The Home Service Expert Podcast - Harnessing the Power of Video Technology to Interview and Hire A+ Talent

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Jeremy Tolan is the Partnerships Manager at Spark Hire. An expert at video interviews, recruitment, sales, marketing, and technology, he has helped hundreds of leading organizations successfully implement video interviewing in their recruitment processes. To date, over 6,000 organizations have used Spark Hire to interview millions of candidates across more than 100 countries. In this episode, we talked about video interviews, hiring, recruitment strategies...

something that's important, at least at our company and a lot of other businesses too, is that your employees, your top candidates, they're always pursuing opportunities to make themselves better. They're always trying to grow and improve themselves. So you might want to ask them, what's a skill that you'd like to improve upon? And just hear about, what's their self awareness? How are they able to judge themselves now? Are they aware of their gaps? What are the steps that they're taking to actually improve and hone in on these skills? I think that's a really awesome interview question too. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's

really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. You guys know who I am, Tommy Mello. It is a hot day in Phoenix, as usual. I've got a lot of energy today. It's going great. Let's go ahead and say hi to Jeremy Tolan. Jeremy's in Chicago, and the great news is he's finally going back to work after this COVID, but today he's joining us from his house. Jeremy is an expert at video interviews, so we'll see how that goes today. Recruitment, sales, marketing, and technology. He started in 2012 as a marketing assistant at SparkHire, and now he's the partnerships manager. Jeremy Tolan is a partnership manager at SparkHire,

the world's number one video interviewing platform. He's responsible for cultivating and maintaining relationships among SparkHire strategic partners. Since joining the team in 2012, he's served in a variety of roles and helped hundreds of leading organizations successfully implement video interviewing. Today, more than 6,000 organizations have interviewed millions of candidates across 100 plus countries on SparkHire. And I'm also a client of SparkHire. It's a very, very good software. Jeremy, first of all, how the heck are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for the intro.

That was awesome. Yeah, the intros are always a major piece of what we plan on doing here. Let me see. But first, let's go ahead and talk about your career. Just a little bit about you. And then we can go ahead and break down what Spark Hire is and how it's used. Definitely. And yeah, thanks for the opportunity.

I really appreciate being included in this conversation. And to kind of walk you through my career at SparkHire, Tommy mentioned a moment ago, I started a little more than nine years ago as a marketing assistant. I ended up in our sales department for a while as an account executive, where I was able to help hundreds of organizations successfully implement video interviewing. And I was also able to help start our customer success department where I was able to learn so much from our customers about how they're making process

improvements and addressing their top hiring challenges. I ended up progressing to become a sales manager where I continue to learn a lot from customers and prospects because I was managing a team of account executives that were connecting with hundreds of different businesses on a monthly basis. And I also had the opportunity to learn a lot about how to put together a really efficient and effective hiring process because I was growing the team myself too and growing our sales team also. And for the last year, I've been the partnerships manager at Sparkhire where I work closely with our different partners to make sure that they're supported so that we can really work together to improve hiring outcomes for our mutual customers. I love that. It's like you said that a couple of times.

Yeah, I thought about it before. I've mentioned it a few times. Yeah. So there's what I want to do. I want to make the whole podcast we'll definitely highlight the software but this whole thing right now i think this is a great podcast because everybody's saying how the hell do i find more people right and i want to throw out a ton of gold nuggets first of all i got this book i got a lot of copies of it i've got about 100 books on hiring but this book called who is a very very good book i don't know if you've checked it out jeremy i've never read it myself oh well that's a book you're gonna have to get into but yeah so we're gonna throw out the million gold nuggets let's first talk about let's just jump into the meat and the bones let's talk first about what spark hire is and how it's used and then we'll go into a lot of hiring questions.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, put simply, it's a video interviewing platform. A lot of businesses are familiar with what we would refer to as a live video interview, where you can connect with candidates in real time through a web camera. A lot of businesses might have been using things like Zoom or Microsoft Teams to do things like this over the last year and a half in particular. What's a little bit unique about SparkHire is we also provide something called a one-way video interview where you could set up some questions in advance. Candidates are able to record video responses to them, but they do it on their own time before a deadline you set for them. That way it's super convenient for the candidates because they're not scheduling an actual time to be interviewed by you, but it's also really convenient on the business owners end where you can review the recordings of these interviews. Whenever it's convenient for you,

you learn a ton about candidates by seeing them on video display. It's really easy to get feedback from anyone else in your organization that you want to collaborate with to make a decision. And you're able to interview so many more candidates in less time to decide if you actually want to advance them to the next stage of your hiring process or not. Yeah, I think it's a great tool because I know within about one minute or less, I mean, probably 10 seconds of someone talking. I don't necessarily know if I want them, but I know if I don't want them. Over the years, I figured out exactly a lot can be said by the way you present yourself.

A lot can be said by the way you talk, your eye contact, your body language. And you get to see that in a video a lot more than you do in a phone call. And what's nice is you could automate it. And just, I ask questions like, tell me a little bit about yourself and why you think you'd be a good fit and what you know about the company. And they got an opportunity to respond. And then I said, one of my questions is, you know, I'm a big competitive guy. I like to win games.

Did you play any college or high school sports? Was there anything you might've done like symphony or karate? Something that you woke up for and did or what you're passionate about? Because competition is a big deal for me for certain roles. But you can set your questions up, and they got to respond to the questions, and you can watch the whole interview, but you can weed a lot of people out and actually go through a lot of people. I've talked to at least 2,000 people that said, hey, you mentioned SparkHire.

We're using it now. And this is before we even had you on the podcast. But a lot of people are saying finding employees are hard. What are the most common hiring challenges the most business owners are struggling with right now? Yeah, I'm sure it wouldn't be surprising that it could be different from business to business. Some of the more common challenges that I'm hearing about might be related to the efficiency of a hiring process because you don't want to miss out on top candidates just because you're not able to get them through your process fast enough. And if you have an open role,

you want your top candidates to be able to be in the role contributing as quickly as possible. So you can really deliver on the goals of your business. Other businesses that we're talking to, they might experience challenges collaborating with different team members that they need to collaborate with to make a decision about a candidate. Maybe they're spread out across different locations, or it's just hard for them to meet to discuss feedback on a candidate to decide how they want to proceed with them or not. And if you're having trouble doing that, or for other reasons, if you're not making great hiring decisions, that could also hurt you on the other end where maybe you have challenges with employee retention too. Your candidates aren't sticking around for that long once you

do hire them. And that could be really devastating for a business too. Other things that come to mind could be interview scheduling challenges. Maybe that sounds familiar to some business owners where you're playing phone tag with candidates, you're exchanging a million emails just to figure out a convenient time to connect with them for an interview. I think part of it too, something that's been very relevant over the last year and a half is figuring out how to adopt a more virtual hiring process. You might have had challenges where you can't actually meet with candidates in person when you're trying to figure out ways that you could still really get to know your candidates from a distance too. Yeah, I think it's great. You know, we're in 19 states now.

And what I like to do is before I set up a ride along and we've got a whole process and this takes a lot of mapping. This took a lot of whiteboarding, but you know, I like it that a lot of people are able to see the candidate that we chose because what you got to have is I've got trainers and I have recruiters and then I've got lead techs and then I got area managers. And I want all four of them to agree on what we're looking for because a lot of the problem that I see with a lot of companies is they haven't defined who their avatar is. And I'll tell you this. Do you think my avatar spends more time? And I'm going to have a multiple choice question for you, Jeremy. There is a right answer. I'm going to say Indeed, Monster, Craigslist, or Facebook? Where does my avatar spend more time?

That's a good question. Where do you think most people spend more time? On a hiring site, on Craigslist, or on social media? Maybe something like Facebook. Yes, Facebook. The answer by far is Facebook. The average TikTok user is on there 58 minutes a day. So what we've learned to do through a buddy of mine that I'm actually really, he's helping me along with hiring, is really going after social media. And it's going to be something that the listeners are going to get a on here in about a month, but we're going to be talking all about how you got to stack the deck and make sure you're indeed in your glass door and your PR out there

about your company's good. But when you're able to get on everywhere from Twitter to YouTube, but especially Facebook, Insta, Ram and TikTok, it's amazing. We turn everything off. We got so many applicants in a time that no one else can hire i'm serious we've got so many people that want to work here and one of the things i always recommend jeremy is and i recommend everybody doing this when they're listening to this podcast is on the top of your paper i want you to write leadership and culture and i want you to write down a list of things that you want to work for, whether that's communication, listens to my thoughts and I'm heard and I get an answer quickly, inputs easily welcomed,

team building. I'm getting trained as an individual, not only in a team. I'm learning more. I'm more valuable if I wanted to leave this company because they've trained me, but I probably wouldn't if they're treating me right. Is there any trophies or annual reports or even weekly or monthly? We got a monthly newsletter that I get to know what's going on with the company. But if you make a list, trust in your core values, gratitude, ethics, accountability. But a lot of people say, I can't get good people. And I go look for these qualities in them and everything that they'd want to work for is not there. When you see a real problem, I doubt you deal with this because you deal with really big companies,

but what are you hearing out there of what's really working right now to get a lot of people where they're not going through these growing pains? Yeah, no, I think those are all really good points. And I like that you pointed out, you have to make sure that you're pursuing multiple avenues, different channels, whether it's different social media channels, different job boards.

Maybe it's how you're communicating with candidates. Are you using a variety of both emails, phone calls, text messages? You'll figure out which of these channels or avenues is going to be most effective depending on your business or the types of candidates you're recruiting. But I think to your point, pursuing all these different avenues and different channels is something that's super effective for just engaging candidates and getting in front of as many of them as possible. Are there any questions? I don't want yes or no questions. I'd say something like, Jeremy, tell me a story about how you've overcome diversity in the workplace. It kind of sounds like I'm an HR director. I'm not. But adversity in the workplace, or maybe you didn't get along with a boss. And how did that come to a conclusion?

And there's the one thing, Jeremy, about these questions is there's no right answer. It's looking at your critical thinking ability. So do you know of any great questions that you've noticed that people use, especially for video that seem to work well? Sure. Yeah. And I think to a point that you made earlier, make sure that you're collaborating with the people close to this, who's going to be responsible for managing that employee, who's going to be working with them, really understand what are the key pieces of skills, experience that they need to do that role. What are you really looking for? And help that guide the questions that you're coming up with.

If we're thinking more broadly to some good preliminary interview questions might be things like, what are the three most important things to you about a job or about a company and why? Because I think that's a great question to really understand what's important to the candidate, what motivates them. Is your company going to be able to deliver on what's important to them? Maybe not. And maybe it's not necessarily a great fit for that candidate. I think that's a really good one. Something that we like to ask in a lot of our early on interviews is that I like this question a lot. It's what's a question we haven't asked you yet? And we should have asked you that. And what would your response be? It gives the candidate to give you a more creative response and let's open up to share more with you beyond things that you've already been

asking them about, things that every other company or business is asking them about. I think it's a way to learn a lot about a candidate early on in your hiring process. A couple of other ones, you might ask these a little later on in more of a final stage interview, but something that's important, at least at our company and a lot of other businesses too, is that your employees, your top candidates, they're always pursuing opportunities to make themselves better. They're always trying to grow and improve themselves. So you might want to ask them, what's a skill that you'd like to improve upon? And just hear about, you know, what's their self-awareness like?

How are they able to judge themselves now? Are they aware of their gaps? What are the steps that they're taking to actually improve and hone in on these skills? I think that's a really awesome interview question too. You know, I've heard that question a million times. Tell me something that you're working on. And they're like, well, I'm constantly just working too many hours and I'm just getting too much done in a day. So my people tell me I work

too hard and I just really need to have that work-life balance. And I love how it's always like, they're trying to say it's something good. Well, I'm too much of a reader. I just, I'm always reading books on self-help and just, I work out too hard. I'm like, okay, no, no, no. Like for me, if you ask me that question, I'd be like, I'm really too hard. I'm like, okay, no, no, no. Like for me, if you ask me that question, I'd be like, I'm really not the best at organizing and time management. So what I decided to do is find somebody that's much more efficient than I am. And she's my assistant and she's amazing at it. She keeps everything organized, make sure I show up to my podcasts on time. And she makes sure that everything's not a spot and it's in order for me, but you can't take a

negative. And I just find that everybody's like, Hmm, it's in order for me. But you can't take a negative. And I just find that everybody's like, hmm, what am I not good at? And they don't want to say I'm unorganized on an interview. So I don't know what a good answer sounds like, really. I definitely would say, you know, I've done personality profiles. And I know I'm a high DI. So when it comes to analytical thinking, when it comes to C-type personalities, when it comes to really, really figuring out the problem,

sometimes I probably don't spend enough time with people that want to explain the full thing to me. I'm like, okay, I get it. You spent five minutes with me. I've had enough. I don't need to hear how the bolt went into the chair to make it stronger. But I don't know.

What would be a good answer for that? I'm just curious what your interpretation would be. Yeah, hopefully they're talking about a skill that would be related to the job that they're interviewing for. But really just showing that they've truly assessed themselves and really reflected on what they need to be better at.

And it's good to hear about what steps they've already taken, what steps they plan on taking. So hearing that they've already started to do things to help themselves is usually a good response. And then hearing how they do have a plan to continue to grow at it too. So if they're involved in AA, that's a good step. I'm just kidding. You got to start somewhere, right? Yeah. You know, Sam had a good question and this is more of a general question, but what's the average time of an installer technician to stay at a company? What I think, to kind of clarify this, in home service, we have technicians and installers, especially garage doors, HVAC, plumbing. Is there anything you guys look at the amount of time is good and bad?

And do you quantify that? Lawyers and dentists are probably way different than let's say home service. But at what point do you say you got a good run with that employee? What's the expectation these days? Yeah, I do think it varies quite a bit from industry to industry. I know a lot of businesses focused on employees that stay more than 90 days. You would probably have a lot of really focus on employees that stay more than 90 days. You would probably have a lot of really good experience within the home service industry in particular. I'm not sure how much that might vary from that, too. But I guess every industry might be a little different.

Every business is a little different. I know a lot of companies focus on employees that stay past 90 days. I mean, I would say, in my opinion, I'm just getting training in 90 days. You know, the thing is, is I developed a culture that gets people to drop off quick if they're not made to be a players. Now there's a very, very important thing here that Jeremy, I want the audience to understand is some people they're in high school. For example, Michael Jordan didn't make a sophomore high school team, his basketball team. But when you get the right coach or manager or leader or business owner or CEO, and they're very, very good at calling the plays and coaching

and getting them around the right environment, you can take a C player and make them an A player rather quickly. And I think a lot of the things that I try to do is have personally profiles to see how quick they can adapt and learn. Because if they can learn fast and they've got a will and they believe in the company, I can do anything with them. But it's so slow learners that I would go like, you forgot already? I tell you this, we went through, you signed off on it yesterday. You prove that you know how.

I tell people this, Jeremy. I'm going to make this huge pot of soup in front of you. And we're going to go step by step. I'm going to write down each step. The next time we're going to do it again tomorrow, I'm going to do it. And you're going to tell me what to put in here. And you're going to have the directions right there. You're going to watch me do it again.

The third time, you're going to squish rolls. And I'm going to tell you what to do. The fourth time, you're going to do it all alone. The fifth time, I'm not going to be there. I'm just going to try the suit. And that's how you got to delegate and train. And I feel like a lot of the time we just say, hey, you're going to do a ride along today. Hey, you're going to watch my secretary. Hey, you're going to do this. And there's no formal training. There's no LMS. Do good or bad. There's no manual. There's no standard operating procedure. There's no checklists. And I go, how in the hell did you expect these employees to succeed? You realize you're the problem, right?

And even when I'm doing good, I realize I'm still a stumbling block of success. And I got to continue to better myself every day. Because as the company goes past 400 employees, I've had to change. And when we're past 1,000, I'm going to be a new person. I think there's a lot of self-development that needs to go into leadership to be able to manage people. And these people that genuinely say that I can't find good people, they're the problem. I don't know if you realize that, but is that something that you've came across? Yeah, definitely. In some situations, I think the employee retention issue isn't necessarily

the people that were hired, but what was the infrastructure that surrounded them? What kind of support did they have to really empower them to be good at their role? And sometimes you might realize too, you hired a really great employee, but maybe they're just not in the right role and they could actually contribute a lot more to your business if you just found the right spot for them and supported them in the right ways. So that definitely happens all the time. What is the average time? One of the biggest stumbling blocks I see is A-plus players, they interview you. And I go off script. I know we have our own questions, but I'm going, I go three hands and guns. But they're interviewing you at the same time. They

don't want somebody stumbling around waiting for a ride along. I've heard a crazy stat that the average onboarding time takes like 17 days. And I don't know exactly that stat. Do you have that available? Or do you know? Oh, I do. I don't have it in front of me, though. What would you say?

It doesn't need to be super accurate, but it's not like, it's obviously not 24 hours. Yeah. No. I'm going to try to see if I could find it. Yeah. I'll talk in the, in the meantime, because I think that a lot of employees look,

if they're looking for a job or they're thinking about making a career change, they are going to want to make a quick turnaround. They're not going to say, okay, I'll just wait for this company to get their crap together for 15 days. Just like I could have, by seeing the video interview and just seeing everything that we see with SparkHire, if I'm viewing them in the first few minutes on a video call, what do you think they're viewing me as? If I can't get a ride

along scheduled or an interview scheduled, sometimes you want three interviews done and it takes three weeks. And it's going, what the hell's wrong with this company? I think that's one of the stumbling blocks is my goal is to get it into a 72-hour turnaround time. I was on a podcast yesterday with a guy named Chad Peterman. And we had a good discussion

about getting the significant others involved. Do you find that stat? So as far as just hiring the candidate, I think on average, it usually takes about 30 days. And then for onboarding them, it might to get them fully ramped in the role might take as many as long as three months or 90 days. And I think that's a huge competitive advantage for a business owner. If you can get your candidates through your hiring process faster

and have them actually contributing and onboarded in the role faster than other businesses too, because you're going to make sure you're never missing out on any of the top candidates. They're going to get through your process faster. They're going to make a decision and they're going to appreciate it

and enjoy that you're so responsive and you're so quick to get them through this process too. They're going to love that experience and working with your organization. If I don't have a guy who is apprenticeship and flew out to Arizona for 30 days and onboarded and hired, has Jewish background, check his drug test, completely trained and making money for the company in 75 days. Then I'm falling short of my expectations and goals. And I told you a monthly newsletter. And I put the quote out every month.

And a lot of people are like, how does he come up with these quotes? And I look up a lot of different quotes. But here's my quote. And they call, you ever heard of a BHAG? No, it's not. Big, hairy, audacious goal. A BHAG is a big, hairy, audacious goal. Well, here's a quote by Jim Rohn.

Don't set your goals too low. If you don't need much, you won't become much. And my goal is to get 50 people through the hiring process and hired, onboarded, and ready every single month. 50. Have I hit that goal? Not yet, but I will this year. And when I hit that goal, it's going to change and it's going to go higher. But I want to kind of pivot a little bit on one thing that we've been working on is when we're talking to people, they want to know how they get paid. They want to understand every benefit that there is to working with you, whether that's you pay weekly instead of biweekly. Is there a 401k? Is there this? Is there that? Is there this? Is there

that? And another great book that you might be able to pull some stuff out of is 1,501 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson. But you got to have a whole list of things ready. But when you explain the pay, it needs to be simple enough that I can explain it to my significant other. And what I'd like to see is a video with the significant others that have worked for you in the past.

So get a couple of the good guys and get their wives or the women's husbands to say, hey, I was a little nervous when they started this job because it's a whole new career. We're living in a new city or whatever it might be. And it's actually, it's a performance-based employment opportunity. And what I loved about it is they stood by our side. They answered a lot of questions. The training went exactly like they said it was going to be. And my husband's making more money than he's ever made.

And his lowest paycheck was $1,250 in the week after taxes. His best paycheck was this, whatever that looks like. And I can't say, but really state the facts, state how the pay works. And then another thing is bring them to the employee get togethers, make them feel part of the team, send them flowers. When we fly them into Arizona and say, we know you're going to be away from your significant other. And we appreciate that you're part of the family just like he or she is. Because every time they come home from work and they've had a long day and things didn't go right for them, they're going to need that moral support from that significant other. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's all about really understanding what's important to your employees, your candidates, and catering to that.

And that's what's going to keep them satisfied. That's what's going to keep them happy. And that's why they're going to love working for your business is because you're attentive to what's important to them and you actually address those things. You know, you've been in the company for nine years. And a lot of the answers I get about us is you guys are growing. I see you guys everywhere. We want to work for a company that maybe we start out in this position, just like you said you did.

You started out as an assistant of some sort, then you moved all the way up. I've had a lot of guys say, I want to come here because we know there's opportunities going to be born. What is it about SparkHire that has kept you in a role for nine years, or at least in the company for nine years? What are some of the attributes you really like i'm just curious from your perspective because you have been there a long time and you moved through the through the food chain there yeah something that i've really

appreciated and that i would say pretty much all of our other employees have appreciated is that it's really important to us that everyone's voice is heard at the company so we're really encouraging feedback we want to make sure to us that everyone's voice is heard at the company. So we're really encouraging feedback. We want to make sure we're getting everyone's opinions and that we are actually taking that feedback into account to make changes and to improve our business, to improve ourselves. And so we're always looking to improve. We're always looking for feedback.

And it's just important that everyone's voice is heard, whether it's your first day working at the company or you've been here for nine plus years everyone's feedback is so important and that's become a huge part of our culture too and and a big reason why we continue to grow and we continue to keep improving yeah those those are good reasons i mean nine years is a long time and i think the biggest thing is i'm right on the borderline of millennials so i am a millennial and and most millennials what we want is we want to feel included we want to know that we're appreciated money's great but money's not the end i'll be all i'd rather work for somebody for less money and just be appreciated and enjoy going into work and enjoy like some people get to

sunday and they go it's kind of like when i get to thursday i love friday because fridays but some people get to sunday and they're like oh i gotta go back to work tomorrow and they hate, it's kind of like when I get to Thursday, I love Friday because Fridays, but some people get to Sunday and they're like, Oh, I got to go back to work tomorrow. And they hate it. And I'm like, I don't feel that way. And I hope the people that I work with don't feel that way, but it wouldn't that stink to have to work all day at a place that you just, you couldn't stand. Yeah. I can't imagine. It's quick way to go lonely and gray and just hate your life. What are the characteristics of a good employee that you can spot from the get-go? Yeah, I think a few things at least that would be important to our company and for a lot of businesses at large too would be things like their problem- skills. We kind of pointed out a couple of interview questions earlier that would help you learn a lot more about how they might have solved the challenge, or maybe explaining a challenge that might be common in the role that they're interviewing for.

How would they go about solving that challenge? And just learning more about how do they solve problems? What kind of solutions do they weigh in on? What is their work style like? So things like problem solving skills would usually be really important to be able to assess from the get-go. Other things that might be important to me are things like self-awareness, like really understanding things like what are you really good at and how do you leverage that? What are things that you still need to work on that you are improving at? And I guess that leads me to something that's related to that is just, is the candidate focused on actually improving themselves?

And that was part of that interview question I mentioned earlier. I like to hear what steps is a candidate taking to improve on these things that they do feel like might be shortcomings for them? What do they plan on continuing to do to keep growing? But how invested is someone in themselves and continuing to grow themselves? And I think there's a good work-life balance that if you're willing to better yourself at home, then I got to be willing to help you from a work perspective. Because no one really cares about my goals.

No one's like, oh God, Tommy hit his goal. You know, at the end of the day, they want to feel appreciated. And how is work going to help them hit their personal goals? So for example, I'll do this with you. Jeremy, tell me something that you'd want in your life in the next year, whether it be personal, financial, emotional, whether that's a goal to go to Mount Everest. What do you want? What's something like, it could be travel, it could be a relationship. What do you want? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned one of the things that would be great. Hopefully as things continue to get better with COVID,

there'll be more opportunities to be able to travel throughout the rest of the year. So what I would do with you is I'd sit down and I'd go through every single market that we're in. And I say to any of these 19 States appeal to you because there's more coming and there's more than this coming But I think it's awesome that if you can mix work and pleasure if you don't mind you can work a few days there Maybe become a trainer and then we can have you take a four-day vacation. We

Insist jeremy that you take pto because everybody needs that time To heal and spend time with family and their loved ones and enjoy themselves because you're going to be kicking ass while you're working here, but we want you to be kicking ass when you're not working and having fun too. So those things matter is how can you take their personal goals? I know that you plan on, this is not for you, but I know that you plan on putting your kids through college. They're 16 and 14. Let's start talking about that. I know that you have a plan to fix your credit. I got a person for you I want you to meet. I also know that you plan on getting in shape. We're going to be having a contest next quarter to see whose is the most weight as far as body fat, and I want you to win

this thing. So, you know, all of those things, we got a thing called the Dave Ramsey program, save a penny or whatever, where we're trying to get people to live a better life by saving and putting away for their future. And I think that as you ask these questions, people are like, holy crap, no one's ever asked these questions before. No one's ever cared about us that way. And if you care about people, it's amazing how the reciprocal relationship works. Yeah, no, it's huge because it definitely will help improve your retention with employees, but they're also just going to do their job more effectively and be able to help you deliver on your company's goals.

And like you mentioned earlier, Tommy, like the employee themselves, they sure they care about doing a good job and delivering on the company's goals, but it's not as significant to them as what's going to be most important in their personal lives. So figuring out how you can align those things is going to keep employees happy and loving to work at your business, but also just have them doing their best work too. I agree. I think having very easy, relatable KPIs that I could see where I fall in the mix and how I could talk to people that are better than me. One thing I've always really done well with is hanging out with people that are better than me.

Being the worst golfer on the golf course, I don't enjoy going as much with guys that are worse than me because it doesn't better me. I'll have fun. Maybe I'll just have a goof-off day where they'll go, you know, just beer day or whatever. But ultimately, if I want to get better at something, I try to be the worst or the dumbest guy in the room. And I think employees like the fact that they can go and talk to somebody that they know is doing better and they could actually address exactly what it is they're doing better because the KPIs, key performance indicators are so simple. And there's a bar chart or a line graph or whatever

that shows who you need to be spending your time in and i think that clarity and being able to show people numbers a lot of owners i noticed that never get big are so worried about doing everything and not sharing the company goals and the objectives and the vision and the performance of what they need to hit next year in the bank quotas. I share all that stuff, but I'm not saying I'm better than anybody, but I live in a very lonely world if I wasn't able to talk to my staff about the goals of the company and what we need to hit. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know.

I think that's an awesome point. Like you really want everyone at the company to feel like they're connected to the company more than just a place that they show up to do their job every day. You want everyone pulling in the same direction. You want that transparency throughout your organization because that's going to help them invest more into what they're doing

and care more about what's going on at the business beyond just showing up and doing what they need to do from nine to five. Hey guys, I got a really awesome deal for you guys at the end of this. If you want to know more about SparkHire and how A1 GarageDoors uses them, stick around to the end and we'll tell you exactly how you can take advantage of SparkHire like A1 does.

Or you could just go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash podcast forward slash Jeremy dash Tolan, T-O-L-A-N. That's homeserviceexpert.com forward slash podcast forward slash Jeremy dash Tolan. Now let's get back to our conversation with Jeremy. You know, we did experience some issues and I think there's still some people out there that are technology challenged, but what are some of the common objections you encounter about hiring through video and how do you respond to those objections? Yeah, I think there's a lot of good solutions out there now where hopefully it's simple enough to use. So the tech savviness maybe isn't as much of a factor,

but I think something that's really important that comes up with a lot of businesses is they might be worried about making their experience feel too impersonal to candidates, especially if they're doing something like a one-way video interview where there's not someone live on the other end with the candidate. So they might be worried about it feeling kind of impersonal. And usually when we talk to businesses that have a concern like that, we'll talk about things. There's certain features that they could take advantage of, like something that I would recommend is using something called an intro or an outro video. So before a candidate starts their one-way video interview, they could see a video for a member of your business talking about what to expect for the video interview, maybe giving them more information about the role or the hiring

process. But they get to have kind of that greeting, that intro from a member of your team on video to them. And then when they finish doing their video interview, you can include that outro video to thank them for their time, let them know what the next steps in the process are like. And I think candidates end up feeling a lot more comfortable with these video interviews. They feel like it's a lot more personal when they're able to see different members of your team on video also. And to that point, you might also want to use something called video questions, where you actually pre-record yourself or a member of your team asking those interview questions on video. So that when the candidate goes to do these one-way video interviews on

their own, they actually see a member of your team asking the questions because you've pre-recorded these videos. But also just because you're using something like a one-way interview to be maybe speed up the process and interview more candidates, I think it's still important to have other touch points with candidates. So if you do invite a candidate to do a one-way interview, I do recommend giving them a quick call, letting them know what you're inviting them to, giving them as much information as possible, letting them know about what the different steps are following the video interview, how long should they expect the interview to take them, what's the deadline for that video interview,

but give them a quick call to provide them with a lot of context, a lot of information about the experience. And if they do have any initial questions, you could help address them for them too. But I think that's definitely been a concern over the last few years is a business doesn't want their experience to be too impersonal for candidates but there's a lot of different features and touch points that you can still have in your hiring process to make sure that you're not losing out on like the human element of actually interacting with your team yeah you know that's i don't think this is the end all be all that this is like i got spark higher and just software did everything for me that's not what it's meant to be.

We use a system that, like I said, my buddy developed that does text messaging and it follows up and it does a voicemail blast. And it shows them where they found us. They don't think we're a random person. And it tells us when to call them. And all we ask is, hey, look, there's several people, including a ride-along specialist who's a lead tech that want to take a look and get to know you a little bit more. We're going to send you a quick video. The owner, Tommy, is going to be asking you a bunch of questions. I got one that I say.

We give $1,500 for referrals. If you get someone awesome, one of your friends, neighbors, someone you could vouch for. And then I got a guy, Kyle, holding up a $7,500 check that just got five people. And it's a big check. I used it for just the image of it because it goes a long way. And he's like, if you know people and you could hire people that are as good or better than you, you're going to make a lot of extra money. And the question is, do you know people? And I like to know, I like to put the idea in their head that they're going to become recruiters

for us. It's worked out really, really well. And those are the kinds of questions I ask. What's one thing that most recruiting companies overlook in the follow-up after the interview? Yeah, I think that's a good question because I think that's so important. You don't want to miss out on candidates because maybe your follow-up wasn't great after that interview. So a few things that I could think of is make sure you're extremely clear with candidates about what they should expect as far as next steps and the timing. When are you going to be getting back to them about these next steps at the different points

in your process? And if you aren't able, things happen. You're not going to be able to keep up with the timing that you previously committed to with candidates. If you're running behind schedule, just send them a quick email, text message, whatever the preferred way is to communicate with them, just to let them know what to expect. Hey, we are running a few days behind. We'll be back in touch about this next step in three days. So have these updates in between updates if your timing is kind of off from the previous expectations that you set with candidates.

And something that I'm a huge proponent of too is using what I would call video messaging throughout your recruiting process. And I think it's a great way to follow up with candidates. So you could include videos and things like emails or text messages that you're sending to your candidates at different stages of your process. So one thing that I think is super effective with candidates is to send them an email that has a video in it. It's pretty much like an employee testimonial. So you might have an employee that is really happy working for you guys, ask them to record just a quick video of themselves explaining what they really like about your business, what they really like about the

role that they're in in particular, and send that to a candidate at a certain touch point as part of your follow-up in an email. Maybe you're just letting them know when do you expect to hear back from you about next steps. And in that email, hey, check out this video from one of our employees that actually does that role that you just applied for. And I think it's a great way to candidate engage and keep them really enthusiastic all the way throughout your process so that they are super excited to work for you and to hear the next steps and be considered for the next step. I really, really like that advice. That's something that I'm actually going to do. I always tell people build rapport, educate and follow up ref. And I do that with customers and clients i also do that with employees and i will say that every step of the way from recruiting to onboarding to where you actually do

the i do a um a three-hour kind of welcome presentation and i feel like most people fail on the follow-up they don't do a great job, and the best employees, they wonder why they don't get great people. The great people already got a job by the time you return their call. Great people don't have time. B and C players have way more time to sit around and wait for you than A players. A players are wanted. They're interviewing you. They're learning all the time and you say i put an ad out and every time i call the guys they always well that's your problem you want them to be a players when you're a c player yourself as an owner you're you know what i'm like guys you gotta care as much as they care about finding

a home that they're able to talk to their whole family about say this is where we're gonna go and this is what we're gonna be able to do to help have the best time and the best family ever. How do you overcome your potential higher tech deficiencies if they just don't get how to use the system? I've personally worked with many great techs who just are not technologically equipped. Also seems like the age group of the technician potential hire had quite a bit to do with their comfort level with technology. How does SparkHire make it easier for the tech candidate as opposed to a Zoom link? Yeah, for SparkHire in particular, what's really helpful is we provide really good 24-7 tech support. So if you have candidates that are a

little bit confused, maybe they just have questions, maybe they're skeptical, definitely have them reach out to our tech support team so we could walk them through that, answer any questions they have, and just make it really simple for them. Our goal is to provide really easy to use software. I believe your candidates will find it pretty easy to use, but if they do need any assistance, they can reach out to our 24-7 tech support team too. And we can also arm you with a number of resources you can share with candidates before the video interview. And a lot of information that maybe you should be providing to the candidate when you invite them to a video interview so they know exactly what to expect.

It might help address questions before they even come up. But we'll provide you with a lot of support and we'll provide your candidates as much support as they need to. Okay. So you've worked there nine years. What does the adoption rate, how has it improved over time? It seems like to me every year, especially because of COVID, I mean, now everybody's like Zoom with, I mean, Facebook Live, everything that we're doing now is video. It's like, I even use a thing called Marco Polo to communicate with people. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's really simple messages. Hey, dude, what's going on? Because you don't understand what's going on if you can't see my face.

And if I'm like, dude, we need to go, you know why? Versus, dude, we need to go, why? Like, it's different than a text. So what's changed since you've been involved here the last nine years? Yeah, I think I do see that candidates in general feel a lot more comfortable doing things like video interviews, being on video interviews. Definitely, especially since March of last year with the pandemic, people have become a lot more

accustomed to and familiar with using different types of video technology i think we're starting to see a lot of the businesses using more videos throughout the recruiting process too whether they're sending videos and emails maybe they're recording things like those intro videos or video questions but i think that's going a long way in making candidates feel a lot more comfortable being on video. And I think what people are realizing too, a while ago, maybe when SparkHire was first launched and video interview was a much newer concept, I think there was a huge emphasis on both candidates and employers trying to just be entirely perfect on video. They don't fumble over a single word. They don't blink the whole time. They don't breathe the whole time. But I think what people are realizing too is that

when you are connecting with someone on video, you're recording videos and sharing them with people, it's okay for it to not be perfect. You just want it to be authentic. And that's really what's going to resonate with your candidate or whoever the recipient of that video is going to be, is that this doesn't need to be so overproduced. Just be your authentic self, get your points across. No one is actually perfect in a real conversation. So I think people are realizing there's not as much pressure when they do a video interview to just be perfect and just hold perfect eye contact and not bumble over a single word or have to think for a split second about the response. I think that's something that's kind of changing over time too. Well, I want to find somewhere the personality that's

laid back. I mean, look, there's my shoes here. I just, just get the job done to your best ability, continue to drive that it's progress, not perfection. And I just, I don't want somebody that's got to stick up their ass. You know, I don't want somebody that needs to be a perfectionist because I'll tell you what, the problem with perfectionists is they're never willing to get started. They're not willing to make a leap. They always want everything. I don't even know how they plan a pregnancy. That's a scary thing. It's like, is there really a perfect time to bring a kid into the world? But yeah, that's off topic. What are some gold nuggets of wisdom that you can share about hiring in general? Yeah. Keep your candidates top of mind. So really put yourself in your

candidates' shoes. I think what's a helpful exercise to really understand what they're going through is try going through your hiring processes. If you're a candidate, apply for a job, go through the whole process and see what it would actually be like if you're a candidate, apply for a job, go through the whole process and see what it would actually be like if you were a candidate going through that. Really understand what they're going through. And I think that will help you identify improvements that can be made to your process. But really try to think about keeping your candidates top of mind. And if it's possible, because every business is a little bit different, but if it's possible, try to place an emphasis on improving collaboration throughout your hiring process. So Tommy talked about this earlier on

in the conversation too, but try to get feedback from multiple sources instead of just a single person making a decision on which candidates are going to advance to the next stage of your process. Collaborate with different people that are involved in your hiring process and really agree on how you're going to be assessing candidates. Try to make it the most objective or consistent way possible because I think that's going to help you not only just combat bias at different points in your process, but you're going to end up making better hiring decisions and hiring better employees because you're able to loop in different people and get their feedback about candidates too. They're going to think about things differently than you. They're going to notice certain things about candidates that maybe you didn't notice and

vice versa. So if it's possible, try to place an emphasis on collaboration throughout your process and really keep your candidates top of mind. You know, I like that answer. One of the things I love about SparkHire or any videos in general is I want everybody that's going to interact with that person, department head, sometimes even coworker, sometimes manager, sometimes trainer, sometimes recruiter. Everybody's got to be involved in the decision because it's really easy if a guy flies into Phoenix and a trainer says, oh my God, who hired this guy? So if you don't have all the buy-in, it's really like, but now you picked that guy. You had

an opportunity to be able to have your input. So I think you're right. It's a collaborative effort. I've even been through, personally, I've been through group interviews. I did one with Southwest Airlines. And it's kind of funny because I must have been 20 years old and I was going to be a baggage guy. I just wanted to fly around the country. And I figured what better

than to get work at Southwest Airlines. And there was 25 people. They let out all but four of us. And they said, you know, they were lining up the next interview. And then four of us are left and they go, congratulations, guys, you made it through the interview. You are the only four that were interested in. And we're going to go through this other drill now. And I ended up getting the job and I ended up not taking it. But I think a lot can be said for group interviews, too, if you do them right. You know, this is probably not something that we need to talk about on here. But there's a lot of effectiveness by letting everybody come into an open house, having pizza, showing them the building, showing them doing a walkthrough,

and then asking them all cumulative questions to just go through it one by one, because you really realize the cream rises to the top in that kind of environment. Yeah. Yeah. Any way that you have a really even playing field and you're able to easily assess your candidates side by side like that, I think is always really effective. Do you have any client success stories, maybe from what service business owners can learn from their experience? Sure. Yeah, we actually have, I think, over 70 case studies on our website that talk about different types of results that all sorts of different businesses have seen. From what we've experienced, the organizations that are using one-way video interviews, it generally has made their preliminary interview process three to seven times faster than

before. As an example, there's a construction company that we have a case study from, and they found that their time to hire metric is improved where they realize they're saving 92 hours of work across 19 different positions. There's another business we've been helping that provides bath renovation products and accessories. They find that they're saving a ton of time and they're just hiring better quality candidates. They talk about how it's been really helpful to easily judge a candidate's professionalism, their demeanor, and their overall attention to detail through video interviews. They also really love how they don't have to juggle multiple schedules to coordinate

interviews. And their entire interviewing process is just a lot more consistent through video interviewing too. And we've helped a ton of other home service businesses, roofing companies, painting companies, all sorts of different businesses that have achieved similar results like that too. So I definitely encourage you to pop around our website, look at some of the case studies and other types of businesses that we've helped. And I think you'll be fascinated with what you find. All right. So we're going to be working on a special offer when the podcast comes out that people are going to get when they come to

SparkHire. What do we do to get ahold of you if we want to... There's two things here. Reach out to SparkHire or maybe to you personally. Yeah. You can always reach out to me personally. I can make sure that we send you my email address. Another good way to learn more about SparkHire and get in touch with us is to go to go.sparkhire.com slash HSE. Home service expert is HSE. So go.sparkhire.com slash HSE. You can learn a lot more on that page. You can request more information and you'll be able to take advantage of the special offer we're going to be able to provide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll have that on the page because I want to make sure... One of the things we always try to do is get something special for the listeners. They take the time to listen to me rant on. Luckily, they got to meet you, but

I ask the same question every time and I doubt you were prepared for it, but I usually ask the guests to give me three books that they recommend. Great question. I wasn't expecting that too. One book I really recommend that helped me a lot just from understanding a company, building a business, understanding your employees is a book called Traction. Oh, it's a great book. Gina Wickman.

Yeah, exactly. That was a really helpful book. Another one that I found really helpful too. I'm trying to remember who is by all crucial conversations. No, no, no, not crucial. It's not crucial. It's fierce. Fierce conversations. Is it about fierce or crucial? I'm thinking of crucial conversations.

Crucial conversations is really good. I'm trying to see who is by, I don't remember the author of the book, but it was an incredible book. It could really help how you're handling your conversations as far as at work and your personal life. I think that was an incredible book, too. I'm trying to think of another book that

might be really relevant also. Let me answer a question and then you can answer it for sam real quick and then i'm going to have you call this out uh sam said how do you get eight players to even apply for a job when they already have a job that they like or already enjoy is that possible here's my best piece of advice and then i'll let you go jeremy yeah there is going to come a time that they're going to come home and shit's going to happen their manager is going to come a time that they're going to come home and shit's going to happen. Their manager's going to get fired. The company's going to grow or it's going to shrink. There will always come

a time that they're going to see that message going through Facebook going, it's time for a career. What I like to do is when I'm having a pizza party or ice cream or whatever, we're out bowling, is tell all the employees to go live and say, hey guys, do me a favor. Have them contact you, all your friends on social media, because I got 5,000, I got 25,000 on LinkedIn. I'm up to my limit. So if you add me and I haven't added you back, it's because I'm at my limit. But you go live and you say, contact me. That way you're getting a $1,500 credit if someone applies. And you say, hey guys, listen, I'm here with my company, A1 Garage Rooms. We're out at a barbecue or we're bowling. We're having a Frisbee golf. And I got to tell you, what's so cool is the work-life balance. We all became friends.

Not only are they my friends, but now I get to work with them too. And if you're looking for an awesome place to work, if you're looking for a place that you get to have fun too, this is it. It's fun. It's not all a party, but I think business and pleasure can come together. And what happens is someone's going to see that message. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow, but if you stay consistent, just like my podcast, people ask me, how did your podcast take off? What'd you do? It's pretty simple. I did it every week and I used to suck horrible, but every week it got a little bit better and I'll tell you guys it's consistency of sticking to the message and building the culture and if

someone's gonna come across that and say that I'm here for a career I want to be happier you guys are growing faster there's more opportunity I am an a player but I worked at a job I'm here for a career Jeremy do you have anything to add on to that question yeah yeah definitely leverage your referrals whether that's internal the people that are already working in your business and external too. So when you are recruiting, don't be afraid to post about it on social media and ask your network to tag people or share it with people that they think might be interested or they think would be great at the role. And I think you'd be surprised who you end up getting connected with by just asking people to share it or tag people in the comments

that they think would be really good at the role. Love it. Now, just like you mentioned in the questions you ask, and I ask this every time, so I'm sure there's something we didn't discuss. We talked about a lot of things. You know, I like some take action things.

I like some things that are going to cause people to actually move, take action. Maybe something we didn't talk about, maybe just some final thoughts, but I'll give you a few minutes to kind of wrap us up and talk about anything we might've missed. Yeah, I think we unpacked a lot today. I think something that I was focusing a lot on too is like really keeping your candidates top of mind. So really think about how you're providing an awesome experience to your candidates. Take it a step further to think about how you're doing that for your employees when they are working for you also. So really keep your candidates, your employees top of mind. Think about having things that you're using like a video that's an employee testimonial where you

are having people record themselves on video talking about why they love working at your business, what they really love about the role. You could share that throughout your recruiting process. You could use that in your onboarding with new employees too. Really just think about how are you catering to your employees? How are you catering to your candidates? And just always keep them top of mind. It's going to be your biggest asset for your business. I like that. Here's the facts. TikTok is growing so freaking fast. YouTube is amazing. Reality TV is blowing up. The fact is that video is going so much more viral than it ever has before. There's no better time. Your audience, your avatar,

your future employees are ready for this. If you don't invest in something similar or a Spark hire, if you don't start doing video interviews, it's crazy to me. So I'm hoping that you really build the process. You take recruiting seriously because the future of your business depends on getting the best people in the best roles. And a lot of people right now, we're going through an economy that we need people. There are some years in the past, you know, five, six years ago where people go, I need more leads. I need more leads. I need more leads. And there's two things you need to master. How do I get more leads? And how do I get more awesome employees? Awesome employees, higher conversion rates, higher average tickets, more five-star reviews, give you bigger budgets to buy more leads.

So my whole attitude is get the best employees in the best roles possible. Jeremy, you are amazing. I appreciate you very much. And thank you for coming on the podcast. Everybody, you need to go check out SparkHire and get involved with it. Thanks so much, Tommy. I really appreciate the opportunity. It was great chatting with you today. And thanks to everyone that joined us live. Awesome, guys. See you guys later. Hey there, I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Jeremy Tolan. We use Spark Hire here at A1 Garage for Service because it made the hiring process simple. I want to be able to see the recordings of these people before I have to call them and

interview them. If they're afraid to make a quick recording, then they're probably not A1 Garage Drill material. You might not think this works great, but it does. Your goal should be to make the hiring process simple and make it easier for you. You'll know if you like the candidates within 10 to 20 seconds of the video. They simply record a quick video. You watch it and you see if they're at the right presentation, the right tonality, the right eye contact for you and your business. Some of the

questions that I ask are like, how competitive are you? Or are you going to be able to get more referrals if we do hire you? Or what do you like about our company? What kind of research have you done? So, you know, I love sharing with you guys. So we negotiated a special deal for you right now. You can go to go.sparkhire.com forward slash HSE. That's go.sparkhire.com forward slash HSE. And you get 14 days trial plus 20% off their annual plan. So go to go.sparkhire.com forward slash HSE. And you can book a demo there. Hopefully you enjoy it. It's going to move the needle for you guys.

You should be thinking about hiring. Hiring, hiring, hiring is where it's at. And my goal is from now on, when I get people on the podcast to negotiate you guys' special deals. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. you