My $100M Hiring Strategy

Summary

• Generate high-quality applications by optimizing job titles to attract more qualified candidates. For example, changing a job title from "Content Manager" to "Senior Content Manager" resulted in receiving better applications.
• Avoid abbreviations in job titles to increase visibility on search platforms—spell out words like "Senior" instead of using "Sr."
• Use clear and widely understood job titles, such as "Vice President of Customer Success" instead of confusing titles like "Head of Student Happiness."
• Do not use idiomatic phrases or jargon in job titles, as these can result in lower search rankings and may deter applicants.
• Refrain from including salary ranges in job titles to avoid being downregulated on job boards.
• Be specific and aligned with the messaging to candidates, similar to effective marketing strategies.
• Improve the candidate experience with both direct (interviews, communication) and indirect (online presence, brand image) communication, acknowledging that 68% of candidates decline job offers due to poor candidate experiences.
• Move quickly in the hiring process to not lose top talent, as the best candidates typically secure jobs within eight days.
• Implement a scaled interview process, adjusting the number of steps to match company resources and capabilities.
• Start interviews with a 15-minute screening call to ascertain basic suitability.
• Clearly explain the company mission, values, and the role's purpose at the start of an interview to set expectations.
• Test for cultural fit by asking questions related to company core values.
• Conduct a skill test interview using situational questions to assess problem-solving abilities.
• Ensure personal goals of candidates align with company goals in an "alignment interview."
• Include a final "CEO interview" to offer a broader vision of the role's potential growth and build a relationship of trust and loyalty with the candidate.
• Recognize that the skills needed to attract clients are similar to those required to recruit candidates and can be equally rewarding and critical for business growth.
• Stay tuned for advice on retaining top talent once they are part of the company.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing strategies to attract top talent efficiently. First, optimize your job titles to make them clear and relevant, like using "Senior Content Manager" instead of just "Content Manager," but avoid abbreviations like "Sr."

To improve visibility and attract the right candidates, make sure your job title is precise and understandable, without jargon or idiomatic expressions. It's also smart to leave out salary ranges in the title to maintain good standing on job boards.

Communication is key to a great candidate experience. Be direct in your interviews and emails, and make sure your online presence reflects the brand image you want candidates to see.

Speed up the hiring process because top talent often gets hired in just eight days. You can do this by reducing unnecessary steps and keeping communication clear and straightforward.

For interviews, start with a quick 15-minute call to check the basics. Then, in a longer interview, explain the company's mission and the purpose of the role. Ask candidates questions that reveal if they fit your company's culture and have the problem-solving skills you need.

Make sure the candidate's personal goals line up with the company's in an "alignment interview." Finally, have a "CEO interview" where the big picture of growth and opportunity is shared, creating trust and loyalty.

Remember, the skills for attracting clients help with recruiting, too. It can be exciting and essential for your business's success. Stay ready to adapt and keep learning about talent retention for continual growth.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"If you know who you're looking for, you've got the messaging right."

– Leila Hormozi

"Own your flaws if you want to attract candidates."

– Leila Hormozi

"Done is better than perfect."

– Leila Hormozi

"You're not just hiring an employee; you're literally purchasing their brain."

– Leila Hormozi

"People with reciprocity of trust with the CEO are going to be better, more efficient workers."

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

tactically like how do I go find a players for a business how do I teach people to go find them so you're constantly feeling constrained and like you don't have the right talent to take your business to the next level then this video is for you and so what I want to break down is the five practices that we have in our company that allow us to go to 100 million so the first piece of this is application generation just like you generate leads for clients you want to generate applications for employees so your job title is your headline now going with that there's really five principles to a job title we posted for a content manager and everyone that we were getting you know six to 12 months of experience and they honestly didn't have a lot of experience in that role and so we changed the title to senior content manager and now we're getting way better applications for that role because people are more qualified and they're used to having more people report to them the second one is that you want to avoid abbreviations and so if you say senior but you just put Sr instead of senior you're gonna get down regularly and so always spell out everything in terms of a job title because it's going to get you up regulated on the platform when people are searching for adopt they're not searching typically with abbreviations they're searching with full-blown word the third and the piece that I see often small businesses tend to mess up the most is that you want to make it easy to understand for someone that doesn't know your business so we had a portfolio company that was looking for essentially like a head of student happiness if you hear that you even know what a head of student happiness is because I don't know what that is but what that really is it might be like a vice president of customer success so it's a much more commonly used term it means that when you're looking for them you want to call them and use the identification that that person actually identifies with the fourth piece is you don't want to use like idiomatic phrases so what I mean by that is a lot of people and this was like six years ago very popular but people used to post they'd be like customer success Superstar sales rock star those actually get down regulated on the platforms now and a lot of people find them to be distasteful it used to be really cool and they used to actually attract people now it's not that way so if you put anything that's not necessary in the job title it's not going to upregulate on the search lastly is you want to leave out excess a lot of people think okay I'm posting for a sales role I'm going to say 100K base up to 200k something in the title again last piece really important gets down regulated on all the sites so overall when it comes to this first piece of the funnel what you want to understand is that you need to know who you're talking to and you'll be very specific about who you're looking for if you know who you're looking for you've got the messaging right it's the same as marketing you can nail the messaging you've got the rest of it down so you've got to nail the messaging for the candidate that you're looking for the second piece of the funnel is really nurture okay 68 of candidates say that they didn't take a job because the canva experience is so poor and so the candy experience is really comprised of two different kinds of communication you've got direct communication and you've got indirect communication direct communication is the interview it's the phone call it's the screening process it's the email you send when you're kindly declining them or when you're moving them forward in the process whereas indirect communication is when they Google your company what's going to come up what's the brand when they look you up on social media what are they going to see when they watch your YouTube videos what are they going to to find when they go look on glass door what's it going to say that person is doing research on your company own your flaws if you want to attract candidates because what they know is that anyone understands that any business is going to have what I like to call like bugs under the rug because they're going to find out no matter what and so you might as well tell them yourself that you can control the narrative a lot of people make it really high friction to apply for a job and find out about that job and then above all of that is speed or the average candidate cycle in terms of how long it takes you to find someone to be placed in your company is 23 days but the best candidates find job is the eight dates so that means that the average company takes three times as long as the average top candidate to place a job because you're going to lose the best talent if you do the direct communication and the indirect communication and it's low friction and it's high education it doesn't matter if you're slow you're going to lose the candidate so the third and last piece of acquiring Talent or the talent acquisition funnel is really sales which I consider sales to be the interview process so it's just like you sell your customer on life after they purchase your product you want to sell a candidate on life after they work at your company broadly going over that five-step sales process so I want to walk you through each of those steps briefly just of what's most important and here's the thing if you have a bigger company you're probably going to have more steps in the process you have a smaller company you're gonna have less steps in the process you have to understand that done is better than perfect it's okay if you can't do all five steps maybe you can only do three with the amount of resources you have right now so the first step is screening the 15-minute phone call with a candidate if you're going to sell them some big pack you don't want to set them straight to the closure because what if they're not qualified where you're essentially finding out like is this the job that they want do they sound excited about the wall is the pay in line with the big amount for pay can they work the hours needed you want to make sure all the logistics are there and you want to also screen out just make sure there's no weirdos and so I open every interview with setting the expectations hey I know that you've seen the job description you've read it we you had the screening call I just want to reset expectations I want to just explain to you exactly what our company does and what this role what this problem is solving of the scroll does and you basically go through here's the mission of our company here's our values and here's what we do in a nutshell 60 to 90 seconds and then you go through and you say what the role does then the best way to frame this is what problem is this roll solving because here's the thing you'll want to bring people in to do activities you want to set the tone which is I'm bringing you in to solve a problem in my behalf I don't have time to solve all the problems I need you to come in here so you can solve the problems for me the next piece to that is that once you set the expectations you want to test for culture so say that you're a company that speed is King then you want to ask hey if you get an email how long do you let the email set in your inbox a day two days an hour two hours which is one of our core values then I might ask the person I might say what does success look like to you why do you work I want someone who works because work is their passion work is what they love and that's what they always want to be constantly progressing in life and work as a way to do that now the third step of the interview process is the skill test interview it's actually very simple I'm going to write out four of these situations or problems and I'm going to present them to them I'm going to try and give them as much context as possible and I'm going to ask them how would you solve this problem how would you approach this situation and then make it a discussion continue to ask questions as they're bringing up how they would solve those situations you can have them go build a funnel but there's a lot of roles that don't have that you bring someone as an operator you know you're not gonna have to do your books for you so you've got to ask them situational questions like that and you want to watch how they think through it because essentially you're buying how they think you're literally purchasing their brain you're paying for their brain to be on your company so you want to make sure that their brain is thinking in a way that is advantageous for your company rather than not the fourth step to the interview process is what I call an alignment interview and this is one that I don't think that I've seen anywhere else but it's one that I have found is how I've saved people from coming into the company that shouldn't be there an alignment interview is making sure that their personal goals are aligned with the goals of the role so I want to make sure if I'm hiring someone that if they have very large career goals I want to make sure that I see a path within our company where we can align with those goals and so that last interview in that sequence is often just a making sure that you're truly aligned another thing you might go over from that is say your work from home have you defined what work from home needs I make sure that in all the interview processes that I explain to people what work from homies they're gone for three hours a day or that they have another job they're working for part-time what it means in my company is that we pretend like we're in office but we're just at our house and so you want to make sure that you're just looking for alignment in that interview to make sure that anything that would cause someone to be fired or quit is taken care of before you bring that person on and then the last step in the five-step process would be the CEO interview in a small company which is going to be majority of people watching this and that's okay the CEO is going to be involved in this process and listen if you don't have more than a thousand employees I don't know why you wouldn't take the last interview I think that that is the job of the CEO to make sure that we have the right people in the company but if you are a bigger company and you aren't involved in that process the last interview is just the CEO interview which essentially is the CEO telling that person where do I see the role going how do I see this role contributing to the team and what do I think the problem that you solve is and often what I've seen is that most CEOs can paint a bigger Vision than that departmental leader and so it kind of just helps show that person the potential of the role because sometimes two you have to understand is that departmental leaders they're going to get afraid of where that role could really go if that person is really good because what if they go it's about them and so it's really great to have the CEO come in and paint the picture for like here's all the opportunity we've got in this company if you crush it here here's other opportunities that you're going to have and also for them to build that relationship because people have reciprocity of trust they have loyalty with the CEO are going to be better more efficient workers and so that's the five-step process or the five-step sale when it comes to Bringing candidates in and so I wanted to cover in this video was really the hard science to it like tactically how do you really bring people in I want to get you to reframe because a lot of people see this as really boring stuff but if you can understand the same skills that allow you to acquire clients it's the same skills to acquire candidates and I think it's a lot more fun for your business and you're probably going to grow a lot bigger is if you guys like this video if you found it useful let me know in the comments and what I would also love is you could just let me know what is missing what more do you want to hear what more do you want to know so that you can actually go implement this in your business and so I'm gonna have a part two to this to talk about you know now that we've gotten the a talent how are we going to keep the a talent let me know what you think in the comments and I will see you on the next one