The 4 Steps To Hire Top Talent | 335

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Randall Kaplan

September 13, 2021

Dan Kuschell is an accomplished entrepreneur, business advisor, and author. He runs Breakthrough3x, a company that helps founders and entrepreneurs triple their profits and impact without multiplying their workload and stress.

Dan has owned 11 companies since 1992, building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the host of the Growth to Freedom podcast, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • Dan Kuschell discusses the first step to hiring rockstar employees for your business
  • The value of identifying your own strengths and weaknesses before starting the recruitment process
  • Dan’s tips for narrowing down the candidate pool to find the perfect fit
  • Why implementing an effective hiring process is one of the best things you can do for your business

In this episode…

What is the key to hiring top talent for your business? One of the most common challenges business owners face is hiring effectively. But, as Dan Kuschell learned firsthand, recruiting the wrong candidates can cost your business thousands of dollars. So, how can you start improving your hiring process today?

According to Dan, the best way to recruit better talent is to slow down your hiring process. He says there are some tried-and-true steps you can take to identify a candidate who aligns with your company’s values and possesses the strengths your business needs to thrive. Dan is here to share his strategies to narrow down his candidate pool and find the perfect fit for his business.

Join Dan Kuschell in this episode of Growth to Freedom as he shares his expert strategies for hiring rockstar employees. Dan discusses the importance of aligning a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses with your own and reveals the key to building a more effective recruitment process. Tune in to discover how you can overcome your hiring challenges and start building a stronger team today

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell  0:03  

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership. We are helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads, more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach a bigger impact and make a bigger contribution. If you’re new. Joining us for the first time, thanks for being with us, whether you’re seeing us on iTunes or YouTube or one of our sites. Today’s episode is about helping you as an entrepreneur, business owner experienced business breakthroughs, business growth breakthroughs, with one of the common challenges most business owners face, which is hiring, you know, if you ever found yourself in a situation where you go, you know, I’ve got a lot of complexity right now. I’ve got a lot of overwhelm, I just need to hire another good person to help me maybe be an assistant, or maybe it be in sales, or maybe it be in marketing, or something of that nature. How valuable would it be, if I was able to give you a blueprint to be able to go out there and hire a rock star in whatever area? What would that be a value to you? You know, the reality is, is that I’m working with a particular client right now we’ve been able to add two Rockstar sales people, we’ve been able to hire a social marketing, social media marketing expert, we’ve been able to hire a project manager. And we’re in the process of hiring two executive assistants. And so we put together a simple blueprint that I’d like to share with you today to help you hire rock stars in your business. So you can experience more freedom in your business to work more on the business instead of in it to be in a situation where you’ve got more simplicity, and cut through a lot of the overwhelm that sometimes we experience as a business owner, right? So let me walk you through it. So we want to hire rockstars number one step to be able to do so is to make a decision. So you want to decide on what you want hire for is really, really important. As simple as that sounds, you need to make a decision on what you want to hire for. Who do you want. That leads us to step number two is the who. And before we can identify who we want, I want to challenge you to think about who you are. And there’s a lot of ways to be able to do this. I worked with a gentleman years ago. You see I’ve been fortunate. Over the last 20 years in business, I started my first company when I was 22 years old. I think I’ve interviewed somewhere near over 20,000 people, one on one or in small group settings. Over 20,000 people that I’ve interviewed will give you a lot of experience into what works, what doesn’t work, what questions asked what questions not to ask. And it starts with the who the gentleman I work with. He says Dan, one thing you’ve got to learn about interviewing and recruiting is that you will attract who you are not who you want, if you’re not careful. And so that’s why we put together this simple blueprint number one you need to decide what you want. Number two is identify the Who Who do you want. But before you can identify the who you want, identify who you are, there’s some great assessments to be able to identify, you know, your strengths, your talents, what are called unique ability factors. You know, there’s a lot of different profiling systems that you can look into. One of the ones we love to use as choice was referred by Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach and Joe Polish. And it’s using a Kolbe assessment, that’s Kolbe, a Kolbe assessment will help you identify the How do you operate best? Naturally, you know, what is it you’re most gifted to do naturally. And you know, there are other ones like disc and several, you know, you’ve got wonderlic and so on. But I would recommend a you take a Kolbe to identify your strengths. You know, the there was a book I read after my divorce years ago called the five love languages. And, you know, essentially what the love languages talks about that I think can be applied not only in personal relationships, but also business is identity, you have a certain factor of characteristics and qualities. And then ideally, when you’re with a partner, those there’s qualities that they have that complement what you do so in operating a business, you want to find people who have talents and strengths that compliment what you do, instead of overtake what you do. Because Have you ever been in a situation where you butt heads with people? Well, part of it is you’re probably very similar in a lot of ways. So you want to find that complimentary, which leads us to step number three in this probably the most critical thing you can do once you decide once you identify who you are, is to start to evaluate the people.

In operating a business, you want to find people who have talents and strengths that complement what you do, instead of overtake what you do. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Number one, maybe you already have on staff with a Kolbe or disc assessment, or so on. And then anybody that you bring through your company, you also take on the same approach to identify who they are. So that leads us to step three is create a process because the biggest mistake that I see most companies make and I’ve made it myself as I’ve run 13 different companies, approximately now I’ve been able to control advise with dozens and dozens of companies I’ve also through our different programs, resources and tools over the years impacted hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of people with the biggest common mistake with hiring and especially as you’re looking to hire rock stars, is we make the mistake of hiring too fast. So I want to challenge you to adapt this philosophy and part of your process, which is the hire slow process. And so I’ve got a diagram of one that we’ve built. And again, this has been refined, it’ll continuously be a work in progress, and over the years will actually work to improve. But just like any skill set, there are certain fundamentals to put in place. So I’d like to reveal and show you my blueprint, the blueprint we’re using in the companies that we consultant advise with, and ideally, this will be of value to you. So number one, when you identify and make a decision on what you’re hiring for, you identify the who what you want to do is create an ad, essentially write an ad that identifies, you know, the different characteristics and qualities you’re looking for, you know, those qualities will be different, those talents will be different, those skills will be different. If you’re hiring for a personal assistant, or an executive assistant, or a social marketing media manager or project manager, or a sales representative or sales manager, again, every position will have its own type of ad that you would run, identify ideally, based on your decision of what you want, and the type of who you want. So that leads to the next thing, once you run the ad, I want to challenge you to take them through a filter process, you know, essentially you want to find right fit type people. So you can create a certain type of survey or questionnaire that people fill out to ideally, kind of show themselves in certain ways. And there’s certain strategic questions that that we ask I mean, if you’d like to get access to a model that we’ve created, you know, you can contact us through our website. And we’ll send you an example of one that we’ve got in place not only for ourselves, but we also put in place for other companies. Once someone fills out the survey. Those people once they respond to the ad, fill out the survey, those are the only people we follow up with. So if someone just sends in a resume, we’re not going to follow up with them. Usually we’ll get a resume and a survey at the same time. Which leads us to a next step, one of our next steps that we have candidates do is we require and recommend they send us a video describing to us why they feel they’d be an ideal candidate to work with our company. Number one today with you know, your your phones, every phone that I know of has a camera on it. Most laptops, most computers have cameras. So it’s a pretty easy process to do. And you’re not looking for quality, per se unless you’re hiring a video person or a video editor. But it’s simply to identify some of the qualities and traits. Because here’s a cornerstone, I’m going to get to the most important piece here in the hiring process that you’re looking for in this and it’s a hidden secret that most people don’t take the time to learn. But after a video, then what we do is we look for our candidates to be able to do a report. So you know, like, for example, if you’re hiring for somebody like the social marketing media specialists we were looking for, we had them look at a book that’s not affiliated to our organization. And we said go check it out and send us a summary about it essentially a cliff notes of what you got out of it, you’re looking for certain qualities you’re looking for, you know, how well did they receive the information? How well do they present information, essentially, because we know this is part of what they’re going to be doing in their particular job. So we have them do a report, it could be a you know, they can listen to a podcast and do a report on they could listen to a book and do a report on it. Or I shouldn’t say listen to a book, I guess you could do that with audio books, but they could read a book and do that. So have them submit a report. If they do these three steps, and they meet a certain criteria, then the next piece that we’re going to look to do is we’ll do a phone interview, usually a phone interview will be at about 10 to 15 minutes, we let them know we have multiple stages, we let them know right up front, we have a slow hire process. And we’re looking for right fit type clients. And we do a series of questions similar to the survey to see how congruent they are, how consistent they are with their answers in what they originally put together in that survey, and also that video. So it says a lot when there is consistency and concurrency that leads us if they make it through this step, then we look to schedule an in person interview. And you know, there’s a lot of different questions that can be asked in in person interviews. And I’ll share a couple that we like to just throw out to people, you know, why are you looking for a new job? You know, what are some? Do you use set goals? And if they say yes, and it doesn’t matter whether they say yes or no, per se, it’s just an evaluation, but most people say yes, then we immediately follow that question up with what are your top three goals right now. And sometimes if they fumble around, it’s apparent that they really probably don’t set goals, which means they’ve kind of probably misled you to some degree, which is a good thing for you to know upfront in advance before you’d ever bring someone on. Right. Just little things like that. Another thing is in your next job. What do you expect to earn? Now usually in your ad, you will probably put some kind of a range of income that they could potentially be earning. So you ask them in an in person interview, what do you expect to earn? And it’s very interesting the type of answers that you get. And again, there are many different questions for sake of time, I just want to focus on create a process and whether you use our processing duplicated, or create some kind of a multi step process to really sift sort and screen to find people that are predisposed pre qualified, pre motivated to really be congruent in alignment with you with your business with leads us to the most important factor you’re looking for in all of these steps, which is you’re looking for people to have right fit values in your company. Because at the end of the day, what matters most is are you in alignment with values, you know, as the owner and entrepreneur of your company, you have a certain vision a certain way you do things, and you want to have people who will, you know, just absorb into those, or it’s almost through osmosis come into your environment, or come into your culture and adapt to what you do, where there isn’t extra conflict, because maybe you, you know, you require your people to, you know, respond to text messages after normal hours. Well, guess what, that’s a value situation. Or maybe you’re you know, committed to growth and learning and you expect your people to read books or listen to certain podcasts on a regular basis. That’s a value proposition. And so if you end up attracting, identifying who you want, attracting through a process, what you’re looking for, now you can go out and hire rock stars, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re looking for someone in sales doesn’t matter whether you’re looking for someone in operations, finance, accounting, any area, this process will work. So the key is, you’re going to follow this three step formula, you’re going to decide that you’re going to hire rock stars, what that would look like who you’d want to have on that on your board of advisors, you’re a player, so to speak, what those qualities would look like, what those characteristics would be.

As the owner and entrepreneur of your company, you have a certain vision, a certain way you do things, and you want to have people who will absorb into those. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Number two is the who, who are you, you know, identify who you are, you can do this through a series of different assessments that are available out there like Colby, disk, wonderlic, and many more. And then also, number three is create a process to hire slow, attract people through value proposition, essentially, through alignment. You know, whether that’s running an ad, serve a video, report, phone interview in person, ultimately, and each of these steps, what you’re looking to do, most importantly, is of course, the skill set. They have the talent they have for that particular job. But you want to make sure that their values are in line, because by hiring slow, you’ll avoid the complexity of hiring fast, you know what I’ve hired fast, and I’ve made the wrong choices. And I’ve had bad hires cost me hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars, I’ve had bad hires, steal money from me, I’ve had bad hires that cost me my business. I’ve had, you know, bad relationships with business partners, because I didn’t go through a filtering process like this, essentially cost me a business. And the reality is, life’s too short, your business is too important to make the wrong choice. So put a process in place. As a business owner, I challenge you to put something in place, whether it’s this, or something that you build and create yourself. There’s no limit to where you can go. Because at the end of the day, when you’ve got a good hiring system, you find people better than you. And let me ask you this, where do you think you’d be in the next year, two years, three years, five years? 10 years from now, if you had a team of a players better than you? Would you be better off than you are today? Would you likely exponentially grow? grow beyond where you are today? And would you be able to be focusing on the things you probably love more than anything doing what you do in your business than you are today? I say the answer is yes. So I challenge it, put it in place and start to experience more business breakthroughs, for business growth. Because you deserve it. It’s your time. So take advantage. Follow the steps. Give us some feedback. Let us know how it’s working, what’s working, what needs improvement. And we’ll look forward to seeing you in another episode. Thanks for being with us. See you soon.

At the end of the day, when you've got a good hiring system, you find people better than you. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Outro  13:58

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode. Make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

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