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:

Challenge today?

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

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? 

Rick’s Nuggets

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

Confetti Offer: *This special promo expires on July 9th

Redeem a $150 discount on your first event by sending an email (see below) to [email protected] with the Subject line: HIRE POWER Confetti Discount

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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:

Challenge today?

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

How do we solve the problem? 

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

Guest Links:

Host Links: 

Show Sponsor:

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:

HIRING STORY:

Challenges today?

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

How do we solve the problem? 

Rick’s Nuggets

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

Guest Links

Host Links:

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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:

Hiring Story:

Challenges today?

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

How do we solve the problem? 

Rick’s Nuggets

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

Guest Links

Host Links:

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:

Challenges today?

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

How do we solve the problem? 

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

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

Guest Links

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Show Sponsor:

www.stridesearch.com

Let's face it, a lot of people are BAD at interviewing on both sides of the table. 

It is easy to understand that candidates or job seekers are bad for numerous reasons. Being nervous, out of practice, and under pressure to do well because of NEED,  create a large margin for error. For seasoned interviewers, it becomes easier to perform because the person has a lot of practice interviewing. That practice is what eventually makes it easier to land a job. 

On the company side, interviewers get a lot of practice asking the same questions as everyone else, but the lack of structure & coordination does very little to uncover evidence to support the decision. The problem with that is that only surface information is gathered and at the end of the day, the hiring decision is made on circumstantial evidence, assumptions, and bias.

Guest Bio:

Varun Puri is the Founder of Yoodli and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Paul Allen's AI Institute. Yoodli uses AI to help people improve their public speaking and interviewing skills without the pressure of an audience. 

Prior to Yoodli, Varun worked on a GoogleX project to bring high speed internet to unconnected regions using invisible lasers. He also ran special projects for Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder.

 Today we discuss:

HIRING STORY:

PROBLEM:

Challenges today?

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

How do we solve the problem? 

Rick’s Nuggets

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

Guest Links

Host Links: 

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Sometimes an innocent conversation during an interview can have horrific consequences, especially if you end up not hiring a person.

The biggest problem every company faces during the hiring process is the interview. 

Two people go into a room together for a conversation and no one knows what transpires. Conversations flow and curiosity carries the conversation.

As we all know, curiosity killed the cat… and possibly your company.

Let’s replace curiosity with consistency.

Because the lack of consistency is what breeds unfair interviewing practices by promoting assumptions and cultivating bias. By simply eliminating assumptions & bias from the interview, we can create a process where evidence is gathered that supports the decision.

Minimizing your exposure to future litigation.

Guest Bio: 

Victor Xu is attorney extraordinaire in the Fisher Phillips Irvine office where he represents companies in all aspects of labor and employment litigation, from inception through trial, in state and federal courts throughout California. 

 Victor also has significant experience in conducting internal investigations into alleged employee/supervisor misconduct, including harassment and discrimination, and has provided recommendations for remedial measures, including preparation of new company policies.

Today we discuss:

Challenges today?

What gets you in trouble when interviewing

Having a standard in place where interviewers are not just shooting from the hip in the interview

Why is this important to the company?

Rick’s Nuggets

How do we solve the problem? 

Train people to interview and use trained people exclusively

Create an interview guide of objective questions

Honest response for hiring choice

Values cannot be discriminatory, Legitimate business reason- values

Rick’s Nuggets

Tie your interview questions to values

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

Guest Links

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As a company founder you have A LOT on your plate. So much,  that it is often overwhelming so you scramble to delegate the things you don’t like to do as quickly as possible.

At the top of the delegation list is offloading hiring. Today I'm going to challenge you to own your people function for as long as possible because it is so critical to your success!.

Last week our guest, Steve Newcomb, exposed his key principles for building successful companies. The most important element in building a successful company is … the foundation.

“Do the big things right and then everything becomes exponentially easier”. This means doing the hard things first because if the foundation isn't right, everything else will be more difficult.

Getting really good at the things you hate… recruiting, interviewing & hiring, translates into onboarding the strongest people early and builds personal credibility in you as a leader.

Today we’re going to discuss:

Challenge today?

Why is this important to the company?

How do we solve the problem? 

Key Takeaways -Value:

Host Links

Let’s talk about why your company is not stacked with A-players. It is not because you cannot afford them.

At its root, the reason is narrowed down to one thing, your foundation

We tend to think of hiring as an activity rather than an essential function like product or finance or even your pitch deck. So much time is invested into these activities.  Yet, hiring is the most critical component of building a successful business. In fact, most investors' decisions are heavily influenced by the people who are onboard.

Solidifying a foundation for hiring requires the same amount of care and work as do the other components of your company. It cannot be outsourced. Hiring needs to be owned by leadership, documented and taught to everyone in the organization. 

Foundation is what attracts high performers to want to join your company, not the paycheck.

Guest Bio:

Steve Newcomb is a product/engineering led serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful venture backed mission-driven startups. He’s best known for co-founding Powerset (now Microsoft Bing) and scaling its engineering team, culture, and operations. 

He is the author of some of the most fundamental essays on hiring, culture, and scaling engineering teams, including the original “Cult(ure) Creation” and “In Defense of Introverts”

Today we discuss:

Challenges today?

Foundation: Do the big things right and then everything becomes exponentially easier

Be the valedictorian of Stanford. Do the hard things early

Without this?

Rick’s Nuggets

Chad Walters from Powerset

How do we solve the problem? 

Principles of doing good interview process. Treat everyone like gold.

You interview me

Creative Tactics: Don't work without good fundamentals 

The interview

Rick’s Nuggets

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

Guest Links

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Let’s talk about what really draws people to your company… and keeps them there. Trust

Trust is what drives better decision making, customer experience and profitability. But trust is not gained after a person starts working for your company. It is established during the interview process.

You see, people’s job mindset has evolved over the past few years.  We are being judged throughout the process for clarity, purpose and structural integrity.  Elements that demonstrate that you take your business seriously and are playing to win.

When hiring, start with the end in mind. Focus on retention, with the intention of building trust through the experience for maximum engagement & long term growth.

Guest Bio:

Ville Houttu is the Founder and CEO of Vincit USA. Previously, he helped Vincit Finland to reach 350 employees and make it public on Nasdaq First North marketplace. After the IPO, Ville moved to California to start Vincit’s local subsidiary. 

Ville and the company have been recognized by several notable institutions, including 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies in America List. In 2020, he led the company to rank top-50 on the FAST Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators list.

Ville is a known public speaker and his leadership has been featured in several leading publications, including TechCrunch, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and Entrepreneur. 

Today we discuss:

Challenges today?

Why is this important to the company?

How do we solve the problem? 

Here’s how CEO of the Day works:

Rick’s Nuggets

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

Guest Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vhouttu/

Host Links:

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