The Search for Excellence Unveiling Skills Beyond the Paper

Discover the hiring revolution you never knew you needed! Join me, Max, alongside Mike, as we share our game-changing approach to recruitment that is making the resume a thing of the past. Through our engaging discussion, you'll learn how employers are evolving their criteria to find the gems that truly fit their teams. We're here to guide you through the maze of what employers really want, peeling back the layers of job descriptions to reveal the core skills and attributes that make a candidate stand out.

Throughout our conversation, we dig into the real-world tactics employers can use to reflect on their hiring practices. We'll walk you through analyzing the successes and misses in your past recruitment efforts, showing you how to spot patterns in top performers and adjust your hiring process to meet the essential needs of your organization. Whether you're a seasoned hiring manager or new to the game, this episode is packed with insights that will help you refine your approach and secure the talent that will drive your company forward. Join us and become part of the hiring transformation that is setting a new standard in the industry.

We love to hear your hiring experience, whether you're a hiring manager with 100s of hires, about to make your first hire, or an applicant that has a story to tell. Share your stories with Max & Mike at hiringexperiencepod@gmail.com

This podcast and the matters discussed herein are for informational purposes only and should not to be construed as advice for a particular company or person. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional or legal advice.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

This is the Hiring Experience the podcast that helps you break down the art and science of hiring. Hosted by Max and Mike friends, founders and creators of rapid hiring, on a mission to bring an end to the resume, bringing you tactical advice to help you attract, select and retain the best talent. This podcast and the matters discussed herein are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as advice for a particular company or person. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional or legal advice.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Because I find that when I'm talking to a lot of these people that the things we start out with on what matters to them and where we end up once we've built out an application and a hiring track for them, the end state of it is not anywhere close to where we start. These are the five things I think are super important and I want to know. Then, over time, you get a lot of questions like oh, where do I find this? How do I find out about that? I'd want to know this. You'll end up with an additional list of 10 things that are more important to them than their initial thoughts on what is important or what they're looking for.

Speaker 2: 1:24

It really just comes down to what we talk about a lot of always understanding what you're looking for in your hires and your new employees. Those subconscious little decisions that you make and the analysis that you make of applicants can be so varied in what it is we think we're looking for. If you're hiring, say, a sales position, that we're looking for sales experience and the like, they start out by looking for somebody who's have you done exactly this thing that we're hiring for. In their head, that's what they're looking for. Over time you can break it down into all these separate skills and start to prioritize those things first over just having done it, I guess.

Speaker 3: 2:07

then how do you move that along so that because right now the process, even with us and clients, the process is over iteration, where it's like we're going to start and then you're going to sort of feel it out and figure it out, but not everybody is working with us and not everybody is using our system and our platform. How does one do this from the start of their process and what are the steps that they can take to iterate themselves effectively?

Speaker 2: 2:33

I think from the starting point of the iteration point is kind of a big component of it. For sure, looking through even if you've had the opportunity to hire for a role before and if you're using some software or even just like a career's email, the odds are you've saved most of them. Going back through, say, a dozen applicants for a job, even ones you've rejected, what are the things that you're rejecting about it? If you're reviewing the application, what was it about this application that made you say no, no, no, and then find a half a dozen that you said yes to or shortlisted or put aside, for maybe we'll interview these people and what are those components that made you say yes to that With each one most people, when you go through that with them, they'll get a couple points out of each one. They may have a ton of them outside of that, but a few that really stand out on each application, and if you have enough of them like you don't need too many, a dozen is probably fine You'll start to see little patterns and little overlaps of.

Speaker 2: 3:35

These are the two things we keep rejecting in what would otherwise be or seem like a good applicant if these two things weren't on it. And then the same thing was like what are the one or two things that almost is always on the shortlist, and whether or not those points are the right points for you to be looking for, we can't say. But starting from there, then at least you've now gotten into a rhythm of understanding what it is that you're you've actually been looking at, especially if you're not, now that they're not active aquable kins and like they're past applicants or something, people seem to be much more objective about what they were looking at than when they're looking at the current hires, and so it helps. It helps that flow as well. And then, like you said, the iteration part is definitely a component of it.

Speaker 3: 4:26

So, using something that allows you to do that, I think what I've found most useful in like how we operate our process and what people are finding the most value of, is how we ultimately increase, you know, honesty in interview processes by asking some of the job understanding things out front and I think that's a really valuable point that we haven't touched on too much is like how we can have people really understand the job that they're applying for before they're asked directly face to face in an interview, and a lot of the things that I talked to with clients and with you know people in general is around this and how there's certain things about a job and you know we use examples that are pretty easy, but this could be anything, but we use things such as the schedule of work or the duration of shifts or, you know, the willingness to work out of town or what have you, and these are really simple, straightforward things that you know. You put the bullet points in your job description and then you think that it's conveyed and a lot of the time I'm relying on that person to opt out if it's not conveyed or if they don't agree with it. But ultimately, you know they might think that's negotiable, they might think that doesn't apply to everyone you don't really know. But when you have somebody in for an interview and you ask them these types of things now they've committed their time, you've committed time you both have a little bit of vested interest in this at this point. And there's also that face to face conversation, the need for human approval. Whatever it is, you're more likely to get a favorable answer.

Speaker 3: 6:04

So if I ask somebody you know this job requires working out of town occasionally whatever that person in person may say, yes, that's no problem, because it's very evident that if they don't give you a favorable answer, they're not going to get the job. And this type of thing can lead to turnover as well, because when it is time, you know they may get that, get that role and everything's good for two, three, four months. Now it's time to go out of town and there's an issue with that. Then we see this turnover and you're back to square one kind of thing, right? So what I found is very helpful for people is some of these basic job understanding things that we think our job descriptions take care of, and then we asked them in the interviews as an assurance, moving them out in your process, where somebody can, you know, choose to self exclude themselves in this capacity earlier in the process. So they're not as committed to the role.

Speaker 2: 6:55

They're definitely a big part of it the fact that we go through it with a lot of people that they're people just simply don't read your job descriptions, because the fur, if they've clicked into their job and they're going to apply, the first apply button they see is the one they're going to click.

Speaker 2: 7:11

If it's at the top they're going to click it and if it's at the bottom they're going to scroll right through to the bottom to hit it.

Speaker 2: 7:18

And because of that, working it into the application flow helps out a lot with making sure we're not wasting time of the applicants and our own on what we're not actually looking for.

Speaker 2: 7:33

And I think kind of it does tie back into what I was saying a few minutes ago, in that understanding what we are looking for in people makes a difference, and those are some of the things that we don't weigh heavily enough in the review process of just the context around the role itself. So if the role is going to be a delivery driver or something like that, then there's a lot of context around what that is and when do you deliver things and the like, because if you're only evaluating it can you do the job. You may be missing some of the larger components of what matters in somebody being successful at the role, in that they'll be able to show up on time work, the schedule that is required for this position and the like. So understanding all of that sooner makes a huge difference in getting people who, like Mike said, understand what it is that they're applying to.

Speaker 3: 8:37

Yeah, and I think that's really what it came down to is, you know, like you said, there's a lot of focus on all of the other things like what are your qualifications, what are your skills, what have you done, what's your experience, yada, yada, yada. And then it's up to people doing the hiring to review those answers and apply them to the role, as opposed to giving people the opportunity to apply them to the role themselves. If the information is more transparent about what the role is in the first place, right? So we want to make sure that we're not the only ones with the information about the job. You know, we want candidates to have that information about the job and it doesn't have to be every in and out and, you know, every day to day. It's more like what's the schedule, what are you doing, what is your day to day and the little intangibles, what makes your company a little bit different.

Speaker 3: 9:25

And you know, if you're a delivery driver, like Mike said elsewhere, you know we can't just expect that the next company is going to be the identical position and then somebody comes in and there's a disconnect because it's not the exact same job that they just had. Right. So like we can work out those nuances. But we want to work them out. I guess what I was getting to was we want to work them out earlier in the process. We want people to understand that as they're applying, not as they're being asked, in the situation that's going to yield the answers that you want to hear, more likely than not.

Speaker 2: 10:02

That is all part of the review process of a candidate, if you make it a part of the process. But a lot of people, like Mike said, leave it to the end as some sort of verification. Like all right, here's the working hour. Like we'd like to hire you, here's the working hours. And then they look at it and they're like this doesn't fit with what I can do.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Thank you for listening to the Hiring Experience. We hope you enjoyed this episode and learned something new about the art and science of hiring. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. This helps others discover the show. Share with a friend, colleague or anyone going through the hiring experience right now. Share your hiring experience with us at hiringexperiencepodcom.