Why Most People Take Jobs for the Wrong Reasons and How to Fix It with Lou Adler

Why Most People Take Jobs for the Wrong Reasons and How to Fix It with Lou Adler

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 186 of the business development podcast. And on today's expert guest interview, we are chatting with the great Lou Adler. Stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business Development, CapitalBD.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy,

Kelly Kennedy: welcome to episode 186 of the business development podcast. And on today's show, it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Lou Adler. Lou stands at the forefront of modern talent acquisition.

Armed with over three decades of experience in revolutionizing the way that companies find and hire exceptional talent. As the CEO and founder of the Adler Group, Lou has pioneered the performance based hiring system, guiding more than 40, 000 recruiters and hiring managers worldwide in implementing strategies that unearth top tier candidates with a client roster boasting industry giants like LinkedIn, McKinsey and Disney lose impact is felt across diverse sectors, reshaping traditional hiring paradigms and setting new standards for excellence.

Beyond his groundbreaking consulting work, Lou is a prolific author, penning bestsellers like hire with your head. The essential guide for hiring and getting hired, which serve as guiding lights for professionals navigating the complex terrain of recruitment, his commitment to fostering diversity in the workplace underscores his mission as seen through initiatives like diversity hiring without compromise.

Lou Adler's influence transcends mere theory. It's a catalyst for tangible change, empowering organizations to build teams that not only excel but also reflect the rich tapestry of human talent. In the realm of talent acquisition, Lou Adler doesn't just talk the talk. He reshapes the hiring landscape with action.

Every step forging a path towards a brighter, more inclusive future. Lou, it is an honor to have you on the show today.

Lou Adler: Well, thank you very much for that introduction. I can only go downhill from there. So now I think we should just cut it off here and go with that.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, goodness. No, it's it's an absolute honor to have you on the show.

And like I said, we chatted a little bit before the show real briefly, but I had mentioned to you that my experience in HR was super, super limited, right? Like I kind of feel like unless you're in that world, you couldn't know, but reading hire with your head was like a gigantic eye opener for me. I didn't realize how complex hiring really is.

Lou Adler: Well, when you really think about it, it's a business decision and it's a tough business decision for manager. I've got to hire someone. It's a person I don't know. So it's real risky if I screw it up my whole, my job's at stake. I got to work harder. So there's these, a lot of these issues. So and making the decision, hire someone who you don't know is not an easy decision and there's risk associated with it.

There's questions. How can you get to know someone an hour and a half or two hours to see if you can work with them? So. Yeah, it is hard. And at some level, I think people always complain, Oh, they, they hire people they know it's all nepotism. It's not really nepotism. It's, I'd rather hire someone I know, even if they're not perfect because it's safer and I know what I'm getting versus a complete unknown.

So yeah, there's a lot of risks, a lot of, you know, issues associated with that. So yeah, it is. It's a complex human behavior decision and a complex management decision. And yeah, you're right. It's not a piece of cake.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I must say though, the way that you wrote Hire With Your Head really is an exact manual.

It's a blueprint. Probably one of the best written instruction manuals that I've read in an incredibly long time, well written, backed up with lots of facts and figures, and not to mention, like I said, I feel like you covered absolutely everything in there, and we're going to talk all about performance based hiring, because it's We're talking to a lot of young entrepreneurs right now who maybe are involved with hiring for their company, but like me, it wasn't their background.

They're kind of flying by the seat of their pants, like most of us. And a book like this can be incredibly valuable. But, you know, before we get into it, Lou, take us back to the beginning. You've been an entrepreneur for over 46 years. Who is Lou Adler? How did you end up on this journey?

Lou Adler: Yeah, interesting that you said that.

I sometimes wonder myself, well, I didn't start out doing writing about hiring. Kind of fell into that. My background is I'm an engineer. I graduated during Vietnam War. I got a job in aerospace working on nuclear missiles. Realistically, when you blow a nuclear missile, and it's off track was then I got an MBA in finance and start working in manufacturing and engineering and cost accounting and do investments and Pretty, pretty young age.

I was running a factory, running a factory company, 300 people in it and making automotive components and was on a pretty good career track. And, but I hated the group president. He's the guy that hired me. I still hated him. Yeah, he was a micromanager and I said, no, leave me alone. If I fail, fire me. I don't care.

I'll find another job. I was from New York, cocky and And I just decided, no, I don't like the corporate BS and the politics. And I, and I probably could have dealt with it, but I didn't like his management style. Literally it was, he showed up, he was a group president. I was a business unit manager and every two, three weeks he showed up and he thought I was the biggest piece of crap.

And I thought he was a jerk and we argued and I quit almost every once every other month, I quit four or five times and the chairman of the company called me up. Lou, don't quit. And I said, I can't do it. So I gave him 6 months notice and I like my work, but I was working 60, 70, 80 hours a week sometime, but I didn't dislike it.

I enjoyed it. But I had a 3 or 4 year old son. I can't do this rest of my life. And my wife supported the idea of having worked with these recruiters who are very, very successful. And I said, I'm, I'm hiring all the people from them and they're making more money than I am. And I'm working harder. So my wife says, why don't you become a recruiter?

So I, and it really took four or five months to think about it, agreed to do it. Then gave a six month notice. And then everybody else said, don't leave, do this. And they tried to talk me out of it. And I said, Hey, make you a bigger division president. And I'm only 32. So I knew I was doing fairly well.

But I decided now I'm going to give it a shot, become an entrepreneur. And I failed the first, well, I didn't, the first month I was very successful, made a placement three weeks, almost doubled my, I'd say this, I made 25 percent of my annual salary in the first month. I said, Oh, this is great. This is pretty cool.

Didn't make another placement for four or five months. So I said It's not for me. Let me go back. And I had other offers and real, real work. But then all of a sudden, some things started clicking. I understand. Nah, this is actually why people make hiring decisions, why they screwed up, why candidates accept bad jobs.

And so many candidates ignore good opportunities and say no without any knowledge whatsoever. I mean, a candidate, you want me to talk about a job? No, I'm not interested. How could you not be interested? You don't know what I'm talking about. So candidates make stupid decisions and hiring managers say, I like the person went to the right school et cetera, et cetera.

So everybody's making stupid decisions, both sides of the desk. So I said, you know, if we make smart decisions on both sides of the desk, everybody can be successful. It took me about six, eight months to start figuring out how to make smart decisions. Now, I didn't totally figure it out, but I, but within the next year, I tripled my income from my.

Running a company. And then I tripled it again, two to three years later. So I said, that's the secret sauce. It eventually became performance based hiring, but it's how do you get both sides of the table to make smart decisions? We can get into what those smart decisions are, but most often is they're looking at the wrong stuff.

Candidates make decisions without even knowing what the job is. Oh, good pay, I'll take that. Oh, that's not the job. That's what you get for doing the job, but they don't. Oh, it's a great pay. So that's how it became. And then I started becoming a pretty successful recruiter. I started talking to business groups, became a more successful recruiter.

And that's how it happened. I mean, so I was probably the more successful recruiter. Then I started a training company to train others. Which wasn't as successful as being a recruiter, but being a recruiter, I was very successful training company, marginally successful in writing books, marginally successful, but more fun.

So.

Kelly Kennedy: Is it four books at this point you've written?

Lou Adler: Five or six, but probably 4, 000 articles. I mean, that's literally wow. I've been writing articles since 1995 or so. So And you think about even 50 articles a year times a lot of years adds up to a lot of articles.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, not to mention one of the cool things you've been on LinkedIn since 2005.

I don't even think I had social media in 2005.

Lou Adler: No, when I came out and I I don't know how I heard about it, but I heard about it. I said, this is cool. This is going to be good. So I kind of lucked out at some level. In fact, I got a letter. It said, you're one of the first hundred thousand. You know, certificate, one of the first 100, 000 members of LinkedIn.

Yeah, and I got that and that and 10 bucks gets me on the subway so.

Kelly Kennedy: My gosh, yeah. Like how could no one could have known how big LinkedIn would get back then? Hey, like it's unreal what it's become. And we're going to get into that because, you know, one of the things that you chat about is the power of technology and hiring as we move forward.

And I want to get into that today because I think a lot of people are not really sure about how to utilize technology to their advantage.

Lou Adler: Well, most people abuse it because they don't know how to use it. So they, it's, I mean, applying for jobs, a waste of time, let's be real frank. So, and they, people complain, I applied to a thousand jobs.

Yeah, big deal. You haven't qualified for any of them. Why do you, but they, now they muck up the system. So you get tens of thousands of people applying to thousands of jobs. You got technology to figure out how to eliminate all that noise. I mean, you'll just think about the global issue of a job posting and the best jobs aren't job postings.

I mean, just like I said, the risk of hiring a person who applies to a job posting is very high. The person might be better than someone I know, but I'll never know that. And it's easier and quicker to hire someone I know, at least I know what I get. So it's again, that stranger versus acquaintance issue.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Lou Adler: So the idea is how do I become an acquaintance before I become a. Candidate to the job. And that's kind of like rethinking the whole equation of how do I put myself on a better career path? Where are you from Kelly? It sounds like you're Canadian or?

Kelly Kennedy: I am. I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. So we just hit springtime.

It's not minus 40, it's plus 20, but you're in beautiful, sunny California at the moment.

Lou Adler: I mean, I live in Laguna Beach, California.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, wow. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, I've I've only been to California once, but I, I really enjoyed it.

Lou Adler: I've been to Edmonton once and I'm not going back.

Kelly Kennedy: I don't blame you.

I don't blame you. It's very nice in the summer, but yeah, Laguna Beach. I would, I would stay there.

Lou Adler: I remembered going up there. I think it was in July and I was on a camping trip with my family and it was real windy going there and you can kind of see it. From the U. S. border, you can see these little buildings out in the distance, 200 miles away, and the wind was blowing, and it was near Banff, so it was nice, so I'm teasing, but it was nice.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. Banff and Jasper are beautiful. I get there as often as we can. Unfortunately, it's never enough, but yeah, it is gorgeous, and we're kind of world renowned for that, but yeah, Edmonton's about there. It's quite a ways away. It's about 200 miles from there.

Lou Adler: I didn't realize, but I guess, yeah, 200 miles is a commute.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's it pretty much is a commute because everything around here is far, right? Like the closest big city for us is 150 miles away.

Lou Adler: I thought Edmonton was a big city.

Kelly Kennedy: It is a big city. That's right. But the next big city is called Calgary. I don't know if you've been there.

Lou Adler: I think I've been there too.

Right.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's about 150 miles and a lot of business is kind of done between there. So if you're in business development or sales, you've, you've made that drive a thousand times, but it's just, you get used to driving a long way to go anywhere when you live here. But yeah, no Lou, I wanted to get into it because one of the things that really blew my mind with your book, Is that in the US alone, companies are losing over a trillion dollars a year in in people turning over in people having voluntary turnover that that figure blew my mind a trillion dollars.

Lou Adler: Did I mention that number? or did you mention that number?

Kelly Kennedy: It was in your book. I read it in the book I think.

Lou Adler: I don't know that that's what the number that I came up with said what I thought I said to get to the trillion and I could be wrong about this. Is that since 1996 or 97, $20 billion a year is spent in the US on hiring issues, job postings, HR issues about that.

So you multiply 20 times 25 billion you get close to half a trillion dollars in HR related expenses. And when you look at that, it doesn't appear that when you look at employee engagement and turnover. At the global macro level, not much has changed companies still complain about what they've complained about 25 years ago.

So I can't remember half it now. It could be you pointed out something else that I said, but that's the number that sticks in my mind as half a trillion dollars spent on HR related hiring issues. And, and largely job postings and technology, and yet none of it really works. All it does is manages the tens of thousands of people who shouldn't have applied and sending them emails to say, you didn't get the job.

There's a lot of money in that. Maybe 10 percent of that is actually useful and say, Hey, We're actually hiring better people as a result. So, but it gets lost in the noise.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I'll have to double check my, my figure, but yeah, either way, whatever you want to call it, half a trillion or a trillion dollars.

It's a ridiculous sum of needlessly spent money.

Lou Adler: And it's definitely true. No question.

Kelly Kennedy: And I think, I think one of the things that was really interesting about your performance based hiring system is that I kind of feel like if people were to take that approach. It could alleviate a lot of that waste.

Lou Adler: Let me give a story and then you can kind of, so people understand what it is. So I want to say this has happened in in the early nineties, mid nineties. I was giving a presentation to a business group and I said, you only ask, need to ask two questions to determine if a candidate's competent or not.

And the business group had 20 from small companies about two to three weeks later. And at the time I was a recruiter, so I, my marketing technique as a recruiter, and I. I started speaking to business groups around the country of CEOs of companies that would say 10 million to 250 million and I'd get there and I presented two or three hour presentation on how to do performance based hiring.

I don't think I called it that at the time, but the same thing. So, about 3 or 4 weeks later, after this 1 presentation, CEO calls and says, Lou, what were those 2 questions you said about that meeting last month? And I said, well, the two questions don't matter. What are you looking for? So it doesn't matter.

Just tell me the two questions. I said, the two questions are absolutely useless unless you tell me what you're looking for. I'm looking for a VP operations. I said, well, I have to know a little bit about the job before the two questions are meaningful. He said, I don't have time. Just give me the two questions.

And he was getting angry. But I was a recruiter at the time. So if he was looking for a VP operations for a company and I, it was at his offices or his company where this meeting was, So I said, I got to spend at least an hour to understand the job. He said, I don't have time. Just tell me the two questions.

He was getting real aggravated. But the two questions, which I'll give you in a minute, don't make any sense unless you know the job. So I said, why are you so insistent on these two questions? I need to know the job. He said, because the candidate's in the front office. I said, ah, now I understand. I said, Okay I said, and I just kind of didn't tell me a little bit.

Okay, VP operations. He had a company making manufactured parts, largely wood furniture and related. So I said, okay, here's what you're going to do. Do not go in your office. You're looking for a VP operations go in your factory. And if you're walking through the factory, stop at every place you have a problem.

Like, and I kind of remember it cause we took a tour of his factory. They said, I know one of the things is you have a lot of scrap, a lot of wood scrap and it was piled up. So whether that's the first stop or the third stop doesn't matter, but go to those kinds of situations and point out the problem, we have a lot of scrap and it's probably costing us 10 to 15%.

We've got to reduce it by. 75 percent so it's less than 2 percent of total expenditures, whatever that is. Then ask the candidate two questions. Question one is, if you were to get this job, how would you solve that problem? Eliminating the scrap. And you're not listening to the actual answer. It's the methodology in which the person would solve the problem.

I've got to understand the root cause. I've got to do this. I've got to talk to this. I've got to talk to that. Whatever it is, they go through that issue. The second question is, what have you done that's most comparable solving problems like that? And spend 10 or 15 minutes on the answer to that. How did you do it?

Why did you do it? How did you get chosen? What was the problem? What were the results? Walk me through step by step how you, you went from the problem to the solution. Now go around the factory and do that three or four more times with all the other big problems. I had a labor problem, I had a material procurement problem, I had a scrap problem, I had a warehouse layout problem.

It doesn't matter what the problems are, ask those two questions. And I don't care, the order doesn't matter. Have you ever solved a problem like that? Tell me through, how would you solve this problem? You can ask either or, it doesn't matter, maybe switch them both. Now, call me, and this was like 11 o'clock or so, he said, I'm seeing him here.

I said, I'll call me this afternoon when you're done.

So he calls me about three or four in the afternoon. He said, great questions. Great. I had a guy, I, the candidate was a great consultant. He had an idea to figure out every single problem. But when I asked him what he has done, that's most comparable. He was like nothing that was superficial. He didn't really ever do it.

He was a good talker, a good consultant, but he couldn't work in a factory like that with a couple hundred people. I'll do, do you want to do the search for the VP operations? Come on up tomorrow and we'll do it. So the idea is you define the work as a series of performance objectives. That factory, it was a five or six things.

And you ask two questions. Have you ever done anything like that? Spend 10 or 15 minutes getting the answer. How would you solve it? Spend 2 to 3 minutes to see if the person has the methodology in which to think about a solution. Not the solution itself, because they don't have enough information to tell you how to do it.

They have to tell you how they would go about figuring out how to do it. And that's a huge difference. This guy aced the, aced the course with just, you know, in a 10 minute, 15 minute phone call on how to do it. And then he introduced us to a couple other CEOs that he knows. And we have half a dozen more search assignments using that same methodology.

But it's digging deep into the company, the candidate's accomplishments related to real job needs. Asking, what have you done as comparable? How would you do it? If you were to get the job to get a thinking skills, you do that three or four times for different companies over different periods of time. And you've got a pretty good track record.

The candidates capable or not of doing the work, but most hiring managers. Don't know what the work is. What does this person need to do to be successful? Even if you're a CEO, Oh, I need a new marketing person. Well, what do you want the marketing person to do? I don't know. What in the issue do you want the person to grow your business three X and two years, that's what you want it to do.

So has they ever done something like that? If not, don't hire the person. I mean, it's, it's defining the work that's key to being a good hiring manager as a recruiter. Now candidates have to see that work as a career move. Do you want to turn this factory around? No, I want more money. Well, that's no, you want to turn the factory around.

And if you could turn a factory, you'll get more money a year from now. You get decent money the start date, but you'll get real money by having that major accomplishment a year or two years down the road. So that's everything I talk about in that book in a nutshell.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. Well, there's so much in there.

Like first off, just let me like let the listeners know there's no way that in this hour that we're going to get to spend together that you could grasp even a portion of what is in the book. So if you enjoy this conversation, you definitely need to go and pick up higher with your head. I got mine off Amazon.

You guys can get it kind of wherever you want, but I would highly recommend that if you enjoy this conversation, you pick up the book because no matter how how many questions ask Lou, there's no way that we could pack in, you know, nine hours of book into this one hour conversation.

Lou Adler: I talk fast, so we'll get four hours anyway.

Kelly Kennedy: But no, it's it really is a manual on how to set up a great H. R. program at your organization. So let me just say that you laid it out really well, Lou. It's awesome. It's a great book, and I would highly recommend it. But, you know, one of the things that you talked about in the book Is that when you structure a job, a lot of companies, they structure it with the requirements first, like the schooling, the dollar amount, things like that, and then get into the job description after.

But in your recommendation, you should really start with what is the job. You should sell the job first. Can we get into that?

Lou Adler: Well, the thing is, When you think about hiring as a system not an interview and not a job description, so, and I think that's the difference is looking at the whole picture from the moment a job rec is defined to the person's hired until they work on the job.

So you think about it, and I have this philosophy. What I call win win hiring, and the win win hiring outcome means you want to hire a person so after the first year, that candidate says, I'm so glad I took this job. It was a good career move. And that company says, I'm so glad we hire you. You're a great candidate, and we hope you stay a couple more years.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Lou Adler: Achieving that is a lot different than hiring for day one. And so many companies hire for day one. You have to have 10 years experience. Like this guy even said, I want a guy with 15 years experience, a manufacturing background, a master's degree. So he can understand finance and accounting and engineering degree.

So he says manufacturing results oriented, good communication skills. And I look at people, I say, no, that's not a job description. That's a person description. What do you want the person to do? What do you mean? Yeah. What do they have to do? Well, they got to turn around the factory. They got to implement a new cost system.

They got to design a new app that allows companies to pay their bills quickly or whatever it is. People do stuff. And once you know what people do, you can just interview them. You've never done this before. Tell me about it. And if that is exciting, you can now recruit the person. So I think companies think, oh, I got to have a job description because it's legally required.

Yeah. I got to interview candidates and I got to post a job. Well, what you're already doing is you're focusing on stuff that doesn't predict success. You're focusing on stuff that gets someone hired for day one. And I think that's the issue is too much day one thinking. Candidates think, what do I get in the start date?

I get a compensation package. I get a location. I get a title. And I relieved the pain of having no job or a crummy job. Yeah, but that lasts three to six weeks. And now this is a crummy job, just like I had last time. I want to change again. So you think about it long term, what drives employee success long term?

It's the work they do. It's people they do it with. And if you're motivated to do that work, you're going to do better. If you're not motivated to do it, you're going to, it doesn't matter how competent you are. I don't want to do that work. And I was motivated to work in this company that I was at 32 years old.

I liked that job. I didn't like the boss when he, the group president, when he showed up, it was the suckiest job in the world. It took me two, three days to forget about him and go back to do what I like to do. So my motivation ebbed and flowed when he wasn't there. It was highly motivated when he was there.

I was a crappy employee. I just didn't want to be around him. So a lot of that stuff is when you define the work itself. You have a chance to attract people who want to do that work. Then the assessment process and the recruiting process is, yeah, Kelly, I know we got to get pay you a competitive wage.

But more important is that is all this other stuff that you're going to be doing during the year that will drive you to success and it's making that picture of day one and year one in some level of combination that's required and that's why I contend that a job description listing skills, experience and competencies, not a job description.

That's a person description. I tell managers, forget the person. Talk about the job. I want some of the results oriented. No, that's a person. What's the job. We'll find someone who wants to do that job. And that making that separation is really the key to hiring success.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the concepts that I'll be honest, I laughed, I laughed out loud when you, when you brought up the 90 day wonder concept, the 90 days, and then you wonder why you hired them.

I got a kick out of that. And, you know, I imagine that happens quite a bit. And I think, you know, one of the reasons that you kind of said that that does tend to happen a lot is that most interviews are happening way too quick. We're making a hiring decision way, way too quick. Can we chat about, you know, panel interviews and what a proper hiring process should look like?

Lou Adler: Well, that's the whole book, but the idea, let's just take the decision itself. You're talking to someone whom you don't know. That person, if you're a hiring manager, will have a huge impact on your personal success. But you, the hiring manager, are thinking, Oh, I got to get this hired quickly. I got them doing all this extra work.

And I can't do it. I'm staying late. So you're, you're kind of have a pain of not having that position filled.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Lou Adler: So if you meet someone who's kind of nice and pleasant and seems okay and has good skills, I got to close this deal. So you're willing to make a long term decision in an hour to two hours.

Candidate, in other hand, has a crappy job or unemployed. They applied to the job. They got certain skills. They went through some interviewing class. They present themselves well. They have a pain point too. My pain is I've got a long drive, or I'm not making paid, I've got mortgages to pay, I've got the family, I've got these pressures, so everybody is under this short term pressure to make a decision, and it's usually 90 days later it was the wrong decision, that's the 90 day wonder, candidates have it, why did I take this job?

It's because you're pressured to, you're avoiding pain. Is a more important thing in terms of the decision making than making a long term career decision. Same thing on a hiring manager. Everybody's making these short term decisions. Now the long term decision is, let's define the work. Let's interview a candidate.

First time I want to see if you're reasonably qualified, maybe on a video. Maybe another one on video, but I, at some point in time, I got to meet you in person. You got to meet some other people in person. So for a candidate, it could be four to six or eight hours for a company. It should be four to six or eight or 10 hours investment in a stranger.

I've had one client who did that and I give him a lot of credit. He said, no, this for V, it was, it was president of a company. It was a high tech company up in the Silicon Valley area, but I remember we placed a lot of people with him. He said, I'm, this is a big decision for me. My whole company's on the line.

I'm going to spend time with these people. He, he proactively spent time. He met the person on the phone. Well, of course in that time we didn't do so, he certainly met the person for two or three hours probably took him out to lunch and decided he wanted to go forward, he would meet the person again, meet with the team, lead a panel interview lead debriefing sessions.

And then he would meet the person and even sometimes the person's wife for dinner before we made the final offer. He, but this was the president of a company hiring number two for a company and it was important to them. I've seen people. So to me, it's how do you spread that out? Now, on the other hand, you got a candidate who's real good.

They got to make a decision next week. Well, now all of a sudden you got the real pressures of business. To me, if I'm a hiring manager, hiring a senior, let's say a first level manager, hiring a technical person. You got to spend two or three hours with that candidate. Other people spend a couple hours interviewing the candidate.

You do the debriefing session. You do a reference checks. You do some kind of personality and IQ testing medical, all that other stuff you have to do. So, to me, that's the minimum. You should do it too important to make a decision. Somebody, you know, for an hourly wage, maybe a little bit less I mean, it's, this is a business decision you're spending for a company.

Let's assume. Average salary for a three year staff person, engineer, marketing person, what is it, 100, 000 to 150, 000 overhead. You're talking 200, 000 a year in expense for that person. How can you spend an hour to two hours to make that decision? I mean, you just look at it money wise, that's a big decision.

If the person stays two to three years, you're talking about a half a million dollars. And the impact that person can make is probably three to five times that. And you're going to spend, you're going to make a decision that's a million dollar decision in an hour and a half. Give me a break. I mean, I don't think people see it that way.

Kelly Kennedy: No, no, you're absolutely right. They don't, right? Like they're looking at it as we just need to get this position filled. And you're right. It's like it doesn't take much more time, but just give that a little bit more time because the long term costs are astronomical compared to what that cost is to do your due diligence up front.

Lou Adler: Well, I think that's where AI can help. My focus is spend more time with fewer people. If you've got to spend 20 people in an hour each, that's 20 hours. But if you have 4 people, that's 5 hours each and you're in a game. And, you know, there's 2 of them, you're going to spend 6 hours or 7. So it's spending more time with fewer people is really the key.

And that's where I think AI can really be effective here. It can narrow the pool very, very quickly. And then you can spend more time with fewer people.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And you advocate for that in the book and you chat about how like an ideal, ideal candidate search should really be narrowed down via phone to about three candidates that you're ultimately going to go through that deep dive interview with, but right now, like just, I'm not an HR background.

How many people does a company typically interview for a position? Is it quite a bit more than three?

Lou Adler: Well, let's say this, do they actually interview? Maybe. But they're usually disappointed, but they probably interview six to eight or ten or fifteen. I got all these resumes coming in. How do I do it? So I would say it's 5 to 6, but even some of those are wasted time.

But there's a lot of wasted time and hiring going through all these thousands of people who applied. And just to give you a general sense, and this is old data, this is pre COVID data. But I was talking with companies that manage they're called applicant tracking systems. And when I added three or four numbers up together, it was like 60 to 70 million candidates who have applied over an X year period.

Only six to 700, 000 got a job offer. That's 1%, 1 percent of the people who now it's less than that. So I'm going to say it's 0. 5 percent of people who apply, get a job and maybe two to 3 percent get interviewed. That's a lot. It has a 97 percent of people who apply and maybe there's another 2 percent there that have some value to the company.

So you're talking 95 percent of people apply is just an overhead expense of and the job boards make all that money because they make money based on all these people who apply. So their businesses, no, we want more people to apply. Not less. I actually proposed that to LinkedIn. No, don't let people apply.

Give people only five jobs a week. They can apply to, or maybe five a day, but, and they guarantee that there'll be interviewed. That's all they can do is they have to select X number, small number, but the guarantee is they will be talked to. So now the company will be more deliberate and the candidate will be more deliberate.

But the folks at LinkedIn said, that's not our model. We want to sell more postings, not fewer postings. So it didn't make economic sense to them. It just made good logic business sense for hiring better people. But that their game was we're going to sell postings and they got to give them credit. They sold a lot of postings and make a lot of money.

Kelly Kennedy: I would say LinkedIn is probably the number one job posting board in the world at this point.

Lou Adler: No, no. Indeed. Now there's others but indeed is much bigger.

Kelly Kennedy: Is it bigger hey?

Lou Adler: It doesn't matter. They both. Well, I need struggling because people realize that maybe we shouldn't be posting so much. So, I mean, I think people are starting to think that.

And that is not an efficient methodology to hire people.

Kelly Kennedy: And I want to spend some time on that because you have the 40 40 20 rule, right? And in the 40 40 20, you're essentially saying networking, direct reach out, and then only 20 percent should be job advertising. And I feel like right now, there's a lot more people putting job posts up than doing that networking and the direct reach out.

Lou Adler: Well, the idea on that. Is when I'm talking to recruiters, I say, here's how you should spend your time. I've actually flipped that to say it should be 40, 50, 40, 10. So 15 percent on networking. If you're a recruiter when I was a recruiter, I was well networked. I knew, but it was Rolodex was the old, maybe had a database, but neither here nor there.

But if you really want to hire good people, you have to network with them and you got to have a deep network of candidates. 40 percent is direct sourcing. You kind of do all the secret sourcing and achiever terms and send emails out and 10 percent on postings in my search firm. And it wasn't huge, but over 20 replaced about 1000 or 1200 people.

Less than 2 percent were off postings. We just said, nah, we're not going to get it. We develop great networking capability and tools to network with people. And so I'm, I'm in the old fashion. It's a high touch approach to recruiting, not a high tech approach. And I think a lot of people are starting to think that, Hey, you know, LinkedIn is a network of a billion people, not just a database.

And if it's a database, you just send emails to everybody. But if it's a network, you said, who do I know can give me this person? I'm looking for a project manager in this area. Well, I know a VP marketing might know this person. So you start thinking if you develop a network over six months to a year, two years, You can get to candidates very quickly.

Hey, Kelly, you know, you've, I know three months ago, you talked to somebody who's a financial manager. What is that person looking? Well, let me give you that person's name. I know you talked to someone on a marketing thing. Can I reach out to that person? You have a network. I have a network. If you can tap into those people's network.

Oh yeah. I just, somebody called me a month ago or three weeks ago. It might be looking for a job. All of a sudden. You start dealing with what I want to call weak connections, which is your network's first degree connections. They're your second degree connections, but you now converted a stranger to somewhat of an acquaintance.

And that changes the whole dynamics of how you hire. In an interview, everybody's phoning, you know, you can't you can't know a person in an hour interview, hiring manager or the candidate. So to break through that veneer of superficiality, you got to either spend time or get that person through an indirect way.

Long answer to the idea of how do you develop a sourcing strategy. But it starts by spending time in a high touch mode versus just a high tech mode.

Kelly Kennedy: And that to me was kind of where I started to really resonate with it because you know, I'm in business development. I have been for a long, long time. And the key with business development in my mind has always been to get ahead of the need.

I've always followed an active marketing process where I, I reach out to people way ahead of when they're looking so that when they are looking for whatever business I'm marketing, They already know me. They've heard of the company. They've heard of me. We've probably even met once before. And so you kind of skip that whole process where instead of them having to go and search for something, they already know that they can reach out to Kelly Kennedy for X, Y, Z need, and I can potentially help them.

And I kind of feel like the approach that you have taken to HR is very similar. It's very much that get ahead of the need. Let people know Or get to know people ahead so that when you do have that need, you already know who to reach out to.

Lou Adler: I think you're 100 percent correct. You hit it on the nail on the head.

It's building a pipeline of relationships whether you're on the hiring side or the company side or the candidate side. And I know candidates, they know that, hey, I'm going to get my next job. Through networking. So they're working in groups. They're, they're part of professional societies, et cetera, et cetera.

They just look at that. Hey, my career is not this job. It's a sequence of jobs and these people whom I work with in the, or I know in this outside group or this organization are going to help me get there. You don't know where it's going to be, but you've developed and planted those seeds long before you actually have the need.

And I'm going to contend that's the hidden job market. A lot of candidates get hired that way. And people say, no, there's no hidden job market. And I say, well, they don't know what they're talking about. Of course there is a hidden job market. They just don't know about it. So they think it's doesn't exist.

But literally speaking, if you think about 20 percent of the workforce turns over pretty quickly. Because of job boards, 80 percent doesn't turn over probably let's say half of those people, if they change jobs, it's internal mobility. Another half of those people because they work for somebody in the past.

And that person. Hey, Kelly, I got this opportunity. I'm looking for a VP business development. You open the chat. So a lot of those things take place. Under the hood. You can't say it's maybe it's hidden, but it's real. You just can't say it just the public doesn't know about it, but a lot of jobs are filled that way.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Like it's just not public. That's all you're kind of saying. People are looking, they're just not going to necessarily throw up a post because you said they're not really that effective. And maybe they don't want to weed through a thousand people to find the right person. Maybe they just want to go directly to a few highly qualified.

Lou Adler: If you're a good person you don't necessarily. If I've worked for you three years ago, Kelly, and I was your VP of accounting and I tell you, Hey, Kelly, things are starting to work out and aren't working out here, just my company keep your eyes and ears open. So you might know something three to six months from now.

I mean, people kind of. That happens all the time. Good people know what's going on. Happens constantly. And you just got to figure out, hey, the public market is the most inefficient transactional market there is. And you got to not, don't be surprised if you get a job, it's not very satisfying. I mean, Gallup comes up with studies all the time on employee engagement.

I mean, you just look at employee engagement in the United States, it averages fully employed people who are fully engaged is about a third of the total workforce. Two thirds are unengaged. One third is totally unengaged and couldn't care. One third is marginated, they just do their job. Another third is fully engaged.

So that's pretty clear at the macro level. It's pretty clear that most people are taking jobs for the wrong reasons.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and obviously no company wants people working for them that aren't engaged, right? Like, ideally, we want people who love what they do, who are doing what they love to do, because that mix is going to give you the best performance.

You're going to get the best results. In your opinion, how can we do more of that? How do we pair the right people with the right jobs? Because to me, you're right. Like, that's an epidemic of, of people getting in the wrong....

Lou Adler: It starts by, again, so I have this philosophy. I was one of the first recruiters to give a one year guarantee.

And the only way that works is by being motivated to do that work. So in the job description, if you don't define the work itself it's random luck. Candidates say, Oh, I want to do that work. I want to do that work. Oh, I didn't know it was that work. So a lot of times when a candidate takes a job is not interested in the work they become unengaged pretty quickly.

And they're, you know, that on the day one and they have so what I do is I say, okay, walk me through this job. What does this person need to do to be successful? And in that factory story I gave it was turning around an underperforming manufacturing facility. That required material control systems, cost systems, labor systems, a host of things.

So when I interview a candidate, and I say, tell me about what you've accomplished, Kelly, that's most related to turning this factory around. Have you ever done work where you put in a new logistic system, or a new labor system, or a new employee or material control system? And I'm listening to their answers.

And I said, Kelly, where did you go the extra mile in job A? Where'd you go the extra mile? Would you decide what kind of work did you like the most? What kind of work did you like the least? Would you, so over an hour, hour and a half, a lot of the questions I ask is trying to understand where this person went the extra mile, took the initiative, did work without being prompted.

And I, so in the first interview, I got a sense of this. In the second interview, I got a, I mean, reinforcing the same issues. So I now know. What a candidate would, what this drives this candidate to excel at that person's intrinsic motivation. I call it, that's to me, that's the key to hiring success. Am I going to, are you going to do work that you find intrinsically motivated in this job?

So now I say, Oh, Kelly, in this job, you're going to be doing this, this and this at least a third of the time, which is the stuff you love to do. You can be developing people, coaching people, and you're going to install these new state of the art manufacturing systems. Oh yeah, that's great. Well, then you get there, that's exactly what it is, because I define that work when I talk to the hiring manager.

So a lot of it is digging deep into the candidate's motivation. But most candidates take jobs. And I asked this question, I call you up, Kelly, you open the chat. I just took another job three months ago, not ready to leave. And I say, is it your dream job? You say, what, what's the dream job? I said, do you enjoy going in every day?

Is it really the work you want to do? Well, if it's not a dream job, but you've made the wrong choice. And people always make, we'll say, nobody thought about that. The candidates don't think about it. The companies don't think about it. So I'm trying to set up a program, hopefully get Gallup involved, which has got a chance anyway, to really focus on measuring engagement.

And you know, before you make the offer, but that's our whole methodology is we really focus on intrinsic motivation to excel. Without that, you get a good worker, but they're not motivated. You get a above average worker who's motivated. That person can be a star.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, that's it. Totally. It's like, if you're engaged in what you do, I know for me, like, if I'm loving the products that I'm working with and the companies I work with, it's so easy to deliver excellent results.

Lou Adler: Right?

Boy, I can't wait to go to work. This was fun. I mean, even the guy, even the guy at Nvidia who Nvidia, he just said this morning. How long do you work? How often do you work? Is it, I work since the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed and I love every minute of it. I mean, it's, that's, right now that's a little bit hard.

I like what I do, but at 78 I get kind of tired by about two or three in the afternoon. So.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, to me that's what's so appealing about entrepreneurship, right? It was like, once it was my baby and my world and the benefits were, to me, my motivation to excel at what I did, went through the roof in a way that I was never able to get in a job.

Lou Adler: That's great. No, that's good that you can find it. It doesn't happen all the time. I mean, part of being an entrepreneur is you got to get business too. And sometimes getting businesses, marketing and selling as opposed to, and a lot of engineering people who are technical like to do certain things.

Technical, but if someone's not paying you to do that, well, then you got to do stuff to get business and that might not be as fun as the business itself. So there's a good side and a bad side to entrepreneurship.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. But I also think like. There's a bit of a challenge to it. And I think if most people just step up to the challenge, they'll surprise themselves.

Lou Adler: Yeah. I mean, if you like it, I totally, I did it. I mean, I'm happy that I did it. I don't like the, I didn't like the, I mean, in general, I didn't like, I didn't like this particular group president. So that was the initial catalyst why I left corporate America. I actually did like the work, but I didn't like the corporate politics and they were always there.

The pressure of quarterly returns, the pressure of this and there is politics. I mean, I had a, and I, that I could have dealt with if I didn't, but those two things I didn't like. One thing I could have dealt with, but I couldn't deal with both of them.

Kelly Kennedy: Lou, you'd mentioned in the beginning that when you'd initially went into business for yourself, you know, you had an initial success, then you kind of had some struggle.

What was it that made you decide to jump back into entrepreneurship again for a second time?

Lou Adler: No, no, I never left. I was thinking of leaving after about six months. I knew I had six months of money to pull this off to become a recruiter. By the sixth month, I said, Nah, I might have had some money left. I'm thinking of going back to work in corporate.

But then a few deals came together. I said, wow, this came together. So I never really left. I left and never went back.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Lou Adler: Although I had opportunities to go back. I never did. Amazing. I did actually the Olympics were in LA in 84. That was there. I had thoughts of maybe I could run one of the groups of the Olympics.

I kind of wanted to do that. And my wife said, don't do it. Don't, I had a couple of people reaching out and I kind of knew how to get the Uber off who was the president. I said, you know, I could probably run the whole basketball group or, you know, whatever it was. I kind of wanted to do that. And I was.

My wife said, don't do it, and it was probably a wise decision, but I don't know why it just, I kind of wanted to get back into that. That to me was pretty cool. The Olympics being in LA, and this was 1980. I've been a recruiter a couple of years and started meeting some people. I said, you know, I think I could probably get a.

Pretty big level job doing that so.

Kelly Kennedy: You probably could, but I'm not sure you would have made the impact that you have made. Had you had you gotten......

Lou Adler: Probably not, well, I'm not sure if I made a big impact. Some days I wonder, I mean, people said, what's your legacy? And I'd say at some level, I'm kind of disappointed because I think what I say actually works, but there's so few people who actually do it.

And yet, and I got a call last week from somewhere from Malaysia. I said, Lou, I built my whole search firm around you. I met you 10 years ago. I took your certification. And I just want to thank you for that. So I talked to her, I get calls like that every now and then I get calls from candidates every now and then says, Lou, thank you.

I just took your advice on this job. So those are satisfying, but it's not scaled. I mean, companies still spend stupid money on job postings and wonder why it's not going anywhere. So who knows? So at some level, I think the book, if people do it, it actually works. It takes discipline to hire and I don't think people would accept that though.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, it takes discipline, but actually really what you're selling is a process. And it's so funny because I look at business development and business development, if you follow a process, can be extremely successful. Like my whole company is built on a process that I follow consistently day over day, week over week, right?

If you follow a process consistently, You have success, right? And, and that's the problem is that most people simply don't follow process.

Lou Adler: Yeah, no, and it's hard. And I think in HIO it's interesting. So take that idea. We have processes for manufacturing. Six Sigma. Back in the 70s, cars weren't very good.

I mean, they broke down. If you were on a long trip you'd expect the car to break down. Now, every car is pretty good. I mean, they all, no, they don't break down. They don't, the engine doesn't go, flywheel doesn't, things don't happen. Things work. So manufacturing works, you look at electronics, it all works.

You can look at the price of a TV. You can get a TV for my mobile TV for less than a thousand dollars. It was a thousand dollars in 1965 to get a color TV and a thousand dollars and it's worth 10 or 15, 000 today. So you look at manufacturing processes, logistics. I mean, I ordered something yesterday from Amazon.

It came this morning. I mean, that's a huge process. It's. So companies have invested tens of billions of dollars, if not trillion in manufacturing and logistics and business processes and all these types of things. But in HR, we have a process that doesn't work and we keep on trying to do it. And we wonder why it doesn't work.

Even the fact that you have to question why it doesn't work says that someone is making a mistake. A good process works. Well, why do you keep on doing stuff that doesn't work? And that's just a question, a rhetorical question, but it's pretty obvious that hiring is a broken process and companies don't want to, well, they don't know how to fix it.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and I find it kind of funny because when I listen to your book and I picture who is, who is implementing this book. In my mind, it is an HR director and HR manager, but a lot of companies don't have that. And so they're really flying by the seat of their pants. Like, I think a lot of companies that even we're talking to today are small teams.

The CEO or the president probably still does the hiring at the company and has zero formal training on how to do it whatsoever. And I would imagine that a lot of that turnover really does come from small companies. The smaller businesses.

Lou Adler: No, I actually say, I'd say no, it's the, the bigger company, all big companies.

Once you get to let's say a couple of hundred employees, they have an HR person. When they get to 500 employees, they've got a sophisticated person in HR and talent. So those, every companies have that. They just haven't, they feel that the safe decision is posting a job. They won't get fired by posting a job because that's when everyone else does it.

I got to manage the data. I got a legal compliance. I got all these things. So their issue is I've got something. I know it doesn't work, but I don't have time to change it. And I don't know how to change it because the law tells me I got to do it. So there's a lot of excuse making and doing it, but they follow the leader.

Well, if the leader does this, I'll, leader, meaning company A is bigger than me in their industry, they do this. I'll do what they do. So with a lot of the follow the leader, not rethinking, Hey, do I have a process is like manufacturing. My background happens to be engineering and manufacturing and cost controls.

So I just look at it as a business process. But most talent leaders don't have that kind of wherewithal. But when I talked to a talent leader who came up through operations, and I remember talking with men maybe 20 years ago, the woman was phenomenal. She was, she was a leader at, it might've been IBM, but she was remarkable.

I just said, you know, you don't sound like a typical HR person. He says, no, I ran the distribution center for the whole Midwest. And they put me in HR to do that. She thought of it, her natural background was process and systems and controls. And it was just, of course, we're going to do it this way. But most HR people don't have that kind of experience or background.

So they kind of fall into it and they kind of say, okay, here's what I got. Let me make it slightly better. And it's not slightly better. I live post more jobs. Let me post them on more job postings et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's interesting to see how that whole thing's evolved over time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's kind of like fishing in a lake. With no fish. It doesn't matter how often you put the rod or the lure in the water. You're never going to catch anything you want.

Lou Adler: Well, that's a, that's a metaphor. Yes. That's a Canadian metaphor. I would probably say you're probably right. It's like going, nevermind.

I'm not going to get into any other types of metaphors.

Kelly Kennedy: No, that's all good. You know, one of the things you talk about in the book a lot is about bias. about hiring bias or first perceptions. And you mentioned that we need to do better at tabling our initial impressions and coming back to them after. Can we speak to that a little bit?

Lou Adler: Well, I say there's a lot of short term thinking going on in hiring. Part of that is due to bias. Bias is probably the number one reason why people make hiring mistakes at the company level. Companies want people who look like them. Sound like them, went to the same schools, have the same personality.

So they have this natural embed bias. I, as a recruiter know that I can't ever duplicate candidates who meet that bias criteria. So, and it's almost maybe Spock like is when I took my 1st search assignment. And I remember it was for another plant manager in the automotive industry sent me a list that I knew the president and I remember I gave a 6 month notice.

So my 1st assignment was the day I started as a recruiter because I had set it up as you said the president gave me a 6 month notice. A list of 10 years experience, engineering degree, this kind of background, how to be in the automotive industry, how to know this chroming and machining and all this.

I said, Mike. That's not a job description, that's a person description. What does a person need to do? So I always started by defining the work. I realized then that if I defined the work, I eliminated some degree of bias. Could this candidate do this work or not do this work? Not was he tall enough, not that he go to the right school.

Could he do this work or not? So that was at least part of it by having the specifications of what the work look like. But then the person would say, well, they got to be a good communicator in his accent. Who not I can't understand him. I said, well, what does good communication skills look like on the job?

Well, they got to make quarterly reports to the management group. I said, well, and who comprised the management group? I said, well, let's see if the candidate has ever made quarterly reports to the management group. So you ask the question, Kelly, have you ever made, you know, you got to talk to a management group consisting of these people, these people, manufacturing people, operations people, financial people.

Well, tell me about where you've ever done that. Can you give me an example of where you've done that? I said, Oh, so now I'm going back to the hiring manager. You think this person doesn't have good communication skills, but look, here's where this person's done it. I remember a hiring manager CFO for a huge medical device company, looking for a director of financial planning or something.

He said, the guy's too soft to do this. I said, well, that's hard to believe. What do you mean? Whether he's working with the union and our manufacturing people are tough nuts people. Yeah. I said, this guy worked in the automotive union. He implemented this cost accounting system at this company at Ford motor company, the toughest UAW union.

And it was because of his soft spoken nature that allowed him to do it. And I remember the CF was, I'll talk to him again. I didn't, I didn't get that out of him. He talked to him, spent two hours, you're right. The guy's perfect. But it's these natural biases that you, and so one way I do is define work, but it's also converting having to doing, what does that look like on the job?

Yeah. Got to be results oriented. What does that look like on the job? Oh, they got to take the initiative in coming up with new techniques to to solve these kinds of problems. Fine, that's what we'll do. Could be soft spoken and have initiative, but they don't look at that. They look at it as, is the person aggressive and proactive during the interview?

Which is maybe right, but it's not totally right. So the idea of bias Is essential, but now during the interview. This is why I like panel interviews and I like panel interviews because I would start leading them. And it's hard to get. I mean, the impact of first impression bias is pretty profound.

When you like someone right away, you ask easy question. If you don't like someone, you prove, you go out of your way to prove the candidate's not competent. So, and I, this one rule I have is wait 30 minutes before you ever make a yes or no decision. 30 minutes minimum and have a scripted interview, ask these questions on the first 30 minutes.

And then at the 30 minute mark, you can first say, is this candidate potentially okay or not okay. But don't make that decision until you collect 30 minutes of data. Okay. So use the interview to collect evidence to make the hiring decision. Don't make it during the hiring decision. That's a great profound statement, but it is hard to do.

Cause human nature is I make judgments right away. If I like you, I'm going to ask you easier questions. Cause I don't really, you gotta remember the pain of hiring. I don't really want to do this. I want a candidate. So if I like it, I'm going to, Oh, Kelly looks pretty cool. If I go, he talks, he goes fishing.

Yeah. He's a good guy. Got to be a good, competent accountant. On the other hand, oh, he's so soft spoken. I couldn't fit with the company. So if I don't like you right away for one reason or other I go out of my way to prove that you can't do the job and I, you can, you can prove it either way. You get enough facts and figures to convince yourself that he's good or bad, or if she's good or bad, and it's very hard to control.

So, in the actual assessment itself, controlling bias is the hardest thing to get an accurate assessment. And yet that's why if I intervene personally, provide evidence of success, give scripted interviews. So there's a lot of things I personally proactively do. To minimize the impact of bias during the assessment process

Kelly Kennedy: But it does sound like it's critical and you really do need to put in safeguards to try to control bias.

Lou Adler: Perfect statement safeguards.

Yes. Absolutely. Well said kelly and I they're hard to do. Yeah, because They, the safeguards get broken by human nature.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and I think too, like you mentioned, like once you've made a decision on something, I think as humans, we really struggle to go back on a decision that we've made. It's much easier to just go with the decision we made than to change our minds about it.

Lou Adler: Oh, absolutely. A hundred percent. Like I, the CFO, I remember this was like 30 years ago. Now I really wanted this account. I had a candidate for director of cost accounting. Everybody in the company liked them, but the CFO, In a 10 minute interview felt that he wasn't very good and he discounted him. I finally got in touch with the CFO later that afternoon or evening because I knew he made a mistake, but I also knew he was a hard nose kind of guy.

The CFO started almost yelling at me and abuse, abusing me as a recruiter, wasting everyone's time. And then he said something, this, my, my 16 year old son has better cost accounting skills than that candidate. And I just said, this is my New York attitude coming out. I said, it. If your 16 year old son has better cost accounting skills, could you send me his resume?

Cause I got a better job for him than yours. And that was a wise ass comment. I just said that. And that just stunned him, stunned the CFO. He said, what are you talking about? Nobody's ever talked to me like that. And I said, well, you're dead wrong. This guy's got great cost accounting skills. No, I conducted an in depth interview.

I knew cost accounting inside out as a subject matter expert. This guy was exceptional. He had worked in a union. And he installed this. A new state of the art cost system on the latest computers. This guy did exactly what he wanted to do. And I then said, Ed, you blew the interview 10 minutes. You could not tell if this guy had a good cost accounting skills.

You just didn't like him because he was soft spoken.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Lou Adler: And you miss an opportunity to hire an outstanding person. So I pushed back on hard, but I had evidence to push back hard. I had confidence to push back hard. This is when it's interviewed him the next morning, spent 2 hours a day out. They whiteboarded the whole implementation of this cost system at his 17 or seven plant manufacturing company, the medical device field.

And he said, this guy's great. And then he said, no one else is going to get hired to this company and finance unless they go through this process of performance based job descriptions. He then went to another medical device company and introduced us there. So once you buy into the idea of defining work as a series of performance objectives, getting candidates to explain in detail what they've accomplished, and putting bias in the parking lot, all of those things are not, they're not there, you will get the right answer, put it doing all those things, defining the work, in depth interview, no bias.

That's hard to do, but it does work.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. Lou, that's that's taking us to the end of our show today. I really, really appreciated having you on. Before we wrap it up though, I did want to ask you one more question and give you a little bit of space to chat about what services that you offer. But the last question I want to ask you is, we're talking to a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of younger entrepreneurs, or people maybe that are just getting started, or there's actually probably HR people that are listening as well.

And one of the things that I wanted to ask you was, what Is that if you could offer one piece of advice, and I know this is really tough, but if you could offer one piece of advice that would improve every person's hire from this point forward, what might that be?

Lou Adler: Well, it's interesting because I had thought about not that you were going to ask it, but somebody asked me that question a couple months ago.

And I said, if you want to just put a control system in place at your company before you ever, ever, ever make a candidate an offer. You ask the candidate, are you aware of the performance expectations of this job? And if you are, why do you think that represents a good career move? And if the candidate has it, they'll say they do, but they won't have a good answer.

Do not make the offer because it's problematic if they'll be successful. To get the right answer, that's, it takes a lot of work. You got to define the work. You got to conduct the interview. The candidate's got to see it as a career move. So. That is a safeguard to ensure you make the right decision. Just ask candidates before you make an offer, are you aware of the performance expectations of this job?

And why do you feel that that's a good career move for you? Getting to a yes to that answer takes a lot of work, but getting a no to that answer prevents a lot of problems. Do not make the offer. So that would be my word of advice. It's kind of like everything comes together when you make an offer. And that will tell you if the person should take it or not.

And if the person says yes. You might not have the most, be paying the most money, but you got to be competitive, but you'll probably close the deal anyway. If they can say yes to both of those things, here's the job. And here's why I want it. Now I'm willing to take a little bit less because I can see two years from now, I'm going to be getting a lot more.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. And Lou, it goes without saying anybody listening to this needs to go and pick up higher with your head. A lot of the stuff we talked about today is very in depth and higher with your head. It will take Give you everything you need to implement a performance based hiring system at your company.

So highly recommend. However, Lou, I imagine you offer other services as well. Can you tell me a little bit about what else you do at performance based hiring learning systems?

Lou Adler: No, we don't. That's the main one. I have to say that would be a good opening and a good entree. And I appreciate that Kelly, but no, I don't do much.

Okay. No, what we do is they go to performancebasedhiring.com. Hiring managers and recruiters. Okay. And that's what we do. We help companies implement performance based hiring. And whether it's an executive level, we don't do recruiting anymore. That's what I did. But we work with recruiters.

We train recruiters. We train hiring managers how to implement that methodology.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing and sorry, can you run me through one more time where they can go to to sign up for that?

Lou Adler: Well, I would go to performancebasedhiring.com or that would probably be the best case you could I mean you can check me out on linkedin You can go to money ball for hr, which is a big thing i'm doing is how do you convert?

hiring decisions into quantitative business decisions But I think if you go to performance based hiring. com, that's a good place to start.

Kelly Kennedy: And I will have the links up for this and all of our posts with the show, including the show notes. So if you're hearing this and you want to figure out where to get it, you'll be able to find it anywhere that we have public posts about this episode.

Lou, it was absolute honor to have you on today. Thank you for joining me.

Lou Adler: Thank you very much. Good, good timing. I'm exhausted. I'm glad you cut it off. I don't think I could be on another five minutes. My day is over.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh goodness. No, I appreciate it until next time. This has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you on the the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.