Founder and President of Eureka Process, Allen Edwards, will be reviewing proven processes for Hiring, Recruiting, and Screening. This walk through will start on what and where to advertise, and go all the way through using your PSA to help you automate the screening process.

We will be using ConnectWise Manage in our example, but the processes are more general and can be applied to many PSAs, and the principals used without automation.

Video Transcript

​Allen Edwards
All right, let’s move forward. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining have one more time. This is an interactive presentation. So using the controls in zoom, or just unmute yourself and just chat if you have questions, or use the chat feature or raise your hand and we’ll work through that. Let me do the brief introductions. Hopefully everybody can see our presentation screen. That should be one of your Bingo. web conference bingo card slots there. Can you see my screen? So this is a presentation for it, Doug. It’s our first webinar of the year. It’s about the hiring, recruiting and screening process. Thank you all for coming. You might not be familiar with it, Doug. Even though this is hosted by Doug so let’s talk a little bit about what that is. It dog as a Facebook group, the URLs listed there if you’re already a member in a public forum, we could actually just at sign it, Doug, to tag us in something or refer people to us, used to be called it doc. And it was founded for the purposes of it documentation users coming together to share and learn tips, kind of a peer group as you will. It was originally created by Tracy and Tracy, did you want to introduce yourself?

Unknown Speaker
Sure, that’s me.

Tracy Hardin
I own an IT company in Lexington, Kentucky, been doing on my own since 2001. And a couple of years I years ago, I signed up with it glue confused on how to get started, looked for help on how to get started, couldn’t really find it. couldn’t really find a Facebook group on it. So I founded a group called it documentation users group. Actually it glue users group, but I’ve expanded it to all types of documentation. So Alan, my co me He joined up, he knew a lot more about this stuff than I did. And together, we keep the group going and look for ways to help with

Unknown Speaker
doing documentation and processes to improve my business.

Allen Edwards
Outstanding and boy has the group grown. You started just in May of 20 1818 months later, we hit 1000 members and look at us now. Well, yeah. The moral of the story behind membership is so many of us are quiet joiners. It does take a certain critical mass to have enough people asking questions, and enough people available who see it and wants to answer your question. So please keep inviting to the group. If you ever say why should I invite let us know what we can do to add value to make sure we’re taking care of your needs. Because Tracy and I and everybody else we’re getting value to just you know, seeing what questions are being asked, answering a few when we can and knowing what’s out there. I’m the lucky guy. Who gets to be today’s speaker. So a little bit about me, I’ve been in it since 1994. I’m not as old as that sounds, I just started young I promise. I owned an IoT firm that I started in 2002 sold it in 2011. I worked for two other msps or we also had some successful growth. You’ll hear a little more about some of those stories shortly. I am an EOS implementer, which I learned at one of those msps and I founded Eureka process, a little bit about what I do all day long, which is kind of where I like to say I come from when giving these presentations. Our company founded in 2017. So we’re in our fourth year now. We specialize in process consulting. So we believe strongly that everything should have a beginning, middle and end and should be planned out which is a lot of what today is about planning out. We do work with a lot of leaders doing Eos. And we also do a lot of tools administration is one of my favorite tools is the documentation tools such as it glue I’m Joining us all the time. And of course, you’ve also had some really cool experiences we’re going to share with you today related to this process, where the virtual teams, we actually have primarily Brooke, who’s on the call. You’ll hear more from her shortly as well. She’s actually the service manager and or dispatcher or doing quality control for many of our clients. So we’re building experiences and testing more processes all the time, and we’re going to share all that with you right now. So this is the hiring, recruiting and screening process. Again, interactive, feel free to ask me to slow down or speed up or go into detail or gloss over. So Brooke, and I we used to work together at an IT firm. It was an MSP, probably around 24 2014 2013. We started working together. And we made a lot of discoveries by 2015 because we had we were growing from 13 employees to 20 Fine and the four and a half years that I was there. And we finally had metrics down and we had processes down and we were able to prove beyond the doubt, we needed more headcount to get there. Our record in one year as we reviewed over 5000 resumes, to make that grow. And think about the amount of time that it takes to review 5000 resumes, and to hire frankly, over that 12 people growth. We had some that didn’t work out still. So it’s a hire that many people in the whole interview process in between and the onboarding. It was grueling, so we stopped, and we created a system that included automations and delegations that we’re going to share with you today. And Tracy, not only is the founder, but her and I have done some consulting together as well. She and her staff actually encouraged me to give this presentation because she has picked up on some of these things and implemented those in her business. And I also want To introduce Skye who you see in the video box, she works for us. We call her our digital marketing intern. She does a lot for us, but she is in her last semester of college. She’s calling from her dorm room right now. And she will be helping us with the presentation as well. So just so you know the name so you might be hearing from today. And Brooke, Tracy sky anytime you want to pitch in or add to the story, please do so. And for the rest of you guys. Anything you want to add, ask questions about tease about that’s fine, too. It’s a small group. Glad to entertain. So first off, is what I call the boring part. I don’t have a lot of content in this section for you, but it’s just getting the word out. Yet job descriptions marketing statements in the ad itself. I felt that I’d be remiss to skip it. So I do have some basic content in here for you. If you have questions or examples or you want to share your own, so free to ask and let’s stop a deep dive if necessary. What you prefer? So first off, is the job descriptions. And what I think the number one thing that is missing in job descriptions is context. instead of jumping into experience and skills,

describe, just use a paragraph and describe a day in the life. What are you doing all day? Not not the, what are you clicking on? But you know, what systems do you live in? Who are you interacting with? What’s the purpose? How does that cog fit into the business and make the business successful? You want to make a hook,

Unknown Speaker
you’ve got to hook them in, what is it that is special about you that’s in that initial description that’s going to want them to look deeper at your description.

Allen Edwards
And we also have a marketing statement. The next slide too, that talks a little more about the hook piece as well in more detail. So this context is more about the context of the of the job itself, which still has to have that hook for how am I going to help this company. And then of course, you’re probably quite familiar with experience required skills. required, we get lazy. Sometimes I see people just kind of list, whatever they think about an experience or they think about skills. But you should really segregate those two lists experiences are what specifically? Do you have to have under your belt in the past? That’s not a skill. And please in the skills list, keep the experience separate, not what have you done. But what exactly do you know how to do you know how to do customer complaint de escalation? Are you you have to have two years of experience in connectwise manage already or autotask esa or do you have to have worked in an IT firm before I keep those less distinct? And I think what Brooke was alluding to, is the marketing statement piece, because so many people forget this sell yourself. At this stage in the game, you want resumes Yes, you would probably prefer only qualified resumes. But for the right people, they’re looking for a great place. To work and you got to let them know you’re a great place to work, be creative. Do you have exciting team events? I’ve had a place we were at before. They had a quarterly event every quarter and every quarter it had the exact same thing meaning one was a family quarter. One was a couple’s event. The other was employees only event, fun stuff. Maybe your culture is really cool. As seen the places where almost everybody who worked there were former military or everybody was a gun enthusiast. I know guns aren’t everybody’s thing. But that was the what brought them together. And then of course, you have something that you might think of is more stereotypical in the IT firms which is everybody was a dungeon master or d&d player. People tend to congregate together. And if you’re looking for more of the same to create a team environment, let them know Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Somebody who doesn’t fit your culture is not going to last anyways. And I haven’t had the reason to do any Mark bulk For your weekend process any I’m sorry, any bulk marketing for a job, but I threw one together here, you can read the stream. That’s my example where we try to say what we’re about and why you’d want to join the team. This is my first crack first draft. Broken sky haven’t had a chance to really read this and tell me how bad it is. But just an example to make sure this is included in your in your job posting as well. awkward pause to allow for questions, nods, etc. All right. Then there’s the Add part. This is so mechanical, and merits a quick discussion as well. The first thing of course, is to build your ad you have to bring all this together. The marketing statement we talked about goes on top. The job description goes below that. You might find when you’re reading your job description again, for the purpose of posting you might want to change some wording or how things are listed and that’s fine, please do that. And something critical people fight with me on advertise the pay. Some people cringe at that. But as an applicant, I’ve stopped applying for jobs because if they are way above what I make, I’m wasting my time and your time, if they’re way below what I make, you don’t know it to get to the phone interview, you’re like, why not waste all my time because this these this day and age applicants have to apply to lots and lots and lots of jobs. That’s just the best use of their time to make sure they actually have prospects to continue providing a living for their family. So make sure that happens. And if you want to argue with me, please let’s have that argument out in public right now. And then of course, call to action call to action is pretty simple. Send your resume here. And I’m going to tell you in the screening process about a very specific call to action, but also keep in mind that the job platform that you’re posting on might have some options for how like called maximum works like they already had a built in, click this link or they might have the option to Send an email or to post in a forum somewhere. There’s lots of options, but you make sure you cover that piece.

Unknown Speaker
All right, where do we post this at?

Unknown Speaker
My favorite.

Allen Edwards
Internally, don’t forget to ask your existing team, who do you want to invite to our team if you have a great culture. So we’re going to say, Man, I have friends who would love to work here, and I would love to work with my friends. And so perhaps you also want to create a program for them. Like maybe there’s a finder’s fee or referral fees. Yeah, if your friend has joined, you get $100 or you get front row parking, or whatever the case is. So don’t overlook that one. That’s and that’s an easy one to do. LinkedIn is my favorite place lately. This list is always changing. But you also have the free option. If you’re actually using your LinkedIn for your business, or you’re building your personal connections. Just make the post it’s organic. It’s free. But there’s also the paid posts in LinkedIn like many other platforms, there are paid posts, do give Great filters, great ways to not only post it, but to go out and find people more easily who match it and invite them to apply. And that invitation to apply is quite powerful. Probably the only disadvantage I’ve seen in the LinkedIn part is I’ll pay a small fee to invite somebody to apply not realizing they’ve been inactive on LinkedIn for the last six months. But that’s not a lot but I even once got a response to a request last week for a job I was posting for a client a year and a half ago.

Unknown Speaker
They missed the boat and it’s okay.

Allen Edwards
And deeds. Another one. When broken out, we’re doing this at a former firm we tended to lead with indeed. We found a lot of good candidates there. However, it came with a lot of junk. In part of the screening process we’re going to show you is partly in response to how can we quickly go through this and find the right candidates. Facebook, very similar to LinkedIn, don’t forget to use your organic links. Maybe you have friends of friends who can post that for organic Li or you want to post them on the following on your Facebook page, or your business page. Just don’t forget, when you post on Facebook to check your security settings, you might want that to be very public, or at least friends of friends so that when people share it, people who they share it with can actually see it. That’s a common request. I see. And they now have a paid program for job postings as well for your business page. I know nothing about it at this point in time. I know that it exists. I know that it has to come from your business page. So I would certainly say give it a try if all else fails. Craigslist who’s using that still? I’m not ruling it out. I would probably post there after I’ve tried the other ones. But yeah, it seems like it’s not as effective as it used to be. Maybe you’ll change your mind about Craigslist. After I show you the screening process,

Unknown Speaker
I have a couple things to add on your job description. Let’s do it.

Unknown Speaker
We’ve added physical requirements.

Tracy Hardin
The ones we include are the ability to sit or stand for long periods of time, ability to lift 50 pounds and perform frequent lifting or carrying objects that may be bulky, such as a ladder, and the ability to drive to customer sites, believe it or not, you need to add these things to your ad you think people would have these abilities? It’s better to not assume that.

Allen Edwards
So and I know we mostly think about hiring technicians. This does apply for more than just technicians and I assume Tracy, you’ve had some stories about why you had to add those things. Actually.

Tracy Hardin
I’m not sure what article I read about that every you know, I read a lot. But the ability to lift I mean a desktop or server or UPS it’s not hard to hit 50 pounds. Hmm, on that stuff. And I’m like, I need to disclose that. Because some people have disabilities and you need to be real upfront with the physical requirements of the job. Right? So I’m not sure where I read, I don’t have a horror story on it. I’ve added it fairly recently, as a proactive I’m like, I just need to know people that we do lifting and I’m watching my staff carrying boxes of cable and stuff. And I’m like, I just got to let people know that these are things we do. The other thing I have also included in mine is a list of requirements. Now, these are all learned the hard way. The requirements are what has to happen. I just want people to be clear because if they can’t meet these requirements, they need to walk away. My number one requirement is to be enthusiastic about technology and love learning. You Believe it or not, I’ve hired technical people that don’t like to learn

Unknown Speaker
that system disaster. It

Unknown Speaker
I can’t do that. So it’s in If you don’t like to learn this job is not for you. And do you think that actually helps weed people out having it in the job description so far? We also hire for this too.

Unknown Speaker
So yeah, hiring questions coming up to

Tracy Hardin
you still get a bunch of junk ones but I’m all up front on stuff. The other thing I did, you must be a self starter pays close attention to detail. Be professional act professional. And key one here is dress professional boy. I know that filters out people right there that dress professional part.

Unknown Speaker
That’s a big one. I wanted a front I wanted in black and white.

Unknown Speaker
Right? And everybody’s different. We definitely have it clients who do not require professional. That’s true.

Unknown Speaker
That’s true, but it is for my firm and the clients that we serve.

Allen Edwards
I almost didn’t hire a rock star because it came in dressed really poorly. And that was literally the only thing we weren’t going to hire him for. So we had a conversation about it, but it slowed the hiring process for this guy drastically. And he was a rockstar.

Unknown Speaker
But is this like, oh, why did you dress like that?

Tracy Hardin
Yeah, we have past people up that had a great interview, but they dress so poorly. So like, if he’s dressing poorly Now, what’s my fight tomorrow gonna be? Right? This is his time to shine. And he’s not thinking this is important, how am I going to put him in front of a bank client?

Unknown Speaker
So are there other recommendations for job descriptions then? Uh,

Tracy Hardin
so those are my requirements, I talk. For me, we have to have background checks. So I have to put my job description because my clients required again, we’re dealing with banks, and they have come up, they want us to do it. So we document all of our background checks. And I think I mentioned that twice in my job description, in the fact that you have to have a good driving record and a license. I think I mentioned that twice, believe it or not.

Allen Edwards
So anything that’s going to rule people out in the screening process that they could know about ahead of time, so they can dislike like they know they’re going to not pass a background check. All right, like Exactly.

Tracy Hardin
Does that stop a bunch of junk ones from coming through? Of course not. It’s it’s hopefully reduces some of it.

Unknown Speaker
Right? Okay. Very good. Anybody else want to add?

Allen Edwards
Okay, well, let’s talk about the screening process. And this is the part where I have a lot more details on. This is my favorite part because it gets really into processes and I love processes. In fact, here you go. There’s the process. You’re welcome. I’m going to disconnect now and let you guys have any

Unknown Speaker
I would do that. Just kidding.

Allen Edwards
So but this is the overview. You don’t have to start reading stuff. I’m over 40. We’re going to zoom in on this before we talk about any of it so we can actually read all the words. But what I want to share with you and the general principles here is it is all connected. And I have this set up so that you can automate this in your PSA I’ve done it in Connect wise I can imagine doing an auto tasks as I’ve gotten to know autotask. And even if you don’t want to automate it, you can still have pre made email templates ready to go for an email box you have. And there’s all sorts of pieces in here that you can package and make more repeatable and easy for you. And we’ll go through those one step at a time. So step one, though. I know right, you guys, you guys are probably on other conference calls at the same time. I caught you I know. But if you will send an email right now to careers at Eureka process comm we’re going to treat you like an applicant so you can see what the applicant sees on this process. If you want to put the word test in it, that’s great. Not required because we don’t have any open positions right now. So we know that everyone would get a test or a fishing expedition. So if you’ll email careers at Eureka process calm we’ll get that process started skies. standing by. She is in our Connect wise PSA, connect wise manage. And we have a Careers Service board set up. And the very first thing that we do, which all ticketing systems do this is going to create a new ticket and you’re going to get a new ticket email back as exemplified here. Let’s zoom in so we can see this bad boy.

Unknown Speaker
All right, so let’s see if I can do this right, a little laser pointer.

Allen Edwards
So new ticket, and when I write a ticket status name, and I put a tilde a after it, that means an email is being sent. So as you send those in, you will automatically get this email where you can see what we write. Now again, we have never had to mass advertise for position yet in our short four year history, 3.1 years four year history. So I created this board just for today’s meeting, but I tried to make it as real as possible. So were prepared to use it anyways. Hopefully there’s no typos, feel free to tell me about them afterwards. And now we have a ticket in our system for every applicant to a job.

Unknown Speaker
This could also just be an email box or an email folder you have in your system.

Unknown Speaker
And then we get into the reviewing resume section.

Allen Edwards
And you have this is the part where you have the most things to do. I recommend you review your resume for no more than one minute. And that might shock some of you no more than a minute. And I recommend you delegate it to somebody else. If you’re the owner, the service manager. You don’t need to spend your time sorting through all the bad resumes you want to save your time for the good ones. So have somebody else do basic skills, basic experience, check if your job description says we require these five things and you can’t find one of them on the resume. may

Unknown Speaker
let somebody else get rid of it for you.

Allen Edwards
You ask yourself, do you do they meet the requirements of a job? And if you’re like, well, I don’t know if it’s actually a requirement, then don’t put it in the requirement section. Let’s be clear. This is why we write stuff down with the job description ahead of time. We’re going to talk about the negative stuff at the end. So we’re not gonna follow the nose on this chart until the very end, we’re gonna follow yeses because guess what guys? sky has read every single one of your resumes. They’re a little light and she is moving you to the next step. So congratulations on that. She is changing the status to email interview sent and she is sending you an email now with our interview quiz or email interview questions on it.

Unknown Speaker
So let’s move along the process.

Allen Edwards
And against that stop if you have questions or want to dive in more so in the email interview This was Tracy’s favorite part. As I recall, we recommend you ask about three questions and they have purposes one. Some people are just too lazy to write anyways, and you don’t want them writing your ticket notes. or writing your sales proposal for too lazy to write and do the research. Get rid of them. I want to say probably half did not respond to the question at all. Probably 25% respond to some crap. My favorite was, what do you know about a company that they fail that question completely? Like they get the wrong company? Are you in insurance? Are you in car sales? They can’t even do basic research. Whoever you delegate to review, these responses can rule them out immediately. On top of the ones that of course that didn’t even respond, and then you get into the real fun questions. Actually, we just tweaked this question in the last week in our templates, what makes you a better fit for our company than other candidates? Nice. basic question and what you’re actually looking for is, do they know how to read? They know how to write, can they form an opinion? It’s the basics is there is a pass fail here. But there’s room for all sorts of gray areas. We’ve had people who gave hilarious answers that still answered the question. We went ahead moved into the next face. We’ve had people that were fairly short, but they were professional about it’s a great, we’ve had long winded ones that were again on point. So they go on to the next question. This is a great litmus test for getting to know somebody. And then especially in our field of technology, can they break down simple concepts we take for granted and make it nice clear baby steps. We have a couple of question ideas for how to find this out. because nothing’s worse and your tier three tech going, ah, they can’t even reboot their computer properly or what have you. You can’t find Active Directory. That’s not the attitude we need. We need somebody who can take down stuff that we take for granted because we’re you know, it geniuses, a lot of our Our guys are on break it down. So how do we test for that in the early stages? Keep it simple. How do you buckle the seatbelt? Most of us have to stop and think about how to write things. We just just kind of do it. So stop, break it down. And then Tracy changed my question on me.

Unknown Speaker
And she decided to ask how do you make a peanut butter sandwich?

Unknown Speaker
I didn’t that was Ronnie’s idea. My service manager. He changed it. You Let

Unknown Speaker
Them you hired him?

Unknown Speaker
It’s a good question.

Allen Edwards
But again, it’s a something so basic. We don’t think about the baby steps. But let’s see, can they break it down into baby steps? And then I have my favorite thing that I like to add. It’s kind of a fourth question. I call it a part B question. And why now maybe that applies a little less to a peanut butter sandwich then again, it’s a strange question to get them thinking and asking why like like, so many of our technicians especially get into solve the problem. Follow the sap move on but why Why should you buckle a seatbelt? I mean, I want to hear somebody talking about their why maybe it’s the law, maybe it’s personal tragedy. Maybe it just seems safe to them, whatever the things that make sure they can articulate. And that’s the whole point of the email interview. Besides reading out the lazy people and getting into the conversation style.

Unknown Speaker
We have any questions? Yes, guy.

Unknown Speaker
All right.

Allen Edwards
So guess what? Most of you are the strong silent type, I get it. But we’re going to pass you to the next step. Anyways, Skye is going to cause you all to have a phone interview requested that again, in our case, we have a status in our PSA a little till date, meaning you’re getting an email. That little email is a calendar link. I will just briefly share that Brooke and I had a much more complex system so many years ago before we discovered that calendly that involves asking them for send three times and scheduling it and having tokens and our emails, simplify your life. This is not designed to be a plug for calendly we use it we like it, it works for us. There are I’ve already forgotten Microsoft planner has a tool times estimator connectwise user, and there are many more coming to the market. So look at those to make your life easy. You should all be getting an email requesting a phone interview so you can see how that works. There is a live calendly link on that. That is actually our calendly my calendar that will get you a phone interview. You are welcome to go through the process and book the appointment if you want to see the messaging and the branding we’ve done throughout that’s fine. I just asked that if you’re not going to be in that phone call the please cancel that after today’s webinar. If not, I’m pretty diligent to my calendar. I’ll probably be there like this waiting for you whenever that appointment is.

Unknown Speaker
So that content is there for you to check out as well.

Unknown Speaker
Just read my notes and make sure haven’t missed anything.

Unknown Speaker
All right, next slide.

Unknown Speaker
Let’s continue down the list, shall we?

Allen Edwards
Let’s talk about the phone interview itself. This is the first time we’re actually taking a deep dive into them. First was a basic skills experience. Just two requirements check. Second time is can they read write and research to get the basics? Now we’re into our first interview, and I want you to do it in 30 minutes or less. Because this is now the hiring managers turn. Hopefully it’s the direct report, direct supervisors time. I strongly encourage you to prepare ahead. The good news is I probably The only had 10% of phone interview candidates be no shows, or late calls. The calendly system helps if you use zoom links or whatever else is these things all help the process. But do prepare ahead, read the resume. Write down some questions ahead of time. In my case, I am writing down my questions. I’m starting a ticket time entry in my PSA, and I’m reading questions done ahead of time that I want to ask to make myself think about it. And I’m researching it probably at least 30 minutes before the phone call. Because the shorter the meeting, the more preparation you need. Here’s your chance to review the resume in detail. Ask your questions about the resume, get those prepared ahead of time, I might jot down a note like hey, what was this long gap? What about job hopping? You said used to this type of position here. How did you like that position? Those types of questions about the resume. Then you review your turn to review the email interview. All right, let’s They write, what does that say about the personality? What questions Did you have you? Did you want to ask? choice questions like, hey, why did you decide to be funny here? This is a job. I mean, what’s your tolerance for risk? Ask questions there. Then you can do the stuff that you guys are probably all well versed at the technical skills interview. I would say at this point, you’re mainly looking for a bullshit meter, excuse my language. We don’t have time to quiz about every technology under the sun asked for, ask them general statements and see if you can get them to give you specific answers such as What do you know about AD? Well, do they start talking about Active Directory? Or do they actually know what ad is? Or do they use it enough to use those terms? That might be a bad question. If you don’t need that positions, you know, Active Directory, even though ad is a basic concept and like all technical people to know. Maybe if they’re involved in firewalls at all, they tell me what the last firewall Keep keep a general, get your skills down. And if you detect vs. Drill in get details if I have people who have difficulty if I have somebody who says, Oh yeah, I’m really good at Active Directory. And I asked them, What screens do you go to? And how do you add a user? If they can’t walk me through pretty close click by click doesn’t propagate probably they don’t have that screen roughly memorized and that they supposedly are experts at it. I’m suspicious. big enough for me. What are your career goals for the next five years? Every now and then people confess? Yeah, I just need a job to pay some bills for a while I’m looking for something else.

Unknown Speaker
Great. Glad we have this chat. We’ve saved the a bunch of time.

Allen Edwards
So make sure that they’re long term unless for some reason you’re looking for shorter term. Make sure this is an a match for what you’re doing. And then I have knowledge that I’ve gained in the last month. I have recently read the ideal team players referred to me by a client from New York by Patrick lencioni. This book is all about how to hire and keep the right candidates. And I love it because I don’t have to put these in my core values anymore. There’s just three, which is not as simple as it sounds, things you look for in a good candidate hungry, humble and smart. I’m not going to recite the whole book to you. But hungry means they have to really want it versus just an eight to fiver doesn’t mean they might not have a life that causes them to need to five, but you want them to really want to be here. humble. They’re not braggarts these are people who probably are too might not be humble enough to tell you the secret question like everybody knows that that’s not humble and smart. And what’s interesting about smart is if you read the book, his definition of smart is people smart, not technology smart necessarily the skills are given you have to figure that out. But that should be pretty road. hungry, humble and smart requirements are hiring read the ideal team player. Great book. And here’s where there’s less process involved and more teamwork. When you take when you do these interviews, take notes. One, there might be legal reasons. You want to have general notes about what happened in that phone interview, too. I, sometimes I had a great feeling No, or absolutely, every now and then, and Brooklyn helped me through this process. And I should back up a lot. I haven’t heard from Brooke lately. Brooke was a dispatcher and an admin during the time I was a service manager at this firm. And I added her during those first two steps of review the resume, review the email questionnaire in start the process of having them book the phone interview themselves. I would then take the notes, do the phone interview, and probably about half the time I’d go to books office efforts go. This is what I wrote down to the concerns I have What do you think? What are the next steps are hurt I would collaborate work I wasn’t, I didn’t breathe very often when there’s like, Is there anything you wanted to go back and add regarding the resume review process or the email interview process?

Unknown Speaker
The email interview and the resume, I will tell you if a resume comes in and it has any spelling errors on it, I’m done. I don’t keep looking. If you don’t have the time to check your resume in Word with spellcheck, then I don’t have the time to read your resume. at particular times when we were looking for people at this it firm, I mean, sometimes I would get 100 resumes a day. So if you can’t be bothered to spellcheck, then I can’t be bothered to read your resume. If you reply back to the email with the three questions that we asked, and there’s clear spelling errors in that or you just tried to like really fast track it from your phone or whatever and jacked around and didn’t spend enough time on it. Then again, I don’t have time to keep going with you. If you don’t want to take the time to answer the questions and act like you really want this job then I don’t have the time to read your resume and help you through that. This process.

Allen Edwards
All right, thank you for that input. So again, quick decision making, I might not, you know, dismiss you at one spelling error. But if there’s definitely several spelling errors or something that spellcheck would always catch, it’s a sign of laziness, laziness, and I just don’t have time for now when you’re trying to resumes a day, right. Alright, so moving on to the next part, then

Unknown Speaker
first

Allen Edwards
Alright, so first of all, congratulations, all of you past our phone interview. Great job, guys. You were on point you called in on time. You didn’t say anything that was totally off the parking You seem to have the basic skills and you’re hungry, humble and smart in my opinion. I discussed your resume with my colleague Brooke. By the way, she might come back to me says hey, yeah, I agree. You nail hungry and people smile. I’m not sure about the humble. These are the types of notes you’re taking. You’re taking notes for Where do you want to dig into next on next interviews because what’s next is sky you’ve sent out you changing these alter personality profile requests.

Unknown Speaker
Excellent. Thank you. I mean

Unknown Speaker
people to join, do you want to tell them how to send it in really quick?

Allen Edwards
Oh, my Thank you very much. So, ladies and gentlemen who are new. We are also letting you guys experience being the applicant through this process. So if you will send an email to careers at your recap process comm or if you’re Canadian careers that you can process comm you will get back a new new email a new ticket email, specifically crafted for the process you’re seeing here is a slide later on where you’ll see the whole process one more time as well. And sky will also walk your application through the process one step at a time. So you get all the emails along the way in order so you can catch up to us. Thanks, Brooke.

Unknown Speaker
And Skye, I think posted it in the group chat. So if anybody needs the email address, she’s posted it there as

Allen Edwards
well. Great, thank you very much. So we sent you a personality profile request. Unfortunately, I had a hard time letting you test this because all the profile tests that I would use are paid for services I’ve used paid for services in the past, where they get to a link, they provide a coupon code goes on your account, they take the test and you get the results. I’m sure there’s some automations you can do in there as well with what’s in the email that gets sent out. Or perhaps you need to add something else, or have responses come to stick as well. So just know that what you have. What you have inside of an email is more of a test template where you can put your own stuff in there. do consider a personality profile. I strongly recommend it Typically personality profiles in my opinion, and some will argue with me on this one are not pass fail. They are an informational and instructional for us. disc is a popular personality profile. I’m a fan of color code. It was this very simple for me, but it’s also a four segments with four personalities with a minor personality mixed in there. char Tech has a system where they’ll actually match a disc profile to a personality there is a, I believe a membership fee for doing that. And you can even use your own testing Survey Monkey personality test. I just did an experiment with the Joe Harry window did give me some clues which is a free tool. So do those and when you get the response back, you can move on to the next face. Real quick note about automation that I’m doing in the PSA. If I don’t get a response In a week, I put them into this status automatically.

Unknown Speaker
And that status just lets them know hey, I hadn’t heard from you in a week.

Allen Edwards
So we’re, you know, considering not considering your application anymore unless you reply back to the email to get back in the chain. You can see I’m pretty striking how I use my squares and Visio. So this was always an automation box. And thank you all for submitting your personality profiles. I know you didn’t really do it. But you’ve moved on to the in person interview now, which is great. All sky had to do was set the status, which in Connect wise is right click, select the status. Bam, you all get emails. requesting it now isn’t a whole lot. Not a whole lot of news here. It’s a different calendly link, but the same concept, some different wording, you’ve all got that in your inboxes Now that is a real county link. I was experimenting this one Actually has Brooke and I and the scheduling and I and I believe you should have a minimum two hour interview. We can talk more about that in a minute. I Shrunk hours to an hour because at two hours Brooke and I never had the same time available at an hour for a suit options, you are welcome to go and book an appointment to test it. I won’t be offended in the least. I just asked that if you’re not going to actually meet with us. Please cancel it afterwards. Because I will show up thinking I have a lead who’s gonna sneak with me or you can and we’ll sit around and chat for an hour. A broken I haven’t known to have no shows or canceled, though while we’re here talking let’s let’s catch up. All right, so let’s get into the fun stuff. And I would love some feedback. If you have some ideas that you want to post in the chat about what to ask in the in person interview. I did not put a lot of detail in my presentation because I feel like we all ask similar questions in person. Glad to expand this section. Ask for questions but the in person interview a few things that I believe

Unknown Speaker
you guys are about to get married.

Allen Edwards
They’re going to come work for you and be a part of your team. They can make or break the success of your entire company. They can make or break the salaries of every person you have working for you treated as that important. So obviously, direct supervisor who’s been doing the interview should be in the room. I recommend the entire leadership team should you have one be in the room. I recommend owners if you have them in a separate be in the room. If you have anybody who’s intuitive, or if you’re a male, heavy topside, and you have somebody female, bring them in the room.

Unknown Speaker
You don’t have a big enough room, maybe we can make some different choices.

Allen Edwards
also bring a representative colleague in the room, somebody who’s going to be working with them. I talked to all of these people beforehand. No, we want professional, candid feedback. Like, Hey, I’m gonna be working with you. I’d like to like you. Let’s talk. Some jokes that I would tell to give you a feel for how I used to do this is a candidate would show up. Somebody at the front desk would come get me say you’re interviewing here. So show them into the conference room, please. And then I would go gather everybody else. I would go to the conference room first set, the minis like oh, you pass the the second personality tests. What do you mean? Oh, the cheer you chose as part of the test? Because we just throw them into the conference room. What did you choose? ahead is inside. That was a joke. We weren’t actually judging, but it was interesting to find out. And then I apologize to the number of people we have in the room and tell them how important we treat new team members as are becoming part of the family. So we all know that introductions of course, owners leaders, some people are a little taken aback by how many people but it’s all on delivery. This is how important it is right here to help. And the more your team does this together, the more we can anticipate our questions. And what we’re going to ask. I think at one point, Brooke and I’s team, we had four to five people. And the candidate, is that correct? Brooke?

Unknown Speaker
Yes. And one thing is, what I usually did is I would, I would be the person that would show them I did not sit at the front, but I would show them to the conference room. And no matter who the person was, whatever they were applying for, we always rolled out the red carpet, has nice bottle water, their company pen, you know, some sort of little swag, whatever you want to call it, something to welcome them to the interview process.

Allen Edwards
And as I mentioned, to talk to all the people who are going to be in the room before the meeting happens, just like the phone interview come prepared. I did most of the hiring. I actually printed out the resume. I printed out their email interview. And if I had any notes in my case was a ticket history. I would print out the ticket history, I would have had the personality profile results, I would hand it to everybody ahead of time. And if I had areas that I wanted to know more about, I was concerned about and vice versa. If I had areas I was quite certain were good or bad. I would make notes in there. So everybody had a chance to see that ahead of time, I did not want them coming in blind. Wasting anybody’s time. Let’s focus on the stuff we haven’t seen. If we know they’re hungry and humble, for example, let’s focus on smart. Let’s not repeat everything. It’s also okay to repeat a few things. I like to make sure their answers are consistent. I don’t mean repeating the same answer. I mean that changing your story. So what are the things they ask about? Obviously, anything in that packet? I just mentioned personality profile. Oh, they’re shy. I can work with OSI people. But here’s some examples are shy people might be uncomfortable or have to apply skills on top of their innate abilities. So let’s ask questions about times are there Silence got in the way, how we ever come is what do they do in an environment with public speaking? Is there a possible conflict in the job? Bring it up. Now, if we’re going to have any conflict, I rather do it now than after I’ve hired them. And as I mentioned, I wasn’t going to go into a whole lot of details about all the different questions you can ask. Let’s list a few common interview questions to get the thing to get the party started. Do you guys have some I’m glad to share them with the whole group. Then we’re going to move on to what to do after the interview. So what books are you reading right now? Or what’s on your nightstand right now? A common one just to get the conversation started. Tell me about a time you have failed. Where’d you learn about it? Tell me about the best project you’ve worked on in the last six months. I usually use timeframes to help them narrow down all the stuff they’re sorting through in their head. If they ever get stuck in a time frame. I remind them, I don’t actually know the timeframe. So I can’t prove you wrong, just tell us helping you sort of record a few key questions you’d like to ask.

Unknown Speaker
I am, I’ve been typing some in the group chat as I think of them.

Unknown Speaker
Could you read this out for me for the group? Um,

Unknown Speaker
I’ve got the what is the last book that you’ve read? I use another one. What sites do you use to keep up with technology? I specifically asked that one for somebody if their certifications appear to be dated. Or if they’ve been out of the game for a little bit. If they’re giving me some tin hat, whatever site then I’m probably or if they’re telling me they’re getting their stuff off Facebook, then that’s kind of a no for me. I was going to talk to somebody and say another one that I’ve started asking recently, because I’m doing virtual service manager for several other clients at once is I ask people, what’s the best way to manage you? What is the best way for me to know how to motivate you at work to make sure that you know I’m giving you what you need so that you can help me get the results.

Allen Edwards
We get some good answers from that as well. And the personality profile can also help you check how self aware they are. because that’ll give you some similar usually some some suggestions on how to manage that person.

Unknown Speaker
And Chris just threw one out there asked how do you plan your day? One, if you want to know how they organize themselves for the day, what tools do they use or someone that I think that’s a great question,

Unknown Speaker
planning? What’s that? Thank you for this.

Unknown Speaker
Probably not the right guy. There might be

Unknown Speaker
my favorite question I asked and I’m usually the one that throws it out there is what tech what kind of tech projects do you have going at home? What’s your tech related, little pet project that you got going? I’ve had people actually have one candidate says he does nothing. Typically when he gets home because he can’t stand to look at a computer one minute longer. It’s probably not going to be somebody who’s going to self start and want to learn new technology if you hate it that much. When you get home, I really am. I like to hear people that say, hey, I’ve got a Linux box running or I bought this computer at a garage sale and I’m trying to learn VMware, love that answer. That’s what I want to hear they’re at home, their spouse is yelling at them because they’re on the thing too much. That’s what I want to hear. That’s my favorite question.

Unknown Speaker
The best part of that hungry part, right? I mean, it’s a

Unknown Speaker
self starter

Allen Edwards
that I’m looking for. I’ve gotten a couple places where we’ve got we felt when we had our processes in our hair, you know, I’m getting down to the point where we could actually hire entry level techs, where it’s a lot harder to talk about experience. And that is an absolute must. If you don’t have the experience, you better be hungry. I want you doing tech work at home, because you will love it that much. Because if you have that kind of passion, we can probably teach you a few things and use you in our team. Desi

Unknown Speaker
added a good question. They like to ask how many emails have to be in your inbox before your eye starts to twitch? Doing nice. That’s a clever question. I do like how the thought process and how you’re, cuz some people, I’ve seen them when I remoted in I mean, there’s like 10,000 in there, and I just want to call up alone.

Allen Edwards
And they might have an answer on why they allow for more. And if it’s well thought of answering these shows other types of organization besides a number, great, like my inboxes I don’t sort anything. But I do Mark read and unread and my unread has to be pretty much at zero. Or I sometimes call it the new zero meaning if I know I have two emails that are taking a week for me to get to, I call to my new zero for the week. All right, thanks for all the input guys. And you’re welcome to keep throwing these into the ITX form as well. Let me we are running a little short on time. So let’s talk about what happens next. We have the interview. I want to talk about the positive first. First of all, in my ticketing system, I have a status called make offer because sometimes making the offer and negotiating and all that stuff too. Take some time before you hire them to like to know where that status is at, versus other phone interviews coming up. I think I totally skipped telling you guys you saw in the s in the process that we do put the status that when these things have been scheduled a phone interview in the in person interview scheduled so we all know I firmly believe as a manager, you should have some authority in the what offer to make, maybe it’s a narrow range. permission from the owner just didn’t negotiate a little bit. But you should get some general guidelines down like like say he needed he needed 70 K, but you can really only offer a 65 K and you work with the owners, okay? What if we can give them a five k bump if you meet these certifications, whatever. Negotiate ahead of time on behalf of that person, and then get on the phone with them and do phone negotiations you should have pretty close package that they said they’re in general willing to accept if a car writing done on the phone because I’ve seen so much back and forth. And it seems black and white. If you offer 65 K, and it’s in writing, and it would, it would take 65 k plus an extra day off a year to make it happen. You can fix that in phone negotiations is harder to fix that in writing. Once you come to general understanding on the phone, yes, then send them the offer in writing, they can still come back. I don’t like this. I don’t like that and get it negotiated and accepted. And of course, if they’re accepted, you mark them as hired in your ticketing system and it’s a closed status. You haven’t seen any more. If you’re growing, you might have other resumes to continue sorting through. And if not, you might have a bunch of news to deliver to other folks. Let’s catch a few hanging chads in this video. And if you have questions, now’s the time to ask because we are almost out of time. First of all, I also have a automation that if they reply to the existing ticket, as many of us have, I like to change the status. I use applicant responded. And I have some nomenclature where I use the greater than sign, as I mentioned before, that it’s a workflow only that triggers that status. That way, whoever’s helping me like the, like Brooke used to help me, they can quickly see who’s responded and then get them back on the right path, which is projected onto the next step, we can ignore the rest. Also, we have the no position open fit. This simply gives them a pretty generic email, which I regret to inform you. You’re all getting today have an open position. So this guy’s going to go ahead and set that you’re going to get our sample email on what that looks like. It’s designed to be positive and pretty generic will keep your resume on file. A little tricky because I also have this status, not a cultural fit. If somebody doesn’t match your culture, they will never, ever, ever come work for you, no matter what positions open,

Unknown Speaker
they are going to get the same exact email template.

Unknown Speaker
But later when you have a new position open,

Allen Edwards
you can go back and look through these guys. Again, I wonder if anybody in here is a fit for this position and get them back in the process and see if you’re still interested. But you’re not going to touch these guys. That’s why we have two different statuses for that.

Unknown Speaker
And I use this a lot. When because you go through a lot of these resumes you start recognizing people’s names because they somebody does bulk apply for things on Indeed, I remember some guy’s name, I’ll go track it down, do a quick search in the summary description or wherever we put the person’s name in there that’s applying. Allen sets it up automatically, and then I can easily say this guy was not a cultural fit. So then I’ll just go straight to that particular email and we just cut through all the

Unknown Speaker
other stuff.

Allen Edwards
Easy peasy. That’s the point. A lot of Now this whole process works without automation to you just follow along at home, you can copy and paste email templates. If you have those. You can do this process other ways. But this is the whole process for screening. And it was the meat of today’s meeting. Do we have any questions before I do the little wrap up next steps.

Tracy Hardin
I just got something to add. If you’re like me, and you have to do background checks, we do background checks before we make any offers. So if we have a promising candidate, we will go ahead and pay to have that background check. Again, I mentioned it in my job description. We talked about getting the interview, we have to collect your social security number as part of it. We have a company that actually will email them ask for that information so we don’t have to touch it. And we go through that first. So you may need to do a little mod to Allen’s diagram here to include the background check stuff, if you need it. Definitely do that before you make the offer. We had people that convinced they were qualified and found really interesting things going back five years on their background.

Allen Edwards
And I had heard one other line of thought as well, which is do the phone negotiation first, because that might just not work out. It also depends on how much background checks cost you too much versus your time. Well, yeah, like, like, I’ve had some people who put the personality profile test at the very end, but I’m like, there’s no time to question that because it cost them somehow more 70 $500 to give. So they really wanted to make sure about like our time having that many people in in person interview is worth far less than that. So let’s make it look like a good fit.

Tracy Hardin
We’ll do it at the end of the first in person interview. If the service manager likes the person, he can go ahead and ask for the background check.

Allen Edwards
Right. And I do agree, well, I would never skip steps. I did forget to mention that. When you’re talking to a candidate. Let them know what the next steps are like Hey, I have to talk with some folks. And you’re either going to get an email letting you know you’re not a fit, or we’re going to do whatever the next step is in the process. Letting them know that as an applicant is so amazing, they even appreciate not being a fit, because they actually found out because so many people just don’t tell them anything. They’re in constant limbo. Go into school. Yeah, so that’s gonna make you a stellar place to work or to at least apply for. Alright, so what would happen next is employee onboarding which is honestly a whole nother passionate thing that Brooke and I have. In fact, Brooke has been tearing apart our established SNPs and rewriting the book a little bit on them with some great success. So that could be a great candidate for future. If you Doug 2022. I can also tell you, I am in active talk to ice glue to let them come in and host a q&a of their own. I’ve asked to make it a mixed Market meaning users and prospective users so that it wouldn’t be very salesy so that if you have words, you don’t talk about Republic about the words, we’ll keep it professional at the same time if you want features, or if you want to learn something new, it’s gonna be an open forum with it glue. I’m still getting that settled, we figured what’s next. I would love your other ideas. You can throw them in chat right now you can unmute yourself or you can even throw them on the i t Doug forum, this to say, Hey, I would love to hear more about this topic or that topic in Tracy Skye and I we will go out there and try to find people, or we’ll give it ourselves we have the content or will create a peer panel or forums to do it. So please keep us posted. We want to be as valuable to you as possible because you guys are also answering our it documentation questions. And sometimes I ask them for our clients, I get paid somehow right. Quick resources. If you’re not a member of it already, you literally just have to go to that URL. Groups slash it dig on Facebook. Click the Join button and answer one question. It’s not a trick question. We just want to make sure you actually enter industry and can contribute. Eureka process comm is a wealth of information and we now have a dedicated it Doug page there. So there’s a direct URL if you want that and you’re always welcome to contact us directly. Do we have any further questions or comments before a almost timely wrap up?

Tracy Hardin
I have something a little controversial talk about if people want to hang out I understand. It’s it’s four o’clock here and it’s the end of the hour. Okay. But uh, I’m gonna go back to where you were talking about advertising your pay on your ads. And we choose not to, because basically because we have a hourly rate plus commission, so sometimes what people get paid depends on how hard they work. So I can’t easily advertise that in an ad.

Unknown Speaker
My rebuttals advertise a wide range.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, isn’t it? I mean, I know that I have decades

Tracy Hardin
we have done it based off based on the base, hourly we’ve done with them without before. Like we’ll say, you know, bases 13 to 16 an hour or something depending or 2025, whatever. But I never know. No, but let me ask you, let me tell you what happened. So we have a kind of a gotcha question in our interview process. We do this kind of early, if they make it to the phone interview, and they pass the peanut butter sandwich question. And then they get to the phone interview. One of the questions we ask is, what is your salary expectation? And that is a loaded Trick question that few people know how to answer.

Unknown Speaker
I advertised

Tracy Hardin
a job and it was an icon ahead of time. his resume was going to be pretty high. And he rolled on Oh, he wanted a six digit. He was worth six digits. He’s 16. Well, immediately that’s the end of the conversation. There’s no sense taking one step forward. Because even if he took something less, he thinks he’s more. And I felt like I couldn’t win that. I’ve also had a different person answer it much better. And they said, Well, I’m coming from Houston. And that’s a lexington is a different market. So I understand pay is going to be less than what I was making. And then he went and said, Well, can you tell me smartly? So Well, what is what is the salary range? And then we told him, and he was like, Okay, I can deal with that. So that was a great answer. That was somebody who was taking in consideration, or the first person is just like, Oh, you know, 100,000 a year, no doubt, it just

Allen Edwards
ended the conversation way and could have weeded him out earlier by advertising the pay range could have well, like in my case, every now and then. I’ve been mostly an entrepreneur or gainfully employed, every now that I’ve hit the job market is to see what was out there. And I get every time somebody would come to me about how excited they were to have me and then I realized the pay range is about a third of what I normally make. Because I’m overqualified for the position. So of course, I met all the requirements and skills, but I didn’t know how they value that position. Which is why even if it’s a large range, give me a ballpark so I can not waste people’s time. So perspective, that’s all we have a conversation about it.

Tracy Hardin
There’s no sauce. I’m also had a situation where the person really liked us and was willing to get paid less because they wanted to work for us suddenly became a cultural fit. It was like we clicked and it was like, No, this is the place I would rather, you know, work here and make a little less and be happy long term. So we’ve had though, especially with older candidates, it’s like they’ve been around They’ve chased the money and now they’re just looking for happiness and contentment.

Allen Edwards
At the same time, that should still fall within a salary range that might be less than looking for but should still be in the range.

Tracy Hardin
I don’t know I don’t know the full you know the thinking on that because we made it further in to the interview process with him at that point. And like you talked about in your first slide, you sell your company, you have to sell them on your culture on what you’re doing. Our Facebook group shows pictures as a lot of activities on their stuff we do. cool fact the staff is coolness, you know, and pictures on the website and stuff like that.

Allen Edwards
And this is why our company values one of things we do differently everyone else’s we do not believe our ways. The only way we do not believe our way is the right way. The only way that our way is a tried and proven way and that there are lots of good ways to get there. And so thank you for your discontent Tracy rabble rousing. Paul also mentions that if you don’t advertise a salary, applicants will likely research that number on Glassdoor, which could be inaccurate. So they could get a false impression by getting bad information. So another point of view there, too. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
Another thing I’ll mention is the personality profile. If you agree to do something like that, you make sure you want to check the legality in your states, you cannot deny someone a job based on the profile, you can use it as a tool to try to help you you know, this, frame it to see if that person might be a good fit for your company. But you cannot say we did. I’m not hiring this person because their profile came back x. Like I said, almost every state that I own, I have dealt with that as against the law. So again, you can use it for a tool, but like I said, you cannot use it as a deciding factor to hire or not hire somebody based on that.

Tracy Hardin
And Brooke, that’s why I don’t use an interview process. We will do actually do an employee day and we’ll do the Myers Briggs personality test for fun and Talk about it amongst ourselves, we learn about each other. But I don’t do a personality test up front, cuz I’m afraid of that exactly what you said. I mean, I don’t care what the law is, I just don’t want somebody accusing me of that.

Allen Edwards
Well, that’s how they always get a phone. That’s why I still interview them afterwards. So that they know that that’s not where they are ruled out. And there was not a decision tree, the personality profile,

Unknown Speaker
we do. That’s why we’ve always done it first, early in the in the process, so it can’t wait for that. But again, I think it’s, I think it’s a valuable tool, depending on how you use it, to try to make sure that that person fits because a lot of times the tool from the management perspective, it’s not going to rate somebody rule them out. But it will definitely help me to know how that person works. What their personality is, is this person, a very sensitive person. So when I do coaching, I have to be really careful on my word choices. When I’m coaching them for you know, if I had to be critical of a ticket or something they weren’t, some people are more from the person I prefer. They’re just black and white. And those people I know I just sit down, give them what it is and they’re on their way and you’re going. So I think I use it too. Way to know how to manage people better. Very good. And Darryl makes a great comment. Do be careful negotiating lower salaries. I’ve definitely had some success doing it. But if you get a desperation hire,

Allen Edwards
they just need the job. They might not be with you for long. So I’m using negotiating behalf of an owner to the employee or applicant. And I always strongly caution against low balling I want them happy, I want them knowing the value you and if that means I have to pay five k more so be it. That’s just going to be a part of the expectation is to produce that much more versus having an unhappy employee who’s unhappy at home or can’t make can’t pay their bills.

Unknown Speaker
What Alan has done is if we couldn’t come to an agreement with the person on salary, I would say all star

Unknown Speaker
Well to try to sort of find a happy medium.

Tracy Hardin
Something else we have done and we that’s been very popular with my staff is we actually do a couple in person interviews.

Unknown Speaker
I try to be at the very first one

Unknown Speaker
in person if at all possible. Hmm,

Tracy Hardin
sometimes it doesn’t work out. But the second one, I make sure I am not there. The second one will involve the team going out to a local, local barbecue restaurant, because it’s not it’s barbecue. So when you don’t, you know, it’s kind of laid back in the team goes, and they talk to the person without me there. Now, there’s some rules there. You got to talk to your team about because there are some laws about what you are allowed to ask and not ask us technically, it’s still an interview. So I say like, don’t start asking them too much detail, start a conversation and let them come in. But you’re not supposed to ask for specific information about how many Kids they have in there certain things you’re not allowed to talk about. But we find that once they get talking about themselves, the other person opens up. And since I’m not there, things are said without me being there and I told him I don’t want to know what all you asked. While I want to know is when you get back from the lunch. How did that person make you feel?

Allen Edwards
Right? good ones. Related to that note, when hiring upper level or mid level management, it’s definitely a marriage. I’ve encouraged people this might be very controversial. Take them to dinner. Take them perhaps to a fancy dinner, invite the spouse and if it’s not against your beliefs, offer alcohol. Good one, have a laid back. People that people conversation we’re about to spend a lot of time together we’re about to borrow your spouse because management doesn’t necessarily work nine to five in really Get to know them on a personal level, of course, alcohol loose lips sink ships, let’s find out now, it’s too late.

Unknown Speaker
added a comment as well says he does some candidate street screening with criteria Corp. It’s a logic test of some sort that he’s using. And I’ve

Allen Edwards
done aptitude tests in the past, and I love them, but I’m a little more cautious about them because I am more likely to go, I can’t hire you because you don’t have aptitude. Or you’re not very smart. And that’s a really hard thing to back out of. So I’d be curious with the HR laws are there but I do like having that information, Chris.

Unknown Speaker
All right. So another client now that I have that uses higher room, they built technical questions in two minutes. And the interesting part of this particular test is it’s a it’s like the initial technical interview and ask them certain questions. And you can see how long did it take them to answer the question if they did copy Paste. If they backspace or whatever, it’s a very, it’s very different. I’ve never seen anybody use it before. It’s the first person I’ve seen use it, but it’s I will say it’s on the money.

Allen Edwards
Very good. And they’ve actually ruled out some candidates that that yes, that otherwise might have seemed good 100% we have or a second five seconds to answer this whole paragraph. And then you put that paragraph in Google and find that exact phrase somewhere else. It tells you that they copy and paste it

Unknown Speaker
and then if you ask him a very basic question, and it took them, you know, 20 minutes to answer it, then, you know, sometimes some things just don’t add up. Again. It’s just another tool that I’ve seen used.

Allen Edwards
I like actually quite impressed the number of you guys who who have stayed with us for the 15 minute bonus round.

Unknown Speaker
I hope you don’t want to stop screen sharing so I can see your beautiful faces. Paul, Chris.

Tracy Hardin
I have to say that peanut butter sandwich is the best question. I can’t tell you how. Important that question is on our initial. For one thing, you just sending out these three questions about a little over half the people won’t even respond to those three questions. So right there, you just stumped them there. They’re not even worth it. But the ones that do those questions really allow you to see a lot into their personality. And our three questions we varied a little bit from what Alan does it, the first question we have, what is the name of the company you’re applying for? And what services does it provide? The second one is tell me about the position you’re applying for. Third is, besides technical skills, what makes you a great candidate, and our fourth one is described the process involved in making a great peanut butter sandwich. The possibly the absolute worst answer we got to this was by a young gentleman who on question number one, he says, to be honest, I’ve thrown a few applications in and I have no idea what company you work for.

Unknown Speaker
He’s had a lot of those. I’ve had a lot of those in the past.

Tracy Hardin
But in that same questionnaire when it says what is his Why is he a great candidate? He says, because I tried the best in everything I do. And I, and I’m honest and I will apply myself to my fullest potential. So that right there told us what his full potential was. He couldn’t bother to take the time to look above 510 lines up and see the company Ronnie worked for because it was right there in the email above it. Imagine his real time ticketing. Oh, I know. If they can’t answer these questions, they’re going to put my ticket system ticket system and it’s gonna come out of my invoice or this can be in my it glue, documenting. I mean, this is you know, I mean, I just felt so bad for him. On the other hand, great answers to the peanut butter sandwich question. We’d love to see a little of humor personality come through. love to see him the Do step by step. They’ll number the steps. They’ll sometimes refer back to steps and previous. They’ll often at the end, if they’re really good, they’ll say, please include glass of milk.

Unknown Speaker
A little extras.

Unknown Speaker
It’s a little it’s a little and you look for that stuff. But I look for punctuation.

Unknown Speaker
Good spelling, Jr.

Tracy Hardin
It’s like the peanut butter question is in one sentence real short. To the point now. I’ve actually had a candidate do an entire page on the peanut butter question. That was also a no.

Allen Edwards
So lots to think about. Yep. Well, thank you all so much for your time and attention today for participating with it, Doug, and if you’re not from it, Doug, please check it out. There will be a recording live we will send you afterwards I just send a brief email takes me a day or two with the engineer content that I could possibly give you guys about this webinar and the link itself to the video so you can rewatch it or share it. It’ll also be on our website and it at some point. So thanks again and we will as quickly as possible try to convey to figure out what February’s webinar will be. If it’s continuing until employee onboarding or other stuff, or giving it glue a chance to represent as well. All sounds like fun and games. And as a parting shot, I’m calling you today from Cozumel, Mexico. I’d like to show that off. I do work when I travel but it is warm and I’m wearing a tie in long sleeves. So see you guys on the forums and elsewhere. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker
Take care guys.

 

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