the bossbabe podcast - 236. BBS: "I'm Always Hiring The Wrong People"

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Hiring is hard! All entrepreneurs can relate.  We all make mistakes, but staffing changes can be some of the most costly missteps we can make. With the time and investment needed to bring in (and then replace) someone new, it’s critical to get these decisions right as often as possible. But as the world of hiring continues to evolve, best practices change along with it. In this episode of the bossbabe business school, Danielle goes into detail about exactly how to attract the most aligned talent for your business. It starts with being specific, not being afraid to add a little bit of style to your job listing and then doing some advanced personality testing to make sure everyone’s compatible. Listen to this episode before setting up your next job listing to finally attract the perfect employee for that important role in your business. Highlights: How to write a job posting that will attract the right candidates. Steal bossbabe’s tried and true interview process for your next hire. The #1 mistake people make when hiring and how to avoid it. Links: Join The Société — The #1 community for ambitious women who are serious about building profitable online businesses. Follow: Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc

a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas it's just believing in yourself confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome back you guys to the Boss Babe podcast and more specifically one of our Boss Babe business school episode, which I am really enjoying recording for you guys. And thank you so much for the feedback. This really, really means so much. And I'm glad that these are so insightful for you. So a subject I wanted to cover today was how to hire because I hear all the time, I'm always hiring the wrong people. And as we know, a big part of growing your company is hiring a team. You cannot do it all yourself. And it sounds easy, right? I'm going to hire someone. They're

going to be great. They'll do this. I'll do that. I'm going to have more space and more time and more freedom. They're going to make my life so much easier. And sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way. You make the wrong hire. They maybe don't have the skill set that you expected. You maybe clash in personalities and after a little while, the relationship goes up in flames with your dream of growth and freedom, right? As some of you relating to this, I know that you are. So first of all, if you do relate to it, don't panic. You aren't alone. And that's what this podcast is all around is making sure that first of all, you know that every entrepreneur goes through these journeys and what we want to do here is provide a safe

space for you to understand, learn, and grow by making decisions that are actually going to support you in those next steps. And so first of all, we all make hiring mistakes. But the important thing is that we get to learn from them. And in the best case scenarios, you get to learn from other people's mistakes before you do them. So that's what I'm going to be sharing is all the things that we have learned along the way and how now we minimize the possibility of us making incorrect hires. And that doesn't mean we have 100% success rate with our hiring. That's not actually achievable. I think some people present in a certain way and when they come into your company, they're not necessary that way and that can happen. The aim of this is for you to really understand ways that you can minimize the chances of that

happening because hiring takes so much time and money really, whether it's onboarding them and then training them and even finding them in the first place. So I want to minimize that for you. So in this episode, I want to highlight some of the best practices as an entrepreneur that you can make to decrease the chances of you hiring the wrong person. So I'm going to share a couple of steps that you can take. So first of all, step one is write a job outline for everyone. Now, stay with me because I know some of you are going to be like, well, this is so basic. I know this, but listen, lots of people will write a job outline that they are going to be displaying externally, which is absolutely the wrong way to do it. Because what happens, you will speak differently

to that external person than you will do internally. I want your internal job role to be so granular that if that person started next week, they're actually going to know what they're expected to do during that week. And I see this over and over again. The entrepreneurs are like, okay, I'm going to hire for this role. And it's going to be like, let's say, for example, it is your responsibility to create a strategy for podcast growth. That is so freaking vague that when you start at that point, you're not really understanding the skill sets that are going to need to be involved with that person creating the strategy for growth. So I want you

to go more granular as if no one else is going to see it. And it's literally things like, okay, I want them to be able to strategically select real content that gets put on Instagram and TikTok to support the podcast growth. It might also be, I want you to be able to create a list of guests that will be appropriate for the podcast and have aligned audiences and create a process to reach out to them. All these things that are very, very granular and go into detail so that when you are getting to the KPIs, the key performance indicators, it's very clear what they are, what is going to be a good measure of the role, and also the competencies that they need to have. So unless I've gone into

detail about, okay, I know that this person needs to be able to select good reels, then really to be able to do that, I'm looking for someone who has some experience maybe with social media, either growing in other companies or understands even how to create good video content. All of these pieces I wouldn't necessarily get to if I was just starting with that, oh, I want you to hold the podcast growth. So just starting very, very granular will help you understand the competencies that this person needs to have. Exactly. It'll help you understand their experience, the skill sets, the softwares that maybe they needs to have exactly to help you understand their experience, the skill sets, the softwares that maybe they need to be utilizing. It might be very unclear they need to be able to use InShop or Adobe if they're doing more creating. So I don't want you

to be afraid of getting really, really granular and into the weeds because that can actually really support you when it comes to this next section, which is step two is write your public job posting. So when you do your official job description, these are the things you're going to include. A brief summary of the role. Okay, got it. You're going to take that from the job description and that's where you can get a little bit more fluffy if you want to, so that's easy for someone to digest. The next bit is, and write this down if you are able to, or if you're driving or something, bookmark this and you know you can listen again when you've got your notepad ready. The next one is a brief summary of

the company. Now this is about the mission. And I want you to be really, really clear in this. One thing that people really try and do with job descriptions is appeal to everybody. But I don't want you to do that. I want you to appeal to your audience, the people who you think are going to make good employees. So let's say, for example, at Boss Babe, we're very clear. Our mission is to help women build wealth. If you're not really interested in that, we don't want you as part of that company. That has to be something that you're also passionate about to really work here. And we're apologetic in that. So we are very, very open about who we are when we're giving that summary of the company. And I would really, really encourage you to do the same. Also specific job responsibilities,

taking from what we've already outlined and making it sound a little bit more, let's say finesse. We use a little more finesse in the wording, but we don't go fluffy. So I really don't want you to be literally taking out paragraphs that you've really outlined as true tasks and just doing one line. Like just really get a little bit granular because what's really important is you want to make sure that when people are applying, they've got a good idea around what they're going to be doing. The education and qualifications, again, that's going to have come from the competencies that you've already established. But then I also want you to talk about personality traits and characteristics. And again, the key thing here is that I see all the time is, oh, I really want a hardworking individual. No, let's cut the fluff,

go and say, I want someone who is able to take a visionary's ideas and integrate them into a team, utilizing Asana and managing their team's KPIs underneath them. Get really specific about what you want. Build your dream employee when you're writing that down. Write the job description in a way that really reflects you and your brand and your company. Use the voice of your company so you can actually connect to your next great employees. So set the tone that you want to be. Don't try and be anybody else within this. The more personality that you actually put into the job description, the better. Again, like I said, be as clear and specific as you can and exact on what you're looking for. Do not be scared to repel people.

Much as you do when you're describing your perfect client, let's say, I want you to really think about who is your perfect employee and make sure you capture the personality qualities and attributes that you're looking for as much as the experience and qualifications that you are going to require. Avoid using jargon words, bland words that just really don't describe anything. You see them in job descriptions all the time in corporate companies. Stand out, have some personality when you are sharing. We always utilize the word unapologetic. You're going to see that in our job descriptions. We're utilizing the words empowerment. You're probably going to see that in our job descriptions. Really, we bring our voice to our job descriptions so that when people are looking through, we're going to stand out. We don't want to be looking the same as Pepsi or Netflix or anyone

else that people are looking towards coming to us for and get them excited about your brand and your mission and your vision. That's really powerful. Again, just like you would be selling to a customer when we say, if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one, the same applies to job descriptions. So sell them who you are, but also speak to that specific person versus trying to make your job description as attractive to everybody because therefore you won't attract the people that really you do want in your company. The next step is, and this is the final step, is step three, the hiring best practices. So these are our boss people. And so I'm going to give you a little rundown of some of the hiring best practices. After you've done the job description or your job role, sorry, then you've got your job

description, which is your external document. This is how we actually go through our hiring procedure. So first of all, we always search within our network. And I really recommend you do the same. If you have an email list, if you have an audience on social media, tap into that because they're already going to be aligned with your brand. They're following you. They're choosing to follow you. They're choosing to buy from your company. So this is always a great, great place to start. Number two is ask every candidate the same questions. I see this over and over again, people trying to ask different candidates, different questions. It's not like you're rifting off what someone else says. I want you to have a

list of questions that you knowingly go in with. And the reason I recommend that is because when we get to the next point, which is scoring, you are going to be able to score every single one individually. So what I do is have a list of questions. I ask them and I'll score them out of five, how well they answer that question. And if I have more than one of us from the team interviewing, they will do the same. It's very, very clear for me being like, okay, hang on a minute. That candidate scored 30 out of 60 points, but

this one scored 45. And it becomes much easier to really see who are the standout candidates versus, oh, I think they answered this question well, but they answered it in this way. I'm not really sure. My feeling is they're not the right person. So really just grounding it in a scoring method is really, really powerful. And that's super easy to do in just an Excel spreadsheet. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place.

So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on

getting organized and making things as smooth as possible I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash bossbabe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash bossbabe. The fourth thing to do is assess their work. It's often appropriate to get the candidate to develop a work product before or after the interview. Personally, what we like to do is do a first round of interviews. And then if we're really enjoying getting to know them, we would like them to do a little bit of work on their side,

which is showcasing their work to us by either doing a test project or getting some information of examples of their work that they have done in the past. And so, for example, let's say I might be asking a potential partnerships manager, right? I might be interviewing someone to handle partnerships. Then something I might ask them to do is like, hey, can you send through a reach out email and a hypothetical partnership plan? And I always say hypothetical. I want to be partnerships, then something I might ask them to do is like, hey, can you send through a reach out email and a hypothetical partnership plan? And I always say hypothetical. I want to be very, very clear. You're not doing this to rip people's work off. You're not going to be like, oh yeah, I'm just going to basically use these people I'm interviewing to take their ideas and then apply it to my business. That's absolutely not what this process is about.

And so you should be very, very clear, like make sure that even if you're giving them certain tasks to do, they're not actually things that you are literally going to apply into your business straight away. So just be very, very wary of that. We always want to be maintaining high morals and ethics. And this is also a great way to see how, let's say, someone's brain works. I've done it for operations people before. Like, hey, can you show me a flow chart on a failed payment system? And just getting them to do a flow chart. And I'm not necessarily feeling like they have to nail it because they don't know all the ins and outs. But really, it's an exercise to see how their brain works, the things that they think about. Also, how they present it. So I'm looking at when they send it back to me. Did they care about

branding? Or did they care about spelling mistakes? So all of these things you tell a lot about person's personality by how they actually complete this test project. The next thing is number five, move fast. One of the biggest determinants of candidate conversation is how quickly you interview them and how quickly you make them an offer. The shorter time that they spend in the interview process, the better. If you really drag this out, you can actually lose some really good candidates. So be very organized. Give yourself a week to interview everyone. Tell them what the next steps are going to be after that. Okay, it's going to be the best project and then we'll get you back for final interviews. So communicate with them what that plan is and the timeframe that you expect it to go through. Number six is check candidate

references, period. I have done this before. I have hired people. I've not checked their references and it always backfires. I know it can be cringe following up with them sometimes, but it's really, really important. And then the last one is consider final candidates to take assessments that really tell you a little bit more about their personalities. So maybe like the Wealth Dynamics test, the Enneagram test, the personality tests that really show you how they think. Because quite often, you might see on Myers-Briggs that they have this certain trait or on Wealth Dynamics, they have these other certain traits or disc and you might realize that they're not really complementary to you or that you actually might clash or that really it

might just not be a great partnership. So that is a great thing to ask because I always say, when you are hiring someone, you're choosing them, but they're also choosing you. And so when I do get people to do personality tests, I also do share some of my details afterwards so that it does feel aligned and fair for them and they can make an informed decision on whether they really want to join the company or not. But these are the seven processes that we go through once we've done that job description and put it out on that external platform, making sure that we're drawing in as many aligned people as possible so that then the process moves much quicker on the backend. So I really hope this is powerful for you. If you are looking for more

support in hiring, I highly recommend that you join us within Inside the Society. So I really hope this is powerful for you. If you are looking for more support in hiring, I highly recommend that you join us with Inside the Society. We actually have a whole section on this with templates, example job descriptions, the hiring scoring template that I was also talking about is all in there. And you can join us for just as little as $48 a month. So I'll link in to the society there so that you can join us, not only join us within the community, but also get access to these templates and some video trainings that are going to help you a little bit more specifically. So as always, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please feel free to DM me any of the questions or things that you'd love to see me cover on the

Boss Babe Business School podcast, because that is my pleasure to really help and support you guys as you move through your entrepreneurial journey and build wealth. So until next time, I will see you soon. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast, then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our Side Hustle Success Kit, your simple, no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com, and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox.