How To Find And Hire The Right Person For The Right Job

This is a monumental week for us, today our team welcomes a new team member, and tomorrow is the six-year anniversary for our business.

To give you some context, we spend our days liberating business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most.  We do that with powerful business coaching that helps business owners and key leaders build systems, processes, and purpose using the Business On Purpose Roadmap and then graduate onto the Business On Purpose Compass.

Business coaching is nuanced and requires a unique skill set that requires intuition and is hard to replicate.  That is why we are a team of four coaches instead of forty at this stage of the game.

How did we find and hire the right person for the right job?

What I am about to share is simply the play that we have called when the game situation calls for bringing a new team member in.  There are many ways to proceed... this is ours.

We will do well to remember that hiring and leading a team is not the equivalent to a primary care nurse checking vitals prior to a visit with a physician.  Of course, vitals are a part of it; prior skill set, past employment, complimentary personality, etc.

Hiring should be thoughtfully intrusive and investigative.  Not in a weird CSI television kind of way, but in a thoughtful, well processed, well-intentioned, goal-focused direction.  Hiring an employee is more metaphorically aligned with marriage than it is with dating.  We are not inviting someone to a job, we are inviting them to a mission, a calling, and we need their help to get there.

An in-human way of hiring is how most hiring is achieved; check for a pulse, make sure they are not too bazaar for what you are comfortable with, see when they can start, and send over the paperwork.

An incredible human way of hiring is slowing the process down.  Not starting at the minimum requirements (experience, degrees, certificates, etc.), but instead walking them through the mission and the role with check in along the way.

We have eight steps that we thoughtfully walk a new team member through over an extended period of time in order both to make sure we are aligned with that person and that they are aligned with our mission.

Step one is pre-recruiting.  Before we ever reach out to someone we check off five pre-recruiting items:

• Define the gap: what is the gap in the business for which we need to bring another team member in to fill?
• Define the role: what role do we need that person to play in order to fill the gap?
• Define the budget: what compensation will be appropriate for this role based on the revenue that will be generated or supported because this role exists.
• Ask for internal candidates: larger businesses should look around internally to see if there are any “homegrown” candidates for the role.
• Share the role with key stakeholders: prior to traditional posting of your new role in the job search databases

Step two to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the initial phone or Zoom interview.  It is intentionally distant and has a goal of simply reading the situation by asking general questions of background, experience, desire, and motivation.

Step three is the first in-person interview (if applicable to location).  In this interview, we do not share anything about role specifics or compensation.  Before you get married your biggest questions are not regarding future financial goals and or roles within the home.  They are important to discuss prior to marriage certainly, but out of the gate, it is important to make sure there is a simple motivational fit.

We want to make sure this new candidate is aligned with our vision, mission, values, and culture.  We spend the entire time reviewing those written cultural and purpose-centered documents along with our Org Chart and case studies so they can get clarity and ask questions.  

We take just a minute to explain the compensation structure (i.e. base plus commission) but do not discuss numbers.  Our desire is they want to be on the team because of purpose first, then we can get to some of the other elements of the agreement down the road.

Step four to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the due diligence phase where we ask the candidate to take a DISC profile, complete an appropriate homework assignment to determine competency and motivation, and we follow up with three references from three different relational backgrounds to the candidate.

Step five is our second in-person interview (if applicable to location).  This step is where we dive deep into the role, where that role fits within the larger organization, and how that role helps our business to take another step towards liberating business owners from chaos so they can make time for what matters most.

This is time that we roll out the specifics of compensation for discussion and review.

Step six is a live meet up with the candidate and their spouse (is applicable).  We want to spend time with them in a casual environment so we can have unscripted discussions about life, business, and a variety of other things.  It also allows another member of their household to get to know us better and hear our heart.   

Step seven to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is the formal offer where we send a formal employee agreement of expectations within a formal offer email.  We put a time limit on the offer and expect prompt response.

The final step to finding and hiring the right person for the right role is ONBOARDING!  We script out the schedule and calendar of the first four weeks for our new team member.  We also host weekly onboarding calls with our new team member for the first 90 days and ask them pre-set questions.  We want them to focus on learning and growing rather than constantly wondering “what’s next?”

The hiring process is the decision-making process to helping your new team member find out if they really do want to run the marathon of your mission with you, the 90 day onboarding time is the stretch period before the race, and the 90-day mark of their new role is when the marathon gun fires at the starting line.

You owe it to yourself, to your team, your mission, and your new team member to take the time to do this right.

For help in this go join our Business On Purpose Roadmap membership community where you can work through a complete training on hiring and 30 other crucial elements of building a business that liberates you from chaos and makes time for what matters most.

Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters.  Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.