Max Hansen and Brian Mohr: Episode 265

Transcript

[0:00:16] RW: Hi, everyone. It’s Rae Williams, host of Author Hour where I interview authors about their new books. We’ve all been through a crazy or tedious job interview, but some of us have actually been on the interviewer side where we’re trying to figure out how to even approach this person. Well, our next guests are going to discuss the whole scene and provide powerful strategies for shifting your hiring philosophy. They are cofounders of the cutting-edge executive recruiting agency Y Scouts, Max Hansen and Brian Mohr. Their book is called Hiring On Purpose. The book is a ground breaking guide that will help you cut through the usual interview and resume BS to recognize and attract innovative problem solvers who perfectly fit with your company’s culture, mission and DNA. Let’s get right to the conversation with Brian and Max.

[0:01:13] MH: I think for the first couple of years when we started Y Scouts, Brian and I felt like we stumbled onto gold when we even put Google the term, search term, purpose-based recruiting when we realized that’s what we were doing. Nothing really came up so we’re really hesitant to really share it with the world at first because we thought we were – kind of had the first mover advantage. We went through about two or three years of having, being in that first mover position and it took us some time to realize after selling and pitching and telling people about what we’re doing. People are very receptive to it but it was still so new for everybody that we started to realize that we did have first mover advantage, but we needed to educate everybody. We really needed this quickly share why purpose matters and why hiring with purpose matters so much. It’s kind of how we started.

[0:02:10] BM: I would add to that, as we began this journey and began having really great success and impacting the lives of the leaders that we had the opportunity to work with and place into organizations who would then have a pretty massive impact on the teams and the organizations that they’re leading. Our larger vision is to connect 10 million people with work that matters and when you start to I guess, reverse engineer 10 million number to do that one at a time is going to take out a really long time and so the idea of capturing all of our experiences up to this point and sharing those experienced and the processes that we’ve used and ever find over time and sharing those with a larger audience would help us achieve that 10 million mark which we are focused on doing. It just became sort of this, there’s no way we’re going to get to 10 million one at a time, so how do we just share this much more broadly so that people can begin to implement these processes and some of the learnings that we’ve had to date?

[0:03:22] RW: Right off the bat in your book, you have a chapter called hiring, hiring must change. How hiring must change. What is it that you – what are the detrimental things that you were seeing or the negatives that you were seeing in hiring practices and a bit more detail that you decided needed to go?

[0:03:39] BM: I think the biggest piece on that is most organizations approach the hiring process as a transaction and for so long, we’ve relied on the alignment between a job description and the candidate’s resume and there’s a huge place for that, obviously. There’s a job to be done and there are certain experiences and skills that a candidate must bring to the table in order to be successful in delivering the outcomes that that role needs, to be delivered or have delivered. Yet, that transactional approach is just so – it’s not serving us as well as it once did. And as we’ve moved from much more manufacturing based economy to a knowledge based economy and as roles are so much more cognitive in nature and much more non-routine than they’ve ever been, the problems that we’re facing today require such a different level of creativity and innovation and so we’re tapping into I think the part of the human experience that doesn’t show up on a resume or doesn’t show up in a company’s job description and that is this notion of purpose and values and cultural alignment. That’s a really hard thing to vet out if you’re relying dominantly on the resume and the job description to facilitate that connection process. It’s really, it’s moving away from a transaction to a relational process and you know, that’s hard, we’re fighting decades and decades of rituals and habits that I think have served us well but are really beginning to outlive their usefulness. I think that’s probably the biggest piece. I don’t know, Max, what would you say?

[0:05:32] MH: I think what I’d add to that is, hiring is you know, it’s hard, it’s a very hard thing to be good at and it’s a very – I always look at it like it’s like becoming a better leader, it’s one of those things that you always are going to have to be working on becoming better of and it’s a muscle that you’ll always have to be kind of working out. I think when we think about hiring must change, not only should it change, must it change from a hiring around purpose, values, cultural aspects. I think, when we say that we also mean for the most part, we also mean for the most part, we see a lot of leaders acknowledging that hiring is the most important thing that they must do, yet I see a lot of leaders also trying to delegate hiring because it is difficult and they want to work on other things. I think it’s a combination of all those things or just trying to kind of wake people up and let them know not only has it changed but you know, you’re going to have to spend more time on it and really focus on it. Be super intentional about it in so many ways.

[0:06:33] RW: What is that first step that people can take to make sure that their hiring practices are not as you said, transactional?

[0:06:40] BM: I would say that the amount of investment and time and energy you put in on the front end before you even begin looking for people and beginning the outreach process is absolutely where it starts. To dust of last year’s job description or to surf the internet and look for similar jobs and begin to piecemeal and borrow language from other people’s job descriptions to create your own job description that you’re going to use to attract talent. Those processes aren’t going to lead you to a very good place most often and so I think that front end investment of connecting with the right people within the organization, that understand the role, that understand the outcomes that the role needs to deliver, and to make sure that you’re really collecting the opinions, the thoughts of the right group of internal stakeholders to help define, what do we really need, who are we really looking for, what are the outcomes that this will really need to deliver as supposed to you know? As opposed to listing up long list of tasks and responsibilities and the day to day things that often times change and just ensuring that there’s clarity of vision of what the role really intends to do is to me where everything starts. It’s, how much you prepare and the type of practice if you will, you put into it on the front end as very indicative of the type of results you’ll achieve when the process concludes.

[0:08:14] RW: How does values play into this because I know you talk a bit in your book about values as well, as you’re kind of doing that front end, you know, research and making sure that the job description is not just as you said, yeah, a list of things to do which I feel like as always, the case. How do you then put values into that, where does that come in?

[0:08:34] BM: Well, I think you know, it comes to values, most organizations that we work with and most organizations just in general, obviously have a set of values and then in the interview process, we’re really looking to – in order to understand what those values mean, within that organization and our perhaps sessions that we spend time with, with our clients, really find out what those behaviors look like in that specific environment and then from there, crafting the right types of questions so we can ask candidates to give us, tell us about times when they show that behavior in another job just to make sure that they see it the same way, they value the same things and there’s alignment between their personal values and the company’s values.

[0:09:19] RW: All right. Give me an example of I guess, one of your stories or one of your best samples of just this in motion, just this way of hiring in motion and that can be from the book or just you know, any other experience that you have but I’d love to hear how this is affecting people and how this is working?

[0:09:36] MH: From a value standpoint or just from an alignment standpoint in general?

[0:09:41] RW: Just form both and just the difference I guess the traditional hiring practices that people are still using and how it looks differently when you’re hiring based on values and when you’re putting that work into actually getting a job description that makes sense, that gives you a feeling rather than the set of tasks.

[0:10:00] MH: Yeah, I mean, the best example that just jumps of the paper at me is we worked with an organization, it was a high end kind of drug treatment centers and they were looking for, they’re looking for somebody to run their operations and so we start our process with a discovery process which means we don’t – when we reach out to candidates, we’re retained and we’re exclusive. We don’t disclose the details of the role or the company because we really want to learn about the candidate genuinely and authentically and the best way to do that is to start asking a questions about them before they know why they’re answering the questions in. I remember, I was actually training a newer employee at the time and this was several years ago and so we’re working for the company, the organization that owns these drug treatment centers and we found a gentleman that had run a multi-site restaurant chain. We didn’t have direct experience necessarily the in drug treatment. When we’re in that discovery process, we ask them if you could make the same amount of money and do anything that you wanted, what would you do? He went on to tell us that when his brother played professional baseball, hurt his knee, had to get knee surgery, start taking pain pills and really fell into this deep bad place in addiction to drugs. He said he would love to work for a drug treatment center. That is just a really great example of you know, just bullseye of somebody really having purpose and passion around something. And us screening for a role in that covert process where there is direct alignment so he went in and did a fantastic job, company ended up being very successful. That’s just a great example of how powerful purpose discovery can be, a lot of times it’s not as black and white as that, you can find alignment through different things around their purpose and passions, but that was a direct hit and I always like to give that example just to give somebody a taste of how powerful it can be.

[0:12:08] BM: yeah, I think it is an excellent example and it’s the one that has stuck with me through all these years. I think sort of the larger narrative around this that I’d like to add is you know, for most people, who are listening to this, here’s a good chance they’ve been recruited in the past, whether it be through LinkedIn or through a referral network and often times, the recruiting firm or search firm, their initial conversation or outreach is, “hey, I’ve got this great job, let me tell you a little bit about the job and I think you’d be a great fit for it from a skills perspective.” I think that approach, again, is it’s fast forwarding to a transaction or a step in the process that is a little too far down the road, there are so much discovery and curiosity that needs to be explored before you even get into that and so, when we reach out to folks and instead as Max shared, not sharing with them the name of the company or any of the details of the role in letting them know, “hey, we wouldn’t be reaching out to you if we didn’t think there was a reason for us to have this conversation.” Because you know, we’re not going to waste your time and we certainly don’t want to waste our time, but before we get into the details of the job and the organization and your resume, we just want to focus on you, the human being and what is it that light you up? What kind of an organization do you think would allow you to do your best work? Who are the type of people that you want to surround yourself with? What are the values and conditions that lead you to operate at your peak operating system? And just really getting into all of those details without them knowing how to answer because they’ve already been informed of the company or the job and they can begin crafting how they might answer in a way that they thing is what we want to hear so that they could progress through the process. Versus, let’s just talk about you and if you don’t have any of the details of how to answer, then that ability to get authentic with somebody is just so much more available. You know, there’s a very small percentage of people that are still just driven by, hey, how much does it pay, where is it located, what’s my title? There’s nothing wrong with that, but the organizations that particularly align well with Y Scouts and our process, those are the companies that want to know the real person behind the resume and are relying on us in the thoroughness of our process to politely weed people out that are driven by the extrinsic motivators, primarily versus the intrinsic motivators that frankly I think that’s the potential that we’ve yet to tap in business is what’s inside people is what’s in their heart and soul? Not necessarily what’s on their resume.

[0:15:12] MH: I would add to that a bit. There’s people that might be listening to this that you know, kind of poo-poo the idea of this covert process because most people aren’t in a position like we are working on the behalf of people. But what I’d say to that is you know, if you plan your process out properly, if somebody even knows the role and the company and you really genuinely start the interview process, by doing discovery and learning about them first, you get the kind of the same result, you get somebody that kind of drops the mask and gets authentic and really, you get to a really better, more authentic place and you learn more about people. Because I know when we talk about being covert, the first thing most people think is, I can’t do that because most people are doing their own hiring and they can’t – they’re not in that position. But I add that because it comes up quite a bit. You know the book talks a lot about it. The process is really just focusing on doing deep discovery and learning about what matters most to the candidate and the person first. And when you do that, things tend to flow a little bit better. Both sides get a little bit more authentic and the ultimate goal I think is everybody shows up to an interview with a mask on. Or most people show up in an interview or any type of interaction with a mask on. Now when you get vulnerable in both sides that mask comes off and then you really get to really what matters.

[0:16:38] RW: Now do you guys think that this is a definite pathway to hiring good leaders or is there a separate process or separate things that we should be looking for or should do when specifically hiring for leadership which I know you talked a lot about in the book?

[0:16:50] MH: I mean I think there is a lot more in your question earlier, you know what is going through my head as far as the first step and Brian started to get into some of the preparation. I always say that is very important. But you know the additional preparation that he was referring to as well is when it comes to hiring leaders in particular and anybody, but particularly leaders I guess, it is really having a plan. Having a plan of what types of questions you are going to ask. What you are actually listening for, how you’re going to – there is this kind of dance of really discerning whether or not this person is a fit, as well as being kind of selling the organization as well and I think there is a fine line between falling too far on each side of that line. And then being ready to know how you’re going to make that decision because great candidates come through relatively quick and I am not suggesting that you have to make quick rash decisions, but have a plan to know when somebody great comes through. What questions you’re going to ask, what you are listening for and then how you’re going to make that decision I think is part of the equation as well.

[0:18:02] BM: I would add to that is most organizations who are clear in their core values that is a great first step. I think there is a next level, specific to leadership is around this notion, does the company have a particular leadership philosophy? And if so, what are the elements or the ingredients of that leadership recipe? And really taking the time to think about what does leadership mean at our organization and what we have found is there’s three behaviors or qualities that help us really sort of separate great leaders from good leaders. And great leaders are those who drive results and know how to do that through other people while they are doing that. While they’re doing that, there is an intense focus on the development of the people that they have the honor and privilege of leading and third that they are just constantly leaning into learning and have a growth mindset and so this notion of driving results, developing people and learning relentlessly, are three characteristics that we believe are just they’re non-negotiables when it comes to leadership. And that is what we use at Y Scouts and that is not to say that every organization has to use those three. But I think we’ve all worked for people at some point in our career who have risen to a role of leadership because they were really, really good individual contributor and making that leap from what got you, what helped you become great as an individual contributor is exactly what will hold you back from being a great leader to help other individual contributors perform at their best. I don’t think we spend enough time helping people make that transition and I don’t know that organizations have really taking the time to define what is being a leader mean at this company, at our company? and what are those qualities, what are those characteristics, what are those personality traits that are the non-negotiables of what it means to be a leader here? And you know we share what we’ve learned through those particular three of the driving results, developing people and learning relentlessly, that anyone can adopt as their own. And if organizations find that they’ve got one or two that are far more relevant to their environment that’s great, but I think the importance of defining leadership within the organization and what that actually means is a step that has to be taken, so that you don’t fall under the trap of just hiring the best individual contributor that found his or her way to the top. Because they’re just superman or superwoman and are great at doing the work themselves, not necessarily doing it through other people, helping people become their best and then again, constantly leaning into learning and that sense of curiosity.

[0:21:14] MH: Yeah, I think when it comes to that leadership model. I think it is also a great way, I know we are talking about hiring, but I think it is a great way for companies to assess themselves, if they don’t have a model already that they are using to assess themselves, Brian always use to tell me I don’t know if this is pc, but he always used to tell me the fish always stinks from the head. So, if the leaders aren’t exemplifying those three elevated behaviors typically that becomes a problem. Usually hiring somebody in after that isn’t necessarily always going to take care of that problem. So I got to say that with a smile in my face because we say it obviously quietly amongst us and it is not something we blast from the hills, but I think it is kind of true.

[0:22:00] RW: All right, so do you guys have any example of a situation where this wasn’t applied and it all fell apart or what happens when people don’t employ some of these principles?

[0:22:12] MH: I mean you know the first thing that comes to mind in the book, we start with the story about the Chicago Bears choosing to hire Jay Cutler as their quarterback. You know when I think about the leadership model, you know did Jay Cutler when he was a Broncos before he went to Chicago, was he a relentless learner? Maybe, did he drag results? Kind of, did he develop on other people? It didn’t seem like it. So, I don’t know. I’m just trying to give an example of maybe a more high profile type of hiring or signing that most people know about that we talked about in the book. But I am sure Brian, do you have any other examples?

[0:22:52] BM: I mean a specific example and my mind goes to a lot of the high-profile ones and I don’t want to necessarily beat up the high-profile examples. What I think about is the overall workplace culture, just the general workplace culture that we’re all working in right now in the United States as evidence to buy all the data suggesting there’s very few people who were coming into work and finding a sense of meaning and purpose from the work experience. And to me, it just screams for the importance of really thinking about and upgrading the way in which we’re approaching our leadership hiring process and those that we are putting into leadership roles, ensuring that they have the qualities and recognize that leadership isn’t a right. It’s a privilege and if you are going to step into that role then you need to be modeling a very different set of qualities, behaviors, characteristics than those individual contributor roles and all roles are necessary. But that is what comes to mind for me, as the conversation continues to unfold, if there is a particular piercing example that I can think I will certainly share it and hopefully not to out anybody or shame any experiences that we have seen.

[0:24:21] RW: All right, if you guys could issue a challenge, just one challenge to your readers and our listeners that’s going to change their hiring practices today, just change the way they do things, something they could take action on almost immediately, what would that challenge be?

[0:24:36] MH: You know the first thing that comes to mind for me is I would challenge leaders, presidents and CEO’s of companies especially small to medium size companies or startups, how much time are you actually dedicating to the hiring process? How important are you – how are you prioritizing it? Because I think if you are the leader of an organization, you know whatever you spend your time on is showing the rest of the organization what’s most important. And you know, I haven’t met many leaders that don’t agree that hiring is if not the most important, the most important thing that they must do right. So my first challenge is, how much time are you spending? I think in a company that is a growing company, it is somewhat close to a startup phase or a small business. I think that leader needs to be spending 25% of their time in hiring processes or with potential candidates and candidates coming through the process. That would be my first challenge, how much time do you actually dedicating to the thing you’re saying is most important?

[0:25:41] BM: Yeah, I would agree with that and maybe as a follow-on step, I would challenge whether it is a CEO, the president just hiring leaders in general, is they need to be proactive. I mean we are in an environment right now that is as fiercely competitive for great talent as ever been at least in my career. And the notion that we are going to write up these great job ads and run them on the internet and expect people to flock to us, I think is a bit of a recipe that’s not going to be necessarily lead to a good outcome. And being proactive, having clarity of the people that you as an organization want to target and spend your time with in being the aggressor and proactively reaching out to the people you want to spend time with I think is exactly what the order of the day is given the competitiveness. Not to mention, even if we weren’t in as competitive in environment as we are right now, but there is nothing that makes an individual feel better about themselves than if they’re being contacted by an organization that recognizes something special about who they are and what they’ve achieved. And just saying, “Hey I would love to connect with you and learn a little bit more about who you are, what you are up to, the kind of work that you would love to be doing. We see something special in you and that is from the outside looking in. We’d like to take a look on the inside and we’d love to spend some time with you.” So, I think this notion that being far more proactive as oppose to reactive would be my follow up to Max’s challenge.

[0:27:21] RW: Nice, okay and is there anything else that you think is important that people know or consider when it comes to their hiring practices and when it comes to just even interviewing candidates?

[0:27:31] MH: There’s a lot of answers to that, but you know what jumps to mind, I think it follows our philosophy and we have seen a lot of success. It’s you know put together a process that makes sense where you genuinely get a learn about the candidate on the front end, showing that you do care about who they really are versus just jumping right into experiences and what you can do for us. So, I would challenge folks to really look at their processes and see if it is set up in a way, where you know, it is a process of care. We are learning about the individual and really what they most value. And then I think becoming a better interviewer. I think one thing we’ve learned in working with a lot of great clients is most people aren’t that good at interviewing. They are not prepared. They don’t know what they’re listening for and they’re really not that good. So, become better at interviewing, get prepared and then I would also throw out there, measure and ask candidates about their experience during the hiring process even the ones that don’t get hired. And find out what their experience is like through that process and does it align to the organization and the experiences and employee because candidate experience quickly turns into employee experience. So those would be a couple other things I’d throw in there.

[0:28:55] BM: Yeah, the only other comment I have is an it is an Einstein quote that just rings so true to me and I think a lot of it is just a result of we’ve all become so accustomed to and rightly so in most areas, that the only way to manage something is to be able to measure it. So, you’ve got to have that quantitative focus on the things that you are trying to accomplish yet at the same time, what’s inside somebody’s heart and soul that is hard to quantify. And the Einstein quote of, “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.” and so, people aren’t their resume. That is simply a snapshot of the things that they’ve done and sometimes, it’s been embellished a little bit, right? So, using that for what it’s worth, but going well beyond that to recognize that these are people. These are human beings. They are so much more than, what is on a LinkedIn profile or a resume. And taking the time to truly discover what’s behind that resume, what’s behind that LinkedIn profile, I think is uncharted territory, right? There is no one way to do that yet I think it is the biggest untapped potential we have to increase productivity, to increase the service delivery for those we serve our clients, which inevitably lead to a lot more profitability and a lot more prosperity for everybody.

[0:30:31] MH: And to that end, the good majority of people that we reach out to, they’re very talented people that aren’t looking for work. So, they don’t have a resume typically that they have updated and a lot of times their LinkedIn they’re so busy and talented they don’t really have their LinkedIn very well built out. So, I would say, agan we don’t post jobs so it is very highly targeted. So, we really have to learn and dig and get detail behind what it is we see as the interface. Whether it be a resume or a profile but the majority of the time it’s not a resume. Majority of the time it starts out as a profile or just a name of a person who we know is in a role with an organization, that may have some cultural alignment to an organization we are working with. So that is just a couple of interesting things to keep in mind.

[0:31:27] RW: Nice, okay thank you guys so much.

[0:31:30] BM: Awesome.

[0:31:31] MH: Awesome, well thanks a lot for your time.

[0:31:33] BM: Yeah, thanks.

[0:31:36] RW: Thank you so much to Brian and Max. Hire on Purpose is available on amazon.com. Rate and review Author Hour on iTunes and join us next time for another author and a new book.