How do you track and define outcomes for your hiring systems?
Oh, that's a great question, Harry.
Well, as far as tracking everything goes, remember, it's all automated.
And so the software tracks all incoming applicants.
When they apply, time of date, time and date when they apply, we know if they're applying
in the middle of the night, we know what regions they're applying from relative to your business
location.
We know their strengths and talents.
We know the time and distance from their location to your business.
We know how long they're planning on staying in the area.
There's a whole bunch of information.
So all of that is automatically tracked.
This is not, you know, it's the opposite of done on index cards and notes written on
a resume, right?
But as far as the outcomes, that's where we get really excited.
The outcomes are generally driven by the candidates' strengths and talents.
And so when you're hiring them for a position and you expect them to need, you know, X,
Y, Z strengths and talents, and we present candidates who have those, then the outcomes
are far better and higher than what you're used to.
And the simple reason being is you're asking people to show up for work each day and be
themselves.
These are A players, B plus players that we bring to the table.
And by doing that, you simply get a better outcome in every conceivable aspect of that
word than than resume based hiring.
There's a follow up question on that.
The A players and the B players.
I think so.
There's only a certain number of limited A players, according to my understanding, and
that might be my limiting belief.
I do not know.
But I'd love to hear that.
But let's say some let's say 10 companies hire you and you only have five A players
to support.
What happens in those scenarios?
And let's say you also run into B players in that case or B plus players.
What's the other?
That's a fascinating question as well.
You're in your game today here.
Holy cow.
So I think remember the way that we do things is we are not pulling from a candidate pool.
We are fresh posting a brand new position each time, and we have the widest possible
funnel at the top.
We want as many applicants as we possibly can.
These are not people generally with experience.
We are looking for folks who can do the job based upon their natural strengths and talents.
So our approach is to cast the widest possible net that we can because we're going to eliminate
almost everybody.
We run them through our mindset assessment filter.
We make sure they have the right mindset for the position.
Then we do their strengths or their speed of learning.
We're going to make sure that they learn fast enough in order to do a great job for your
business.
And then we look at their strengths and talents.
And then when that's all said and done, we look at what we call knockout questions.
And those are all the reasons why they wouldn't be able to do the job.
So when still past that, we have a one way video interview.
And so when all of this work is done, we end up with A players and B players, but they're
not coming from where you think they are, Harry.
These are unknown folks.
These are not people who generally are presented 10 different jobs to begin with.
They might be presented with a couple because they don't look like an A player a lot of
times.
They know they are.
They know they have no problems getting a position and being offered positions.
But they just aren't folks that are out there with these resumes that are glowing, that
have incredible work history.
You are dying to get them in your business.
You look at their resume and you say, huh, what are these guys talking about?
When the real solution to the problem is this match that we're able to do.
So we know they're an A player or a B plus at around a 97% level on average.
That's why the outcome is so great.
They stick to these positions.
They stay a lot longer, much longer.
All of this happens because they're a natural fit for the position.
This is another deep level of that question.
Throughout your process, how are you identifying the A players and B players?
What are you looking for specifically that this is someone is an A player?
How do you even check for that in a hiring or even shift?
I would say shifting process.
It's not one thing.
That's what makes this special.
Depends on the position.
Quite simply, an A player for position A might be a C player for position B.
Your A player is not an A player across all positions because it completely depends on
their strengths and talents.
That's a little bit of a difficult thing to replicate any other way.
With these folks, the natural strength and talent approach is how they're an A player
for that position, but it is all relative to the position.
Each position requires different strengths and talents, different capabilities.
Let's say stress management.
That's a really easy thing for everybody to understand.
If you're in a concierge type service-based business, low volume, everybody is really
focusing on high quality interactions, then that requires a lower stress tolerance.
That's something we measure.
Whereas, let's say you're in a super busy doctor's office working at the front desk,
which is in a high stress position for arguably just about anybody.
If you have a really high stress tolerance, that's no big deal for you.
A player quality for that position.
You have a low stress tolerance, that is not going to work out.
That person put in that position will leave very, very quickly.
It's counted in days.
Imagine if you will, there's a big algorithm for each of these positions.
Each position has different things that we want in a candidate and things that we don't
want in a candidate.
They're prioritized and they're structured.
That's where we're able to identify these folks.
It's not a simple process behind the scenes.
Imagine the iceberg.
What we're showing clients is the tip of the iceberg.
Behind the scenes, it's the rest of the iceberg.
We make it easy.
That's why you can hire somebody through Build My Team in under an hour's worth of work total.
We do this all day long throughout North America.
Wow, that's awesome.
Next question for you, I think it's something similar to what we've been talking about.
What are some of your strategies for reducing turnover in the teams you build?
This gets down to culture.
Boy, another great question.
Culture is one way to describe this.
Really the turnover comes from both areas, around the team member and from the top down.
What is the average workday like for the team member?
I should say three things internally.
The internal side of things is are they utilizing their strengths and talents?
With the Build My Team approach, yes, that's a given.
If you're not doing that, then you've got to make sure that they are working with their
natural strengths and talents.
That's a real challenge.
The second thing would be who are they surrounded by?
You have an A player or a really awesome, fantastic employee.
Who are they working with?
Are they awesome, fantastic employees or are they working with the C player, the D player
or the proverbial boat anchor that never gets any project off the ground?
They just are not in any way a performer.
You want to reduce turnover, make sure your great team members are working only with other
great team members.
That's an enormous way to do it.
The third part, of course, is the cultural side.
You want to improve your culture, reduce turnover for your team members.
It's very simple.
It's all about reducing the C and the D players from your team.
Remove them.
They have to go.
They are causing the turnover for your fantastic people.
Remember, C and D people, they might be great folks.
They are working in the wrong job for them, by definition, because they're not performing.
They are a repellent to talent, to top talent.
They are absolutely a repellent.
You're talking about magnetism, a positive and a negative.
You are talking about oil and water, all those types of things.
Those are the strategies that can be used by any business to dramatically reduce the
turnover.
Michael, now we're talking about culture.
I think a culture can't be stated enough without talking about leadership.
To you, what's the definition of a great leader in terms of maybe leading teams, building
teams, or being a supervisor, or a company owner, or a team builder?
Well, I've got a fellow that I work with.
His name's Frank.
He runs both our practice and Build My Team.
He's a great example of a great leader.
One of the things that stands out about him is clarity of communication.
Crystal clear communication.
This is not a person who, well, maybe we'll get to this.
I'm not sure.
Not like that at all.
It's definitive.
This is what we're going to do.
This is how we're going to do it.
This is when we're going to do it.
And he gives the proverbial marching orders to the team, and they march.
Working with a person like that is a luxury.
It is a fantastic honor to work with a person like that.
From my standpoint, I know that the goals are going to get achieved and that he will
do so in an extraordinarily respectful way for the team.
He protects the team.
Everyone needed.
And he is absolutely terrific, again, at the communication side of things.
So those are the things that pop to mind.
Of course, we've all read the books on leadership.
We've all done those things.
I always like to suggest that maybe people take a look more at the basics, the infrastructure
of leadership, if you will.
Crystal clear communication is one.
Decisiveness is another.
Ethical, honesty.
I mean, you can't be pulling fast ones on your team.
They're out the door if you do that.
Good grief.
The list goes on and on.
But I would say those are the top ones that kind of pop into my head.
Next thing, going into a layer deeper, what tips would you have for leaders?
I think that goes back to the previous question in a lot of ways.
If you're struggling with your teams, entrepreneurs especially, and I think we're all susceptible
to this on the entrepreneurial side of things, I would suggest that we take a look at the
communication that you're giving your team members.
Crystal clear communication.
Entrepreneurs, like all of us listening, have this innate ability to think that people are
reading our minds.
And you don't understand what I'm saying.
I've said three words and you don't get it.
Those types of things.
So developing a skill set as a leader that allows you to communicate in a crystal clear
fashion is incredibly helpful.
There's a company called Strategic Coach that built a tool for this.
It's called an impact filter and anybody can Google it.
Wonderful, wonderful help for entrepreneurs if they're looking for an immediate improvement
for something along those lines.
So I do think the communication side of things, I think you have to live up to what you say
you're going to do and you do it.
Show up on time, be respectful of people's time.
I mean, those are the things that kind of come to my mind outside of what the general
leadership books all say.
Along the lines of the same thing, do you have some stories that you like to share where
you had great experiences with the leadership that you worked with or the leadership you
were under that probably inspired you?
Or on the other side, would you like to share some horrible or not so impactful leaders
that you came across that didn't bring you up or put you down or didn't help your talents?
I'd love to hear some of those stories.
So long time ago, I was in a program called Army Cadets in Canada, not part of the military,
but the motto was something called Acer Acer Pori.
As the maple, so the sapling is what it meant.
And it basically is a glorified way to say lead by example.
That is core for any leader.
If a leader is practicing do as I say, not as I do, best of luck with your team.
You're going to repel talent worse than oil and water.
You can't do that.
There's a reason why so many of those marvelous movies that we've all seen have the general
leading from the front, that type of thing.
So I think from the story standpoint, I've seen terrific leaders, I've seen horrible
leaders.
The horrible leaders, they generally don't tend to be leaders for very long.
They're just not successful in the position.
And you can't get great economic results in a business as a horrible leader.
You might get good, you might get even better than good, but it's not sustainable.
Truly outstanding business results require, let's call it highly correlated, incredibly
well correlated to the leader's ability to be a great leader.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
I invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and
attention.
I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro