That is an interesting question. I don't know if I have ever been asked that before.
The guy that's done several podcasts. I'm sure you have done just about every question.I tried when we are looking for team members, which we have grown a lot. We have more employees now than we have ever had. I have tried to be extremely intentional about finding Class-A talent. Some of the best of the best because when you are starting, you don't want to make a mistake with the wrong assistant or the wrong asset manager. You must find good team members, business partners or whatever. There were key things that were very important to me. I want us to be on the same page about numerous things but their drive, ability and desire to learn are so much more important to me than almost some of their skillsets.
I will train you or I will hire somebody to train you as long as you have the drive, stamina and wanting to push forward. Almost some entrepreneurial ability in you was so important. A big part of even our job description talks about our mission. We don't hold back on that. It's obvious too that new potential employee that this is what we stand for.
This is our mission. It doesn't affect your job at all. Most of them love playing a role in that. They will chip in here and there for the foundation. As far as doing a little work, my assistant practically built a website for the foundation. It's different abilities that they have that they chip in and they love being a part of that as well.
It's great to hear you say that it's more about heart, drive and things like that because I have heard it often. I thought they were just saying it about me that a trained monkey could do my job. I’ve got offended by that and then I realized that if you've got good people, the drive, the passion and the desire to make them become a reality than a trained monkey can if they have those things. What we do is not easy but it's not impossible. It's not that difficult if you know what you are doing. Speaking of knowing what you are doing, you mentioned that you went to a lot of conferences, how did you get the expertise to know what personnel and talent that you needed? How are you able to see what was in front of you to know what you needed to hire?That has been definitely a growing experience. One book I will recommend right off the bat is
Topgrading by Bradford D Smart. I know I've got it behind me but I went through that book. It's on audible as well but get the hard copy. There are few different versions. There's an older version that has a lot more in it just so you know, I can't remember the exact version but if you are going to hire somebody, look up
Topgrading. I have done numerous shows personally, just talking about the method that I use to hire my assistant. We had 700 applicants or something and I narrowed it down to four interviews through different types of tasks and things I asked them to do. Those four interviews were like four hours long each.
It is grueling but we don't want to make a mistake. It was so worth going through that book. Honestly, I probably used 30% or maybe 20% of that book but it was so helpful. Finding those people are difficult. We sent out the same job description on
Indeed. Also, send it out to my network, had two different forms that were exactly alike through our CRM.
That way, I could track where people are coming from. As they came in, there were some specific things I asked them to do at the bottom of this. Actually, there were four things. Two of them were mandatory. Two were optional. Give them a little bit of room there for people to stand out. The very first thing was a fourteen-page questionnaire.
I go through this entire questionnaire on a podcast. You can hear every word of it. Who's going to fill that out. Not everybody. People on Indeed or people wherever, if they are just hitting the apply button, they are not checking out your job description. I bet the people that submit that they do care probably about working for you. They have done some research. That's a lot of work but we tell them where to send it exactly what to submit to us.
It narrowed it down to about 30 people out of 700 applicants immediately. I picked out to like the top twelve and I called them out of the blue, no notice and said, “I'm Whitney Sewell, you have been selected to go to the next round, whatever but then there are four tasks I need to be completed by tomorrow afternoon, here they are, thank you.” That narrowed it down to about eight people and that helped me get to that final four interviews.
They didn't have to do the perfect job answering those questions but it allowed me to see just their attention to detail, the way they communicate and the way they submitted things to me. Did they get it to me by the end of the day? Did they wait until midnight? Did they get it to me at all? All those things, did they even answer the phone? How did they answer the phone?
All those things you are getting to see through that process, how they submitted those documents and just many questions I wouldn't have even thought to ask. Even though I did investigations on a Federal level for a long time, there were questions on that questionnaire and through the interview process, I wouldn't have even thought of. They were very good. That's how we found Class A talent for my assistant.
I probably scratched myself off the list. I don't think I would have made it. I'm pretty certain about Page 3 of that questionnaire. I would scroll to the bottom and see how many more pages were to go. What was the number one thing you were looking for out of all of that? What was the number one thing you needed your assistant to be able to do?Effort as much as anything. You have completed that. You have done it well. You could have even done it by hand but you did it as neat as you possibly could or whatever. I had people do at the highlighter or some put note. They tried to do it. It was like, “Seriously, you are applying for a position and you couldn't find a pen to use or use a marker and say it.” There would be a few like that. It sets people apart very quickly. Depending on the role. You have to have a great job description. You need to know exactly what this person is going to do for you.