9 Steps to Hire the Right & Ideal People

One of the three most important ingredients to the success of a business is its people - hiring, retaining and developing good people who do a great job and contribute to the success of the business. A business could provide a fantastic product or service to its clients and customers; but without a team of competent, intelligent, caring and hard-working people, such a business will struggle.

The right people are the greatest asset, resource and wealth of any business. You want the right people for your business. 

And you want only right people in your business - no lazy, incompetent, detrimental, negative, counter-productive or unproductive people.

I’ve started and managed three businesses in my career, employing 1,100 people over that time. We studied and evolved a super-successful system for hiring over the years. These steps are simple,  but they do take more time than you might like.  I think the excellent results are worth the extra time and effort. 

Step 1 - List of Qualities and Skills

Work out the exact and complete set of qualities and skills you want in a person for each job. Get the ideal person firmly in mind. But emphasize inner qualities and traits, as much as or even more than specific job experience and job skills (high-quality people will learn specific skills quickly).  I consider inner qualities more important than experience. 

Create in your mind the totally ideal person with all the qualities and skills you would like. Don’t hold back because you think you’ll never find such a person.

Step 2 - Create A Winning Recruitment Ad

Write your ad based on the ideal from Step 1.  Write a recruiting ad much like you would write an appealing, interesting marketing ad, so that high-quality people will be attracted to apply. 

Make your company and job sound appealing, challenging, professional rewarding and terrific. A recruitment ad should double as a marketing ad. 

Then run this ad on any effective recruiting channels.

And, talk to people you know and trust to find out who they might know who fit your ideal. High-quality people know other high-quality people, so talk to all the high-quality people you know and ask who they know who might fit your business.

Step 3 - Resumes

Now comes the hardest and worst part of this process - going through all the resumes you’ll get. 

This step is the worst part because you might get a lot of resumes to go through. This step is the most difficult part because a resume is NOT an accurate picture of the person. 

Most people don’t write good resumes. More often than not, the resume either (1) paints a much better and exaggerated picture than the person truly is, or (2) the resume doesn’t reflect how good someone really is, when the person actually might be a diamond in the rough. So what to do? 

I would rather err on the side of contacting and interviewing more people rather than less, because I don't want to lose a potentially great person. I don't judge resumes too strictly or harshly. I would rather spend more time interviewing, than trying to save time by weeding out people based strictly on their resume. My way takes far more time for sure, and you will certainly interview more duds this way. But you will also find hidden gold and diamonds if you aren’t too strict with resumes. Remember, a resume most often does not give you an accurate sense of the individual.

Step 4 - Initial Contact

Initial phone calls to applicants are best. If you have a lot of resumes, have one or more trusted team members help with the initial calls to screen out the obvious unqualified people. Phone calls are better than emails because you get a far better sense of the person. Phone calls give you a decent sense of the person, and you then decide on a face-to-face interview based on the phone conversation.

I can hear your objections now. “This takes way too long! We have so many resumes, calling all of them will take forever!” 

That’s why I suggest spreading out these resumes among as many trusted people as possible. I can assure you, that my process will give you gold and diamonds that you would lose if you screen resumes too heavily.

You can also invite applicants to interviews via email. This doesn’t give you as accurate a sense of people, but it can be done. Interviews would be decided on the basis of an email exchange.

Step 5 - Initial Face-to-Face Interview. 

I don’t make hiring decisions based on one interview, so I don't judge applicants too hard initially. In fact, I strongly recommend that you not make hiring decisions based on one interview. It’s easier for applicants to pass our initial interviews - do we like the person as a person or not? 

Again, I’m looking for potential jewels, potential superstars that might not shine brightly on an initial interview. Sometimes excellent people are nervous or shy the first time they meet you. Some people don’t interview well the first time they meet a prospective employer. 

You can lose some great people if you judge too harshly on the initial interview. So I tend to be more lenient in the initial interviews.

My goal in the initial interview is to get a sense of the person, not his or her specific work experience. I look for qualities and attitudes during the initial interview

• a sense of their personality, 
• their general attitude, 
• their character, 
• their intelligence, 
• their likability factor. 

To me, these are far more important than experience. 

We have a real conversation. I ask questions and engage the person the same way I would talk with someone I’ve just met at a social function. 

I don’t ask the usual corporate questions such as “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” (UGH!) I want a real conversation, I want the person to talk to me about their lives, interests, goals - and their mistakes and failures. This is done with a genuine conversation, not a stiff and robotic Q&A using programmed questions. 

If the applicant passes the initial interview, they move on to Step 6.

Step 6 - Working interview. 

In my mind, working interviews are a MUST. There is no better way to get a good sense of the actual value of a person than by having that person work with your team, and observe how they interact and work. 

Working interviews can be one day or more than one day. Have the candidate work with trusted people in your company, including yourself if possible.

Some companies do not do working interviews because they think they are not allowed in their states, or because they are afraid of some sort of legal problems from working interviews. Working interviews are legal in every state in the US; each state has their own rules regarding working interviews, so just get familiar with those rules and follow them. We conducted working interviews for over 25 years, in multiple states, and never had even the slightest hint of trouble. So, don’t let any attorney convince you that you cannot do working interviews. Find out the state rules yourself. This isn’t difficult.

The enormous advantages of conducting actual working interviews over a day or several days is well worth the time and effort.

We paid people for their working interviews. We paid a set amount that was lower than the actual job rate of pay. We let the applicant know this was just the pay for the working interview, and not their actual pay rate if they got the job. The relatively small amounts of money we paid for working interviews was well worth it for the excellent results we achieved.

You can decide if you want to pay for working interview time or not, unless of course your state requires it.

Step 7 - Your Best People

Have as many trusted people as possible have a hand in the interview and hiring process for each candidate. Your best people are also your best opinions about who to hire or not. The success rate of hiring after working interviews is far higher than without a working interview. And the success rate is also far higher when several trusted people in the group have a hand in interviewing and choosing candidates.

Step 8 - testing

After all these steps, there will usually be 1-3 front-runners for the position. The ideal situation, of course, is to have one candidate be the unanimous choice. But, unanimous or not, one final candidate or several, we learned the hard way to test our final candidates - no matter how much all of us might love one person. 

There are lots of tests and testing companies out there. We found a company whose testing was remarkably accurate and predictive, and that company has been near-perfect in their test results. We use this company exclusively for all our candidate testing; their tests are amazingly accurate - scary accurate, as a matter of fact.

Their tests either confirm our own opinions, or tell us not to hire an individual. There have been a few times when we ignored the results of a test when the test said, “Don’t hire this person.” In every one of those cases - where the test said NO and we said YES - the person we all thought was the greatest person ever invented turned out to be a failure for us. So we learned to listen to the tests.

Most of the time, the people who do very well in their working interviews, and who are a clear choice by most or all of the people involved in the interview process, also do well on their tests. Most of the time, the tests validate the majority or unanimous opinions. But on occasion, the test results disagree, and we know to listen to those test results.

(If you want to find out more about this company's tests, go to our website - klhgrowthstrategies.com - and go to the page Hiring Good People. You can take their tests for free and see for yourself how accurate they are.)

Step 9 

Every so often, no one candidate appears to be what we’re looking for. Once again, we learned the hard way. We learned from experience NOT to simply hire the “best of the bunch.” If no one candidate passed all the steps and was clearly qualified as the right person for us, we simply started the entire hiring process all over again until we found our man or woman. This can be frustrating when it happens, but I learned not to give in to the urge to hire whoever was the best of all the candidates. You don’t want the best of all the candidates. You want the right person for your business.

Many owners and managers won’t like to do what is recommended in this article. But I can assure you that the benefits far, far outweigh all the extra time and effort that go with this process. Having the right and ideal people for your business makes the business more successful, and makes your life much easier. So this process is worth the time it takes. Our businesses were extremely successful in large part because we followed the actions and principles given here, and hired and retained only the people who were right for our businesses.

______________

About the Author

Joe Kerner is a successful entrepreneur and business consultant. He started a business from nothing and grew it to over $12 Million per year in less than 4 years. He also started and grew a successful management consulting firm, and helped hundreds of businesses grow, solve problems, become more efficient and earn more revenues and profits.

Joe is an accomplished speaker, having delivered over 1,000 seminars and workshops on such topics as leadership, efficiency, growing a business, analytics, personnel training and development and cash flow.

Joe is the Founding Partner of KLH Growth Strategies, a business and leadership consulting group. The strength and uniqueness of KLH lies in its consultants - each consultant is a successful business owner, and each also has a proven track record of success helping other businesses become successful. KLH consultants have expertise in many industries, and help businesses achieve greater success by getting in place all the fundamental ingredients to success.

One of the three most important ingredients to business success is people - hiring, retaining and developing good people who do a great job and contribute to the success of the business. A business could provide a fantastic product or service to its clients and customers; but without a team of competent, intelligent, caring and hard-working people, such a business will struggle.

The right people are the greatest asset, resource and wealth of any business. You want the right people for your business. 

And you want only right people in your business - no lazy, incompetent, detrimental, negative, dramatic or unproductive people.

I’ve started and managed three businesses in my career, employing well over 1,000 people over that time. We studied and evolved a super-successful system for hiring over the years. These steps are simple,  but they do take more time than you might like.  I think the excellent results are worth the extra time and effort. 

This is how we hire people, and we have had great success with this system.

Step 1 - List of Qualities and Skills

Work out the exact and complete set of qualities and skills you want in a person for each job. Get the ideal person firmly in mind. But emphasize qualities and traits, as much as or even more than specific job experience and job skills (high-quality people will learn specific skills quickly).  Shoot for the stars on this step, create in your mind the totally ideal person with all the qualities and skills you would like. Hey, this mental exercise is free and unlimited, so splurge on it! Don’t hold back because you think you’ll never find such a person; instead, go for the sun, moon and stars when defining your ideal person. But again, list out all the inner qualities you want, not just specific job skills. Inner qualities are as important or even more important than experience. 

Step 2 - Create A Winning Recruitment Ad

Write your ad based on the ideal from Step 1. Don’t write the typical, dry, boring corporate-type ad. Then run this ad on any effective recruiting channels. Write a recruiting ad much like you would write an appealing, interesting marketing ad, so that high-quality people will be attracted to apply. Make your company and job sound appealing, challenging, professional rewarding and terrific. A recruitment ad should double as a marketing ad. 

And, talk to people you know and trust to find out who they might know who fit your ideal. High-quality people know other high-quality people, so talk to all the high-quality people you know and ask who they know who might fit your business.

Step 3 - Resumes

Now comes the hardest and worst part of this process - going through all the resumes you’ll get. This step is the worst part because you might get a LOT of resumes to go through. This step is the most difficult part because a resume is NOT an accurate picture of the person. Most people don’t write good resumes. More often than not, the resume either paints a much better and exaggerated picture than the person truly is, or the resume doesn’t reflect how good someone really is, when the person actually might be a diamond in the rough. So what to do? 

I would rather err on the side of contacting and interviewing more people rather than less, because I don't want to lose a potentially great person. I don't judge resumes too strictly or harshly. I would rather spend more time interviewing, than trying to save time by weeding out people based strictly on their resume. My way takes more time for sure, and you will certainly interview more duds this way. But you will also find hidden gold and diamonds if you aren’t too strict with resumes. Remember, a resume most often does not give you an accurate sense of the individual.

Step 4 - Initial Contact

Initial phone calls to applicants are best. If you have a lot of resumes, have one or more trusted team members help with the initial calls to screen out the obvious unqualified people. Phone calls are better than emails because you get a far better sense of the person. If the job you are hiring for interacts with customers and clients or the public in any way, then initial phone interviews are the best way to start. Phone calls give you a decent sense of the person, and you then decide on a face-to-face interview or not based on the phone conversation.

I can hear your objections now. “This takes way too long! We have so many resumes, calling all of them will take forever!” That’s why I suggest spreading out these resumes among as many trusted people as possible. I can assure you, that my process will give you gold and diamonds that you would lose if you screen resumes too heavily.

You can also invite applicants to interviews via email. This doesn’t give you as accurate a sense of people, but it can be done. Interviews would be decided on the basis of an email exchange.

Step 5 - Initial Face-to-Face Interview. 

I’m not looking to make a hiring decision during the initial interviews, so I don't judge applicants too hard initially. In fact, I strongly recommend that you not make hiring decisions based on one initial interview. It’s easier for applicants to pass our initial interviews - do we like the person as a person or not? Again, I’m looking for potential jewels, potential superstars that might not shine brightly on an initial interview. Sometimes excellent people are nervous or shy the first time they meet you. Some people don’t interview well the first time they meet a prospective employer. You can lose some great people if you judge too harshly on the initial interview. So I tend to be more lenient in the initial interviews.

My goal in the initial interview is to get a sense of the person, not necessarily his or her specific work experience - we'll evaluate job skills in a second interview. I look for qualities during the initial interview - a sense of their personality, their general attitude, their character, their intelligence, their likability factor. We have a real conversation. I ask questions and engage the person the same way I would talk with someone I’ve just met at a social function. I DON’T ask the usual corporate questions such as “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” I want a real conversation, I want the person to talk to me about their lives, interests, goals - even their mistakes and failures. This is done with a genuine conversation, not a stiff and robotic Q&A using programmed questions. If the applicant passes the initial interview, they move on to Step 6.

Step 6 - Working interview. 

In my mind, working interviews are a MUST. There is no better way to get a good sense of the actual value of a person than by having that person work with your team, and observe how they interact and work. Working interviews can be one day or more than one day. Have the candidate work with trusted people in your company, including yourself if possible.

Some companies do not do working interviews because they think they are not allowed in their states, or because they are afraid of some sort of legal problems from working interviews. Working interviews are legal in every state in the US; each state has their own rules regarding working interviews, so just get familiar with those rules and follow them. We conducted working interviews for over 25 years, in multiple states, and never had even the slightest hint of trouble. So, don’t let any attorney convince you that you cannot do working interviews. Find out the state rules yourself. This isn’t difficult.

The value of working interviews is enormous. The enormous advantages of conducting actual working interviews over a day or several days far outweighs the inconvenience of figuring out how to do them safely for your business.

We paid people for their working interviews. We paid a set amount that was lower than the actual job rate of pay. We let the applicant know this was just the pay for the working interview, and not their actual pay rate if they got the job. Every candidate we ever had do a working interview was fine with this. You can decide if you want to pay for working interview time or not, unless of course your state requires it. We chose to pay, and the relatively small amounts of money we paid for working interviews was well worth it for the excellent results we achieved.

Step 7 - Your Best People

Have as many trusted people as possible have a hand in the interview and hiring process for each candidate. Your best people are also your best opinions about who to hire or not. The success rate of hiring after working interviews is far higher than without a working interview. And the success rate is also far higher when several trusted people in the group have a hand in interviewing and choosing candidates.

Step 8 - testing

After all these steps, there will usually be 1-3 front-runners for the position. The ideal situation, of course, is to have one candidate be the unanimous choice. But, unanimous or not, one final candidate or several, we learned the hard way to test our final candidates - no matter how much all of us might love one person. There are lots of tests and testing companies out there. We found a company whose testing was remarkably accurate and predictive, and that company has been near-perfect in their test results. We use this company exclusively for all our candidate testing; their tests are amazingly accurate - scary accurate, as a matter of fact.

Their tests either confirm our own opinions, or tell us not to hire an individual. There have been a few times when we ignored the results of a test when the test said, “Don’t hire this person.” In every one of those cases - where the test said NO and we said YES - the person we all thought was the greatest person ever invented turned out to be a failure for us. So we learned to listen to the tests.

Most of the time, the people who do very well in their working interviews, and who are a clear choice by most or all of the people involved in the interview process, also do well on their tests. Most of the time, the tests validate the majority or unanimous opinions. But on occasion, the test results disagree, and we know to listen to those test results.

(If you want to find out more about this company's tests, go to our website - klhgrowthstrategies.com - and go to the page Hiring Good People. You can take their tests for free and see for yourself how accurate they are.)

Step 9 

Every so often, no one candidate appears to be what we’re looking for. Once again, we learned the hard way. We learned from experience NOT to simply hire the “best of the bunch.” If no one candidate passed all the steps and was clearly qualified as the right person for us, we simply started the entire hiring process all over again until we found our man or woman. This can be frustrating when it happens, but I learned not to give in to the urge to hire whoever was the best of all the candidates. You don’t want the best of all the candidates. You want the right person for your business.

_____________

One final note. This process gave us a 96-97% success rate. For the other 3-4% of people we hired who turned out not to be the right person after all, we would know this within the first week or two. Most businesses have a 90-day probationary period for new hires. But in reality, it doesn’t take 90 days to know if you hired the wrong person. You can tell within the first week or two - and for certain within the first month - if the person you hired just isn’t the one you thought he or she was. As soon as you know the person you hired isn’t right for your business, let him or her go immediately, rather than wait out the entire probationary period. You will save yourself, your business and your staff a lot of stress and heartache if you simply let incompatible people go right away.

Many owners and managers won’t like to do what is recommended in this article. But I can assure you that the benefits far, far outweigh all the extra time and effort that go with this process. Having the right and ideal people for your business makes the business more successful, and makes your life far easier. So this process is worth the time it takes. Our businesses were extremely successful in large part because we followed the actions and principles given here, and hired and retained only the people who were right for our businesses.

______________

About the Author

Joe Kerner is a successful entrepreneur and business consultant. He started a business from nothing and grew it to over $10 Million per year in less than 4 years. He also started and grew a successful management consulting firm, and helped hundreds of businesses grow, solve problems, become more efficient and earn more revenues and profits.

Joe is also an accomplished speaker, having delivered over 1,000 seminars and workshops on such topics as leadership, efficiency, growing a business, analytics, personnel training and development and cash flow.

Joe is the Founding Partner of KLH Growth Strategies, a business and leadership consulting group. The strength and uniqueness of KLH lies in its consultants - each consultant is a successful business owner, and each also has a proven track record of success helping other businesses become successful. KLH consultants have expertise in many industries, and help businesses achieve greater success by getting in place all the fundamental ingredients to success.