The one thing that saves you time and money when hiring new team members

One of the most, most, most, most, most expensive thing is having to start that recruiting process all over again to be recruiting, interviewing, hiring, ramping someone up. Okay. There’s really very few activities that are more expensive and more costly than high attrition, right? High turnover. That is what costs so much money because we not only lose our time and whoever on our team members time of looking for people and interviewing people that all takes time, but this ramp up folks not being fully up to speed, that’s another amount of time that we’re not having folks operate at full capacity.

Welcome to the managing mid simple podcast. I’m Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant through this show and my signature ops playbook. I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech. to save you time, money, and stress. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be. Are a new manager looking to learn the ropes or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game?

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Kind of nice, right? So if you are ready to make this whole managing thing easier while scaling your business, head to Liagarvin. com slash the book or amazon. com and get your copy of The Unstoppable Team. Welcome back to the show. When it comes to hiring team members, this can be one of the most high stakes, stressful things that we can do as a leader or business owner. And today I wanted to share the number one thing that you can do to save time and money when you’re first hiring.

Finding yourself in the hiring process. And what is that number one thing? It is to think about upfront before you even start hiring, what is the criteria that you need? That’s going to make this person a great fit. Now, this might sound obvious, but we don’t always do it. In fact, I think the team that I’ve worked with and worked on, we rarely do it. Okay. We write up a job description. Maybe we figure out some of the roles and responsibilities that we need, some of the key activities they’ll be doing, but we don’t always stop and think what will make this person a fit.

Now, not only will this save you time and money, this is going to make a way more equitable process. So this reduces that bias that comes in when we’d really click with someone and we want them to work on a team because they work just like us, or they remind us of ourselves, or we have too many folks that come from the same background or work the same way or think the same way. Right. We all know that diversity builds better results, builds better teams.

And so this is another way that by thinking, what are the criteria that makes someone a great fit on our team, that we create a high performing team. Okay. Now, when I say we want to think about what are the criteria, this means for a range of, you know, those behavioral things. So someone, you know, that they’re a great listener, they’re a strong communicator, they work without a ton of direction, right? All the way down to what are some of those key skills that you need.

And when we do this, we map it out upfront. We can sort of create a matrix for ourselves where we, where we figure out, well, what is the hierarchy? That’s important of these different things, because maybe someone doesn’t have all of them. But again, from the equity standpoint, we can determine with full certainty, yes, I evaluated everybody on the same things. And I know when someone joins my team, I’ve done my due diligence to make sure they’re really that fit that I didn’t later realize, well, gosh, I, I kind of thought being a self starter was not, not that important on the list because we had a lot of clearly defined projects.

But then six months from now things change and there’s not as much definition. And I hired someone that is just kind of waiting around for somebody to give them the direction. Now I realize that person’s not a fit. And so when we hire, we want to hire not just for today or this whole that you have, but, but six to 12 months down the line. And we don’t always know what that’s going to look like from the workload perspective.

So that’s where we have to think about like, what are their criteria is then from a team values perspective and the behaviors that make someone the right kind of person. Now, where does this save you time and money? Well, one of the most, most, most, most, most expensive thing is having to. Start that recruiting process all over again to be recruiting, interviewing, hiring, ramping someone up. Okay. There’s really very few activities that are more expensive and more costly than high attrition, right?

High turnover. That is what costs so much money because we not only lose our time and whoever on our team members time of looking for people and interviewing people that all takes time, but this ramp up folks not being fully up to speed. That’s another amount of time that we’re not having folks operate at full capacity. Now, if we have high turnover because we’ve spent all that time and we’ve trained someone and they’re end up not really being a fit because they didn’t withstand sort of the growth and direction of our company, or we didn’t realize, yeah, we had some non negotiables that we hadn’t really factored in.

Now, all that knowledge and that time we spent onboarding and ramping that person up and teaching the business and the direction and the products and whatever, we’re losing that. That’s walking out the door. So this gets expensive and saving time and money here is not a massive undertaking. All I’m really saying is starting by thinking about what makes someone a great employee in this company. And again, you’re going to think about, you know, what are your team values?

You’re going to think about what are those behaviors. Both really concrete and sort of in sort of the intangibles thinking about, well, what are those folks that have really, really stood out and, and become those 10 Xers and a players on your team. If you don’t have any at the moment, think about what, what would you wish? What do you wish so much that folks would be doing proactively? You know, is it some aspect of that, you know, where they just pick up and run with something?

Like I said, is it that they can look at some complicated situation and just see clarity right away? And you’re not going to want every single person to have those different skills, but you have a general set of people in this team and this company have to have some of these qualities. Now, this is not the same as saying everyone is, you know, has the same personality. No, we’re talking about if we have to have folks that are thinking outside the box.

If we, we know we’re going to be working, you know, burning the midnight oil and working like a lot. So example, I work with some PR agencies or folks in the marketing space. That is the kind of company, the kind of industry. That there’s going to be events, last minute stuff, and we really need all of our team members to be in that headspace of, we roll up our sleeves and we just get it done. We understand that this is high stakes environment, you know, client events, whatever it looks like, these things, the show must go on, they have to happen.

And so that’s an example of a criteria that we really want to establish up front. That when we talk about an interview, like, Hey, are we able to be here? And put in that extra work knowing that we’re going to be paid fairly for it. We’ll get comp time, whatever it is after. But are we going to have a team member that’s like, yes, I get it. I believe in that. I understand the nature of the work, you know, same thing with if folks have to be, you know, the same thing now with folks that are working in any sort of client interaction space.

One thing that I’ve been working a lot with clients on in this, in this situation is teaching every team member about their role in the sales process. Now with Medspot clients or, or folks that run a gym or something like that, this can be a tough one. You know, you have your receptionist, you have a service provider, maybe they don’t feel that comfortable, you know, talking about rebooking or retail products that really pair with the service they got or signing up for another membership.

And that team member thinks, well, I don’t do sales. That’s not part of the job. Actually, if we’ve defined, Hey, the expectation of everybody that works here is that we’re all collectively working to grow the business, which in the office framework, I strongly suggest that we always show our team members, their role in growing the business. So it’s not just your responsibility as the business owner. Once we’ve made that clear. Now, when we’re hiring, this becomes a non negotiable that everyone understands that they will have a role in growing the business.

And we’re going to define what that is and we’re going to help them get there. But that we don’t just have some people think I’m just here for the ride. I’m just completing a task and like I get paid either way. Okay. That’s not the vibe that’s going to help take your business to the next level. But again, that is a piece of criteria of saying, Hey, we want everyone that comes into this team and this company to see that they have a role in this.

And if someone says, Hey, listen, I’m really, I’m never going to be able to do that. I’m not going to be able to talk about renewing memberships or pricing or things like that. It’s just not me. That might be an example of someone that’s not a fit or a fit for that specific role that you have. You see what I’m saying? And so knowing. What does it mean to be a great team member or great member of your company is going to be so critical because it is going to save you from all of those misunderstandings that happen down the line.

And again, it’s going to make for an equitable process because you’re going to make sure to ask all of your candidates from all different backgrounds and areas of expertise and industries and whatever they come from so that you have a really  diverse and well rounded candidate pool, you’re going to make sure to ask those folks the same kind of questions. And you’ve preset it so that you’re not biasing yourself into, Oh, I had a really great conversation with this person.

And so I’m going with that without evaluating what other folks might offer. Okay. So this is really what helps you step away from some of those rush hiring decisions or feeling like I just need someone right now. And then against your best judgment, and they actually didn’t need all this criteria. Okay. Because again, with hiring and rehiring and onboarding folks being so expensive, if we hire someone quickly and we haven’t thought about these things and they end up not being a great fit, even though in that moment you felt like you needed somebody so bad to be starting the next day.

We end up losing that time anyway, because they’re not a fit. It either kind of drags down the vibe of the team. They’re not really set up for success in their role. They’re not happy. You’re not happy. And you have to start the process again. So this one thing really figuring out what does it mean to be a great team member for your specific company, your industry, your team, this is going to be game changing for saving you time and money as you hire, see you next time.

That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the managing made simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive with that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.