We have all become painfully aware that cybercrime is at all-time record highs. Now the bad actors have figured out how to hack your hiring process.

Stories have been surfacing about people accepting roles remotely that are different people from the ones attending the interview.

Let’s face it, hacking the interview process is probably the easiest way to infiltrate your company and ultimately your data. When the interviewers focus on the skills and do not dig deep enough into the truth about the other person the result can be the opportunity that puts your company in jeopardy.

Guest Bio:

Becky Wanta is the CTO of Q5id and a highly accomplished global senior executive with more than 30 years of success in applying extensive IT experience to guide companies in a wide variety of industries to achieve their goals. 

She has proven her ability to improve market share and profitability while establishing long-term business relations and recruiting and developing cross-functional and high-performing teams. 

She has also been profiled by various publications, including Profile magazine and Bloomberg News. She is the holder of two US patents.

Today We Discuss:

• How bad actors can infiltrate your company

Challenge today?

• Not a guarantee that the person who you are hiring is who they say they are

• No prevent identity

• References, credit score, 

Why is this important to the company?

• Cost the company Millions of dollars

Rick’s Nuggets

• Targeted and focused search 
  • Totally negates the issue

How do we solve the problem? 

• Tighten up and expand pre-employment and background check processes to include a proven identity process which includes:

• Biometrics/personal identifiers that your employees control.  This needs to include liveness checks, biometric and AI-driven models to ensure individuals are who they say they are

• So, companies need to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive while building a distributed team, with everyone focused on the product. They must be systematic about finding specific skillsets and finding those skillsets in people who want to work with other people.

• biometrics

Rick’s Nuggets

• Targeted hiring approach
  • Identify & proactively develop a relationship with the person BEFORE you need to hire them.

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Never compromise on finding the best people with the best-fitted skills 

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccawanta/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor: www.stridesearch.com

Last week I had a conversation with a CEO who thought it was too early to establish core values because his company was only 15 people. His thinking was that things would just change anyway and he would have to do them all over again as the company grows.

But here was the ginormous problem: Two of his people recently quit, the last 4 offers he made were turned down and the candidate pipeline was drying up.

… And he thought it was about the money.

Today, more than ever, people desire to be in alignment with the values of the organization. If they aren’t in alignment, they leave.

Here’s the truth: your company has values whether you like it or not. Solidifying your values and making them a decision-making tool can never happen too early and will only fuel company growth.

Guest Bio: 

Marc Reifenrath is the CEO & Co-founder of Spinutech, a full-service digital marketing agency with 165+ team members across the U.S. 

Marc has helped Spinutech grow from a college start-up to one of the premier full-service digital marketing agencies in the country. The secret ingredient? Company values that are truly lived, including a commitment to “Get Better Every Day”. 

In that capacity, Marc understands firsthand how critical a company’s culture is to achieving and maintaining success.

Today We Discuss:

• When to implement your company values

Challenge today?

• Had unwritten core values but were not formalized

Why is this important to the company?

• From a hiring perspective, it is a really quick filter

Rick’s Nuggets:

• Formalization attracts the right people and repels those who do not

How do we solve the problem? 

• Leadership team development

• People who understand the organization

• We get better every day: better myself, team & clients

• Core values onboarding

• Weekly video “get better every day”

• Stronger the core values the more you are prepared for growth

Rick’s Nuggets

• Be realistic about who YOU are

• Aspirational values are worthless

• Aligned = hire 

• Assign interview questions to each interviewer

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Honest about what your core values are, Lived not aspirational

Guest Links: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcreifenrath/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor: 

• www.stridesearch.com

Are Strategy and Systems missing in your hiring process?

The answer is most likely “Yes” as 99.9% of entrepreneurs approach hiring as a reactive activity based on a current need. This is dangerous because it perpetuates the transactional mindset that sets you up for failure.

Strategy is not about “how do I turn on the funnel”. Strategy is about how you identify, contact & engage with the person who will thrive in your business. This means being able to articulate your value to align with each individual.

But, strategy is not enough to get an A-player to join your company. The structure of your interview process is the System that demonstrates excellence within the organization. And excellence is what every high performer strives for in their next company.

Guest Bio:

Hilmon Sorey is Co-Founder of CoachCRM sales coaching software for managers; Co-Founder of ClozeLoop, a sales strategy, training, and enablement firm with offices in New York, Houston, Silicon Valley, and Johannesburg; Partner in 2.12 Angels as a seed-stage venture capital firm; and author of 8 top-selling books on sales, sales management, and coaching. 

He has helped build teams in companies that range from early-stage startups to Salesforce, Box, SurveyMonkey, Bill.com, and some of the fastest-growing companies in the world totaling over $600B in valuation and market cap. 

 He’s an award-winning trainer who has trained over 15,000 salespeople and over 5,000 executives. He is a sought-after speaker around the globe and a Forbes contributor.

Today We Discuss:

• The 4 S’s: Strategy, Systems, Staff & Skills

Challenge Today?

• Ensuring that you are hiring the right people who will have impact

Why is this important to the company?

• Ask any CEO of a Unicorn what they consider to be their competitive advantage.   They’ll say their people.  

Rick’s Nuggets

• Strategy absent:

• No time to do it

• It’s all bullshit anyways

• No time to set up or train

How do we solve the problem? 

• Strategy 
  • Understanding GTM strategy

Rick’s Nuggets

• Strategy:

• Only hire people who align with company values!

• Understand YOU first

• Interview process

• Documented, and communicated, 

• Train your people

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Focus on Strategy and Systems to create scale. 

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilmonsorey/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor: 

• www.stridesearch.com

Why is the phone screen is the most underutilized tool in hiring today?

There is this perception or fear that the person making the call will say the wrong thing and screw up the chances that the person will show up. So the phone screen is treated like a used car sale.

Tell people all the great things about our company, gather some basic information and invite the person in to interview.  And because we like them because look good on paper, we assume they will want to work for us.

Here’s the truth: High performing people do not want to work for your company based on your sales pitch. What people want is to be understood and to be positioned where they can deliver the greatest impact.

How do I get better with phone screens? 

Today we’re going to discuss:

• Why Phone screens (Discovery calls) are critical to hiring A-players

Challenge today?

• Phone Screen! - Discovery call

• Often skipped

• Real time waster is the interview

• “What are 3 or 4 main criteria you need to see in an opportunity for you to accept an offer with a company”

Why is this important to the company?

• First impression of your company

How do we solve the problem? 

• Value the Discovery call

• Prioritize time   

• Basic screening eliminates the bottom 10% but also the top 10%

• Pain, Desire & Impact

• “3 or 4 main criteria you need to see in an opportunity for you to accept an offer with a company”

• Allows them to take ownership

Key Takeaways -Value:

• Prioritize the phone screen/discovery call

Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor:

• www.stridesearch.com

Two people pop into a room together for an interview. What happens next?

No one knows! 

This is the eternal mystery that most companies have faced for decades. And the single point of failure in hiring!

Because we assume that everyone knows how to interview. But the truth is, they do not as most interviewers have only been trained on what NOT to say. There is no insight as to what is being said, the questions that are asked or personal motives that drive a person’s opinion on a hiring decision. 

So today we are going to help to give you insight into how you can gain valuable interviewing data to empower your people to make stronger hiring decisions for your company!

Guest Bio:

Raphael Danilo is a French entrepreneur and investor based in New York. He's the CEO and founder of Yobs, an Interview Intelligence platform that sits on top of Zoom and the ATS and enables every interviewer to feel prepared and be more efficient in hiring top talent. 

Raphael has helped 100+ high-growth organizations up level their recruiting organization with Interview Intelligence through Yobs and Evening Fund, the VC fund he runs on nights and weekends.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

• The importance of interview intelligence

Challenge today?

• Recruiting is incredibility opinion spaced

• Opinions about what we remember about the conversation

• Labor intensive tasks - ie: interview plan, taking notes

• Not having a shared view of reality

Rick’s Nuggets

• Interview is riddled with fail

How do we solve the problem (solution)? 

• Capture reality 

• capture all candidate interactions - across web conferencing, dialers, phone, and email.

Rick’s Nuggets

• Interview intelligence 

• Decision making language throughout the organization

• Protectors of realm

• Behavioral interview questions 

• Assumptions allow bias & motives to fester

• what they said, not what you translated

• Video (zoom, teams, etc…) 

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Capture reality- record your calls

Guest Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphael-danilo-481b41b2/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor:

• www.stridesearch.com

One big thing that we have learned over the past year is that employers no longer have control over the people they hire. The balance of power has shifted with the majority of people willing to walk away from an opportunity that does not align with their personal beliefs or values. 

Many companies are left scratching their heads as to why. So, the thinking has evolved into “it must be the money” so let’s increase compensation & benefits. Hoping this will solve the problem. But it hasn’t.

The interviewees today are the one’s making the selection, not the company. 

So to get people to choose your company to join you simply need to level the playing field by understanding “what’s in it for them”.

Guest Bio:

Lee Rubin is the Founder and CEO of Confetti. A platform that helps companies build stronger culture by providing shared experiences for a distributed workplace.  Their holistic tool empowers HR and other team leads to quickly discover, plan and book from a catalog of exclusive experiences that optimize corporate culture and employee’s professional growth. 

Lee is a visionary culture leader with a decade of experience in B2B sales. She's one of the world's experts on remote event planning and has built her company from 0 to 60 employees in just 3 years!

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

• What the field really looks like today

Challenge today?

• Differentiate the company

• Higher chance of closing the person

• Win-win scenario

Why is this important to the company?

• You don’t want your people to feel under-valued monetarily 

Rick’s Nuggets

• Optimize for remote vs. onsite

Authenticity - As you know from your book “healing career wounds” people are literally traumatized from their job and don’t want to make the mistake again of joining a company they don’t like. So how do you get to know them authentically, make them feel comfortable and close the deal better? 

How do we solve the problem? 

• Getting people to feel comfortable

• Body language, casual talk: friendly 

• One of their core values 

• About you, improvised 

• Prepared with job posting

• Ie: Customer success- create a customer response email

• Negotiate respectfully

Rick’s Nuggets

•  Values driven experience

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Optimize for people you want to go through the shit with

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Guest Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubinl/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor:

• www.stridesearch.com

Do you really need a data scientist for your startup?

Throughout my career, I have placed a lot of data scientists at smaller companies. Most of the people placed left within a year of starting with the common feedback that the work didn't warrant having a data scientist.

In most cases a data engineer is more than sufficient to build the organization. Sure AI and machine learning may be critical to your business but the question that should be asked before anyone is hired.

Guest Bio:

Asim Razvi has been focused on Business Intelligence for the last 20 years. He leads the analytics and data strategy for high growth companies.  Asim brings a wide background across Media, Communications and Finance and has built Business Intelligence practices for PwC, Cognizant and Accenture.  

Formerly the Head of Education and Research for TDWI where his focus was to rebuild the TDWI brand through alignment with Analytics, Big Data and Cloud thought leadership.

TODAY WE DISCUSS:

• Why to think twice before hiring a data scientist

Challenge today?

• Why hire a data scientist?

• Hiring company

• Organization 

• Build something valuable 

• Not a subject matter expert on what the company wants

Why is this important to the company?

• Knowing when to hire a data scientist

• Monetize data

Rick’s Nuggets

• Not enough challenging work

How do we solve the problem? 

• Focus on data maturity

• Sophisticated business users

• Vertical chain

• How prepared is the organization to hire a data scientist

• Enable users to become data scientists

• You don't need a data scientist as a startup

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Don't hire earlier than you need to

Guest Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asimrazvi/

Host Links: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor:

• www.stridesearch.com

A company founder approached me last week with a problem. He has had a critical role open for the past 6 months and no one has accepted his offer. 5 people had been offered the job and every single person turned it down.

When asked why, the founder said, “I did a great job selling each one of them from the beginning so It must have been the money”.

Then I asked, “what was it that the person you were trying to hire really desired in their next role. To that his response was “I have no idea”.

We get so busy selling that we forget to ask.

Interviewing is not about selling. Interviewing is about understanding the truth of what is important to the person on the other side of the table.

And understanding is how we avoid turned down offers!

Guest Bio:

Jeff Wolfe is an energy and cleantech industry leader and serial entrepreneur. He has spent his career creating new solutions in the built environment and clean energy. As CEO of Veloce Energy he is working to accelerate the electrification of everything by creating systems that reduce the cost, time, and complexity of powering EV charging and building electrification.

He has been President for the Americas of a global EV charger manufacturer, worked in retail energy and in a multi-national oil company, and designed over a billion dollars of hospitals, laboratories, and other infrastructure. 

 Today we discuss:

• Why listening during the interview process produces results

HIRING STORY:

• Met 4th cofounder through 3rd party 

Challenges today?

• Aggressive employee environment

Why is this important to the company?

• Able to hire good people for reasonable compensation

Rick’s Nuggets

• People not accepting or leaving - not the $$$

How do we solve the problem? 

• Let the person tell you what they need

• Why do people stay - three elements of compensation

• Money & Benefits

• Learn how to communicate it and own it

• Honest relationships

• Leadership communication

• No low balling

• Take notes 

Rick’s Nuggets

• Values

• North star for strong team

• Interviewing for value alignment

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Learn to embody and externally express the company culture and mission. Do not be afraid of them

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffwolfeenergy/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor:

www.stridesearch.com

A big push for people to return to the office is the argument that spontaneous interaction is critical to the growth of the business. The fear is that people are not communicating and it has hindered innovation.

However, let’s look at the number of fully remote companies who have been thriving throughout the past few years. The big differentiator is the structure and setting up interaction channels to foster communication.

Mastering the interview has been more challenging as it is often difficult to read nonverbal cues and interactions. As we have grown more comfortable with this method of interviewing, the structure of consistent interview questions has been the single most important element in hiring success.

Guest Bio:

David Wald is cofounder and CEO of Aclaimant, an insight driven workflow solution for safety and risk management. As CEO, David’s primary focus is driving the company’s vision, identifying and executing strategic partner and customer relationships, and growing the Aclaimant team and investor base. The company has been remote first for the past 8 years!

Prior to Aclaimant, David spent time with the Lightbank Venture Capital fund in Chicago on both the investment team, and as an operator and EIR. He was also a management consultant at Bain and Company. David graduated from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and currently resides in Chicago with his wife and three kids.

Today we discuss:

• What's critical in a remote work/interviewing environment

Hiring Story:

• Intro to our top candidate's brother's high school friend… 

Challenges today?

• Artificial collisions- bumping into people in the hall, watercooler conversation across departments

• Zoom is not good for rapid collaboration

Why is this important to the company?

• Cant have passive actors in a remote environment

• I was waiting for….

• Onboarding is challenging remotely 

Rick’s Nuggets

• Communication must be fueled by leadership

How do we solve the problem? 

• Tooling:

• Every team, project & customer have their own room 

• candidates , customers & internal

• Scientific method

• Documenting every process and keeping it clean

• True information source & driving everyone to that location

• Office hours for every team (meeting) once a week

• Informally stop and chat

• Information needs to get out 

• Surveying tools, function specific data, 

• Every manager & director is plugged into the right sequence of events to gather feedback

Rick’s Nuggets

• Remote (Zoom, Teams) interview 

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Very deliberate about how you create connectivity

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidawald/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor: www.stridesearch.com

We often hear data on how much bad hire costs you and your company. About 3x the person’s annual salary.

But how much did the interview process itself cost?

For a startup to make a hire, the company spends about 73 total hours interviewing. With the most significant cost being 30 hours of the production team's combined time. And this is assuming that 6 people make it through a full interview to get to the hire.

We have to ask ourselves, can we really afford to lose almost 4 days of productive activity to interview? Roughly $9,855 per role, not including candidate marketing or recruiting fees. 

As a small business, the answer is NO!

Guest Bio:

Rocky Lalvani of Profit Comes First, serves as Chief Profitability Adviser for business owners. He teaches them how to ensure they get paid and make profit a priority! As a certified Profit First Professional he implements Mike Michalowicz's Profit First System.  

Rocky started with nothing when his parents immigrated to the United States when he was two years old, and his parents were in their 40's. It was his parents' second time starting over in life as they moved here to experience the American dream. 

In spite of a lot of struggles and his mom passing away when Rocky was 7, he has been able to achieve financial and life success. Rocky loves to share his journey and inspire others to achieve their dreams even faster.

Today we discuss:

• Why it is critical to understand what interviewing costs 

Challenges today?

• Employees are the major cost for the business 

• Employee should provide a return for the business

Why is this important to the company?

• Costs to the company hiring 

• Reduces morale

Rick’s Nuggets

• Team time waste!

• People who meet the team must be positioned properly

How do we solve the problem? 

• Mission values purpose

• This is the step most business owners skip!

• Not who you like

• Bad Hire- Employee does not provide any value

• Mistakes 

• For every $1 in payroll returns x$ in gross profit

We change the accounting formula of Sales - Expenses = Profit to Sales - Profit = Expenses.  This ensures Profit comes first! (PS. It's not about money at all costs, people come before money!)

Rick’s Nuggets

• Values - most important

Key Takeaways that the Audience can plug into their business today! (Value):

• Is mission vision purpose written down & do your employees know it?

Guest Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rocky-lalvani/

Host Links:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-girard-07722/

Show Sponsor:

www.stridesearch.com