Rob Stott: All right, we are back on the Connected Design podcast and excited to dive into the world. Hiring is an important thing, I think. You kind of need people in your business to run your business. Saying that as a self-employed one-man band, it’s kind of ironic for me to say, but I appreciate the opportunity to dive into this space. Maybe I’ll learn a little something. I think that’s maybe where we’re getting at having you on Mr. Chris Smith, principal of TheCoTeam. I need advice. I think just for me. No, that’s awesome. So how are you, man? How are things going?
Chris Smith: Just for you. I love it. Yeah, that’s all right. Podcast one of one. I’m doing really well. Good to see you. I love catching up with you at all the events and things. I’m glad we could sit down and chat.
Rob Stott: Absolutely. And it was awesome to see you. Funny enough, I think we talked about it there was the Oasis Summit that we were at and talk about doing a podcast. And I was like thinking through ideas of what we could talk about. And the next thing I know you’re up on stage doing everything I wanted to do. I could have just recorded that and saved us both the time and publish that as an episode, but no, it’s awesome to be able to dive into that with you. And, you know, we certainly appreciate you taking the time and being willing to jump in with us. So.
Chris Smith: Thanks for having me.
Rob Stott: Before, yeah, absolutely. Before all that though, I want to give you the chance to paint the picture because I think it’s important. It’ll help shape sort of the rest of the conversation and narrative that we go through here, but paint your background for us, for those that don’t know who you are and kind of your path to becoming principal at TheCoTeam.
Chris Smith: Yeah, so Chris Smith with TheCoTeam, we help companies hire. I came from this space and have been in the CI industry about 26 years now. It’s a little crazy to think about and kind of wacky that it’s been that long. But my kind of history is broken up almost equally in chunks and we’ll, for sake of conversation, we’ll call them about five-year chunks, give or take. So I started my world in custom integration actually as an installer, right? Pulling wires, getting dirty in attic spaces and construction sites and, you know, installing systems. And then I learned how to program. And then I was doing some kind of project management and sales. And so I kind of grew up through the integrator side of the industry. And then I had an opportunity to move over to Bowers & Wilkins. I became actually a national trainer for them. And that then turned into being a salesperson. That salesperson, the territory just kind of grew. And then at some point, McIntosh Labs came knocking and I became a director of sales. And in that world, I was managing teams of people. And then that just kind of grew. And then eventually the company transacted and I was part of that transaction when it sold into the Fine Sounds Group. So I got to be part of its M&A. So I got to learn a lot about that whole process. And then we launched the McIntosh Townhouse in New York. And so as part of that project, we needed an integrator to help us do that. I got to meet a company called Cloud9 Smart. I then started working back on the integrator side after 10 years and got to kind of implement all the things that I had seen that I’d really liked about companies that I’d worked with for many, many years and then kind of avoid all the pitfalls. So I ran an integration company in New York City for five years, ultimately becoming the CEO. I was an equity partner in that business. I left to start up my own company. And what I realized was that I wanted to do kind of coaching consulting work. And that coaching consulting work was really about helping companies run their businesses better, make more money, et cetera. And what came out of that was two things. And they were both people related. One was I would grow my business and scale it, but I can’t find the humans they need to do that. I kept hearing that over and over and over again. And the second was, hey, I’ve got this guy in the back and you know, he’s all right, or maybe he sucks. And I’d rather get rid of him, but I can’t find anybody to replace him. So I feel like I’m stuck with him. And those themes kept coming up. And so what came out of that was really, and I’m a big fan of giving value. So I started presenting a presentation back about hiring best practices and that presentation was not monetarily valuable to me. It was really a means to an end for kind of ideal clients for us. And so somebody approached me after that and just said would you do that for us. And that really shifted my thinking about should my company be in this kind of domain expertise of coaching consulting work which wasn’t particularly scalable and it was really just about me and helping somebody or should it be around the hiring side and that’s highly scalable and we could do it across this industry and now we’re also doing it outside of this industry. And so it really kind of shifted us into that world. And last year alone, we placed 181 people. We’ve broken 500 hires as a company, which is really cool. Prior to starting this year, we were about 450. So you see like the idea that the business just keeps growing and scaling. And we’ve now been doing this outside of this industry as well. So the same method and process works. And what we really do is we kind of, I looked at the recruitment model and just said, it’s kind of broken. What would it look like if it was exactly the opposite? So we went with a very low-cost model, hourly-based, aligned with the mutual interests of our clients. And then we do this across every conceivable position within a business. So it’s crazy to think about. We’re now international. We’re selling into Canada.
Rob Stott: Wow.
Chris Smith: We have rep firms across the country. It’s like pretty cool what it’s become and it wasn’t its intention when it started, but it was like, we’re here now. It feels really cool.
Rob Stott: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And I, and I was, I’m glad you brought up those numbers because that was going to be my next point is like, the proof is kind of in the pudding for you guys. And all the data really, you know, the, the, the fact that you are being successful with this model, and you know, it is scaling and growing and, and like, not just placing people either, like, right. They’re successful hires and things like that. So talk about that a little bit. And, you know, the background too, like the reason I wanted you to talk about it, because initially you started from the manufacturer and integrator side, obviously having the experience of both. I like those things, just sort of the snowball effect, right? You guys are experiencing that momentum and it’s paying off.
Chris Smith: It’s really neat. Yeah. And I think, so some things that are interesting about this, we have a really high success rate. Last year we had a 91% fill rate, which is really cool. That’s like three times higher than like a standard recruiter. And we’re doing it for a fraction of the price. So Net-net, kind of like to joke, we’re about 10 times more effective than a recruiter dollar for dollar. And so we think that the model is actually proving itself to work really well. Within that, 99% happen within 10 hours. So it means that we’re doing it within the timeframe that’s been allotted to us. And while it’s not a perfect fill rate, I don’t know that there ever could be, right? I don’t know that there’s a way to make that happen. And by the way, if there was, I’d really like to make sure it happens in our business. Like that is where we’re headed. How do we do this better and better and better? And so in terms of kind of other stats that are really interesting, two-thirds of our companies come back and make second, third, fourth hires. And on average we do about three hires per client so far. I don’t know what that will look like in three, four and five years of having clients, but that’s where we stand today.
Rob Stott: Yeah, having the return customer at all, I think speaks volumes to what you guys are doing and the fact that they trust it.
Chris Smith: Yeah, yeah, it’s working for them. They want to come back. And so our best client last year hired 20 people. That’s crazy to think about. And so we look at the dollar for dollar value of that and we go, you couldn’t hire a single human inside of your organization to do what we do for the price we charge them. So it’s a pretty cost-effective model. And so we think it’s really kind of disruptive. And we obviously have a vision for propagating this into other verticals as well, because we see it working in other verticals today. And so it’s been fun building. It’s really cool. And it’s really cool to think about the legacy that we’re leaving, which is actually really great quality humans inside of other businesses and what that does for those people and their families, but the business and their families. Like it just, it feels really meaningful and it’s exciting to be a part of that.
Rob Stott: Yeah. Now I know you guys are relatively new in the grand scheme of things, right? So like still a young company. So this next question may be a little unfair to ask, but like, do you know the staying power of those employees? Like are they, are they lasting within the company?
Chris Smith: Yeah, it’s a really good question. We don’t actually know. So sometimes we have a hard time getting our current clients who actually did make a hire to tell us they made a hire. So like to get them to follow up with us and tell us that somebody is still there or not, we don’t know that stat. The only kind of inductive reasoning we have around it is that they come back to ask us to make further hires. That’s the kind of signal that it seems like that’s working really well. And it seems like the testimonials that we get after we do our work are quite high. And so we’ll be at trade shows and we’ll mic people up and say, hey, just tell us about using your experience with us. And all of those seem to be pretty positive. Again, we don’t think perfect, but I think we’re on our way to making more people happy than not by a long shot.
Rob Stott: Yeah, for sure. The other thing that aside from the staying power, the other question you hear a lot in this space, especially around hiring or just integrators in general, is that that talent gap, right? That they have trouble finding people. I mean, you guys, when you’re out there looking and I know it can be again, maybe an unfair thing to ask, but like because different markets are different and you know, the amount of talent in a New York City may be different than a Davenport, Iowa, but are you seeing, are you seeing that? Like, is that a fair assessment? Like, is there really a talent gap or, you know, what do you guys, what’s your assessment of that?
Chris Smith: Yeah, it’s a really great question. I think you have people with technical skills that exist in markets, but obviously in smaller markets, there are few of those people with those technical skills. So I think that’s a real problem, especially in secondary and tertiary markets. But it’s a real problem in major metro markets, to be really honest, that’s not to say anything about any market or any company. This is a real issue. And I think it’s worth diving into the why part. The second part is there are some people with these technical skills who are absolutely not the right human to hire for a team. So when you talk about like a skills gap, I think there are people who have skills that I would never ever in a million years after interviewing them put them in front of one of my clients. Like that’s not right for the team that you put them in front of. And it’s not right for the owner of that business. This is not the human you should hire, even if they have the skills. And so I think there’s kind of two components here. Let’s go address the technical, like very practically. Our industry is tiny, tiny. So to say I only want people with technical skills of a given ilk, that’s not a really great hiring strategy because it’s just not practical. You won’t get to where you want to go. So now what you could say is, are there people who are one or two or three rings out from the dartboard who have foundational skills that are very similar to ours that we could train and build into the people that we want? 100% yes. And the people who are winning that hiring game are open-minded to that. So if I could encourage one thing, whether you use us or don’t use us or use a different service or don’t use them and you do it yourself, it doesn’t matter. Be super open-minded to that because the organizations that are winning are building training and development organizations inside of their walls. So that conquers the skills gap, assuming you’ve got the right foundational skill of the human.
Chris Smith: I think separately is this question about hiring for longevity of the human. Like, are we really putting people on our teams that are amazing? And if we’re putting people on our teams that are amazing, they have staying power. We want them to be a part of our organization. We want them to grow into whatever the thing is that they want to do within our organization. And so that to me is the other big takeaway here is not just the skills gap. It’s the finding the right human to build your team.
Rob Stott: Yeah, no, I love all of that. And what comes to mind hearing that is like what I imagine the biggest struggle for someone hiring is they’re looking for like that unicorn, right? Like they want the perfect person. They have this ideal person in mind and they’re not willing to waver from that or be open to, to your point, like the dart, I love that dartboard model too, right? Cause there’s like that unicorn is the bullseye, but then if you go out a few layers, you know, what other types of talent are out there that are moldable into, you know, they become that unicorn for you.
Chris Smith: And there’s a lot of that, by the way, there’s a lot of people out there who are looking for their next opportunity because wherever they’re at is capped. And maybe it’s the technical nature of those jobs just won’t allow for anything beyond it. Maybe their organizations don’t have training and development paths because those people are short-sighted. I mean, there’s so many ways to think about that. But there are plenty of people who are looking for that opportunity, who actually are good humans. And I think for the folks that are open-minded to it, they have a real first-mover advantage to saying yes to those people. You don’t have to hire them. All I would suggest is that you talk to them. And there’s so many people who would just throw that resume away and like not even think about it. And I think that’s that short-sighted. But yeah, I think looking for the unicorn, sometimes we call it the fish jumps in the boat, right? But I wouldn’t build my strategy on only looking for those that I think is the key takeaway.
Rob Stott: Now without calling out, and I don’t even know if any would come to mind right off the bat without calling out like the specific company or person, like does any example of that, you know, sort of outer ring individual come to mind of like an integrator was looking for a very specific, you know, type of installer or someone that fit their team perfectly. What is that parallel industry that they came from? Like any example of something like that that comes to mind?
Chris Smith: Right. Yeah, I think obviously so many of our clients are target-market CI and specifically residential CI. So I think that’s an important statement to say what would target center look like here. And I think a few places out from that, we love commercial guys. Commercial guys come from audio, video control systems. They tend to usually be weaker in, say, networks because that usually goes to a different subcontractor, and they tend to not have really lighting and shading understanding. But if you show me a guy who’s been installing Q-SYS control systems and programming Q-SYS, you could teach that guy anything we do, anything, right? And so you show me a guy with a great disposition, right? Who’s been doing Q-SYS work. I want to talk to that guy. Now, to be fair, there are commercial people who don’t like working in residential settings. It’s like a very real thing. We actually ask about it, but there’s an example. Another example is, let’s talk about the people who are on an upward trajectory but hit a ceiling in their current employer. So a really common version of that is what we call pull, term, test guys. And so from the cabling world, and I don’t mean cable television, I mean cabling infrastructure, they pull a wire from here to there, they terminate it, they mount a device at the end of it, they tend to do rack and stack work where they actually build an equipment rack, and then they usually lace that rack up. Those guys, their contract caps at something like that. So if they’ve done that for a while, they are really proficient at it and they do really beautiful work. I mean, picture-worthy work. Some guys will call it rack porn, right? Like that. So those guys do that and you go, okay, so like, what’s the next thing for you? Well, they don’t have a next thing. Their contracts don’t allow them to touch anything beyond that. So if you ask them about control systems,
Rob Stott: Yeah, that’s my term. That’s the term. If you didn’t say it, I was gonna.
Chris Smith: For them, it’s just a box that sits at the end of a wire. They don’t really know what it does. They kind of have an idea, but they’re not trained on it. But if you explain to that guy, cool, I’m gonna teach you the rest of control systems, and now I’m gonna teach you what a lighting panel does and what a shading panel does, they pick that up super fast. That is not the thing that’s limiting them. Now, some of them won’t make it all the way to programming or configuration, because that’s maybe not their interest or ability, but they could take that next level of install and crush that without question. Those people make amazing hires and we’ve done that a ton. So last year alone, 40 % of the hires that we made were technicians. That’s 72 technicians across the country. So when people say like, I can’t find a technician, well, is it because you’re looking for an alarm programmer? Is it because you’re looking for some very like odd esoteric skill set that just doesn’t exist at scale? Now, if on the other hand, what you said was I want a person who’s really proficient in install, knows how to hang a picture straight and can run the wire from here to there and make it look clean. There’s lots of guys that can do that. My question would be, are you open-minded to talking to the people that aren’t your historical demographic? Security guys, amazingly interesting people. Like security guys are wiring up panels. Like if you can explain to me how a relay works, you can do all sorts of stuff, right? And there’s all sorts of people that come from that world that are used to wiring those up by hand. There’s guys who are doing programmable logic controllers, PLC work from the electrical space.
Chris Smith: If you understand how a PLC works, you can do any lighting panel on the planet. So like you start to think about those things and you go, would I be open-minded if I found a human like that who was interested in my job? I would at least want to talk to them. And out of those, we’re only looking for the top two to 3% of people that are worthy of like that next round. So it’s a very stringent criteria.
Rob Stott: No, that’s awesome. And you have to figure that someone that’s in the market for a job is willing to at least entertain the idea of talking. They may have a dream job in their mind, but they may want to open up their target a few rings to make sure they know what other opportunities are out there. The other side of it too, to your point of being able to mold someone into that center target, is that when you hire someone, that’s not the end of it. They’re constantly learning. You as a business owner, you in your job, should constantly be learning and evolving and trying to add to your skill set. So when you’re hiring someone for a role, you’ve got to imagine that they’re going to do that as well.
Chris Smith: Man, how interesting is this question? This makes me think back when I was actually pretty young. I was talking to an employer at the time. He had four children with his high school sweetheart. And I said, how do you like know? How do you know when like that’s the person for you? And he goes, you’re actually not marrying them. You’re marrying the person you hope they become. And I thought that was a really fantastic takeaway because I think hiring in some ways is kind of like that.
Rob Stott: I love that.
Chris Smith: I’m looking for potential in people. Yes, I want foundational skill. I want to know what you can do and all of that’s really important. But I want to look at this and say, where could I take this? Like, where could I conceivably grow to with this individual? What does hiring this particular individual enable my company to do right now? Like, what does it get us in the path of going towards? And that’s a really different way of thinking because I think a lot of people are just going like, well, if it doesn’t immediately solve this massive problem that I envisioned in my head, I’m not doing it. And I go, okay, so you could watch those people and then in six months from now, they’re still fence sitting. And so for me, I think this question about making decisions, iterating, learning, growing, trying, all of that matters, assuming that you’ve got the right people on board, right humans, disposition, right kind of thought process, that really goes a long way. And I think you see a lot of people just continue to fence sit and never execute. So my question is always like, unicorn hunting, how’s that going for you? Right? Fence sitting, how’s that going for you? You’re like, oh, I’m exactly the same size I was three years ago. Okay, well then maybe there’s a different way to kind of think about that.
Rob Stott: No, it makes a lot of sense. And I mean, I have to imagine too, the understanding that it’s an investment. Yes, there’s some immediate payoff, right? They come in and, you know, they’re gonna have to integrate themselves into your business and understand how things work, things like that. But at the same time, it’s like, it’s the start of a journey. So you gotta, you gotta have a little bit more, you know, more foresight into what’s to come with that individual or with your company. So you don’t land on that center target individual, but if you aim for someone maybe that has a, you know, a few years less experience or something like that, a better investment for your business that they can grow into that, the unicorn that you were looking for. Yeah.
Chris Smith: Exactly right. A networking guy who’s got CCNA skills and can learn a Pakedge course catalog? If he could learn CCNA, or she could learn CCNA, you don’t think we could send them to Lutron class, right? Like that’s the kind of stuff I start to think about and I go, so who are those people and like, what would we do with them if given the opportunity? So I think that’s really, really strong. Yeah, super important.
Rob Stott: Right. Yep. Yeah, I feel like we’ve talked about a lot of what could be the common pitfalls, but are there any things that stand out as far as, you know, other common missteps or things you see in the hiring process, not necessarily asking you to give away like your guys’ ingredients or secret sauce, but like, you know, what other advice from, you know, I think back to the session that you gave and, you know, the presentation that you had and, and things that would stand out that, you know, would be beneficial for an integrator looking to hire someone to hear.
Chris Smith: Yeah, so you brought up one just before this question where you were talking about, like, I’ll synthesize and say, what’s the plan for this individual? So when we bring on employees internally, one of the things that we think about is what’s the training period for that individual? The easy way to think about that is a 30-, 60-, 90-day plan. What do we expect out of this individual at each of those places? The other way to think about it is, and at what point will they then become billable? If they’re a cost of goods employee, if they were a salesperson, at what point do they start selling or closing deals, right? So you start to think about like trajectory and arc for this person. I don’t think many people are writing 30-, 60-, 90-day plans for their people with AI, never been easier by the way, right? So feel free to go use that tool. I think the 30-, 60-, 90-day plan, for instance, when we hire an employee, we have a 90-day window where at the end of that 90 days, we want them to be billable out to the outside world. So what we’ve actually realized is even within that, we can shorten that down to 60 days. Now, can we get it to 45 or even 30 days, like practically and still have the quality be as good? Or could we have it fractionally billable at some level and with a safety net and then have them growing? And so I think this question about the evolution of your 30-, 60-, 90-day plan. The hiring side’s really important, the interviewing side’s really important, the closing the deal with an offer letter’s really important, but now it’s like if we’re the dog that caught the bumper, what do we do with it? And I think that that question for people is that’s the 30, 60, 90. That plan is everything. Now that plan will be slightly different for this individual than this individual because of where they’re starting from and coming from, like where their trajectory is or was, and then where we want them to get to. Now if they start day one with that plan known and you start it, everyone is on the same page about what those expectations are. And I think what’s really great about that is if you do that well, you build stickiness, you build the ability to keep them within your orbit and they don’t spin out. So if you’re losing humans after you seal the deal, that’s your sign to say, well, what’s my onboarding process? And I don’t mean onboarding like you filled in your tax document and we got you on your health insurance. That’s not the onboarding I’m about.
Chris Smith: Still necessary, but I think that question about the plan is really crucial. Separately, like a big one is pay scale. This is where we like ruffle feathers a bit. This is really important, like really important that you think deeply about what the market is currently offering in competition to you. I actually don’t much care what your buying group says, don’t much care what CEDIA says, I don’t much care what you currently pay your employees. None of that matters. What matters is looking at how would I land the talent I need to get the work done I have to do. If everything requires you to be at this level and everyone else you were talking to is over here, that doesn’t help you very much. And so I think the real takeaway here isn’t that they’re all wrong. It’s make sure you validate this with the current marketplace. That’s a really key takeaway. And you can do this for free using tools that are out there, like Indeed, you can look and see what jobs are posting. You want to be competitive in that space. The second part that people will say is, well, then I only want to look at my competitors, right? Like, no, no, no, you want to look at, as we talked about, rings from the dartboard. So what are the building management system people paying? What’s the security guy paying? What are the cable-pulling technicians making?
Chris Smith: All of that will help really calibrate, but it does a second thing really well. It helps you firm up your moat around your organization so that you don’t lose the current humans you have. That takeaway, I think, is not happening. Everyone is so busy running their businesses, which I get, that makes tons of sense, but then they’re like, hey, I haven’t really done that analysis these days, I don’t really know. And if you’re thinking back that way, you’re gonna run into the back end of a bus.
Chris Smith: And I think that that is the takeaway. And now we’re just then refilling more seats at the top of this organization. That’s really hard. I think that’s probably the thing I don’t see happening enough is true coherency around what the marketplace is offering in terms of competitors a few rings out.
Rob Stott: Both of those things I want to dive into separately, just because you’re just wrapping it up. The paying side of things, you know, we’ll start there. It’s almost like the resting on your laurels, right? Like you don’t want to get comfy thinking that, you know, the last, the last thing you want to think about is one of your current employees looking elsewhere, but hey, it’s a, it’s a reality. It’s going to happen. And especially to your point, if the pay scale is off within your business, not even just with someone that you’re looking to hire. So, you know, if someone’s looking for a job and your company happens to be in that orbit of where they’re looking. You have to imagine that, you know, someone within could be looking elsewhere as well. You know, understanding what the, again, to your point, not just your competitors, but other like jobs could be offering, you know, is it enough that would sway them to leave and go somewhere else? And then there’s the whole cost of them having to refill that position that just, you know, became empty.
Chris Smith: 100%, you’re exactly right. I think we are in an interesting position because when we get called in to help companies hire, we’re often asking, so what happened? Why are we hiring for this? In some cases they’re growing, right, so we’re adding bodies. In other cases somebody has left. Now there’s reasons that people leave that aren’t pay-related. Hey they’re relocating to be closer to family members or all sorts of things but one common thing that happens is they’re leaving to go outside of the industry.
Chris Smith: If that’s true for people that are leaving your organization, why can’t we be hiring people to come into our industry? All right, pretty cool thing to think about. And the second is, you should be looking at your competition outside of our industry so that you have some relative comprehension of what you’re competing with. And I think that that’s a really, really good takeaway. Now, by the way, your point about your employees could be looking and seeing, all the data we’re looking at is publicly available. Like none of it requires a subscription. All of it is exactly what your current employees could see if they just took five minutes of time to go look. So you should inform yourself.
Rob Stott: And who’s to say they’re not putzing around LinkedIn, like who’s on LinkedIn every day? I think most people, right? So, you know, those are out there. And even if I, you know, I’m sitting here as a business owner myself and, you know, I still get fed the LinkedIn job post. Like it’s just the algorithm is doing it. So even, even if they’re not specifically looking, they may just have something that gets into their feed that sparks their interest and makes them think, I wonder. And that’s all it could, that that might be all it takes.
Chris Smith: So I’ll give you an example. We don’t often use LinkedIn for promoting a hire because it’s not common, but every once in a while there’s a reason why it makes good sense. So we’re helping a client hire and they’re hiring for a director of sales. And so we say, hey, this would be a potential sponsorship opportunity on LinkedIn. So we go and we put the sponsorship up with them, and right, I opened up my LinkedIn and I am served the ad for that job, which I thought it was like, okay, like this.
Rob Stott: No, all right, That’s awesome
Chris Smith: The thing is working, right? It’s like you’d be a good fit for this. So I think that that’s really interesting. These tools work correctly when applied well. And so I think, you know what you’re working with, et cetera. The other thing that you got me thinking about and potential like problems, right. So like structurally and we can figure out when we want to talk about these. But, you know, what are we posting out there? What’s the ad?
Rob Stott: That’s awesome.
Chris Smith: Like that’s a really important distinction. So be thinking about that and does it feel like really engaging? Where are we posting it? So this, and this ties to the LinkedIn question versus say, indeed, like there are things to think about here about where does my ideal person shop for jobs, right? And most jobs are not actually on LinkedIn. It’s actually not where a lot of technicians are going. It doesn’t mean they’re not there, but indeed is way better as an example. How are we doing our interviews and scheduling for that? What are we interviewing for? Like, are we interviewing just for technical or are we interviewing for personality fit? Are we interviewing for comp relevance? You know, what does that look like? What’s our next round of interview look like after that? So we’ve talked to people who actually have businesses for years and don’t have a process around hiring. They just don’t. Like, they’re just gut checking it when somebody comes in and you’re like, wow, how’s that working? A guy who was really honest about it this week goes,
Rob Stott: Huh.
Chris Smith: I know, about 50-50 and I went like, wow. And he heard himself saying it. He knew, he knew it wasn’t what he wanted. And so I think that that takeaway is like, what does that look like, and is it getting better? Are we improving that process incrementally each time we do it? And so then I think about, like, are we doing skills assessments for people? When do we do that? Should we be using personality assessments? When do we do that?
Rob Stott: Man, okay.
Chris Smith: And there are like good and bad things for each of these. So none of them are all, like, just go all in and don’t think about it. It’s like, how are we doing it and why? And so I think if people are a big component of your business and at least AI hasn’t fully like consumed the world yet. So like there’s still going to be some amount of humans for at least a few more years, I would think. So like, I think that the people on your team like really matter. And so if that’s really true, are we spending as much time on that as we are on the stuff we’re installing and the vendors we buy from, that’s probably a good cross-check for your amount of time investment and thought process.
Rob Stott: Yeah. I mean, it all, and this even, I think goes back and applies to after the hire and the onboarding, like the, the, again, not the, the logistical onboarding, the, the training, the plan of integrating them into your business. You know, no pun intended on integrator, but, you know, the, it’s being intentional about it. And, and, you know, you want to be as intentional about the hiring process from start to finish from the moment you know, you need to hire. So you make the decision that you’re going to hire someone to when they become fully integrated into your team, same way you would about a project, like going into someone’s home or office. And like, you want to make that client happy at the end of the day, with the hiring process, your business is that client, right? You want to make sure that you are finding someone that is going to, you know, mesh, you know, fit the culture of what you’re trying to create there, which that’s a whole separate conversation around culture that we could dive into, but like it’s, it’s being as intentional about the hiring process as you would be for a client that you were, you know, whatever project it might be that you’re working on.
Chris Smith: Your word of intentional is really important here. One of our core values, and we have five of them, is intentional. And so being intentional in everything that you do and how you do it and why you do it, it matters. And so the question, I think, for a lot of people when they go to hiring is, are they actually being intentional about it or are they being reactive? Like, my gosh, my hair’s on fire, someone just quit, I need a body right now. Like, that’s not intentional. That is coming from a position of stress and it will increase your likelihood of making a poor decision or a short term decision as opposed to the right long term decision. And so I think your intentionality question is really, really crucial here. The other one, like you talked about process or we were kind of saying like, we want a project to go well. Well, that starts to sound like project management and project management is indeed a process. So. Here’s the question I always ask every group whenever we sit in front of them is, can you show me your hiring process? And when I say show me, that’s very easy because you can literally hold up the document that describes it and visualizes it. If you don’t have one of those, I would make one, and you could make one for free, right? You just need to sit down and like think about this step happens, then this step happens, and then what happens if. So we literally have a workflow that shows people how that goes. And we did that because people kept asking us, so how does it work? So how does it work? And so rather than writing out the same answer every time, I just made one visual and that’s what we follow. So what’s yours in your business? And I think as you think that through, don’t just know that you have one, like show me. Because if you show me, you can show the applicant what your process is like. You can show the people internal to your organization what your process is like and how you’re gonna get there.
Chris Smith: And then you can also show me where it’s not working well. Hey, like right here, everything else is great, but right here, we could do this step better. Okay, cool, let’s go and work on that step. And then now we know that if we ever made a bad hire for whatever reason, we’ve got that feedback loop to come back and fix the machine and that won’t happen again. If it’s visualized, and our buddy Jason Sayen has a really great way of saying it, 70% of people are visual learners. Come back to your process and go, it’s right here. That’s the thing I want to get better at. And if you can do that, it becomes a locus of control for you to fix it, as opposed to it being like, man, I hope that never happens again.
Rob Stott: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. It takes the, like the guesswork out of it and it creates, and I feel like this could, you know, so many ways to go, like the, you know, understanding that it creates consistency, which consists of like being intentional and being consistent, you know, ultimately breeds the culture of the organization. Like it’s just, it all just makes too much sense to me. And I, but I know, without sounding like I’m oversimplifying it and all that good stuff, but it’s still easy to talk about, hard to implement, I have to imagine.
Chris Smith: Yeah, people can own these things for not a lot of capital, but it is a little bit of time, right? And so there’s time investment in that. And I think the takeaway I would have for that, though, it’s not hard, right? It’s not hard to do. It just takes a little bit of time, but it has a high return on its investment and you can lever the same tool repeatedly. In other words, we’re not making a tool that’s so obscure you use it one time every once in a while and it’s not a big deal if you didn’t have it.
Chris Smith: You’re like, no, we need that tool. Like this makes everything go better. I think if you can perceive it that way, it makes the small amount of time investment you put into it really easy to think about. And I understand everyone’s busy running a million miles an hour, but I think the analog is, you know, going out to cut wood with a dull saw or a dull ax. It pays you back pretty quickly when you sharpen it.
Rob Stott: That’s awesome. I feel like we could go, you know, again, a million different directions in ways, but at the same time, I want to be cognizant of people’s time and yours and my time as well. So I feel like this is a not a one-time conversation for sure, but I appreciate you at least, you know, setting the table for future appearances on this podcast. And it was a lot of fun, man, to dive into it. And it’s such an important aspect of the business that, you know, it’s easy to talk about the products and like the sexy things that are out there, but like, I think you can make hiring sexy. I really do. I think there’s ways to do it. Yeah.
Chris Smith: Man, I’m not the marketing guy, as you can probably tell, but I appreciate you having me on to talk about it. I think you’re 100% right about the value of people in the organization. I think that these should all feel important to people and it should feel, to your point, intentional. We’re excited about the opportunity to do what we’re doing with our organization in this industry. And I look at the potential upside for businesses by doing it well. And I go, why wouldn’t you just do these things well? And so what we’ve realized though, is that those people are really busy. They’re busy running their businesses. And so we’ve become an added value in being able to be kind of a bandwidth opportunity for them. Hey, we can take on that portion that you would like to do well. You just don’t have time to do well yourself. Or the answer is you guys are busy growing. And as you’re busy growing, you’ve outgrown your ability to do the hiring the way you had it. So, hey, we can come in and do that. We love working with those companies who are in that space and they just go, it’s not our favorite thing to do. We don’t have enough time to do it. And hey, it’s not what we do every day. And we’re like, yeah, like let’s outsource that. And there are a bunch of companies in our industry who are doing variations of that for components of businesses. And we’re excited to kind of be in that services suite mentality for companies like this.
Rob Stott: If you, the listener or watcher of this, haven’t had the opportunity to see Chris at a show or, you know, connect with them, I highly encourage you to do so. Because it’s engaging. I’ve seen it, you know, not in a one-on-one setting, but like in the group settings and getting people to think and how they react to what you present is, you know, it’s awesome. And kind of eye-opening for them for sure. And inspiring for me to be able to watch it happen in person. So certainly encourage you to check out TheCoTeam and everything Chris has going on. But man, this was a lot of fun. I look forward to doing it again soon.
Chris Smith: Thanks Rob, we really appreciate you having us on.
Rob Stott: You bet.
