The 100% Foolproof Framework to NEVER Make a Bad Hire Ever Again! (Part 2)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Perpetual Traffic – The 100% Foolproof Framework to NEVER Make a Bad Hire Ever Again! (Part 2)
Release Date: March 11, 2025

Hosts:

• Ralph Burns – Founder and CEO of Tier 11
• Lauren E. Petrullo – Co-host
• Josh Hill – VP of HR (Guest Speaker)

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Introduction

In the second part of their three-part series on hiring strategies, Ralph Burns and guest Josh Hill delve deep into the intricacies of building a robust hiring framework. This episode builds upon the foundational steps discussed in Part 1, emphasizing the blend of systematic processes and intuitive decision-making essential for securing top-tier talent.

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Key Topics Discussed

1. The Evolution of Hiring Processes

   • From Manual to Automated Systems: Ralph shares the progression from using basic tools like Gravity Forms and Trello to advanced HR software like Jazz HR, highlighting the efficiency gains achieved through automation.
   • Importance of Continuous Improvement: Both hosts stress the need for iterative tweaks based on feedback from candidates and hiring managers to refine the hiring process continually.

2. Core Values and Accountability

   • Establishing Core Values: Josh elaborates on how Tier 11 identifies and solidifies core values by analyzing the characteristics of their top performers, ensuring these values evolve with the organization.
   • Accountability Chart: Revisiting Step 1 from Part 1, they discuss the significance of clarity in roles and responsibilities to streamline the hiring process.

3. Sourcing Candidates Effectively

   • Leveraging LinkedIn: Josh emphasizes LinkedIn as a primary sourcing tool, differentiating it from passive job boards. He provides strategies for effective outreach, such as personalized messaging and minimizing application barriers.

     "With LinkedIn, you're reaching out, disrupting someone's momentum at their own workplace. It's all about the outreach and the way you message." (07:25)

4. Utilizing Knockout Questions in Applications

   • Streamlining Candidate Pools: Through Jazz HR's knockout questions, Tier 11 efficiently filters applicants based on essential criteria like location, availability, and specific competencies.

     "You can stack these questions and have 5, 10, even more questions that do the sifting." (19:22)

   • Balancing Aggressiveness: Josh warns against being overly aggressive with filters to avoid discarding high-potential candidates who might not meet every criterion initially.

5. Discovery Calls: Humanizing the Hiring Process

   • Building Connections: Both hosts highlight the necessity of discovery calls to assess candidate fit beyond resumes, fostering a two-way evaluation where both parties gauge mutual compatibility.

     "It's about discovery, learning their pain points, their aspirations, and seeing if there's a match." (09:23)

   • Counteracting AI-Driven Resumes: With AI's rise in crafting perfect resumes, discovery calls become pivotal in authenticating candidates' true capabilities and fit.

6. Simulation Tasks and Role-Playing

   • Assessing Technical and Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Josh explains the implementation of simulation tasks tailored to specific roles, enabling candidates to demonstrate their skills in realistic scenarios.

     "Simulation tasks allow us to assess their technical proficiency and how they handle real-world situations." (41:27)

   • Future of AI in Simulation: Discussion on the potential integration of AI-driven role plays and assessments to further enhance the evaluation process.

7. Triangulating Data Points for Comprehensive Evaluation

   • Balancing Science and Art: Emphasizing that successful hiring combines structured data (applications, simulation tasks) with intuitive judgments formed through multiple interactions.

     "The art is in being efficient in looking at the right candidates by triangulating all these data points." (33:57)

   • Avoiding the Warm Body Trap: Ralph warns against hastily filling positions without thorough evaluation, which often leads to poor hires despite an extensive framework.

     "It's the warm body trap. You just need somebody to do this thing, and that's the worst way to hire people." (47:32)

8. Onboarding: Setting Up for Success

   • Beyond Hiring: The conversation underscores that effective onboarding is crucial to transition from a successful hire to a productive team member.

     "If you have a crappy onboarding, they're not screwed. It's why the relationship starts." (53:21)

   • Continuous Engagement: Ensuring that the onboarding process aligns with the company's values and equips new hires to contribute effectively from day one.

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Notable Quotes

• Ralph Burns (07:25):
  "With LinkedIn, you're reaching out, disrupting someone's momentum at their own workplace. It's all about the outreach and the way you message."

• Josh Hill (19:22):
  "You can stack these questions and have 5, 10, even more questions that do the sifting."

• Ralph Burns (09:23):
  "It's about discovery, learning their pain points, their aspirations, and seeing if there's a match."

• Josh Hill (41:27):
  "Simulation tasks allow us to assess their technical proficiency and how they handle real-world situations."

• Ralph Burns (47:32):
  "It's the warm body trap. You just need somebody to do this thing, and that's the worst way to hire people."

• Josh Hill (33:57):
  "The art is in being efficient in looking at the right candidates by triangulating all these data points."

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Conclusions and Takeaways

• Structured yet Flexible Processes: A well-defined hiring framework that incorporates both automated systems and human intuition leads to higher-quality hires.

• Continuous Feedback and Iteration: Regularly refining hiring strategies based on feedback ensures adaptability and sustained effectiveness.

• Human-Centric Evaluation: Despite advancements in technology, personal interactions like discovery calls remain indispensable in authenticating candidate fit and mitigating AI-related biases.

• Comprehensive Onboarding: Successful hiring extends beyond selection, requiring an effective onboarding process to integrate new hires seamlessly into the organizational culture.

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Next Episode Preview

In the upcoming Part 3 of this series, Ralph and Josh will explore the intricacies of the interview stage, focusing on how subtle cues and comprehensive data triangulation contribute to identifying truly stellar team members. They will also delve into advanced onboarding strategies to ensure new hires thrive within their roles.

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For More Information:
Visit Perpetual Traffic or follow their YouTube Channel for additional insights and future episodes.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content segments to focus solely on the valuable hiring strategies discussed in the episode.

Transcript

[Ralph Burns]

Our friends over at Appsumo started with one simple idea. The tools you need to grow your business shouldn't put you out of business. That's why they work directly with developers to get exclusive discounts of 80 to 90% off software, saving entrepreneurs like you over half of a billion dollars since 2010. Some of the biggest names in tech like Mailchimp, Zapier, Dropbox all got their start on AppSumo. With a rotating selection of hundreds of tools, the ones that you're using anyway and probably paying too much for, you'll find all the software you need to make your life easier in 2020. 5. Plus, with a 60 day money back guarantee, you can try any tool risk free. Oh my God, What a deal. AppSumo rarely offers discounts, but they are going to offer a deal here for you. The perpetual traffic listener. Because prices are already so low, but we got the biggest discount we could possibly get from them anywhere. You get 13% off your first order with the code TRAFFIC13. These guys have been saving entrepreneurs like you and marketing people like you hundreds of millions of dollars since 2010. Don't miss out right now because they don't offer discounts like this. Head on over to appsumo.com enter the code traffic13 and get 13% off your first [e-mail] hey, it's Ralph here. Let me tell you about a lifestyle brand that we recently worked with where they grew their revenue by 49.8% year over year and hit eight figures in top line revenue for the very first time in their history and they are now on track for 25 million in revenue in 2025. We are so excited to be working with this company and the reason why is they started using Tier 11 data suite about a year ago and re reduced their unattributed traffic by 90%. That's right. They're unattributed direct unknown traffic that probably frustrates the hell out of you. Over in GA4 or one of those other crappy attribution tools, we reduced that unattributed traffic by 90%, uncovered $850,000 in hidden revenue, and scaled their ad spend by over 3x. These results are not magic. The results of clean, accurate data and a system designed for today's privacy world where everybody is trying to block your data. If you want to see these kinds of results for your business, reach out and let's make it happen. [e-mail] apply and discover how tier 11 data suite can finally allow you to scale your business, acquiring new customers at a cost you can afford, head on over to tier11.com apply. You're listening to Perpetual Traff. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier11. Not alongside my amazing co host, Lauren E. Petrulo. She is sunning herself on some beach somewhere in the south Caribbean island of. I don't even know where she is actually, but she's traveling somewhere. So anyway, so it's just me and our VP of hr. Wait a second. That's just so, so boring. I'm going to give you all your titles right here. VP of thriving people. HR 47 or HR 47. We'll get to that in just a second. Why? And VP of Team Member Success, VP of People and Culture. But basically our HR guy, Josh Hill, coming back for episode two on how to hire absolute rock star Superst. Far as putting your overused corporate expression there, welcome back to Perpetual Traffic.

[Josh Hill]

Thanks. I'm glad to be back. And I feel like I've just been knighted with all these BS titles that now people like to use, but I know they do.

[Ralph Burns]

My favorite one is HR47. Can you explain that one as to why that is?

[Josh Hill]

Well, I think it's a blend of the military background, the AK47 being a rifle, and the hiring of candidates. So I think like sniping the right candidate, sniping the right people for the job. It's lame. I didn't give it myself. All right, so that was not self acclaimed.

[Ralph Burns]

You know, it was a lot funnier when we sort of mentioned it internally. Now that I'm sort of talking about it live on a podcast, it's not quite as funny. But anyway, we are going to help you snipe the ideal employee, the ideal worker, the ideal team member for your business and give you some of the insights here because we've been doing this for quite some time. So all kidding aside, as we talked about, Josh obviously has a military background. He was a captain in the military, the Australian military, so had a lot of experience. We snatched him out of all that bureaucracy and brought him over to tier 11, where he actually started off as a media buyer and then ascended through the ranks, senior media buyer. And obviously HR and people development is something that you're deeply passionate about and quite good at, might I add. And you inherited a system where we had an eight step process of hiring people, which in essence we still kind of do have, but you've made modifications to it. So in episode one we did talk about the accountability chart, how to source candidates to a certain degree, the importance of establishing your core values in order to sort of create that character diamond. And that's changing over time, your core values as you evolve as an organization. This is something. When I spoke at a conference this past weekend, Josh and I mentioned this, I was like, this is something that everybody misses. They always miss the core values. And to summarize, what we talked about back in episode one, for this, or sort of step one or part one, was that we took our best employee, our best worker, me, and two or three of the other guys that were in the leadership team at that point in time. We just wrote down every one of their core characteristics and the type of individual that we want to basically clone mountain and bring the tier 11. So as a result of that, we then created sort of a list. We boiled it down to three or four characteristics, which became our core values. And I think you sort of start there. So go back and listen to that episode. Obviously, that's a super important one. If you don't have core values, it's not just something that you just post up on the wall and then forget about something that you live and breathe. We actually have a channel devoted to it inside Slack for that. So that's step one. Step two is then sourcing candidates. And this is one of the things I think a lot of people still ask me about. And the best place to source candidates we've found and we still do look for is on LinkedIn. And I know we talked about it just a bit, but is there anything since we recorded that first episode that you want to tell the audience about that you've learned through using that platform? Because no matter what, your candidate is probably there at some point in time during their week or during their month. So what's your big tip there with LinkedIn?

[Josh Hill]

I mean, there's a few different variables and a few different things that need to be considered depending on what sourcing platform you use. I think with LinkedIn, specifically compared to job boards, which are more passive, I mean, candidates are coming to you. With LinkedIn, you're reaching out, right? You're disrupting someone's momentum at their own workplace. You're attempting to capture their attention with an opportunity. So really, the messaging and the outreach, that's where the magic is. I think even preliminary to that, you need to figure out how to search and find your candidate on LinkedIn to begin with. There's various different ways to do that. You can just look through the actual search function that LinkedIn has natively. You can use that to identify competitor companies or similar companies and then filter by people. So you can do more of like a cost free search to identify personnel or you can subscribe to LinkedIn Recruiter which costs, I think it's like a couple hundred bucks a month. That's really good because it's like LinkedIn search on steroids. So you can really add additional criteria to get to the higher quality or at least the people that are going to fit your description or your ideal candidate profile much quicker and then you reach out to them via those means and then it's all like I said before, it's all in the, the outreach, the way you message, the way you paint the opportunity, pitch it as a challenge, make sure it's a career move for them and that's really just kicking off the initial discussions. But once you've got their interest, what we usually do is then we direct them straight from LinkedIn to a discovery call and we often go straight to a discovery call before we even go to an application process. And the reason for doing that is when you're specifically targeting someone on LinkedIn a lot of the time, like I mentioned before, it's you're disrupting them. So I'm not going to disrupt someone and then put extra work on their plate and say hey, we've got this massive opportunity. By the way, can you fill out this 10 minute form and do this and do that.

[Ralph Burns]

They can write and then do this simulation and this other task over here. They're going to be like, who the hell is this guy?

[Josh Hill]

Exactly. So when it comes to LinkedIn, I think the biggest tip would be don't overreach initially with the ask. Make sure you're identifying in the ballpark of the right person that you believe would be the good fit and then treat them like a candidate in a sales process. Make the barriers, reduce the barriers to them getting to understand and be aligned to the vision you have for your company and the potential opportunities in the role. What are the benefits the role comes with likely for them as a career focused individual, provided you really looking for a players and deliver that information on a face to face discovery call where it's as much about you selling the opportunity of the role and the job and the company as it is you understanding their likely fit and their ambitions. And it's really like a bolt adjust, right? Like if. Here we go, AK47 analogy, right? If I take an AK47 to a range, a firing range and I just start Blooding off rounds at a target without zeroing in the rifle. My rounds are going to go everywhere. I'm going to waste ammunition, I'm going to waste time and energy. So what I want to do is I want to adjust the bolt of the rifle first. I want to zero it in properly so that my shots after that are much more accurate and precise. And that's really what we do with the discovery call. We're zeroing in identifying if the candidate's likely the right fit. If they're not, we move on to the next one and we move on to the next one as opposed to going through the entire rigmarole with lots and lots of candidates, which we'll get to other ways now of like how to further save time in a screening process. But ultimately the balance between a screening process and whether it's LinkedIn or hiring in general is all about how do you make the best use of your hiring resources. The actual HR teams that you have or the hiring managers time, which could be regular line managers, how do you manage their time and the resources versus the sheer quantity of candidates that you want to put in front of them and also the quality and increasing the likelihood of you being able to get the right person in the right seat. So it's a balance between those two. And often you need to come up with a nuanced way of how you leverage automation, AI tools, your people's time to not over analyze people, but just analyze people enough and just let enough people get in front of the right people to assess them so that you can get high quality when you actually go to hire. So there's some nuance there which we can get into.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, I'm going to interrupt you there because I think what you just mentioned there is actually really important because one of the questions that when I presented this as part of this presentation I did this past weekend is like does everybody go through a simulator and an application and all these other sorts of things? It depends. And I think with for example, for our CSOs, our client success owners, which are incredibly important at tier 11, not to minimize any other hires that we make, but these are client facing. There's usually higher paid individuals, you have experience, high amount of eiq. These are not the types of people that are probably if they are working somewhere, they're not looking, they're not going to fill out an application. Or maybe like if you were looking for a new VP of Sales or a VP of operations, these are higher level people need to have that personal touch point and also care because they don't know who you are. Like you have to sell them on you and your. Don't be so high and mighty to think that, oh, everyone wants to work for my company. That's not true. Because nobody really cares about you. They really only care about themselves and what you can do for them. And if what you can do for them also matches what they can do for you, then there's a match. And at the end of the day, that really is a great hire. So I think you bring up an important point here, is it isn't like a cattle call for an application like for some of our positions. That may be the case, however, for sort of a selected group of middle to upper management. You want to do what you're talking about. You're extraordinarily good at this. Because I've talked to people who have either gone through the process and didn't get hired by tier 11 or did get hired. If they didn't get hired, they still have a very positive impression of Tier 11 because of your outreach and the care that you make. And this stuff takes time. This is the reason why this is your full time job. And if you're a solopreneur and you're making your first hire here, I would encourage you to do it this way.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

Because that first hire is your most important hire. And whether it's your first or your hundredth, every hire is important. However, you gotta get this right, you gotta sort of get the rhythm of it. And I think LinkedIn is a great place to interrupt people. And I don't even know what your hit rate is with some of these. I would imagine it's fairly low even with really good outreach. But you have to be constantly mindful of the fact that you're selling the opportunity as much as they're trying to sell you on them.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah, for sure. I'm actually pretty surprised with the response rates on LinkedIn, to be honest. What's incredibly obvious is the difference in responses you can get depending on how you craft the outreach. And it is very largely dependent as well on the type of person that you're looking to hire. You know, I think to your point, there's specific roles that you know what my emphasis on job boards for this role is like so low because it's a very nuanced position or it's managerial or even executive. Those guys and girls are not. I mean, they're on job boards, but they know people who know people who they got networks, they're connected, they're hard working individuals that are just getting shit done, they're not going to be scouring job boards, applying for lots and lots and lots of jobs. So that's when it becomes even more important to emphasize outreach. That's when it becomes even more important to craft communication. That is like, whoa, okay, this is a pretty cool opportunity. These guys are super transparent, they've got a clear vision, they're trying to make an impact. And this is, yeah, pretty sexy looking opportunity. Yeah, I'm interested. Okay, great. Let's get on a call. 15 minute chat. I just want to get your time. We'll have a chat and we get on the call. You lead with, you know, it's the basics of how you interact with any sort of candidate in any sort of sales process. I mean, it's about discovery, it's about learning their pain points in their current position and their needs as a human, what their aspirations are, their ambitions. And if it's not a good match, we're completely transparent with that. We're like, okay, that's not actually what we're looking for right now. But if it is a good match, it's like, let's double down. This is great, let's continue the process. And from there we might even have another call. And then it's like, okay, how about we start putting a bit more on your plate now? Let's look at maybe a simulation task or let's get you to apply and answer some questions. Let's dig a bit deeper. And by that stage you've got the trust and the interest so that they're willing to go through those hurdles out of their busy day and commit to a more comprehensive assessment as opposed to just being upfront and pushing a lot of candidates away, which is what we used to do. We used to potentially push people away because we would ask for too much upfront and it just isn't realistic. You don't go on a date with anyone and then instantly start asking them for their hand or ridiculous requests.

[Ralph Burns]

Right.

[Josh Hill]

It's like you need to take it slow and be mindful and respectful of people's time.

[Ralph Burns]

So there is an element to this where you're sniping. That's where the HR for the HR47 comes from. And by the way, we did once go to an archery range and you got like 19 bullseyes and I don't think I even hit the target. So you are actually a really good marksman. Slash archer the point. And you can snipe. You can not only snipe when it comes to bow and arrow and weapons. But also when it comes to this sort of stuff, what you are describing here is a little bit more bespoke way in which to entice candidates to become interested in you. And that does take time. Yes, but let's talk about the other side too. And this is the thing that whenever I talk about our hiring process, I use like a media buyer as an example because there is an application process. Maybe in some cases you are reaching out to select people. Maybe if they're senior media buyer, maybe they're a traffic strategist or some sort of higher level, or maybe even not that we have the opening, but like director of media buying, obviously that would be more of a bespoke, maybe more reach out. However, for. You know, we just hired an incredible creative designer. Like he came in through hundreds of applications. Correct me if I'm wrong. Let's talk about that process and what that looks like as well.

[Josh Hill]

Perfect. Definitely. Yeah. It's definitely important to segregate both of them because they do both have their more tailored approaches. I think with LinkedIn, right, it is much more sniping in the sense that we are going out and we are funneling ourselves through our own research and our own. I mean, with LinkedIn, for example, the tools and the systems that they have, we're doing our own sniping and finding those select few people and then going after them. Sniping in the other sense is more about how do you cast a wide net and then funnel that net down to. And I guess that's sniping in a sense, right? I mean, you're really trying to funnel the focus down to the top layer of key individuals. And again, what I was saying earlier with regards to that balance of resource versus quality HR resource, the wider you cast that net and the more you can funnel down to the cream, like the best of the best, it's going to make more efficient use of the HR resources you have. The more funneling and screening and concentration you can implement in your recruitment process up front. And the way we do that at tier 11 is through a HR applicant tracking system. It's called Jazz hr, but there's plenty of them available. And a system like that is what you said. Yeah, that's right. Jazz.

[Ralph Burns]

Jazz HR with that Aussie accent. Sometimes people are like, what the heck did he just say? I feel like sometimes with John Moran, I need to like translate with you. I actually do need to translate.

[Josh Hill]

Translate up on the next screen.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, that's got saying. So it's Jazz hr. That's the software hr. Sorry, I mispronounced it hr. So anyway, so talk about that, like, what makes that good and or any other of its analogs and competitors that are out there, what does it allow you to do?

[Josh Hill]

Right, so when it comes to the heavy lifting of sorting through a lot of applicants, which is commonly the case, we have some jobs that we've advertised for where we've had 1,000 plus applications and candidates to sift through. And when you've got a HR team of one to two people, even three people, it's a lot. And when we are aligned to the fact that hiring is one of the most important functions in business and you want to get the best people in, you want to get the best fits in, you can't take the risk of spreading your resources too thin and doing an average job across a thousand candidates. So we rely on a platform like Jazz to do a lot of that initial screening for us through automation, which has been a game changer because what it's allowed is through their functionality. It's called knockout questions. You can stipulate questions in the application process that put the candidate into a different bucket that you can look at later, but it basically deprioritizes that candidate based on your criteria. And the criteria can be as rudimentary as we need people in this certain geographic location. So the question on the application would be, are you from X country or will you be working from X location? If they select a location that doesn't match with the intention of what we're looking to hire for, which we would have also put in the job application as well, but it puts them in a bucket. And through the advent of these questions, you can stack them, you can stack these questions and they have 5, 10, even more questions that do the sifting. So you might take a funnel, a pipeline of a thousand candidates, and then have a refined list of, say, 200, that you then have the HR resource to more feasibly go through with more intention and vigor. And that's simply just the grassroots number one sifting that every company should be doing. Otherwise, you're spreading your resources too thin and you're looking at applicants that would never be considered in the first place. That's a staple of the hiring process, and there's pros and cons to that. I think that if you liken it to an analogy of panning for gold, right, you got a thousand candidates in a pan, you've got a lot of sediment in the pan. If you swirl it around really, really aggressive. That is, if you set those knockout questions to being very aggressive, you're going to really thin out the sediment. You're going to thin that thousand list down to like 200, 150 people. But be aware that if you do that, if you swell that pan too aggressively, you're going to throw out gold. It's going to happen, there's going to be collateral. But this is the balance. How aggressively do you swirl determines how much resources you have internally in your business to actually do the swirling. If you've got one person, you may only. You may have to be aggressive to whittle that list down to, say, 50 to 100 people. If you've got four, five, six solid HR team, you might not even need to have knockout questions or at least have very light questions that do just a rudimentary sorting.

[Ralph Burns]

Got it.

[Josh Hill]

So that is a spectrum of like, how aggressive you want to pan for the gold. And once you are comfortable with the panning and the quality that you've got, that's left over, then you start subsequent process of how to actually sort through the candidates. But that's kind of the initial screening through Jazz hr. Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

So country of origin, for example, we do a fair amount of recruiting in Latin America. So I mean, obviously, like, where do you live? Even though you're probably putting ads in those geo locations, there is stuff that's always going to sort of flow through no matter what. So there is that and then there is usually there's like a continuum of. There's maybe a location type question would either prioritize or deprioritize them to a certain degree. And then there's usually some level of competency question.

[Josh Hill]

Yes.

[Ralph Burns]

Because when you're looking for. And let's just take Media Buyer as an example, there needs to be some kind of filter there based upon the job application. If it's an MB one, which is sort of our entry level, the answer to that question is going to be quite different than an MB3, which is very higher level. So how do you stack these questions? And typically when you're trying to source candidates from sort of front. When I say frontline employees, people that are doing the work itself. How many of these knockout questions do you typically have? Is it 1 to 3, 3 to 5? Like, what's your sense? Does it vary? Like, give us an idea there.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah, this is good because this is now getting into the real tailored aspect of how to sort effectively. I'd say on average, I mean, you may have like five. It depends on the Business. It all depends. Right. But on average I'd say you have maybe five rudimentary questions. Anything from location to arrangement. Are you looking for a contractor or employee arrangement? How many hours can you do? It's just stuff that's just simple and yes and no kind of very simplistic stuff. So you might have like five of those.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, it's like an absolute must. If they don't have this, there's no way they could come on board kind of. I guess those are the types of questions. You might be listening to this and you're not an agency. Great. It might be an E commerce business or service based business. Digital products, whatever your business is, what are the characteristics that you're looking for? You know, if you're looking for a programmer, you need a certain level of competency based upon what that programmer is going to do. So think about those things first and foremost. It sounds like common sense, but this is actually super important. Otherwise you are chasing your tail for a thousand applicants.

[Josh Hill]

In some cases it really can waste a lot of time. Here's the thing though, with these type of. When you're filtering out for these type of questions, this is where you have the highest propensity to get rid of sediment out of the pan with big chunks of gold. You may have a really ideal candidate for a job, but they simply want a contractor instead of an employee. Relationship engagement. You might have a really solid candidate for a job and for your company, but they can only do part time instead of full time right now. And you're putting those people aside into a bucket and deprioritizing them. So one caveat to all of this.

[Ralph Burns]

Is you're not throwing them out, by the way. You're not throwing them out, deprioritizing them. Which is.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah, which is, you know, like Jaz using the term knockout. I feel like that's a bit aggressive when really what you're doing a little.

[Ralph Burns]

Bit, something you used to do back in the Australian military, knock guys up. But anyway, okay, we're going, we're going with it. But it's deprioritizing because you might need them later on. You never know.

[Josh Hill]

Okay, here's what we found with this and we'll get into the other side of the different types of questions to ask as well in this knockout process. But when you knock, when you deprioritize anyone to get to a more focused list, it's very important to keep in the back of your mind that you are likely and you probably should go and revisit that list. And Jazzhr has a functionality where you can actually, after the fact, you can apply filters to that deprioritized list to surface more people. So when you're panning for the sediment, you're actually not just throwing it out, you're putting it in a separate bucket that you can then pan again later, and then you can pan again later, and then you can pan again later. So this first pass is really just, let's get a thousand people down to 200. Let's see what we got. Okay. We swirled too aggressively. We went through these 200 people. We need some more. Let's go back and into the bucket. Okay. We found a really good candidate and they got knocked out because they said that they wanted to be a contractor instead of an employee. Let's just get on a call with them. Let's see why that is. Maybe there's a chance for a negotiation. So really it's the process that you start off strong and then you graduate to a wider and wider pool because you've got the luxury of being able to do that with this process, with this system. So again, it's about focusing your HR resource on the highest likelihood of finding gold. And then you can open up the space from there and you can open up and you can open up and you can open up. All the while you're getting new candidates in. And it's kind of like this dial that you can turn up and you can turn down depending on the quality that you're finding in the talent pool at any one time. And you may do this mid process. You might do this at the start, at the end, it's completely up to you, depending on what you're seeing. So we have the rudimentary questions, which are very straightforward, basic. You will test and adjust them and that will be your primary method of filtering out the most obvious people that aren't fits. And then to your point, with regards to different levels of different roles, the nuance between different positions, for example, you've stated a media buyer. One like a very junior media buyer, we will have different expectations on their experience and how they are expected to perform in the agency and their level of competency, their ability, even their behavior, there's certain aspects that will be different to that of a senior media buyer or even a manager or an executive. So separate to the rudimentary knockout questions, we've got other knockout questions which are more nuanced to the role and the level, which are radio button esque questions. So it'll be a question Such as describe your experience working in a digital marketing agency. And then there'll be radio buttons that have predetermined answers. For example, no experience, some experience, a lot of experience. And each of those answers will have a little paragraph associated with it as well to paint the picture of what that observably what that looks like. So that the candidate, when answering that question in their mind can associate their experience to one of those entries. So it's not what we're trying to avoid here with these questions is subjective, bias prone. Rate yourself questions that we're asking. Candidate, write yourself on your experience of this role or this and that out of one to ten they may say oh yeah, eight. So okay, well that's so arbitrary. That's subjective. What does that even mean? So we reformat that question to be more experience focused. And then yeah, we've seen some great success with that. Obviously people will no doubt still inflate and inject bias, but we're trying to avoid that and reduce that. And you may have five of these radio buttons all the way from absolutely no experience to absolute a player gun like I've been doing this for so long, this is and how it looks like. And you may have two to three or even most of those questions as knockout. So unless a candidate asks the most, you know, maybe four or four and five out of five questions, they're not going to get through to the next stage. So again, you can dial that we may see that's too aggressive, that question. So we may actually allow some experience to enter through and only exclude the no experience. So again, that's you got a dial within a dial and that's kind of how you manipulate the quality that you get through or at least the perceived self perceived quality because they're answering their own questions on their own experience. But it's a good complement to the rudimentary because that's again how you get a list from 1000 to 200. It's like you got to be asking these tough polarizing questions up front, otherwise you're going to have too many people that you need to work through.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. So before this, before the onset of an HR software, I went back and I explained this how we were doing this in 2015 and it was literally a gravity form or it was a type form that then was zapped into Trello into a board. And that's literally how we took these out. Like we had an application and then there was a score that was assigned to it. And then if they got an 80 or above it was zapped into Trello or they were basically discarded and we don't really didn't know where they went, but it was the same kind of thing. It's not like we manufactured our own sort of HR software back then. And it's sort of funny, that was only 10 years ago and that was the exact like we engineered this that way and then they went on to some of the other steps that we're going to talk about here. But now you can do this through automation and a tool like Jazz HR is pretty tremendous. It's like having an extra couple of set of hands here, which used to be mostly hires from belay or VAs that we would hire way back when. You probably actually went through that process when you first applied at tier 11 is my guess. So it's come a long way.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah, yeah. It's the only way really with a limited team that you can have enterprise level like world class hiring. It's these little hacks, these little tweaks in process and the tools that you use. It all amounts to being able to have more of an impact as a HR team. And there's a lot of exciting things coming down range as well. When it comes to hiring and the use of artificial intelligence, there's also some dangers as well. I think we spoke about previously, the funny paradox. You've got a lot of candidates leveraging AI to create these perfect applications and CVs and resumes based on a position automatically within five seconds. And they may have 200 different resumes because they're all perfectly crafted to get a role at your company or that company or this company. So this candidate Looks like 200 different people. And then on the other end you've got HR teams, HR systems, companies that are looking for the most perfect candidate for their positions using AI. So you've got AI on one end, AI on the other end, meeting halfway in the middle and suddenly everyone looks like a perfect candidate.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah.

[Josh Hill]

Which is scary. Yeah. I think that's what emphasizes the importance of discovery calls. It emphasizes the importance of getting going back to the grassroots of human to human interaction, which takes more resource, it can't be discounted. But it does compromise the ability to leverage automation in the hiring process. Because if all of the data is nullifying itself because you've got two AIs basically giving each other what each other.

[Ralph Burns]

Wants, battling each other.

[Josh Hill]

Right. Literally, literally just shaking hands and be like, yep, sounds good. Right. It's like it just creates more noise. So questions like this in the system, in the process Initially up front, when we're not relying on the resume per se, we're relying on candidates input, asking them questions as a method of screening as opposed to just purely reviewing a resume. That can provide you a little bit of an edge. So that's why I think these knockout questions and this method of sorting is still relevant now, and it may become more and more relevant. But also when you start doing this sorting without the questions that require the input and you do the sorting based on the resume, that's when you can have issues. Because Jazz HR is like, oh yeah, this person looks great. And then you go get on a chat with them and they're like, they've over inflated their resume. They've relied on AI to really craft it. And you're wasting your time because you get on and you're like, this is not matched. Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

So the way to counteract AI is really is through human interaction. Like good old school, like 15 minute discovery call, you know, I mean, you have to use your judgment when it comes to that. I mean, it sort of depends on what the role is. But even with, I think of like the frontline, you know, team member, one of the designers that we just hired, did you get on a discovery call with him or did he go through sort of the next step, which we'll lead into in just a second, which is like the simulation or. Tell me about about that, because that's more frontline individual as opposed to maybe some of these other positions that would be an obvious sort of discovery call type of candidate. Talk to me about that.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah, so we do discovery calls really with every candidate that comes through our process. It's a staple and it's a necessity to really touch base and do that assessment up front as soon as possible.

[Ralph Burns]

Sorry to interrupt. Is that always with you or with your assistant or who. It's always with you?

[Josh Hill]

Yeah. No, not necessarily, no. I think I get involved with discovery calls when it's probably more of a, how would I put it, a more impactful, I guess, valuable higher level managerial role, so to speak. I think at the moment, I mean, specifically for the recent creative hire, the HR generalists we have on staff. Did the discovery call.

[Ralph Burns]

Did the discovery call.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah. And so HR still gets involved and still holds the discovery call and still leads the discovery call, the initial one. Because I think, at least from our perspective and how we service HR at tier 11, it's a human resource function recruitment and we lead it and we consider it. When we look at hiring managers and we look at candidates, we look at them as our customers, as our clients. So when it comes to hiring, the hiring managers and the teams that we're hiring for are our clients, and we want to provide an excellent experience for them as well as the candidate. So what we tend to do up front is try to do as much heavy lifting and sorting and prioritization and put it on a platter for the hiring managers. So we try to keep a bit of an arm's length when it comes to the initial discovery calls and some of the initial process. And then when we get to a point where we're really happy with the selection of 10 to 20 candidates, that's when we start feeding them through for feedback to the hiring managers. But that Discovery Call process really is mainly hr, a combination of myself, depending on the role, and the rest of the team. For this creative strategist that we recently hired, they came in through a job board. So they naturally went through the application process. They were one of the 200 people out of the 1,000. And we screened their resume, we look at their questions, we check everything. And then Jazz also has an automated function where you can save email templates depending on the role. So we simply the platform, super intuitive. You just click send email as the next step, or you just drag them to the next step of the process, automatically sends the email from human resources and said, hey, really loved your application. Would love to get on a call with you to discuss and ascertain, like, what it is you're looking for at tier 11. And we can share information about what we're looking for, what you're looking for, and see if there's a match with this process specifically. We went straight to Discovery Call because we were getting such good quality at the other end, at the bottom of the barrel.

[Ralph Burns]

Right.

[Josh Hill]

Like, after doing all of that refinement, we were getting really good candidates. So we were comfortable and had the capacity internally to go straight to the Discovery Call, which is labor intensive. Some of them can go for 30 to 45 minutes. You don't want to be doing that for hundreds of people. After the discovery call, then we went on to demonstrations and simulation tasks and the other methods that we employ to get even more, I guess, focused in on, okay, they may want it, they may have the capacity, but do they really get it in terms of do they have the ability and experience? Can they actually do what we need them to do in the job consistently? And that's when we enter into the space of more technical demonstration or a simulation task. And those are kind of two different Things we can talk about. And then we basically, through those means, we assess their technical proficiency. And then subsequently from there, later in the process, which we can talk about, we actually have more interviews. So discovery call upfront is really one of the first things that we do. And you may have these technical tasks either before or after the discovery call, but for the sake of the creative strategist, we did them afterwards.

[Ralph Burns]

Right. So just to summarize, going back through to the first part of this series, which is going to be a three part series because it is fairly in depth. But once again, the reason why we are going through this is because if you are listening right after the first of the year, the way to make your present better is to make your future bigger. The only way to do that is through the efforts of other people. And hiring is the most important part. Hard. It's not about people, it's about the right people. And that's what we're talking about here. And this will allow you to leverage your unique ability and then get that 80% that maybe you're doing right now and hire for it as you scale and grow as a business, as a department, whatever it happens to be. So the steps that we've already gone through is accountability chart, which is step one. Number two is you then source candidates. We talked a lot about that. Number three is you funnel out those high quality leads. Sometimes we use an application. In most cases you are using an application or it might be outreach in that particular case. Number four is the discovery call. Where we fit in the simulation task sort of depends on the role, which is sort of step number five, which is something that we used to do really, really heavily way back in 2015, when we were the only virtual company that was out there. Because that by virtue of the fact that we were virtual, we could send people through like three or four different tasks and they'd go all the way through and then they'd actually come on board as an intern and we wouldn't even pay them because it was such a unique opportunity. Now it's not quite as unique. So you can't really have that level of arrogance anymore. Where do you insert the simulation task? Like what type of individual do you use the simulation task with to guarantee expertise? And how do you determine what that task should be in step sort of four or five here?

[Josh Hill]

So I think the simulation task is quite labor intensive. And to give people an overview really of what we're asking, it's usually in the form of some mock scenarios or an overarching mock Scenario or circumstance, the role itself and their subsequent level of experience that you would want to hire them for in the role is going to encounter at your company or in their position. And the simulation task usually is an ask of about, I don't know, 15 to 20 minute video and it asks the candidate to demonstrate a set of responses to the scenario, set of questions that you may answer. And usually we present that in a slide deck. And there's a lot of difference between how that's constructed between roles. I think that the simulation task lends itself very nicely to more technically focused roles where it's quite easy to demonstrate your skills via a video via Screen Share. It's quite easy to demonstrate how you would solve a problem with logic using iq. When it comes to the EQ focus, which is more of the empath, the how to navigate certain situations judgment, like these, things that are more intangible, that are harder to demonstrate and measure. That's when simulation tasks still are relevant and still provide value. And we actually do simulation tasks for both types of roles. Now regardless, an example is of this difference would be a simulation task for the creative strategist that we've just hired or a media buyer where it's very much working with data, developing, producing, creating, exporting. Very simpler of an exercise versus a simulation task. For a client success owner or like a csm, their primary skill sets and their responsibilities are around handling communications, conflict expectations, goal setting. It's harder to get more of a genuine authentic response because a lot of people know how they should behave. And it's very easy for people, especially of that nature that are applying for those roles to talk about eloquently and articulate them themselves. How they think they should behave in a certain situation doesn't necessarily correlate to how they will behave. So simulation tasks become less relevant, still important, still still beneficial, but less relevant as you get to that other end of the EQ spectrum. But you can supplement that with other things which we haven't experimented with yet, but I'd love to, which is more like mock circumstances, mock live situations where we're hiring a client success owner, for example, and we give them a brief upfront and then I join or someone else joins as client X and client X has got issues, client X has got problems, and how does the CSO react and deal with that, provided they've got the background and the necessary information so they're not just thrown on a call with no information. And the client's like, why aren't you doing your job? And Then they're like, I don't work here.

[Ralph Burns]

So this is like a role play. This is like you like next level simulation for not necessarily technical expertise, but EIQ related expertise, which is much harder to test for unless you're gonna do some sort of battery of psychological exams which we don't really get into here. Or, you know, not even, I don't even know any testing, like from Colby A all the way to, you know, you name it disc. There's nothing that really measures that extremely well. So. But this is sort of an interesting sort of next level. I'm sure AI will figure out a solution or Jazz HR will figure out a solution to this at some point.

[Josh Hill]

Oh, I mean, we're already kind of there. Like we're not far off. I mean, you can get voice based generative tools where it could literally hold a voice conversation with a candidate and respond the way a client wants. You want the client to respond. It's actually happening, if not around the corner, where you can have AI tools that are literally conducting the role play and then assessing and providing feedback. I think what's important to consider with all of this and the reason why hiring is difficult is because there is science and then there's art to it. And the art piece is really about how do you triangulate all of these data points, all of these things, right, that are around the candidate from what you've taken them through or what you can observe. For example, the initial discovery call is going to give you so many insights if you ask the right questions, the right way. The initial application, their LinkedIn resume, how they engage online, the feedback, the reviews, the referees they've got on their LinkedIn, the references that you should probably reach out to and get feedback from. The simulation task, like as you said, disc Colby, those are another forms, another data point that you can use to triangulate. There is not one silver bullet amongst all of these avenues of information. The art is in being efficient in looking at the right candidates. So you can do that triangulation effectively. Because you can't do that triangulation effectively for 1000 candidates. You can only do that for a select few of people because it's so intentional and you need to do it rigorously with a lot of information. And there's an element to it which is ultimately human centric as well. You need the right recruiters that understand the importance of this triangulation exercise and they're not just relying or being overly biased on one interaction or one data point. For example, I had a really Good discovery call with this person. We hit it off, but their sim was crap and they've got. The referee was saying something dodgy. And you're like, you get fixated on one data point. You're not triangulating effectively. And this is the essence of hiring slow versus hiring fast and making mistakes. People that hire fast don't do this triangulation. They skip it. They rely on one source of data, one variable, one interview or a couple of interviews, and they skip straight to a result. And then you're left with a poor hire.

[Ralph Burns]

It's the warm body trap. I need a warm body right now to fill this role, and I don't really care who they are. I just need somebody to do this thing. And that's, that's the worst way to hire people. And you bring up a couple of good points. And I mean, our leadership team gives you so much crap for getting so excited about all this stuff. But at the heart of it, this is so much fun to talk about from my standpoint, so I'm going to defend you next time they. They rip you publicly. But anyway, it's all in good fun. Here at tier 11. Josh gets so excited about HR stuff. One of the things I hear a lot my like, it's great. Would you want anybody else in charge of it? Like, he's so passionate about it, but, like, the triangulation, it's like taking little data points. And we'll get into this in our next episode when we go into interviews, but it's the subtle cues and clues that something tells you in the back of your mind, you're like, something's not right or something is right. It's like, we had a interview yesterday with somebody. My initial gut reaction was, I like this guy. Now it's not because I liked him, but he checked all these psychological boxes in my head, which is a very good first impression. Like the first impression, it does matter. Some people are very good at first impressions, but that's one data point exactly. But if he didn't make that good first impression, that would be like, meh. I'll go along because he seems like he's competent and his LinkedIn profile looks good and all these other sorts of things, but it's like you're thinking about all of these different parts of the interaction. And we'll get into this with the interview stage, which I know you're a big fan of, like, a lot of, like, these strategies that we use and how effective they are, but it's not necessarily how they answer or the content of the answer. It's how they answer. Because that sets off these little triggers in your head, either yes or no. And I think it's the triangulation. You're saying. It's like triangulation. Like three points, I think of as like, 12 or 14 different points all coming together. And if one or two of them are just off, I'm like, there's something about that. And it always comes back. This is just the luxury of having experience, like having interviewed thousands of people, literally thousands of people at this point in time in my career. It's like you sock away so much in your subconscious and you can't quite put your finger on it. But there's something that's not right or there's something that is right. It works both ways. I think that's an important point that is overlooked in the hiring process, because it's not like, hey, you're going through step one, two, three, four, five. It's not that we are outlining this in steps, of course, because that's what we do when we try and teach, is make it as simple as possible. But it is the subtleties, I think, that is the difference between a great hire and just a meh. Higher. Yeah, disagree.

[Josh Hill]

I agree completely. And I think, is there a shape that has, like, 30 different angles?

[Ralph Burns]

I don't know. Maybe we need to said dodecahedron. I don't know.

[Josh Hill]

Angulation. Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. We'll have to ask Ange about that. She's like the chemist.

[Josh Hill]

She's.

[Ralph Burns]

I'm sure there's some kind of chemical formula that has 32 sides. Yeah.

[Josh Hill]

I do think that there's kind of two sides to this. There's the steps, which is the science, and then there's. There's the undercurrents, there's the principles, there's the art that stitches it all together. What's really interesting as well is just when you've done this, a lot of times you do have that intuition even hiring managers may have, that you may present candidates that you believe are great. And then the hiring manager's like, no. You're like, well, why not? It's hard to put my finger on it. I need some more time to think. But it's not sitting well. And you have to respect that because of their experience and work with the hiring managers to dig deeper as to, like, what are their feelings? Why are they feeling it? What are the potential blocks? Because ultimately, like I mentioned previously, the HR function is there to serve those in which they are hiring for. And if Every time you put candidates in front of your hiring managers to review, you're getting feedback from them. I don't like this person. This person's great. I like this aspect. Don't like that aspect. We're furiously taking notes. Okay, all right, got it. We're building the role. We're tweaking the application, we're tweaking the sim task, we're tweaking the discovery call. I'm tweaking the way I reach out and conduct outreach. It's an evolving, iterative beast that grows and changes form and shape based on feedback. And it's feedback from candidates, from hiring managers, from who we're getting in the funnel. It's not a fixed method, per se.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. Well, I think this has been a great step to like, now that I'm saying step two, because it's really. We're really on sort of like step six here. But I mean, we're formulating an overall strategy. The reason why we're doing this is we've been doing this a long time and there are companies that are larger than us, but there's not many companies that have been hiring virtually as long as we have. When you really stop and think about that. And that's one of the reasons why I really do believe that people listening to this show, even if you're running a billion dollar organization and you're hiring virtual employees or people that are remote, these principles apply. And I guarantee you would learn something from this series of episodes here because you can always get better at it. Because there's been plenty of times I've been completely fooled. I'm like, home run, love that guy or gal or whoever it is. And then they turn out to be just a dud. So even with all this experience, you still get fooled. And that's just a natural part of the process where that's the reality of the world that we live in. You're not going to make judgments all the time, but if you're right 80% of the time in your hires or 90%, that's hall of Fame, really, at the end of the day.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah. And I think we'll cover this as one of the last steps, or if not the last step. But to your point regarding, you can feel like or believe that you've hired the best person for the role, but if you have an onboarding process that is inconsistent, isn't setting them up for success isn't really enabling them to have that ability to GWC from the start to really get the role, get it.

[Ralph Burns]

Has the capacity to do it. For those who are familiar with the EOS term gwc. Sorry, that was not an Aussie term. That was an actual real term from a guy in the U.S. that's right.

[Josh Hill]

I'm converting.

[Ralph Burns]

Just doing my job as a translator here.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah, Josh, that's it. I think onboarding, I mean, we'll get to that. I personally feel like that is one of the most important steps of this entire process, because I think I mentioned in series one, like the first podcast. I mean, you can go through all of this and hire the right person for the seat. Objectively. The right person, like, it is the right person. Let's just take that as a truth. If you have a crappy onboarding, they're not screwed. Yeah. It's just like, why go through all this effort, all this resource and time and effort and everyone's getting excited, everyone's keen, everyone's aligned. Let's do it. And then it's just like you're completely shooting yourself in the foot. So the onboarding experience, the employee candidate experience, does not finish. When they sign the dotted line and they join the company. That's ultimately where it starts.

[Ralph Burns]

You know, in my perspective, really where the relationship starts.

[Josh Hill]

Exactly. So it's. It's huge. Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

That's good stuff. Well, we're going to get into that in. We might need a fourth episode on this because, I mean, there is so much to it. But at the very least, you're here right now. You've gotten your candid all the way through HR Discovery call, your simulation task. You're ready for that first interview, and that's what we're going to hit on in the next step in this process in part three of how to Hire a. What's the most cliche thing besides Rockstar in today's language?

[Josh Hill]

Probably a player.

[Ralph Burns]

A player. Okay.

[Josh Hill]

Superstar. A player.

[Ralph Burns]

A player. Superstar. Rock star. All right, we're just gonna go full on corporate cliche here, but you basically want, like a great team member that's going to be with you for a very, very long period of time.

[Josh Hill]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And is a great match for them because they're getting what they want out of the job and. And you're getting out of them what you need for the company, and that's when that happens. That is a really good feeling. And like you said, it doesn't stop with the hiring process. It only sort of begins because then the hard work is really there. The management and the leadership and everything else which we'll hint at in our next episode. So Once again, Josh Hill, VP of hr. We're just going to say that thank you once again for coming on Perpetual Traffic. It's been tremendous here. And stay tuned for the next episode in in this series here. And we will leave links over in the show notes [e-mail] if you have not left us a rating or a review on this show, I don't know what you've been doing with your life, but make sure you head over to Spotify especially. We're blowing up there, especially in the marketing space or wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave us a rating and review. We really do appreciate that. And of course, you can always tune in over on our YouTube channel at Perpetual Traffic. So thank you, Josh, for coming on.

[Josh Hill]

Thanks for having me. It's been super fun. Looking forward to episode three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

[Ralph Burns]

And we actually recorded this one, too. Let's not forget that last time we forgot to hit record. So we've actually done this episode twice to our viewers and listeners out there. All right, well, anyway, thank you so much for listening to this week on behalf of my awesome co host, Lauren Ippetrulo, who is not with us here today, but I'm sure enjoying herself. But she will be listening to this because she needs help hiring for her company too. Until next show. See you. You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.