Die eine Regel gegen schlechte Einstellungen

0:00So, you recently had a podcast where you outlined uh Oh, here you go. You recently had a podcast where you outlined >> [laughter] >> You had a podcast where you outlined a change in hiring strategy where you focus less on experience and even skills and focus more on like raw processing power, how fast can someone learn something new. Mhm. I've really been struggling with hiring Yeah. and um during the interview process it's very difficult to identify if someone can learn quickly, if they can solve problems independently, and I hire them and then after the first 2 weeks, I basically there are these small things that I notice and then I have to let them go.

0:41And this has happened many times. Yeah. So, you're saying What what are tactical things that you can How how how can I better identify if someone is smart as defined as like how how quick they can learn? Mhm. I'm super stimulated. >> [laughter] >> Just so you know, if I talk fast, uh listen fast. So, So, there's there's the need of the business, which is what you have. You have some need that you're trying to fill, right? Some clear function that you need to to fill the gap for. And so, there's a person who's going to come in and they're going to come in with a learning potential and skills that are actual, right? Now, within skills, you have the hard skills and soft skills.

1:29I spent a weird amount of time trying to trying to reconcile this idea of like, do you hire for attitude not aptitude? You guys have heard I'm sure you've heard some of these things, right? And it really bugged me because I was like, sometimes it's better to do this, sometimes it's better to do that. And I was just trying to figure it out. And so, I did come to a conclusion, which is that you always hire for the smallest skill deficiency. It's just that being kind is also a skill.

1:55It's just that it's probably a harder skill to teach than setting calls for a sales team. I can teach someone to set calls in about 48 hours. Teaching someone to be kind takes a lot longer, mostly because kind is a single word but it has 30 sub-skills underneath of it, which is how What are all the different conditions that I need to train someone to behave, right? Does that make sense in terms of the bucket of like the word kind, lots of skills, setting, fewer skills. And so, the actual skill deficiency, it makes sense to hire someone if setting is the skill deficiency, to hire someone who has all these soft traits, and then you just train up the hard traits. Now, to give you an opposite example, if I want to have a transactional uh CFO who's done multiple uh M&A deals above 100 million and specializes in health care, I'm not going to have that many guys that I can pick from, number one. And so, if I go find some nice guy on the street, for me to go teach the skill deficiency of all of that would be too big. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that my return on resources is not ideal. And so, we're still always making the investment of what is the highest return I can make per hire. So, we always solve for the first small skill deficiency. And depending on the role, sometimes it'll be soft skills, sometimes it'll be hard skills. So, it'd be easier for me to take the guy who's got that all that experience, who's just the least big dick, and then say, "Hey, here's how to not be a douche with my team. And if you just do these six things, I can at least attenuate some of the downside."

3:24>> [snorts] >> Now, the second piece is if I we we're There's always going to be some deficiency in terms of skills, right? Like no one comes in 100% and I think Frank talked about it today or yesterday. Um you always have to be willing to have a little bit of a bridge, right? It's very rare to have perfect fits. And so, then if we have this gap from the skills that are current, what is my rate of learning? And so, that's where the raw intelligence comes in. And so, I have looked more for raw intelligence and what's been interesting for me is that if I look at the some of the most successful businesses in the world, right? You look at the Googles, the Facebooks, the the the Bains, the Goldman Sachs, like the the the most successful businesses out there, what do they have? They have a machine for raw talent. They just pick the smartest [ __ ] people out of Harvard and they're just like, "Okay, we will make you into something. You just have raw raw talent You have raw learning potential." And so, they put them through an 8-week boot camp and then they're an analyst.

4:22And so, I bring this up because I have more Over time, I've been putting more and more uh weight on someone's learning potential because we've also gotten better and better at training. And so, with that, I can actually take people and so, if I have somebody let's say if I have two candidates that I have to make this decision between, I've got somebody who's a 10-year HR vet and somebody who's 3-year uh a 3-year person. This person has more hard skills for HR cuz they're 10 years experience.

4:48Um maybe let's say they both have the same soft skills. So, I would rather get the really intelligent hard-working HR person rather than just the hard-working HR person who has more experience because I know that it'll take me 4 months to get this person to be the same as this, but every month after that, this one's going to keep growing. And so, I still get a better return overall. Does that make sense? Now, how do I identify this? Right. So, part of it I think is um This is going to sound douchey, but we'll do I'll see what I see what comes out.

5:22I think I think to a large degree you can tell if someone's smarter than you. And the goal is to find people who are smarter. And the hard part is getting someone smarter to work for you if they're smarter than you. And so, I actually think this is one of the biggest limiters of business, it's just being real. Like the more I thought about this is that I think um and that's where I think having all of these other skills where like if you look at Jeff Bezos, who I do think is brilliant. I think part of the reason that Jeff Bezos was able to bring people even smarter than him in is because he is such an admirable leader. If you've ever watched like the few interviews of Bezos, he just seems like such a solid guy. Like unshakable. And um that's where I think having character traits that people find admirable and a mission that they believe in, they're like You're like, "Listen, you're way smarter than I am, but we're trying to do this thing and will you come with me?" And I think that's how you can attract some of that top talent. Um but a big part of it comes down to the opportunity that you're bringing them in on.

6:22And so, I can tell you, you know, very transparently that the talent that I could bring in for Gym Launch is significantly different than the talent I can bring in for Acquisition.com. And part of that's also building the external brand. Is this something that's going to add to their career? Because the kid who's graduated from Harvard has unlimited options. He doesn't need to go to you. And so, the best candidates you have to sell. And so, I think um in the early days I used to think that I'm giving this person the opportunity of working at my at working at my business. And nowadays, we have to spend these very long processes of courting very intelligent people to convince them to work for us rather than the 10 other very good options they have.

7:01And I think that's what Now, again, this depends on levels. I'm trying to give you a contextual answer, which is people, right? Um but like a low-level role might not, you know, like you might not have to court as hard. But if you're bringing in the higher basically the level is, the more it goes from them coming to you and it goes to more you going to them. That's kind of the shift that happens over time. Thank you. Yeah. If you're a business owner and you're not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.