The Caitlin Mitchell Show
After nearly a decade in business, it's time for me to share what I've learned about building a business focused on service leadership to help you on your journey as a business owner. My goal is for you to walk away from each episode with one thing - one sentence, one thought, one perspective shift, one new idea - that has an impact on you, your business, or your life.
The Caitlin Mitchell Show
Inside the Hiring Process: A CEO's Guide to Building a Stellar Team | Ep 14
Discover the blueprint for crafting an unbeatable team as I share my hiring process - including thinking about whether or not you even should hire. It’s an eye-opener on how every hire is a critical piece of the puzzle, influencing the culture and strength of your team’s collective achievements. I'll guide you through the three-tier interview process I use for hiring great talent at EB Academics, which ensures that new team members share our core values and fit seamlessly into our culture.
This episode isn't just about hiring tactics; it's also a rallying cry for leaders and entrepreneurs to wield these strategies and craft their role with intention, shaping an era of impactful leadership and dynamic team building. Tune in to transform your approach to hiring and inspire your quest for a championship team.
Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlindmitchell/
All right, you guys, I finally have a voice and I'm finally able to record this podcast episode. My apologies that it is a little bit late, but I am super excited to dive into this. I'm going to talk to you about my hiring process. I really feel strongly about the way in which I have structured my hiring process and I really believe that I have created just this incredible team at EB academics because of this. This is such an integral part to ensuring that you have a championship team at your back. So today I'm going to walk you through our hiring process. I'm going to share insights, strategies, some considerations, just things that you want to be thinking about when it comes to assembling just that championship team that really aligns with your company's vision and your values. All right, let's go ahead and dive into the episode.
Speaker 1:So I want to start off by sharing just a quick little story. So we had our State of the Company quarterly meeting recently, on April 1st, and I took a moment to ask the team, you know what they thought was our biggest win within the last 90 days, and this is something I do with them at every single SSC meeting. You should incorporate it as well. Very simple, very powerful and I asked them to journal and reflect on it and then share with the team, and almost every single one of their responses had something to do with the incredible team that we have at EB academics, that we just operate as that championship team. We work well together, we support each other, we encourage each other and it truly does feel like just this incredibly special place to get to work at and to be a part of this crew. And for me, you know, it's such a powerful thing to get to be their leader, you know, and it's demanded and invited just a different level of myself to be able to lead a team like this. Now, this is not done without extreme intention behind who you bring into the fold of your company. Every new hire within your business, especially with a small team, can have a massive impact.
Speaker 1:So if you haven't heard of this saying about the sick fish in the tank, I think it's a really great metaphor for what we want to do as leaders in protecting the culture of our company, right? We want to do everything that we can as the CEOs, as the leaders, to ensure that we are protecting the tank from any sick fish coming in. That's our team, that's our company culture, right? Because as soon as that sick fish comes into the, that's our company culture, right? Because as soon as that sick fish comes into the tank, it impacts other people, right? I even remember my one of my trainers, val, just gave this great example about when you have like a row of people doing a plank for a minute. If one person falls, the next person right next to them pretty much is likely to go next, and then it's like a domino effect. And so it's just so important that people that we are surrounding ourselves with and our team is no different than that right, we've all heard the phrase you are what your five people that you spend the most time with You're like. Your makeup of the five people you spend the most time with Our team is not any different. We spend more time with our team probably than anybody else in our life.
Speaker 1:So I really want you to think about why the hiring process is so, so important, because it's not just about, like, hiring somebody to fill a need in your company. It is about so much more than that. And the phrase of hire slowly, fire fast. Even though we've heard it time and time again, you absolutely want to take that to heart. And when I haven't done that, or I haven't followed my interview process that I'm going to share with you, I've made some decisions that just didn't end up working out well in the end, and it's unfortunate because that's not only a waste of your time, but that's a waste of your resources, that's a waste of your energy, but it's also of the person that we hired that. Maybe the position just wasn't right fit for them. So, all around, we want to make sure that we're doing this in a very intentional way.
Speaker 1:So in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through my exact hiring process so that, hopefully, you can avoid bad hiring decisions and, at the end of the day, you can save yourself a lot of time, energy and, quite frankly, money. So the first thing that I want to start with is talking about defining your hiring needs. So, first things first. Before we even set out to hire someone new in the company, I think it's really important to define what your business actually needs. Are you really truly in need of this role, or are you trying to hire something out and throw money at a problem that you just don't have the time to deal with? And this is hard because it requires us, as business owners, to be totally honest with ourselves. So it's very important to have extreme clarity on the current staffing requirement that you are looking for. Is this a critical role to help grow the business, or are you buying back your own time? So there are a lot of things that you want to look at when you're thinking about even hiring someone, and I don't want to go into the details of this episode per se, but I highly suggest you read Dan Martell's book called Buy Back your Time, because there's one specific area of it page 84, where he shares kind of like this hierarchy of hiring. You know what are the best roles to hire for first and why, and which roles perhaps, like we should hold onto ourselves and so we absolutely need to hire for that. It's a great visual. It's very helpful in understanding that hierarchy of hiring.
Speaker 1:I think what a lot of us find ourselves doing is we're like, oh my God, I just need someone to help me run the business. So we hire an expensive integrator or an OBM, thinking they're going to solve all of our problems and we don't have to lead. Well, that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to be the leader of my company. I'm not here to put that on somebody else. That's my job. I'm not here to put that on somebody else. That's my job. That's my role as CEO, right? So we could have a whole other conversation about that. That's not the path we're going down for this episode.
Speaker 1:But I just want you to think about, like, what is the actual staffing requirement that your business has, and that page 84, dan Martell's book is hugely helpful in looking at that. So, once you've defined your hiring needs and that you actually need to hire for this position, it's important that you go through the exercise of writing up the job description. This allows you to, from the get-go, very clearly communicate expectations to a potential new hire. You know what are the responsibilities of the job and then what are the true qualifications of this role. How will this potential hire know that they are in fact contributing to the company effectively, successfully, et cetera. And I also include on our job description our company core values. That way I can ensure that the person looking to work for us is a cultural fit right, those intangibles.
Speaker 1:One thing my dad always said to me growing up as an athlete was if your coach says jump, you say how high, and that's a type of attitude that I want from everybody at my company, like myself included. You know, I always tell them we recently, as a team, kind of had our feet to the fire and it was a little bit of like a high pressure moment and I'm telling them like, look, we got to do what others aren't willing to do, right? I always say be willing to do what others aren't. And I want my team, everybody on my team, to have that attitude, to have that perspective, because if you have one person who has a bad attitude or is like, oh, I have so much going on or I can't do that, like that takes other people down.
Speaker 1:When we have a variety of people, all of these people on the team, rallying together towards this thing that we've got to accomplish and complete, and it's hard and it's like, oh my gosh, no one really wants to be doing this, but we got to just freaking do it, you start to build momentum within the company too. So there are all of these intangibles that happen just based on the type of attitude that people bring to the table in your company. So I want to make that very clear on our job description, because I don't want people who are applying who don't fit that bill. Now, of course, you will get people who apply who don't fit that bill, but before I ever sit down to interview someone, I have clearly communicated quite a bit of my expectations for this role simply through that job description. So defining your hiring needs and then making sure that you write that job description so it's super clear what the responsibilities are, the type of person that you want to hire, etc. Well, now we've got to attract top talent.
Speaker 1:So before we even move into actually listing the position that you're hiring for, I think it's important to look to your internal team first. So are there people on your team right now that you may actually want to promote into this role, or are there people on your team who would love to take a shot at taking on this position? So one thing that I do my best to live by with team is to keep the team lean and mean. Keep it lean and mean for as long as possible until you are absolutely bursting at the seams and have to hire out. So are there other people where it would make sense for them to fulfill two different roles within the business, but they have the capacity to do so. So, for example, one of our staff members at EB is our membership manager, but she's also our copywriter, and I love this. It works beautifully because she's so close to our members and their needs and their language, so that when she goes to write copy for emails or social media or any other communications for the business, it just makes sense. She just knows because she's so embedded into our teacher's worlds.
Speaker 1:The other thing is talking about just really optimizing your job postings and recruitment channels. So I've seen some job postings where I'm looking and I'm like I don't want to hire for I don't want to apply for that job. I would never want to apply for that job just based on the way in which the posting is presented. So I've had some incredible talent apply for our jobs that I've listed. I asked them you know, why do you want to work? What even made you want to apply for our jobs that I've listed? I ask them you know why do you want to work? What even made you want to apply for this job? Why do you want to work for us? And I've had so many people say the way in which you set up the job posting was just like nothing I've ever seen before. It's so cool. It seems innovative and exciting and I want to be a part of that right.
Speaker 1:So your job posting matters to attract great talent. So you want to think about how are you representing yourself when you're putting your job posting out into the world. And then you can also think about you know recruitment channels. Are you utilizing online platforms? Are you posting about it on your social media? Do you have professional networks right that you can reach out to and ask? We've found so many of our great employees and I know that this is not for every single industry, but for us, like our community has grown generated just incredible people to work for our team, just extremely qualified candidates. So I think that's really important to think about of, like the variety of places that you can reach out to and utilize to have so many different recruitment channels. It doesn't just have to be an email right. Reach out to your contacts, reach out to people that you know.
Speaker 1:The other thing I want you to think about is there are a variety of different ways to structure the actual job application. So I don't know the legal implications of what others do in terms for asking a video beforehand or requiring potential candidates to complete larger tasks. So please consult with a labor lawyer, and I have a great labor lawyer. If you want his information, feel free to send me a direct message on Instagram. I'm happy to share it with you. But I will say that our initial application process doesn't have like a ton of hurdles to jump over. We have a simple application that also requires a small task to be completed that relates to the position in which the candidate is applying for. So, for example, for our executive assistant role, the assignment that I have on our job posting is to take a list of tasks that need to be completed and then to create a project plan using mondaycom. So I just want to see, like, how does their brain organize content? How do they structure things right? So it's not this massive thing that they have to jump over, but it's still something that they have to complete, so I can see the way in which they think and organize, because that's important for this role.
Speaker 1:As for positions that maybe require more knowledge of a specific area of expertise, it might be beneficial to ask a series of questions to help you identify the candidate's knowledge in that area, as opposed to requiring a larger task that could take them a handful of hours. Again, you want to consult with a labor lawyer regarding compensation, what is or what is not allowed, what is best practice, et cetera. But I do think it's important to think about what are we asking people to do as a part of the application process and why? What is our intended outcome? What are we looking for and how can we elicit that from potential future hires? Okay, so then, in terms of the screening and selection process, once we receive applications and resumes, you would be shocked at the types of resumes and cover letters. I mean, people do not take their time applying.
Speaker 1:It's very easy to start to whittle it down to at least 10, 15, 20 qualified candidates In our application. We have them, you know, write a secret word to show that they were actually paying attention and read through the whole job application and things like that. But you want to think about, like, what are some initial screenings that you could do with these people before you even spend your time setting up a Zoom interview with them? Could you get on a phone with them? Could you have them submit a video interview to assess their communication skills, answering a couple more questions for you, things along those lines. So just something to consider as a way to have a little bit more of a screening behind this.
Speaker 1:We don't spend a ton of time here, but we do look through candidates' applications in terms of what is it that I want from this person? So if I'm hiring for an EA, I want their answers to be very organized. I don't want them to have typos. I wanna make sure that they have capitals and periods and they write eloquently and communicate effectively. So the way in which they even answer questions is gonna start to tell you a lot about the type of person that they are. So I think that's an important step that doesn't necessarily have to take you a ton of time before you get on the interview. All right.
Speaker 1:Last thing I wanna talk about is the actual interview process itself. So it's important that we structure our interviews effectively and we design the interview formats and questions to really assess this candidate Are they the right fit? Do they have the right future potential? So I actually do three different interviews and I have found when I don't follow my process, I don't hire the right people. So if recently I did not follow this process and I did not hire the right person, I didn't follow my own advice and I got an intended outcome that I did not want. So I will say that, even though this seems tedious, I do think it's incredibly important.
Speaker 1:So the first interview that I do, it's standard questions in terms of the role, just getting to know the candidate a little bit more, what they find exciting about the potential position, any areas of concerns or questions that they might have for me, things along those lines. And during this interview I'm really paying attention to the way in which they answer questions. I'm just trying to get a feel for who they are as a person. So skills, those things, for the most part can be taught, although if you're not organized, it's hard to make somebody an organized person. But I will say that the majority of skills can be taught.
Speaker 1:So while I'm doing this first interview, I want them to do the majority of the talking and I'm just picking up on little nuances of the way in which they communicate to me who they are right, because communication is actually what? 90%? Body language, 10% of what people actually say. So I'm looking at the way in which they carry themselves, I'm listening to their intonation, I'm listening to their confidence levels. I'm just kind of getting a feel for who is this person, more so than the way in which they necessarily answer the questions, because most people are going to answer the questions pretty similarly. This is a thing that I think is just a skill set that I have, perhaps from being a communications major and taking a variety of interpersonal communications classes, but I am very in tune to reading people for who they are pretty darn well within the first 30 seconds of meeting somebody.
Speaker 1:So at the end of this first interview, I just give this person an initial gut response number, and most people maybe don't do that, maybe you won't do that, maybe you disagree with that, but that's what I do, and that allows me to remember how I felt about that person. Because I'll tell you right now, if you do six interviews over the course of a day or two, people start to blend together and that's problematic too right that no one's really standing out. So that's something to consider also. So the first interview basic questions happy to send you a list of my questions If you want to send me a message over on Instagram. So the second interview I don't ask everybody back to, only people that I have a good feeling about. So I'm looking at people that maybe I put an eight and nine or 10 as my initial gut reaction to them, and for the second interview I actually do most of the talking.
Speaker 1:So in this interview, I cover every single one of our company core values, and my goal here is to make sure that this person aligns to not just our company's mission but, more importantly, to our team's culture and the cultures created through our values. So is this person someone that I would want to enjoy hanging out with and being around, because, guess what, like I said earlier, you're going to be around them a lot and you want to make sure that you enjoy their company, and so this second interview is also an opportunity for them to self-select out and that's actually happened to me before during the interview process Somebody who made it through the second round. I was actually going to offer them the position they said. You know what? It just seems like there's maybe too much in terms of expectations that I'm not going to be able to fulfill. Oh, my gosh, what a blessing that that happened, that I didn't have to get 30, 60, 90 days into them being a part of our team to then let them go because they weren't able to rise to the occasion of my expectations.
Speaker 1:So when I go through our core values, I let the candidate know these are our core values, this is our basically operating system, this is our decision-making filter. The core values are what we live and breathe and die by at EB. So if one of our core values is the wow factor I'm going to share with the future potential person, that the future potential person I'm going to share with the candidate, that Someone at our company, let's say Sarah, exemplifies this particular core value when she does X, y and Z. So not only am I sharing our core values with the candidate, I'm also giving them examples, specific examples of people on our team showcasing them, so that they can start to see and get an idea of what it's like to work here. And get an idea of what it's like to work here. Because I'll tell you right now, most candidates don't really ask you the types of questions that really they should be asking in terms of what is the company culture like, how do you handle conflict, how do you handle feedback at your company? All of those things I think are really important for the way in which people just typically operate in the world and those questions don't really get asked.
Speaker 1:So I wanna utilize this second interview to set the expectation of what it means to get to work here, so that before they're even onboarded, before they're even offered the position, they already have a clear expectation of. This is a team of A players, and if I'm selected, I get to operate at that level too. So this is not for the faint of heart. Like I don't want you on my team if you're going to complain about things. I don't want you on my team if you're going to have a Debbie Downer attitude. You know what I mean. Like I want people on my team who are A plus players. I don't want a C player on my team, and I want to make that super clear during that second interview. Like, if you can't hang, let me know now. So this is very much an opportunity for them to say like no, thank you, I don't want to accept this position, which is great. Okay.
Speaker 1:Then the third interview is an opportunity to really ask any outstanding questions or bring up any red flags that may have come up for you throughout the interview process. So perhaps you wrote something down the way in which they responded to or answered a question that you're like oh, I don't really like the way that they answered that, or maybe you wanted to ask some follow-up questions that you thought about later. This is that opportunity to do that, because perhaps you have two people that you're between and you're like I don't really know who I should choose. Because this is also a great opportunity in that instance where you could bring someone else on the team to come meet them and share their feedback on that potential hire as well. So I've always brought somebody else on the team to that third interview with me to just give me a different perspective. Maybe they can pick up on something that I don't necessarily see. And then I'm also hiring too. I want you to think about hiring for the future as well.
Speaker 1:So my executive assistant right now. I've recently moved her and added some more responsibilities to her plate of being as a part of our sales team for our school's sales department. When I hired her as my executive assistant a year ago, I knew I'm like there's no way she's going to stay as my executive assistant. She is way too qualified to be an executive assistant and she had many years of experience in pharmaceutical sales. So I'm thinking about yeah, I'm hiring her as my EA, but what is the future potential of this person at the company. How else can they grow and do they have the qualifications, the skillset, the desire, the drive to grow with the company? So that's where I'm looking at, like, how do they answer the question If I ask them where do you see yourself five years from now?
Speaker 1:If they don't say something that aligns to being with us? Well, I don't want you here because I want you to grow with the company. I want you to see the vision that I have for the company right from the get-go. Right, I don't want you here if you're like well, I think I'm going to go back to school and I want to be a lawyer or whatever. You know what I mean. Like you want to find people who are in it to win it with you. Okay, last thing that I want to say about this.
Speaker 1:So, first interview getting to know them, picking up on body language, things along those lines. Also, paying attention to what types of questions are they asking you. They don't have any questions for you. That's a red flag to me. Second interview you do most of the talking. You are sharing your core values, what it means to get to be there. They get to self-select out if they don't want to work for your company because of your expectations, which you want to make clear anyways. And then the third interview is that opportunity to ask any outstanding questions. Bring somebody else on your team to come give you a second opinion of the potential candidates.
Speaker 1:So when we're evaluating candidate performance, after every single interview, not only do I give them that like instinctual gut rating on a scale of one to 10, I'm also writing down their body language, their responses, their dress, you know how did they choose to present themselves, their behaviors, those intangibles, their alignment with company culture and their values. So after every single one of these three interviews with every single candidate, I immediately take notes on anything that I want to remember about that person. That is so, so important, because I guarantee you there's not a chance in hell that you're going to remember every single thing about every single candidate that you want to. So again, that one to scale instinctual thing I do, and if it's a seven, let's say that's my instinct. What are my concerns Like? What are the areas of concern that I have about this person? Because I definitely want to address those with them if they make it to that third and final interview.
Speaker 1:So the last thing that I want to say about the hiring process and the interview process is, as with anything, you always want to continuously be improving. So how can you iterate on this, how can you evolve, how can you strengthen your entire hiring, screening, interviewing process to adapt to meet changing needs and market dynamics? You know the markets change. The market gets more sophisticated. There might be more opportunities for people in your industry to go to that. You've got to make yourself stand out as a potential future employer for them as well. So I hope that this was helpful. Thank you guys so much for joining me on this episode and for sitting tight for a week while I got my voice back.
Speaker 1:Building a high performing team is essential for the success of any business, any startup, and your choices in the hiring process as the leader play a crucial role in achieving that goal. So I really hope the insights into our hiring process at EB have been valuable to you as you just navigate your own recruitment efforts in the months to come, weeks to come, because we will always be hiring. That's just the reality. Teams come and go, you know. Navigate your own recruitment efforts in the months to come, weeks to come, because we will always be hiring, like that's just the reality. Teams come and go, people on our teams will come and go and things will change, and so it's just something that you really want to dial in and nail down as the leader of your company.
Speaker 1:All right, if you found something valuable from this, I would love it if you would share it with another entrepreneur friend to spread the message of this podcast, because, again, like I've said before, I have no monetary need to do this podcast. This, for me, is just a giving back, and so the more that we share with others, the more we're able to share this message with the greater community of entrepreneurs who have the potential to create amazing businesses but really need to hone in their abilities to lead successful teams. So I think it's just so important that we get this type of message into the hands of as many entrepreneurs as possible so that they can be fricking badass CEOs and successful leaders of their companies. All right, you guys have a great week and I will see you next week on the podcast.
