Sharon: Good morning, this is Sharon, and I’m here with Steven Kohnke from Denver Business Coach. Good morning, Steven.
Steven: Good morning Sharon, how are you doing?
Sharon: I’m good. I’m eager to hear about what our topic is this morning.
Steven: Yes. So as a business owner, it is sometimes helpful to really think of your business not as just this thing that does something that that sells something, but really as different pieces that need to be focused on and maintained regularly. So what we’ve done is really broken this down into the big components. There’s seven of them.
There’s foundations, there’s the leadership, there’s sales, marketing, operations, financials and H.R. and we’ve put this series together to really provide tips and insights that business owners can apply right away. So today we’re focusing on the H.R. pillar and more specifically, the interview process of that.
Sharon: All right. So let’s start right there. What do you mean when you say interview process? It seems like that can mean so many different things. So let’s get to some specifics.
Steven: Yeah. So simply speaking, it’s really the steps that you follow to get the right person matched with the right position. So, it’s your effectiveness and prospecting in attracting qualified candidates to work in your business. And this process also includes the ability to select the absolute best candidate for that position that you’re hiring for. So it’s it’s those pieces put together before the actual hiring process.
Sharon: All right. So from there, let’s start with the interviewing process and why is that so important? You know, of course, businesses need to hire, but why why hone in on the process when it’s maybe something you just do from time to time?
Steven: Right. And that’s that’s a great contrast right there, because that’s where a lot of business owners go with that. You know, they’ll post a job posting and they’ll have a phone call with some person. They sound great. They say, hey, you start tomorrow. And that’s that’s a lot of business owners use that as a process. And when you’re not able to really clearly put things in place that help you select the best candidate for the right position, you’re really putting your business at at a huge risk. So really to understand the importance of having a good interview process, I kind of want to take a look at those risks of what a bad hire really costs.
And this goes beyond just cash. You know, you have the lost productivity of a bad hire. Unmotivated individuals will cause bottlenecks or slow downs and actually cause more work for either the manager or the owner of the business in being able to pick up the slack. So there’s huge productivity loss, potentially lost clients if their client facing hires of not doing a good job, and the satisfaction realm damaging the business reputation both on the customer and in employee acquisition side. Because, you know, if you end up firing this person, they could be on disgruntled, leave you a bad review.
And I forget what the hiring site is called, but there’s a place where you can go and check in businesses. So that is a potential risk and just the pure cost of time that goes into bringing on a bad hire and then having to let go of them and then finding someone else and then potentially having to let go of them because your hiring process isn’t dialed in.
So it could be this vicious cycle of just overturning for a single position many, many times, you know, then you’re throwing in the actual dollar value of their salary, training costs, recruitment costs and other financial investments that really go into it. So, you know, a bad hire can have really bad repercussions for any business, especially small business.
Sharon: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for really bringing that home. So how does a business owner make sure that they really have a strong process in place? So all of those things you just spoke about hopefully don’t happen.
Steven: Yeah. So it’s not until those things happen that a lot of business owners think, oh, wow, what’s going on? That’s that’s not happening in here. So, you know, what we’re focused on is doing it right the first time. One of my favorite principles for this is the fifty one percent forty nine percent principle. And what this means is higher for the fifty one percent and the fifty one percent is fit. It’s more of a culture fit rather than a technical. Ill fit that. Forty nine percent is a technical skill, so they’re very close to each other because they’re both very important.
But the the purpose of putting it is 51 instead of 50 50 is it’s just slightly more important in that retention piece. In finding the right person. You can train on the technical side of most jobs, but you cannot train on the cultural fit. You can, but it’s very, very hard and most times it doesn’t work. So you want to be hiring for that cultural fit. So the precursor to that is understanding what your culture is.
The process there is then turns into at least a two step process. I usually recommend a three step process, but that first interview you’re actually going through is for that culture fit. So I usually recommend do a casual setting, don’t sit across from each other in a conference room and the stuffy suit and saying asking all interview questions because that’s what you think you’re supposed to do.
Steven: It’s go out and have coffee, go out for lunch, see how they interact with your servers. You know, who is this person that you’re about to hire? So really understanding who they are as a person rather than the technical side and making sure that that’s a focus for that first step. Second step. You can talk about the technical piece. Third step, which is a bonus step is get that second opinion.
You know, if you have a team of people, team of executives or even just one other person, have them talk with this new person, see if they fit with this person, make sure that, you know, if you’re not missing out on anything that someone else can see. Those are probably the best ways that I usually recommend to to mitigate against all those those risks that go into having a bad hire. And then, you know, you step into the onboarding process and retention strategies and all those other pieces that go along with it. But the first step is, is nailing that that interview process at hiring process. And then you can go from there.
Sharon: Great tips. Thank you, Steven. So if somebody’s watching this knows they want a little extra support getting this process in place or or any other support from Denver business coach, how would they go about that?
Steven: Yeah, well, the easiest way is really just to go to the website, denverbusinesscoach.com. From there, you can reach out a couple of different ways and we’d be happy to have a conversation about how to establish your interview process.
Sharon: Great. Great talking to you, as always, until next time.