Episode 186

Why Most People Take Jobs for the Wrong Reasons and How to Fix It with Lou Adler

In Episode 186 of The Business Development Podcast, Kelly Kennedy sits down with Lou Adler, the renowned CEO and founder of The Adler Group, to explore the intricacies of hiring and talent acquisition. Lou shares groundbreaking insights on why most people take jobs for the wrong reasons and how companies can dramatically improve their hiring processes. Drawing from over three decades of experience and the principles in his bestselling book "Hire With Your Head", Lou unpacks the concept of performance-based hiring. He explains how to align candidates' intrinsic motivations with job requirements to create mutually beneficial, long-term career relationships. With actionable advice and real-world examples, this episode provides invaluable guidance for entrepreneurs, HR professionals, and business leaders looking to refine their hiring strategies.

Throughout the episode, Lou dives deep into issues such as hiring bias, the inefficiencies of traditional job postings, and the importance of defining clear performance objectives for roles. He emphasizes the power of networking and direct outreach, urging companies to adopt a high-touch, rather than high-tech, approach to recruiting. Whether you're a small business owner flying by the seat of your pants or an HR leader at a large corporation, Lou's insights offer practical ways to make better hiring decisions and avoid the costly mistakes of quick, ill-informed choices. If you’re looking to build stronger teams and make smarter hiring decisions, this conversation is not to be missed.

Key Takeaways:

1. Most people take jobs for the wrong reasons, often prioritizing pay or title over meaningful career growth.

2. Defining clear performance objectives for a role is essential to hiring success.

3. A two-question interview method—"How would you solve this problem?" and "What have you done that's comparable?"—can transform the hiring process.

4. Networking and direct outreach are far more effective than relying on job postings.

5. Intrinsic motivation is the key to long-term employee engagement and performance.

6. Hiring decisions made too quickly often lead to costly mistakes, known as the "90-day wonder."

7. Addressing hiring bias through structured interviews and delaying snap judgments leads to better outcomes.

8. A job description should focus on what needs to be accomplished, not just candidate qualifications.

9. Spending more time with fewer candidates ensures better hiring decisions and long-term results.

10. Before making an offer, always ask candidates if they understand the role’s expectations and why it’s a good career move for them.


Links referenced in this episode:

Transcript
Host:

Welcome to episode 186 of the Business Development Podcast.

Host:

And on today's expert guest interview, we are chatting with the great Lou Adler.

Host:

Stick with us.

Host:

You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Kelly Kennedy:

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Kelly Kennedy:

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

Kelly Kennedy:

And we couldn't agree more.

Kelly Kennedy:

This is the Business Development Podcast, based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and broadcasting to the world.

Kelly Kennedy:

You'll get expert business development advice, tips and experiences.

Kelly Kennedy:

And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps.

Kelly Kennedy:

You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Kelly Kennedy:

Brought to you by Capital Business Development, CapitalBD CA.

Kelly Kennedy:

Let's do it.

Kelly Kennedy:

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

Kelly Kennedy:

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Host:

Welcome to episode 186 of the Business Development Podcast.

Host:

And on today's show, it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Lou Adler.

Host:

Lou stands at the forefront of modern talent acquisition, armed with over three decades of experience in revolutionizing the way that companies find and hire exceptional talent.

Host:

As the CEO and founder of the Adler Group, Lou has pioneered the performance based hiring system, guiding more than 40,000 recruiters and hiring managers worldwide in implementing strategies that unearth top tier candidates.

Host:

With a client roster boasting industry giants like LinkedIn, McKinsey and Disney, Lou's impact is felt across diverse sectors, reshaping traditional hiring paradigms and setting new standards for excellence.

Host:

Beyond his groundbreaking consulting work, Lou is a prolific author, penning bestsellers like Hire with youh Head, the Essential Guide for Hiring and Getting Hired, which serve as guiding lights for professionals navigating the complex terrain of recruitment.

Host:

His commitment to fostering diversity in the workplace underscores his mission as seen through initiatives like Diversity Hiring Without Compromise, Lou Adler's influence transcends mere theory.

Host:

It's a catalyst for tangible change, empowering organizations to build teams that not only excel, but also reflect the rich tapestry of human talent.

Host:

In the realm of talent acquisition, Lou Adler doesn't just talk the talk.

Host:

He reshapes the hiring landscape with every step, forging a path towards a brighter, more inclusive future.

Host:

Lou, it is an honor to have you on the show today.

Lou Adler:

Well, thank you very much for that introduction.

Lou Adler:

I can only go to Downhill from there.

Lou Adler:

So now, now I think we should just cut it off here and go with that.

Guest:

Oh goodness, no.

Lou Adler:

It's.

Guest:

It's an absolute honor to have you on the show.

Guest:

And like I said, we chatted a little bit before the show, real briefly, but I had mentioned to you that my experience in HR was super, super limited.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Like, I kind of feel like unless you're in that world, you couldn't know.

Guest:

But reading higher with your head was like a gigantic eye opener for me.

Guest:

I didn't realize how complex hiring really is.

Lou Adler:

Well, when you really think about it, it's a business decision and it's a tough business decision for manager.

Lou Adler:

I've got to hire someone, it's a person I don't know.

Lou Adler:

So it's real risky.

Lou Adler:

If I screw it up, my whole my job's a stick, I got to work harder.

Lou Adler:

So there's a lot of these issues.

Lou Adler:

So.

Lou Adler:

And making the decision hire someone who you don't know is not an easy decision.

Lou Adler:

There's risk associated with it, there's questions.

Lou Adler:

How can you get to know someone an hour, hour and a half or two hours to see if you can work with them?

Lou Adler:

So yeah, it is hard.

Lou Adler:

And at some level I think people always complain.

Lou Adler:

Oh, they hire people they know.

Lou Adler:

It's all nepotism.

Lou Adler:

It's not really nepotism, it's I'd rather hire someone I know even if they're not perfect because it's safer and I know what I'm getting versus a complete unknown.

Lou Adler:

So yeah, there's a lot of risk, a lot of issues associated with that.

Lou Adler:

So yeah, it is.

Lou Adler:

It's a complex human behavior decision and a complex management decision.

Lou Adler:

And yeah, you're right, it's not a piece of cake.

Guest:

Well, I must say though, the way that you wrote Hire with your head really is an exact manual.

Guest:

It's a blueprint, probably one of the best written instruction manuals that I've read in an incredibly long time.

Guest:

Well written, backed up with lots of facts and figures and not to mention, like I said, I feel like you covered absolutely everything in there.

Guest:

And we're going to talk all about performance based hiring because we're talking to a lot of young entrepreneurs right now who maybe are involved with hiring for their company.

Guest:

But like me, it wasn't their background.

Guest:

They're kind of flying by the seat of their pants like most of us.

Guest:

And a book like this can be incredibly valuable.

Guest:

But you know, before we get into it, Lou, take us back to the beginning.

Guest:

You've been an entrepreneur for over 46 years.

Guest:

Who is Lou Adler?

Guest:

How did you end up on this journey?

Lou Adler:

Yeah, interesting that you said that.

Lou Adler:

I sometimes wonder myself.

Lou Adler:

No, I didn't start out doing writing about hiring.

Lou Adler:

That kind of fell into that My background is I'm an engineer.

Lou Adler:

I graduated during Vietnam War.

Lou Adler:

I got a job in aerospace working on nuclear missiles.

Lou Adler:

Realistically, when do you blow a nuclear missile?

Lou Adler:

When it's off track.

Lou Adler:

Was then I got an MBA in finance and started working in manufacturing and engineering and cost accounting and new investments and pretty pretty young age.

Lou Adler:

I was running a factory, running a factory company, 300 people in it and making automotive components and I was on a pretty good career track and.

Lou Adler:

But I hated the group president.

Lou Adler:

He's the guy that hired me.

Lou Adler:

I still hated him.

Lou Adler:

He was a micromanager.

Lou Adler:

And I said no, leave me alone.

Lou Adler:

If I fail, fire me, I don't care, I'll find another job.

Lou Adler:

I was from New York, cocky and, and I just decided no, I don't like the corporate BS and the politics and I, and I probably could have dealt with it, but I didn't like his management style.

Lou Adler:

Literally it was, he showed up, he was a group president, I was a business unit manager and every two, three weeks he showed up and he thought I was the biggest piece of crap and I thought he was a jerk.

Lou Adler:

And we argued and I quit almost once every other month I quit four or five times.

Lou Adler:

And the chairman of the company called me up, lou, don't quit.

Lou Adler:

And I said I can't do it.

Lou Adler:

So I gave him six months notice.

Lou Adler:

And I liked my work, but I was working 60, 70, 80 hours a week sometimes.

Lou Adler:

But I didn't dislike it, I enjoyed it.

Lou Adler:

But I had a three or four year old son, I can't do this the rest of my life.

Lou Adler:

And my wife supported the idea of having worked with these recruiters who were very, very successful.

Lou Adler:

And I thought I'm hiring all the people from them and they're making more money than I am and I'm working harder.

Lou Adler:

So my wife says, why don't you become a recruiter?

Lou Adler:

So I, and it really took four or five months to think about it, agreed to do it, then gave a six month notice.

Lou Adler:

And then everybody else said don't leave, do this.

Lou Adler:

And they try to talk me out of it.

Lou Adler:

And I said, hey, make you a bigger division president.

Lou Adler:

And I'm only 32.

Lou Adler:

So I knew I was doing fairly well.

Lou Adler:

But I decided no, I'm going to give it a shot, become an entrepreneur.

Lou Adler:

And I failed the first, well, I didn't the first month I was very successful, made a placement three weeks, almost doubled my, let's say this, I made 25% of my annual salary in the first month.

Lou Adler:

I said, oh this is great.

Lou Adler:

This is pretty cool.

Lou Adler:

Didn't make another placement for four or five months.

Lou Adler:

So I said, it's not for me.

Lou Adler:

Let me go back.

Lou Adler:

And I had other offers and real work.

Lou Adler:

But then all of a sudden, some things started clicking.

Lou Adler:

I understand.

Lou Adler:

Nah, this is actually why people make hiring decisions, why they screw it up, why candidates accept bad jobs.

Lou Adler:

And so many candidates ignore good opportunities and say no without any knowledge whatsoever.

Lou Adler:

I mean, a candidate.

Lou Adler:

Do you want to be talking about a job?

Lou Adler:

No, I'm not interested.

Lou Adler:

How can you not be interested?

Lou Adler:

You don't know what I'm talking about.

Lou Adler:

So candidates make stupid decisions and hiring managers say, I like the person went to the right school, et cetera, et cetera.

Lou Adler:

So everybody's making stupid decisions both sides of the desk.

Lou Adler:

So I said, you know, if we make smart decisions on both sides of the desk, everybody can be successful.

Lou Adler:

And it took me about six, eight months to start figuring out how to make smart decisions.

Lou Adler:

Now, I didn't totally figure it out, but I.

Lou Adler:

But within the next year, I tripled my income from my running a company, and then I tripled it again two to three years later.

Lou Adler:

So I said, that's the secret sauce.

Lou Adler:

It eventually became performance based hiring.

Lou Adler:

But it's.

Lou Adler:

How do you get both sides of the table to make smart decisions?

Lou Adler:

We can get into what those smart decisions are, but most often is they're looking at the wrong stuff.

Lou Adler:

Candidates make decisions without even knowing what the job is.

Lou Adler:

Oh, good pay.

Lou Adler:

I'll take that.

Lou Adler:

Well, it's not the job.

Lou Adler:

That's what you get for doing the job, but they don't.

Lou Adler:

It's a great pay.

Lou Adler:

So that's how it became.

Lou Adler:

And then I started becoming a pretty successful recruiter.

Lou Adler:

I started talking to business groups, became a more successful recruiter, and that's how it happened.

Lou Adler:

I mean, so I was probably a more successful recruiter.

Lou Adler:

Then I started a training company to train others, which wasn't as successful as being a recruiter, but being a recruiter, I was very successful training company.

Lou Adler:

Marginally successful.

Lou Adler:

And writing books.

Lou Adler:

Marginally successful, but more fun.

Guest:

So is it four books at this point?

Lou Adler:

You've written five or six, but probably 4,000 articles.

Lou Adler:

I mean, that's literally.

Guest:

Wow.

Lou Adler:

e been writing articles since:

Lou Adler:

And you think about even 50 articles a year times a lot of years adds up to a lot of articles.

Guest:

Well, not to mention one of the cool things.

Guest:

You've been on LinkedIn since:

Guest:

n think I had social media in:

Guest:

5.

Lou Adler:

No.

Lou Adler:

When I came out and I.

Lou Adler:

I don't know how I heard about it, but I heard about it, I said, this is cool.

Lou Adler:

This is going to be good.

Lou Adler:

So I kind of lucked out at some level.

Lou Adler:

In fact, I got a letter said, you're one of the first hundred thousand, you know, wow.

Lou Adler:

Certificate.

Lou Adler:

One of the first hundred thousand members of LinkedIn.

Lou Adler:

Yeah.

Lou Adler:

And I got that.

Lou Adler:

And that in 10 bucks gets me on the subway.

Guest:

So, my gosh.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Like, how could.

Guest:

No one could have known how big LinkedIn would get back then.

Guest:

Hey.

Guest:

Like, it's unreal what it's become.

Guest:

And we're going to get into that because, you know, one of the things that you chat about is the power of technology in hiring as we move forward.

Guest:

And I want to get into that today because I think a lot of people are not really sure about how to utilize technology to their advantage.

Lou Adler:

Well, most people abuse it because they don't know how to use it.

Lou Adler:

So they, It's a.

Lou Adler:

I mean, applying for jobs, a waste of time.

Lou Adler:

Let's be real frank.

Lou Adler:

So.

Lou Adler:

And they.

Lou Adler:

People complain, I applied a thousand jobs.

Lou Adler:

Yeah, big deal.

Lou Adler:

I qualified for any of them.

Lou Adler:

Why do you.

Lou Adler:

But they now they muck up the system.

Lou Adler:

So you get tens of thousands of people applying to thousands of jobs.

Lou Adler:

You got technology to figure out how to eliminate all that noise.

Lou Adler:

I mean, you just think about the global issue of a job posting, and the best jobs aren't job postings.

Lou Adler:

I mean, just like I said, the risk of hiring a person who applies to a job posting is very high.

Lou Adler:

The person might be better than someone I know, but I'll never know that.

Lou Adler:

And it's easier and quicker to hire someone I know.

Lou Adler:

At least I know what I get.

Lou Adler:

So it's again, that stranger versus acquaintance issue.

Guest:

Yeah.

Lou Adler:

So the idea is, how do I become an acquaintance before I become a candidate to the job?

Lou Adler:

And that's kind of like rethinking the whole equation of how do I put myself on a better career path.

Lou Adler:

Where are you from, Kelly?

Lou Adler:

It sounds like you're Canadian or.

Guest:

I am.

Guest:

I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Guest:

So we just hit springtime.

Guest:

It's not minus 40, it's plus 20, but all right.

Lou Adler:

No, I've been Edmonton.

Guest:

You're in beautiful, sunny California at the moment.

Lou Adler:

I'm in.

Lou Adler:

I live in Laguna Beach, California.

Guest:

Oh, wow.

Guest:

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

I've only been to California once, but I really enjoyed it.

Lou Adler:

I've been to Edmonton once and I'm not going back.

Lou Adler:

I don't blame you.

Guest:

I don't blame you.

Guest:

It's very nice in the summer.

Guest:

But yeah, Laguna Beach.

Guest:

I would, I would stay there too.

Lou Adler:

I remember going up there.

Lou Adler:

I think it was in July and I was on a camping trip with my family and it was real windy going there and you can kind of see it from the US border.

Lou Adler:

You can see these little buildings out in the distance 200 miles away and the wind was blowing and it doesn't.

Lou Adler:

It was near Banff so it was nice.

Lou Adler:

So I'm teasing, but it was nice?

Guest:

Yes, yes.

Guest:

Banff and Jasper are beautiful.

Guest:

I get there as often as we can.

Guest:

Unfortunately it's never enough.

Guest:

But yeah, it is gorgeous and we're kind of world renowned for that.

Guest:

But yeah, Edmonton's about.

Guest:

It's quite a ways away.

Guest:

It's about 200 miles from there.

Lou Adler:

I didn't really.

Lou Adler:

200 miles is the commute.

Guest:

Yeah, it pretty much is a commute because everything around here is far.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Like the closest big city for us is 150 miles away.

Lou Adler:

I thought Edmonton was a big city.

Guest:

It is a big city.

Guest:

That's right.

Guest:

But if the next big city is called Calgary, I don't know if you've been there.

Lou Adler:

Sure.

Lou Adler:

Yeah, I think I've been there too.

Guest:

Right?

Guest:

Yeah, yeah.

Guest:

And it's.

Guest:

Yeah, it's about 150 miles and a lot of business is kind of done between there.

Guest:

So if you're in business development or sales, you've.

Guest:

You've made that drive a thousand times.

Guest:

But it's just.

Guest:

You get used to driving a long way to go anywhere when you live here.

Guest:

But yeah, no, Lou, I wanted to get into it because one of the things that really blew my mind with your book is that in the US alone companies are losing over a trillion dollars a year in people turning over and people having voluntary turnover.

Guest:

That figure blew my mind.

Guest:

A trillion dollars a year.

Lou Adler:

Did I mention that number?

Lou Adler:

Did you mention that number?

Guest:

It was in your book.

Guest:

I read it in the book.

Lou Adler:

I think.

Lou Adler:

I don't know that that's what the number that I came up with said.

Lou Adler:

What I thought I said to get to the trillion.

Lou Adler:

ong about this, is that since:

Lou Adler:

About that.

Lou Adler:

So you multiply 20 times 25 billion, you get close to half a trillion dollars in HR related expenses.

Lou Adler:

And when you look at that, it doesn't appear that when you look at employee engagement and turnover at the Global macro level.

Lou Adler:

Not much has changed.

Lou Adler:

Companies still complain about what they've complained about 25 years ago.

Lou Adler:

So I kind of remember half now.

Lou Adler:

It could be you pointed out something else that I said.

Lou Adler:

But that's the number that sticks in my mind as half a trillion dollars spent on HR related hiring issues and largely job postings and technology.

Lou Adler:

And yet none of it really works.

Lou Adler:

All it does is manages the tens of thousands of people who shouldn't have applied and sending them emails to say you didn't get the job.

Lou Adler:

There's a lot of money in that.

Lou Adler:

Maybe 10% of that is actually useful and say, hey, we're actually hiring better people as a result.

Lou Adler:

But it gets lost in the noise.

Guest:

Yeah, I'll have to double check my figure.

Guest:

But yeah, either way, whatever you want to call it, half a trillion or a trillion dollars, it's a ridiculous sum of needlessly spent money.

Lou Adler:

Well, that's definitely true.

Lou Adler:

No question.

Guest:

And I think one of the things that was really interesting about your performance based hiring system is that I kind of feel like if people were to take that approach, it could alleviate a lot of that waste.

Lou Adler:

Let me give a story and then you can kind of so people understand what it is.

Lou Adler:

So I want to say this has happened in the early 90s, mid-90s, I was giving a presentation to a business group and I said, you only need to ask two questions to determine if a candidate's competent or not.

Lou Adler:

And the business were about 20 or 30 CEOs from small companies about two to three weeks later.

Lou Adler:

And at the time I was a recruiter, so my marketing technique as a recruiter and I lucked out on finding this idea.

Lou Adler:

I started speaking to business groups around the country of CEOs of companies that were say 10 million to 250 million and I'd get there and I present a two or three hour presentation on how to do performance based hiring.

Lou Adler:

I don't think I called it that at the time, but the same thing.

Lou Adler:

So about three or four weeks later after this one presentation, CEO calls and says, Lou, what were those two questions you said about that meeting last month?

Lou Adler:

And I said, well, the two questions don't matter.

Lou Adler:

What are you looking for?

Lou Adler:

He said, well, it doesn't matter, just tell me the two questions.

Lou Adler:

I said, the two questions are absolutely useless unless you tell me what you're looking for.

Lou Adler:

I'm looking for a VP Operations.

Lou Adler:

I said, well, I have to know a little bit about the job before the two questions are meaningful.

Lou Adler:

He said, I don't have time Just give me the two questions.

Lou Adler:

And he was getting angry.

Lou Adler:

But I was a recruiter at the time, so if he was looking for a VP operations for a company, and it was at his offices or his company where this meeting was.

Lou Adler:

So I said, I gotta spend at least an hour to understand the job because I don't have time.

Lou Adler:

Just tell me the two questions.

Lou Adler:

He was getting real aggravated.

Lou Adler:

But the two questions, which I'll give you in a minute, don't make any sense unless you know the job.

Lou Adler:

So I said, why are you so insistent on these two questions?

Lou Adler:

I need to know the job.

Lou Adler:

He said, because the candidates in the front office.

Lou Adler:

I said, ah, now I understand.

Lou Adler:

I said, okay.

Lou Adler:

I said, and I just kind of.

Lou Adler:

Tim, tell me a little bit about VP operations.

Lou Adler:

He had a company making manufactured parts, largely wood furniture and related.

Lou Adler:

So I said, okay, here's what you're going to do.

Lou Adler:

Do not go in your office.

Lou Adler:

You're looking for a VP operations, go in your factory.

Lou Adler:

And if you're walking through the factory, stop at every place you have a problem.

Lou Adler:

And I kind of remember because we took a tour of his factory, I said, I know one of the things is you have a lot of scrap, a lot of wood scrap, and it was piled up.

Lou Adler:

So whether that's the first stop or the third stop doesn't matter.

Lou Adler:

But go to those kinds of situations and point out the problem.

Lou Adler:

We have a lot of scrap and it's probably costing us 10 to 15%.

Lou Adler:

We got to reduce it by 75% so it's less than 2% of total expenditures, whatever that is.

Lou Adler:

Then ask the candidate two questions.

Lou Adler:

Question one is, if you were to get this job, how would you solve that problem?

Lou Adler:

Eliminating the scrap.

Lou Adler:

And you're not listening to the actual answer.

Lou Adler:

It's the methodology in which the person would solve the problem.

Lou Adler:

I got to understand the root cause.

Lou Adler:

I got to do this.

Lou Adler:

I got to talk to this, got to talk to vet whatever it is they go through that issue.

Lou Adler:

The second question is, what have you done that's most comparable solving problems like that and spend 10 or 15 minutes on the answer to that.

Lou Adler:

How did you do it?

Lou Adler:

Why'd you do it?

Lou Adler:

How'd you get chosen?

Lou Adler:

What was the problem?

Lou Adler:

What were the results?

Lou Adler:

Walk me through, step by step, how you.

Lou Adler:

You went from the problem to the solution.

Lou Adler:

Now go around the factory and do that three or four more times with all the other big problems.

Lou Adler:

I had a labor problem, had a material procurement problem, had a scrap problem, had a warehouse layout problem.

Lou Adler:

It doesn't Matter what the problems are.

Lou Adler:

Ask those two questions and I don't care.

Lou Adler:

The order doesn't matter.

Lou Adler:

Have you ever solved a problem like that?

Lou Adler:

Tell me through how would you solve this problem?

Lou Adler:

You can ask either or it doesn't matter.

Lou Adler:

Maybe switch them both.

Lou Adler:

Now call me.

Lou Adler:

And this was like:

Lou Adler:

He said I'm seeing him here.

Lou Adler:

I said don't call me this afternoon when you're done.

Lou Adler:

So he calls me about three or four in the afternoon.

Lou Adler:

He said great questions, great.

Lou Adler:

I had that guy.

Lou Adler:

The candidate was a great consultant.

Lou Adler:

He had an idea to figure out every single problem.

Lou Adler:

But when I asked him what he has done that's most comparable, he was like nothing.

Lou Adler:

He was superficial.

Lou Adler:

He didn't really ever do it.

Lou Adler:

He was a good talker, good consultant but he couldn't work in a factory like that with a couple hundred people.

Lou Adler:

Lou, do you want to do the search for the VP operations?

Lou Adler:

Come on up tomorrow and we'll do it.

Lou Adler:

So the idea is you define the work as a series of performance objectives.

Lou Adler:

That factory, it was a five or six things and you asked two questions.

Lou Adler:

Have you ever done anything like that?

Lou Adler:

Spend 10 or 15 minutes getting the answer.

Lou Adler:

How would you solve it?

Lou Adler:

Spend a two to three minutes to see if the person has the methodology in which to think about a solution, not the solution itself.

Lou Adler:

Because they don't have enough information to tell you how to do it.

Lou Adler:

They have to tell you how they would go about figuring out how to do it.

Lou Adler:

And that's a huge difference.

Lou Adler:

This guy aced the course with just you know, in a 10 minute, 15 minute phone call on how to do it.

Lou Adler:

Then he introduced us to a couple other CEOs that he knows and we have half a dozen more search assignments using that same methodology.

Lou Adler:

But it's digging deep into the company.

Lou Adler:

The candidates accomplishments related to real job needs.

Lou Adler:

Asking what have you done that's comparable?

Lou Adler:

How would you do it if you were to get the job to get a thinking skills?

Lou Adler:

You do that three or four times for different companies over different periods of time and you got a pretty good track record.

Lou Adler:

The candidates capable or not of doing the work.

Lou Adler:

But most hiring managers don't know what the work is.

Lou Adler:

What does this person need to do to be successful even if you're a CEO?

Lou Adler:

Oh, I need a new marketing person.

Lou Adler:

Well, what do you want the marketing person to do?

Lou Adler:

I don't know one.

Lou Adler:

Yes you do.

Lou Adler:

You want the person to grow your business 3x in two years.

Lou Adler:

That's what you wanted to do.

Lou Adler:

So has they ever done something like that?

Lou Adler:

If not, don't hire the person.

Lou Adler:

I mean, it's, it's defining the work that's key to being a good hiring manager.

Lou Adler:

As a recruiter.

Lou Adler:

Now candidates have to see that work as a career move.

Lou Adler:

Do you want to turn this factory around?

Lou Adler:

No, I want more money.

Lou Adler:

Well, that's.

Lou Adler:

No, you want to turn the factory around.

Lou Adler:

And if you turn a factory, you'll get more money a year from now.

Lou Adler:

You get decent money, the start date, but you'll get real money by having that major accomplishment a year or two years down the road.

Lou Adler:

So that's everything I talk about in that book in a nutshell.

Guest:

Yes.

Guest:

Yes.

Guest:

Well, there's so much in there.

Guest:

Like, first off, just let me like, let the listeners know there's no way that in this hour that we're going to get to spend together that you could grasp even a portion of what is in the book.

Guest:

So if you enjoy this conversation, you definitely need to go and pick up higher with your head.

Guest:

I got mine off Amazon.

Guest:

You guys can get it kind of wherever you want.

Guest:

But I would highly recommend that if you enjoy this conversation that you pick up the book.

Guest:

Because no matter how, how many questions I ask, Lou, there's no way that we could pack in, you know, nine hours of book into this one hour conversation.

Lou Adler:

I talk fast, we'll get four hours anyway.

Guest:

But no, it's, it really is a manual on how to set up a great HR programming organization.

Guest:

So let me just say that you laid it out really well, Lou.

Guest:

It's awesome.

Guest:

It's a great book and I would highly recommend it.

Guest:

But you know, one of the things that you talked about in the book is that when you structure a job, a lot of companies, they structure it with the requirements first, like the schooling, the dollar amount, things like that, and then get into the job description after.

Guest:

But in your recommendation, you should really start with what is the job?

Guest:

You should sell the job first.

Guest:

Can we get into that?

Lou Adler:

Well, the thing is, when you think about hiring as a system, not an interview and not a job description.

Lou Adler:

So, and I think that's the difference is looking at the whole picture from the moment a job wreck is defined to the persons hired until they work on the job.

Lou Adler:

So you think about it.

Lou Adler:

And I have this philosophy, what I call win win hiring.

Lou Adler:

And the win win hiring outcome means you want to hire a person.

Lou Adler:

So after the first year, that candidate says, I'm so glad I took this job.

Lou Adler:

It was a good career move.

Lou Adler:

And that company says, we're so glad we hired you.

Lou Adler:

You a great candidate and we hope you stay a couple more years.

Guest:

Yes.

Lou Adler:

Achieving that is a lot different than hiring for day one.

Lou Adler:

And so many companies hire for day one.

Lou Adler:

You have to have 10 years experience.

Lou Adler:

Like this guy even said, I want a guy with 15 years experience, a manufacturing background, master's degree so you can understand finance and accounting and engineering degree.

Lou Adler:

So he says, manufacturing results oriented, good communication skills.

Lou Adler:

And I look at people and say, no, that's not a job description.

Lou Adler:

That's a person description.

Lou Adler:

What do you want the person to do?

Lou Adler:

What do you mean?

Lou Adler:

Yeah, what do they have to do?

Lou Adler:

Well, they got to turn around the factory, they got to implement a new cost system, they got to design a new app that allows companies to pay their bills quickly or whatever it is.

Lou Adler:

People do stuff.

Lou Adler:

And once you know what people do, you can just interview them.

Lou Adler:

You've ever done this before?

Lou Adler:

Tell me about it.

Lou Adler:

And if that is exciting, you can now recruit the person.

Lou Adler:

So I think companies think, oh, I got to have a job description because it's legally required.

Lou Adler:

I got to interview candidates and I got to post the job.

Lou Adler:

Well, what you're already doing is you're focusing on stuff that doesn't predict success.

Lou Adler:

You're focusing on stuff that gets someone hired for day one.

Lou Adler:

And I think that's issues too much.

Lou Adler:

Day one, thinking, candidates think, what do I get in the start date?

Lou Adler:

I get a compensation package, I get a location, I get a title.

Lou Adler:

And I relieve the pain of having no job or a crummy job.

Lou Adler:

Yeah, but that lasts three, six weeks.

Lou Adler:

And this is a crummy job.

Lou Adler:

Just like I had last time.

Lou Adler:

I want to change again.

Lou Adler:

So you think about it long term, what drives employees success long term, it's the work they do, it's people they do it with.

Lou Adler:

And if you're motivated to do that work, you're going to do better.

Lou Adler:

If you're not motivated to do it, you're gonna.

Lou Adler:

It doesn't matter how competent you are.

Lou Adler:

I don't want to do that work.

Lou Adler:

I mean, I was motivated to work in this company that I was at 32 years old.

Lou Adler:

I liked that job.

Lou Adler:

I didn't like the boss when he, the group president, when he showed up, it was the suckiest job in the world.

Lou Adler:

Yeah, it took me two, three days to forget about him and go back to do what I like to do.

Lou Adler:

So my motivation ebbed and flowed.

Lou Adler:

When he wasn't there, it was highly motivated.

Lou Adler:

When he was there, I was a crappy employee.

Lou Adler:

They just didn't want to be around him.

Lou Adler:

So a lot of that stuff is when you define the work itself, you have a chance to attract people who want to do that work.

Lou Adler:

Then the assessment process and the recruiting process is, yeah, Kelly, I know we got to pay you a competitive wage.

Lou Adler:

But more important is that is all this other stuff that you're going to be doing during the year that will drive you to success.

Lou Adler:

And it's making that picture of day one and year one in some level of combination that's required.

Lou Adler:

And that's why I contend that a job description listing skills, experience and competencies.

Lou Adler:

Not a job description, that's a person description.

Lou Adler:

I tell managers, forget the person, talk about the job.

Lou Adler:

I want some of the results oriented.

Lou Adler:

No, that's a person.

Lou Adler:

What's the job?

Lou Adler:

We'll find someone who wants to do that job and that making that separation is really the key to hiring success.

Guest:

One of the concepts that, I'll be honest, I laughed.

Guest:

I laughed out loud when you, when you brought up the 90 day wonder concept.

Guest:

The 90 days.

Guest:

And then you wonder why you hired them.

Lou Adler:

Right.

Guest:

I got a kick out of that.

Guest:

And, you know, I imagine that happens quite a bit.

Guest:

And I think, you know, one of the reasons that you kind of said that that does tend to happen a lot is that most interviews are happening way too quick.

Guest:

We're making a hiring decision way, way too quick.

Guest:

Can we chat about, you know, panel interviews and what a proper hiring process should look like?

Lou Adler:

Well, that's the whole book, but the idea, let's just take the decision itself.

Lou Adler:

You're talking to someone whom you don't know.

Lou Adler:

That person, if you're a hiring manager, will have a huge impact on your personal success.

Lou Adler:

But you, the hiring manager, are thinking, oh, I got to get this hired quickly.

Lou Adler:

I'm doing all this extra work, I can't do it.

Lou Adler:

I'm staying late.

Lou Adler:

So you kind of have a pain of not having that position filled.

Lou Adler:

So if you meet someone who's kind of nice and pleasant and seems okay and has good skills, I got to close this deal.

Lou Adler:

So you're willing to make a long term decision in an hour to two hours.

Lou Adler:

The candidate, on the other hand, has a crappy job or unemployed.

Lou Adler:

They applied to the job, they got certain skills, they went through some interviewing class, they present themselves well.

Lou Adler:

They have a pain point too.

Lou Adler:

My pain is I've got a long drive or I'm not making paid.

Lou Adler:

I got mortgage to pay, I got the family, I got these pressures.

Lou Adler:

So everybody is under this Short term pressure to make a decision and it's usually 90 days later it was the wrong decision.

Lou Adler:

That's the 90 day wonder candidates have it.

Lou Adler:

Why did I take this job?

Lou Adler:

It's because you're pressured to you avoiding pain is a more important thing in terms of the decision making than making a long term career decision.

Lou Adler:

Same thing on a hiring manager.

Lou Adler:

Everybody's making these short term decisions.

Lou Adler:

Now the long term decision is.

Lou Adler:

Let's define the work.

Lou Adler:

Let's interview a candidate.

Lou Adler:

First time I want to see if you're reasonably qualified.

Lou Adler:

Maybe on video, maybe another one on video.

Lou Adler:

But at some point I'm going to meet you in person.

Lou Adler:

You got to meet some other people in person.

Lou Adler:

So for a candidate it could be 4 to 6 or 8 hours.

Lou Adler:

For a company it should be 4 to 6 or 8 or 10 hours.

Lou Adler:

Investment in a stranger.

Lou Adler:

I've had one client who did that and I give him a lot of credit.

Lou Adler:

He said no, this was president of a company, it was a high tech company up in the Silicon Valley area.

Lou Adler:

But I remember place a lot of people with him.

Lou Adler:

He said this is a big decision for me.

Lou Adler:

My whole company is on the line.

Lou Adler:

I'm going to spend time with these people.

Lou Adler:

He, he proactively spent time.

Lou Adler:

He met the person on the phone.

Lou Adler:

Well of course in that and we didn't do so.

Lou Adler:

He certainly met the person for two or three hours.

Lou Adler:

Probably took him out to lunch, decided he wanted to go forward.

Lou Adler:

He would meet the person again, meet with the team, lead a panel, interview, lead debriefing sessions and then he would meet the person and even sometimes the person's wife for dinner before he made the final offer.

Lou Adler:

But this was a president of a company hiring a number two for a company.

Lou Adler:

And it was important to him.

Lou Adler:

I've seen people.

Lou Adler:

So to me it's how do you spread that out?

Lou Adler:

Now on the other hand, you got a candidate who's real good, they got to make a decision next week.

Lou Adler:

Well now all of a sudden you got the real pressures of business.

Lou Adler:

To me, if I'm a hiring manager hiring a senior, let's say a first level manager hiring a technical person, you got to spend two or three hours with that candidate.

Lou Adler:

Other people spend a couple hours interviewing the candidate.

Lou Adler:

You do the debriefing session, you do a reference check, you do some kind of personality and IQ testing, medical, all that other stuff you have to do.

Lou Adler:

So to me that's the minimum.

Lou Adler:

You should do it too important to make a decision.

Lou Adler:

Somebody you know for an hourly wage, maybe A little bit less.

Lou Adler:

I mean it's, this is a business decision.

Lou Adler:

You're spending for a company.

Lou Adler:

Let's assume average salary for a three year staff person, engineer, marketing person.

Lou Adler:

What is 100, 150,000 overhead?

Lou Adler:

You're talking $200,000 a year in expense for that person.

Lou Adler:

How can you spend an hour to two hours to make that decision?

Lou Adler:

I mean, you just look at it money wise.

Lou Adler:

That's a big decision.

Lou Adler:

And if the person stays two to three years, you're talking about a half a million dollars.

Lou Adler:

And the impact that person can make is probably three to five times that.

Lou Adler:

And you're going to spend, you're going to make a decision that's a million dollar decision in an hour and a half.

Lou Adler:

Give me a break.

Lou Adler:

I mean, I don't think people see it that way.

Guest:

No, no, you're absolutely right.

Guest:

They don't.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Like they're looking at it as we just need to get this position filled.

Guest:

And you're right.

Guest:

It's like it doesn't take much more time, but just give that little bit more time because the long term costs are astronomical compared to what that cost is to do your due diligence up front.

Lou Adler:

Well, I think that's where AI can help.

Lou Adler:

I, my focus is spend more time with fewer people.

Lou Adler:

If you got to spend 20 people in an hour each, that's 20 hours.

Lou Adler:

But if you have four people, that's five hours each and you're in the game and there's two of them, you're going to spend six hours or so.

Lou Adler:

It's spending more time with fewer people is really the key.

Lou Adler:

And that's where I think AI can really be effective here.

Lou Adler:

It can narrow the pool very, very quickly.

Lou Adler:

And then you can spend more time with fewer people.

Guest:

Yes.

Guest:

And you advocate for that in the book and you chat about how an ideal candidate search should really be narrowed down via phone to about three candidates that you're ultimately going to go through that deep dive interview with.

Guest:

But right now, like just, I'm not an HR background, how many people does a company typically interview for a position?

Guest:

Is it quite a bit more than three?

Lou Adler:

Well, let's say this.

Lou Adler:

Do they actually interview?

Lou Adler:

Maybe, but they're usually disappointed.

Lou Adler:

But they probably interview 6 to 8 or 10 or 15.

Lou Adler:

I got all these resumes coming in.

Lou Adler:

How do I do it?

Lou Adler:

So I would say that's five to six.

Lou Adler:

But even some of those are a waste of time.

Lou Adler:

But there's a lot of wasted time in hiring, going through all these thousands of people who Applied and just to give you a general sense, and this is old data, this is pre Covid data, but I was talking with companies that manage, they're called applicant tracking systems.

Lou Adler:

When I added three or four numbers up together, it was like 60 to 70 million candidates who have applied over year period.

Lou Adler:

Only 6 to 700,000 got a job offer.

Lou Adler:

That's 1%, 1% of the people.

Lou Adler:

Now it's less than that.

Lou Adler:

So I'm going to say it's 0.5% of people who apply get a job and maybe 2 to 3% get interviewed.

Lou Adler:

That's a lot.

Lou Adler:

97% of people who apply and maybe there's another 2% there that have some value to the company.

Lou Adler:

So you talk to 95% of people apply is just an overhead expense of.

Lou Adler:

And but job boards make all that money because they make money based on all these people who apply.

Lou Adler:

So their business is now we want more people to apply, not less.

Lou Adler:

I actually proposed that to LinkedIn.

Lou Adler:

No, don't let people apply.

Lou Adler:

Give people only five jobs a week they can apply to or maybe five a day, but.

Lou Adler:

And they guarantee that they'll be interviewed.

Lou Adler:

That's all they can do is they have to select X number or small number.

Lou Adler:

But the guarantee is they will be talked to.

Lou Adler:

So now the company will be more deliberate and the candidate will be more deliberate.

Lou Adler:

But the folks at LinkedIn said that's not our model.

Lou Adler:

We want to sell more postings, not fewer postings.

Lou Adler:

So it didn't make economic sense to them.

Lou Adler:

It just made good logic, business sense for hiring better people.

Lou Adler:

But their game was we're going to sell postings and they got to give them credit.

Lou Adler:

They sold a lot of postings, make a lot of money.

Guest:

I would say LinkedIn is probably the number one job posting board in the world at this point.

Lou Adler:

No, no, indeed.

Lou Adler:

Now there's others.

Lou Adler:

Indeed is much bigger.

Guest:

Is it bigger?

Lou Adler:

Hey, it doesn't matter.

Lou Adler:

They both, well, indeed struggling because people realize maybe we shouldn't be posting so much.

Lou Adler:

So I mean, I think people are starting to think that that is not an efficient methodology to hire people.

Guest:

And I want to spend some time on that because you have the 40, 40, 20 rule, right?

Guest:

And in the 40, 40, 20 you're essentially saying networking, direct reach out and then only 20% should be job advertising.

Guest:

And I feel like right now there's a lot more people putting job posts up than doing that networking in the direct reach out.

Lou Adler:

Well, the idea on that is when I'm talking to recruiters, I say, here's how you should spend your time.

Lou Adler:

I've actually flipped that to say it should be 40, 50, 40, 10.

Lou Adler:

So 50% on networking if you're a recruiter.

Lou Adler:

When I was a recruiter I was well networked.

Lou Adler:

I knew but it was Rolodex was the old maybe had a database, but neither here nor there.

Lou Adler:

But if you really want to hire good people, you have to network with them and you got to have a deep network of candidates.

Lou Adler:

40% is direct sourcing.

Lou Adler:

You kind of do all the secret sourcing and achiever terms and send emails out.

Lou Adler:

And 10% is on postings in my search firm and it wasn't huge, but over a 20 year period replaced about a thousand or twelve hundred people.

Lou Adler:

Less than 2% were off postings.

Lou Adler:

We just said, nah, we're not going to get it.

Lou Adler:

We develop great networking capability and tools to network with people.

Lou Adler:

And so I'm in the old fashioned, it's a high touch approach to recruiting, not a high tech approach.

Lou Adler:

And I think a lot of people are starting to think that, hey, you know, LinkedIn is a network of a billion people, not just a database.

Lou Adler:

And if it's a database, you just send emails to everybody.

Lou Adler:

But if it's a network, you said, who do I know can give me this person?

Lou Adler:

I'm looking for a project manager in this area.

Lou Adler:

Well, I know a VP marketing might know this person.

Lou Adler:

So you start thinking if you develop a network over six months to a year, two years, you can get to candidates very quickly.

Lou Adler:

Hey Kelly, you know you've.

Lou Adler:

I know three months ago you talked to somebody who's a financial manager.

Lou Adler:

What is that person looking?

Lou Adler:

Well, let me give you that person's name.

Lou Adler:

I know you talk to someone on a marketing thing.

Lou Adler:

Can I reach out to that person?

Lou Adler:

You have a network, I have a network.

Lou Adler:

If you can tap into those people's network.

Lou Adler:

Oh yeah, I just, somebody called me a month ago or three weeks ago, might be looking for a job.

Lou Adler:

All of a sudden you start dealing with what I want to call week connections, which is your network's first degree connections.

Lou Adler:

They're your second degree connections.

Lou Adler:

But you now converted a stranger to somewhat of an acquaintance.

Lou Adler:

And that changes the whole dynamics of how you hire.

Lou Adler:

In an interview, everybody's phony.

Lou Adler:

You know, you can't, you can't know a person in an hour interview, hiring manager or the candidate.

Lou Adler:

So to break through that veneer of superficiality, you gotta either spend time or get that person through an indirect way.

Lou Adler:

Long answer to the idea of how do you develop A sourcing strategy.

Lou Adler:

But it starts by spending time in a high touch mode versus just a high tech mode.

Guest:

And that to me was kind of where I started to really resonate with it.

Guest:

Because, you know, I'm in business development.

Guest:

I have been for a long, long time.

Guest:

And the key with business development in my mind has always been to get ahead of the need.

Guest:

I've always followed an active marketing process where I reach out to people way ahead of when they're looking, so that when they are looking for whatever business I'm marketing, they already know me.

Guest:

They've heard of the company, they've heard of me, We've probably even met once before.

Guest:

And so you kind of skip that whole process where instead of them having to go and search for something, they already know that they can reach out to Kelly Kennedy for XYZ need and I can potentially help them.

Guest:

And I kind of feel like the approach that you have taken to HR is very similar.

Guest:

It's very much that get ahead of the need, let people know or get to know people ahead so that when you do have that need, you already know who to reach out to.

Lou Adler:

I think you're 100% correct.

Lou Adler:

You hit it on the nail on the head.

Lou Adler:

It's building a pipeline of relationships, whether you're on the hiring side or the company or the candidate side.

Lou Adler:

And I know candidates, they know that, hey, I'm going to get my next job through networking.

Lou Adler:

So they're working in groups, they're, they're part of professional societies, et cetera, et cetera.

Lou Adler:

They just look at that, hey, my career is not this job.

Lou Adler:

It's a sequence of jobs.

Lou Adler:

And these people whom I work with in the or I know, in this outside group or this organization are going to help me get there.

Lou Adler:

You don't know where it's going to be, but you've developed and planted those seeds long before you actually have the need.

Lou Adler:

And I'm going to contend that's the hidden job market.

Lou Adler:

A lot of candidates get hired that way and people say, no, there's no hidden job market.

Lou Adler:

I say, well, they don't know what they're talking about because there is a hidden job market.

Lou Adler:

They just don't know about it, so they think it doesn't exist.

Lou Adler:

But literally speaking, if you think about 20% of the workforce turns over pretty quickly because of job boards, 80% doesn't turn over.

Lou Adler:

Probably, let's say half of those people, if they change jobs, it's internal mobility.

Lou Adler:

Another half of those people because they work for somebody in the past and that person.

Lou Adler:

Hey, Kelly, I got this opportunity.

Lou Adler:

I'm looking for a vp Business Development.

Lou Adler:

You open the chat.

Lou Adler:

So a lot of those things take place under the hood.

Lou Adler:

You can't say it's.

Lou Adler:

Maybe it's hidden, but it's real.

Lou Adler:

You just can't say.

Lou Adler:

You just.

Lou Adler:

The public doesn't know about it, but a lot of jobs are filled that way.

Guest:

Yeah, like it's just not public.

Guest:

That's all.

Guest:

You're kind of saying people are looking, they're just not going to necessarily throw up a post because you said they're not really that effective.

Guest:

And maybe they don't want to weed through a thousand people to find the right person.

Guest:

Maybe they just want to go directly to a few highly qualified people.

Lou Adler:

Yeah.

Lou Adler:

If you're a good person, you don't necessarily.

Lou Adler:

If I worked for you three years ago, Kelly, and I was your VP of accounting and I tell you, hey, Kelly, things are starting to work out and aren't working out here, just my company.

Lou Adler:

Keep your eyes and ears open.

Lou Adler:

So you might know something three to six months from now.

Lou Adler:

I mean, people kind of.

Lou Adler:

That happens all the time.

Lou Adler:

Good people know what's going on.

Lou Adler:

Happens constantly.

Lou Adler:

And you just got to figure out, hey, the public market is the most inefficient transactional market there is.

Lou Adler:

And you got to not.

Lou Adler:

Don't be surprised if you get a job.

Lou Adler:

It's not very satisfying.

Lou Adler:

I mean, Gallup comes up with studies all the time on employee engagement.

Lou Adler:

I mean, you just look at employee engagement, United States.

Lou Adler:

It averages fully employed people who are fully engaged is about a third of the total workforce.

Lou Adler:

But two thirds are unengaged, one third is totally unengaged and couldn't care.

Lou Adler:

They're.

Lou Adler:

One third is margin, they just do their job.

Lou Adler:

Another third is fully engaged.

Lou Adler:

So it's.

Lou Adler:

Because that's pretty clear at the macro level.

Lou Adler:

It's pretty clear that most people are taking jobs for the wrong reasons.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

And obviously no company wants people working for them that aren't engaged.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

Like ideally, we want people who love what they do, who are doing what they love to do.

Guest:

Because that mix is going to give you the best performance.

Guest:

You're going to get the best results.

Guest:

In your opinion, how can we do more of that?

Guest:

How do we pair the right people with the right jobs?

Guest:

Because to me, you're right.

Guest:

Like that's an epidemic of people getting in the way.

Lou Adler:

It starts by again.

Lou Adler:

So I have this philosophy.

Lou Adler:

I was one of the first recruiters to give a one year guarantee.

Lou Adler:

And the Only way that works is by being motivated to do that work.

Lou Adler:

So in the job description, if you don't define the work itself, it's random luck.

Lou Adler:

Candidates say, oh, I want to do that work, I want to do that work.

Lou Adler:

Oh, I didn't know it was at work.

Lou Adler:

So a lot of times when a candidate takes a job, is not interested in the work, they become unengaged pretty quickly.

Lou Adler:

And you know that on the day one.

Lou Adler:

And they have.

Lou Adler:

So what I do is I say, okay, walk me through this job.

Lou Adler:

What does this person need to do to be successful?

Lou Adler:

And in that factory story I gave, it was turning around an underperforming manufacturing facility that required material control systems, cost systems, labor systems, a host of things.

Lou Adler:

So when I interview a candidate and I say, tell me about what you've accomplished, Kelly, that's most related to turning this factory around.

Lou Adler:

Have you ever done work where you put in a new logistics system or a new labor system or new employee or material control system?

Lou Adler:

And I'm listening to their answers and I said, kelly, where did you go the extra mile in job A?

Lou Adler:

Where'd you go the extra mile?

Lou Adler:

Where'd you decide?

Lou Adler:

What kind of work did you like the most?

Lou Adler:

What kind of work did you like the least?

Lou Adler:

Would you.

Lou Adler:

So over an hour, hour and a half.

Lou Adler:

A lot of the questions I ask is trying to understand where this person went the extra mile, took the initiative, did work without being prompted.

Lou Adler:

And I.

Lou Adler:

So in the first interview I got a sense of this.

Lou Adler:

In the second interview I got a reinforcing the same issues.

Lou Adler:

So I now know what a candidate would, what this drives this candidate to excel at that person's intrinsic motivation.

Lou Adler:

I call that's, to me, that's the key to hiring success.

Lou Adler:

Am I gonna, are you gonna do work that you find intrinsically motivated in this job?

Lou Adler:

So now I say, oh, Kelly, in this job you're going to be doing this, this, and this at least a third of the time, which is the stuff you love to do.

Lou Adler:

You're going to be developing people, coaching people, and you're going to install these new state of the art manufacturing systems.

Lou Adler:

Oh, yeah, that's great.

Lou Adler:

Well, then when you get there, that's exactly what it is, because I define that work when I talk to the hiring manager.

Lou Adler:

So a lot of it is digging deep into the candidate's motivation.

Lou Adler:

But most candidates take jobs.

Lou Adler:

And I ask this question, I call you up, Kelly, open the chat.

Lou Adler:

I just took another job three months ago, not ready to leave.

Lou Adler:

And I say, is it your dream job?

Lou Adler:

You say, what's a dream job?

Lou Adler:

I said, do you enjoy going in every day?

Lou Adler:

Is it really work you want to do?

Lou Adler:

Well, if it's not a dream job, you've made the wrong choice.

Lou Adler:

And people always make.

Lou Adler:

Nobody thought about that.

Lou Adler:

The candidates don't think about it.

Lou Adler:

The companies don't think about it.

Lou Adler:

So I'm trying to set up a program, hopefully you Gallup involved, which has got a chance anyway, to really focus on measuring engagement before you make the offer.

Lou Adler:

And.

Lou Adler:

But that's our whole methodology is we really focus on intrinsic motivation to excel.

Lou Adler:

Without that, you get a good worker, but they're not motivated.

Lou Adler:

You get a above average worker who's motivated.

Lou Adler:

That person can be a star.

Guest:

Yeah, that's it.

Guest:

Totally.

Guest:

It's like if you're engaged in what you do.

Guest:

I know for me, like, if I'm loving the products that I'm working with and the companies I work with, it's so easy to deliver excellent results because.

Guest:

Right.

Lou Adler:

Boy, I can't wait to go to work.

Lou Adler:

This was fun.

Lou Adler:

I mean, even the guy, even the guy at Nvidia who Nvidia.

Lou Adler:

He just said this morning, how long do you work?

Lou Adler:

How often do you work?

Lou Adler:

Is it.

Lou Adler:

I work since the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.

Lou Adler:

And I love every minute of it.

Lou Adler:

I mean, it's.

Lou Adler:

That's.

Lou Adler:

Right now, that's a little bit hard.

Lou Adler:

I like what I do, but at 78, I get kind of tired by about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, so.

Guest:

Well, to me, that's what's so appealing about entrepreneurship.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

It was like once it was my baby in my world and the benefits were to me, my motivation to excel at what I did went through the roof in a way that I was never able to get in a job.

Lou Adler:

That's great.

Lou Adler:

No, that's good that you can find it, but it doesn't happen all the time.

Lou Adler:

I mean, part of being an entrepreneur is you got to get business too.

Lou Adler:

And sometimes getting business is marketing and selling as opposed to.

Lou Adler:

And a lot of engineering people who are technical like to do certain things technical.

Lou Adler:

But if someone's not paying you to do that, well, then you got to do stuff to get business.

Lou Adler:

And that might not be as fun as the business itself.

Lou Adler:

So there's a good side and a bad side to entrepreneurship.

Guest:

Yeah, no, I agree, I agree.

Guest:

But I also think, like, there's a bit of a challenge to it.

Guest:

And I think if most people just step up to the challenge, they'll surprise themselves.

Lou Adler:

Oh, yeah.

Lou Adler:

I Mean, if you like it, I totally.

Lou Adler:

So I did it.

Lou Adler:

I mean, I'm happy that I did it.

Lou Adler:

I don't like the.

Lou Adler:

I didn't like the.

Lou Adler:

I mean, in general, I didn't like this particular group president.

Lou Adler:

So that was the initial catalyst why I left corporate America.

Lou Adler:

I actually did like the work, but I didn't like the corporate politics.

Lou Adler:

And they were always there.

Lou Adler:

The pressure of quarterly returns, the pressure of this.

Lou Adler:

And there is politics.

Lou Adler:

I mean, I had to.

Lou Adler:

And I.

Lou Adler:

That I could have dealt with if I didn't.

Lou Adler:

But those two things I didn't like, one thing I could have dealt with, but I couldn't deal with both of them.

Guest:

So, Lou, you'd mentioned in the beginning that when you'd initially went into business for yourself, you know, you had initial success, then you kind of had some struggle.

Guest:

What was it that made you decide to jump back into entrepreneurship again for a second time?

Lou Adler:

No, no, I never left.

Lou Adler:

I was thinking of leaving after about six months.

Lou Adler:

I knew I had six months of money to pull this off, to become a recruiter.

Lou Adler:

By the six months, I said, nah, I might have still had some money left.

Lou Adler:

I'm thinking of going back to work in corporate.

Lou Adler:

But then a few deals came together.

Lou Adler:

I said, wow, this came together.

Lou Adler:

So I never really left.

Lou Adler:

I left and never went back.

Guest:

Okay.

Lou Adler:

Although I had opportunities to go back, I never did.

Guest:

Amazing.

Lou Adler:

I did, actually.

Lou Adler:

The Olympics were in LA in 84, and that was there.

Lou Adler:

And I had thoughts of maybe I could run one of the groups of the Olympics.

Lou Adler:

I kind of wanted to do that, and my wife said, don't do it.

Lou Adler:

And I had a couple people reaching out, and I kind of knew how to get the Uber off, who was the president.

Lou Adler:

I said I could probably run the whole basketball group or, you know, whatever it was.

Lou Adler:

I kind of wanted to do that.

Lou Adler:

And I was.

Lou Adler:

My wife said, don't do it.

Lou Adler:

And it was probably a wise decision.

Lou Adler:

I don't know.

Lou Adler:

It just.

Lou Adler:

I kind of wanted to get back into that.

Lou Adler:

pics being in LA and this was:

Lou Adler:

I'd been a recruiter a couple years and started meeting some people.

Lou Adler:

I said, you know, I think I could probably get a pretty big level job doing that.

Guest:

So you probably could, but I'm not sure you would have made the impact that you have made had you.

Guest:

Had you got.

Lou Adler:

Well, probably not.

Lou Adler:

Well, I'm not sure if I made a big impact.

Lou Adler:

Some days I wonder.

Lou Adler:

I mean, people said, what's your legacy?

Lou Adler:

And I'd say, At some level, I'm kind of disappointed because I think what I say actually works, but there's so few people who actually do it.

Lou Adler:

And yet I got a call last week from someone from Malaysia, said, lou, I built my whole search firm around you.

Lou Adler:

I met you 10 years ago, I took your certification, and I just want to thank you for that.

Lou Adler:

So I talked to her.

Lou Adler:

I get calls like that every now and then.

Lou Adler:

I get calls from candidates every now and then, says, Lou, thank you.

Lou Adler:

I just took your advice on this job.

Lou Adler:

So those are satisfying, but it's not scaled.

Lou Adler:

I mean, companies still spend stupid money on job postings and wonder why it's not going anywhere.

Lou Adler:

So who knows?

Lou Adler:

So at some level, I think the book, if people do it, it actually works.

Lou Adler:

It takes discipline to hire, and I don't think people would accept that, though.

Guest:

Yes, it takes discipline, but actually, really what you're selling is a process.

Guest:

And it's so funny because I look at business development, and business development, if you follow a process, can be extremely successful.

Guest:

Like, my whole company is built on a process that I follow consistently day over day, week over.

Guest:

If you follow a process consistently, you have success.

Guest:

Right.

Guest:

And that's the problem, is that most people simply don't follow process.

Lou Adler:

Yeah.

Lou Adler:

No, and it's hard.

Lou Adler:

And I think in high.

Lou Adler:

What's interesting.

Lou Adler:

So take that idea.

Lou Adler:

We have processes for manufacturing.

Lou Adler:

Six Sigma.

Lou Adler:

Back in the 70s, cars weren't very good.

Lou Adler:

I mean, they broke down.

Lou Adler:

If you were on a long trip, you'd expect the car to break down.

Lou Adler:

Now, every car is pretty good.

Lou Adler:

I mean, they all.

Lou Adler:

No, they don't break down.

Lou Adler:

They don't.

Lou Adler:

The engine doesn't go, flywheel doesn't.

Lou Adler:

Things don't happen.

Lou Adler:

Things work.

Lou Adler:

So manufacturing works.

Lou Adler:

You look at electronics, it all works.

Lou Adler:

You get to look at the price of a TV.

Lou Adler:

You can get a TV for mile mobile TV for less than $1,000.

Lou Adler:

in:

Lou Adler:

And the thousand dollars then is worth 10 or 15,000 today.

Lou Adler:

So you look at manufacturing processes, logistics.

Lou Adler:

I mean, I ordered something yesterday from Amazon.

Lou Adler:

It came this morning.

Lou Adler:

I mean, that's a huge process.

Lou Adler:

It's.

Lou Adler:

But so companies have invested tens of billions of dollars, if not trillions in manufacturing and logistics and business processes and all these types of things.

Lou Adler:

But in hr, we have a process that doesn't work and we keep on trying to do it, and we wonder why it doesn't work.

Lou Adler:

Even the fact that you have to question why it doesn't work says that the someone's making a mistake.

Lou Adler:

A good process works well.

Lou Adler:

Why do you keep on doing stuff that doesn't work?

Lou Adler:

And that's just a question, a rhetorical question.

Lou Adler:

But it's pretty obvious that hiring is a broken process and companies don't want to.

Lou Adler:

Well, they don't know how to fix it.

Guest:

Well, and I find it kind of funny because when I listen to your book and I picture who is implementing this book, in my mind it is an HR director, an HR manager, but a lot of companies don't have that and so they're really flying by the seat of their pants.

Guest:

Like I think a lot of companies that even we're talking to today are small teams.

Guest:

The CEO or the president probably still does the hiring at the company and has zero formal training on how to do it whatsoever.

Guest:

And I would imagine that a lot of that turnover really does come from the smaller businesses.

Lou Adler:

No, actually say.

Lou Adler:

I'd say no, really, it's the bigger company.

Lou Adler:

All big companies, once you get to, let's say a couple hundred employees, they have an HR person.

Lou Adler:

When they get to 500 employees, they've got a sophisticated person in HR and talent.

Lou Adler:

So every companies have that.

Lou Adler:

They just haven't.

Lou Adler:

They feel that the safe decision is posting a job.

Lou Adler:

They won't get fired by posting a job because that's when everyone else does it.

Lou Adler:

I got to manage the data, I got a legal compliance, I got all these things.

Lou Adler:

So their issue is I've got something, I know it doesn't work, but I don't have time to change it.

Lou Adler:

And I don't know how to change it because the law tells me I got to do it.

Lou Adler:

So it's a lot of excuse making in doing it.

Lou Adler:

But they follow the leader.

Lou Adler:

Well, if the leader does this, I'll.

Lou Adler:

Leader mean company A is bigger than me in their industry.

Lou Adler:

They do this, I'll do what they do.

Lou Adler:

So with a lot of the follow the leader not rethinking, hey, do I have a process that's like manufacturing?

Lou Adler:

My background happens to be engineering and manufacturing and cost controls.

Lou Adler:

So I just look at it as a business process.

Lou Adler:

But most talent leaders don't have that kind of wherewithal.

Lou Adler:

But when I talk to a talent leader who came up through operations and I Remember talking with minus 20 years ago, the woman was phenomenal.

Lou Adler:

She was, she was a leader at.

Lou Adler:

It might have been IBM, but she was remarkable.

Lou Adler:

And I just said, you know, you don't sound like a typical HR person.

Lou Adler:

She says, no, I ran the distribution center for the whole Midwest.

Lou Adler:

And they put me in HR to do this.

Lou Adler:

She thought of it, her natural background was process and systems and controls.

Lou Adler:

And it was just, of course you're going to do it this way.

Lou Adler:

But most HR people don't have that kind of experience or background, so they kind of fall into it and they kind of say, okay, here's what I got.

Lou Adler:

Let me make it slightly better and it's not slightly better and let me post more jobs, let me post them on more job postings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Lou Adler:

So it's interesting to see how that whole thing's evolved over time.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah.

Guest:

Well, it's kind of like fishing in a lake with no fish.

Guest:

It doesn't matter how often you put the rod or the lure in the water, you're never going to catch anything you want.

Lou Adler:

Well, that's a, that's a metaphor.

Lou Adler:

Yes, that's a Canadian metaphor.

Lou Adler:

I would probably say you're probably right.

Lou Adler:

It's like going, never mind, I'm not going to get into any other types of metaphors.

Guest:

No, that's all good.

Guest:

You know, one of the things you talk about in the book a lot is about bias, about hiring bias or first perceptions.

Guest:

And you mentioned that we need to do better at tabling our initial impressions and coming back to them after.

Guest:

Can we speak to that a little bit?

Lou Adler:

While I say there's a lot of short term thinking going on in hiring, part of that is due to bias.

Lou Adler:

Bias is probably the number one reason why people make hiring mistakes at the company level.

Lou Adler:

Companies want people who look like them, sound like them, went to the same schools, have the same personality, so they have this natural embed bias.

Lou Adler:

I as a recruiter know that I can't ever duplicate candidates who meet that bias criteria.

Lou Adler:

So, and it's almost maybe Spock like is when I took my first search assignment and I remember it was for another plant manager in the automotive industry, sent me a list of had that and I knew the president and I remember I gave a six month notice.

Lou Adler:

So my first assignment was the day I started as a recruiter because I had set it up as you said.

Lou Adler:

The president gave me a list of 10 years experience, engineering degree, this kind of background, how to be in the automotive industry, how to know this chroming and machining and all this.

Lou Adler:

And I said, Mike, that's not a job description, that's a person description.

Lou Adler:

What does a person need to do?

Lou Adler:

So I always started by defining the work.

Lou Adler:

I realized then that if I defined the work I eliminated some degree of bias.

Lou Adler:

Could this candidate do this work or not?

Lou Adler:

Do this work?

Lou Adler:

Not.

Lou Adler:

Was he tall enough?

Lou Adler:

Not.

Lou Adler:

Did he go to the right school?

Lou Adler:

Could he do this work or not?

Lou Adler:

So that was at least part of it.

Lou Adler:

By having the specifications of what the work looked like.

Lou Adler:

But then the person would say, well, they got to be a good communicator in this accent too.

Lou Adler:

Not.

Lou Adler:

I can't understand them.

Lou Adler:

I said, well, what does good communication skills look like on the job?

Lou Adler:

Well, they got to make quarterly reports of the management group.

Lou Adler:

I said, well, and who comprised the management group?

Lou Adler:

I said, well, let's see if the candidate has ever made quarterly reports to the management group.

Lou Adler:

So you asked the question, Kelly, have you ever made, you know, you got to talk to a management group consisting of these people?

Lou Adler:

These people, manufacturing people, operations people, financial people, What?

Lou Adler:

Tell me about where.

Lou Adler:

Have you ever done that?

Lou Adler:

Can you give me an example of where you've done that?

Lou Adler:

I said, oh, so now I go back to the hiring manager.

Lou Adler:

Do you think this person doesn't have good communication skills?

Lou Adler:

But look, here's where this person's done it.

Lou Adler:

I remember a hiring manager, CFO for a huge medical device company looking for a director of financial planning or something.

Lou Adler:

He said, the guy's too soft to do this.

Lou Adler:

I said, well, that's hard to believe.

Lou Adler:

What do you mean?

Lou Adler:

Whether he's working with the union, he's working.

Lou Adler:

Our manufacturing people are tough nuts people.

Lou Adler:

I said, this guy worked in the automotive union.

Lou Adler:

He implemented this cost accounting system at this company at Ford Motor Company, the toughest UAW union.

Lou Adler:

And it was because of his soft spoken nature that allowed him to do it.

Lou Adler:

And I remember the cfo.

Lou Adler:

I'll talk to him again.

Lou Adler:

I didn't, I didn't get that out of him.

Lou Adler:

He talked, spent two hours.

Lou Adler:

You're right, the guy's perfect.

Lou Adler:

But it's these natural biases that you and so one way to do is define work, but it's also converting having to doing.

Lou Adler:

What does that look like on the job?

Lou Adler:

Gotta be results oriented.

Lou Adler:

What does that look like on the job?

Lou Adler:

Oh, they gotta take the initiative in coming up with new techniques to solve these kinds of problems.

Lou Adler:

Fine, that's what we'll do.

Lou Adler:

Could be soft spoken and have initiative, but they don't look at that.

Lou Adler:

They look at it as is the person aggressive and proactive during the interview, which is maybe right, but it's not totally right.

Lou Adler:

So the idea of bias is essential.

Lou Adler:

But now during the interview, this is why I like panel interviews and I like panel interviews because I would start leading them and it's hard to get.

Lou Adler:

I mean, the impact of first impression bias is pretty profound.

Lou Adler:

When you like someone right away, you ask easy question.

Lou Adler:

If you don't like someone, you prove, go out of your way to prove the candidate's not competent.

Lou Adler:

So, and I, this one rule I have is wait 30 minutes before you ever make a yes or no decision.

Lou Adler:

30 minutes minimum.

Lou Adler:

And have a scripted interview.

Lou Adler:

Ask these questions in the first 30 minutes and then at the 30 minute mark, you can first say, is this candidate potentially okay or not okay.

Lou Adler:

But don't make that decision until you collect 30 minutes of data.

Lou Adler:

So use the interview to collect evidence to make the hiring decision.

Lou Adler:

Don't make it during the hiring decision.

Lou Adler:

That's a great, profound statement.

Lou Adler:

But it is hard to do because human nature is, I make judgments right away.

Lou Adler:

If I like you, I'm going to ask you easier questions because I don't really.

Lou Adler:

You gotta remember the pain of hiring.

Lou Adler:

I don't really want to do this.

Lou Adler:

I want a candidate.

Lou Adler:

So if I like you, I'm gonna.

Lou Adler:

Oh, Kelly looks pretty cool.

Lou Adler:

He talks, he goes fishing.

Lou Adler:

Yeah, he's a good guy.

Lou Adler:

Got to be a good, competent accountant.

Lou Adler:

On the other hand, oh, he's so soft spoken, I couldn't fit with the company.

Lou Adler:

So if I don't like you right away for one reason or other, I go out of my way to prove that you can't do the job.

Lou Adler:

And you can prove it.

Lou Adler:

Either way, you'll get enough facts and figures to convince yourself that he's good or bad or if she's good or bad.

Lou Adler:

And it's very hard to control.

Lou Adler:

So in the actual assessment itself, controlling bias is the hardest thing to get an accurate assessment.

Lou Adler:

And yet that's why if I intervene personally, provide evidence of success, give scripted interviews.

Lou Adler:

So there's a lot of things I personally proactively do to minimize the impact of bias during the assessment process.

Guest:

But it does sound like it's critical and you really do need to put in safeguards to try to control bias.

Lou Adler:

Perfect statement safeguards.

Lou Adler:

Yes, absolutely.

Lou Adler:

Well said, Kelly.

Lou Adler:

And they're hard to do because the safeguards get broken by human nature.

Guest:

Well, and I think too, like you mentioned, like, once you've made a decision on something, I think as humans we really struggle to go back on a decision that we've made.

Guest:

It's much easier to just go with the decision we made than to change our minds about it.

Lou Adler:

Oh, absolutely.

Lou Adler:

100%.

Lou Adler:

The CFO.

Lou Adler:

I remember this is like 30 years ago now.

Lou Adler:

I really wanted this account.

Lou Adler:

I had a candidate for director of cost accounting.

Lou Adler:

Everybody in the company liked them.

Lou Adler:

But the CFO in a 10 minute interview felt that he wasn't very good and he discounted them.

Lou Adler:

I finally got in touch with the CFO later that afternoon or evening because I knew he made a mistake.

Lou Adler:

But I also knew he was a hard nosed kind of guy.

Lou Adler:

The CFO started almost yelling at me and abusing me as a recruiter, wasting everyone's time.

Lou Adler:

And then he said something.

Lou Adler:

My 16 year old son has better cost accounting skills than that candidate.

Lou Adler:

And I just said, this is my New York attitude coming out.

Lou Adler:

I said, ed, if your 16 year old son has better cost accounting skills, could you send me his resume because I got a better job for him than yours.

Lou Adler:

And that was a wise ass comment.

Lou Adler:

I just said that.

Lou Adler:

And that just stunned him, stunned the cfo.

Lou Adler:

He said, what are you talking about?

Lou Adler:

Nobody's ever talked to me like that.

Lou Adler:

And I said, well, you're dead wrong.

Lou Adler:

This guy's got great cost accounting skills.

Lou Adler:

Now I conducted an in depth interview.

Lou Adler:

I knew cost accounting inside out as a subject matter expert.

Lou Adler:

This guy was exceptional.

Lou Adler:

He had worked in a union.

Lou Adler:

He installed a new state of the art cost system on the latest computer.

Lou Adler:

This guy did exactly what he wanted to do.

Lou Adler:

And I then said, Ed, you blew the interview.

Lou Adler:

Ten minutes.

Lou Adler:

You could not tell if this guy had a good cost accounting skills.

Lou Adler:

You just didn't like him because he was soft spoken.

Lou Adler:

Yeah.

Lou Adler:

And you miss an opportunity to hire an outstanding person.

Lou Adler:

So I pushed back on hard.

Lou Adler:

But I had evidence to push back hard and had confidence to push back hard.

Lou Adler:

This is when Ed interviewed him the next morning, spent two hours with.

Lou Adler:

They whiteboarded the whole implementation of this cost system at his 17 or 7 plant manufacturing company with a medical device field.

Lou Adler:

And he said, this guy's great.

Lou Adler:

And then he said, no one else is going to get hired this company in finance unless they go through this process of performance based job descriptions.

Lou Adler:

He then went to another medical device company and introduced us there.

Lou Adler:

So once you buy into the idea of defining work as a series of performance objectives, getting candidates to explain in detail what they've accomplished and putting bias in the parking lot, all of those things are not, they're not there.

Lou Adler:

You will get the right answer.

Lou Adler:

Put it doing all those things, defining the work in depth interview.

Lou Adler:

No bias.

Lou Adler:

That's hard to do, but it does work.

Guest:

Yes.

Guest:

Yes, Lou.

Guest:

That's taken us to the end of our show today.

Guest:

I really, really appreciate having you on.

Guest:

Before we wrap it up, though, I did want to ask you one more question and give you a little bit of space to chat about what services that you offer.

Guest:

But the last question I want to ask you is we're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of younger entrepreneurs or people maybe that are just getting started, or there's actually probably HR people that are listening as well.

Guest:

And one of the things that I wanted to ask you was is that if you could offer one piece of advice, and I know this is really tough, but if you could offer one piece of advice that would improve every person's hire from this point forward, what might that be?

Lou Adler:

Well, it's interesting because I thought about, not that you were going to ask it, but somebody asked me that question a couple months ago, and I said, if you want to just put a control system in place at your company before you ever, ever, ever make a candidate an offer, you ask the candidate, are you aware of the performance expectations of this job?

Lou Adler:

And if you are, why do you think that represents a good career move?

Lou Adler:

And if the candidate has it, they'll say they do, but they won't have the good answer.

Lou Adler:

Do not make the offer because it's problematic if they'll be successful to get the right answer.

Lou Adler:

That's.

Lou Adler:

It takes a lot of work.

Lou Adler:

You got to define the work.

Lou Adler:

You got to conduct the interview.

Lou Adler:

The candidates got to see it as a career move.

Lou Adler:

So that is a safeguard to ensure you make the right decision.

Lou Adler:

Just ask candidates, before you make an offer, are you aware of the performance expectations of this job?

Lou Adler:

And why do you feel that that's a good career move for you?

Lou Adler:

Getting to a yes to that answer takes a lot of work, but getting a no to that answer prevents a lot of problems.

Lou Adler:

Do not make the offer.

Lou Adler:

So that would be my word of advice.

Lou Adler:

It's kind of like everything comes together when you make an offer, and that will tell you if the person should take it or not.

Lou Adler:

And if the person says yes, you might not have the most be paying the most money, but you got to be competitive.

Lou Adler:

But you'll probably close the deal anyway.

Lou Adler:

If they can say yes to both of those things.

Lou Adler:

Here's the job and here's why I want it.

Lou Adler:

Now I'm willing to take a little bit less because I can see two years from now I'm going to be getting a lot more.

Guest:

Amazing.

Guest:

Amazing.

Guest:

And Lou, it goes without saying anybody listening to this needs to go and pick up higher with your head a lot of the Stuff we talked about today is very in depth in hire with your head.

Guest:

It will give you everything you need to implement a performance based hiring system at your company.

Guest:

So highly recommend.

Guest:

However, Lou, I imagine you offer other services as well.

Guest:

Can you tell me a little bit about what else you do at performance based hiring learning systems?

Lou Adler:

No, we don't.

Guest:

That's the main one.

Lou Adler:

I have to say.

Lou Adler:

That would be a good opening and a good entree and I appreciate that, Kelly, but no, I don't do much.

Lou Adler:

Okay.

Lou Adler:

Now what we do is they go to performance basedhiring.com we offer training to hiring managers and recruiters and that's what we do.

Lou Adler:

We help companies implement performance based hiring.

Lou Adler:

And whether it's an executive level, we don't do recruiting anymore.

Lou Adler:

That's what I did.

Lou Adler:

But we work with recruiters, we train recruiters, we train hiring managers how to implement that methodology.

Guest:

Amazing.

Guest:

And sorry, can you run me through one more time where they can go to sign up for that?

Lou Adler:

Well, I would go to performancebasedhiring.com or that would probably be the best case.

Lou Adler:

I mean, you can check me out on LinkedIn.

Lou Adler:

You can go to Moneyball for HR, which is a big thing I'm doing is how do you convert hiring decisions into quantitative business decisions.

Lou Adler:

But I think if you go to performance basedhiring.com, that's a good place to start.

Guest:

Perfect.

Guest:

And I will have the links up for this in all of our posts with the show, including the show notes.

Guest:

So if you're hearing this and you want to figure out where to get it, you'll be able to find it anywhere that we have public posts about this episode.

Guest:

Lou, it was absolute honor to have you on today.

Guest:

Thank you for joining me.

Lou Adler:

Thank you very much.

Lou Adler:

Good timing.

Lou Adler:

I'm exhausted.

Lou Adler:

I'm glad you cut it off.

Lou Adler:

I don't think I could have got another five minutes.

Lou Adler:

My day is over.

Guest:

Oh, goodness, no.

Guest:

I appreciate it.

Guest:

Until next time.

Guest:

This has been the business development podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Kelly Kennedy:

This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy:

business development firm in:

Kelly Kennedy:

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

Kelly Kennedy:

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

Kelly Kennedy:

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

Kelly Kennedy:

see you next time on the business development podcast.

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The Business Development Podcast
The Business Development Podcast is an award-winning show dedicated to entrepreneurs, executives, sales, and business development specialists.

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Kelly Kennedy