Charlotte Ward: 0:13
Hello and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Matt Dale to talk about hiring the right people. Hey Matt, welcome back. Lovely to see you again on the podcast so soon in 2022.
Matt Dale: 0:38
Likewise, Charles. It’s like when it rains, it pours. We get we get to hang out with each other, we get to talk about cool stuff. I love it. So thank you.
Charlotte Ward: 0:45
There is uh there there is nothing I like better than you know, uh a repeat visit from Matt in quick succession to see off the new year. Like we’re we’re in mid-February now already. I we’re definitely past the new year vibes. Um, but it still feels early enough. Like, you know, it’s it’s good to hang out, like, you know, and just yeah, accelerate towards spring, right?
Matt Dale: 1:09
The entire month of January, the Dale family was like sick, one one or while the other of us. So it still to me feels kind of like New Year because I’m still getting back to the swing of things. So yeah, it’s it’s it’s great to to be back and to have a conversation. And and I think talking about a topic that is maybe on some people’s minds, certainly on my mind, and I think it’s on your mind, and that’s really getting the right people on the team, working through the process to you know make sure that you you’re being fair, that you’re you’re looking for the right folks, you’ve got good, clear definitions of what you’re looking for, um, and going there. So I’m excited to talk about that today.
Charlotte Ward: 1:39
It is it and I think it is actually the time of year as well, a little bit where hiring conversations often come up because we we wrap up all of those like end-of-year reviews, we’ve done our planning, we’ve got our budget lined up, and we’re beginning to think about getting the job ads out there that we need for you know that next critical role, just to just to fill, you know, get get us off to the right start for what is like at this point still a relatively new year. So I think hiring comes up and it pops into our heads a lot one way or another this time of year.
Matt Dale: 2:11
Yeah, certainly.
Charlotte Ward: 2:12
Um, so how how do we get off on the right foot then when it comes to hiring? Like what’s even the first step?
Matt Dale: 2:20
Yeah, I think really having that understanding of of who you need, like what roles you’re looking for, and when you need those roles to start. And so I always kind of work backwards from my busy season. I’m an e-com right now. So, you know, the holiday sales cycle, um, when I was in in ed tech, uh it was a similar cycle. We had the back to school season. And I think a lot of industries have different areas where um there’s a busy season. So I I would start with that date. I would then work backwards from that and say, hey, how long does it take for someone to get useful on the team? And in some cases, it’s hey, that’s that might be a couple weeks. In other cases, um, at my previous gig, that was almost six months. And so being able to look at that and go, during this busy cycle, we think we’re gonna need X number of new agents. It takes Y number of days or weeks long to get them there. And then if so, we need to have them start on this particular day. And then and using that to kind of work back into um, okay, we need to have we need to have a job that’s posted around this time. It usually takes between, I don’t know, four to six weeks perhaps to to go through the hiring process. We need to add two weeks so they can give notice or other types of giving notice in other parts of the world um that you may be familiar with. Um and then and then and then we’ll say, okay, cool, like that’s that’s that’s our time frame that we’re going. When do we need to have a job description thought through? When do we need to start working with our HR teams or with our internal recruiters or external recruiters so that we can be able to hit those specific deadlines? And and again, often we find ourselves, like I was, I was talking today, um, we’re we’re trying to start uh July 1st is is the start date. We’ve got three new agents that we’re looking at hiring. Um that’s several months away, but when you start backing off, we’re like, oh, we really need to be posting that in in you know late April, early May to be able to hit that sort of a deadline. And so that’s really not that far away. Um so I I kind of like to think about it that way, starting with the with the dates we’re looking at, and then who do we like what’s the job description that we need to build for them?
Charlotte Ward: 4:11
I I I I love the idea of that in theory. I wish I could be that rigorous, Matt. You know, I uh I I I feel like again, going it like into planning at the end of the year or kicking off the new year, that I’ve got a day in mind. I know when I’m gonna need but do you know hiring just goes off the rails for all sorts of reasons. And with the best intentions, I find that I’m just not getting the right people in the pipeline. Or, you know, you get someone 90% of the way through the process and then they don’t accept the offer, or you know, it falls through for whatever reason they’ve been holding court with two potential employee employers or whatever. So, like I in my experience, I’m sorry to say, like being that deadline driven just never works for me. And I feel like listening to you, I’m doing something wrong.
Matt Dale: 5:07
If I can’t if you can’t, I don’t know about something wrong, but I I really think it’s it’s really um I think it’s like you know, the you’ve got all the great plans until you get punched in the face, right? Like the, you know, like the I I think there’s kind of an element there where I like to start with the plan if I can and and build in enough time so that when stuff does go sideways, um, I’m able to then still work through it. But but I agree. I sometimes it’s very difficult to find the right people or to um or like you said, they you’ve got a perfect candidate and they take another gig at another job. And you know, it it it doesn’t work out. Um but again, I always I always like to start with that. What do I absolutely need? Build in enough buffers so that I’m not in in tough shape if I can help it, and then be ready for it to go completely sideways and kind of figure it out.
Charlotte Ward: 5:51
So yeah, I mean, I guess you’re right. The other thing I suppose is a lot depends on on two other things is it the the type of role you’re hiring for, you know, the experience required, the tech technical or or any other like part of the profile, but but also how many roles you’re hiring for as well. I suppose if you’re hiring for a a peak season and you’re hiring three or four or ten or whatever, that um you’re gonna have a really active pipeline. So the the impact of one person dropping out is pretty um, you know, the the proportionally it’s uh less impact.
Matt Dale: 6:28
Yeah, and again, I think that’s part of the planning process that I would say. Like assess your role and understand is this gonna be a unicorn we’re looking for? Um, or is this a cohort of, you know, I think one time I started 12 people in the same day. It was all customer service, frontline role. Um, we had a process that was really good for onboarding. Um, we were working with a pretty good team internally on our recruiting. Um, for whatever reason, like things were just really humming, and we hit 12 without like we were kind of aiming somewhere between eight and 15, and we hit 12 that seemed like good ones, and like let’s go. And so I but I think understanding that is really key. Uh and and maybe that’s the step before you look at the timeline, although I think the timeline is important. Really going, what is this role we’re looking for? How does this role fit into our overall plan? Maybe the step before too is making sure you’ve got sign-offs from senior leadership. You know, is is the CFO feeling okay about what you think you need? Have you had that conversation about these are the levels of service that we’ll be able to deliver if we have this particular headcount? If we have less than that headcount, then the level of service is gonna drop. Where do we as an organization want to be on that? And you know, I’ve been at private equity-backed companies where it’s like what provide the least level of service you can without customers leaving. Um, that’s what they that would that was the stomach they had for hiring new people. And so we provided service that was less than I would have liked, but it met that particular requirement. So understand, I think, the business environment that you’re in. Make sure you’ve been advocating to your boss or to the senior leadership. Or if you’re serving on senior leadership to your peers, making sure that you’ve got a clear idea of what you need, where where you’re going to be going from an uh increase in ticket perspective, what other resources, if you’ve implemented a new AI bot that you know be reasonable, is this gonna be really helpful or not? But like think through how much people we really need, why do we need them, answer all those questions, um, work back on the timeline, and then and then kind of go, yeah, is this is this a unicorn role where we’re gonna we’re gonna take six months to find the right person because it’s really important to do that, or is this a is this a role that’s a little bit more standardized and we can face from a pool with a lot of fish in it, um that’s gonna be an easier process.
Charlotte Ward: 8:34
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, how predictable it is, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I I think the other thing that strikes me listening to you is is, you know, in terms of like the predictable nature and then the likelihood of things going off the rails mid-process for any number of reasons is contingency planning. Because when things are very, very predictable, you perhaps don’t need to contingency plan. But when things go sideways, it’s worth understanding what your options are. I mean, I’ve certainly been in situations, for instance, where I’ve got all of my ducks in a row. I’ve got, you know, budget, I’ve got timelines, I’ve got great onboarding, I’ve got a plan for staffing that means I need to hire three people at this point. And then for whatever reason, it’s just not, it’s just not happening, you know? And it’s something that like you you read the clues in the process and and understanding that you might have to play other cards because you can’t stay three down or whatever forever, right? You actually have to have a plan B in some cases as well. I think that’s super important. And in that case, it was okay, I’m gonna hire two, I’m gonna refactor the role to be a more senior one, you know, and I’m gonna hire two instead of three. And this is my alternate plan. I’m gonna have to start again on a bit of a pipeline, I’m gonna have to get everything signed off again, I’m gonna have to make my case. Why didn’t I even justifying why this wasn’t my plan first time round, you know? But but uh but the contingency, like I think like being really connected to the market and your needs, and that’s a little bit, it’s a little bit of an art rather than a science, but but contingency planning for me is like something I always have in the back of my mind, even if I haven’t written it down.
Matt Dale: 10:21
Yeah, I I think that’s really important, and I think there’s another element that you talked about there that is is helpful, and that is being able to be flexible when the situation changes. Um and sometimes going through the process of the hiring process, you realize this isn’t what I thought I needed. Um I was working with one of my uh actually one of my my my main gig right now. Um, and I I envisioned a support I oversee our business analytics team. And there really isn’t a team yet. I’m I’m I’m building it all out. And I had a role that we’d define and that I’d set out, and it was pretty broad in that it was it was database admin, uh doing API things as well as building reports. And it was very easy to find people that can build reports, and it was a little harder finding people that were gonna do database admins, but to find that in one role, what as I was going through the process, I realized that this isn’t what this isn’t gonna work. You know, like that the person I’m looking for out here doesn’t actually exist. And I ended up completely kind of I pressed pause, I worked with my HR partner. Um, we ended up going with an outside consultant, a contractor, to do the building work, and probably in another month or two, um, we’re gonna be hiring a business analyst that’s a much lower level business analyst because we’re gonna have we have this beautiful database uh that that the guy’s building and that and he’s gonna be in the picture here to kind of maintain. But this thing that I thought was one role is really turned out it’s working better for us as two roles, and and one of the roles isn’t even a full-time permanent role. And so being open to that. And again, I think if you’re in the I’m looking at CSRs, I’m looking at customer service people, like those those agent roles, you may not have that flexibility, but as you look at some of the other roles that might require a little bit more seniority, might require a little bit more special skills. I think being open to learning and and and shifting and changing as it happens, being being flexible in that case, and realizing, hey, the process itself is helping me refine what I think I need, I think is a really good place to be. And it’s something that, again, it’s where I’m talking about, hey, we gotta have the plan, gotta have the boop, boop, boop, boop all lined up. That’s not necessarily always working when when it when it when it comes in the real world. And if I focus so much on holding tightly to that plan or even the contingency plan that I’ve made, I’m not looking at all of the options that might be out there to you know solve the problem that I’m trying to solve from a business perspective.
Charlotte Ward: 12:35
Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s like using being open to using that process, even though we all know hiring is expensive just in in terms of running the process and everything, but uh it’s time consuming uh, you know, um, not just for you, usually, usually you’re you know consuming other resources across the business. It’s like being willing to learn from it and being willing to pitch the change of direction to the rest of the business who actually might feel slightly disheartened. You know, you committed to this plan, you’ve got HR out there, we’ve written the role, you’re running ads, we’re you know, you’ve got pe other people in the business fielding resumes for you and whatnot, and suddenly you change direction, you know, it’s kind of but being willing to say, you know what, I’m I’m adjusting because um I I I think I think you have to like carry the confidence to to have that conversation and not just stick rigidly for the sake of it. Um what is the um in your experience while we’re talking about things going off the rails? I’m I’m so sorry, I feel like I took this conversation off the rails because we we started we started, I believe, um thinking that we were gonna talk about hiring the right people and like your lovely predictable process. And I feel I just very quickly said, what if things go wrong? But but in your experience, what things have sort of caught you by surprise in hiring? What has taken the process off the rails?
Matt Dale: 14:03
I think there are a lot of different things that can take the process off the rails. Uh first off, the the biggest one is really finding the right people. Um when we think about the hiring process, we’re saying, Oh, I’m gonna hire someone on this date during this time frame. You’re really only looking at a very small segment of the workforce, and that’s the ones that have to be looking for a job that week that you’ve posted the thing. And a lot of times, you know, in this modern day, you put a job up and you’ve got 250 applicants in the first day or two. Um and so I think there’s an element there where sometimes we limit ourselves because we’re only looking at this pool at this particular period of time. Um and I’m not and in in some cases that’s fine, like you’ve got a good candidate and it’s okay. But if you’re looking for those more specific worlds where it’s like, hey, this is support married with a developer that has experience, you know, decoding APIs, okay. That that that person may not exist the week you’re looking for the job. And so I think being open to kind of, hey, we went through the list of the people and and we’re gonna we’re gonna push the start date because because we didn’t find someone that we’re really thinking is gonna meet our needs. Maybe we need to look at the role again and refactor it. Maybe we need to just, you know, try a different fishing hole. Maybe we need to fish on a different day, whatever that may be. I think I think that’s an area that hiring can go badly. And and from my experience, when I get worried about that, oh, I’ve got to hit this specific date, or I’ve got to, you know, if I don’t have these people by this date, then we’re not I that puts me in a position of fear, and that position of fear makes me sometimes make a decision on a person that might not be a great fit or a good fit because I’m worried about having someone in that spot. And I think that’s that’s an important thing to try to avoid if you can. Um, because you don’t want to, you’re you’re disrupting someone else’s life, whether they’ve got a job or not when they’re taking yours. Um, and you’re disrupting a lot of effort and time onboarding that person um only to find out that they may not fit, you know, several months down the road. So I think that’s probably the biggest area where things can kind of go awry is is getting worried, not finding the right candidates, and then settling with someone that you’re just not feeling is going to be a great fit.
Charlotte Ward: 16:05
Yeah, yeah. I think I think we can all honestly say we’ve done that, right? We’ve all we’ve all hired some enthusiastic nodding at least.
Matt Dale: 16:15
Yes, yes, yes. Enable them all on several hands, you know, yeah.
Charlotte Ward: 16:20
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and and it’s always disappointing when that happens. And you know, I I sort of think to your point, there’s a there’s a moment where you think, oh no, this isn’t working two, three, four months in, and you have to introspect a little, but you also have to be quite forgiving because you can’t we are we are human as hiring managers and uh it’s other humans we’re dealing with at every aspect at the stage. And you know, hire hiring is limited in what it can reveal to you about a person and and the the fit and everything else. And actually only getting people in to do the role really tells you the full story sometimes, right?
Matt Dale: 17:04
I I think that’s a really important point to underscore for our audience. Um I have a boss and he’s firmly like in his heart, he believes if he puts together the perfect questions to ask in an interview and the perfect process to walk someone through, that person will be a good fit and it will work well. And I I I fundamentally disagree with that position. Um and we’ve had respectful conversations about it back and forth. We’re friends and we can we can have those conversations. But he’s like, if we just got it better, it would be better. And we’re like version 14 of the of the questions. Um I think that we’re dealing with humans, and humans are messy things, and we’re all putting our best foot forward. We’re trying to sell them on the idea of working with us. We’re trying to discern if they’re a person that would be a good fit for the role. They’re putting on their absolute best perspective and they’re they’re projecting, like it’s it’s first date kind of a situation, and there’s a very limited time frame that we have to really assess who they are and what they’re doing. I I very much think it’s helpful to have a consistent process um for a specific role so that you can ask the same questions of several candidates and you can get a good baseline and an understanding, will this person be a to the best of our ability be a good fit? I I I I so I I can’t underscore how important that is to have. Um that being said, there’s also an element of of humanity there. And sometimes you think you you’ve got a good idea for someone and and they show up, and that’s not what that’s not who they actually are. And and as hiring managers, we can get down and I I can get really depressed kind of thinking about that because I put all this effort in and I thought they were gonna be so great, and they’re not. And again, reflect on that experience. Were there better questions that I could have asked? Is there something other that I could have done in this case that would have helped me? But then also we’re dealing with human beings, it’s messy, and we’re not gonna get it perfect every time. So we’re not looking for a hundred percent. I’d say 60, 70% if you’re batting that, like you’re you’re doing pretty well um as a hiring manager once you start doing serious numbers.
Charlotte Ward: 18:54
So yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn’t agree more. The first date comparison is an interesting one because when you said that, I thought, you know, we’ve all been on those first dates uh many, many years ago, you know, where one or certainly for both of us, uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. For lots of reasons. So yeah.
Matt Dale: 19:10
Um, but we’ve all I’ve given up about 20 years this year for our for our wedding. So yeah, I’ve been I’ve been a married man for quite a while now.
Charlotte Ward: 19:17
Mine is 19. Mine is 19 today, actually.
Matt Dale: 19:20
Happy anniversary. That’s that’s lovely. You’re choosing to spend with me rather than well, it’s late.
Charlotte Ward: 19:25
They’ve all gone to bed, you know.
Matt Dale: 19:26
So the benefit of being on different time zones and different continents.
Charlotte Ward: 19:30
100%, 100%. Um, but the first date uh analogy was such a uh um a strong one for me because uh as you said that I was thinking those people that we bring in where it doesn’t work out, I sort of feel like we brought those people in out of excitement or desperation, and like that’s where so many first dates have gone, right? Yeah, for sure.
Matt Dale: 19:54
Yeah, we are we coming from a place of fear, are we coming from a place of you know, doing our best and understanding? And and I think relationships are that way. We’re human and some work well and they’re 19 or 20 years in, and others are are you know, they don’t make it that long. And yeah, yeah, like a good relationship, I think working with someone also involves a lot of work, good communication and developing some of those skills and and things like that we’re looking at for the other person. So that there probably are more analogies to hiring and and dating than than I’ve thought about before.
Charlotte Ward: 20:26
Yeah, and maybe that we probably don’t want to explore too much at depth, but I think they definitely are there. And it’s on both sides to your point. Like we’re in on a first date and and in the hiring process, everyone is putting their best foot forward. And um yeah, when you when things get messy four months in, six years in, whenever it may be, like you couldn’t you couldn’t necessarily predict that because we’re we’re all human at the end of the day.
Matt Dale: 20:51
In in positive news, at least with a work relationship, um, there aren’t children. Uh so if the divorce happens and you need to part for their they need to leave or you need to leave, like that that that that is less disruptive, I think, than perhaps our relationships. But I think it’s a good thing to kind of keep in mind that you know we’re dealing with human beings and human beings grow and change and and are messy. I always, in my interviews, in fact, I had had one today we were interviewing a gentleman for a full stack web developer, and I just said, hey, as we start this off, I’m on this side of the table and I’m trying to decide if you’re a good fit for our company, but I want you to have the flexibility and the freedom to ask questions because you’re trying to decide is this a good fit for your career? And it has to be that benefit for both parties. If if the person on the other side is running away from the bad job or they’re they’re unemployed and they’re just looking desperately for something to bring to pay the bills, that’s okay, that’s okay. Like that’s human and we’re we’re there. Um, and that’s a normal that that’s a it’s a valid reason to be trying to get a new job. But if if we can get past that point and go, hey, is this actually going to be a good fit for us in the in the short and maybe medium term? Long term it’d be great, but if not short and medium, like are we gonna be able to meet each other’s needs well? Is this gonna fit who you are as a human being? This role, this job, or is it going to be causing you frustration? Like if both parties are trying to be honest about that, I think we have a decent chance of getting to someone that is reasonably a good fit. So I always try to look at it as both ways. It’s not just me getting something out of someone, but it’s their looking to see what can they get from me and from my company.
Charlotte Ward: 22:18
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And that op giving them that opportunity to ask questions is I think super critical in to your point, helping them understand how good a fit the organization is for them. Um it it does make me a little bit frustrated though. I always give that space to ask questions, and almost nobody has questions. And there’s only so much you can predict about how how people view you or what you feel they need to know or should know about your organization and the team they’re gonna be joining and what a working day is like. You can only give so much, but they do have to have the confidence to pull. So I suppose my last piece of advice to anyone looking and and going through a process with any organization right now would be ask questions. No interviewer is not gonna listen and want to answer any questions because we are all trying to make it successful.
Matt Dale: 23:14
And in fact, to that point, like I think interviewers appreciate the questions because we’re trying to see, you know, is this gonna work? And yeah, so I always grade people higher based on the types of good questions we have. Don’t ask stupid ones, don’t the the basics that are already covered several times. Like that, that’s not what we’re we’re not don’t check the box with the question, but use the question time to to really dig in and go, hey, what is it like here? Why why do you actually like working here? What do you think, what do you think would make me successful if I’m here? What are the what are the skills you’re looking for? Um you know, what what does a day look like? What what do my coworkers look like? How how how would we work well with them? There’s a ton of really interesting questions that again, as an interviewer, I would love to be asked and and have a chance to answer because I want to share who who I am, who my company is, and why you’d want to work here. Um yeah, I think there’s a great point here up.
Charlotte Ward: 24:00
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, um, thank you so much for joining me. Uh and uh I think there’s some really interesting points here, and I know we’re gonna talk at some point again, probably in the quite near future, and we’ll we’ll talk about um hiring again at some point. I feel like you and I have had different conversations over the years on hiring and uh all aspects of it, and that there’s there’s always more thread to pull. So um come back, talk a bit more about this, maybe about onboarding. I feel like that’s the next you mentioned that a few times, and I think it’s a really uh, particularly in the current landscape with AI and things like that, some really interesting opportunities. So let’s have that conversation and many, many more to come. But thank you so much for joining me today, Matt.
Matt Dale: 24:43
I look forward to being here again. It’s a pleasure joining you. Have a good one and happy anniversary.
Charlotte Ward: 24:48
Thank you so much. Thanks. Let’s talk soon. That’s it for today. Go to customer supportleaders.com forward slash 290 for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.
