How to Find Superstars
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“The worst thing you could do for a superstar is is ignore them. You should be spending most of your time with your best people. Those are the people you're going to leverage to be great. Those are the people who want to be challenged. Those are the people who could take some of your work off your hands.”
— Mike Goldman
Consistent & Productive Hiring Process
- Look beyond resumes; conduct in-depth interviews for cultural compatibility.
- Prioritize hiring top talent, acknowledging the higher ROI and organizational growth they bring.
Building A Virtual Bench / Planning Ahead
- Create a virtual bench of potential top performers for various roles.
- Identify ten trusted contacts and inquire about potential superstar referrals.
- Engage with these candidates to build relationships for future hiring opportunities.
Employee Referral Program
- Implement a high-reward referral program (e.g., $5,000 - $10,000 incentives).
- Structure rewards: 50% on hiring, 50% after one year to promote retention.
- Actively promote the program to maximize employee participation.
Top Grading - A Method For Hiring
- Recommended reading: "Who: The A Method For Hiring" by Geoff Smart.
- Utilize top grading interview techniques, including phone screening, resume analysis, technical and culture fit interviews.
- Implement the TORC (Threat of a Reference Check) method for effective reference checks.
Prioritizing High Performers
- Focus on retaining and developing high-performing employees.
- Embrace a "fire fast, hire slow" philosophy for optimal team composition.
- Recognize the link between people growth and profit growth, investing in top talent acquisition.
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It's hard to find good people. I can't find good people. There are no good people anymore. Where are all the good people? I've heard that from leaders for my whole career. 35 plus years. Yes, it's always it's always been and it will always be difficult to find good people. But we need to find a way we can't throw our hands up and build our team, build our company with mediocre people.
Kip Tyndall, who was the founder of the container store and the CEO for many years, had this great philosophy around people he called one equals three. One equals three says one superstar performer. equals the productivity of three mediocre performers. Superstar is three X as productive as a mediocre performer.
I've seen that you've probably seen that. In fact, there are positions where it's a lot more than that, especially a leadership position. Where that leader impacts so many people cascading down through the organization that it may not be 1 equals 3, it may be 1 equals 10.
Now, we need to find good people, but there are a number of obstacles. In our way, even in addition to the obstacle of there may not be that many good people out there. The good people that are out there are probably feeling pretty happy and fulfilled where they're working right now. But in addition to that, there are some challenges that we have within companies that make this process much harder than it needs to be.
And the first thing I see is many companies have no process. There's no consistent, reproducible, productive process to go out and find the best people. It, it almost feels to me from the outside when I'm coaching these organizations that, you know, Every time they need to go hire somebody, it's a brand new project they haven't worked on before.
How should we do it? Where should we market it? Where should we post it? Who should we talk to? What kind of job description do we need? What should we be paying? How do we market it? Who should be interviewing? How should we interview? How do we evaluate? If you want to increase your chances of finding the right people for your organization to find potential superstars, to find people who will perform at an a level, you need a consistent process.
And I'll talk about some things that should be part of that process. And there's not one right process, but you need a consistent process. Number one, number two obstacle is.
It's easy to get fooled by a nice resume. It's easy to get fooled, especially when you are looking for folks at a senior enough level, they're probably schooled at creating a great resume.
So we make mistakes in hiring because the resume looks great, but we don't have the right interviewing process to get to the heart of what's real. And whether that person is a real fit in our organization. Speaking of fit, the other problem I see is that companies are focused on the jobs they've had before, the experience and the positions they've had before, and maybe how they sound on an interview.
But they're not really focused on culture fit.
They may not even know what culture fit means other than I kind of liked her or he seemed to have an attitude. Like what does culture fit mean? You should be interviewing with a set of core values in mind, a set of non negotiable behaviors, not asking people if they believe in your core values. Of course they'll say they do because they want the damn job.
But you need to ask them questions on an interview that get to the heart as to whether those people are already living those core values. Don't ask someone if they believe in your, uh, we take initiative core value. They're not going to say no. Ask them questions to find out where in their career they have taken initiative.
And if you can't find it anywhere, Assume they probably don't live that core value. Doesn't make them a bad person, but it may make them a bad fit for your organization. So, that's another problem I see is that people don't focus on that culture fit.
I also see the problem of people kind of bootstrapping the hiring process.
And I'm not talking about a brand new startup. I'm talking about companies that have been around a while. You know, looking to pay less for people. Let's see if we could hire someone, uh, but instead of paying them, you know, the 150,000 we know that, that job is paying everywhere else. Let's see if we can pay someone 120, 000 or 130, 000.
This is not the place to bootstrap. Remember, 1 equals 3. Or for a leader, it may be 1 equals 5 or 1 equals 10. What does that mean? That means you could pay somebody double. What you're paying a mediocre performer and still get return on investment.
The other problem I see is people hiring for the present but not thinking about the future. The biggest thing that will hold you back from growing your organization is not having the right people to drive that growth. So if you're planning to grow 25 percent per year over the next three years, you need to hire someone who has the ability to drive, uh, their part of the organization to drive their responsibility and accountability in a company that could get you there and manage beyond that.
And the last thing I see is, is the emotional part of it is people get so frustrated, I've seen leaders get so frustrated that, that they can't find the right people that they just throw their hands up and say, I guess they're not out there. So let me go out and hire someone mediocre, bad idea. So now that I've outlined all of the problems, let's.
Let me be a little bit more productive and talk about some solutions that I've seen some tips and techniques that I hope you could pull from one, two, or all of these to improve your recruiting, evaluating, hiring process, whether it's for a leader or anyone else in the organization
The number one tip is Don't wait until you're thirsty to dig the well.
Now I know people don't dig wells anymore, so I sound like a 75 year old man. But don't wait until you have a need to start recruiting. The worst time to go out and start looking for a CFO is when you have an urgent need for a CFO. You're going to screw up. You're going to hire too quickly and make a mistake.
So what you need to do is dig that well before you're thirsty. What you need to do is start recruiting before you have a need. Now that doesn't mean you're putting a job posting out there and interviewing for a position you don't have available. But what it means is you're building a virtual bench.
You're building a bench of potential A players for your team in all positions. You might. Need. Now, what does that mean? And I'm going to get very tactical for a moment. It, it means that you as a, if you're, you're a leader, if you're the CEO or the, or the business owner, you do this and everybody on your leadership team should do this.
But, but start with you. Make a list of ten people you know, like, and trust. Hopefully they know, like, and trust you back. Now they don't need to be in your industry. Some of them are in your industry, that's wonderful. But they don't need to be in your industry. Not, not every job is industry specific. And even if it is, you don't know who knows who.
So make a list of ten people you know, like, and trust. And then pick up the phone. Don't email them, pick up the phone, call them and ask them who they know. That's a potential superstar. The call might go like this. You might say, Hey Mike, I hope things are going well. Hey, you know how important it is that I grow my business.
You know how seriously I take that. And I've got to surround myself with the right people. We have significant growth plans. Who do you know that's a superstar that I ought to talk to?
Now the, the, the response you may get is what kind of person are you looking for? Are you looking for a salesperson? Are you looking for an accounts payable clerk? Are you looking for a CFO? You got to help me. What are you looking for? And your answer should be, you know what, we've got growth plans, we're going to need to fill all positions.
We're going to need people who can sell, we're going to need people who can service, we're going to need people who can market, we're going to need financial, we're going to need all sorts of great people. So this is not about a specific position. I need to talk to superstars. Who do you know that I ought to talk to?
Now, when you make those 10 calls, you're going to get some great names. You're going to get people that, you know what, and, and these are stories I've heard from clients where, uh, there was someone, someone that they, they ended up getting introduced to was someone who had interviewed at that company of, of the friend they called, they'd interviewed at that company, but they didn't have a need for them right now.
But man, they were amazing. I think you ought to talk to him. It was someone who left the company a year ago because they hit a ceiling. They left on great terms, but they hit a ceiling and they went somewhere else for a better opportunity. So, the person said, hey, they may be happy where they are now, but who knows, I'd be glad to make an introduction.
So, pretty simple. To make those phone calls. Now, most leaders, as simple as it is, don't do it. They don't make the time to do it. They don't necessarily feel comfortable asking others for help. But suck it up. It's not hard to make those phone calls. You will get introduced to some great people. And then what you do is, you're not sitting down and having a job interview with them.
Unless you happen to have a need for what they have right at that moment. But assuming you're going to get people at all different levels for all different positions, what you want to do is have a cup of coffee with them. Virtual cup of coffee. If they're local, in person, cup of coffee. Talk to them. Tell them a little bit about you and your company.
Find out a little bit more about them. It's not a job interview. It's, hey, Joe said you were a superstar. I needed to meet you. So... Let's talk, get to know each other, who knows what might come of it. Because chances are you don't have a need for what they do right now. Chances are also that they're happy where they are right now.
Superstars very often are happy where they are. But you want to have a conversation and find out is, is there a connection here? And if there is, well let's keep in touch. Maybe every few months, let's get together and see how we're doing. And by the way, the last question you ask that person, assuming you enjoyed the conversation, and you want to add them to your virtual bench and stay in touch, the last question you ask them is,
Hey, who do you know that's a superstar that I ought to be talking to?
So those introductions beget more introductions. And if you're doing that, and you're keeping in touch with those folks, and other members of your team are doing the same thing, that virtual bench may not help you hire someone next week. But if you set a goal, and say something like, Hey, everybody on our team has got to add two people to our virtual bench, every month or even every quarter.
You can see if a number of folks are doing that, how that virtual bench grows and grows. And if you're keeping in touch with those folks in time, you've got dozens of great people on your virtual bench. And at some point you're going to need what they do. At some point, they're not going to feel as great about where they are and they're going to call you.
So first tip is to build a virtual bench.
Second is plan ahead. Just like building a virtual bench. Given your growth plans, start to understand not where you have a need today, 2, 3, 4, 5 quarters from now. And if you do that, if you have more time, To project out what your needs are. You could do a better job of breeding folks from within the organization.
You don't need a VP of sales right now, but given your growth trajectory, your growth goals, a year and a half from now, you will need a VP of sales. We'll start breeding folks. From within right now, there's a great, method I use called the accelerator session, which you could learn about. There is, another, uh, another podcast called building your leadership team bench.
Check that out, and it talks about the accelerator session. So, if you have more time, before you've got to fill that need, if you know it's an important need but it's not urgent yet, you can give people opportunities to grow within your company to fill that need.
So think harder about hiring from within and what you need to do to groom people for that.
The third tip is have an employee referral program. Not just an employee referral program where, yes, a lot of you are paying people 250 dollars, 500 dollars for referrals. If we hire someone you introduce us to, we'll give you a check for 250 dollars. Well, I love that you have a program, but I've got news for you. 250 dollars is not changing anybody's behavior.
No one is looking at a 250 dollar bonus and saying, Oh, I better make some phone calls
up that amount considerably. Why not 5,000 dollars? Why not 7,500 dollars? Why not 10,000 dollars? It's certainly a lot less than you would pay a recruiter who are typically charging 20 or 25 percent of annual salary. Why not pay big bucks for employee referrals?
And what I would do to make it a little easier on cash flow and a little stickier is if you decide it's 10,000 dollars, if we hire that person, you get 5,000 dollars, you get half of it. When we hire that person and you get the other half if you and that person are still here one year from now. So it encourages retention as well.
So don't just have an employee referral program. Up what you're paying and market the hell out of it. I have companies that have employee referral programs and most of their employees know nothing about it. So market it.
The next tip is a whole process and a couple of books, but there's a process called top grading.
And there's a book called Top Grading written by Brad Smart, Bradford Smart. The better book was written by his son Geoffrey Smart. And the book is called Who the A Method for Hiring. Now, some of the tips I've already given you and some of what I'm about to give you come from that book. It is the best book I've read to increase your chances of hiring great people.
Specifically what I want to pull from there right now. is the top grading interview structure. And I won't take you through the details of their interview structure. Read the book. It's well worth it. But part of that interview structure is a very consistent phone screen process. It's a consistent, what they call top grading interview, which is a very detailed, you know, sometimes four hour interview where you are reviewing that resume from top to bottom in excruciating detail, understanding why they left each position.
Often that's very telling. There's then a technical interview and a technical interview is interviews on, you know, on the details of doing the job, whether it's whether they really know sales or, you know, a programming language, if they're in technology or financial analysis or marketing.
So there's a phone screen, there's a top grading interview, which is really about the resume. There's a technical interview. I've had clients that had a culture fit interview, a core values interview. Now, it's really important to have multiple people interviewing a candidate, especially if it's someone with any leadership responsibilities.
And a lot of folks do that. But here's the challenge. It may be, if you don't have a structured process, that you have two or three or four people interviewing the candidate, but what you're doing is you're pissing off this poor candidate, because all of you are asking 50 percent of the same questions over and over again.
By having a structured interview process, phone screen, top grading, technical interview, core values interview, etc. You can divide and conquer so you're not all asking the same questions over and over again and you get a much better feel for the candidate. So that's called the top grading interview structure.
The other great idea from the book Who the A Method for Hiring is what they call the TORC method, T O R C. T O R C stands for Threat of a Reference Check. Now, a lot of you probably do reference checking. But for a lot of you, it's probably not a very valuable part of the process. You do it because you know you're supposed to do it, but you're not really getting value.
The references they give you are their best buddies who are only going to say great things. So what value is that? Well, thread of a reference check makes the reference check process incredibly valuable. And that threat of a reference check actually starts on the phone screen. Where you might say on the phone screen, Hey, you know, tell me about this, this job.
You know, as you're kind of doing a quick phone screen review of the resume. And you might say, well, who, who did you work for there? What was the name of your supervisor or your leader? Oh, that was, uh, Joe Smith. Well, when I talk to Joe, oh, and by the way, if you get this far in the interview, I'm actually going to ask you to schedule a meeting for me to talk to Joe.
But when I talk to Joe, how do you think he'd rate your performance on a scale of 1 to 5? Now, a superstar loves that kind of question. They love that eventually you're going to ask them to schedule a meeting with Joe. But a mediocre performer or a low performer is going to be scared out of their mind when they hear that.
Oh my god, Joe's not going to say good things about me, and now he's asking me what Joe would say. He's telling me I've got to schedule a meeting between him and Joe. I haven't talked to Joe in years, and by the way, he didn't like me much when I worked for him. It's a wonderful process, and when you get to the point.
of needing to schedule the reference check interviews. The person has been forewarned and now when you ask them to go schedule those interviews, you also get an idea of their executive functioning. I had a client that interviewed someone who did incredibly well in the interview, but when it came time to scheduling the references, They blew it over and over again and just did dumb things.
They never would have learned that this person had those kinds of challenges if they didn't go through this process. I had another client, one of the first times I recommended this many years ago. I had a client go do it and then come back to me and go, Mike, I did the threat of a reference check and it didn't work.
I said, well, what do you mean it didn't work? And he said, well, we did phone screens with 20 people. We had 10 we really liked, but like five of them have ghosted us. We can't get in touch with them anymore. So I said it worked, it worked. When you did thread of a reference check, you scared them off and now you don't have to waste your time talking to them.
So it's a beautiful, beautiful process. So within this top grading methodology, the top grading interviewing structure, the threat of a reference check, read Who the A Method for Hiring.
The other solution, and the last solution I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you one solution and a philosophy. But the last solution is to focus more than you probably do. on retaining your high performers. It is all too easy and all too natural as a leader to focus most of your time on your low performers.
After all, they're the ones that need the most coaching and development and accountability. So you spend the majority of your time with your mediocre performers and or your low performers. And you look at your high performers and you go, Oh, thank God for Sally. I don't, I don't have to worry about her.
That's the worst thing you can do for a high performer. The worst thing you could do for a superstar is, is ignore them. You should be spending most of your time with your best people. Those are the people you're going to leverage to be great. Those are the people who want to be challenged. Those are the people who could take some of your work off your hands.
Those are the people who are probably on the phone right now with a recruiter who's offering them to make 50 percent more going to your competition. So spend more time coaching, developing, challenging, re-recruiting.
Your high performers.
And the last thing I'll say is more of a philosophy and it's the philosophy of fire fast, hire slow.
Most companies do the opposite. They wait way too long. To cut the cord on someone who's not a fit for their organization. And by the time they do, the work is piled up. There's crazy urgency, a big fire drill to replace the position. So they fired slow, but now they, they hire fast. And they make the same damn mistake they made the first time around.
So you want to do the opposite. You want to understand where people don't fit. And cut the cord. Those folks could perform at an A level somewhere else. I do believe everyone has the ability to perform at a, at a high level somewhere. And by you keeping them, you're not only hurting you and your organization and your clients, you're hurting them.
Now that doesn't mean fire someone the first time they do something wrong, but don't make it a 6, month thing. Nightmare.
Fire fast. Hire slow. Hire slow doesn't mean drag out the hiring process. But it means, man, take the time to find the right person. Don't throw up your hands and say there are no good people out there. That's a recipe for mediocrity or less within your business.
The primary driver of profit growth. is people growth.
What are you doing to ensure you've got the right people until next time? Go build your virtual bench.