Hiring the Best Employees in the New Normal Era

The success or failure of a business is greatly influenced by hiring the right people. It is for these reasons that the hiring process should be handled with the utmost attention, just like marketing and sales. 

It's a major part of the business success tripod. 

Business won’t run optimally if you aren’t assembling the best team of professionals that will help you take your venture to the next level. 

And because of this new normal, we have to quickly adapt and pivot to the changes happening around us. Or else, our business will suffer. 

Even though the new era started 10 years ago, it’s only now that it became so explicit and so tangible that it makes no sense to have big buildings and payrolled people. 

It’s best to organize around projects and skills. So, bring the right person and the right skill on a temporary commitment. 

Because of the changes happening around us, we need to be smart when it comes to maximizing our resources. 

In fact, we need to be cost-aware. That’s why work from home is a good thing because it gives us the best result without incurring too much costs. 

The new era means to organize your business and yourself in a way that is more “Lego” than “Duplo”. 

This means your business is made up of small (Lego) parts that you can quickly and easily recombine. By adapting that approach, your business can thrive in the new normal. 

In business, Lego means having 100% remote teams. You can easily bring in people for projects. You collaborate with other networks. 

You find the best people that want to be on these projects. 

That means you don’t have to pick unqualified people just because they’re on your payroll and you just want to utilize your idle resource to make them productive. 

Business Owner: “Take Peter to do the market research.”

Project Coordinator: “But Peter is not the best fit for the project.”

Business Owner: “Take him because he’s just sitting around and costing us a ton of money. So, we have to utilize Peter, so he has something to do.” 

That model is the OLD model.

And the new model revolves around these questions.

Where are the best people?

How can we bring them together with this project?

You source them from other networks. They have their own infrastructure. They need not to be in your business permanently, unless you want to. 

The bottomline is…

You only get the expertise when you need it to maximize the result you can get out of that decision. 

Because at the end of the day, what you need is to grow and scale your business. 

There are three main levers to grow and scale your business. 

The first one is reinvesting the profits into creating more money. 

The second is systemizing. Create a rocketship out of them by systemizing them. Create rocket ships that are self-propelling.

The third one is hiring great people. Bring in world-class people who are passionate about the purpose that you’re passionate about and the whole thing will become much more impactful. 

Now, what we are talking about right now is a system. It should inspire you to create your hiring system because you need world-class people that are passionate about the same thing that your business is passionate about. 

I will share with you the 15 Steps that the Strategies Sprints team uses. This may not be applicable to yours. It is not a perfect system. There’s no such thing as a perfect system.

This is what works for us but we have specific context, a specific stage for development, and a specific value chain, etc. 

Now I want to tell you these 15 Steps because I want to inspire you to create today the first draft of your hiring system. It just can be 5 steps or 10 steps but start with something. 

You can download the hiring template here: www.strategysprints.com/tools. 

Start with the first draft. It will change anyway every couple of weeks. It should be. It should be a living document like everything that in the Sprints universe we start with you. Everything should just be started quickly and kept simple as possible because it is a living document. It will change and evolve week by week as you learn. 

The first thing that we do before we hire is create a job scorecard. Maybe even before there is a decision to hire. 

When do we say, “now we need people”? 

We have this rule which basically says whenever somebody of us can be the CEO, can be the Head of Implementation, can be Head of Customer Success. 

When doing time analysis, whenever you find that you are doing a task that somebody could do for one-third of the value, that’s when we hire.

For example, Diana is doing the post-editing of the strategy shows. She does her time analysis and she said “Oh, I am spending 12 hours a week on video post-editing.” 

Now, she makes a judgment call. 

“If I delegate this 12 hours to somebody else in this time, could I create 3X more revenue than this person costs?” 

This is our 3X rule. If she says, ”I can do 3x more value in economic terms. I can bring in, for the company 3X more euro per month, which is 12 hours which would be four times in one month. With that, I can bring 3X more value.” 

Then we say “Okay, we need to hire.”

What do we do then? 

Step 1. Create a Job Scorecard.

The Job Scorecard is created which means the whole job description from end to end - the vision, the purpose, the KPIs, the skills needed. 

We need to think it through and we need to create a system before we onboard somebody. The mistake I see often is that people don’t prepare. They bring in world-class people but these world-class people cannot rock because there is nothing to rock. The basics are not there. 

Create a Job Scorecard that is the basics. 

Step 2. Reach Out Via Email

Then, you reach out. We reach out per email to our email service. We send emails to possible applicants in our database to inform them that there are available positions in the company. 

Step 3. Reach Out Via Social Media Post.

We reach out per social media in our social media channels - Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram and we say... 

‘Hey people, we are hiring. This is the position. Do you know somebody? That’s how you can apply.”

80% of our hiring happens over social media. 

Step 4. Reach Out Via Traditional Platform.

Then if it doesn’t work, we also do our reach out on traditional platforms. We had the best results with Angellist, Techcrunch. It’s free. You can create a corporate account there and put your hiring ad there.

We have also had many clients that have great results with Craigslist, Smart Recruiters, and Zip Recruiters. 

Our best results are from Angellist, Techcrunch, and some social media.

Step 5. The application email is received. 

Somebody wrote to us “Hey, I’m interested in this position to work with you”.  We sent the first email and the email is ready already. We do save the email in Canned Response which is basically why we love email templates. This is one of the most common emails that goes out a lot and always the same. 

So it is an email template. We have it in Gmail Canned Responses. Whatever you use, make an email template. Write the first email that you write then save it as a template. 

Step 6. Test Task 1 Competed. 

Then we give one small test task. In that case, depending on the role, we will let them do a task so that we see how they work and how fast they work and the quality of their work. 

Step 7. Application Email 2 Sent. 

Then, there is a second email application that we asked a little bit more. We give more information. 

Step 8. 20-Minute Call With The COO Scheduled.

This 20-minute interview with our COO is also automated. It goes over Calendly. 

Step 9. Test Task 2 Completed. 

Then there is a second test task which is a bigger one, according to the roles. 

So the test task, for example, you are searching for a salesperson. The first small test task is a minor sales task and the second one is also a sales task.

Do not make it generic. The clients do generic tasks like, ‘this is the case and solve that case’. Please don’t do generic stuff. 

It is really about respecting the time of everybody and in this case of the applicants. So really do the test you want to test and not some general intelligence or what have you. 

Step 10. There is a 30-minute interview with the CEO. 

This is like the final interview with the CEO and will determine if they make the cut or not.

Step 11. Onboarding Email Sent.

Then we have an onboarding email sent out. This is automated. 

Step 12. Offer a 60-Day trial period. 

We send the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and the trial contract. 

Step 13. Onboarding package is received. 

That is also standard. 

Step 14. Review the 60-Day Trial Period. 

After 60 days, we will review the performance and results of the person. This is a step where we determine if the candidate will proceed to the next phase or not. 

Step 15. Full Hire Contract.

After the trial period and the full hire comes in where we send the full contract. 

The legal situation is different in every country and you are reading from 140 different countries about this.  You have to check the context of your legislative, geographical context. 

But nevertheless, what you need is a general hiring contract. 

This is quite a simple thing that describes services and the payments, the terms, the termination, and the relationships, the ownership of things and the confidentiality, indemnification, the rights, and a couple of things more. At the end of the document, you have to sign. 

You might need to tweak it based on your context. If you have a very mature business with big cash flow coming in, then, let it be done by your lawyers. 

That’s our 15 Steps. In our business, we have it all in Asana on the board which is basically 15 columns. When somebody comes in we move them forward to the next. 

We have an executive assistant who moves the next and tells everybody what to do. She says “Hey COO, we are on Step 8. You need to do this interview”. She tells the CEO, “Now it is step 10, you need to do this”. 

That is basically how we set this system. 

You can get access to our hiring templates here:  www.strategysprints.com/tools. 

I really recommend you start your own system. It can be as simple as what I describe or much more precise as you want, depending on the context of your business. 

Hiring world-class people is a major priority in any business, especially in his uncertain times. 

Get help by choosing the right people and make it right. It’s because if you get experts to help your business grow, you’re not only getting good results, you’re getting a lot better compared to what others have. 

In choosing the right people for the project, you need to be cost-efficient when it comes to your hiring decision. That’s why work-from-home experts emerge. Not only will it save you the cost of maintaining an office and regular payrolls, you only maintain them during the duration of the project. 

Office-centric teams will be a thing of the past. 

Most businesses will now run and operate remotely with people working from different parts of the world -- with different expertise and skill sets needed to make the job done...

With one goal of growing the business profitably. 

So, if you want to hire the best people in the new normal era, what’s important is you start with your own hiring system. 

Make your first draft. Get feedback then start using it, testing it, and improving it.