Hire Better People Faster, with Jeremy Macliver

September 21, 2023

Shannon Waller

Imagine you’re in the mind of someone applying for a job at your company. Are they seeing the real picture of who you are as a team and as a business? Why would they want to work for you? Shannon Waller invites Jeremy Macliver, author of Hire Better People Faster, to explain how to draw the right people into choosing to work for you. Jeremy’s Core Fit Hiring System flips the usual HR process of “hunting” or “farming” for talent to “fishing” amongst the best candidates.

Show Notes:

Finding And Hiring Great Team Members

How do you attract passionate people who may not have traditional qualifications but align with the company’s values?
The Core Fit Hiring Process begins by getting clear on what the company’s core values and vision are.

Different Models For Hiring

Most companies focus on “hunting” or “farming” methods of finding talent, which are both expensive and take a long time.
Jeremy’s Core Fit Hiring Process instead focuses on “fishing”: creating an attractive job offer that appeals to the right type of candidate.
Company leadership must do the exercise to define core values and vision even if they think they already know this information.

Like Attracts Like

Be fully authentic in articulating your business’s core values and identity, and those candidates who resonate with and share your personality will show up.

Compensation being equal, people would rather work for a “why” they’re aligned with.
Even companies in industries like steel manufacturing, that were initially skeptical of defining core values, have found the exercise helps connect the team when leaders share what really matters to them.

The 6-Step System

Find, Automate, Interview, Onboard, Engage, and Assess.
Three main sections of the book: Attract, Onboard, and Maintain.

Treat Recruiting As Marketing

Sometimes teams have to lower annual goals not because of a lack of clients but an inability to hire enough team members.
Recruiting talent requires treating it as a marketing priority and involving all team members.
Why not shift recruitment to the marketing team instead of HR?

Job Descriptions And Job Ads

Make your job ad exciting and clear about what the role is.
Keep job ads to 1,500 words to get search engines to recognize them but still stay concise.
Be direct in job ads about the company culture:
Mentioning a fast-paced, hard-driving environment screens out candidates who don’t want high-intensity work. o More people should be repelled from your job ad than attracted by it.
Reinforce this in the interview stage.
Focus less on compensation and benefits, and more on a why-driven mission and culture where candidates will fit in.

2-4-12 Launch Formula

To improve onboarding success, outline expectations and responsibilities over the first 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 12 weeks for a new team member.
The process of the 2-4-12 Launch helps to gradually transition responsibilities versus an abrupt shift, which sets new hires up for success and avoids blaming failures on lack of training.

How To Retain Better Team Members

Focus on retention so that current team members are not leaving while you’re trying to grow the team.
Deliver on promises to team members to retain them.
Ensure alignment between a company’s values and a team member’s values.
Not having the people you need is a real obstacle to growth and thinking bigger.

Resources:

Hire Better People Faster by Jeremy Macliver 

Kolbe 

EOS^®: Entrepreneurial Operating System 

Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin 

10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More By Doing Less by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy 

Who Not How: The Formula To Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy 

Start With Why by Simon Sinek 

The Team Success Handbook by Shannon Waller

Multiplication By Subtraction by Shannon Waller

Episode Transcript:

Shannon Waller: Is hiring challenging or a struggle, and would you like to have a really solid system to help you do it better? Stay tuned for my fascinating interview with Jeremy Macliver, author of Hire Better People Faster, and learn all about his six-stage Core Fit Hiring System to make sure that you are hiring people who are a true fit for your core values. Stay tuned.

Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to Team Success. I am really thrilled to be able to bring you a brilliant author, co-author actually, of a new book, which is all about hiring, Hire Better People Faster. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me. We were chatting, you're an EOS implementer. You and your partner have written this book and you made one comment, and I was like, "Oh, can I interview you for my podcast?" Because you have really worked out a system that is different, that gets incredible results that you've used with your clients, and I cannot wait to share this with the world. I'm super excited about this book. Before we jump in, all the really cool things that you have to offer, and there's no way we can talk about all the things in the book, unfortunately. But Jeremy, why don't you introduce yourself and really talk about what really drove you to write the book. What's your why behind the book?

Jeremy Macliver: Yeah, well, thank you. I'm super excited to be here. I love the Strategic Coach Program and being a member of it, and so it's been a great journey there. First and foremost, who am I? I am a certified EOS implementer and an EOS coach for EOS Worldwide. In that arena, I get to see lots of teams going through lots of challenges. I was recently introduced at a wedding from one of my clients, another leader on the leadership team introduced me as, "The guy that knows all of our dirty dark secrets." I was hoping that was a good intro, but in that, I got to see what are the real challenges and obstacles? And that's a lot of the why behind this book. When you go back to so many of the things around this, it is the people that we have on the team.

You read these great books, you listen to these massive success stories and it's always about the people they had there. How do we get the people? That's the big issue. One of the obstacles I noticed is that there's stuff for hiring the leadership level and recruiting things can be there and those things, but what we really need is the day-to-day, the frontline worker, the guys that are out there in the field working and the ladies that are doing whatever. We need the people. That's the inspiration between that and Ryan's been working on building the system and we decided to join and write the book and that's why we got it there.

Shannon Waller: One of the things I want to stress, I read a lot and I love curating books and I only share books that I believe in, that I've read, that speak to me, and that are also well-written and easy to read. Both of us have a very similar Kolbe profile. I want easy to read, easy to implement. That's my success criteria for a nonfiction book. And this book is so great. You've got fabulous stories, great examples, a model, bullet points. You just tell it in a very accessible way, which I very much appreciate. It was super easy to go through. There were neat points, highlighted lots of it. It was obviously a labor of love and it's really well done, so congratulations.

Jeremy Macliver: Thank you. We definitely wanted this to be more than a why you need to hire book because I think we all know that.

Shannon Waller: This is how.

Jeremy Macliver: Yes, this is a how. This is a manual. I fully expect to see a worn out, weathered edition that's been folded and crumpled and sitting on the desk as somebody works through Hiring Better People Faster.

Shannon Waller: I love it. Let's jump in. Again, highly encourage you when you're listening to this to get it as soon as possible and buy some copies for the people in your company because you're not the only one who does the hiring. Buy copies for everyone who needs to hire. And as we'll talk about later, it's everyone's job, not just one person, but we'll save that for a little bit. Let's talk about your Core Fit Hiring Process. You have a fabulous model, six parts to it. Some of those will be very familiar, but I want to dive into a couple of them because you have some different approaches and you have some, I would say, deeper ways of thinking and talking about it that people might be tempted to gloss over. You need to find better people faster.

The better people is key because we're in a really interesting market right now when it comes to great Whos. This is a take on how to find great Whos. And there's a lot of competition for good people. Some people want to rush the interview process. I want to talk about job descriptions, because some of them sound horrific, the ones you related in the book. It feels like there aren't enough good people out there or I hear a lot about, especially in the industrial area where our school system haven't trained the right people. I just read a fabulous book by Temple Grandin called Visual Thinking and it says, we've excluded those people because they didn't like algebra. So it's just, how do we attract great people even if they don't look like they have all of the school accreditation that they need? Which I think is another powerful conversation.

So I'm very clear that finding like-minded, values aligned, capable people who are passionate, it's the thing. I'm so excited that you have delved into this very thoroughly, but in an easy to read way, important for me, into this process. So let me actually even before we jump into your Core Fit Hiring Process, what are you noticing out in the world? Because you have a conversation in the book because people say, "Oh, hiring's changed." Or, "There's no good people out there." So what do you say when people throw that line at you, which I'm sure you've heard hundreds of times?

Jeremy Macliver: This is the first time I've heard it is right on this podcast. If you believe that one, I have something more than a book to sell you. Yeah, so that's a common belief. And what's interesting is we wrote this book for the construction, trade-based type business because we felt like there was a lot of stuff out there that we'll use Google or Apple or these cultures that don't seem real when I got cement that's got to get poured at 5:00 AM, I got a customer that's going to be standing there expecting their food order to be delivered. I got these things that just virtual doesn't work, foosball tables won't get, there's things that I got to run a business. And so we wrote it for that. But interestingly enough, and that's why you see a lot of the tactical and the practical and like, okay, how do we really do this?

I hear those exact things about we can't hire, we can't find good people at every level of every company. Lawyers are saying the exact same thing that HVAC techs are saying word for word almost. There's no good help out there. You can't find people to show up. Everybody's got an entitlement mentality. These are common things. And in the book we're going to go back and break down some of those things and show you that some of that's been around for a long time. It's just things have shifted a little bit in the way that it's being communicated. And so if we get to the core of what's driving people, you will win.

Shannon Waller: Okay, so let's dive into that. Let's dive into the Core Fit Hiring Process. Where does it begin? Where do you start?

Jeremy Macliver: So it begins at the center, and when I mention the center, I realize this is the audio, but know that the very middle of our model, we have the core. Most leaders do not get what they want because they never actually say what they really want. And that is going to become a compelling, and part of what we're getting ready to do is getting you really clear on what does it really mean to have a great employee, a great company, a great vision of where you're going? So we start with your core because if we can get you clear around that, we can begin to attract the right people.

Shannon Waller: So I love that. So it's really an attraction game, is that what you're saying?

Jeremy Macliver: It is. It is absolutely an attraction game. So if you're going to draw... And we actually use an analogy, you'll hear in sales, farming and hunting, we have farmer salespeople, we have hunting salespeople, and that's always been a general term. The hunters are the ones that can go out and figure out that one right prospect and go right after them. And farmers are the ones that can do more of account management, curate, build through a network type thing. And we see those same principles in the hiring, because really hiring is a marketing and sales thing. We'll dive deeper into that in just a minute. And so we'll see the hunters or the recruiters and they're going out there, they're getting... And those are really needed in certain situations. I need one leader to run my operations. Hunter, go for it.

And we'll see the farming thing, I see a lot of that. And we're going to build from within. We're going to promote, we're going to build training programs, we're going to build apprenticeship programs, we're going to work with school systems to collaborate. Those are all really noteworthy and great ways to attract people. Unfortunately, one's expensive and one can take a long time. What we really have brought to the table is what we call the fishing model. So you can have hunting and you can have farming or say, "Hey, there's another way to put food on the table, fishing."

Shannon Waller: Well, and it's this idea, when you said this to me, I'm like, I leaned in. I'm like, what? I only know of the other two, at least from an articulated way of talking about it. So this one, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I need you on my podcast." Let's talk about fishing. What is fishing in this context?

Jeremy Macliver: Fishing, if you just look at it's essentially going to the right pond, creating the right attractive offer, and letting them come to you.

Shannon Waller: Interesting.

Jeremy Macliver: And that's why we start with core, because you have to get clear on what fish do you want swimming towards you.

Shannon Waller: Well, that's why you really have to know what you want or it's like having a hook that's not baited.

Jeremy Macliver: Hook that's not baited or you're in the wrong pond or you're attracting... Well, all I'm getting is carp. Well, change your bait and you'll get a different fish. Maybe you were looking for something different. And so it's all about what's going to attract them that's in line to what you are. And I find that entrepreneurs, we just go out and we just blast. We throw anything on there, put anything out there, and we haven't got really clear on what do we want.

Shannon Waller: Interesting. So you have a number of processes and questions that you suggest that people take some time, some EOS Clarity Breaks to answer. So let's talk about what some of those things are that people need to think about as they're really figuring out who they are, what they want to attract, who they want to attract.

Jeremy Macliver: Yeah, and you mentioned EOS, obviously I'm an EOS implementer, so you could see that there's definitely a very symbiotic relationship and for companies that are running on EOS, some of these questions will have been answered through going through EOS.

Shannon Waller: Yes. And just to clarify, Strategic Coach runs on EOS. Well, a while ago, saw Gino at his workshop, Gino Wickman, founder of EOS, which stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System, was at the EOS conferences this year. So it's very knitted together and it merges so beautifully with Coach, it's completely complementary and doesn't overlap, which is kind of amazing. So it's been a perfect system for us to run on. And it's funny, so I've been with Coach since 1991, long time, and we were doing the core values exercise and I was kind of like, "Everyone knows who we are. We know what we're about, why are we doing this?" I was so snotty about it.

And then we articulate, turns out we had 13, a few too many, narrowed down to four, PAGE positive and collaborative teamwork, alert, curious, responsive, resourceful, growth and results and excellent first-class experience. Those are our four core values. And all of a sudden it became so much refreshed, so much better. It was very clear. So I was like, "Oh Shannon, you need to have a little more humility about this." Because it helped us articulate something that was intrinsic, but it wasn't extrinsic and it was like, "Duh, of course you need to do this."

Jeremy Macliver: I'm glad you brought that up, because that is one of my... As an author, when you're writing the book, you have this picture of what they're doing when they're reading the book. It may not always be true.

Shannon Waller: True. You hope.

Jeremy Macliver: So my hope for anybody reading the book is that you don't go, "Oh yeah, I got those values. Yep, I got a vision... Oh, I got those things. All right, move down. How do I get to the faster piece?" Because if you do faster first, we started with better.

Shannon Waller: Right. Ooh, good one.

Jeremy Macliver: And so you've got to get the better section. And like you said, it's the longest chapter of the book, because once we get this, everything else gets lined up.

Shannon Waller: So there's an expression, go slow to go fast. And that's really what you're talking about here.

Jeremy Macliver: Yeah, so go slow and that going slow get... If I could just beg, plead, urge to get 100% authentic with it. So there's a story about a team in the book that it wasn't quite working and when we get into the ads and all that stuff later, they had gotten really clear on who they were, but they hadn't got clear on articulating that, because they weren't confident and ready for that and it didn't work well. They had the wrong thing showing up. It really wasn't the system was working. You've got to actually do the hard work to get clear on it. And then little tweaks of just becoming more authentic with who you are allows you to really propel it.

Shannon Waller: So do you have an example of that? Of something that wasn't quite on point and then they made a small tweak probably in an ad, right?

Jeremy Macliver: Yeah.

Shannon Waller: That really shifted it for them. I'm curious to hear what does that tangibly look like?

Jeremy Macliver: So I'm trying to think of the best way to describe, if I can remember the core value right now, I would give it to you. But they have a really cool, fun piece to them. It's got this little bit of a goofy sense of humor and they're super productive and they had looked at all the other ads around their marketplace, big mistake.

Shannon Waller: I was actually waving my finger when you said that. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't reference other people.

Jeremy Macliver: The only way that can not be a mistake is you make sure yours does not look like any of them or even resemble them. That would be the only time I'd be like, okay, maybe you got a few bonus points out of it, but not a lot. You're better off just going and doing what you want. And so they had took... Because they really needed people. I mean, they were at the spot where if you have a pulse, I'll hire you.

Shannon Waller: Yeah, if you can fog a mirror, you're good.

Jeremy Macliver: If you can fog a mirror, I need you. But they didn't let that goofy part go into it because we need people. And this is serious. When they let a little bit out, a little fun and creativity into their ad, a little bit of dazzle, you could say, of who they really were, it actually, boom, all of a sudden more ads. Now what's interesting is they didn't realize this at first, but they actually had to get a little bit of that goofy into their interview now.

Shannon Waller: Nice. So it has to be congruent the whole way through.

Jeremy Macliver: If you're not fun, and one of my core values is seriously funny.

Shannon Waller: Oh, I love that. One of mine is lighthearted, serious minded. I love it.

Jeremy Macliver: And I'm very serious about both sides of that. I'm serious, we got some massive stuff we need to be doing. Let's move. Let's go. And if you can't laugh along the journey, we're going to struggle. And so this team wasn't being inauthentic to have a little bit of goofiness in their interview and in their ads, it was actually becoming more real of who they were. And so if you don't have that, whatever your... I had a team when they're doing core values one time who wanted funny in their core values. It's in mine so I'm not opposed to it. But the team was a very serious and stoic company, but they felt like they needed to have it.

And they're debating it. Are we? Are we not? We used Patrick Lencioni's three value traps, the aspiration, accidental, and permission to play. And they're discussing and finally someone says, "Well we have a fun committee, we've got to be fun." I thought, oh, if you have a committee for it, we probably aren't a core value. And so those that are listening at it don't feel like this story. You have to be fun or caught up in your interview if that's not who you are. But when that team got that way, they got more relaxed. They saw people that didn't fit them as well, because they were more who they were. And then they found some gems.

Shannon Waller: Nice.

Jeremy Macliver: And then birds of a feather flock together. So if you want eagles, act like an eagle, you'll attract eagles and they'll attract more eagles.

Shannon Waller: Nice. I like that. And there's something else from, again, I get a little tired of the generational conversation, but I do think that hiring people born much later than I was born, one of the things that's happened in the marketplace, which I think is actually great, is that people are more interested in authenticity, more interested in transparency, and want to find meaning in their work. Is that something that you've discovered too? And so for me, this sharing your core values actually allows people to connect with you. It's like, yes, I've been looking for you. Where have you been? Whereas if you don't do that, they don't know and they can't trust because you haven't said who you are. You haven't said what you're about.

Jeremy Macliver: It's exactly true. We have more choice now and are on our phone for where we could spend our time. Early 1900s, you worked at the GM factory because GM factory was what was in town. My grandfather worked at the Corning Glass Company for 40 years because in his town was Corning Glass and you either had a job at Corning Glass or you had a job supporting Corning Glass. That's not the case anymore. So everybody can choose. Well, if they're going to choose, they're going to choose more around their why, compensation being equal. And actually I find we have scenarios that some of them we pulled out of the book, because they almost sound too unrealistic. But they're true stories of people taking massive cuts in pay over value and where they were going and the opportunity to be aligned to a purpose or a vision. We have story after story. We dabbled in it, but we cut some of them down because this sounds unrealistic like we're making it up.

Shannon Waller: Well, I can validate that. I was literally talking to someone Friday night. The person took a more than 50% pay cut from their previous role because that role wasn't aligned. She didn't feel like it was the right fit. She took this opportunity. Now first of all, she's going to end up with way better experience, way more opportunity to grow. At some point she'll be writing her own ticket. But she took... Man, I was like, that takes courage to do that. But there was the win. And truthfully what she will end up doing, she'll fly so high. I've heard my own stories that validate exactly what you said.

Jeremy Macliver: Absolutely. They're all over. And anybody, according to the book that you all have, The 10x Is Easier Than 2x. That's exactly what's going on with those kinds of people.

Shannon Waller: Yep.

Jeremy Macliver: That's a great book. And in that, that's people that are really looking for it. And that's the people you want on your team are people that are like, no, I want to be behind this. I want this direction. So it's extremely important that you share it from your core. And I'm going to reiterate that core because when it comes from way deep down within, people resonate. It connects, it works. And it works in the trades really well. People say, "Oh, I have a steel company." Well, you know what? I was implementing EOS for a steel company that thought this core values thing was, “Eh, we weren't going to get so far with that one,” but they did it because it's part of the process and they're getting great results with their [inaudible 00:22:25]. And they did it with all their hearts. They started probably about where you just shared, a little bit like, okay, we'll do this for the fun of it, for what Jeremy's telling us we have to do and we'll get through this and we'll move on to the valuable stuff.

But the owner and iron worker himself really got to thinking and say, okay, these are our values. Just like when you shared we had 13 and here we are, and then all of a sudden, no, these are it. And you were just right there, rattled them off. And then he got up and delivered this to his iron worker employees, rough guys, tough guys. We're in Phoenix, Arizona, the hot sun, rugged, they're proud of their ruggedness. And he got up in front of them and I had the honor of being there for this one. And he said, "Guys, we're doing this EOS thing and it's been really good. They've taught us a lot and we're really growing. It's been transformational in our business. And they said we had to do this core values thing and I thought it was stupid. But I got to thinking, what really matters out there? We have four things I want to share with you."

And he shared from his heart and I saw an iron worker wipe a tear. This is a guy standing out delivering the speech in jean coveralls and a t-shirt. I mean, this is not... Right? Kind of like, this is what we are about.

Shannon Waller: Nice.

Jeremy Macliver: And so they want it. They're craving to belong. And so get clear on your core. We go through that in depth, spending time letting you think about what your answers are to these important questions. We can track people that want to do exactly that.

Shannon Waller: Oh my gosh, that's an inspiring story. Thank you for sharing that. So let's talk about, you've got a six-part system. We will not have time to jump into all of it, but it's find, automate, interview, onboard, engage, and assess. Those are the six steps after you figure out your core and you share your core. And I do want to touch on something we've been alluding to a little bit. Well actually two things. Job descriptions, not making them seven pages. And also the fact that it actually is a marketing activity and not just a responsibility of HR. And a fun little story, which I don't think you'll know Jeremy. So someone was talking to Babs about our structure. They're like, "Oh, well we need to have an HR department." She goes, "I refuse to have an HR department. We are all in HR."

She was like, "Forget about it. We're all in the people business. No one gets to do this." So we actually have, do we have someone who does HR functions? Yes, we do. However, it's very much about finding people, taking care of people, if necessary, exiting people. It's all of our responsibility. She did not want that just focused in on one human. And so we have recruiting managers, we've got people whose sole focus is finding great people, which is why this information will be super helpful. But I thought that was cool and enlightened. My background is organizational psychology, so I'm like, that's kind of cool, but particularly to go back to you what you're saying, and there's this great quote in the book that I highlighted, "Recruiting is a marketing activity and everyone is responsible for it."

Jeremy Macliver: Absolutely.

Shannon Waller: Yeah. So let's talk about that.

Jeremy Macliver: And if, not if, when you switch your mindset to exactly what that said, that this is a marketing activity, you will begin the big pivotal change of actually getting the people you want. I see, and I work with a lot of different teams, I'll see them master marketing. They got it down, they can get clients, they know how to do that. And then we look over at the people, and they're like, but we don't have no one to do the work. Can you just take what you just did but move it over to the other part? We were doing a lot of the coaching and the training and what really propelled us to put the book together and say, okay, we're going to go for it, was when we started noticing team after team after team whose annual planning goals were lowered not because they couldn't get clients, but because they couldn't get team members.

Shannon Waller: That's crazy.

Jeremy Macliver: It's a marketing activity. And then from that, it's everybody's job. How do we engage everything? And we're going to give a ton of content inside the book around how do you get everybody doing this? This is not one of those areas that you want to just delegate and forget. Everybody that knows me knows I am a master at delegating and forgetting and I love it except for when it's the critical path for your business. And so we want to engage everybody in that and then look at it from a marketing aspect. I have a lot of teams that will actually split this up even. The accountability, if you think about on the accountability chart of it, of an EOS accountability chart. And they'll put recruiting, employee brand, that stuff in the marketing accountability.

Shannon Waller: That is so cool.

Jeremy Macliver: And then they'll put the HR functions of payroll, compensation, benefits over in the finance or HR area where it belongs.

Shannon Waller: I love that.

Jeremy Macliver: And so don't feel like you have to say, oh, I got to have one person. No, it could split up. I was just talking to a team this morning before our podcast that the marketing leader, they needed an integrator. The company needed one, couldn't get one, couldn't get one. Guess who got it? The marketing leader.

Shannon Waller: Amazing.

Jeremy Macliver: Knew how to go out there, attract, find the right, do it. And I just met the new integrator. He's super pumped, super excited. They've done tons of core value fits. They know who they are at the core, but it came from being able to take these principles and just go to marketing.

Shannon Waller: Nice. I love that story. Makes me excited for people. That is a profound statement. People were lowering their goals not because of a lack of clients, but a lack of team members to deliver on those promises. This is huge. This is why you wrote this book.

Jeremy Macliver: It is.

Shannon Waller: That's insane.

Jeremy Macliver: Let me throw a little bit more onto that one though after you said that. So let me do the inverse thinking of that. So one, they can consciously see and you might be here listening and think, okay, yeah, I did lower my goal, because I couldn't get the people, I couldn't... But leaders that master this uncover how much restrictive thinking they had on their goals.

Shannon Waller: Really?

Jeremy Macliver: Some leaders might've said, "Hey, we're going to go for five million dollars in revenue. Oh, I don't know if we can get it, let's back it down to 4.5." But the five was already a restrictive mindset. And so when they can unlock that, no, we can, we can get the Whos from Who, Not How. We can do this, now what do we do? And they unlock the potential and now the five is six, seven, eight because of that.

Shannon Waller: And that's what you're seeing. You're seeing, I'm going to call it exponential growth, when they really dial in the system and they do all the things that you've said and we're going to touch on a couple of them before we wrap up. But when they do that, they actually, as you said, have the confidence to go higher. And this is interesting. Something I've learned about my own thinking is that until I have the capabilities in place, I can't, won't, don't set much bigger goals. And I am strategic, so I'm not small-minded in any way, but until I know the capabilities are there, which is why Who, Not How is so critical, because if what I can do is this big compared to what I can do in teamwork with other people is gigantic. But I have to be confident in that. And if I'm not, I don't think big. So I totally get what you're saying, that inverse is very much true.

Jeremy Macliver: And there's a part of just hearing that you can force your brain to think bigger, try, push. It's like when you're going to run, I like to run, okay, I'm just going to run faster. Well, I can only do a little bit more of that. So if I'm going to five million, I might be big 5.25, 5.5. But when it's in the DNA and the blood and you're just like, no, we can conquer, because I know we have a system. That's when it exponentially grows. And so I love it, I'm seeing it in the feeling and I love how you articulate it. We're seeing the exact same thing and that's one of the ones I love about watching teams unlock their ability to get the right people to go to the right place for.

Shannon Waller: So in the spirit of 10x, this could be your key.

Jeremy Macliver: Absolutely.

Shannon Waller: But the fact that it is actually one of the key obstacles to growth, that's a big takeaway for me in this. And you've seen what happens and there's stories of radical increases in revenue and profit with enthusiasm, with joy, with commitment, with passion, which is so amazing. All right, just because we can't talk all day, although you and I could, we definitely could. I wanted people to leave with some tangible things. Okay, you talk about the disaster of up to seven page job descriptions. So do you have coaching or a recommendation for how long a job description could be or what not to do? Because I always think that's useful too.

Jeremy Macliver: So job descriptions and job ads are different so that we get those two separated because I do see teams put job descriptions on job ads. And how many times have you seen this where you're driving down the road and you see a billboard for a company and it says, hey, this is the customer we serve and if you don't meet all these criteria, don't even call us. Have you ever seen that?

Shannon Waller: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Macliver: I've seen that in job ads, but usually when we're marketing our customers, we don't say that exact word.

Shannon Waller: 100%. That's a bit odd.

Jeremy Macliver: Well, why do we say it about our ads? Like, need not apply if you don't meet... Like, okay, whoa, let's tame that back. Let's get clear on what we want. And so that's one thing I would say in job ads is get very specific about what you're looking for. I see more ads that aren't exciting. I wouldn't apply. I wonder why nobody is. We're finding right now and we're always working on algorithms and stuff because technology does take a piece of this, how long should a job ad be and what should be included? There is a little bit of that that technology plays a part in. 1,500 words seems to be a fairly good size. It's lengthy enough to get search engines to work if you're using anything like that, but it's short enough and concise enough that we don't bore them to death. Right,

Shannon Waller: That's really helpful. Okay, cool.

Jeremy Macliver: Yeah, so that gets us close there. And then just be specific, use words in there that are, I talked about the fun and cool culture, or if you're a hard driving culture. Show that. You should have a big percentage of people that are turned off by your ad.

Shannon Waller: Which is the aim of really good marketing.

Jeremy Macliver: Absolutely.

Shannon Waller: As Joe Polish said, you want to sift, sort, and screen in the right people and repel the wrong people. So you should do that. And one of the best ads, and I'm going to mangle this example, there was a great sales letter that went out and I think it was for a trip to Africa. And what it said was, "This journey is going to be incredibly difficult. It's going to be hard. There will be risks." I don't think it said you may not make it home, but it was a little bit the implication. Anyway, they had this deluge of people who were the right fit because they actually said it appealed to the right people and repelled the wrong ones. So being really direct works, I love that. I love, love, love that. You want it to sift, sort, and screen in and repel the wrong.

Jeremy Macliver: Yes, we have a team that had a core value of fire in your belly. Hard charging, go-getters. If you want to go 100 miles an hour all the time, perfect team. They're going to wear you out. And so they made sure that ad was that way, everything, their interviews are... If you don't like this momentum and this pace, get out of our way, we're going to run you over. And yeah, people are like, "Oh no, that's not what I'm looking for."

Shannon Waller: Which actually really does that candidate a favor. There's nothing worse than accepting a job, going through the training, and then three months later you wash out. That's not a good part of your job search. So I think being really direct about that is-

Jeremy Macliver: But then so many people join the team that are that and are so happy they finally met their people.

Shannon Waller: I know, right? They finally have found their home, their work home. When I found Coach, I was like, finally I found my work family, [inaudible 00:36:41] my work community. But it was like, I am at home here. And you know because we have similar profiles on a few different realm. It's rare. To work with entrepreneurs, 100% my happy place. Corporate, I don't get it. Not my planet, monkey boy.

Jeremy Macliver: No. But it works best for everybody to filter through and they begin attracting and they begin doing more. And think about it, if you're in that kind of a culture and that environment that you fit and you like the people and it's achieving a lot of your why and Simon Sinek has Start With Why and all this, we know about the why. The conversations around compensation, benefits, all of those other things that we think are the little things are not as critical now. I'm not saying that they're not critical, but they're not as critical.

Shannon Waller: Yeah, this has been proven by numerous studies. I'm going to call it danger pay. People want to get paid more if some of their other needs are not being met. What is it, like number five on the list of satisfiers for jobs? It's not number one.

Jeremy Macliver: Forever. We do these-

Shannon Waller: Forever.

Jeremy Macliver: Forever. And then I've seen team after team after team, "Well we just need to give them raises, pay them more money so that we don't lose them." We need to go deliver to them, to some of them. What I found is going through this process is that you'll find that some of them actually don't fit. Release them to where they should fit and you'll find the right ones.

Shannon Waller: Awesome. One more thing that I thought. I mean, there's so many gems, it's very hard to pick. But one other thing I want to talk through briefly is your 2, 4, 12 launch formula. It's short and sweet and so astute. I was really impressed by that. So can you just share what you're checking out at each of those stages?

Jeremy Macliver: Yeah, so first and foremost, just so you know where this come from, we see time and time again the onboarding fail.

Shannon Waller: I love that term.

Jeremy Macliver: For one of two reasons. One, I was so desperate to get you there that when you show up, I'm buried in 100 other things and I just, "Shannon take it and run." And I abandon it or I create this environment where I have to do everything and you as the new employee don't own any of it. And so we have the own the results squared. It's, I'm going to own the results, you're going to own the results. We're going to make sure that this is a combo thing right here. And with that we came up with a 2, 4, 12 launch, which is really close and aligned with a quarter. We found that the 90 day, there's a lot of science around the 90 days. And so with that, in those first two weeks, it's really getting to know the basics. So we're going to outline, hey, two weeks you should know, four weeks you should know, and then 12 weeks you should know and this allows you to create that.

And so the very beginning we need you to know the basics, the job, just getting comfortable with that stuff. And what this does is it actually takes pressure off of the whole onboarding process and alleviate, okay, we just need to get this... If you think about gears, we're just meshing two sets of gears and we got your stuff and ours and we're moving those together. From there, we're going to move into week four and now we're going to start getting into more of the tactical stuff. Like, you were actually able to do all of this stuff and then by 12, you need to be able to own the role and the results. And so the very beginning is just getting into the team, then getting the tactical basic tackle and block stuff, and then by 12 weeks we got you there. And that allows us to shift through and not put so much stress on day one or burden everything up too fast, too much. We're data dumping, or we're putting too much pressure on ourselves or we're lighting it all off.

Now the other critical thing with this that has really helped a lot of teams and for the clients that are doing EOS and there's a lot of clients that are using Hire Better People Faster, they're not doing EOS. But for those that are doing some form of EOS format or they have some form of meeting cadence, we get really clear on day one about the whole 2, 4, 12 launch with them and then it's their job, the new employee to help guide this. And so we're going to have the meetings, the level tens bring it up, we're going to give you that and now you help us help you, but we expect that in 12 weeks, you own this.

Shannon Waller: I really like this because they need to take initiative, they need to speak up, they need to share responsibility and partnership. I mean, I wrote The Team Success Handbook to give people a recipe for success to be in entrepreneurial companies and I wrote Multiplication By Subtraction for when it didn't work. How to gracefully let go of wrong-fit team members. But so much of this either gets set or wrecked in the onboarding process. So for me it's very encouraging that it's a partnership. They need to own the role and the results. I'm all about that, but they're a partner in that happening. So one of the reasons why people don't let go of team members, it’s like, oh, I didn't do enough. I could have done better. Did I give them enough training? All this stuff. And I'm like, dude, unless you're a complete jerk, it ain't you.

Jeremy Macliver: I love that.

Shannon Waller: Yeah, so I think it's key.

Jeremy Macliver: [inaudible 00:42:21] Is obviously aligned with that. And we're communicating all of it, what the 12 looks like at the beginning and in the book we go through really detailed. We don't have time for it all right here, we're communicating that and then we're giving them the ownership of that. And an employee saying, "Hey, I'm struggling with..." is a valuable, valuable conversation.

Shannon Waller: Totally.

Jeremy Macliver: Not, "You didn't train me. How was I..." No, I need you to own that. It becomes a give and take dance. Whereas, I'm sure you've seen this too, let's pretend in the mind of the leader, they did do the training piece and I put it in little quotes right now. They did do the training piece and they did do enough, which most often I see what you just said that they, oh, I didn't train enough, I didn't... And they get to day 90 like, okay, I did my thing, I'm done. You have to own it. Now we have the cold hard shift. Why didn't we start shifting into gear on day one? Now we just training dropped right here.

Shannon Waller: I know. Yep. You're now thrown out of the airplane and you may or may not have a functioning parachute.

Jeremy Macliver: Versus we could have guided this in and that's what the 2, 4, 12 is meant to do and that really came from, it's good to hire better people faster, but one of the best ways to do that is make sure that the people that you got aren't leaving.

Shannon Waller: Yeah, that's a great point. Well, they're not leaving, you're not firing them, all the things.

Jeremy Macliver: Leaving for whatever reason, if you open the front door and shut the back door, you're going to fill up the house a lot faster.

Shannon Waller: So good, so good. I love it. That's a really great point, because that is another danger. People leaving, job hopping, all the things. That's why really delivering on what you promised and that will just guarantee that you hire better people faster.

Jeremy Macliver: And that's why the model actually does have, we talked about the six components around the, it's really seven components, but around the core. But if you look at in the way the model is drafted, there's three major functions around it. There's the attract section, which many people want to focus on. Then there's the hire, which is the interview, onboarding, and then there is the retain section. Because if we really got this dialed in, it's spinning really well. Get the right people in the right seats, they're doing it. We've just got this continual motion there.

Shannon Waller: Such a great structure. Jeremy, thank you so much. This has been interesting, informative, and I love it if people are growth oriented, this is critical. As you pointed out, you're actually probably holding back your own vision for growth and goal setting and what your company could be doing and making the impact you want to have in the world, because this is not dialed in. That's kind of a big deal and I think that's key. Lots of insights, but also recruiting as a marketing function. Everyone's in this and you can share that amongst different roles. How to really make sure that you retain people once you hire them? And the need to go in first so that you can attract the right fit people and those are the ones that you will retain. I mean, now I'm the person other than Babs and Dan who've been with Coach the longest, but we have so many other 20, 25 year people, it's ridiculous, on the team and fortunately also clients.

But when there's an alignment, it works. And it works and people are like, "That is so unusual." I'm like, "It is for other companies, it's not for us." So I know from our own experience that when you have that alignment, it works brilliantly. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for you and Ryan for writing this book. Can't wait for people to get it in their hot little hands. How can they contact you? Where can they buy the book? They have questions if they love your process, but don't want to do it themselves. Because once someone's laid it out, you're like, "Oh good, can you do it for me please?" So that happens. So how can people reach out and find you and learn more?

Jeremy Macliver: So hirebetterpeoplefaster.com. They can go there, it'll forward them to the Core Matters and they can get all that. Just know as far as our level of involvement, we have the book and we tried writing the book so that a lot of people could just open it up and do the work. You saw that, it's not a theory book.

Shannon Waller: No, very practical.

Jeremy Macliver: This is a practical. I hope there's little dog ears on it and writing and it's utilized. It's meant to be like that. But then we do have some different ways to interact, either light, all the way to done for you, or we're completely immersed in it. None of this is theory to us. We are living it every single day. And so I invite you to just explore the best way to unleash the potential for your team.

Shannon Waller: I love it. Jeremy, thank you, thank you, thank you for your time. As I said, teams and Unique Ability teamwork is 100% where my focus is. People in business I find endlessly fascinating and motivating. And your contribution and your take on this to me is extremely helpful. It is practical, it is tactical, it's wise, and it's easy to read and easy to implement. So I'm very appreciative that you put this out into the world. Thank you so much.

Jeremy Macliver: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Shannon Waller: I hope you enjoyed this interview about how to hire better people faster. Thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know at questions@strategiccoach.com. And as always, here's to your team's success.