Episode 243 – Why You Need Hiring Phases To Hire Fast and Effectively

This week's podcast is all about hiring phases. Focus on what's important to you in YOUR business, and use hiring phases to save you both time and money. BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS: Do some brainstorming to narrow down the traits you're looking for. Your systems are only as good as you are. The market is open. What are you going to do about it? Show Highlights What are you looking for in a potential employee? (3:00) Use interview phases to help you identify the things you want to test for. (5:00) Your solution to hiring fast and efficiently. (7:00) Links Ready to get serious about your hiring process? Sign up with Jazz HR, click here. Free Facebook group, Jump Start Your Pet Business here. To sign up for Better Marketing With Bella Semester 2, click here. To email Bella, if there is anything you’d specifically like to hear about, email [email protected] Share The Show Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: This is episode 243 of Bella in Your Business. Hi there, I'm Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. You might know me from CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, or maybe you've seen me speak on stage or read my book, The Four Dogs That Every Business Owner Needs. In any case, get ready because you're about to get your hashtag Bella Butt Kickin' in this next episode of Bella in Your Business. So what do you say? Let's get ready and jump. Hello and welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. I'm here today to talk to you all about phases of hiring. You guys, we just finished up with the high gear hiring challenge. That was a pop-up group that I did last month, and I really feel like these podcasts are starting to become like mini training series for you. If you're one of those people that have been binging on Bella, as we like to call it, and listening to all the podcast series, shoot me an email. I'd love to hear from you and let me know what resonates with you. My email is [email protected]. Something that comes up a lot in the mastermind—we actually just went through a bunch of people's JazzHR accounts. We went through four different ones to see how they set up their phases. Now, phases of an interview are like the different stages, right? It's not enough to just find someone's application and then all of a sudden want to interview them. You can't do that. You're going to waste a lot of time, you're going to get ghosted, you're not going to have qualified applicants, and honestly, I am here to tell you that your time is worth money. So do not waste your time jumping into an interview before you even know the person, before you know that there are things like trustworthy, detail-oriented, an animal lover, or an empath, or whatever it might be that you're looking for, okay? So number one I want you to take from this is to understand what you're looking for. What I love to do with this is get a bunch of sticky notes and just kind of brainstorm and stick them all up on a wall. These are almost like your topics or your buckets or something like that. Maybe there are four major things that you really want to test for. Then you can break it down underneath it and examine how you’re going to test for this. Phases of an interview are really, really important. If you own the Employee Quick Start program, which I started about a decade ago, it teaches you a very simplified interview process. This is before the days of JazzHR. If you have not checked out JazzHR yet, you want to go to jumpconsulting.net/jazzHR. That will give you a sign-up form to talk to Abby, and she can tell you all about it. Abby's been working with pet sitters and dog walkers for three years now, and a lot of my members have been having a lot of success hiring even in this volatile market. Adriana, one of my mastermind members, actually said that because of the phases and because of JazzHR, she was able to get someone past three phases in one hour the other day. When the market is so volatile and you get a fish on the hook, you are going to want to reel that fish in and get them on the boat as soon as possible. With JazzHR and those systems, you really can—but those systems are only as good as you are. And that’s why I’m talking about phases today. So let’s take a step back here because I just kind of threw a lot at you, and I’m going to keep this podcast episode short as well. I really, really want you to think about what you are wanting in your next person. Are they in a certain place in life? Are they a stay-at-home mom? Are they a freelancer who is already working from home online but wants to get out and do something else—and this money isn’t their “real” money but their play money? Are you attracting someone who is retired but very active? Are you maybe attracting an online college student who is hustling, working three different jobs? That was me, by the way. Who are you looking for? It starts off, obviously, with the job post and talking directly to that avatar. Your very first stage should be those knockout questions, and those knockout questions are your non-negotiables. It’s things like: do you live in the area? Do you have a car and a cell phone? Are you able to care for dogs and cats or cuddle with them? It always amazed me when people would apply and say that they’re allergic. Are you kidding me? Anyways, that’s literally your knockout question stage. Knockout questions are really important because if you have them set up correctly, you are only going to see the qualified applicants. You won’t see people that are half-assing it, not serious about the position, or don’t have the basic qualifications you’re looking for. Then we get into more of the intangibles. So the first phase, we might want to be testing for something like “common sense.” Someone said that the other day in my mastermind, and I asked what she meant by that. She said, “Things like attention to detail, what they would do in situations, or how they would approach challenges.” I said, “Okay, give me your questions.” And when she did, I told her, “You’re actually testing here for responsibility, attention to detail, and following directions.” Common sense is so abstract—it’s very hard to test for. So we broke it down into specific scenarios where she felt that following directions really applied. Creating questions and presenting them can be done through a questionnaire, open-ended questions, video responses, or multiple choice. The important part is that you focus on one of these things each phase. If they pass, they move on to the next phase. After knockout questions, you might test for attention to detail, then responsibility. Think about times in your business where responsibility really stood out—an exemplary employee or a memorable situation—and create a question out of that. Maybe the next phase is empathy or nurture. You want to find people that are doing this job because their heart wants to, not because their wallet wants to. Being a pet sitter, especially in today’s gig economy, means you can’t expect someone to stay for one or two years anymore. That’s why it’s important to always have a funnel of new employees—to have that pipeline filled and to get them through that pipeline really fast, with just a click of a button, going through phases using JazzHR. I have yet to find another solution for hiring efficiently and fast than JazzHR. I know this sounds like I’m pushing it, and guess what? I am. Because I use them myself to find my own nanny and my own virtual assistants. I really believe in this program. If you want to spend your day trying to keep track of who you said what to and what stage they are in the interview, or if you’re just jumping straight to phone interviews without qualifying candidates, you are doing yourself a terrible disservice. So if you want to get serious about the interview process, please consider doing phases. And if you want to learn more, you definitely have two choices. One, go to jumpconsulting.net/jazzHR and get on a phone call with Abby and be like, “What is Bella squawking about?” Or two, join the mastermind with us. You can go along the journey as people test and refine their processes and achieve great success. Now, do they have success 10 out of 10 times? No. But what they do is collaborate, figure it out together, and share what’s working and what’s not. They are a community of doers. So if you want to do this, I suggest you join us—jumpconsulting.net/mastermind. I told you I’d keep this episode short and sweet. I wonder, do you like them when they’re longer, like a half hour, or do you like these bite-sized ones? Shoot me an email and let me know at [email protected]. Now is the time to hire. Now is the time to get your systems perfected and smoothed out so you can take on as much business as possible. The puppies from the pandemic and COVID kitties have increased the number of pet owners right now. More people are staying at home, which means they need you to walk their dogs so they can focus on Zoom calls. Your problem has changed. More businesses are shutting down, which means there’s more market share for you. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to let me help you through it? I hope so, because this excites me, as I hope it excites you. This has been another episode of Bella in Your Business. Remember, when life gets you down, always keep jumping. Do your phases, guys. Do your phases. Bye now. So what did you think? Did you love this episode? I sure hope you did because I put a lot of love into this for you. The best way you can show me that is by going to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcast and leaving a review.