"Stay curious. And you only have one reputation. Guard it with your life."

Hiring for judgment, not just rehearsed confidence

Industrial water treatment is full of decisions made with incomplete data—on sites, with customers, and inside the business. JD Roth (Managing Director and Co-owner of Guardian Chemicals) builds his hiring around that reality. His aim is straightforward: protect the team and the culture by selecting people who can think, collaborate, and lead under pressure.

JD frames the organization as a group of people choosing to work toward a common goal: building a better future for communities, the environment, and staff. That priority shows how Guardian hires, who they keep, and what becomes a deal-breaker. If a candidate is misaligned with core values, JD is clear: performance elsewhere won't override that mismatch.

The "Hiring Olympics" structure

For a high-bandwidth, project-based role (their Graduate Business Analyst program), Guardian needed a way to evaluate many strong candidates without consuming 40–50 hours of team time. The result is a four-hour, multi-station day that includes:

Core values interviews (two-person format)
Competency interviews (horsepower and capability)
An individual case study (primarily math/business-oriented)
A collaborative case study (decision-making and team dynamics)

The collaborative case study is the centerpiece. Candidates work with peers who are also competitors for limited roles, using real cases built around business decisions—often with imperfect or incomplete information—so the team can observe how candidates break down problems, delegate, support others, and present recommendations.

How decisions get made afterward

After candidates leave, the interview team convenes for a group decision. JD starts by looking for any "vetoes," especially around core values to fit (he references an EOS-style standard of meeting 5 out of 6 core values most of the time). From there, the team compares notes across competency, core values, and observed collaboration behaviors.

Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge!

Timestamps

02:20 – Trace Blackmore shares part of a real-world service routine and ongoing professional improvement

05:35 – Upcoming Events for Water Treatment Professionals

12:00 – Words of Water with James McDonald

13:52 – Fun Fact about 1903 from this day

14:28 – Interview with JD Roth, Managing Director and Co-Owner of Guardian Chemicals

15:20 - "A company is people"

19:00 – First solo site lesson: ask for help vs. pretend

25:10 – The GBA Program (Graduate Business Analyst)

27:50 – Hiring Olympics format + Efficiency

33:30 – "Ping pong balls in a jumbo jet" example

39:10 – Selection rules: Core values veto + EOS bar + Values list

Quotes

JD:"And if you've got great people and you take care of great people, they take care of your customers, and your customers take care of you."

JD: "There really isn't a company. There is just a whole bunch of people who have decided to work together towards a common goal."

Trace: "I can only imagine how empowered your team feels because they're so involved in this process and you're involving everybody"

Trace: "I love the fact that we're diving deeper into the most important thing, and that's protecting and enhancing our culture."

Connect with JD Roth

Email: jdroth@guardianchem.ca

Website: http://www.guardianchem.ca/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-david-jd-roth-58714113/

Guest Resources Mentioned

Entrepreneurs' Organization

Verne Harnish 'Scaling Up'

About Verne Harnish

Harvard Business Review Case Studies

Scaling UP! H2O Resources Mentioned

AWT (Association of Water Technologies)

AWT Technical Training Seminars

Scaling UP! H2O Academy video courses

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2026 Events for Water Professionals

Check out our Scaling UP! H2O Events Calendar where we've listed every event Water Treaters should be aware of by clicking HERE.

458 Hiring Olympics and High-Performance Culture with J.D. Roth