Hiring Right, Finally!

This is going to sound crazy, but it’s the truth and I’m admitting it.

In 2016-2020, I hired and fired over 100 people.

I had 100% turnover. Every person I hired was the wrong person.

As you might imagine, there’s been a lot of learning in that experience and it took me some time to figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out though, with every wrong hire, I got a little bit closer to figuring out the secret sauce, the magic recipe, the right recruiting process to attract, recruit and hire the right people.

These days, people ask me all the time how I found our amazing team of professionals (you can read all of their bios here), and how they can do the same for their own companies. So I thought I’d share some of those insights with you. You can apply this methodology to any industry.

In our 7-step recruiting process we look at these 3 areas:

1.      Core Values and Culture Fit

As part of the application process, candidates are required to describe their own personal core values We look to make sure those align well with our company core values. We also spell out our core values and a description of company culture in the job description. Doing this helps to repel the wrong candidates from applying to our positions and attracts the right ones. Here’s an example of a core value / culture fit question we ask.

2.      Job Fit

Assessing job fit can be challenging. Here’s how we tackle this:

–         Education: This one is easy. Does the candidate have the required level of education?

–         Skills & Experience: The only way to know if a candidate really has the skills to perform the job is to test them. We developed our own simple accounting test to assess skill. We administer the test live on a Zoom call with screen sharing on! Believe it or not, over 75% of candidates that get to this point in our process fail our simple accounting test! And this includes people with Bachelor’s Degrees in Accounting and even some CPA’s! It’s unbelievable.

–         Behavioral Match: Every job has a unique behavioral profile and candidates will have natural workplace characteristics that may or may not fit that profile. We do a Behavioral Assessment using The Predictive Index to see how closely each candidate matches the job profile.

–         Cognitive Match: Each job has a certain level of required cognitive ability in order to be successful. We use Predictive Index to do a Cognitive Assessment which tells us how quickly candidates can learn new tools and technology.

3.      Strong Communication

Throughout the recruiting process, there are many opportunities to assess candidates’ communication skills. Spelling and grammar are obvious. But consider whether or not the candidate shows up on time to a phone screen or an interview. How quickly do they respond to your communications? In their various communications with you, are they able to express an idea or thought, and get a point across in a professional way? How does their communication make you feel? Would you be comfortable having them communicate with your clients or employees?

That’s it in a nutshell. We’ve gotten pretty good at recruiting and hiring and we’d be happy to help you too! If your business needs an upgrade in its finance or HR department, give us a call! We look forward to hearing from you!