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How to recruit the right talent in today’s economy is challenging.
How do you find the best people for the job when prospective employees have more expectations from the workplace than ever before?
Today’s guest, Kathleen Quinn Votaw, has some practical solutions.
What You’ll Discover About How to Recruit the Right Talent:
- Why recruiting the right talent is about selecting, not hiring.
- The seven steps of precision interviewing to recruit the right talent.
- The crucial role of an interview guide.
- What to do if an imposter slips through the interview process.
- Why entrepreneurs can’t afford to not have some kind of interview process.
- And much MORE.
Guest: Kathleen Quinn Votaw
Kathleen Quinn Votaw (www.talentrust.com) is the CEO of TalenTrust, a strategic recruiting and human capital consulting firm.
She is the author of two books, Dare to Care in the Workplace: A Guide to the New Way We Work, and Solve The People Puzzle: How High-Growth Companies Attract & Retain Top Talent.
Regarded as a key disruptor in her industry, Quinn Votaw has helped thousands of companies across multiple industries develop purpose-based, inclusive communities that inspire employees to come to work.
Her company has been recognized in the Inc. 5000. Kathleen also speaks nationally on recruitment, culture and leading with empathy in the workplace.
Related Resources:
If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Human Resources episodes.
Contact Kathleen and connect with her on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Also be sure to check out her websites: https://kathleenquinnvotaw.com/ and https://talentrust.com/
Book: Dare to Care in the Workplace: A Guide to the New Way We Work
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How to Recruit the Right Talent in Today’s Economy with Kathleen Quinn Votaw
How to recruit the right talent in today’s economy is challenging. How do you find the best people for the job when prospective employees have more expectations from the workplace than ever before? Today’s guest has some practical solutions. Stay tuned.
This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line. I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I have a fascinating guest for you today. She’s Kathleen Quinn Votaw, the CEO of Talent Trust, a strategic recruiting and human capital consulting firm, and the author of two books, “Dare to Care in the Workplace: A Guide to the New Way We Work,” and “Solve the People Puzzle: How High Growth Companies Attract & Retain Top Talent.”
Regarded as a key disruptor in her industry, Kathleen has helped thousands of companies across multiple industries develop purpose based, inclusive communities that inspire employees to come to work.
Plus, her company, Talent Trust, has been named to the Inc. 5000. How to recruit the right talent is just a perennial challenge for people who aren’t professional recruiters. It’s not their full time job. They haven’t been trained and they’re so likely to make mistakes. And that’s why I’m curious to learn more.
Welcome to Business Confidential Now, Kathleen.
Thanks for having me. I’m excited for this discussion.
I am, too, because what is it about employee recruitment processes that makes it so challenging to recruit the right talent?
Well, what makes it most challenging is that most people, as you stated, aren’t trained on how to select the right people for their community, their company, their culture, how they want to show up for their customers. They’re not patient enough to select from a wonderful group of people that will fit their business objectives. We’re in a state of hiring versus selecting, and there’s a big difference there, Hanna.
Well, that’s an interesting distinction because I’m sure that the people who need employees are saying, “Well, I know my business. I know what I want. I think I know what I need.” But, what you’ve just talked about, selecting versus hiring, let’s do a little deeper dive on what you mean by selecting.
How do we select strategically? What should we be asking ourselves to make the proper selections in order to get the right talent?
Absolutely. There’s seven steps that we’ve uncovered in really building a precise selection process because recruitment is a sales process and there’s seven steps to precision interviewing. Those steps are being very structured and standardized. So making sure you’re treating every applicant and candidate in a similar fashion. You identify the duties and competencies of what you’re trying to accomplish in the job that you’re hiring for.
You also identify the target behaviors, what questions you should ask to ensure you’re identifying the behaviors, and then probe to get complete answers. Rate the candidate’s behaviors. Because when we let people go, right, Hanna, it’s usually because of how they behaved; not because they didn’t know how to do an Excel spreadsheet. And then I really encourage companies, small, medium, and large, to have a position interview guide for every single position in their company because some of the hiring managers are not hiring on a regular basis.
And sometimes if you don’t use a skill, you’ll forget. You won’t know how to apply the knowledge learned maybe three years ago. So there are seven distinct steps to making sure you select people versus just hire people.
Well, I have a feeling that there’s opportunity for missteps in every one of those steps. So let’s talk about some of those, because as you said, if you’re on a roll with recruiting and you’re interviewing a bunch of people, I can imagine that you get a little bit better at it. And then if you don’t do it again for a few more years, yeah, it’s easy to forget some of those little nuances.
It’s kind of like working with an app for a while. You do it and then you go on vacation and you come back, you go, “Oh my God, what was that password? What was this? What was that?” So, I think we can identify with it.
Let’s start with the beginning. I mean, in the first steps, it sounds like they need to come in a certain sequence and that if you fall off the track in the beginning, it’s really hard to kind of get back on, no?
You are absolutely right. So, it’s step one structuring and standardizing. How we treat people when we’re trying to evaluate them to come into our company is the secret sauce. Every company has a different structure. They will approach it differently. But many we find, Hanna, don’t have any structure. They tend to wing it when it comes to selecting people, and sometimes they don’t have enough choice.
They just might not have enough candidates to choose from. So they pick who’s sitting in front of them versus purposefully selecting the right person for the right job, for their company, for their environment, for their values, attitudes and beliefs. Because many people want the work to get done and they forget about the how the work should get done. Because when your employees interact with your customers, you want to make sure it’s the right employee interacting with your customers.
We can’t wing it when it comes to selection. So that that first piece, the wheels can come off the bus often when they don’t have any structure or process is another great word on how we bring in people to our organization.
And my first book, “Solve the People Puzzle,” maps this out very nicely for people. There’s also another publication called, “Who,” that maps out a process that companies can follow that’s predictive – step one, step two, step three. So, they’re making more informed decisions. I’m sure many of your listeners have visited Chick-fil-A one or two times in their life.
I’m friends with Dee Ann Turner, who is the former Chief People Officer at Chick-fil-A for about 30 years. She defined a really great process to bring in the front line employees who “it’s their pleasure” to get you your Chick-fil-A every day. And it was a very formulaic selection process that was laid out with specific questions. The answers we’re listening for. That’s a patience issue.
Many people don’t wait for the right answer, or they don’t know what the answer should be from the question – the interview question they’re asking. And she’s developed this formula that I bet we all could agree. Most of us could agree that Chick-fil-A is doing something right.
Absolutely. I understand this concept of having a structure and a process and standardizing it so that you’re treating each applicant the same way in terms of being able to ferret out and tease out how they fit in terms of the overall spectrum of the organization and culture and what you’re trying to achieve.
But could you give us an example of a structure and a process to make it come a little bit more alive?
Oh, sure, absolutely. So here’s something that your listeners could follow. Certainly. So when you’re setting up your interview guide, for example, and this could make it very easy for people who might have smaller companies to each position really requires key competencies, target behaviors, questions and how to probe for them.
There’s a really good rule that people could apply in setting up a structure. It’s called the Starla Rule. Have you ever heard of it, Hanna?
I haven’t. No, I haven’t. Tell me more.
Okay. So, it’s Starla. So it stands for Situation or Task. So you ask selection questions based on a specific circumstance and a situation the candidate might have been involved in. And what action did they take to address the situation? What were the results or the outcome or the consequences of what the candidate did, the team did, and then what did they learn from the situation and how did they apply it after they learned it?
That’s an example of how structured the interview process could be, where you have situation task questions and the interviewer, the hiring manager, is looking for the action, the result, the learning and how the candidate applied it. Hopefully, that’s more specific and helpful.
Yeah, I like that example. It does make it more concrete. Well, I’m curious, in your experience though, some people are very good at interviewing, and then, when they get into a position, their performance is something else. So, do you have any suggestions for how to interview for that?
Well, behavioral based interviewing is a one way that you could ferret out somebody who might behave differently. But even if you get somebody on your team, Hanna, that might get through the interview process, because to your great point, some people are professional interviewers, right?
There might be imposters or they might have practiced with somebody. So no process is perfect, so somebody might get through. If that happens, then the first 90 days are critical of anybody’s employment with you to inspect what you expect and set up the first 30 days. These are the things you should have achieved, and they’re different in every position, right?
The next 60 days, these are the things you should have achieved or learned, or next 90 days, because no process is perfect. And in the interview process, think of the person, the candidate interviewing. They’re pretty vulnerable. Somebody who doesn’t have a job or who is changing a job. They’re in a vulnerable position. They’re worried because they want to take care of their family, which is the number one reason people work, by the way.
They want to take care of their family. They want to have a great life. They want to have a home. They want to have transportation. So the person we’re interviewing is very fragile, but they probably practiced. They’ve gotten up in the morning, they’ve researched the company in the best case scenario, they’re prepared for the interview. They’re going to put their best foot forward nine times out of 10.
I’ve been doing this for 30 years. People really want to do a good job. Any process can allow for people to get through that. But if you follow our seven steps of structuring the key competencies, what behaviors, the questions to ask, probing in those questions, rating the candidates behavior, and follow our position interview guides that we have created for our clients, you’re going to have a better chance of not having that happen.
That sounds awfully involved, and I could imagine that we have some entrepreneurs listening. These are small businesses. Maybe they’re startups and they need to start hiring outside of the friends and family scope that they use to start up their business. And they’re like, I got so much going on – I don’t have time for all of that.
Maybe a big company can afford to engage somebody’s services such as yourself. I might have time to skim that book, but create these big, long – you know. And besides that, I don’t know that I can really afford the right talent because it’s probably really expensive. What can you suggest to companies in that position?
Well, I love that you asked that because that’s the stories we tell ourselves. I’m an entrepreneur, too, and I started 20 years ago and I’ll never forget my first hire. And asking the right questions led to seven years of that first employee representing my personal brand and my business brand to the community.
So, I don’t care if you have two employees or 250,000 employees. Having some kind of structure is going to help you identify and select the right people who you want to present to the world that says, “You represent my brand and I trust you.”
So I think it’s so important to have a process. And, again, I’m just like an entrepreneur out there. I have 30 employees right now, so some people could say, “Hey, it’s way too much to go through all this rigmarole. Let’s just try them out.” I hear that all the time, Hanna. “Why don’t we just try them out? If they fail, big deal. Right?” Well, imagine who they’re touching along their journey.
Who are they affecting? They’re affecting you and your psyche as the business owner. They are affecting other great employees. If you have 3 or 4 employees, because they might not have the behaviors because you weren’t patient enough to select, they could cost you a customer. They could cost you your brand reputation.
It is vital to spend some time on this and you still might get it wrong. Truth be told, I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Guess what? I’ve made mistakes in hiring. But by following a process that doesn’t take long, it’s really rather simple, you can have more predictive outcomes and more success to grow your small or medium sized company because you don’t want to be distracted as an owner with people problems.
That’s why my first book is “Solve the People Puzzle,” right? We wake up in the middle of the night at 2:00 AM, what’s our wake up call? It’s probably about people. Let’s eliminate as much of that noise as possible and focus on the good work we’re trying to do with our products and services. So, I think it’s vital to entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes to spend just a little time on this.
Read a book, and you don’t have to hire a company like mine, you can read my book. For what – $9.99? [Laughter] I mean, you could buy the book, “Who?” I’m even promoting other people. You could go to Dee Ann Turner’s website, download some interview questions. Cheat to win, but have some kind of process because, otherwise, you’re letting somebody hijack your brand. We can’t have that as entrepreneurs.
You’re absolutely right. You made some really important and valid points that I hope people take to heart, because the time pressure that especially entrepreneurs and startups are under, they have a huge long to do list. The last thing they want to do is add to it.
But, again, as you point out, they may be penny wise and pound foolish, as the old saying goes, and substituting one problem for six, [Laughter] by hiring too fast. But let me ask you this. What if an organization just really can’t find the right talent but recognizes that there could be some talent out there that’s like the diamond in the rough that could be developed, how would the recruiting process change, if at all?
Well, it wouldn’t change, but it would focus more less on technical competencies and more on behavioral based competencies. So let me unbundle this word, “competencies.” We always tend to over – it’s a big word. All it means is can the person do it really, truly? Do they have the skills or the behaviors to do it?
So, we would focus on kind of what they – how they’ve shown up in their – or maybe they’re younger people. How have they shown up? Have they been an athlete? We’ll look for transferable skills. Have they been a good student? That’s a transferable skill. Have they been involved in the community of at high school or in college, student government, or band, or football? Or how have they engaged?
What is the behaviors that they have chosen in their life? And can I manage and train this person? And I think if you don’t have the budget and, by the way, many companies do not have the budget to pay outrageous compensation. Don’t be fooled. People don’t want it’s not all about the compensation. We can come back to that.
It’s about working for a company that cares about me, cares about my family and will provide me flexibility. So we can come back to that in another question, because I’m sure you’re going to go there. But I think developing someone is very rewarding; A, because I’ve done it many times, because I couldn’t afford the big ticket person either. And just making sure they have the attributes, the grit, and the humility to learn, and that you have the time to put into them.
One other person I know, who’s actually on my team, he loves to read books with his employees. Don’t we all have some time to give to the people who work with us who might be emerging leaders? I love that he reads books with them. He picks a book and he reads it with each person. And it could be as simple as that to help develop them. There’s so – obviously, I’m an author, I love books.
There’s so much to learn. And if you can just take a little time to develop someone, they can be loyal to you for decades. I have someone who’s been with me for a dozen years. I’m grateful to her and she’s taught me as much as I’ve taught her. And so it’s very rewarding to develop somebody. And it doesn’t take that much time.
You know, Hanna, you touched a nerve when you talked about time. I speak all over the country to many different organizations, and I hear from business leaders. I don’t have the time and I challenge them to stop thinking that and saying that. You do have the time. We all have a little bit of time to put just a little bit more into our companies, just a little bit more into our people.
I mean, if we’re so busy, what are you busy doing? Your number one job as a leader is to put your people first.
Well said. When I hear that somebody says they don’t have the time, and it’s usually more around risk management issues, but very similar. It’s something that’s very important and key to a company. I always like to say, “Well, if you don’t have the time, that’s fine. Then you’re going to have to make the time to do it over.”
Exactly. I mean, where did we come up with this whole concept of, “Oh, I’m so busy.”? I think people think the busier they are, the more important they are. And that’s just – that’s a myth.
True.
It’s not true.
Yeah, yeah.
[Laughter] It’s not true.
Definitely. Well, I think we kind of worship a workaholic culture. So, if people aren’t busy, then they’re lazy, which isn’t true either. But it goes in circles, but I hear you, I agree with you, and I want to come back to this compensation issue. Because, I think, in younger cohorts, people do a lot of job changing.
They’re not going to stay 12 years with an employer, in part because they find that that’s the best way for them to increase their compensation, especially in a competitive job market, the way it’s post-COVID, where finding the right talent is a challenge and it’s more of a market that favors the employees right now than the employers. The talent war, if you will.
So let’s talk about compensation, because not everybody can offer top dollar. What are the key things that companies should be focusing on, and especially smaller ones? I understand flexibility, but there are some people that are graduating college and it’s like, “Well, I didn’t do classes on Friday. I didn’t do Monday. So, Tuesday through Thursday, and Thursday, I want to leave early.”
[Laughter] There is a group that falls into that category and it’s like, “Okay. So, don’t let me interrupt your life, but this is a job.” I mean, flexibility can be taken too far in the extreme. What do you think is a good balance for a small organization, a small to mid-size one? You have 30 employees, which is significant. That is affordable and reasonable.
Yes. So wonderful question. So we tend to think of compensation and cold, hard cash. Right?
Right.
Your base salary, your incentives, your paid time off, right? The holidays, benefits, the traditional package. Well, what if we got a little creative – what if? And use time as more of a lever for compensation. So I’ll give you an example.
So what if 3.8 million women are struggling to work and balance life? They’re trying to balance having the child education issues, elder care issues. I mean, there are so many issues right now that people are just like, I got to focus on my family. So what if we created an environment where people could have flexibility to choose hours, like have a menu of hours?
It does create more infrastructure on the owner. I recognize that. But it allows you to recruit and retain better talent because you’re creating more flexible schedules. Restaurants have gone to this shorter shifts like four hour shifts versus eight hour shifts. So, I could be a waitress in the morning or bartender in the morning or they – gosh, I hope not in the morning – but I could be a bartender in the afternoon, and I can drive an Uber by night, and I could go to my CrossFit class, and I could then go act on Broadway.
I’m making it up. Right? But people are looking at their life. Think of your life as a plate or blank canvas, and how does my work fit into my life versus how does my life fit into my work? Very different point of view.
And how do we as employers beyond monetary, beyond cold, hard cash, give them that flexibility and still serve our customers? That’s the question. So, I would say time is a great lever, where people work and how they work is a great lever to pull, different benefits that your people might like, that you don’t – might not even know about. Some of us are…
I’m 57 years old, I might not even know about something that people like. And recognition is key. People want to be – they want to matter, Hanna. So they want to know that you care. Therefore, my second book, “Dare to Care in the Workplace,” about them and their lives versus I’m just coming in and punching a clock.
Be interested in them, be curious in them, and what do they need to make it all work? So those are some of the things to think about. And I’m going to tell you, if you have employees one or more, ask them, “Other than cash compensation, what would be interesting to you?” I just had a conversation with an employer in Pittsburgh, and it’s time. Time and time again, I hear time. “I need more time to live my life.”
Very good. And I think it’s that mindset change that you referenced before. How does life fit into work instead of work fit into life?
Yes.
That different approach to evaluating priorities, really.
Big shift, and many people just don’t know how to do that.
Indeed. And I think that’s what a lot of managers are struggling with, especially in larger companies, that have come of age in a command and control structure. Because now you know the emphasis is changing more towards the employees and what they want.
And some feel like they’re losing control in the process. And that’s not necessarily the case. They’re not necessarily abdicating. But, Kathleen, we’ve covered a lot of ground.
And I’m just – my last question to you, although there’s more if we could get together over a glass of wine, but that’s not possible right now.
I’d love that. [Laughter]
[Laughter] Me too. What do you think the most important thing is that executives, managers and entrepreneurs need to know about how to recruit the right talent? If you could boil it down to one thing or two?
Create a simple process of selecting. Don’t get caught up into this, “I don’t have choices.” Make sure you never hire a candidate in isolation. Everybody looks good in isolation. Make sure you have some comparison candidates and you follow, even if it’s just five of the same questions, just follow some kind of structure that you can hang on to, that will predict more success.
Wonderful. Wonderful, great advice. This has been terrific. Thank you so much, Kathleen. And thanks for all you do to show organizations how to recruit the right talent and retain them. I know that’s a whole topic we didn’t even scratch the surface on. But, altogether, it builds stronger and more successful workplaces.
And thanks for sharing some of those great insights today. Now, if you’re listening…
My pleasure.
…and you’d like to know more about Kathleen Quinn Votaw, her work and her books, “Dare to Care in the Workplace” and “Solve the People Puzzle,” that information, as well as a transcript of this interview can be found at the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.
Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to tell your friends about the show, especially if they’re in a hiring mode and need to recruit so that they can do it right. Leave a positive review and we’ll be back next week with another episode of Business Confidential Now.
So, until then, have a great day and an even better tomorrow.
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