Last week we spoke about what type of person we want to look for in a hire and what tools we can use to find them. This week we're following on from that and diving deeper into the actual hiring process. When we’ve placed an add on job sites, we want to think of this as a funnel, because this is where we’re going to have to eliminate the most candidates. After that we want to look at call screening and then follow that up with a video call or in person interview. What I like to then do is have a team member interview the candidate… just to make sure that the team fit is locked in. It’s absolutely vital that you have a strategy in place for the hiring process or it will most definitely be overwhelming, take up more time than it should… or you could end up with the wrong hire. So join the Investor Mindset community by hitting subscribe and let us know down in the comments below what your recruitment process is.
Last week we spoke about what type of person we want to look for in a hire and what tools we can use to find them. This week we're following on from that and diving deeper into the actual hiring process. When we’ve placed an add on job sites, we want to think of this as a funnel, because this is where we’re going to have to eliminate the most candidates. After that we want to look at call screening and then follow that up with a video call or in person interview. What I like to then do is have a team member interview the candidate… just to make sure that the team fit is locked in. It’s absolutely vital that you have a strategy in place for the hiring process or it will most definitely be overwhelming, take up more time than it should… or you could end up with the wrong hire.
So join the Investor Mindset community by hitting subscribe and let us know down in the comments below what your recruitment process is.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Make sure the job description is in total alignment with the person that we're looking to hire.
2. Take a look at the people in an already successful sales team and see what you need (or what you're lacking) from their skill set.
3. Think about the hiring process as a funnel and have a solid process of elimination.
4. At the top of the funnel have everyone apply through a website such as Indeed or Monster. Then we can have them instantly complete a personality assessment such as DISC.
5. The phone screening process is really important... especially in sales roles. This gives us an instant idea of if we want to continue to the next step or not.
6. We need to ask some key questions during the short phone screening. Check the episode out to hear these in detail.
7. If the fit is not right then move on quickly and end the call in a respectable way. You're going to be talking to a lot of people!
8. The final step in my process is an interview with someone from my team. This is important because it allows us to ascertain if they have the right team fit. My team members might also notice something that I missed.
BOOKS
The Passive Investing Playbook - https://theinvestormindset.com/passive
LINKS
Join the MultiFamilyMBA and get exclusive free training: https://theinvestormindset.com/mfmba
Learn more about investing with Steven at https://theinvestormindset.com/invest
Steven: [00:01]: Welcome back to this week's mindset minutes episode with the Investor Mindset podcast. And I'm your host, Steven Pesavento. And each week I share mindset tips and real estate investing strategies that can help you grow your business and your investing career to the next level. And this week, we're going to be diving a little bit deeper into a topic we talked about recently, on the hiring front about -- how do we go about vetting and bringing on the right sales people. So today, we're going to be diving into interviewing. So join us each week as we share more tips and strategies that can help you reach true financial freedom through real estate by hitting that subscribe button right down below, and making sure you never miss another episode. All right. Let's get into it.
INTRO: This is The Investor Mindset podcasts, and I'm Steven Pesavento, for as long as I can remember, I've been obsessed with understanding how we can think better, how we can be better, and how we can do better. And each episode we explore lessons on motivation and mindset from the most successful real estate investors and entrepreneurs in the nation.
Steven: [01:04]: So if you missed our last episode, diving into hiring and finding the right salespeople, then I encourage you to go start there. But as a first little build up to set the stage where we're going to talk a little bit about on that episode, we talked about how do we figure out what type of salesperson we're looking for, and what type of information or personality profile traits or past sales type experience and background is the right fit for the type of job that we're actually going to be hiring for. So just to kind of lay the foundation for that on the job description front, I think it's really important that we make sure the job description is in alignment with that assessment that we're going to be using to understand what type of personality profile traits, the type of person that we're looking to bring on the team. And as I mentioned before, it's really valuable to look at what are the top performers on your team currently, and if you're like many of us, and you have a very small team, or not a lot of data to base off of within your own company, then it's important to have networks, have masterminds have connections, other people who are succeeding and have already succeeded in the area that you're looking to grow your team so that you can go and look and understand well, from the perspective of their best salespeople, what's interesting or different about them than some of the people who are maybe average or mediocre at best. So as we're starting to understand what those characteristics are, those traits, those qualities that the salesperson has, that we are going to be searching for, then we can make sure that we write the job description in a way that's appealing to them, and speaks to them on that basis. But once we have those folks coming in, and they're applying whatever job board you might be applying through, maybe that's Indeed maybe that's Monster, maybe that's Zip Recruiter, or any of the other different avenues you can have to have people coming into your funnel. And we really want to think about the hiring process as a funnel, because we're going to have people who are going to be applying, and they're going to be not qualified at all at the top of our funnel.
Steven: [00:03:10]: And as we work through this process, we want to be screening those folks in disqualifying people as we go, and qualifying people as we're working through these resumes. So of course, if you don't have a process for something, then it's going to be very difficult, or it's going to feel very overwhelming as you're looking at all these different resumes and trying to determine which is the best person to bring in your company. So that is why I think it's very valuable for you to follow this step by step procedure. And you can build one that's going to be the best fit for you and your company. And what we'd like to do is at the top of the funnel, we have everybody apply through a website like Indeed or a job board like that, and as they're applying, we typically then immediately after their application is received, regardless of what their resume says automatically, we're sending them a link, or some type of request for them to complete a personality profile assessment. So like I mentioned in the last episode, we love using DISC because it's very accessible for small business owners and different entrepreneurs, but there's other great choices. Predictive index is one of them that I'm a big fan of, The Culture index is another one that I'm a big fan of Myers Briggs, there are many that have some really valuable information that you can start to make once they make hiring decisions based off of but influence your screening process so that you can only focus on people of the right type of way of thinking for the role that you're looking for.
Steven: [00:04:43]: So that's that first step, we send them a message and we follow up with them, asking them to complete the assessment if they don't complete the assessment, they essentially disqualify themselves from being considered.
And once that assessment is completed, then we're going to take a look at the information and based on what qualifications or qualities that person has, if they fit into the different segments of way of thinking that we're looking for in this candidate, then we're going to bring them on to the next step, which is the phone screening. And I think this is a really important process that most people I think, underutilized or under appreciate how valuable it can be, especially when we're talking about something from a sales role position. So the phone screen, I think it's really important that we're being effective and efficient with our time. So every single person that we're going to interview, we're going to ask them the same questions, we're going to ask them those same questions in the same way, every single time. And we're going to spend a very limited amount of time connecting with them and talking to them on the phone screen because at the core, the phone screen, the purpose of having them on that call is to understand and qualify them, are they the right fit for us to spend an hour with on a video interview or in person interview? So if that's the core purpose, all we need to do is decide, are they a fit or are they not a fit to move to the next step. And as soon as we know, they're a fit, it's important, let's move them to that next step and if we know they're not a fit, let's end it right there.
Steven: [00:06:15]: So I want to share a couple examples of some of those questions that I like to ask and how that process can be used really effectively. So some of these questions that I like to ask are very simple, but the purpose of the phone screen again, is so that we can clearly understand if this person is the right fit. So I like to immediately get on the phone, I like to say, "Hey, this is Steven with VonFinch, just wanted to jump on, we've got seven minutes, just a quick conversation, understand if you might be a good fit for this role. And I'll save a couple minutes at the end for questions for you. And if it is a good fit, we can talk about what the next steps are from there. Does that sound good?" And then we jump right into it. I ask them, tell me a little bit about yourself and why you're looking for a new role. Walk me through your experience. And how do you think those relate to this position? And as I'm asking some of these questions, what we're really looking for is -- I'm really looking for this person to tell me why they wanted to apply for this role. I want them to show that they have done some research that they understand the role. I want them to show that they've got some sales skills and abilities. And I frankly want them to sell me a little bit on themselves and why they're a good fit. Extra brownie points for a salesperson who answers the question but also follows up by asking questions, because any good salesperson is going to want to find out well, what is it that you're looking for and how do you know that you found the right person for the role and maybe tries to turn things on you as the interviewer so that they could understand how they can best tailor their message to you. And as you're going through this process, I think it's really important that as soon as you realize that somebody is not a fit, that you realize that this is not the right person for the role that you as quickly as possible, get off the phone. Because while you're doing these phone screens, you're going to be talking to lots of people. And so it's important to respect their time, as well as your time. If you know it's not a fit that you just say, Hey, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, we'll follow up and let you know if we have any further questions, or you might even be honest and say, Hey, you know what, I don't think this is a good fit. But thank you so much for your time, and just move on, you'll have to decide what you feel comfortable with. And to be honest, one of the hardest parts, the things that it took me a long time to get over. But I think it's something that you absolutely can as well as that you don't want to you feel bad for that person that you don't want to hurt their feelings and at the same time, if you're going to talk to 20, or 30, or 40 or 50 people in this process and do that as quickly and as efficiently as possible, you're going to have to realize that, that person is not a good fit, and be able to let them off the line in a very respectable and respectful way to them, while also being able to move right on to your next call. And one thing that I forgot to mention, one of my favorite things to do in order to best set up this process is that I like to send an email to folks inviting them to join for phone screening, I like to offer two times like to say hey, we're going to do a phone screening on Thursday from 9 until 10am, or we're going to do a phone screen on Wednesday afternoon from 4 to 5pm. Which time would work best for you? And then I make it clear in that email that I'm going to give them a call that it's going to be about a seven-minute call and I'm going to call them as soon as I'm done with the next person that's in front of them. The value and benefit of this is that you can schedule 10/15 multiple different phone screens within that hour time. And as you're finishing up a call quickly, you get off that phone in five minutes or seven minutes. Now you've just saved some extra time and in between each of those, it ends up allowing you to be able to move much faster and spend a little bit more time with those folks who you really think, Hey, this could be a good fit. I'm not 100% yet, let me ask a couple more questions until you get to that next step of the phase.
Steven: [00:10:07]: And so now we know we finished the phone screen; we know that we're going to move on to that video/in person interview. And if the first step of our process was the assessment to understand personality, profile wise, are they a fit. The second step was phone screen to understand if this person a quality fit according to what I'm looking for, in order to get to know them better on a personal level and see if they have the right skills, to be able to wear the right personality to be a good fit for my company, I'm going to bring that person into a video interview, which I like video because it's faster, you can still get a lot of that personal connection done and you can connect with a lot of people from all around the country. But in person, there's always an energy that can be really valuable, especially when you're having people come directly into your office. And so on the video interview, what I'm looking for is just diving deep and personal, as quickly as possible to really understand who they are, and set up that conversation from the beginning by letting them know, Hey, I'm here to get to know who you are, I'm going to ask some personal questions I want to get to know -- do you have the values that end up matching our company values and see if you're the right fit for the team. And we will talk about the skills and the experience later, because you've already made it to this point of the interview. So clearly, you have some of those skills and experience that we're looking for in this role. And what that does is allows the other person to open up to start having that person to person conversation, especially when you're running a small company, it makes a biggest difference if you don't have somebody who has the right core values alignment. So in these conversations, I like to get to know who they are, what do they value, what are they looking for in a career. What was their past experience? What kind of income they're making? What kind of income they're desiring, what kind of time they're looking to invest? Are they open to working late, or on the weekends? Are they looking specifically for a nine to five, are they looking for some kind of fixed income or 100% commission? And in this conversation, I've been able to get to know who they are at a personal level and in that process, we ask some questions about experience and skills to be able to dive a little bit deeper. And if the person qualifies from that perspective, then we move on to the final interview, or one of the final interview steps of our processes, having them interview with somebody else from our team. And in this final step, what we're really doing is making sure that there's team fit, that they've got the right skills, and the right values to align with the team and that as a hiring manager, that I'm not missing anything that maybe another team member might be able to see or pick up. And I always want to value what my other team members are going to share. So I'm going to have them dive in deep, ask some questions, and validate that this person is going to have the right skill set to step into the role. So if they are the right fit, and they are hired then the final step of the hiring process, a very important step is diving into the onboarding and training. It's so incredibly important to have a clear-cut process for onboarding somebody and bringing them through the right training to make sure that they've got the right skill sets to be able to succeed very early. But along that line, within the training, we're setting up and establishing clear KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, clear, measurable numbers to understand is that person succeeding in the role so they know. And so I know as a manager, now, we could talk a lot more about all of this, but these are just some strategies that I've been grateful to use myself that I've shared with a number of my clients, both on the one to one basis, and through our group coaching and other programs that we end up working along with them in order to help them grow their business. And this stuff works. And so if you're looking to hire somebody, and this ends up being valuable anyway, definitely drop a comment down below. Shoot me a message steven.pensavento@theinvestormindset.com and let me know what you think. Have you used similar strategies like this before and what have been some of the biggest challenges that you have had, when it comes to hiring and bringing on the right sales people? So thank you so much for joining us and look forward to seeing you next time.
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