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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2660 Q&A Wednesday: Why Do I Keep Hiring The Wrong Type of People?
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Hiring shouldn’t feel like a roll of the dice—but for many entrepreneurs, it does. If you've ever brought someone on board only to realize they weren’t the right fit, you're not alone. It’s a pattern that can drain your time, budget, and energy.
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Introducing Family freedom from T Mobile. We'll pay off four phones up to 3, 200 and give you four free phones, all on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com familyfreedom up to 800 per line via virtual prepaid card. Typically takes 15 days. Free phone via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement. Example Apple iPhone 16128 gigs 8, 2999 eligible trade in. Example iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel Contact us Hey, welcome Back to the $100 MBA show. Today's Q and A Wednesday, where I answer a real question from a real listener just like you. Today's question is from Fred, and it's a big one. Why do I keep hiring the wrong type of people? Oh man, if I had a dollar every time I heard this. This is so common it's not even funny. And what I learned the hard way throughout my career is that your job as an entrepreneur soon becomes recruitment. Really, you gotta become a recruitment expert because the better people that you hire, the better team you have, the better business you have, the better product you have. It's just the best way to compete in the marketplace. So this is okay, right? We all start somewhere and today I'm going to show you how to get better at recruitment and hire the right people for your company and for the position you're hiring for. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. We're going to dig into the honest truth about why most entrepreneurs struggle with hiring. And I'm going to show you how to fix it for good so that you don't have to worry about this anymore and you're just getting better and better. But first, I want to say to Fred, who asked this question, everybody who's listening, don't beat yourself up. Hiring the wrong person is not a rare mistake. It's actually the norm in most early stage businesses. And the reason why this happens is because everyone looks good on paper. This is something that I had to learn. Again, the hard way. Everyone looks good on paper. No one states their flaws on their CV or resume. No one states their weaknesses, you know, in an interview. And everyone says the right things in the interview. They are showing the most polished version of themselves. Everyone claims to be a team player and understands the importance of attention to detail and to be a self starter, right? They, they say the right things because they have to. They want the job. But what you need to find out as the employer is how do they actually work, right? How do they actually do the work that you want them to do? That's the real question here. Hiring is a bet. You're betting if this person can actually do the job you want them to do. And if you're placing your bets based on what they give you on the resume or based on what they say in an interview or the way they answer questions, that is not a good bet. You should not place bets based on vibe. Right? No wonder why you keep losing money, right? This is just fundamental, you know, game strategy. There's a rule in business I absolutely love. The rule is trust but verify. You've got to verify they can do the job. Think about it this way. You're about to give thousands of dollars to this person every single month. That's not a small transaction. You have to know that there's value on this other side of that transaction. Okay? We need to make sure there's value. We need to verify with actual proof. Time out for a second. Just take a minute to think about what I just said. Okay? You're about to give this person tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year so that they can do something in your business. You can use that money somewhere else in your business. You can invest in marketing, you can invest it in technology. You can take it as a dividend and go on a holiday. The point here is that's a lot of money, right? You need to make sure that before you give up all that money that you're getting something that is worthwhile in return. The reason why I'm painting this picture this way is because you need to see the stakes here, how important this is. So when you see the importance, you're going to realize, oh, I need to invest more time and energy and effort to make sure I'm making the right decision. Let me tell you a little story so you have an example as well as how I fix this in my own business. After years, I'm talking literally years of making bad hires and learning the hard way and getting burnt and feeling horrible. I learned how to actually do this right. Right. I learned this from mentors. I learned this from coaches. I also learned it through experimentation. And I implemented a new way of hiring in my company, my software company, Webinar Ninja. I still do this in my company now, the hundred MBA, but we use three rounds of hiring. It's a three round hiring process and this weeds out 95% of the fluff. And I'm going to share later in the end of this episode why you need to get rid of 95% of the candidates. So let's start with round one in this interview process. And that's just a quick interview. This is a short 20 to 30 minute chat with the candidate. Now, this is just the interview process, by the way. Okay, this before this, we have people applying. There's an application process. There's questions on the application, there's things that we ask them to submit. We go through that. And once they qualify for an interview, this is when these three rounds start. So round one is a quick interview. This is a 20 to 30 minute chat. It's casual. It's just figuring out if they're a good cultural fit for our company. Are they even in the ballpark? Right. Do I even wanna hang out with this person? Is this somebody I wanna spend time with? Because, hey, I spend a lot of time at work. I wanna spend time with people that are cool and nice and interesting and kind and considerate and thoughtful and have good ideas and are inspiring. I want that kind of vibe at my company, not only just for me, but also for my team members and also for the person I'm about to hire. Because if I use this criteria with my other candidates, that means I have a team, people that are really cool to hang out with. Again, a quick just understanding. If they know what the role is, and that's pretty much it, the reason why this is important is because if they're not a good cultural fit, if they're not somebody that you want to spend time with, that would add value just in terms of their attitude and their personality, then there's no reason for us to figure out if they can do it, do the job technically, right, there's no reason for us to keep on going. This is actually a good first interview because this is really important. Because if you don't have the right attitude, then I can't train attitude. Right. I can't teach somebody to have a good attitude. They either have it or they don't. So if they don't, we then say no thank you later on and say, you know, not a good fit. But if they do, they move on to the next round of interview.
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Running a business is complicated. There's dozens of software programs that you need and they're all so expensive. And since they come from different companies, they don't always play nice with one another. But what can you do, right? Odoo. That's what. Odoo has all the software business owners need. We're talking sales, CRM, manufacturing, websites, literally every kind of software. And it's an all in one platform. So it all works together and it's quality software. So you're not sacrificing. It's simply a better experience than a hodgepodge of programs trying to fit together. You'd expect to pay a premium for it, right? But that's the most amazing part about Odoo. This interconnected suite of business software costs less than the mismatch of disconnected programs you're currently using. So the question is, why spend more on software programs that are less efficient when Odoo's simple software program can handle everything for a fraction of the price? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com that's o d o o.com and that's round two, called the live project. This is where things get really real. Okay, we set up a two to three hour zoom session, sometimes four hours. I'm gonna give you examples in a moment. Okay? We give them a real task, a real project similar to what they would do in their job, and they do it live on the call. We watch when I say we. Maybe I'm on the call. Maybe somebody on my team, my manager of that department, will be on that for sure. The point of is we need to see how they work. Okay? We tell them in advance this is going to be two to three hours. If it's four hours, we tell them it's four hours. And I know that's a lot of Time, but it's worth it because we're, again, we're throwing a lot of money at this hire. We want to make sure that we're making the right hire. The call is also recorded and reviewed by other team members. And we tell the candidate that it will be recorded. And then we say the reasons why. And the reasons why we record is because we want to see how you think, how you handle pressure, how you solve problems. And some people are not available for the live call, and they want to see that later on when they can, because of time zones or whatever it might be. They also want to see how you communicate and how you get through a tough problem. We're not hiring based on resumes or cvs. We're hiring for performance. What they can actually do. Let me give you two quick examples of how we implemented this. When we hired for customer support, we would have the customer support manager be on the live call for two to three hours, and they would act like a customer. And they would do a live chat, even just using the chat in zoom, as if they were a customer, asking questions about our product, our software, webinar Ninja. And we would give the candidate, you know, our FAQs, all our help articles, the website, even access to the software if they wanted. Okay. And we wanted to see how they were solving problems, how they addressed the customer, how they would communicate. Would they check back in with the customer every minute, say, hey, I'm still working on this. I'm going to get you an answer. Don't worry, we're going to solve this. How is their demeanor? Were they empathetic? We were not really concerned if they're giving the right answers because we don't expect them to know everything about the product. They just walked into this, right? They still need proper training, and that's only fair. What we really care about, and we tell this to the candidate, by the way, we say, you know, we don't really grade you or judge you based on your answers. We just want to see how you approach the problem, how you approach the situation. We also did this with, for example, hiring engineers. We would get an engineer, and those were longer. There's about four hours long. We get an engineer to actually code a project, right? An actual project that they might have to do to in the job. So, for example, they coded a login module or login page of an app. We wanted to see how they were doing it. This is so important because I want to see how this engineer is writing the code. Are they writing clean code? Are they Commenting the code. Are they unit testing? Are they writing the unit test before they actually write the code? This is all technical jargon, but this is important for that job, right? We need to know if they can do this the proper way. And the only way to know for sure is to see it. I want to see evidence, real eyewitness accounts of the fact they can do the job. Now, if you get a candidate in the middle of this interview or even before the interview and say, this is not my style. I don't do this. I don't work under this kind of pressure while you're watching me say, hey, no problem. We understand this is not a good fit, then no worries. All the best in your job search. I have no problem doing that. Why? Because I don't want that person in my company. Okay? There's nothing bad about them inherently, but I want the people that, when they are approached with this challenge, like, oh, that's cool. You're gonna record it. Can I get the recording later on? I would love to learn a little bit more how I can improve. Can you give me feedback? I want somebody who's excited for the challenge, right? I want somebody who's like, this is cool. I never experienced this before. Is there a way I can benefit from this? You know, experience? That's a great hire. That alone would be like, green light. This person is somebody that might make the cut. Round three, final chat and expectations. This interview is just a way for us to confirm we got it right. Right. If they nailed round two, we're pretty sure that they're a good hire. But this is where we set expectations clearly on both sides. We talk about salary and compensation. We talk about benefits, time off. We talk about what success looks like in this role, what we expect of them in terms of responsibilities and deliverabilities, what they're expected to do, and their outcomes. You know, we talk about specific outcomes that they're responsible for. We also talk about how we give feedback and how we measure performance so they understand how they will know they're winning. Right? We're not trying to close a sale here. We're trying to build a relationship. We're trying to start the relationship in a way, because if they say yes, we're going to make an offer. Right? And we both need to know exactly what we're getting into. Now, this next point is super important. There's another reason why you're hiring the wrong people. You're just not seeing enough candidates. Most business owners interview three, four, maybe five people for a role, and Then they pick the best out of that bunch. No, this is too dangerous, okay? This is your company you're talking about. This is the thing that you built, that you sacrifice your life for. Don't just leave it by chance. You need to verify you have the right person. You have to increase the likelihoods that you have the right hire. Because what if you screen in five people, interview five people, and, and they're all below the bar, right? You got to keep going, right? You don't want the best person you interviewed. You want the best person out there in the world. That's why I use the 5% rule. This is a rule I meet up, right? You know, take it with a grain of salt. But this is, has worked for me in a lot of ways. Only 5% of people I speak to in interviews will be the right fit, and they're the ones actually prove it to me. So if I want to get one great hire, I need to actually talk to at least 20 people. I need to get 20 people through the interview stages, all three stages. I mean, that's just math. Because if I want to hire one person, one out of 20 is 5%, right? That means 15 people that I speak to or they go through the test and they go through the, the three stages or the three different interviews, they're going to get a no, they're going to get rejected. And that's okay because you want the best of the best. And hiring is a funnel, just like in marketing and sales. The wider you are on top, the, the better your chances. So the more applications you get, the more people that you have a chance to kind of filter in for an interview. And the more people you interview, the more chances you're going to get, like the best of the best for that job. Now, Fred and everyone who's listening, I got an exercise for you. Because we don't want to just forget about the mistakes we made. We want to learn from them. We're going to turn the mirror towards you. Why did you say yes to those people who didn't work out that you felt like were a horrible fit and they were a bad hire? Or was it a gut feeling? Was it desperation? Were you excited that someone finally said yes or was willing to be part of your company? Ask yourself in that moment when you made that hire, did I have enough evidence of their skills? Did I see them do the actual job or did I just hear a good story and they impressed me? Hiring is a skill, just like sales, just like marketing, just like creating a great product, right? You got to work at it. And you need enough reps. That's why I'm saying enough interviews, enough candidates for you to get better. And what I found out, at the end of the day, if you want a successful business, you got to learn how to recruit like a pro. You got to be better at recruitment. You got to be able to pick the right people to join your team. And hopefully, with the framework I gave you today, you'll be able to do exactly that. Look, Fred and everybody who's listening, hiring amazing people takes work, but it's worth it. It's so worth it. Because when you work with great people, everything changes. Your company changes in an incredible way. Your product gets better, your customers are happy, you make more money, you make more revenue. Everybody in the company loves what they're doing. They're working towards the same mission. It's a great feeling. It also frees up your time. It also gains confidence in your whole company. Everybody starts feeling like, hey, this is a great company to work for because everybody's amazing here. You stop feeling like you're constantly cleaning up somebody else's mess, right? Oh, I got to fix this problem now. And most importantly, you got to stop bleeding cash from bad decisions. Remember, when you make a bad hire, that's a really bad sunk cost, right? Because you often don't get an ROI from that person for all that money that you spent. So next time you hire, remember, trust but verify, test, don't guess, and make sure you become the kind of leader that top talent wants to work for. And you will get better as time goes on and you start taking your time and finding that right person for that role. Thanks for the question, Fred. And if you have a question you want to ask here on Q and A Wednesday, head on over to 100- MBA-NET-Q and ask away, and we'll answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Until next time. Keep pushing, keep learning, and keep building something great with a great team. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to to this podcast, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. And it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you subscribed. I'll check you in the next episode.
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