Rick Girard 11:58
So so your key thing would be content learning? What are the measurables behind that? So like, I break it down into what are measurables? Like, what are the attributes that people possess that display that behavior, right? So it might be it might be learning, right? So you might say something like, tell me about the last thing you taught yourself. Hmm. Right. Yeah. And, and then let them start to get into it and tell you about that experience.
John Corcoran 12:29
Right. And one person might say, I can’t remember the last thing. And the other might say, actually, I decided that I really wanted to learn trombone. And so I started I taught myself last month.
Rick Girard 12:39
Yeah. Okay. Wow, that’s, that’s really interesting. Tell me more how that work.
John Corcoran 12:42
Yeah, I go, like went on YouTube or hired a tutor, trainer or whatever.
Rick Girard 12:47
Exactly. Yeah. First, I was watching, you know, the symphony. And I was watching these people. I got really inspired. And then, yeah, I went on YouTube. And I saw like, there’s these three people that teach trombone. And so I went in, and I rented a trombone for a little while to see if I would like it, brought it back. I committed myself to doing lessons for two hours a day, every day. And you know, so you see a progression of commitment that they put into it. Yeah, that’s really cool. And that’s all that’s all really good evidence that tells you how somebody is going to operate within your company. That’s far more valuable than Do you have three years of this and four years of that.
John Corcoran 13:24
Mm hmm. Tell us about the now first of all, I want to ask about the book. What inspired you to put this all down into a book, actually start with a book first, and then we’ll talk about the software. So, okay, so you you can you’ve decided to put it into a book. There’s so many books that have been written about hiring, what made you feel that there weren’t enough or that you had to put this out into the world in a book.
Rick Girard 13:51
So first off, there’s million books about hiring, but very few books about interviewing, like, and so the, the main reason was, I don’t scale. And I’m, like, nothing but I’m super passionate about startups and startups succeeding. And I since I don’t scale, and there’s millions of startups out there, the easiest way to kind of get my message out there and give people the tools that they can be successful on hiring, by owning the interview, was to write the book. And you know, so the book is called Healing Career Wounds. And the idea behind it is, that’s the punch line for how you land superior talent. That’s a punch line on how you attract really stellar people. If you can heal their career wounds, then they’re going to they’re going to forego, like the money because you’re giving them some more like a lot more value of what it is they’re looking to get another career, then where they are an hour or whatever. Anybody else can give,
John Corcoran 14:53
like career ones like previous Yeah, career stops that have no
Rick Girard 14:59
yeah, there’s It sucks out there that like, almost 70% of people that are in roles are disengaged, they’re like, you know, they might be right person wrong seat. They may be wrong person wrong seat, who knows, but they’re just not fully engaged in the work they’re doing. And as a recruiting professional, like I call people all the time, and I recruit them. And, you know, the biggest thing that I hear is, yeah, you know, what, I don’t really have a place to grow, I’m bored of the work that I’m doing. You know, just the content skinny, I want to work on something else, I want to be able to do that I can’t do that here. I’m, you know, I’m position it’s limiting, you know, I might have a bad boss, or, you know, some changes corporately that happen. It’s usually the growth, leadership, and content of the work. Those are the big three that I see. And sometimes it’s a combination of all three. And so, you know, again, high performers aren’t actively out there looking most of the time. So if I can identify kind of what their challenge is, and match it with what your opportunity is, and it becomes a much easier reason for that person to to make a move to your organization.
John Corcoran 16:10
What have you said to your sorry, finish your thought? And then what have you said to your clients, in the last couple of years, and we’re recording this in October 2022. And there’s a there’s definitely kind of a downturn in the market, people are predicting recession, but his you know, over the last three years, or something, it’s been a very competitive marketplace, has been the great resignation, people are talking about a lot of people changing. I’m sure you’ve had some clients who said to you, oh, Rick, this is all right. And good, that’s cool that you have this system and everything, but we’re having a hard time getting people, we can’t mess around with really hard, challenging hiring process. We just need to get people what What have you said to them about
Rick Girard 16:53
that? Yeah, you’re not gonna get people. So like, you know, the, the current, the current systems that people use, are set up to basically screen out the top 10% And the bottom 10%. So you’re not getting the high performers that are joining your company, most of the time, you you’re probably, if you’re like most companies you’re posting on Indeed, you’re putting up your little hurdles, so that, you know, like, you got to do this, you got to do these things before we’ll talk to you. And by the way, we’re not in a market where like, those hurdles really are effective, like, in attracting really strong talent, most strong talent are gonna be like, No, I’m not gonna go do that. I don’t even know who your company is. You’re not Amazon, you know, you’re not your XYZ Corporation. I’ve never heard of you, and I really don’t care. And so the attitude has shifted quite a bit. And the high performers are like, well, you know, I’ll just kind of wait until the right thing taps me on the shoulder, and I’ll go to that. So people peace out real real quickly. And, you know, you’re also in a position right now to where there are companies that are kind of scaling back a little bit, and they’re getting rid of their bottom performers, right. So you’re gonna have a flux of people that were wrong person, wrong seat that are out there, but they may or may not be right for your company. But they obviously weren’t right for that company, for whatever reason, right. And so now, it’s even more critical that if you are hiring, that you get a players on board, because it’s going to keep your high performers engaged. If you start down hiring, that’s where it becomes very dangerous, because it drives out your top performers. And then your boss, like your, your, your other people that join who aren’t as productive as everybody else start down hiring even more. So then, you know, the demise of your company. Yeah, could potentially happen at that point.
John Corcoran 18:50
So as to the point you made about hurdles, putting up hurdles. So, you know, requiring people to you know, do a test before when they apply or fill out a lot of information and stuff like that sounds like you’re not a fan of doing those things. No,
Rick Girard 19:04
not at all. No.
John Corcoran 19:06
So it sounds like active recruitment of a players is what you’re advocating.
Rick Girard 19:14
Yeah, bet I mean, look at you can still get great people off postings, I made a placement a few months ago off of a posting from LinkedIn. So it’s like, you know, it does, it does happen. You just got to be able to post in the right place. And, you know, the way that the way in which you posts or the way you know, keep in mind the, as you post a job, it’s a marketing doc. So, you know, treat it like it’s a marketing tool, as opposed to like, you know, you must have this and, you know, most job descriptions are just terribly, you know, compliant focused, and they don’t attract talent by
John Corcoran 19:52
So, what is the the way to articulate those posts? What are your some of your tips behind You know, articulating, in a marketing way, the posts that you put out there that’s going to attract a players?
Rick Girard 20:07
Well, if you think about it, who do you want to get? Right? So to me, if I’m posting, I want to get that person who goes home late, like on a Thursday night and goes, God, I should just see what’s out there. Like, just check out what’s on the market, not really looking. But you know, just passively looking. And there’s a lot of people who do this, right? So I want to capture that person. So how do I capture that person? Well, first I need to identify, you know, I need to identify with them, I need to I open up with like a, like a, you’re probably feeling like, you know, you’re, you’re in a place where you’re stuck, or, you know, you can’t really grow, or you’re feeling under appreciated or something like that. Because I want I want them to understand that I understand them. Right. And if they think that I’m speaking to them, which I am, then they’re gonna keep reading on. So I don’t open up with anything that has to do with Hey, look at, we’re great. You know, we’re the X, you know, we have we have these founders and this money, and, you know, we’ve been doing this bunch of business, you know, you do the exact opposite of what everybody else is doing, and you get really good people. And then at the end of it, you know, we actually put a call to action on there. So if if you’re interested, don’t send us a resume, answer these three questions and send me an email. And the people who are engaged at that point, are the ones who think about it, they send an email with, with some well thought out answers. And those are the ones that you end up hiring, and you just kind of put a filtering system in place that made it really easy for you to attract people, you know, you want to attract the people are gonna thrive in your environment and repel the people that are not. Mm hmm.
John Corcoran 21:57
I want to ask you also about how you got the foreword. So there’s a great story. You got Gino Wickman, who’s the author of a number of different books best selling author of Traction. I got one of his books right here. Yeah. You know, he’s had 10s of 1000s of businesses that have gone through his EOS. Yep, Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. Lots of fans, you cold called him and got him to write your introduction to the book. That’s so amazing.
Rick Girard 22:24
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, so the, the system that I’ve run, I’ve been part of companies are running us. And so I’m a huge EOS fan. And one of the things that I was thinking I was looking at, we talk a lot about, you want to hire people to get it, want it and have the capacity to do the work, Gino’s where it’s right. But we don’t tell people how, in the interview to identify whether or not people get it wanted or have the capacity to do the work. Now, there are some methodologies that have been out there for like years and years, that, you know, probably work but they don’t really tie to your corporate values deep enough. So you can get close. It’s kind of like, you know, you have a target on the barn wall, you just throw it, you’re hitting the wall. So you’re close, but like, you know, that’s never been good enough for me, I always wanted to hit the target. So I just called Gino and said, Hey, look at this is what we’re doing. We’re solving for for EOS customers. Were teaching them how to interview effectively. And and it was kind of funny, because he’s like, Well, you know, I don’t really write forwards that much. And I go, Well, let me send you the manuscript. Take a look at it. If it resonates with you. Great. And if it doesn’t, that’s fine, too. And a week later, I got an email back. He’s like, Okay, I’ll do the foreword. So I was celebrating, you know, yeah, my wife and I were like, Let’s go have steak. We don’t even eat meat.
John Corcoran 23:51
That’s funny. I didn’t ask you this at the beginning of the interview. But you I’m fascinated by kids who grew up with parents as entrepreneurs. Maybe in part because I’m a parent. And so I think about these things, but you grew up and your father was an entrepreneur. Talk a little bit about what he did and, and how that influenced you for good or for
Rick Girard 24:17
bad. You know, so I think my dad was, so I don’t know, if he was really an entrepreneur. He was more of a, like a really good salesman that worked for himself. So it was kind of like more of a solopreneur. And he went from it was kind of funny, because when I was a child, he was like a pool man in Beverly Hills. And I remember like, going in, like, you know, I go with him and his route because I wanted her money. So like you have you hose out filters and stuff like that. And he did these, you know, enormous. I actually Kareem Abdul Jabbar was one of his clients at one point. So, um, And then and then he kind of sold that business and decided to go into like be a used car wholesaler, which to me like was the most fascinating. Like, I mean, and kind of demoralizing business in the world because you’re like sending you just you’re begging for cars to buy cars. And you’re buying buying
John Corcoran 25:22
groups of cars and selling them to other to Carlisle. Yeah.
Rick Girard 25:26
Okay, so he would buy he buy cars from dealerships mainly trade ins. And he had a couple of dealerships that he worked with really closely, they would sell them all our cars and stuff like that. And then you turn around and sell him and then like, you know, he he’d employ like, all of our friends, like, as we were growing up to either detail the cars, or or like move the cars to different locations, like he’d already have some sold. You know, in the end, he was dealing like, pretty high volume, and you know, some cash buyers and some other things. So it was kind of an interesting, it was kind of an interesting business. I got really tired of driving the cars around. So I remember I was like, Well, let me detail the cars for you. And we had this neighbor across the street who used to own to own a car lot. And he saw me like detailing with the, you know, the buffer and stuff. He goes, he goes, You’re nuts. He goes, let me teach you a little trick. He goes get WD 40 and spray it on the car and wipe it over you guys Mix Paint shot, le say cut down our time to like, you know, we’d spend like two or three hours on a car, we cut it down to like 20 minutes. Nice. That’s funny. Never let my dad know that why? He’ll probably hear it on this.
John Corcoran 26:41
What did you learn about sales from him?
Rick Girard 26:45
God, you know, he was just persistent. And that guy could sell an ice cube to an Eskimo like, no, he was in a transactional. Like he used to say that too. That was his saying but you know, he was in a transactional world. It’s all about kind of, you know, I’ll do a favor for you. You sell me the cars. And so I just I by watching him I learned, you know, just how to have tenacity and not take no for an answer and keep going until you get what you want.
John Corcoran 27:13
Yeah, yeah. Has a very different switch to go from pool sales to wholesale car sales. That’s a major.
Rick Girard 27:21
Yeah, yeah. Or being a pool man like he was. He was like, you know, he was the guy doing the doing. Skimming the pools and doing all the work. Yeah, it’s
John Corcoran 27:31
funny. I grew up in Southern California and Calabasas area, and a lot of kids would go into that that was kind of like a very entrepreneurial area, because everyone has piles. Everyone needs clean pools to be cleaned. Yeah, that’s funny. I grew up in Agoura Hills. Okay, small world. Yeah, we’re neighbors. Yeah, exactly. So tell me about now your software entrepreneur, because you’re taking these principles and turning them into a platform. I played around with a lot of different platforms, we onboard with JazzHR, which is applicant tracking system? Yeah, there’s different platforms out there, some of which incorporate video and stuff. Talk about the vision behind it.
Rick Girard 28:07
Yeah. So you know, there’s a gap and ATS systems, basically, I mean, all it does is it tracks this, like the the interview through it doesn’t actually run the interview. So that was one of the things that I noticed was that, you know, there are some tools out there that you can do, I mean, you can just use Zoom, and you can conduct an interview, right. But there’s nothing out there that kind of ensures that, that interviews that are being conducted without bias, without assumptions and without personal motives, and gathering evidence. So I took a lot of the, the, the hiring operating system that I developed, and essentially, like put that into a platform combined with AI to ensure that like the number one, giving people coaching to make sure that they’re extracting the right data, but also, you know, testing, hey, there’s an inconsistency here in the data that you’re getting. So we need to dig a little bit deeper. And so we just launched that two weeks ago, we’re in beta, and we’ve got our first 10 clients that are like, you know, working through our beta. And we got to weightless which is great of customers once we once we go live. And is it
John Corcoran 29:21
I’m picturing kind of like a Cyrano de Bergerac type of thing where you kind of like have someone in your ear whispering. The AI is kind of saying like, Oh, no, asked his follow up question. Is that kind of the vision behind it? You know, you didn’t dig enough here?
Rick Girard 29:36
No, it’s kind of Yeah, it’s not it’s not so much that the questions are actually on on like being fed to you on the on the video feed as the conversations going, you’re making a decision, each question at a time. Yes, this is a thumbs up or a thumbs down. So as you go through, you’re able to kind of check those boxes. We’re capturing real time data feedback so that, you know, you’re also taking notes. And you’re saying, hey, like, you know, this is what the person said. Here’s where it aligns. Again, again, we’re trying to, we’re trying to get people in the mode of making decisions. Not based on gut feel, because gut feel is wrong most of the time. Yeah.
John Corcoran 30:24
We tend to hire people that we like, personally, but might not be a good fit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Rick Girard 30:29
I’ve done it a million times. I’ve hired people that I was a guy. You know, you do jujitsu, I did jujitsu. We shouldn’t, like we should work together, you know, because we have a commonality. And that’s just wrong. I mean, that that’s a benefit if you guys enjoy those same things, but as long as they align with your core values, your company. But you know, there’s probably somebody else better out there. Who you could have interviewed who you pass it on, because you didn’t see it.
John Corcoran 30:57
Yeah, yeah. What about? You mentioned earlier that Amazon, you found that they hire more for core value fit than they do for skills fit? Yeah. What is the breakdown between those two? In other words, how much should employers think about fit for skills and fit for core values? Is it 5050? Is it 7030? Does it depend on the role?
Rick Girard 31:20
Yeah, I believe it’s something like, I haven’t worked at Amazon. But like, what I’ve read, I believe it’s like 70% of the hiring decision is based on whether or not people align with their, what they call their leadership principles, which are core to their core values. Yeah. And the other in I’ve heard Bezos say that, essentially, you can teach people skills, you just can’t teach people values. And, you know, if you hire for values to you don’t have problems, like diversity, or inclusion, or any of these other things that are hot topics right now, because, you know, values kind of transcend every other. Like, you know, everything else. You either have the values you don’t, it doesn’t matter, your skin color, or sex or whatever else. Right, right.
John Corcoran 32:09
I remember I met someone who had worked at Amazon, who was working at Amazon, he was at Amazon, I think, at a minimum at a conference, and he was talking about this time about that Amazon has, I think 14 core values. And I was like 14 Corvette? Wow, that seems like a lot. Don’t you know, isn’t usually last year, like now we have 14 core values. And he’s like, and I bet every single Amazon employee can recite all 14. And I said, prove it to me. And like, pull out a piece of paper. Give him 10 Is it right about and he sat there? And he didn’t think about them a little bit, but he wrote them all out all 14 I was really impressed. But yeah,
Rick Girard 32:41
yeah. I mean, they use it as a decision making tool. I think they’re number one is customer obsession, right. So you know, and they ask you interview questions. And it’s your responsibility to demonstrate that you are customers obsessed. Yeah. And, you know, it’s now it’s funny. Now, there’s like, you know, all kinds of people out there coaching all this for you. So, yeah, like, Okay, you’re gonna get this question. This is how you ask answer it. Right, right.
John Corcoran 33:05
Yeah. Well, this has been great. Rick, I want to wrap up with the question that I always ask, which is my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of expressing gratitude, especially those who’ve helped you along the way. Yeah, a lot of people will tend to mention family and friends. And that’s fine. But I’d also love to hear about, you know, peers and contemporaries and maybe other recruiters who have helped you along the way it sounds like you learned a lot from your dad, you learned a lot from Gino who would you want to
Rick Girard 33:32
acknowledge? Gosh, you know, actually, I my, my first kind of real boss that I have is guy named Chuck pillow. So I did a stint where I was like, wanting to be a professional photographer, and he had a studio. And, you know, he was probably the most fair and fun boss that I ever worked with. And I just remember like, he left a lasting impression on me from the perspective of like, I wanted to emulate him as I became, you know, a leader.
John Corcoran 34:07
Interesting, the lasting impact that that has for you. Even though you haven’t been a photographer, your your focus. Yeah,
Rick Girard 34:15
yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Um, and I think the other, like, if I forgot to do too, I mean, the other kind of impactful piece for me was, you know, I had a stint when, you know, a lifetime ago when I lived in Hawaii, where I met some people in this gonna sound super controversial, but the pickup artists community and there were some things that I learned from them there were very fascinated and made me start thinking about how people make decisions from a from a primal perspective, and I think I really appreciated kind of being exposed to that community there’s a lot of slime Enos to it but but some of the some of the techniques and some of the things that I learned just how people operate, you know in the primal brain was really impactful to how I evolved as a human.
John Corcoran 35:18
Yeah and Neil Strauss’s book The Game is really kind of a book that kind of brought a lot of those issues out and kind of talked about them. Well, this has been great, Rick. So tell us about where can people go to learn more about you? Hire Power Radio is the podcast, Healing Career Wounds is the name of the book. The new software company tell us? Where can people go?
Rick Girard 35:42
Yeah, so the new company is called Intertru, it’s intertru.ai. You can go to the website right now. We’re if you if you’re interested, and you want to run an interview platform built around your core values, sign up, send us an email, we’re building our waitlist, we’d love to talk to you about it. So Hire Power Radio, it’s not a religion show. By the way. It’s Hire Power Radio. And we broadcast live every tuesday at noon. And you can get the book on Amazon, Healing Career Wounds or you if you want to talk to me, you can just drop me an email at [email protected]. I will say I try to prioritize things, but I get like 100 emails like everybody else in my on a daily basis. Give me a few days they’ll get mad at me if I don’t get back to you quickly.
John Corcoran 36:29
No worries. All right, Rick. Thanks so much.
Rick Girard 36:32
Thanks for having me.
Outro 36:33
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.