How To Make Your Next Hire. The Complete Guide To Hiring Top Talent

Hiring the wrong person doesn't just cost money. It costs momentum, energy, confidence, and sometimes months of progress. When you're stretched thin and desperate for help, it's easy to rush the process and convince yourself that a candidate is "good enough." Those decisions have a way of sticking around much longer than you'd like.

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  Some people hire like they're buying a coffee. You should be hiring like you're buying a house, because it might cost you your house if you get it wrong. You'll spend hours with this person, more than your own family at home. And this new hire, if they make one bad decision, it can cost you your customers, your sanity, maybe even your whole business. I should know, I made a bad hire that cost me half a million dollars. Before you write a single job post, stop and ask yourself two questions. Number one, where am I spending my time and attention right now? And number two, what are the exact desired outcomes I want from this hire? Today, I'm gonna show you my exact playbook, my step-by-step process, so that you can

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  make your next hire and get a return on investment from that hire as soon as possible. Let's go.

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  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

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  The number one reason why people make bad hires is usually because they are overwhelmed with the process and they rush the hire. They feel like I need somebody as soon as possible so that I can get a return on investment and I can make this worth my while. I got too much on my plate, I'm stressed out, so I'm just gonna make a quick hire. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But what doesn't make sense is you not considering the cost of a bad hire. This is why we have a rule here in our company. We hire slowly and intentionally, and then on the flip side, we also have a rule to fire quickly if things are not working out. As soon as you realize you've made a bad decision, you need to stop putting good money after bad money. You have to stop and realize this is not working out.

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  Fire them so that you can find the right person for your company as soon as possible. The more they're in your company, the more damage they're gonna do. I know this, because as embarrassing as it sounds, I've made some really bad hires over the years. I've learned the hard way. One hire in particular cost me half a million dollars. Yes, it was super painful. That person was a bad fit, and I had a bad outcome because of that. And they were a decision-maker in the company, and they made some decisions that really cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if I didn't fire them when I did, they would've cost me millions of dollars. And the crazy thing, the crazy thing is I could've completely avoided this if I took my time to make that hire.

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  So, slow down when you're making a hire. I also have another rule in our company, that if I'm hiring for a position, and there might be somebody suitable for that position in my company already, I can promote them into that position. The outside hire, the person that is out there in the world, applying for the job, they have to be at least 40% better than the person that already is on my team. Why? Because I am seeing a flawless person as an outside hire. That person that's coming and applying for the job, I don't know any of their flaws. I don't know any of their areas that they need to improve. I don't have the full picture. All I see is positive things.

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  No one puts the mistakes they made or their weaknesses on their CV, okay? So, when I'm hiring internally, making a, I know what I'm getting. I know the things I need to work on with this person. I know where are their strengths. I know where they're kind of timid about, and where we need to kinda train them up on. The point here is that when you're making a hire, don't just think that, oh, they're gonna come and solve all my problems. It's gonna take some work, especially if they're new to your company and new to the position. And I made that rule because, guess what? The person that I hired that cost me half a million dollars was somebody who was external, who I could've had that position filled by somebody inside the company with a promotion. Now that you see the lens I'm seeing this through, let me give you the step-by-step

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  plan you need to make your next hire. Step one is to define the role and write down the job ad that sells the position to the perfect person. A lot of people, they kinda skip this step. They jump straight to, I need a marketer, right? And they check what a marketer does online, they Google it, they use AI, and they actually just come up and slap something together on a Word doc or something, and they're like, that's my job ad. No, you're not hiring some random marketer. You're hiring somebody that is going to fit into your business and your needs. What you need to do is like, who's doing this job right now? Probably you're doing the marketing, right? So, look at your calendar, look at all the things that you're doing when it comes to

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  marketing, write down those tasks, so you understand who you're hiring and what you're going to give them when you hire them. A phrase I like to use when I'm creating this job description is "so they can." What is that all about? Well, let me tell you. A lot of us, when we do this exercise, we just write down a bunch of tasks, like, this person writes the newsletter, this person then creates the Facebook marketing campaign, this person then uses a marketing budget so that they can sponsor other podcasts. These are just tasks, really, right? But you have to use the phrase "so you can," so you understand the outcomes you want. They are running ads so they can get what? What's the outcome? Get more leads, right? Get more customers, whatever it might be.

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  "So they can" is a great little phrase that you should be using when you're creating your job description, because what you really want them to have are outcomes to go after. Why? Because when people are driven by outcomes, they own and they take ownership of that job, rather than you getting them to do a bunch of tasks and they don't own the outcome. You want somebody to take the whole responsibility off your plate. It'll also help you attract serious candidates that want more than a paycheck. They want ownership over an area of the business. They wanna be able to feel like they were making their own inputs, and they wanna have a little stake in the game, like, meaning that, like, hey, I'm going after these certain outcomes, I'm gonna have to be creative about what I have to do to get to those outcomes.

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  So, when you're writing your job description, not only worry about the tasks, worry about the outcomes they have to achieve, and you have to make it very clear to them, hey, this is how you win in our company. One of the things I would also recommend adding in that job description is why they should work for you. Listen, you're interviewing them, but they're also interviewing you. They wanna know why would I work at your company versus all the other companies in the world I could work for? So, explain why that your place is special. So, for example, in our job descriptions, we write in bold letters that, hey, you're gonna do the best work you've ever done in your career here at the $100 MBA. And we really believe that. We like to challenge people and give them a lot of ownership and autonomy, so that

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  they get to be creative, they do work they're really proud of, work that is gonna be viewed or is going to be listened to or watched by millions of people. That's something that they probably won't get anywhere else, and this is what we can offer. So, we're gonna attract people that are attracted to that.

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  All right, you created your job description. Now it's time to screen an interview with intention. What does this mean? Well, it means that before you commit to a hire, you need to screen people that are a good fit before you even get to the interview stage. So one of the things that we do to screen people so that we don't waste hours, days, weeks, even months interviewing people that are not a good fit, is we get them to fill out an application form. And in the application form, by the way, this is just a Google form. It's free to create. We ask questions that they would be asked in that job. So we're kind of simulating what it's like. So for example, if we're hiring a customer service agent, we'll say, hey, go to our help article and here's a question from a customer. How would you answer this question via email?

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  And they would have like a little box where they'll put the response based on what they learned from the help article. We'd actually get them to do some mini tasks in the application to show what they can do in the actual job. And then lastly, it doesn't matter what position they're in. We would get them to shoot a video of themselves answering a few questions that we would give them in the application. Now, the reason why we do this is because in our company, communication is key. They need to be able to communicate with other people. They need to be able to communicate their ideas. We have creative meetings all the time here at the 100 MBA. We have times where people have to kind of say, hey, this is an idea I believe in. And you need to be able to express your ideas clearly so people can understand what you want and what you need and what you want to put out in the world.

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  So if you can't do that on video where you have time to prepare and script and shoot, then you probably can't do it on the fly. Now, what this does is that it actually filters out a lot of people because if they're not willing to do a video, then they're probably not willing to do the job, right? They're not a go getter. They're actually not hungry for this job. And this is something they could just do with their phone. It's not very low lift. But the point here is that we want to see how they communicate, how they like to present themselves. Are they putting their best foot forward? Are they just being themselves and being honest? Like we had applicants where they were like, hey, I got this piece of paper because there's a few things I want to say. I don't want to forget, so I'm going to have it with me as I'm recording. I can appreciate that. I can appreciate they're actually making an effort and it's okay if they have a piece of paper. You know, in real life, you could have a piece of paper in front of you in a meeting.

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  It also allows you to have a vibe check with this person. Do I want to work with this person? Do they seem like somebody I want to see more of? If so, let's filter them into an interview stage. This is going to allow you to save so much time and energy and effort and money, I should say, because you're also cutting down to the best of the best before you go to the interview stage. So you're not interviewing like hundreds of people. You're interviewing maybe seven, eight, nine, 10, 15, 20 people max. Step three is actually three things in one. Interview, simulate working together, and a reference check. When you're conducting the interview, you want to break the ice as much as possible. You want to make people feel as comfortable because a lot of people when they're in an interview, they're nervous or not complete themselves. So feel free to ask questions that are not totally about the job.

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  Like, what are your favorite movies? And then you can follow that up with like, well, what about those movies you like that you'd like to apply in creating content here at our company? You are actually easing them in. What you're doing here is you're doing yourself a favor so that you can get the real person behind the desk or behind this interview scenario. Okay? So what we like to do is after the interview, whoever is a part of the interview, and I would recommend maybe not just have yourself at the interview, have another person that works with you in the company, or maybe even a colleague or a friend that's willing to kind of just sit in and just give a different perspective. But after the interview is over, the first thing we ask ourselves is, do I want to spend more time with this person?

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  Or is it like, I'm just happy that was over and I don't really want to see or talk to this person again? That's a clear indication that you're probably not going to work well together if you don't want to talk to them again. But if you're like, hey, I wouldn't mind like having a coffee with this person, or you know, this person seems like they're fun and interesting. I want to learn more about them. That is a good signal. Next, it does help to have some sort of scorecard that you create, some way so that you are objective about each candidate that comes in, about the skillset, about the culture fit, about their experience and how it fits into what you're doing in your company. Having some sort of scorecard will allow you to have some sort of discussion with the people that ran the interview with you. Now, it's easy to be hard on people because you have a high standard and because the

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  people that are already working with you in the company have learned about the company, know what you expect, all that kind of stuff. But you got to remember, in that interview, this is literally the worst they'll ever going to be with you in this job, right? They don't know anything about you yet. If they did a little bit of homework, they know a little bit about you. But the point here is that you can train skills, but you can't train attitude. So try to find out, do they have the right attitude? Do they have the right demeanor? Do they have what it takes so that I can train them? Are they trainable? Are there some of that is positive that has a growth mindset? Or are they just kind of one way thinking? Or maybe they're just jaded? Or maybe, we've met a lot of people in interviews where just like, they have experience, but they didn't have the right attitude. And the thing is, I can't train attitude.

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  You either have it or you don't. It's not really about the finished product. It's about the potential. It's about, does this person have the potential to be a star in my team? So I'm looking for things like willingness to learn, be able to accept feedback. So I'll ask questions like, when did you disagree with your boss before? And how did you take on that feedback, right? How do you recover from mistakes? You know, we ask questions like, when did you completely screw up? When did you make a mistake? What did you learn in that process? It forces them to be honest too in that moment. I also look to see if they're able to crack a joke, right? Are they able to make fun of themselves? I don't want to work in an office where people are like so serious that it's not enjoyable. Like, I like to have a joke or two during the day. It's okay to take yourself a little lightly.

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  So if they have those qualities, they have potential to become a hire. And then lastly, like I said before, can you see yourself spending hours with this person every day? And this is a really critical question because this is the reality. You're going to be spending eight, nine, 10 hours a day with this person. You're going to be communicating with them a lot. You're going to be in each other's faces. Can you enjoy their company? Because why are you building a company if you can't enjoy it? Now, once you have decided this person has potential and I want to hire them, you should put them on some sort of trial project, something that allows you to see what it's really like to work with them. This could be a paid project where they are doing something in a short period of time, like a day or two. If they're a video editor, get them to edit a video for you.

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  If they are somebody who's going to be dealing with customers and customer support, get them to shadow one of the people that are in customer support and get them to jump in to answer some questions themselves. When we hired an engineer for Webinar Ninja, we would get them to code a piece of the software. And we do like a live coding session. We even did this over Zoom for people that were remote. And we would record this whole thing. It'd be like a two hour session where they're actually working on the software and building like a login screen, for example. We make it very clear to the candidate that we're not really concerned about the outcome of the project in terms of what they create, but we're really interested in how they think, how they make decisions, if they ask questions, do they collaborate with other people? How they collaborate?

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  Are they just somebody that is good on paper, but then when they actually do the work, they're kind of shaky or not as confident? That trial project has saved my rear end more than any other thing in my business because so many times they would go through the trial project and they're not what they seemed in the interview or on their CV. They're actually not as good as they think they are. And what we do is actually when we go through the interview process, we give a trial project to many candidates, like three or four people. These people seem like they could be a good fit. And then through that trial project, we realize, oh, actually, let's take a look at their work. Let's look at how they worked, how they submitted some of the feedback or some of the circumstances they did this in, like whether they were in the office or whether they did it at home.

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  We kind of weigh everything together and say, actually, this candidate stands out from the rest. If this episode's helpful, then we have an episode that you're absolutely going to love, but I don't want you to miss it. So hit subscribe. It's all about the top five mistakes every business owner makes in their first year of business. I know all these mistakes and I did them all. I know them and I have helped over 4,000 entrepreneurs in my career. And I've seen these mistakes happen over and over again. So I don't want you to make these mistakes as you're getting started. Hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode. All right, you made your decision, you made your hire. Let's move on to step four, which is onboarding and making sure that they succeed in your business. Your job as the leader of your business is to make sure you show them how to win.

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  Right? Your job is not over once you hire them. You've got to train them. You've got to make sure that they understand the context of your business. They understand the rules of your game so that they can be able to win for you. So that your customers get a result, you get a result, and you get a return on investment. This means you need to make sure that you give them everything they need to succeed. This could be software tools. This could be hardware. It could be a camera, for example, if they're shooting content. It could be giving them feedback, correcting issues as they happen, which we call just-in-time learning. This is something I learned in my teaching days. You don't wait for months when you see something wrong, especially in the early days. In their first, I would say even six months, as soon as something goes a little bit left and not so perfect, or maybe it's not to the standard you're looking for.

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  It's your job as the leader or the person that's managing them to say, hey, good effort. This is what we're looking for. You're just a little bit off the mark. This is how we're going to get there. I'm telling you right now, most people with the right attitude are going to appreciate this. They want the honest feedback. They want to be able to know how to win in your business. They want to succeed. They want to get better. This is why I say communication is the mother of all skills. If you can communicate properly and communicate feedback, you are going to win in business. Because if you can't tell people and have a little bit of an uncomfortable discussion where it's like, hey, listen, I want to see you win. What you did was good, but I want you to be great. Let me show you how to make it great. And you give them feedback, you give them training in the moment, or you show them how

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  to get better, whether it's like watch this video or read this book or whatever it might be. This is going to help you put in the investment to make sure that they're great. Listen, nothing is going to pan out in your business if you're not willing to invest in it, including the people that you hire. Now, what if you go through these steps and then a month, maybe two months, maybe three months down the line, you realize maybe they were not the right hire? Maybe they're not a good fit. What do you do? Well, you have an honest discussion with them. You say, hey, this is what I'm expecting. These are the outcomes I'm looking for. Right now, this is what you're producing. How can we get you there? Let's get on a plan. Let's figure out how we can get you the outcomes that we need from you in this company.

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  Give them a chance to improve and see if they can turn it around. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. In my humble opinion and in my experience, nine times out of 10, they're not able to turn it around. And in fact, it's not their fault. It's your fault. You made the wrong hire. They're not a good fit for this position and for the things you're asking them to do. So when you make a mistake, you have to own up to it. I made a mistake. I made the wrong hire. I need to fix this mistake by either helping them improve. And if they don't improve, then I need to fire them. I need to let them go and replace them with somebody is a good hire. Now, this is one of the toughest parts of being an entrepreneur because this is where you start to realize, oh, I'm not their colleague, right?

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  My responsibility is to my customers. I need to make sure my customers, my listeners, my audience, my whatever, get the best from me. And if I'm not doing everything I can to make that happen, then I'm doing a disservice to the people that pay everybody's bills and pays everybody's paycheck. Okay? So it's your job as a leader to make these tough decisions and fire as soon as you know it's not going to work out. And there's nothing that you can do to salvage it. Don't delay this because the longer they're in this position doing a bad job, the more damage they're going to do, the more money and time and effort it's going to cost you, not only in that time, but also for you to recover from those losses. That is the game plan. That's how you make your next hire, A to Z. Listen, you'll get better at this over time.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  This will feel like second nature. And as you do this over and over again, you're going to find that, hey, every hire I make is better than the last hire I made because you are getting better at recognizing great talent. One more thing that most people won't say, there is luck involved. Sometimes you're going to get lucky and you're going to find somebody that is just really good and it didn't take much effort. And you should just celebrate that win and be happy with it. But understand that sometimes you are unlucky and it takes longer than you expect to find the right person. And that's okay. Don't be impatient. Wait and keep working at it until you find the right person for this position. It's too critical not to do that. Now, if you loved today's episode and you want to continue learning, there's an episode that I highly recommend you check out.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  They were recently published. It's called "The One-Person AI Company Is BS." Okay? It's all about, this is crazy that's happening on social media. Hey, I can build an app with AI and build a whole software company by myself and be super rich and super successful. That's not exactly how it works. If you want to learn more about that, go check out that episode. Just scroll up on whatever app you're using, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, we're on them all. It's called "The One-Person AI Company Is A Fantasy." Go ahead and check it out.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help start, grow, and scale your business, subscribe to the podcast. All you got to do is hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. I'll check you in the next episode.

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