Red Flags To Avoid When Hiring

Lauren: You’re a high octane business owner. You’ve got a team on paper. It looks like you’re rolling in success, but there’s a voice inside of you. Whisper, screaming, This isn’t sustainable. Something feels off and I’m gonna lose it all. Sound familiar? That’s where I come in.

My name is Lauren Goldstein and I’m the CEO at Golden Key Partnership. I help top level executives like you avoid burning out and burning down as you’re scaling up. How? By harnessing your superpowers, finding and hiring your ideal team. And then simplifying the heck out of your business operations. That was easy.

It’s my mission and the mission of this podcast to help you see operations in a whole new light, to help you diagnose the real root cause of your company challenges and to bring your business back to a healthy flow and profit. They call me the business doctor and. Is the Biz Doctor podcast.

Welcome back to the show. I am very excited about today’s show because I’m gonna share some red flags that I see when hirings, you can avoid them when you hire for your next. Because here’s a fun fact, a bad, higher cost and average of $14,900 or 30% of their first year salary. Personally, I think it’s more when you factor in your time and energy.

So avoiding these red flags is gonna save you a boatload of time, frustration, and revenue. Okay, so when you are interviewing people, the first red flag I see. Is not having a plan. This is a hallmark of a worker B, not a player. And you know what I say? Unless you have a big enough team or you have players managing worker Bs, you should never have a worker B as someone that you directly manage, not unless you really enjoy doing two people’s jobs.

Because worker beads really don’t work unless they’re told what to do. And if you want me to dive more into that, go back and listen to some of my previous episodes about players versus worker beads. But my favorite question to ask in interviews to see who I’m working with is something like this. Let me make up something.

The mission of this role is to. Increase sales by 10% and increase the lifetime value of our current clients by 25%. Can you tell me what your plan might be to accomplish this? Now, I know this might sound like a very simple question, but you would be surprised how much it’s actually gonna tell you about the person that you’re interviewing.

A player would respond something like this. In my experience, what we’ve done when we’ve had similar goals is doing X, Y, Z, because this is the goal and we’re gonna work backwards. So we’re gonna take this part and this part and this part, and work together. The overarching plan is to do this, then this, then this.

So they talk about, number one, the plan. They talk about big picture first, then the details, they talk about the team. There’s not a lot of eye focus conversations, but there’s a lot of conversation about how it impacts the team, the business, the customers, the ecosystem as a whole, where worker be’s, however they will respond.

Something like, Well, uh, we would do, you know, really whatever my manager tells me to do, or I would come in and see how things were done in the past and I would make them better. This is actually very hard for me to imitate because. I’m not a worker bee, but a lot of times what you’ll find them saying is I focus statements.

They’re gonna get really into the nitty gritty of the details. They tend not to work backwards, and they’re really looking for permission and guidance from somebody who has, in their eyes, more expertise or authority or their manager. So they’re gonna really like hone in on being careful about how they answer because they don’t wanna say the wrong thing, versus a player is gonna say, Well, this is my plan and we’re gonna launch it and we’re gonna learn.

And whereas a worker bee is gonna really focus on, well we’ll see what’s working before, or, I’m happy to do whatever you would like me to do. Like that’s something they say a lot. Again, why this is so important is, especially for those of you that have lean teams, working with worker bees is going to be an immense time suck on your time, and it’s also gonna decrease performance on the team because it’s gonna pull your time away from other things, as well as create bottlenecks in the team.

So you want to make sure that you’re really hiring a player with a plan because something. Might seem obvious but isn’t always obvious is when you hire somebody for a position that you are not an expert in, they have to be the expert. They have to have the strengths that are your weaknesses. And come to you with solutions, not problems.

Because like if we use marketing as an example, I am not a marketing expert . And so if I was to try and tell Katie how to do marketing or Google ads or whatnot, it would be a disaster and we would get nothing done because that is not my wheelhouse. Like the reason I hired her is cuz she has a plan and she can execute on that plan and then pull me in where necessary.

That my friends, is what is going to give you back time and will actually make this higher an investment rather than a cost. The second red flag is not having a humble growth mindset. So a lot of times I’ll see again, to go back to worker base, I’ll see a lot of braggadocious. Which I’m not saying having a healthy ego and confidence is a bad thing.

That’s not what I’m saying, but I am saying that when somebody is not very humble or overly braggadocious, Let’s save the the cred to back it up. That’s where you get to a problem. For me, at least, what I’ve seen and what I’ve come to know, is the more you know , the more you realize how much you actually don’t know.

So players are always looking to sharpen their blade, and with the rate of change in this digital world and the business world as a whole, it’s critical to stay on top of these. Something that I’m always tuning my ears to is, is this person a lifelong learner? Are they curious? Are they, you know, if they have a problem, are they gonna go solve it or try and find a solution and then come to me?

Or are they waiting for me to help them solve it? Because again, that’s another hallmark of a worker. We versus the player is, are they coming to you with problems? Are they coming to you with so, . One of my favorite questions to ask when I’m interviewing is how do you stay on top of marketing trends? For example, if I’m hiring a marketing person, because that’s gonna open-ended question, that’s gonna tell me a lot about how they think they’re gonna, you know, say various things from um, podcasts, to blogs, to books, to conferences, et cetera.

But the things that I’m listening for and looking for, Are they proactively making sure that they are relevant? And that their expertise is continually being sharpened. Cause the one thing that, I mean, there’s many things, but one of the biggest things that I look for to make sure we don’t ever get this on a team is complacency or mediocracy.

Because I actually said this to a client last week. I said, If you tolerate mediocracy on your team and any team member, it will alienate your top producers faster than you can imagine. It’s like cancer to your organization. Because they’re gonna build resentment that they’re producing. They’re doing great work and getting the same rewards as somebody who’s an anchor to the team by really understanding how they think, how they’re sharpening their tools, how they’re.

Maintaining their expertise is gonna make sure that you have a player who is going to move the team and the business forward and not hold it hostage. Another follow up question is, what was the last marketing book you read? It looks. Into how they’re spending their downtime because worker bees will answer this question of like, Oh gosh, I haven’t read a book in like however many years or something like that.

And again, this is, I, I am making some, some black and white comparisons, but I’ve been doing this for 11 years, so I, I see some, some basic things. I once had a worker be tell me when I asked. Um, what she did when my client didn’t have like a to-do list for her and she’s like, Oh, I just go on Facebook and I’m taking this real estate course, so I’ll go do some modules.

And so it like kind of blew my mind that she was so honest, but also I was grateful that she was honest. And so that’s an example of. Someone who [00:10:00] is doing the bare minimum. And um, if you’ve listened to previous episodes when I talked about the four quadrants, that somebody who’s playing not to lose or just playing, and that’s not the way to build a high performing team.

And then the third point, or rather the third red flag that I look for is someone who bucks the system. So we at Golden Key, have a proven process that produces amazing results with getting the right butts and seats. I’m talking like 95% of the time we get the perfect person. It’s called hiring made simple.

And if you aren’t familiar, the very high level, I mean there’s a lot that goes into it, but the very high level, We post the job, we have an Easter egg, then we actually have another step where we ask for a loom video, which tests their critical thinking skills and ability to use a tool that we use every day in business.

And that last step alone saves conservatively a hundred hours per role. It’s such a huge time save. Um, so obviously I just dumbed down our process exponentially. Um, the bulk of of what makes our hiring made simple framework. Work, uh, to that 95% is the before , which is what happens with the scorecard and the job description and really getting clarity on the role, which I will talk about in a subsequent episode.

But when you have this system, and the reason I love our system so much is that it shows me in a really clear, definitive way, it weeds out the all stars. Um, rather it, it shows me the all stars and it weeds out the bad eggs. Let me give you some examples of some bad eggs. This will make you laugh. I’ve had people say things like this, I don’t know if you’re proud of your dog and pony show, but I don’t wanna be part of it.

Or they sent me an MP4 video that uploaded to the Google Drive instead of a loom. Or they’re telling me that I’m wasting their. But hands down my all time favorite. Get ready. Listen to this. Seriously, the PS section with three question marks. What are we in sixth grade? This is laughable. PS, can I still bring my yearbook to the ice cream social question mark?

I remember when we got this. Um, Like almost falling out of my seat in, in laughter. This was in response to her getting rejected for not falling the directions for application listed in the job description, which, you know, sometimes we do hide it, and in this particular case it was as a ps. Funny enough, she was interviewing for a customer service role, if you can.

Anyway, the point is, aren’t you glad that we had a process? Because how much time could you have potentially wasted in a quote unquote good [00:13:00] candidate? Cuz on paper, like she had a lot of the things that we were looking for, but in personality, oh my gosh, that would’ve been a disaster. That’s really why I love this because they’re showing you your, their full hand cuz we’re not doing this process to be pains in the butts or waste their time.

We’re all busy. We’re looking for a win-win. We’re doing it because we use Loom in our business almost every day. So , it’s not that hard. If you don’t know how to use it, Google it, right? And we do have certain policies and procedures and systems that we have to follow that are part of our overall general business operations.

If you wanna go rogue, go rogue. Just don’t do it in my business. That’s why this is one of the red flags that I look for is if somebody is bucking the system, pay attention. Pay attention, because this will save you so much time because it’s gonna cut off those people who are just gonna be disruptors to your team.

Plus, suck your time and energy and profits and just really not be a team player because if somebody is bucking the system, chances are they’re not very coachable. They’re not a team player. They might be a know-it-all. So many other neuroscience things I could go into there. But the thing that I want you to take away is if you can take these three biggest red flags and just keep an eye out, keep them in the back of your mind, you are going to have exponential, more success in hiring and not waste you or your team or even the candidates time, and your team and your business well.

That’s it for this week’s episode. I hope you enjoyed these red flags. Maybe some of them were new, maybe some of them were old, but I’d love to hear from you and your biggest takeaways. Thanks so much for listening in. Make sure that you’re following along. Tag me on Instagram at its Lauren Goldstein or LinkedIn or wherever you hang out on the inter.

And we will see you next week.

Thanks for listening to The Biz Doctor Podcast. You’re probably wondering what your next steps are. Hmm. So here are some options for you no matter what. Head to the show notes or to my website at goldenkeypartnership.com  That’s where you’ll find links to do at Diagnostic Deep Dive with me and my team. This deep dive will help us identify what is really holding you and your business. For more profitability, impact, and sustainable growth.

After that, register for our next workshop. Ooh. I host them often, and it’s a great way to interact with me in a virtual room and get your questions answered. All of that info is on our at goldenkeypartnership.com.

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