Category: entrepreneurship

Why I Wrote Hire Smart from the Start

Why I Wrote Hire Smart from the Start

All books are labors of love.

Some are also the fruits of a mission.

That’s the case with my new book, Hire Smart from the Start. It launches January 18 from AMACOM Press.

I wrote Hire Smart from the Start aiming to do nothing less than to disrupt the entire business of hiring.

Disrupt it for the good of the entrepreneurship economy. Because no company is immune to making a bad hire. Everything bad that happens at a company is fundamentally a people problem. This creates massive uncertainty for your colleagues and their families. Good companies fail all the time. Because too many CEOs are winging it.

Disrupt it for the good of all the incredibly dedicated people — the leadership teams, the operations managers, the engineers, marketers, product, sales, client services people and all those who get left behind and miss out on turning entrepreneurial dreams into realities. They deserve better.

Disrupt it because there is a better way. Every leader can read this book and they can make people and culture their strategic competitive advantage. They can make leadership their legacy. And, if they have current success, they can take their success even higher. There is a brighter future. They should know that they can live and they can fight. There can be a new tomorrow.

Sound like a lofty mission? Maybe even a grandiose one?

Let me explain.

For more than two decades I’ve poured my heart and soul into the art of the hire. I started as a humble associate in a traditional placement firm. I found success there because I was hungry and hardworking—at it every morning while most folks were still thinking about their first cup of coffee—and maybe, just maybe, because I truly cared about the people I placed, and the organizations I placed them in.

But there was nothing unusual about my modus operandi. I cold called; I scanned the listings; I cold called; I collected resumes; I cold called; I matched skill sets with role specifications.

Meanwhile the world around the placement firm was plunging headlong into change. The Internet. Search engines. Google, cell phones, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, data-driven analytics, social media. The entire nature of business and marketing was in flux.

Yet, curiously, the hiring process went on much as it always had: post a role specification, gather in the resumes, match the skills with the job description, run an interview to check the candidate didn’t have two heads – et voila!, some random “new hire” was born.

I knew things had to change.

Seizing opportunity, I became an entrepreneur, and over the next decade I helped to pioneer the Online Recruiting industry through two amazing ventures: HotJobs and Ladders. Those experiences taught me so much. They taught me what it’s like to risk everything on a business venture. What it’s like to build out a company of 650 employees from scratch. What it’s like to take a company to an IPO and watch the value soar.

In the end, I knew deeper transformations were afoot, and I was hungry to do more, to really get at the heart of what hiring meant in the new economy.

So I struck out on my own, as a trusted advisor to boards and CEOs of high tech startups with enormous growth potential, helping them extract and secure extraordinary talent—the right talent for them. People who would flourish in their enterprises; people who would make sure those enterprises flourished.

That venture tested everything I knew and confirmed the strategies, their value and how any leader can create the most important things in business — a common purpose, shared values and clear objectives to achieve their mission. These three vital principles formed the basis of Hire Smart from the Start:

  1. People are everything.

No matter how important you think your business concept or branding or technology might be, your fate as an entrepreneur will be decided by the leadership team you assemble. Your people strategy is your company’s operating system. The quickened pace of our economy means that teams must work seamlessly to provide agility and speed. Old-style firms could “eat” a few bad leadership hires and keep moving along in their own, cumbersome, hierarchical way. Not so today, when competitors can come from down the block or across the ocean, and startup funding flows from a greater variety of sources than ever before in capitalism’s history. A strong leader can establish a strong vision, and that’s crucial. But only a well-tuned team can Get. It. Done.

  1. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Entrepreneurs are susceptible to blind spots when it comes to the human dimension. They tend to be innovative and restless, relentlessly driven folks with a single-minded focus that is usually tied to a sense of personal significance. They tend to see HR as a nettlesome necessity and hiring as a chore. But experience means so much in this respect. I travel the country speaking with seasoned entrepreneurs—women and men who have built billion-dollar businesses and reached the pinnacle of success in their fields—and uniformly they echo the truth of Point 1: People are everything. These high-powered entrepreneurs draw inspiration from great, human-centered change makers like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and they look to business leaders like Richard Branson. They have learned to build and trust their teams. The ones who succeed are the ones who have awakened to the value of personal growth and crossed the critical chasm from entrepreneur to leader. They understand that while personal growth is linear, team growth is exponential.

  1. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Once you realize the single importance of your team, you need to understand what makes a hire right—how to find the folks who won’t just “do a great job,” but who will build enduring value for your enterprise and help achieve your mission. The key isn’t about skill set, or even a record of past success. Skills can be learned, and folks successful in one context can founder in another. The key, is core values, finding the people who share your beliefs, your priorities, your sense of how a business should run. Those are the people who will put everything they’ve got into your venture. The ones who will make the right calls under pressure. The ones who will help project the sense of unified mission that inspires employees and builds the type of customer experience no amount of marketing can buy.

We are living in an age of abundance. That includes abundance of talent and abundance of entrepreneurial activity. Never in the history of the world has there been a greater flow of resources to good ideas. For every talented candidate, there is a perfect fit. And when the right fits are made, people flourish—and so does the bottom line. Because ultimately the success of every entrepreneur will be determined by their ability to recruit and build culture to achieve their mission.

Recruit better. Achieve more. Make leadership your legacy.

Hire Smart from the Start.

PS – We need to do more than just build leadership values among today’s entrepreneurs; we need to help pave the way for tomorrow’s innovators. That’s why 100% of profits from Hire Smart from the Start will go to Room to Read, a fantastic nonprofit that is breaking down the barriers to literacy, education and gender equality for millions of children worldwide. World Change Starts with Educated Children.

How to Delight With The Double Opt-In Email Introduction

How to Delight With The Double Opt-In Email Introduction

Connecting your new ‘friends’ in business can be valuable. You must take heed in how this is done. Making unsolicited, blind, single opt-in introductions to please a new friend is a pretty big offense as a professional. It makes gross assumptions about the interests of your offended target. It puts all three of you in a precarious position of awkward social, uncertain territory and forces your offended target to either ignore you, privately message you back, or worse, school you on proper email etiquette with a strong possibility of public shaming in an email response that includes your new friend.

It’s better to ask than it is to assume that you know what your target contact currently wants, has time for, or any interest in. Your friend may not be a priority or interest.

So, be professional and conduct yourself with a level of executive decorum that makes people smile and admire your social grace, etiquette and excellence in social comportment. This is attractive to others and endears people to you.

There are two great ways to reach out to your target contacts. In both ways, you first provide context, color and thoughts. Either form of this simple email note ensures value creation and a successful introduction for the benefit of all parties:

VERSION 1 —  You write a direct note to your target contact (DO NOT COPY YOUR FRIEND):

“Hi Julie, I met Bob the founder of NewCo earlier today and think he has assembled a great team, strong product and great early traction with their AI SaaS engine. They’ve signed 8 big name clients and a bunch of smaller ones. Want an intro?”

If Julie says yes, then some form of this:

“Hi Julie & Bob, It is my pleasure to intro you. I’ve mentioned you briefly to each other and am certain you will both enjoy meeting up. I’ll leave you from here. Best, Dave”

VERSION 2 — Ask your ‘friend’ to send you a blurb along with any info that you can forward along with an endorsement or simple ask. This could be easier & faster for you and looks something like this:

Hi Julie — please see note below from Bob. NewCo is interesting and I like him. Feel free to follow up directly and mention my name or let me know if you’d like an intro? Best, Dave”

Success in business requires being selective about your relationships, making new friends, connections and nurturing your relationships. Cultivating important relationships over the long term requires you to conduct yourself in a way that makes others want to nurture your relationship back. Relationships are a place to give, not take. Be respectful of people’s time, energy & bandwidth.

And remember, the Golden Rule is golden for a reason.

How To Triumph With People & Executive Recruiting

How To Triumph With People & Executive Recruiting

The most highly qualified, high caliber talent that you need are not unemployed, sitting on a couch eating potato chips, waiting for the phone to ring.

The three truths about high achievers are that:

  1. They are good at what they do.
  2. People like them.
  3. And they are generally capable of creating the circumstances in their lives for this thing called happiness.

So, at a minimum, they are at least mildly interested, actively engaged in whatever they are currently doing. Recruiting is about disrupting their comfort to ‘extract and secure’ the talent you need for your company.

You must believe that everybody is on the market for the right set of circumstances. Identify who are the all stars that you need inside of your company, extract and secure them. It’s not easy. Stop whining. Be persistent.

People. Idea. Capital. Capital is abundant. Idea is over-rated, more important than an idea is execution. Execution is all about people. So, you are left with people and capital. People are by far the most important.

All teams are not created equal. Build executive teams with purpose.

The advantage that agency recruiters have in assessing the best talent, culture fit and securing the right hires is that we get to go in clean and clear of predisposed notions or any colored thinking about your company.

Offering candidates clean, objective, unbiased data about the market, compensation and opportunities with the leading executive teams in growth companies is valuable in creating a relationship, first.

To understand first, a candidates motivations and where they are trying to get to, allows for trust and a better partnership in career guidance.

Social media, blogging can be distracting. Staying focused on the primary work is the key for creating high-quality results, first.

The best self promoters and propaganda creators are not the best at what they do. It’s important to prioritize high-quality work, first.

So much noise, people want to be marketed to less and less.

Say meaningful, thoughtful things.

Connecting is more important than noise.

When you’ve identified the people with whom you want to connect, find out about them and connect with them in a way that is more interesting.

Connect as a human being first. Understand their interests.

Triathlons and Ironman racing is awesome. Fitness is a great way to make connections!

Great recruiting can only happen by building trust and being an effective partner to the top executives in your market.

Talk for as long as possible about human interests — rapport, laughter and common interests create real connection.

People want to do business with people who are like them. Find the similarities, the things that bring you closer. Delay for as long as possible talking about business. Learn about their deepest desires, dreams and motivations. Only this way can you then jump in to help them and be an effective partner to them.

To lead is to recruit and build culture. Make recruiting and culture your strategic competitive advantage. And, make leadership your legacy.

These were some of the insightful takeaways from a great panel discussion. In attendance were some of the brightest stars in human resources, talent acquisition and People teams from NYC tech and from all around the country at the JobMobile Summit. The panel was led by Career Advice Expert Amanda Augustine, CPCC and included Cat Hernandez @CatMHernandez, Deb Josephs, and Susan Yun @SusanEYun.

The Nobel-Prize winning author, Isaac Bashevis Singer said “Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything.”

He was right.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.