Chris Mursau 6:22
to start. Wonderful. And so our philosophy starts with setting a goal, especially for hiring but really, for really talent across or in through an organization. And that is to set the bar much higher than it is today. Yeah, and for most managers, that bar is at average, and if you get a higher or you promote someone, and they turn out to be, you know, average or slightly above average, you know, most managers are relatively happy because they’ve also experienced the opposite where they’ve made those new hires and promotions and Those people turned out to be much below average. And bar is like, I’ve experienced the nightmare. As long as it’s not that I’m fine. Exactly fine is, you know, is good, you know, for for most of those people placement decisions, and our philosophy a top rating is to hire and promote people who are in the top 10% of talent available for the pay. And to put that another way, right now, if you have someone who is not in the top 10% of talent available for the pay, you’re actually paying for those results and behaviors. But you’re not getting them if you don’t have someone who is in the top 10%. And so that’s where our philosophy starts with. It starts with setting that bar, both as an organization but individually for everyone in the company at top 10% of talent available. So it’s a high performer, but also a high performer who fits your culture. Well as a good member of the team, because, you know, often when you say a player, you hear a player, it’s, you know, you get a, it’s usually a picture of the top salesperson. And you know, that person can sell a lot, but they’re really a jerk. And you know, in our definition of a player, you need to be a great culture fit and great member of the team and deliver a great results or you’re not a player.
Jeremy Weisz 8:27
Is there anything else that people in your definition of a player that usually consider? Or is it really, you know, people kind of normally just put that as Oh, your top performer, but they’re not thinking of the culture fit? Is there anything else in the definition of a player people should consider?
Chris Mursau 8:43
Yeah, those are the two big things. Now we also have in our definition, and I’ll get to this in a second with how we operationalize that definition of a player. But we also have other key characteristics and behaviors. So we have the results that are expected that culture fit out for more many companies that your core values and so we actually list those core values, because everyone in the company needs to be at least okay in those areas to be a good culture fit. And then there are, of course, other behaviors and characteristics necessary to deliver the results that are expected. So, you know, we really consider the whole person I mean, we even go into the fit with the manager, because that’s such an important piece to an employee’s job satisfaction is how they fit with that manager. And so we need to be sure those styles are complimentary, so that it can be at least at least satisfying. You know, hopefully, it’s a little better than satisfying, but at least satisfying working on that team.
Jeremy Weisz 9:43
What do you say to companies, Chris, that you mentioned this about, you know, an A player in the book it talks about, well, sometimes a player can do the job of two to three, you know, C or D or B players and What do you say to companies that say, well, we only can afford this amount for this position? And, and you’re saying, Well, if you really want a player, you’re gonna have to pay this amount. How do you navigate that with company? And so it’s interesting, Jeremy. So another part of, it’s kind of inherent in our definition of a player is that the definition of a player is different for almost every different organization,
Chris Mursau 10:25
you know. So going back to the sales rep, you know, a sales rep for a small software company, is the definition of a player for that company is different than a sales rep for you know, an Oracle or another larger software company. Those are two different things. They’re interacting with different kinds of people potentially. And so we need to be sure we’re looking for an A player at the right level. So part of our definition of a player is for for the pay. So that means get the best people you can for what you can afford now. I’m not saying that you You’re not paying too low because that’s, that’s a problem. You know, we have clients who are looking for, you know, looking for, you know, it’s an overused metaphor, but I’m going to use it anyway, you know, they have champagne taste on a beer budget. And so you know, you need to know if if beer is okay, and you can get the job done with beer, it’s fine to pay, you know, and have your pay there. But if you really need, you know, more results, better results, different results, it may make sense to pay a little bit more. The thing is, we’re objective about that and we really define a player based on the business results. And then when we go out into the market and begin interacting with candidates, you know, and understand what we can get for the pay. It may mean that we have to increase that pay a little bit, but what we what we find so often is that is it Aqaba, you know that it’s hard to find people you know not so much in today’s market right now, but you know, a month ago and for the previous 10 years, it was really a seller’s market in terms of candidates because There were fewer candidates than necessary. And if you wanted a job you were employed, it was difficult to get those people. And so often we, you know, we have to pay more is the quick answer. That’s not always the case. You know, so often it’s you have to look harder to be a bit more creative in the looking because those people are out there. They just happen to be employed and they’re not looking for your job at
Jeremy Weisz 12:19
what do you find are good. Are there any good tips about attracting a players?
Chris Mursau 12:24
Yeah, there are and the first, the first place we start is with your employer brand. Most career pages we go to as we’re beginning to work with clients need a lot of work. Yeah, we know that glass door, that’s a have an avenue for people to maybe who have been fired or who are nudged out to air their grievances. But new employees Look at that. So you know, your LinkedIn profile, your Glassdoor profile, your careers page are all extremely important and You know, if you have core values, living those core values, you know, so you have a culture that’s attractive. And I understand that that’s not a quick fix. But working to have a culture that’s attractive for a players is really important. Yeah, now down the line, and it’s a bit of a circular definition. But we’ve also found that a strong team, and having a lot of a players in the company actually attract other aids, both through referrals and just word of mouth. Another thing that’s really important is to be sure that the job ads that are posted are attractive, you know, so often we see a really boring job description, cut and pasted into indeed or LinkedIn or zoom or up, that’s it, but a zip recruiter, and it’s just boring. And you know, it’s really difficult to get a good feel for the company and a good feel for a job in all of those words. And so, their strong recommendation is to, you know, put some marketing and some sales into your job ads. So They’re attractive and they stand out.
Jeremy Weisz 14:01
Yeah, because most people don’t put the time and effort, they need to enter those things.
Chris Mursau 14:06
Right. And the other really important thing too, I know there’s a lot of companies, when they have an open position, they’re sourcing, it really is putting job ads out on indeed, and zip recruiter and other places, posting those jobs. Keep doing that, of course, but you’re getting to a small piece of the market in terms of candidates when you’re just posting job ads. So strategies to get the attention of passive candidates who are working right now, but not necessarily looking for a job. A really important to have, you know, and a really straightforward one that everyone has at least heard of, and maybe even hasn’t, is utilizing our referral programs, those referral programs, they need to have some kind of recognition, both public recognition in the company, and also, you know, some money or whatnot, you know, a reward some incentive. Have some incentive. Absolutely. And for some companies they have large incentives for for referrals. We found though, that almost as important is some kind of I say public recognition, but recognition in the company, rewarding those people with that recognition for doing something so valuable to the success in the growth.
Jeremy Weisz 15:21
Are there any other so I like that so, you know, because if you have a town hall and you bring the person up and go, the most important thing is the people were giving this person the medal, you know, huge trophy and this reward and that’s obviously the recognition piece may go even further to their peers then, you know, $100 or $1,000 or something like that.
Unknown Speaker 15:43
Absolutely. They see the good exam
Jeremy Weisz 15:45
heard of any good like over the top examples of companies with like how they’ve recognized staff. Are there any good stories in the that you’ve heard of or experienced?
Chris Mursau 15:56
Wait, so we go this is going this is going way back? But working for if anyone who’s from the Chicago area, Dominic’s in the 80s, and 90s. There’s also a little bit before my time, so it’s a secondhand story. But they would do actually what you just mentioned, and monthly meetings, those who referred and gotten got the referrals hired, were recognized, and they got there was a monetary, it was maybe $20. You know, so not not a huge sum, but they got the $200 in front of everyone. And, you know, there was a bit of a celebration around that. So they really publicize that, you know, and marketed it internally. So, that’s another recommendation in terms of sourcing is to, you know, think about, it’s not going to ever be this balanced, but think about how you can put as much effort into attracting candidates as you do customers or clients. And, you know, by putting that thought and some of that effort in, it can really be valuable having big art Like
Jeremy Weisz 17:00
any other Yeah, for some reason when you say that I picture the movie Rudy, and like people carrying, you know, and if anyone’s really carry Rudy off the field, Viana picture, like in those extreme example, just
Chris Mursau 17:12
carrying over like, fire, but that you’re right in the Right, right.
Jeremy Weisz 17:16
Um, any other passive way to get passive passive ways to get candidates like that referral programs any others that our people should think about?
Chris Mursau 17:27
Yeah, so just thinking about, you know, recruiting and sort of thinking about recruiting all day and every day, you know, not being obnoxious about it, but yeah, managers and really reinforcing that managers have their eye open for talent all the time. Yeah. So again, pretty, pretty straightforward example. But if you need someone to interact with customers in kind of a customer service role of any kind, and you know, you are at Starbucks or Home Depot or you run and you find some One who is wonderful, you know, that’s a person to make a connection with, you know, maybe even some of our clients actually have business cards that do double duty recruiting on one side, and you know, their information on the other and have those cards ready to pass on say, Hey, we’re always hiring, we’re looking for people who are great with people, you know, can we can we exchange your information, love to tell you a little bit more about it? It doesn’t work all the time. But those kinds of activities and actions and just thinking about
Jeremy Weisz 18:29
Yeah, there’s really, no, that’s really smart. Because I know, I’ve been in, you know, some store and I’m like, wow, that person was so friendly. They were so nice. They are the best customer service. And if I would have thought at the time, oh, you know, just, if you’re ever looking in the future, maybe not. Now, that would be a perfect segue, and I’m sure they’ll feel honored and special that you even mentioned that and, you know, you never know and they’re already employed. So that’s, that’s a great tip. I love that. Um, and one other one other thing. thing it’s been referred to as a virtual bench. But it’s doing this recruiting activity just consistently,
Chris Mursau 19:07
you know, knowing that, even if even if you don’t have any openings right now, you will have openings at some point in time, keeping your eye open and developing relationships with people. So when you do have an opening, you have some candidates who are somewhat vetted, and you can approach them and say, Hey, we finally have an opening. You know, I think you’d be great for it. And you can move really quickly and kind of be recruiting off your front foot versus, you know, rushing and scrambling and being kind of desperate when that job comes open.
Jeremy Weisz 19:38
So, Chris, you know, we talked in the front of the interview about some secrets. People can use immediately, at no cost. I don’t know if they lock you in and no cost but that’s just, you know, in the communication, but what are some things people can use immediately to implement and start using topics grading and hiring a players.
Chris Mursau 20:01
Yeah, Jeremy, I’ll tell you about the things they can do immediately in the context of, you know, the five, the five key components of Topgrading, and especially the Topgrading hiring process. And so there are definitely a couple of free things in here and actually several free things in here. So the first thing and really the first hiring mistake is that I’ll say companies, especially even individual managers, don’t really know who they’re looking for. And, you know, it’s evidenced by most job descriptions, we see, you know, they’re relatively vague, they have a lot of words in there. They cover a lot of breath. And it’s difficult to really understand exactly what that person is going to be held accountable for. And so that’s the first hiring mistake. And actually, the first key step of top rating is to yet define what a player performance and behaviors are in that job in your company. So we call that a job scorecard and recommend before you even start looking for people are posting jobs, you create that job scorecard. So the hiring manager is very clear. And whoever if it’s not the hiring manager screening candidates is very clear. And they have an accurate filter with which screen those can. So that’s the first step and actually give a couple of categories there. Because that’s something that people can do for free. You can do that on your own. list the results you expect in a player to deliver with metrics, so percentages, dollar signs, due dates, deadlines, and lists everything they need to do, you know, just the results, not behaviors, not communicating, not you know, being likable or resourceful the results they expect that person to deliver. Once you understand what you expect in terms of results, the behaviors necessary to deliver those results will be much more evident. So Do that, list it out and tell you and keep listing things until you can say, if the person does those things, and only those things in the first year, I consider them a high performer and be very happy to have them on the team. The other important component, many companies already have this. And if you don’t describe your culture, and for most companies, if you have core values that should describe your culture or the culture you’re working to build, and then think about what else the person needs to be excellent in when they walk in the door, to be effective and be an A player and deliver those results. If you do those things, you know, those three categories, results, core values and any other key competencies. You’re really a long way to defining a player so you know you’re pointing in the right direction, you know, your target. The next thing and this is another free, another free thing that people can start doing tomorrow. The problem is, we are screening candidates based on erroneous or incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information, because we get to know candidates up front, usually with their resume or their their CV. And resumes are your candidate sales brochure. So there’s no law stating that every Java person has ever had needs to be listed on a resume. You know, it doesn’t. There’s no law that even says the resume has to be true. And so we are going in, you know, not necessarily blindfolded, but at least looking through things with with blurry glasses. And we’re not quite sure a player’s resumes look great because they’ve done a lot of great things. Non a player’s resumes can also look great because there’s a lot of help on how to create a good resume. And so we need a way to be able to rely on the information we’re getting from clients and we have a technique we call the torque technique to RC that stands for threat of reference, check. And so it sounds a lot more ominous than it really is. It’s really just letting candidates know early in the selection process that at the appropriate time, which is right before a job offer, yeah, that asked them to arrange for reference calls with former managers and maybe some others. So it’s subtle, you know, it’s more of a promise of a reference check, than than a threat. But threat is
Jeremy Weisz 24:22
no, I get it. It sounds better. Right, right. I mean, you could do it or not do it, but it keeps people honest. Because if they know you’re gonna be checking on it, well, maybe I shouldn’t put that company or, you know, because they’re, you know, so it keeps people honest, in a sense, I guess.
Chris Mursau 24:39
It does, and you know, and then we reinforced that torque technique, really, with each interaction, because with each interaction, whether it’s a phone screen interview, you know, or eventually a career history interview, which we call the Topgrading interview. With finalist candidates, we’re actually talking about those former managers and we can just structure question In a way that reinforces that we’ll probably be talking with them. So when we do, what do you think they’ll tell us about you. So we use that that’s, that’s our, our truth serum. And it really works. And then I’m going to fast forward to the end right before the job offer, we actually follow through with those reference calls. And we ask the candidates to arrange for them with their former managers. And, you know, we call them personal reference calls, because many companies have, in fact, probably most companies have policies against giving business references, so we call them personal references. And what we found is those who are, you know, above average, and certainly those who have were a players in previous jobs, they can get their managers to talk. And you know, we facilitate that by being available early in the morning, maybe later in the evening or afternoon, or on the weekends when somebody’s not necessarily sitting at their desk, to make them feel a little bit more comfortable about being open and honest with us. So those are two and that’s actually the And the fifth key steps are that you’re letting people know that they’re doing the references and actually following through with them, we asked the candidate to arrange the calls, we actually get to speak with people we want to relatively easily, they’re, they’re expecting our call, and they tend to pick it up. Mm hmm. And, and so that so that was the, that those are three out of five steps first, second, and fifth. So after we let candidates know about the torque technique, the next thing we need to do because resumes may or may not be complete is we need to collect the full education and career history. And so this is one thing, we’ve created a tool over the years. It used to be just a form in Word. We call it a career history form. We actually now have some software that has the same content, but actually graphs that information so it can help with screening and then creates interview guides from it. And that’s another thing that you can try out for free so we have a free trial of it. We’ll let you try it out for One open position so you can get a feel for it
Jeremy Weisz 27:03
for free, where can people find it? Chris, can you
Jeremy Weisz 27:06
Topgrading resources?
Jeremy Weisz 27:10
Okay, cool. Yeah, so you can take a check that out. And that’s kind of the career history stuff. So
Jeremy Weisz 27:18
it is and so we get, we have full visibility into every education experience and every job they’ve had throughout their career before we sit down and invest a lot of time with them, because the fourth and really the most powerful part of Topgrading and really we’re Topgrading started is with the career history or the Topgrading interview. So the career history interview, or Topgrading interview. It’s a chronological in depth and structured interview that covers every education and work experience person has had since they since they were in high school. And we only do these interviews with finalist candidates. So we need to do some screening interviews before And, and there’s some variability there clients do things differently based on their industry and the level of the job and and their situation really their size as well. But when we get down to the two or three finalist candidates, we need to spend some significant time with them to get to know them. Well, it’s one place where typical hiring processes, if we even call it that, but you know, typical hiring processes fall short, is the interactions with candidates are short, you know, half hour, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, and you have to make a choice in that short period of time. You can either go deeply into a couple of areas, or we can stay at a very high level in many areas, but we never get to go both broad and deep with a candidate. The Topgrading interview allows us to do that. And with a Topgrading interview, we were leveraging some things we do really well as humans. One is learn from stories, you know, and essentially we are getting candidates to tell us their their story, starting in high school and getting more in depth as we get to the the recent history. We’re also using something we do really well as humans. And that is our ability to recognize patterns and anomalies in those patterns. So when we’re listening to a person’s story, and we’re asking them about high points and low points or accomplishments and the stakes of everything they’ve done, we get to see patterns. And we can then more accurately predict what they’re going to be like in the situation you’re looking to put them in. One other thing we’re really good at as humans, and it’s more is the Bayesian theorem tends to be more associated with computing. But really, our brains can do this as well. We have, you know, billions of data points based on our experiences. And when we take a couple of other data points, and can enter them into the database, we can really accurately predict what comes next. We also suggest these career history interviews be done with two interviewers. So we’re getting we’re having two people with two separate experiential histories, listening to this information about the candidate. We can come up with Even more accurate conclusions about that person, you know. And then fifth step is follow through with the reference calls. And by doing those five things, our clients, our case study, clients have gotten to an 85% hiring success rate, what that means and what success for us is getting an A player in that role. So 85% of the time, they ended up with a high performer who fits their culture.
Jeremy Weisz 30:26
And I mean, I think and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong from from the stuff I’ve researched from Topgrading, the typical is like 20%, maybe lower than that 20% or lower in the cost of not hiring an A player. Because what like, what have you seen the cost? I mean, I’ve heard metrics thrown around like it’s costing $100,000 that year. I don’t know if that’s true or not just by not hiring the right person.
Unknown Speaker 30:51
So a few statistics there, Jeremy one on the low end is the cost of turnover. So this Just what it costs to replace someone who leaves. Yes. So it has nothing to do with mistakes that person made. It’s just getting someone into the company. And research shows that it costs about 20% of the annual compensation just to get a new person in that position. So that’s on the low end, just sort of the mechanical cost of that turnover. But what we’ve found is that the real costs and the significant costs of a hiring mistake come in the missed opportunities and the mistakes and the disruption associated with having at nine a player in the role and that can range anywhere from one time. So one x annual compensation, you know, up to over 25 per 25 times annual compensation for an executive in a midsize or larger company. You know, and you think about the the difference in authority, you know, an entry level, you know, somebody’s making 910 12 bucks an hour has versus the CEO of a company, you can understand how you know why that range is so dramatically different though, you know, the cost of a hiring mistake is frankly astronomical. And actually that’s another thing I really recommend people doing and that’s going to go to our website or even Google just Google or search cost of Miss hire form. Chances are our form will come up or you can find it under website and resources calculated in
Unknown Speaker 32:33
add up,
Jeremy Weisz 32:34
we I’m looking under if you go to Topgrading resources, there’s a drop down that’s cost of Miss hire calculator. That’s it.
Unknown Speaker 32:43
Yep, that’s what we recommend doing that. Well, really highlight the the monetary cost, but also the cost and wasted time, you know, so how much time do you waste with a non a player, you know, for everyone listening, think about the number of hours per week that you end up wasted, you know, because that person, whoever you’re thinking about was not a player and then multiply it by the number of weeks they were in the job, you know, chances are, you’re wasting a couple or three or maybe even five plus hours per week. You know, you multiply that by a year and you wasted 250 hours. And so that loss of productivity factors into the monetary? Totally.
Jeremy Weisz 33:21
Yeah, so it’s like two months of work weeks, you know? Yes, that’s any red flags. You know, maybe obvious, maybe not, obviously, that you see, or that people should look out for
Chris Mursau 33:36
this, this varies. But, you know, on the extreme end, especially when we’re talking about positions, individual, contributor, professional, so accountants and engineers and salespeople and above managers and directors and executives, yet someone who has a relatively short job tenure recently Yeah, so a bit of a job hopper. That’s Red Flag. And you know, we hear, or I hear often, that times are changing and people don’t stay in jobs as long, you know. But the fact of the matter is, if you have a manager, and especially if you have an executive who has been changing jobs every year to 18 months, they haven’t had the opportunity to assess the situation, you know, figure out what the new strategy is, implement that strategy and stick around long enough to say that it worked or not. And so what you do, the way you want to look at that history is if someone has a say, an average job tenure of 18 months, over the past 10 years, you need to ask yourself, Is it okay if they stick around for only 18 months because their past history really points toward their only being there for 18 months at the maximum? Yeah, that’s the red flag. Another one that I see often as at least a factor in a hiring mistake. Is it someone who has worked you know, only at larger and larger companies moving into a very small and entrepreneurial company, maybe even a startup and the percentage of success, the success percentage, it’s actually really low there, you know, and vice versa, you know, someone who is work used to working in a startup environment, moving into a larger, maybe more bureaucratic company, because larger companies need to be more bureaucratic with more controls. That tends to not work out very often as well. So, you know, the the message there is not, yeah, don’t hire people, people from big companies or don’t hire people who have only worked in startups. It’s, you know, have the evidence that points toward the person being effective in your environment. So be aware as you’re going through the process. You’re aware, you know, be aware. This is a red flag, I’m going to think of a very specific a specific example of a new with a new client. They need a new leader. A person for their leadership team, and so that the positions open, we help them create the job scorecard. And when those positions are open, one other thing we do is think about what the key criteria are, you know, so key criteria meaning something, I put someone’s LinkedIn profile or their resume, or something we could find out in the quick phone screen interview to say, Yep, they have the potential to fit or not. This company is in a very rural area, rather large company in a very rural area. And so one of the key criteria is having to have lived in a rural area, at least at some point in their life. Have some experience there to say, Yes, I yeah, I’d like to live in a rural area or not. And so it can be as simple as that. But, you know, getting, getting what someone has done in their past, you know, to point toward being a good fit, being able to do what you need them to do is really important. And so, it depends it depends on the schedule, but you know, having those gaps to fill be as narrow as possible.
Jeremy Weisz 36:59
Yeah, no Like we said that was it could be different key criteria. But in that case, if they need the person to relocate to a rural area, and they’ve only lived in New York City, you know, the odds of them maybe enjoying, I mean, less odds of them enjoying Hey, I’m go from New York City to this rural area. But if they grew up in some real area, then then the likelihood is Oh, they’ve experienced that they know what they’re getting into type of
Unknown Speaker 37:23
thing. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And in German, not saying that, that never works. Yeah, that that you will, why
Jeremy Weisz 37:29
not just set yourself in the best case to succeed, right? Like you want to go with someone who’s from New York City or you want to go someone who grew up for 18 years in a rural area, like if you have a choice between the two?
Unknown Speaker 37:39
Absolutely, and that’s what we’re looking to do. We’re looking to minimize the risk factors and that’s that’s certainly one way to do it. And really get one other thing if this is all that is taken away. Hopefully it’s not but if this is all it’s taken away, is yet to just be more conservative with hiring decisions, you know, and conservative In the amount of risk that is tolerable, you know, I see so often Yeah, we took a chance on that person you know, we even we that that was a weakness, but we took a chance and those chances working out, you know a lot a lot more don’t work out they actually do.
Jeremy Weisz 38:16
Yeah. Cuz I want to talk about one example I know we were talking before we hit record just to give people maybe a full context but and you brought up Mariano’s as an example, and you know what they came to you for and kind of how you what you walked them through and in what happened.
Unknown Speaker 38:35
And so, for those of those who might not be familiar with Mariano’s, it’s a grocery store chain in a relatively new grocery store chain in the Chicago area. And they were created in as a start up of a division of roundy supermarkets. So they had about 150 stores in Wisconsin and Minnesota at that time. And Bob Mariano was the CEO Bob Mariana was the president of Dominic’s for a long time in the 80s and 90s, in the Chicago area. And so one of his goals and dreams was to get back into the Chicago grocery market with an upscale, you know, very service oriented grocery store, kind of somewhere between a big box grocery store and Whole Foods was what they were going for next to what they what they achieved. And one part of Bob’s vision was to have just better service by a long margin than any of the other grocery stores. And so to back up a little bit you know, when Bob arrived at Randy’s, you know, shortly after that, we reengaged with him because we had worked with him for a while since he had left Dominic’s and we we helped really strengthen the leadership team. You know, it’s a really important factor for the success of Topgrading and in ingraining, the a player standard, it’s to have a strong leadership team for one because a players tend to not want to work For 90 days, and, you know if we were to go into a lot of effort hiring, the lower level getting the lower level hires right without having really good managers for them to work for, you know, those a players are going to leave they’re going to go find someone who you know can help them fulfill their career goals. So once that happened yet yeah, the question was right, can you can we use Topgrading to hire everyone in these new Mariano’s stores? Because we want the service to be you know, fantastic and wonderful in relation to you know, what the typical experiences and we said Yes, I think so. And we worked on a couple of their other store openings before that we went to the Mariano’s on hiring and figuring out how to use Topgrading for for entry level cashiers and the people getting in the carts in from the from the parking lot and we were able to do it, you know, we we shortened the Topgrading interview. So for those for anyone who reads Topgrading or has right Topgrading, you know, one of the things that tends to stick out is a long interview, you know, three or four hours, it is actually three or four hours with executive level candidates without question can even be a little bit longer than that. But that amount of time is completely unnecessary for an entry level hire. And so we abbreviated the process, down to a half hour, 45 minutes for a Topgrading interview with finalist candidates did a couple of reference calls, we still did the reference calls. And what they found was, their service was, in fact, much better than those grocery stores and their competitors in the area, because they hired people, you know, who didn’t necessarily know how to work in the grocery store or have experience working in a grocery store, but who really good interacting with people and had some demin demonstrated ability to learn things relatively quickly. They said, you know, we can teach you what you need to know about working in the store. We can’t teach you how to engage and interact and you know, be warm with our work with our customers. And, you know, before Kroger bought Mariano’s. They were known for their service, you know, they had wonderful food and refresh food and it was a good store and a well run store. But their service was why, you know, people keep coming back.
Jeremy Weisz 42:17
Thank you, Chris. Um, I want you to touch on some ways that people listening can interact with you in the company a on one is obviously getting the Topgrading book, which is amazing. You can get an audible Amazon probably at a bookstore somewhere. But you also have workshops, you also have coaching software implementation. So if you could touch a little bit on each of those, just so people get an idea of, and I know you’ve, I said, conducted over 2500 of these assessments and worked you know, you essentially run the workshop have run the workshops. So maybe start with the workshops and we’ll just just touch on each of those how people can interact with with Topgrading
Unknown Speaker 43:00
Absolutely. And actually, Jeremy, I’m going to leave the workshops for somewhere in the middle of Okay, good. Yeah, in the in the middle of the offerings. Because as I, as I just mentioned, one of the keys to get Topgrading in the A Player standard really working in a company is having a strong leadership team. And so that’s really where we start, we tend to engage with CEO or president or owner to start with and and yet do what we need to do to get that leadership team strong. And the individuals that a players really want to, to work for. So, you know, how do we do that we do assessment and feedback and coaching, and get people to really reach their full potential. We also really get to know their different leadership styles and management styles. So when we’re helping assess candidates for hire, we can match those people. Wow. So that’s where we start. You want to take care of the foundation first, first, which is the leadership team. I gotcha. You know, and as we’re doing that, we also you know, as I say, I did, I’ve done it 2500 it’s much more than that. Now. Probably We update that a little bit.
Jeremy Weisz 44:02
It’s like 10,000, you’re like that was written like maybe 19 years ago.
Unknown Speaker 44:08
Not quite 10,000. But it’s more than 2500. But I spend my lot a lot of my time assessing finalists, candidates for senior positions for our clients kind of as the the final quality checker, the insurance policy to be sure that those hiring mistakes at the top are avoided. So those are two ways that we engage kind of actually do do that work. Yeah. And then lower in the organization is where our workshops and training come in. So what we found and this goes back to it really Brad’s book was a bit before my time of bread smarts book, the founder of top rating with GE in the 90s. Where they found that even that managers are trained, you know, through in the workshop model, you know, and then coach through a couple of interviews can get results that are nearly as good as Topgrading professionals, lower in the organization for sulfur managers and individual individual contributors. What we find is really important there is having the two interviewers, so two interviewers, interviewing one candidate, and, you know, with some practice and some training, they can get some really, really dramatic improvement in results. So our workshop is the first step, you know, and then we help execute those steps for some period of time until you don’t need us anymore. So we do coaching interviews, we help create jobs scorecards, and then we also have some software that facilitates the execution of Topgrading. And I said we tend to interact or engage with, with CEOs and presidents and owners. We do you know, they are they’re ultimately our clients. We work very, very closely though and intimately with HR teams and C HR o ‘s and heads of HR. And we’ve actually got something that really helps make the lives of the HR team better especially in the screening process, when they are getting candidates and from those jobs. And so we have some really, really slick screening software that helps with that, too. So those are the main ways that they can engage me the easiest way is to give us a call. And if we had some, any desire to improve your hiring, and we can talk through what the the best approach and the best way to produce top rating can be.
Jeremy Weisz 46:20
First of all, Chris, I want to be the first one to thank you. This has been amazing, very informative, and people should check out Topgrading calm. I just want to leave people with if there’s anything else that we should any other parting words, I’m also curious of any books or resources in general that you have looked on in your career that had been helpful maybe it’s not specifically in hiring but adjunctive maybe skill sets or other things are there any other books or resources that that people should check out? Obviously Topgrading the book by like, we we mentioned, Brad, who founded this company, and any other books or resources outside of, you know, Brad smarts Topgrading that we should think about looking at.
Unknown Speaker 47:16
So, you know, books. There are a couple of great ones. One is scaling up by Vern harnish. Another Yeah, it’s an oldie but a goodie. Good to Great. You know, there’s some good stuff in there without question. What else? Yeah. In terms of interviewing, I’ll get a get a question about body language. What what part does body language play? a great book it The title is what everybody God is saying.
Unknown Speaker 47:53
And unfortunately, the author’s name is escaping me right now.
Jeremy Weisz 47:56
It’s all right. People could Google it. Everybody is escape. Is is Yeah, it’s a former FBI
Unknown Speaker 48:01
profiler interrogator. And really interesting, it’s fun read, and a way you can do a little analyzing when you’re having a cocktail party when we can eventually do that again.
Jeremy Weisz 48:14
Nice. Thank you, Chris. Any other
Jeremy Weisz 48:16
parting words on talking general maybe that you want to highlight or that we haven’t mentioned? I have to two things, Jeremy. And one is, you know, whether it’s Topgrading or some other process, I strongly, strongly recommend that you have a hiring process. You know, our clients have processes and metrics for almost everything in their business. So often, though, hiring is you. The individual managers are given almost free rein to do what they want in the hiring process. So have a process, have it structured, you know it, it results in a great candidate experience and just having a structure that you can replicate? Locate and test and tweak will help you higher better. No other thing is, you know, a little bit, not a little bit, it’s connected with the environment we’re in right now. And in understanding that, you know, hiring is not necessarily a top priority, but to just have everyone think about number one, when hiring comes back, because it will, it will eventually come back, you know, have Be ready, be ready for it and, you know, get ready for it. But also, you know, especially if you do have some open positions, this could potentially be one of the best recruiting environments that we’ve experienced in the last 10 years, you know, people are going maybe 100 years, could be in a very well could be, you know, we’re all at home. And, you know, some people might be a bit nervous about the future in terms of in terms of their jobs and much more willing to take those calls. You know, if you have open positions now or you anticipate having a In positions once, once everything gets sorted turned back on and we can we can start interacting as normal.
Jeremy Weisz 50:06
So everyone check out Topgrading was six out for me, Chris is there’s a lot of nuggets here, but I’m just listing the results with metrics for when you do that, instead of just a job description I think is huge, right? Because we just kind of put out a description. actually thinking through the results we want in general is helpful but also putting them in a job description to your height, you know, hiring for a results based person and also they know what to expect as well. So that’s a big, big takeaway for me, among other things. So thank you for sharing your knowledge and your time and everyone check out Topgrading calm and the book talk radio.
Chris Mursau 50:43
Thank you, Jeremy.
