Josh emphasizes the importance of being a bar raiser during hiring, explaining that new hires should elevate the entire team. By raising the bar with each new team member, existing talent will also be inspired to improve. Tune in to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast for more talent acquisition tips!

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, Josh— the host of this podcast and an experienced eight-figure brand owner—shares a proven seven-step hiring process tailored for entrepreneurs scaling to 8-figures and beyond. Listeners learn how to conduct a time study, craft compelling role profiles, source and filter candidates, assign test projects, and leverage group and one-on-one interviews with reference checks. Emphasizing practical assessments over resumes, the episode offers actionable strategies to attract A-level talent, streamline hiring, and build a high-performing team—empowering business owners to delegate effectively and accelerate their company’s growth.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

Build a Team That Scales With You
Hiring is the highest-leverage activity for any entrepreneur aiming to scale. By following this rigorous, data-driven, and human-centered 7-step process, you’ll dramatically increase your odds of hiring management-level staff who drive growth, embody your values, and help you reach 8 figures and beyond.Here are 3 actionable takeaways that you can get from this episode:
1. Slow down to speed up: Invest the time upfront to avoid costly mis-hires.
2. Be relentless in your standards: Only A-players will help you scale.
3. Systematize and optimize: Use tools

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Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Transcript Area

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. If you are tired of hiring the wrong people, or you’re tired of putting out a job post and finding poor applicants, I’ve got the system for you. I’m going to be showing you and breaking down my seven step process in order to hire management level staff from anywhere in the world. All right. So let’s get into it. First of all, 99% of you entrepreneurs are hiring people the wrong way. We’re going to be diving in exactly how you should be hiring them here. All right. So let’s talk about what is the easiest way to use AI and to be able to find incredible management level contractors. First of all, who am I? I am a father of four, husband to a beautiful wife. that is my pride and joy. Right there is my family. Also, I’ve been an eight figure brand owner for the past three years, and I am obviously the host of the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast, which you’re watching right now. This is where I share actionable strategies for seven figure, eight figure entrepreneurs to be able to scale beyond eight and nine figures.

Josh Hadley 00:01:10  All right. So let’s talk about, back in the day. This was about 2017 okay. In my business was starting to take off. And I had heard from other entrepreneurs that they were having success hiring Filipinos at like 3 or $4 an hour. And I was like, oh, that sounds that sounds compelling, obviously. And at the time, the platform people were hiring on, it was called oDesk. All right. For those of you that have been around the block, you might have heard that, that has now transitioned into Upwork as we know it today. so back then it was oDesk and I reached out. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I needed to hire a customer support, assistant. Right. I was getting tons of customer support on Etsy, Amazon or Shopify store, and I just needed somebody to provide that level of support. So I went on to oDesk, said I was looking for a customer customer support specialist, and I got tons of applications, okay, tons of applications.

Josh Hadley 00:02:15  So here I go. I go and I start reading resumes. And this is painstaking, like I’m spending hours of my time reviewing all of these different resumes, and I am just like, I’m pulling my hair out after a couple hours because it’s like they all start to look and sound the same. And I’m like, how can I spot a level talent if I am just reviewing resumes? And so I end up through that process. I ended up like finding or highlighting, maybe like the top 10 or 20 according to myself, according to just what I see on their resume. That’s it. That’s the only thing I’m going off of. And what I do is I set up some interviews with these people. So this is going to be a zoom interview and I was conducting it through oDesk. Right. So I line up all of these interviews, and the picture that you see here is I have to go into my car to hold these interviews because guess what time I’m holding these interviews at? I’m doing them at 11 p.m., 11:30 p.m. 12 12:30 a.m..

Josh Hadley 00:03:19  Like I’m doing this in the middle of my night because that’s obviously the daytime in the Philippines, and I’m doing it in my car because at the time we’re living in a small house, I have small children, and I didn’t want to wake everybody up in the house. And so I go sit in my car and I’m going to have these interviews with these people. Well, guess what happens. First one shows up, it’s at 11 p.m.. And guess what? I can barely understand the person like their English is not great. I can kind of understand them, but I’m like, oh my gosh, I scheduled this meeting to last for 30 minutes. Like. And I gave them the courtesy of trying to hang out with them for 5 to 10 minutes. And then I wrapped up the interview. Guess what happened at 20 minutes later when the next person came on like their internet could barely work. So yes, they spoke better English, but I could barely have a conversation with them because their internet keeps coming in and out.

Josh Hadley 00:04:17  They didn’t even have a good connection. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is going to be the longest night of my life. And sure enough, it was like, I think over 75% of the calls, like I could barely understand the Wi-Fi was terrible. It wasn’t my Wi-Fi problem, it was theirs. and, it was just it was painstaking. All right. So I knew at that time there had to be a better way to find talent and spot a level talent on all of these different online platforms such as Upwork, now, oDesk at the time. And, And so I’m going to be sharing you the seven step process that I created through going through this painstaking process of trying to find a level talent for myself. So here’s a quick overview of what this, seven step process looks like. All right, so first off, we have our time study that we’re going to be talking about. We’re going to be doing a role profile sourcing candidates, filtering those candidates, sending them test projects, having group interviews.

Josh Hadley 00:05:21  And then we’re going to dive into one on one interviews and reference checks. All right. So step number one. So before you ever consider hiring a specific person you need to know exactly what they should be doing and how much time are they taking off of your plate. All right. So this applies whether you are the entrepreneur and you are the CEO. Or maybe you’re one of the managers and you are being tasked with having to go and source new talent for your team. If that’s the case, one of the most important things you need to do is conduct a time study of your own time. Because if you, as the CEO, you’re saying, hey, I believe that if I hire this person, it’s going to make my life easier. Well, it’s like define that. Okay. So what you do is you ultimately do a time study where in 15 minute increments you are blocking down, or you’re writing down exactly what you do every 15 minutes of the day. And this starts from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed.

Josh Hadley 00:06:25  Sounds tedious, sounds painful, sounds miserable. And guess what it is. It’s not fun, but you need to do this over the course of two weeks, okay? And when you do that over the course of two weeks, it’s going to give you a better holistic view of like what goes on on a day to day basis with your business. Because as you know, some weeks are going to be heavier involved in X, Y and Z than others. Right. So it is super important to make sure you do it over the span of at least two weeks, maybe even three weeks. to be real sure. But ultimately, what you’re going to be able to do after that two week time study is identify your bottlenecks. And what you’re going to be looking for is, hey, where is the majority of my time going? And here’s what I think is going to be enlightening. And it happens to me every time. I can often think in my mind where I think my time is going.

Josh Hadley 00:07:15  Like, if somebody asked me, Josh, where did you spend your last two weeks of of working time? Like, what did you do? What did you work on? I’d be like, well, I think it was, you know, a lot on like the leadership meetings and annual planning and things like that. Right. That’s what I’m going to say out loud. But guess what is going to really happen when I do a time study? I’m going to look and I’m going to be like, Holy cow! Actually, the majority of my time was caught up approving POS for our supply chain or managing our sales team, providing them feedback. Or maybe it was, you know, actually doing customer service because I had to create some SOPs and help bring on a new team member, or maybe I was stuck in the financials, etc. but like, those are the things that are eating away at your time, but you don’t know it. All right. And so one of the most important things that you can do is first conduct a time study.

Josh Hadley 00:08:11  Understand. this is truly where most of my time is going. Because when you identify where most of your time is going, that’s exactly what you want to get off your plate. So that’s when you’re going to create the role specifically just for that role itself to in order to get that off of your plate. So the next thing that we’re going to do, once you’ve got that off of your plate, is you’re going to then create a role profile to help them understand what is actually needed. So a couple just books and good information for you is going to be. One book I highly recommend is called clockwork. Okay, this is by Mike McCulloch’s great book to help you understand this. Like Queen bee role, you as the CEO or the manager, there’s going to be certain things that you do and work on inside your business that is actually sustaining the business. That is like your secret sauce. You want to ensure that everything else is delegated off of your plate, so that you are only working on the thing that you are uniquely gifted at, and that means everything else needs to go off your plate.

Josh Hadley 00:09:23  All right, so now that we have understood what our unique talents are, where the majority of our time is going, we’ve identified where most of our time is going and what we need to outsource. Now, the most important thing is we need to create a role profile. So what is this role profile that I’m talking about? You are going to be identifying what are the KPIs that you are going to be able to measure? This new person, whoever’s going to take on this big pile of work that you have to take off your plate. You need to have KPIs to ensure whether they are going to be successful in that role, so that you can measure and actually determine whether they’re successful or not. All right. And then you’re also going to be listing out here all the different activities they need to be doing on a day to day basis. And in an ideal world, you’re also recording yourself via loom videos, jotting down a process of like how to execute those day to day tasks so that the day this person starts, they are ready to hit the ground running.

Josh Hadley 00:10:23  All right. So when we create a role profile, you first need to define the role that you are needing to hire by completing this magical role profile template. So what does this look like? Step number one. You need to ensure that you have a company, mission, vision, or mission that is stated here because guess what? A level talent is attracted to a really compelling vision or mission that you are driving towards. Oftentimes, you will be able to attract a level talent where they will be willing to move from either a more successful company or like where they’re making more money at another company. You may be able to recruit them to join your team at a lower cost than what they’re currently being paid, because they believe in the vision and mission that much. That’s how powerful this is, and that’s why this is step number one. Make sure you can articulate to anybody why they should join your team. What is it that you are doing into the that you are bringing into the world, which also makes it challenging if you’re a business owner that’s just like, hey, I’m just looking to make a quick buck.

Josh Hadley 00:11:33  it may be a little scammy, maybe a little fishy, but look, I’m just in it to make a quick buck. You’re going to have a hard time attracting a level talent, because most a level talent doesn’t want to put that on their resume, and they’re not. Those are not the type of people that are going to take a great opportunity and leave it and come work for you at a lower cost. Step number two you need to create a scorecard. These are the metrics that you are going to use to actually measure somebody’s performance. And this is extremely critical because in the best analogy I can share here is imagine you go to a basketball game. You go to this basketball game but nobody is keeping score okay. And also there is no time. There’s no clock. Right. So there’s no there’s no time period. There’s no quarters. There’s no nothing. It’s just guys playing basketball and nobody’s keeping score. How many people do you think are going to show up to watch that game? Basically it’s just pick up ball but still nobody’s keeping score.

Josh Hadley 00:12:39  I would argue very, very few people are going to go watch a bunch of sweaty dudes just run up and down a court just for the heck of it. Do you know what makes watching basketball games really exciting, and specifically the final two minutes of any sporting event? When it’s crunch time, it’s when there’s a scoreboard and the scores really close, right? One teams up by two points and it’s two minutes to go. So we know there is a definitive time that this game is going to end. And the results are going to be tracked. And there’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser. That crunch time is all the magic of what makes sporting events so fun. So guess what? You need to apply that same principle into your business. Your team members need to know when it is crunch time. If they have a monthly metric that needs to be hit. They best darn be working on that the final days of the month to make sure that they’re going to be meeting that KPI.

Josh Hadley 00:13:42  So same thing if you have daily KPIs, weekly KPIs, those are going to be like, that’s that’s the end of the game. Your score is going to be tallied, and it’s either going to be a win or it’s going to be a loss at the end of the week based off of your performance. And also the scoreboard becomes, hey, how am I actually being measured? So here’s a good measurement or good KPI for like somebody that’s in supply chain. Do we have a 99 9.5% in stock rate? Okay. That is a yes or no metric. This is black or white. You are either at 99.5% or above or you are below. If you’re above, you’re winning. If you’re below, you’re losing. Do you have a 750 API score? Okay. Do you have excess inventory that’s less than 2.5% Okay. Those are just sample metrics for you to get you to understand that when you set a KPI, these can’t be. Hey, I want you to, you know, I want you to ensure that our accounting reports are accurate.

Josh Hadley 00:14:51  What is what is that like? I want you to make sure that we have a comprehensive, business strategy. What does that mean? Like a comprehensive strategy? What does that mean? Hey, I want you to make sure that our customers feel loved and cared for. Well, what does that mean, like. Those are all very subjective KPIs. KPIs need to be non subjective. It’s either black or white. It’s either yes or no. It’s either you hit this number or you did not hit this number. Okay. So keep that in mind as you create KPIs. Now you may be asking the question well how do I get ideas of like, what are actually some good KPIs that I can use to measure performance? This is where ChatGPT comes into play here. So my favorite use of ChatGPT is using these prompts. So here’s my secret tips for you. I asked ChatGPT to actually create the prompt for me. Okay. And then it’s going to ask me a whole bunch of questions. Then I’m going to take that prompt and create a new chat in ChatGPT.

Josh Hadley 00:16:01  And it’s then going to spit out a whole bunch of different KPIs. And I typically ask like, hey, give me 20 different KPIs that are specific and measurable that I can use to track somebody’s success in this particular role. Yes or no? Okay. And then it’s going to give me a whole bunch of ideas. And from there, my job is to come back and identify. These are the KPIs that I want to use. All right. Step number three. What does success look like. again using the scorecard metrics. Put this into ChatGPT and say, hey, here are my 3 to 5. Which by the way, whenever you have KPIs, you should never give somebody more than 3 to 5 KPIs is just too much. anything more than five, like it’s really hard for somebody to actually remember those things and to ensure they’re tracking towards those. All right. You take these 3 to 5 metrics. And as you can see here, you use ChatGPT to say hey create. What does success look like.

Josh Hadley 00:16:59  So that when a level talent reads the job description they’re going to be like, I can see this. And yes, I am this type of person that does these things. Step number four. This principle comes from the book The One Thing, which is a fantastic book. I would highly, highly recommend anybody read that book, but it talks about like, can you focus on one thing? What are the big rocks that you need to focus on first and foremost? Because when you knock over one big domino. It will then make everything else easier. Okay, so you need to define for this role whatever it is. What are the 2 to 3 most important tasks that can not be forgotten? You do these tasks and it makes everything else ten times easier. You need to make sure you take the time to prioritize that. And if you need help, go to ChatGPT as a, you know, sounding board for you. But you need to identify what are the top 2 to 3 things that somebody should be doing in that role that’s going to be making them successful.

Josh Hadley 00:18:04  Then step number five, you will be then listing the regular work activities that you need to be doing. Okay. So for this team member hey, here’s here’s all the other miscellaneous things that you just need to keep up with. But first make sure you prioritize these 2 to 3 tasks. Then fill in the rest of your time with the 80%. I call these the smaller rocks, the pebbles, the sand fill in around the big rocks that you got to make sure that you prioritize. All right. Once we’ve listed those activities, then for step six and seven, we’ve got as needed activities. Okay. What are the other meetings that they should be participating in? Step number eight list. What are the key skills. And again you can go to ChatGPT. Get some ideas here. These aren’t critical but just nice things to have up front so that it sets your mind up for success of how you’re going to organize your organization and get people involved in the right way. Who are they reporting to? How often are they meeting? How am I keeping them accountable? Next, you’re then going to list the requirements for that role.

Josh Hadley 00:19:08  Like what are the must haves. Like they they have to have these skills otherwise they’re out. Okay. So list those requirements when you’re all said and done. This is what it looks like. You can see like this is a very detailed role profile. And guess what? When it comes to hiring a level talent, this is the first step. If you skip this step, I will promise you you will have a 90% more difficult time than I will finding a level talent because I’ve done this hard work up front. Yes, this may take you a couple hours to do, but this makes everything else easier. This is the big domino that falls first to then make hiring that actual a level talent person that much easier. So if you would like, here’s access to a free role profile template that you can just download and use yourself. And guess what? If you want access to a very easy like role profile creator in ChatGPT. I created a custom GPT. Basically, tell them the role that you’re looking for and it will basically flesh out that that chat or that role profile for you.

Josh Hadley 00:20:16  Very quick. But I will say this caveat you still need to go in there and use your brain. It’s not going to spit out something that’s like picture perfect on on the first iteration. You need to go in there, but it can do the bulk of the work. So what used to take me maybe at least ten hours of work to create a role profile is down to an hour of time. If I’m utilizing ChatGPT to make 90% of it, just move a lot faster and just like spark my ideas a lot quicker. Now that we have created this role profile, you’re ready to create your job description. But before we we talk about creating this job description, let’s talk about these two different Amazon listings okay. If you’re a customer which Amazon listing are you going to purchase? I would argue you’re going to purchase the one over here because you can see somebody actually cares about their listing. The brand actually cares to show up. You’re probably going to get a solid product if they put this much time and effort into their listing.

Josh Hadley 00:21:19  Sure. Like, surely they’re not going to cut corners when it comes to like their product. Whereas if I buy this guy, I don’t know if I’m trying to get ripped off at this ridiculously high price and these piece of crap, you know, bullets that nobody really wanted to spend enough time or energy to actually make it compelling enough. So like all day long, I’m going to go over to and purchase this other grill mount on the right side. Okay. Well, guess what happens. A level talent is attracted to really good job descriptions. Somebody that they see puts up the amount of time that’s necessary to attract them. Okay. A level talent is not going to come over here and find the the last minute. I just slapped a job listing up on Upwork or on indeed or LinkedIn. Somebody that does that, you’re going to attract CD and even F level players. Is that really what you want? So again, this comes to take your time and be methodical. Create a compelling job description.

Josh Hadley 00:22:26  And one of my favorite little tricks for this is using grok. grok is a large language model. has done an amazing job of taking my role profiles and then turning them into, like, really good job descriptions. Okay, so once you have that created, then look at this. You’ve got this. Like if you see a job description like this, are you ready to make an impact in the world. Do what you were born to do, blah blah blah. Here’s what success looks like. Like I’m trying to attract a level talent right out of the gate by attracting them to the vision and what success looks like, so that they can raise their hand and be like, yeah, that’s me. Here’s the other trick that we’ll do inside of our job descriptions. We will list, hey, put in a like, I love pizza or some sentence that you just want to bake in and hide it somewhere in the job listing to ensure like they actually read through everything, and they can actually follow instructions because arguably, for every role you want somebody that can follow instructions, then you’re going to post the job.

Josh Hadley 00:23:32  So where do we post our jobs? Online jobs. Upwork. Indeed. Workable work. UA and Job Rack and LinkedIn has also been a really, really good one for us. So we’ve posted those jobs on all those platforms. Now our job is we have to go actually source those candidates. Here’s where most people go wrong. Most people have the build it and they will come. kind of myth inside their head. And it’s completely wrong. When you post your job description, anybody that just organically sees it, that’s your cherry on top. The hard work comes in to you actually having to go out, put on your sales hat and go recruit, because if you don’t recruit and you get and you invite thousands of people to apply to your listing, you’re doing it wrong. For every role I hire for. I want to see that we have at least 1000 applicants. If I don’t see it, 1000 applicants. I haven’t done enough. And I need to go get more applicants. But I bet you money that if you have over 1000 applicants, you will be able to find at least one person.

Josh Hadley 00:24:46  That is a level talent. Okay. It’s all about quantity. Most people say that. Oh, wow. Look, they feel really good about themselves. If they had over 100 people applied to their job. But for me, I laugh at that because we do ten x the volume, okay. And I have a higher likelihood because I’ve got more volume coming through my pipeline. I know I’m going to attract a level talent faster than somebody that’s only getting 50 or 100 applicants for their jobs. All right. So how do you go about doing this at scale? So on online jobs this is what we’ll do. We will go here and we will set up these filters full time. ID score greater than zero. They’ve been active on Upwork on online jobs within the last week. Because I want somebody that’s either in the job market currently or maybe they’re actively working somewhere else. But obviously if they’re coming to online jobs, they may be looking or considering a change. And then I’m going to type in whatever this role is that I’m looking for.

Josh Hadley 00:25:49  So if I’m looking for a project manager, see, Online Jobs has given me 904 job seekers that meet my criteria. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to you’re going to reach out to all 900 of these, and you’re going to invite them to apply to work with you. Okay. So we just simply send them a message just like you see here. And this is the exact message that we send out. So what I do is I have my assistant that goes out and sends all of these messages, okay, to all 904. Then guess what we’re going to do now. We’re going to go to Upwork and we’re going to do the exact same thing. Okay, we are going to come in here, I’m going to set the role that I’m looking for. I’m going to put the location. So again, the location doesn’t necessarily matter. I’m willing to hire for hire from anywhere in the world. Okay. Philippines just happens to be where a lot of my team members have come from.

Josh Hadley 00:26:49  But like, I’m willing to find anybody from anywhere in the world. Okay, obviously I like a native bilingual English speaker. I like any earned amount, job success, any job success. So here’s where I’ll give you a little secret Golden nugget. Are you paying attention? Okay. Because if you’re not paying attention, you’re going to miss out on like, probably one of the biggest hacks here when it comes to recruiting on Upwork, I want to select any amount of job success and I want to select any hours build. The reason why I want to do that is because anybody that is just new to joining Upwork, guess what? They don’t have? They don’t have reviews and they don’t have any job success and they don’t have any hours billed. But guess what? Most of those people that are new to Upwork, they’re transitioning typically from a corporate environment or another job, and they’re willing to give a give it a go with this freelancer type work. Okay. Most of the team members that we’ve been able to hire that are brand new to Upwork have been some of our best team members.

Josh Hadley 00:27:56  I typically don’t like to hire, and typically they’re not the best candidates either. The ones that have 5000 reviews, 90% success rate and 1000 plus hours billed. I don’t like those guys because they’re just working with tons of clients. Multiple, multiple, multiple clients. Instead, I want to find somebody that actually wants to devote the majority of their time to me. Okay, hourly rate. You can select that based on kind of what country and area and role that you’re sourcing for. Okay. And then obviously I’m only looking for freelancers no agencies. And then we’re just going to simply use those filters and just click this invite to job button. And we just we just go. Invite invite invite invite invite invite invite invite invite invite invite until we have over a thousand applicants for a role. Workable AI recruiter. This is a new tool as well. You can use workable. Okay, it’s an ATS platform, applicant tracking software and basically what it will do is it will source thousands of applicants for you.

Josh Hadley 00:29:01  So if you’re looking for a specific role, what you can do is obviously upload your job description, everything you post the job there within workable. And then it’s AI recruiter with some of its magic in the background of everybody that’s ever applied through workable. Right. Like it’s scraping stuff probably off of LinkedIn. And then what it’s doing is it’s like it’s telling me, hey, within the Philippines, it matched 3080 profiles here. Okay. And one of the cool things you can do is actually just like in one click, you can contact all 3000 of those people and invite them to your job. And I’ll show you how to do that. But like I want to also double down on the fact that, like, these are not your typical VA’s. Like there are smart people all over throughout the world. The US does not have a monopoly on smart, smart people. In fact, I think that in most other countries the the work like the hustle and the work ethic is probably even stronger. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:30:04  And so as I look at this for the Philippines, when we were looking for a accounting controller, you can see like look at the people that are applying for this. Somebody that had an MBA, somebody that had an FP and a background, somebody that worked for Ernst and Young, but over in the Philippines. So what, like those are probably wicked smart people. Why not bring them on to your team? That’s the type of people that I’m able to recruit and try to get to apply for my position. So you simply just add all of those people to your list, you. And then you can one click, send them an email, write a bulk action. I want to send these people an email. This is the exact email that we send out to people, and we just see if they’re interested and invite them to apply for the position. And ultimately, as you can see here, like we want to have thousands of people that we are inviting and applying, to work with us.

Josh Hadley 00:31:00  The last thing I want to add before we move into this next step, which is step number four is if you’re using any of the other platforms such as indeed Monster Online job or or even LinkedIn. One of the most important things you can do there is just turn on sponsored ads for your job listings. So even though there’s not a way to proactively go invite people to apply to your position on indeed LinkedIn, you arguably could. You could set up some systems. And for higher level roles, I’m talking like VP, director, and even C-level roles. You’ll want to incorporate kind of a LinkedIn strategy where you can reach out and have bots that do that on your behalf. They will go out, they’ll reach out, connect with people of certain criteria. so just be aware that that that is a strategy that you can employ there. But the point I was trying to make is like, turn on your sponsored posts For all of those positions, because that way it’s going to your job is going to get featured.

Josh Hadley 00:32:06  And guess what? Yes, you’re going to pay money. Like you’re probably going to need to pay $5,000. Okay. In terms of sponsored ad posts, paying your assistant just to get 1000 applicants. But look, you can either do that or go pay a recruiter to do that for you. But for anybody that’s bootstrapping, I think this is the way to do it. Okay. All right. So before you can move on to step number four, you have to have a mindset shift in the way that you approach hiring okay. Now where did this idea and methodology come from. This came from okay. Michael E Gerber, the author of the E-myth, I had him on my podcast and I asked him this question. Over your decades of experience hiring people, having them manage your businesses, how have you been able to identify and spot a level talent? And his answer was profound. And I have used this analogy ever since. And I want you to experience this exact same mindset shift as well.

Josh Hadley 00:33:14  And it is this. Do you have a a process where your applicants have to go through as something as difficult as what the Navy Seals have to go through in order for them to actually become a Navy Seal? You should create a process where only the best are able to survive. And the best analogy he used was this. And he asked me this question do you know what it takes in order to become a Navy Seal? And I was like, no, I have absolutely no idea. Enlighten me. And he said this. There’s something called Hell Week and it’s part of budge training. Okay. So all of these people, these Navy Seal candidates have to go through this. And this is five and a half days of cold. Wet. Brutally difficult. Like training to. And this is to kick out the week. This is to get out the week that cannot cut it, that cannot survive. This is so extremely difficult that on average, only 25% of the candidates actually make it through. All right.

Josh Hadley 00:34:19  So that’s my question to you. What in your hiring process is able to kick out 75% of people and make it extremely difficult for them. That’s going to test them to see, like, do they have the resolve to actually become a standout player on your team? And guess what? I would argue that this applies to any level of team member that you that is joining your team, even if it’s just a entry level customer service assistant person that’s coming in to help you. I put them through the same process to make it difficult because I only want the best, because the best are going to be able to have future potential to rise with me as the business grows. All right. So we’ve talked about that. Now you’re ready for step number four. So step number four is this how do we make this difficult so that only the best survive. Watch what we do. So we are going to invite successful candidates to complete assessments. Okay. Successful means that they used our keywords in their cover letter.

Josh Hadley 00:35:25  All right. So you can see this here. So somebody actually applied. They followed our instructions. And then what I immediately do in my assistant does this for me. I don’t look at their resume I don’t look at their application I don’t look at anything. I just we auto send this little assessment that says, hey, great. we think you have a great background. Please complete this assessment to assess your skills and your abilities. So what is this assessment? We use Criteria Corp to assess people’s skills and their abilities here. And this is going to weed out 90% of people. So there’s three different tests the aptitude test, personality test and the skills test. I’m not worried about the personality test or the skills test. It’s the aptitude test that makes all the difference. So this is called the criteria cognitive aptitude test. The cat. This cat score according to Criteria Corp who’s done all of their own scientific studies whatever. They claim here that cognitive aptitude is one of the most accurate job predictors of job success for any position.

Josh Hadley 00:36:36  In a way, this is almost like an IQ score. SAT score if you want. It does take them some time, but you want them to complete this because anybody that does not pass this, they’re not moving on into the next stage. Okay. So how does this work? You’re going to filter the assessment results. So how? What criteria are we using to filter assessment results. I want candidates to be in the 65th percentile or above. Meaning I want candidates that are above like they’re above 65% of the population, if that makes sense. Right. They are in the top 30%. They are in the top third of people with intellect okay, in the world. All right. And then for employee personality profile, anything over 80% basic skills test. This is like basic English basic math. This is like if you can’t pass this at 75% or better, like there’s just like serious issues okay. Now for Criteria Corp I’ve actually negotiated a special offer. That’s just because like anytime I’ve presented my hiring strategy on stages, criteria Corp always sees like a sign up number of people sign up.

Josh Hadley 00:37:52  So anyways, I asked them if there’s a discount that I could offer you on this recording today. and so there’s the offer, right? But again, I’m not an affiliate. I don’t make any money from this. so take it for what it’s worth. Alright. Now, this is going to be a significant investment, but if you want to enhance your success rate, you add in the following. So Culture index has been something that I have just implemented into this process within the last nine months. And it has been game changing. It is something I use every single day as I interact with my team members. So Culture Index allows. It’s basically it has like predictive analytics of like how people show up on the job. Who are they naturally wired to be? Are they naturally analytical? Are they naturally introverted? Now I know that there are desc Myers-Briggs personality assessments, the Kolbe Index. I have been there, done that. I have looked at all of those and I will tell you this much.

Josh Hadley 00:38:58  Culture index has risen to the top. Time and time again. And it is spooky, accurate, and it. I promise you, this has increased our success rate fundamentally. And now whenever I like ten next hour success rate overall. And this happens because like you’re able to identify who’s the right type of fit and who are the people that you definitely want to avoid, because there’s going to be people that are really good on interviews and their resume look might look really, really good, but guess what? Their natural wiring is not going to be conducive to the role that you are looking for. So what we do is after they submit their assessment, we will then kick this back to them. This is the email that we send. We ask asked them to complete the culture Index survey. And then we asked them to record a video five minutes just introducing themselves. That way we can get to know them real quick and again, allows us to weed people out before we turn up the heat, and we get to the next portion that I’ll be sharing, where it’s like, we’re really going to turn up the heat.

Josh Hadley 00:40:06  This is where we get into Hell Week for our business and for all the candidates that think they want to join us. That’s why it’s so important that you have a strong vision and mission, because you’re going to make it difficult for these people. They got to want it and they got to want it bad. Okay, so make that vision and mission compelling enough that they’re willing to jump through these hoops. And guess what? Do you. Are you going to have some people that whine, moan and complain, I’m not doing an assessment for you, blah blah blah. Yes, but guess what? They’re not the right fit anyways. So don’t don’t sweat that and don’t even worry about it. All right, so that’s the culture index. Next we will be talking about how we turn up the heat for these candidates. So step number five is where we turn up the heat okay. This is where we have candidates complete a test project of a real task or a project that they would need to perform on the job.

Josh Hadley 00:41:01  You’re going to go from 100 applicants down to maybe 10 or 15 applicants. Most people are going to a not complete the test project and also fail at this test project, which is exactly what you want to happen. I also want to interject here and ask you to pause and reflect. How many times have I asked you to read anybody’s resume or application yet, or read their cover letter? And the answer to that is zero. There are zero times where I read anybody’s cover letter or resume, even when I extend the job offer. Okay. Because it doesn’t matter. The resume for A-level talent does not matter. All right. So let’s take a look at this. Here’s an example of a test project. All right. So this is a for like one of the creative director positions that we hired for okay. Here’s an example of the email we created. And we recorded a zoom video. Both my wife and I were featured in that video because now they feel like, okay, there’s actually some real people sitting behind this and I get to see their faces.

Josh Hadley 00:42:07  Okay. So here’s the example of that test project that was included in that email. We need you to create a simple test project with the following deliverables. Create a plus content page for blah blah blah. We’re giving them access to our resources like we gave them access to our listing images, to an AI files, etc.. Now again, we’re not giving them access to all of the files within the company. I’m just there’s like a test project folder where we give them some assets because we want them to be able to play with real life things that they would be doing in the actual project itself. And I’m not that they can’t steal that IP anyways. so I don’t don’t stress about that. Okay. And then I’m going to ask them to create a five minute loom video that walks me through, the decisions that they made in order to create those content or that content. Okay. And then I give them a due date, and then I ask them to send that to our email, with very specific directions of how I want them to title the subject line.

Josh Hadley 00:43:12  Because, again, I want to see how well, how good they are at following directions. Now you may be asking like, oh, I don’t know. Like that’s a good example for a creative director. What about for a supply chain specialist? What about for an accounting controller. What about for a customer support specialist? Like for every role I hire for and hear this every role that includes a VA that includes a customer support specialist, Us even the lowest level team member that you want to hire. You have to create a test project for them. Use ChatGPT to get ideas. Here’s a prompt. Okay. And again I like to have ChatGPT give me ten different project ideas because as I review that, I’m going to have ten that I’m like, actually I like this one, I like number five and I like number eight, and I like different aspects of them. Maybe I can combine them all together to create the ultimate test project that I really want to be created. So have ChatGPT create the test project and to create the email that explains the test project as well.

Josh Hadley 00:44:17  And then what I would just really encourage you to do is make sure that you add in your loom video of yourself explaining that test project to somebody and what your expectations are. Again, just to give that more personal human feel. The nice part is this loom video can go out to all 100 people. So again, it saves your time with this asynchronous meeting, rather than having to set up zoom calls with 100 people to give them this instruction. All right. So let’s talk about some test project tips and FAQs that always get asked to me. So what’s the normal completion rate. How many of those hundred do you think actually complete it? 20 to 30% are actually going to complete it. Now not all of those that complete it are going to have good test projects. So that’s why I say like you’ll end up with like ten or maybe 15, that you’re like decent. These are decent test projects. I could use this in my own work. Right. Okay. One of the things, do they do it for free? Yes, they most certainly do it for free.

Josh Hadley 00:45:20  And the reason why I am very confident in saying you should ask them to do this for free is because guess what happened when I was completing my MBA at the University of Utah in between years one and two, and I applied for a job with American Airlines. And guess what they asked me to do as part of the process. When it got to the final round, they asked me to complete a test project. They said, when we deliver this file to you, you will have exactly 60 minutes to send it back to us. And if you don’t, you’re done. Like flat out, like you’re out. You’re out of the running. So I remember going to a study hall, study room, lock the door, made sure nobody’s going to interrupt me for 60 minutes. Okay. And completed that test project for somebody. So guess what? If the top businesses in the America are doing that. Why in the world are you not doing that? Okay. And yes, are you going to get some people who will say, like, how dare you ask me to do this for free? And are you going to get probably out of 100 people, maybe two are going to be like, how dare you? I don’t work for free.

Josh Hadley 00:46:26  Okay, goodbye. That’s it. That’s it. Okay. And don’t worry about it. Who creates this test project? It’s not the CEO, it’s whoever the immediate supervisor is going to be. So whoever is reviewing their work on a day to day basis, whoever’s meeting with that person, they are the ones who have to create the test project because they are the ones that are closer to the problems. And what we’re looking for in terms of solutions and somebody that’s succeeding in that role who reviews it, it’s the immediate supervisor. And when it comes to reviewing it, make sure that you create a scoring rubric. So when you’re scoring the test project, don’t just be like, hey, I think I’m going to give it an A next guy, I’m giving it a B. And these are just random scores that you’re assigning like go through here. Here’s like five different things you could test them on. How do they communicate. Like is it easy for me to understand just in their loom video. Like I could turn this on two x speed and I can still understand them well okay, great.

Josh Hadley 00:47:28  That’s five. I’ll give them a five out of five. Are they articulate? Or do they just like they blabber on about nonsense for five minutes and I got no value or information from this, right? are they detail oriented? Job specific requirement one. Job specific requirement two. Were they accurate? Right. Did they come to the right conclusion? If you do a supply chain study and it’s like how many units do we need to order for this for skew x y, z. Here’s how much how many units we have in stock currently, here’s the lead time, etc.. Did they come to the right conclusion. Right? What? How close did they get to the number score that on the level of 1 to 5? Okay. Ask the candidate to record a five minute loom discussing the test project, why they made those decisions. You want that. You do not want them to just send you an Excel sheet that you have to go through, right? Because like as soon as you turn on that loom video, most likely within the first two minutes, you’re going to already know like, yeah, this test projects worth scoring or this.

Josh Hadley 00:48:32  This thing’s hot trash anyways. Like out like. And I’m going to save my time from having to even score this project because, like, I can’t even understand you to begin with, dude. Right. So don’t bend over backwards to score every single one. If you had, let’s say you had 50 applicants, like that’s still a lot. So save yourself the time, make sure they have a loom video. And guess what? If they don’t record a loom video? Or guess what? If their loom video’s over five minutes? Not a great sign right now. It can be. And there are times where somebody goes a little over, but like it’s very value jam. Like I’ll consider it right. Don’t fool yourself. If the candidate performs poorly on the test project, do not move forward with them. Do not go in being like, well, their culture index was so good and their cat score was so high or their resume is so good. They came from some fantastic background. Who cares? because this test project is the.

Josh Hadley 00:49:32  Let me reiterate that the most accurate job. The most accurate predictor of job success. Even more so than the criteria Corp score, it is the test project. However they do on this test project. Hopefully they knock this thing out of the park and if they knock it out of the park, you’re like, oh yeah, like you thought of things I never even thought of. That’s what you’re looking for. Okay. And then the last thing here, if someone misses the deadline for submitting the test project, they’re immediately disregarded. It’s like when you’re doing the test project, this is when you should be on your A game. This is like you should be at your best. And so if somebody comes back and like they’re not at their best, like they couldn’t even submit it by their due date or their mom’s in the hospital, their dad, whatever. I’m again, we give give somebody grace. Like, all right. Their their spouse goes to the hospital like, I hear you. Maybe we might make a rare exception.

Josh Hadley 00:50:29  But like, how often does the dog eat the homework, right? Not very often. And so if somebody’s already giving you excuses, that’s a big red flag. They have to outperform and have excellent scores on everything else. To where I would consider and say like, okay, maybe it maybe it’s legit. You did need this extra day because something happened in your personal life. All right. Next step, step number six. Now we’re going to dive into group interviews. So let’s say from those 100 we have now scored everybody. And we’ve got ten final candidates that I like their test project. They’re good enough. I could see myself working with them rather than setting up one on one interviews with each of these ten people. Again, you’re going to make your life easier by doing the following. You’re going to set up two group interviews. Now, when I talk about doing a group interview, this is not a group interview where you bring on your team to interview the candidate. Rather, you are interviewing the candidates in batches of five.

Josh Hadley 00:51:34  Okay, so you’re going to break up your candidates into groups of five. So if we had 15, you go down to three. If you had ten, you go down to two. If you had only five candidates that had good test projects, you got one group interview. In that group interview, everybody joins via zoom. A maximum of five candidates. You don’t want any more than five. Okay. If you have six candidates, arguably you could have maybe consider. But if you have seven, make sure you have set up two different group interviews. Three. Four. Okay. And then you’re going to ask each candidate the same question. So the way this happens is like when they come on the screen you’re going to be like hey guys. Welcome. I just want to let everybody know like you guys are all applying. These are fellow applicants for this particular role. this is unique. I realize that many of you have probably never done something like this, but I feel like there is value when you get to know how your skills and talents and experience stack up to the other candidates, because typically you don’t get to see that.

Josh Hadley 00:52:39  And actually we get candidates that rave about the group interview process initially it is a little like intimidating to them, but then they always have very positive things to be like. I’m really glad I was able to see how I stack up. So we go around and I’ll say, hey, you have 60s to answer these questions. We’re going to go in this order Jane, John, James and Sally. Okay. That’s the order we’re going in. You have 60s tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career, and then you’re going to go through that list, right? And ultimately, I’m just trying to like, get a gauge of these people you’re trying to identify. Like these people have worked on some hard things. They’ve driven some big results in the past. How do they think about, like, actual questions and issues related to the role that they would be filling for our organization? And get their take, because some people are going to be like, yeah, I really like these people.

Josh Hadley 00:53:41  Some you’re going to be like, no, this guy’s this guy’s weird. This guy gives me like weird vibes while I’m on the call. Like, I’m just out, right? And so that’s going to save you time from setting up a one on one interview that’s an hour long in five minutes and you’re like, oh, I didn’t have good vibes from five minutes in. Now I got to waste 55 more minutes of my time just to be polite. Now here’s my final question that I love to ask. This is what I call the peer picking probe. Okay, at the end of the group interview, I ask the candidates, all right, here’s the order. We’re going to go in. Tell me who you would hire from this interview and why. And by the way, you cannot say yourself that turns the heat up a little bit, doesn’t it? Okay. And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to turn the heat up for all of these applicants. I’m trying to get them to back out, just like the Navy Seals are trying to get candidates to back out by saying, like, we’re going to put you through hell week.

Josh Hadley 00:54:37  Are you sure? Are you coming? You do realize 75% of people are going to fail. Are you still sure you’re going to show up? That’s what we’re trying to put people through, because the people that make it through this are going to be worth their weight in gold. All right. In step number seven, we’re going to be diving into one on one interviews. And then the reference check. All right. This is kind of like the final stage. But I’m going to preface it by saying this. The interview is one of the worst predictors of job success. If there’s one thing that I learned through going through my MBA program, it was this message that stuck out to me is that the interviews themselves like a lot of like there’s some smooth people that can be really good talkers but like really bad when it comes to execution. And most of the time the interview can lead you far astray. And so that’s why this interview is just kind of like this is the final like gut check. Like, hey, I feel like we we work really well together.

Josh Hadley 00:55:41  I like where you’re headed. it’s more of that personal one on one conversation. But again, they’ve already passed all of the other criteria and filters that we’ve put them up against. And so when it gets to this point, you have better confidence that you’re talking with somebody, even if they don’t have a personality that you love, they might be more introverted, which is okay, because like their test project is going to speak volumes about who they are and what they have to offer you. So let’s dive in here. So what’s the purpose of this one on one interview? The purpose of your one on one interview is that you want to uncover a career success track record. All right, so what does that mean? And this kind of comes from the book who which is all about like the interview guide. This is the a method for hiring okay. Which is essentially you’re going to do this. You go back in chronological order starting with their most recent job, and you ask them the following questions.

Josh Hadley 00:56:39  What were you hired to do? What accomplishments were you most proud of? What are some low points during that job? What were the things you loved? What lit you up? who did you work with? And then one of the key key questions you want to ask is why did you leave that job? What you were going to find. And the secret is this a level talent typically is pulled into future jobs. They’re they’re rarely pushed out of current jobs. So what that means is anybody that’s been laid off. Not a great not a great sign. Right. Because what business owner is going to let their best talent go by the wayside unless they’re, like, just super high salary and they can’t afford them anymore. But that is so rare. That is so rare for a business owner to let go of some of their best talent. So be aware of that. Okay. And then likewise, what typically will happen is like a former what I love to hear is like, why did you leave that job? Well, my manager left to go work with this other company and they started to do really well.

Josh Hadley 00:57:49  And my manager reached out to me and asked me to come join them. That’s a really, really good sign, because do you think a manager is going to go back to his former job, former like team, and ask somebody to come work for him if he didn’t like the way that they were working to begin with. Right. Obviously they were a rock star. They were crushing things. They were successful. That’s why he’s bringing him on. So typically really good A-level talent is pulled okay. They are pulled into multiple jobs or they’re headhunted. They’re recruited. That’s a really good track record okay. The other thing that you are looking for is like how quickly were they promoted in their roles? Or were they somebody that like they’ve been at their job for the last ten years and they’ve just been at like entry level team member status? They’ve never risen any higher than that. Really not a great sign once again. Right. And so those are the key things that you’re trying to look for as you try to uncover this career success track record.

Josh Hadley 00:58:54  So ultimately what you’re trying to do is you’re going to go through job by job asking them these questions, okay. And you’re going to go all the way back to even. I want to talk about high school, and I want to talk about college, because guess what I want to ask you about when it gets back to high school and college. I want to ask you about like, hey, what are the. Did you participate in any extracurricular activities and did you participate? Like let’s for example, chess club. What about sports? Were you on it or cheer or whatever it was? Did you participate in anything? Then I’ll ask him the question. Did you hold any leadership responsibilities in any of these extracurricular activities? Because guess what a level talent has on their resume at a really young age. They’re just natural leaders and they’re they’re people that take life by the horns, and they make life what they want out of it. Okay. And so what that means is like typically future if you want somebody that’s leadership potential.

Josh Hadley 00:59:58  Guess what. They were the captain of the chess team or the debate team or the hockey team or the basketball. I don’t care what it was that they participated in, but they held a leadership position, right? I was the treasurer for my fraternity or sorority or whatever it is. You want people that they just. They naturally rise. The cream always rises to the top. And this is something that is like innately within people. And that’s what you’re trying to get to. That’s why when you go all the way back to high school to uncover a track record of like, look, you’ve always been successful in everything that you’ve been doing, okay? You’ve always risen to the top in leadership and responsibility. That’s why this is so extremely important. And that’s that’s what your one on one interviews are structured around. The one on one interviews is not your time to be like. So tell me about, the time where you had a deep challenge, right? Or tell me about your greatest strengths. Tell me about your greatest weaknesses.

Josh Hadley 01:01:01  Like, that’s that’s just garbage interviewing right now. What you do want to do is you want to be focused on like getting into the details of uncovering, just like who they are. Have they always been somebody that has brought potential in success to anything that they’ve participated in? The next questions that you should be asking are as follows. So if you’re hiring a director of Customer Success and maybe you have no, maybe you’re a $100 million company, right? And you don’t have experience being a director of Customer Success. One of the things that you want to do is you want to ask these future leaders, like, hey, as the head of marketing, as the director of Customer Success, you want to ask them, what metrics do you measure? And the reason why you want to leave that open ended is because you want to see, like, do they understand KPIs? Do they understand what are the leading metrics or the leading actions that need to be measured, that are going to drive the lagging indicators such as profit, revenue, etc.? those are lagging metrics from a leading action that’s being taken in the business, right? So you want them to be able to give you specifics and not just surface level examples.

Josh Hadley 01:02:17  director of customer success. Like if they’re just talking like, oh, we just want people to have just really good. Like, we want our, every customer to just walk away from us being a big fan of our brand. That’s that’s terrible. That’s a bad answer. I want people that are talking like, well, we measured Net Promoter Score. Then we also talk about call handle time. And this is why this is important. We also then measure like how much additional revenue came from that customer that had a customer interaction or customer service interaction with our business. Right. Now I’m like okay, this person gets it. They know what they’re talking about. So this is a really good question to ask. Like do they understand the metrics that actually matter in that position? Okay. Next question. How does what you do make the business money? Okay. Because if they cannot describe the output of their job that ties to revenue or profit for the business, you can be certain that they don’t know how to do it and that they won’t do it for you because they can’t even tell you how it works.

Josh Hadley 01:03:22  You want people that can actually, if you’re looking for somebody that can come drive results, you want to ask them how, as the customer service representative, how is your job tied to revenue and profit for the business? Okay. They should be able to articulate that to you if they have leadership potential. And if they are somebody that you want to bring on as a plus talent. All right. So let’s dive in even deeper. So as you’re going through these questions and you’re asking them about their career track record, one of my favorite questions to ask. That’s going to be super revealing to you is going to be as follows. As you go through their career, you’re going to ask them who did you work with? Well, what was your manager’s name? And when I get their manager’s name, they’ll say, okay, it was John. All right, well, when you worked for John, I’m curious. I’m going to be reaching out to references in previous managers. So when I reach out to John, I’m going to ask him the following two questions.

Josh Hadley 01:04:20  Number one, how will he or she rate your job performance on a scale of 1 to 10 and why? Okay, this is a question where like they can’t be Sue. That’s why I call it the truth serum question. Because if they do and they say, oh, he’ll give me a ten. John, he loved me. He’s going to. And rarely will people say that they’ll typically throw out eight to nines because people typically aren’t arrogant enough to say ten. so you’ll get lots of eights and nines. But if John says like, no, no, he’s maybe like a 6 or 7, okay. Cause for concern. Right? And then the next question is like, when I reach out to John, what will he say is your strength or your opportunity for improvement? Okay. So what what do you think John’s going to say is an area that you need to improve? Think back to that last performance conversation you had with him. What is he going to tell me? And again, people aren’t going to be sue because like if they’re like, oh, John’s going to say I work too hard.

Josh Hadley 01:05:25  That’s my weakness. It’s like, no, I don’t think that’s what John’s going to say when I ask him that question. John’s going to shoot me straight and John’s going to be like, yeah, honestly, he had a real challenge, like showing up to meetings on time. Right. So again, these are two fantastic questions. So never asked a question. What’s your greatest strength? What’s your greatest weakness? Those are garbage questions. These are much better conversations that you have as you walk through people’s career track records. Okay. And then ultimately, yes, you’re going to follow up with those references. Now if you’re hiring senior leadership, which I’m talking about, like director, obviously when you get to the C-suite, you’re doing one on one, like phone call interviews, if not trying to meet them in person to try to really uncover, like, what’s this person’s character and their values? And would they be a true get fit or not? Right. But in general, if you’re hiring mid-level managers and below like you can fire off emails all day long, this is just a sample template of the emails here.

Josh Hadley 01:06:29  okay. And then you’re going to want to get responses from those references. And you’re going to want to see something like this right where it’s like, hey, I loved working with this person, right? I’m going to actually give them a ten. Here’s why I loved working with this person so much okay. These this is an example of like this is what a glowing review would look like. That then adds to your confidence of being able to be like, yep, this is the right person. And everybody Like everything is jiving with this person, right? And by the way, these references should be their previous managers. I don’t want friends. I don’t want colleagues. These are references like their previous managers okay. And then ultimately, before you select your final person, you want to ask yourself this question. Do they raise the bar of the team okay. Because the team will only rise to the lowest level of competence on your team. Okay. So when you think before you think about bringing somebody on, even as a VA, if that person is not a person of integrity, if that person is not somebody that does what they say, they’re going to like somebody that actually follows through, somebody that’s always perpetually late.

Josh Hadley 01:07:41  That’s now what the rest of your team is going to like, ultimately fall to that level because it’s just nature and that’s what happens. So again, you want to always look at your team in that lowest level performer is. That’s kind of like where most people are going to be at. So that’s why you got to continue to raise the bar. Your higher should always be like, yes, this raises the bar to a whole new level. And then guess what? Your other a plus talent. When they see that, they will also try to rise and fit that mold as well. So ask that question. Do they raise the bar of the team from a moral integrity value standpoint, as well as like what value they’re bringing to the business in terms of their experience, their skills and their expertise? And that’s how you select your and hire amazing management level staff anywhere in the world. And that’s where you could get a real bargain. Doesn’t always have to be US based. and you can find really, really smart people anywhere in the world.

Josh Hadley 01:08:43  So to wrap things up, that is the seven step process. Number one, you’ve got to do a time study up front. That time study is going to reveal to you where your bottleneck is. Where are you spending the majority of your time? That if you could offload this to somebody else, would then allow you to then focus on more strategic aspects of the business, be able to grow the business ultimately. Okay. That’s step number one. Step number two is the role profile. Actually jot down what it is that they need to be doing on a day to day basis and make sure it’s a compelling job description that it gets them excited because a level talent is going to be attracted to a vision and a mission and clear, articulate KPIs that they know that they can come in and crush. Okay. Step number three. Once you post your job, your job is just starting. The work is just beginning. When you post that job on Upwork, on online jobs, on LinkedIn, on indeed, your work has just begun.

Josh Hadley 01:09:45  You now need to go source candidates, and you don’t stop until you have at least 1000 people that have applied for your position. Okay. You want to know why so many people are frustrated with like, oh, I can never find so many enough good people to hire. It’s a volume game, right? When I ask him how many people applied, like, I don’t know, 50, 100, they feel real good about themselves. No. Get to a thousand. Then you want to. Step number four is you’re going to filter candidates. You’re going to use the Create the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test to whittle down a thousand applicants down to 100 without you ever having to look at any resumes. Okay. It’s going to weed out 90% of people that cannot fit in the top one third of intellect. Okay. Then you’re going to turn up the heat in step number five, where you actually give them a tangible test project, something you want them actually working on, something you would actually use in the business.

Josh Hadley 01:10:45  Okay. From there you’re going to whittle it down from 100 people down to maybe ten, 15 candidates. Then you’re going to set up step number six, those group interviews where you’re just going to try to weed out the ones that are obvious non fits just because of how they interact with others, the way they show up, the vibes you get, right. It’s just an easy way to just like save yourself some time. Then step number seven. When you get to the one on one interviews and the reference checks, this is where you’re going deep and you’re just trying to uncover a career track record of success. Have they always proven to rise to the top no matter what role they’ve been put in? Because if they have, that’s who you want to scoop up and bring on to your team. And ultimately when you do that, that’s where you get to a point where, you know, we have since hired over 30 team members for our business, and our churn is extremely low. Most team members have been with us for years.

Josh Hadley 01:11:49  Okay. And that’s where your business is going to be able to make leaps and bounds progress. Because one of the things that kills you the most in any business is going to be churn. And so that is my pitch to you is like slow down to implement this process. Because if you hire the right people, it makes all the difference. And I’ll go back to one of one of my biggest mentors I admire the most, Alex Hermosa talks about this. If he is coming away from one of his last years in business, doing over 250 million. If he says one of the things I learned the most is that all, it’s all about the people. It’s all about recruiting the right people, getting the right people on the team, the wrong people off the bus, if that’s what it’s all about. This is one of the most important things that you should work on as the CEO of the business, because this is where it all starts.