefits for every level of the company. And, you know, those recruiters will help connect you to the business. best tools and sort of tricks of the trade. And, you know, so often you can't do it on your own. And often, you know, the benefits of getting someone really great into that role can be enormous. Yeah, we talk a lot at Entrate Leadership about delegation. And this is one of those areas where

you might not have a team of recruiters like we have here at Ramsey Solutions. You might be a small business and you don't even have an HR team. You are HR. And so turning to some great tools, resources like you guys have a zip recruiter is a great opportunity. for our small business owners out there. So thank you so much for your time today, Julia. Appreciate all the work you and your team are doing to stay connected to the job market, identify the trends, and help employers out there hire the best possible people. Thank you very much. I mean, this is a really tough environment. The numbers speak for themselves, and you need all the help you can get from the very best tools available.

Thanks for your wisdom and insight, Julie. Appreciate you. Big thanks to Julia for joining us on today's show. A lot of good inside baseball there and what job seekers are looking for and how we can make better hiring decisions as leaders. Well, folks, I'm looking at my watch here. We're just a couple of weeks away from Entree Leadership Master's Series. And good news, we just released tickets for the Entree Leadership Master's Series live stream, and you can get yours for a special discount this week only. If you don't know, Master Series is our premier conference for business owners

and their leadership teams, and it's happening September 25th through the 29th. You'll get to stream the event live from anywhere, watch the replays for the rest of the year and learn tactical business ownership on your terms. So go to Entreeleadership.com slash live stream to snag your tickets today. We've also got the link for you in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode of the show, do us a quick favor, follow or subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. Or even better, share this episode with your team, with your friends, or on social media. All of that helps us impact more people and more leaders like you.

Be sure to follow us at Entree Leadership, wherever you hang out on social media. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rudder. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.