Perfect Hire Blueprint Read online

  Perfect Hire Blueprint by Dave Clough

  Edited by Julie Chakrin

  Published by mPower Advisors

  61 Pleasant Street #1453

  Newburyport MA 01950

  www.PerfectHireBlueprint.com

  © 2017 Dave Clough

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Introduction

  Can’t I Just Hire a Headhunter?

  The Right People on the Bus in the Right Seats

  Chapter 1: Preparing to Hire

  Questions to Ask Before Hiring

  What Are the Costs of Hiring?

  Reactive Recruiting vs. Talent Acquisition

  Hiring the Right People

  Defining “Mis-fits”

  You Want A-players

  Chapter 2: Determine Openings

  Chapter 3: The Process

  Overview of the Process

  Selling an Interview Candidate

  Section 1: Setup & Pre-hire

  Chapter 4: Profile/Benchmark

  Profile of a Perfect Hire

  Chapter 5: Job Description

  Chapter 6: Creation of Ad

  You Talkin’ to Me?

  Chapter 7: Placement of Ad (Sourcing)

  Recruiting “Passive” Candidates

  Section 2: Screening

  Chapter 8: Track and Qualify Applicants

  Get More Role Specific Information

  Chapter 9: Rejecting Candidates

  Chapter 10: Phone Screen

  Conduct Phone Interviews with Qualified Candidates

  Chapter 11: Have a Pre-Interview Meet-up

  Chapter 12: First Interview

  Chapter 13: Talent Assessment & Gap Analysis

  Chapter 14: Second Interview

  Reference Checks

  Background Check

  Chapter 15: Post Interview Roundtable/Interview Candidate Roundtable

  Section 3: Closing the Deal

  Chapter 16: The Offer

  Chapter 17: Post Offer

  Chapter 18: Onboarding

  Chapter 19: Benefits of This Process

  Chapter 20: Why I Use TTI Assessments

  Chapter 21: Takeaways

  What Are People Saying?

  About the Author

  Thank you for picking up this book! Feel free to read it from front to back, or jump to a chapter as a reference for your hiring needs at any time. For more information, and to download the resources mentioned in the book, visit PerfectHireBlueprint.com/Resources.

  To your success,

  Dave

  Foreword

  There are a few "Meta skills" that make a person’s life and business SIGNIFICANTLY better.

  The ability to really know what drives and motivates or frustrates and challenges another human being is at the top of the list…especially for Entrepreneurs!

  I have spent 30 years serving over 40,000 people to discover exactly that for themselves and apply it to their life and business.

  It is one thing to help individuals discover these truths about themselves. It is an entirely different thing to systematically and objectively discover what truly drives and challenges another human being, and strategically match their gifts to a career where they can shine…for the organization they work for and themselves.

  Amazing!

  The book you are holding will do exactly that.

  I have had the privilege of working with and supporting Dave and I am always impressed with how he thinks, his ability to make the overwhelming and difficult seem simple, how he solves problems and how he cares about people…their abilities and their needs.

  The Perfect Hire Blueprint presents a powerful step by step process that when applied properly saves entrepreneurs and businesses time, frustration and significant money. The value of this process is easy to underestimate. I want to remind you that if you are holding this book, you are likely in the middle of hiring – and perhaps building an entire team. The truth is, you will do it right or you will pay dearly.

  A study conducted by the Center for American Progress determined that the cost of losing an employee can range anywhere from 16% of their salary (for hourly, unsalaried employees), to 213% of the salary (for a highly trained position)! So if a highly trained executive is making $120,000 a year, the true loss could be up to $255,600 to the company!

  The reality is this: small to medium size businesses cannot afford to makes these kind of mistakes.

  I know this for a fact, since I have been hiring and building teams for over 30 years. I can say with great certainty (personal experience) that in the past I have made almost every mistake this book aims to solve.

  Following just some of Dave’s systems (like integrating the DISC Assessment as part of the hiring process) has helped me hire team members that are still with me over 20 years later.

  One last recommendation: please do yourself and your business a favor, don’t just read the book – engage with the online resources. The tools are all there to actually do this, to find the right person for the right job…the first time! Like I just did with my new Executive Assistant.

  I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes of Dave's:

  "Most companies hire based on experience and skill, but they fire based on attitude or behavior.”

  Let’s not make that mistake again.

  Enjoy!

  Jay Fiset

  Facilitator, Mastermind Mentor & Best Selling Author

  www.MastermindtoMillions.com

  Prologue

  Writing a book is not something that most people do on a whim, so you may be wondering why someone with my background decided to write this.

  Simon Sinek recently wrote the book Start with Why – I totally buy in to his concepts, so I’ll start this book with my “why.”

  My why, and my passion, is to help small businesses (1 to 350 employees) succeed. That is my full time job. I left corporate America to do just that - to become a business advisor (some people might use the words consultant or coach).

  The reason I care so much about small businesses is because they are an economic equalizer and a way to change your station in life. Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad emphasizes that just a paycheck will not change your station in life, but owning a business very well could.

  I came from a modest background (my family was on food stamps and free school lunches) and dramatically improved my station, but I did it the way most people would expect:

  It was a bit of a fluke for me to be on this path, hailing from a blue collar town with blue collar parents. Just attending college was unexpected, given the underprivileged high school in my town.

  Many of the small business CEOs/owners that I’ve worked with have not gone the college route, and I think my upbringing allows me to connect with them.

  My stepfather bought a small business when I was young, but it wasn’t a viable business for very long. All of these factors have played a part in forming my “why.”

  The odds are not in the favor of the small business. We’ve all heard the data: 20%+ of small businesses fail after one year and less than 1/3 make it to 10 years.

  Those are terrible odds, yet people start businesses all the time. Back in 2004 I did it too, so I guess I’m one of the successful third.

  The typical reason for failure isn’t because the idea was bad. It is usually because the execution was poor. I work hard to get entrepreneurs to focus on the right things at the right times.

  This brings me to hiring: ba
d hiring plays a huge part in the execution issues that cause small businesses to fail. It’s important to hire the right people who fit the job AND the company.

  There is a saying I like: “don’t hire for skill, hire for attitude.” The skills can be learned by those with some aptitude. While this is generally true, for a small business owner, this is too simplistic because they don’t have the time or the resources to train every employee.

  Small businesses need the attitude AND the skill, but most small businesses don’t know how to find the right people. The whole reason they may fail is because they hired the wrong people (and likely had a poor business plan).

  If a business is going to succeed, it needs the right people doing the right jobs, and that is why I’m writing this book.

  I’ve been able to achieve a life that I did not foresee as a child, and my hope is that this book helps at least a few more entrepreneurs achieve their visions and goals.

  Introduction

  Has this ever happened to you?

  You need to hire someone now because your employees are busy, stressed, and you’ll lose money and your best workers if you don’t get more help. So you ask around, and someone you know suggests a candidate who they think will be a perfect fit. Maybe this person is a friend or a relative, and you get the feeling that he might not be exactly right, but you need someone to fill the role immediately or your business will suffer. To make it more official, you ask a manager to “interview” the person to get a feel for talent and fit, but there are no solid criteria.

  Nobody at your company has the time to train, so you do on the job training. You hope the employee will succeed, but after 90 days it is clear that he is the wrong fit. You don’t want to fire the person since it will cause hurt feelings and a strained personal relationship, so you keep trying to make it work.

  When you ultimately have to fire the person, now you’ve lost 3+ months, not to mention the financial losses of finding someone new to hire and train. The cost of this bad hire is in the tens of thousands of dollars in direct cost and opportunity costs.

  The U.S. Department of Labor estimated that the average cost of a bad hiring decision can equal 30% of the individual’s first year potential earnings, and that is the lowest number that I’ve seen. In 2013, CareerBuilder surveyed 6000 hiring managers and HR professionals worldwide. They found that 27% of employers in the U.S. who had a bad hire reported costs exceeding $50,000.

  * * *

  The cost of a bad hire can be in the tens of thousands in direct cost and opportunity costs.

  * * *

  Go to PerfectHireBlueprint.com/Resources for a spreadsheet to help calculate the cost of a bad hire for your business.

  It doesn’t have to be this way.

  In a growing company, hiring seems to be a never ending process, taking up a lot of time. In my experience, most hiring managers dislike the process of hiring. For these people, it feels like running uphill: painful while doing it, but rewarding when the process is complete and after some recovery time.

  I’ve spoken with many who feel that even after all the hard work (much of it after hours) and due diligence, it is still a gamble as to whether the person is a good hire. After the long process, some employers feel that they still need to put the person on a 90 day trial and withhold benefits until the employee has proven himself.

  There is a major problem with the idea of a trial hire: the best candidates do not want to be on a trial with little clarity. Why would they leave a good job for a new one with an uncertain 90 day outcome? But if an employer does not do this trial, how can he protect the company from overpaying or getting locked into a bad hire?

  Does this sound like you?

  Without the right people in your company, everything is a struggle. How many of these sound like what you are experiencing?

  You have to micromanage to get the desired results

  You have to repeat yourself because they “don’t remember”

  You can’t take a vacation because things fall apart when you are gone

  When you are out of the office, the productivity drops

  If you are not looking over shoulders, nothing gets done

  To the employees, it’s just a job

  Employees are always asking for a raise, but the productivity and profitability is not increasing

  You don’t want to praise, because they’ll want a raise

  You have to double check everything before it is sent to the customer (internal or external)

  A person does one part of the job well, but the rest is a mess

  The manager reporting to you can’t get the results from the employees that you did before your promotion

  Employees just don’t have the right attitude

  Sometimes it is a struggle to be motivated to go in to the office

  With the right employees, things are much better:

  People are productive and profitable

  They seem to know what to do without you having to tell them

  It isn’t just a job; they care about the company

  The customers are happy and they refer you to their contacts

  Your company is growing, and you don’t feel as if you have to push too hard.

  It is easier to find people to hire because your employees speak well of the company

  Problems are solved before you are told about them

  Employees work together easily and push each other to do better

  Morale is good

  It is a pleasure to go to work

  Of course, the second list also requires good management and leadership, but that is beyond the scope of this book. If you don’t have the right people, you can still fail even though you are a great leader.

  This book is written for leaders who need to hire and want to build a team that achieves great things.

  It is for the leader who recognizes that it is better to get scalable results through people than getting self-recognition for personally doing the work. It is for those who are willing to invest in others for long-term success, rather than those who need quick results that require micromanagement.

  When businesses grow, they need more people. But the speed at which a business grows and the ease with which it grows depends upon its ability to hire and retain high quality people. I am NOT a commissioned recruiter. I primarily consult with and advise small business owners to help them grow their businesses. In most cases they can't achieve the goals that we set without the right people in place. As Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) says, “We need to have the right people in the right seats.”

  I believe in continuous improvement, and I practice what I preach. What got me started was reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey in the early 1990s. It was my awakening as a young manager. Since then I have filled bookshelves with business books. I continually refer to Covey, Collins, Ken Blanchard, Peter Drucker, Daniel Goleman and John Maxwell and have recently added Brendon Burchard. My views are a distillation of my learning, and I use these as well as the talents I was given and my experience to do my best to advise my clients.

  Sometimes we need to hire senior level managers because those roles don't already exist in the company. Other times we need to hire beneath the person we want to act as a manager so that she can stop doing the work and start leading a team to do the work, giving an opportunity for personal and professional growth.

  There have also been times I have diagnosed that the wrong person is in an important role. We need to either relocate or replace that person in order to achieve the company’s goals. In all of these cases it is essential to hire the right person. My goal is to help my client find and hire the right person for the job without overpaying to do so.

  In many cases, these clients could do the job of hiring internally – if only they knew how. For many companies, there’s no need to use professional recruiters to find good people. A structured, thoughtful hiring process is necessary because most of my clients have either never hir
ed well, or haven't hired frequently enough to do it well consistently.

  There are many factors that can make hiring more difficult:

  It takes a lot of time that most managers believe they don’t have

  It typically requires calls outside of normal work hours

  In order to engage with good candidates, you need to move fast

  Resumes are sometimes works of fiction, “edited” by experts

  The candidate interview is a coached performance rather than an authentic conversation, and you may not know the real person until many days after he starts