How To Hire The Right Employee

Would you like to know how to hire the right employee and then how to retain them? Welcome to Hero TV! I’m Nate Woodbury, I’m here with Sydney Jacques. We’re going to talk about that Hey everybody! it’s Sydney Jacques. I’m excited to talk to you today about how to hire the right employee, and how to retain that employee once you have them. a long time ago, okay, about 20 years ago, I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing a man that was turning 103 years old. And in this interview, they were asking all kinds of questions. They’re saying what, “did you eat what?”, “what kind of vitamins did you take?”, “how much water did you drink?”, “what did you do for exercise?”, And this man I was listening to on the radio he said, “you know? I learned years, and years, and years ago, the secret to life. do you want to know what it is?” this is what he said, he said, “a long time ago I learned the secret to life is every day I get up, and I look out my window, and I say oh this is is just the kind of thing I was hoping for!” He said, because I learned on the outside sometimes it’s raining, sometimes it’s snowing, sometimes it’s windy, sometimes it is a beautiful bright sunny day, but I can’t control any of that.

The only thing that I can control is what’s on the inside and that’s me. So he said, what I learned many, many years ago, that is truly the biggest secret to living a long and healthy happy life is to just choose every morning when you get up to have a good attitude and I love that story and as I think about hiring new employees as I’ve done many times over the last 20 years in my business, that is the number one thing that I look for is, what attitude are they bringing to me? I can teach technical skills, I can teach customer service, I can teach them even how to work in a team, but to just start the day and have a great attitude and bring positivity to my team, that’s something that’s a lot harder to teach. So that is truly the number one thing that I look for. And as you’re interviewing, and as you’re getting to know people, it’s a little hard to figure out. One of the things that I’ve done is, if I choose someone to go on to a second interview, I actually make that a work meeting. Where they come in with my team and I ask them to spend two to three hours with us maybe it’s creating a proposal, maybe it’s putting together a plan for a project, but I want to know how do they interact with us? What kind of attitude are they bringing? What value do they have to add? So, attitude is something that I think that you just really need to figure out. What kind of attitude are they bringing to your team? because there’s a lot of things that you can teach but if they already come with a great attitude, then you’re far ahead. I remember when one of my older daughters was going to college, and she called me one day and she’d just gotten out of a class, and they called it something like current events and, and they had given all these statistics about all these kids that were graduating from college and they had all this debt ,and they couldn’t find jobs. And she was just depressed. She’s like, “oh what am I going to do?” and I said, “I promise you Megan, if you will continue to have the great attitude that you have and hone your communication skills, you will always find employment. You will always be successful in your career because attitude is truly more important than the other things that you can bring to the table. Alright. So, as once we get that employee and once we’d get the right employee, then we want to make sure that we can retain our employees and keep them with us for the long run. Right? So, on another episode of hero TV, I use this model as I talked about our company and how we gain more market share. Well, I want to use the same model again and talk about how we use it to retain the employees that we have. So this is a model that I call the 5s. And the first one that I’m going to talk about is food. Because the reality is, we all love food. Okay, you probably know by now I baked chocolate chip cookies for all of my clients meetings workshops. Last year, my staff and I baked over 20,000 chocolate chip cookies. Alright, so that’s my thing but when I have staff meeting, we have really great food in staff meeting. So, thinking of this in terms of “how do you retain your employees” maybe, it’s you know, some of the software companies around where we live, they have, you know, open kitchens full of food. Sometimes they offer free lunch. Some of the contractor that I work with, they have big summer parties. One of my favorite clients that I work with, they invite me to their summer party where we have Dutch oven cooking and fishing up in the mountains. I like that food. We always have to think about, where does the food fit into our culture? because it does make a difference to people. The second thing is freedom. So what kind of freedom can you give your employees? Now obviously it depends on you know what your work situations are.

But in this day and age with our electronics, we have so many more opportunities that we can allow people to maybe work from home at least part of the time or maybe we can allow them the freedom of choosing their work schedule. When I very first started work as an engineer, I was working up in the mountains surveying and designing campgrounds and I worked four 10-hour days and had a three-day weekend every week and I loved it. So, look at different options that you have and ask your employees, what kind of things could you do? maybe it’s even just staggering the start and the stop time to their day. Or the days of the week that they work. every business is different but this is something that I think you’ll be surprised if you actually open up this conversation with your employees and ask them, you know, are there ways that we could provide more freedom to you? more flexibility in your time? in your schedule? so that you will be more apt to want to stay here because we want you here. Alright, so I guess we’re jumping ahead to number five which is the future. We always want our employees to know that we intend to keep them here for the long run. We want them to be a part of our future. So how do we do that? I have one client that I’m working with and when they gave me a tour as a contractor and when they gave me a tour of their facility, they actually on their walls they have everyone that’s been there ten years or more. They have this big picture on the wall with the date that they came to work for the company and then it goes along. And you can see it’s amazing the longevity of the employees there. So, something that celebrates their anniversary, something that is increased benefits, the longer that they’ve been there. You have to figure out, what is it that will make them want to be a part of their future? and how do you communicate to them so that they know you want them to be a part of their future. Going back here, this which was number three, is fulfillment. How can you help your employees feel more fulfilled than the work that they’re doing with you? One of the things that we do in my company is we have four days a year that I pay my employees to go do volunteer service. Sometimes they choose projects and they go do it on their own, sometimes we work together as a team. We’ve done Habitat for Humanity projects. This last summer, we worked with the city that we live in and we donated date and we all went out and helped to build a new playground that’s designed to help children, the aring wheelchairs and have disadvantages physically. And, we had a great awesome day with all of our team working together. Find ways that you can fulfill them maybe even bring their families in to some of this. But volunteer service is something that bonds people together and helps them be excited about where they work four days a year a volunteer service. That’s a great perk. And, the last one that we’re going to talk about is financial. So of course, we all have to figure out if we want our employees to stay, we have to figure out what is a what is a competitive pay rate? what can we offer as far as benefits? but, one of the things that I learned from a client of mine is that, when they did year end bonuses, they encourage their employees to use that specifically for a vacation. Now, that could it be a vacation for you in a significant other, or vacation for your family. I adopted this and when we did our bonuses and I asked people I said, “I can’t tell you what you have to do with your money, but I strongly recommend that you take this money and instead of just using it to pay your utility bills and buy your groceries and you never really notice it was there, because it is extra bonus, set it aside and do something”. One of my families, they took all of their kids and grandkids to Disneyland, and Six Flags, Magic Mountain. Do you think they were happy for that bonus? and is that something that they’re going to remember back on the company? “Oh! everybody in that family loves our company” right? and so there’s different ways that we can use our financial rewards, but doing it in a way that helps them want to be a part of the future in your company. As we put all these things together, as you recruit the right employees, you find the ones that have the great attitude, and then you treat them well while they’re there. You’ll be able to recruit and retain quality employees and that will have a direct effect on your bottom line. So go to work, get it done and let me know how I can help you.

If you found this video helpful, make sure to LIKE and subscribe and thanks so much Sydney for sharing this wisdom with us. You can find out a lot more information about Sydney if you go down in the description below. Make sure to share your comments, ask any questions. And remember, to live on purpose, make a difference, and be the hero!