Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old-school business practices in the traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while offering you meaningful modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host Dave Cane. Wondering how much it’s going to cost you to fill that vacant position? According to the Society for Human Resource Management, the answer is 4,129 bucks, not chump change by any means, and depending on how many people you need or how high your company’s turnover rate is, that figure could soon balloon out of control.
To help minimize these costs we’re seeing more business owners embrace the mindset behind hiring talent, but what goes into this technique? Are you committed to hiring the top talent? Do you have a hiring strategy? Do you have the time to do the correct hire? Today’s guest is Desiree Lyon, a human resource and recruitment professional with talent acquisition expertise. Desiree, want to raise newest employees, we’ll kick off our HR miniseries, which will provide you with tools and insight that will strengthen your existing recruitment and retention strategies. Welcome to unsuitable, Desiree.
Desiree Lyon: Thank you, Dave.
Dave: Welcome to Rea & Associates.
Desiree: Thank you.
Dave: You’ve been here several months and already have had a big impact on the firm.
Desiree: Yes, it’s been a good several months. I’ve met a lot of people, learned a lot about the firm, so it’s really been a good opportunity to get involved and stay connected such as being on unsuitable.
Dave: Well, great. I noticed as you were developing your office, putting your office together, as I walked in there I saw something that was rather disturbing and may even be against company policy and that was the terrible towel.
Desiree: Yes, I am from the outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a small town called Menesa, and that’s where I grew up, and that is home. A lot of times I get a lot of heat from people that generally don’t understand how I could be a part of a culture that is a championship culture. We’re always welcoming people so if you’d like to come on board, you’re more than welcome.
Dave: Sure. Great to have you aboard. The Steelers do have a great fan base, and since you’re from Pittsburgh, I guess we’ll give you a pass. You can route for the Steelers, the Pirates, and now the Penguins I guess.
Desiree: Absolutely, and since I’m a part of HR, I’ll be looking into those policies and changing them.
Dave: Well, great. Great. Welcome aboard. Today we’re going to talk about hiring strategies and so let’s get off and rolling, but where do you start? We talked in the intro about developing a hiring strategy, easier said than done. How would you advise a company or a client of ours on how to start, how to get started?
Desiree: One of the things you want to do is definitely find the need for the opportunity. When you think of need, you want to set yourself in the mindset of understanding what the businesses are, what that person would do, how that would benefit the overall bottom line. When you’re thinking about hiring people, the goal is to keep them. I know you had mentioned earlier about turnover rate, you mentioned that could be catastrophic in some instances. One of the things you want to do is make sure that you’re really focused on hiring the most qualified. You may get a number of applicants that come through the door but you want to make sure that you’re really focused on what’s important and how they can help grow your business.
Dave: You talk about with a prospect or you’re looking for somebody to come in, you talk about the culture of the company, you try to sell the culture to that applicant?
Desiree: Absolutely. Culture is huge in hiring, and one of the things people look for is where they can be happy at, not just somewhere they can get a paycheck. You can go anywhere and get a paycheck, but the goal is to have that foundation so when you’re thinking of even your mission in a company, what does that stand for? How can we build a culture from that mission that really everybody’s involved in? When you have a culture that is about growth and thriving and development of your people and giving those benefits to provide to people to show them that, “Hey, you can be happy here and enjoy what you do,” that’s what a lot of people that are looking for jobs are seeking.
Dave: In your position, you’re a salesperson, you’re selling the culture.
Desiree: Absolutely.
Dave: So you bought it when, you bought the culture when you interviewed with us.
Desiree: That’s right, I did.
Dave: We must done an okay job.
Desiree: You did a good job. I’m still here.
Dave: Well, thanks. We talked earlier in the introduction about the cost of making a bad hire, a replacement, and it was north of four grand but I’ve seen numbers that are even greater than that depending on the technical expertise of a particular employee, so there is a huge cost of not having a hiring strategy, if you will.
Desiree: Yes, there is. One of the things I’ve seen numbers from the 4000, which is the standard that the Society for Human Resources Management talked about, but also can go up to 10,000 depending on the position and also thinking of the sum of all your recruiting cost that goes involved into something as well as how many people that you need over a given period of time. If you’re continuously hiring, that number is going to continue to increase for your cost per hire. Then when you add in your turnover, that really can increase it by an amount that is not really in the budget per se.
Dave: Sure. Set some expectations for our listening audience. Let’s say that I placed an order, I need an employee that’s say a tax specialist. In my mind, how long from start to finish would it take for the employee to be in the seat?
Desiree: It can take, depending on how specialized the-
Dave: By the way, I’m impatient. I like that employee in place by the end of the week. Can you do that?
Desiree: One of the things I can do is to talk to you a little bit more about how much detail is involved and needed for this role. So before we want to be thinking too quickly on how to fill that seat, the goal is to get you the right person. Let’s talk about how specialized that role is first and then I can tell you what I can do for you.
Dave: So you’re going to push it back on me. You’re going to interview me and get my feedback.
Desiree: Absolutely.
Dave: You’ll make me part of this.
Desiree: I need you to talk to me to tell me what you need from me and then I can lay it all on a table. What that does is allows you to say, “Okay, maybe I need to rethink this time line, and give it a little more time.”
Dave: It’s several weeks, a month, could be depending on what you’re looking for but it’s not a short-term process by any means.
Desiree: No, it’s not. Even for a position that may not have as much detail as some others, I wouldn’t recommend anybody to say, “I want to hire someone overnight.” I would say in general, from my experience, a lot of the roles that I’ve recruited for could take, give it about three weeks at the most or at minimum three weeks just to prepare to know where I’m looking, to give me an opportunity to get to some networking events, to talk to your team to find out what they’re looking for, things of that nature.
Dave: Let me give you an example and see how off-base I am, I guess, or right on target. Let’s say I’m hiring a marketing position and I do an interview, and I come to you and I say, “I know it. That’s the person. We gotta do that right now. I just know it.” How would you respond?
Desiree: One of the things that I would say is, I want to find out the relationship. “Well, how do this person?”
Dave: “No, I like that person. Let’s go. We gotta … Get an offer in front of them.”
Desiree: Well, that sounds good but we need to think about how this person to make sure that we’re protecting the business at the same time. You don’t want to just hire all my niece, my nephew, my cousin, my child. You may have a pool of other applicants that are very qualified as well, so you have to think about that too.
Dave: So you’re going to slow me down, going to slow down the process?
Desiree: Well, it’s about thinking of it in a different manner. It’s not about slowing it down. It’s about what’s beneficial for the business. When you think about what’s beneficial, it’s more so about expanding, so when you hire someone , you may know them on a personal level but you may not know them professionally. A lot of times people hire … I’ve got a lot of resumes from people that have said, “Oh, I know this. This is one of my buddies. Interview this person.” For a courtesy, sure, I may interview them or have a conversation with them. A lot of times they’re not even that qualified.
Dave: It’s not the right fit.
Desiree: Right, it’s not the right fit. So then when I go back to them and talk to them in detail about the interview guide, the questions I asked, and their responses, it gives them an opportunity to think about it over again and say, “Okay, do I really want this person on my team? I may like them but can they do the job?”
Dave: Correct. Let’s take a break from that conversation and talk about hiring for Rea & Associates. I think I saw a release from you that we’re looking at maybe 10 positions across the firm?
Desiree: Yes.
Dave: For our listeners, if there’s anybody out there that is looking for an accounting position, get ahold of Desiree and we’ll get the process started.
Desiree: Absolutely. They can go to the Rea website and go to the careers page, and everything that we are recruiting for is listed there.
Dave: See, we gave you a free commercial.
Desiree: Well, thank you so much.
Dave: How about that? Let’s talk about testing of applicants when they come in. What type of testing do you normally recommend or do you like to see before you make a final decision?
Desiree: Well, one of the things that we test here at Rea, the main goal that I’m recruiting for now or the main position, I should say, that I’m recruiting for now is the client service specialist role, and that’s a bookkeeper position. One of the things that goes in line with that role is to test your knowledge in bookkeeping. There is a test that they would, each applicant that would move forward in the process would take and then that is graded by one of the professionals here that would actually be managing that position, so they get a chance to grade it, assess their knowledge and skill. That’s the type of testing that’s important. You want to always have a test that aligns properly with the position that you’re recruiting for.
Dave: What about caliper testing, disk testing, Wonderlic? Does that play a role?
Desiree: It does. Those tests are, you have questions about personality, you have questions about … really to find that good fit. You’ll have questions about how you manage certain behaviors and certain situations, and even outside of the testing in my questions, I’ve been able to develop some questions that are related to behavioral-based questions. I like to ask you, “Tell me about a time when this happened to you or what would you do in this situation?” That really pulls out a person’s experience when they are given opportunity to talk about what they’ve done in the past.
Dave: Okay, let’s dig a little deeper. Let me ask you a little personal question here.
Desiree: Okay.
Dave: Do you ever go out on like Facebook and LinkedIn and research the applicants?
Desiree: I don’t and one of the main reasons that I don’t is because Facebook is something that is, it’s social media, especially Facebook. LinkedIn is a bit more professional. I actually do recruit through LinkedIn, I should say. I go on LinkedIn looking for applicants, but as far as Facebook, people have their family, their friends, where they hang out. By no means do I ever want to have a bias in my mind and say, “Oh, that person likes the Cleveland Browns. I don’t want to hire them. I’m a Steeler fan.”
Dave: “This interview is just about over.”
Desiree: That’s one of the things that I have to think about. You always want to give people the fair shot. Everybody deserves an opportunity if they come through with their resume that shows that, “Hey, I have the credentials. I have the qualifications. I meet the qualifications that are listed in this job opportunity,” so whether they like dogs or cats or read certain books or whatever the case may be, that’s not my concern. My concern is that you can do the job and be successful at the firm that I’m recruiting for.
Dave: As you, in your vast network, do you see companies in their hiring strategies and policies, are they increasing drug testing or decreasing drug testing?
Desiree: It’s actually decreased. One of the things that has happened recently are some legislation that’s come into play that has really removed that process. For example, we know a lot of states legalized marijuana. We know that different things happen inside the laws. There is a law that had came out that was called Ban The Box, and one of the things that is important is you want to make sure that you’re looking at what’s important and valuable to the firm. Now, of course you want to consider all aspects but certain things, it’s unnecessary at this point based on the law. When the law doesn’t require it necessary for certain positions to test for it, then we don’t do it.
Dave: There’s a lot of noise around this hiring process that you just eliminated. Let’s get right to the applicant and see if they’re qualified and fits the company’s need.
Desiree: Right, that’s exactly what it should be about is removing, eliminating all bias, removing any ideas of thought. One of the good things I do, I do a lot of phone screens, and over those phone screens, I don’t see a person. I hear person and what I’m hearing, what I’m listening for is their responses to my questions. A lot of times what I like to do too is give direction so when I get into my behavioral-based questions I say, “What I’m looking for is a specific example of how you handle certain situations, and then tell me what the outcome was.” That gives me a whole perfect picture in my mind of what they can do, and that’s my primary goal.
Dave: Now, what a company is developing a strategy, we talk and we see and hear a lot about diversity hiring within a company’s strategic plan. Are you seeing more and more of that in the workplace?
Desiree: It is growing. I know that twitter actually just hired a new diverse and inclusion officer and that’s been a lot of the stories I’ve seen online. One of the things I can definitely say is that it’s valuable when it comes down to it. One of the focuses I always talk about to people is to broaden your scope, think about things, doing business outside of what you’re used to. It’s always good to … You’re in a small environment. If you have a firm or a company in a small town, go 30 miles out to a different side of town or to a neighboring city and make sure that you find, “Hey, there’s an organization here that …” it might be the Hispanic chapter of MBAs or the National Association of Black Accountants, or a woman’s organization. These are all professional groups that we can find top talent in, so it’s always good to really broaden your scope and see what else is out there opposed to people just handing you resumes from your neighbors or cousins or whatever the case may be.
Dave: That’s a fantastic approach to the strategy. There are a lot of companies, I bet, that just don’t have that strategy or not thinking that expansive.
Desiree: Sometimes people don’t because they are not aware and that’s okay, but it’s important to be informed and then you just go out there. When I first moved to Columbus, one of the things I did, I went by myself to a professional networking event and I met so many awesome people. It was a little uncomfortable at first because you don’t know anyone. I walked in and people came up to me, shook my hand. We exchanged business cards. It was a great experience, and I met a lot of longtime friends from that opportunity.
Dave: Fantastic. You’d mentioned earlier that Rea & Associates is looking for several client service specialists around the firm, around the state of Ohio. Let’s talk about creating job descriptions for the various positions you’re trying to fill, and let’s talk a little bit about the client service specialists, the CSS. How important is that job description in my hiring strategy?
Desiree: That is very important. One of the things that makes it so important is that that’s what you’re selling to the candidate. That’s what you’re writing down to give you the opportunity to be creative and say, “Hey, I have this opportunity here. Let me tell you why you want to work for us.” You could really talk … The main goal, I should say, is talk about what the job entails. Also, make sure that you’re giving details in what they would be doing. Talk about if there’s travel, 5% travel or 50% travel. You want to talk about what they would be doing on a regular basis and making sure that their qualifications align with that job description. Of course, that’s my responsibility as the recruiter but that’s very important. Then at the beginning of all of our job descriptions we talk about Rea being such a strong firm, in top 100. These are things that we have to keep in mind to really pull people in.
Dave: As a HR professional, when you get a series of resumes and you read those resumes, can you tell from those resumes, can you make a first cut or pass as you look at somebody’s resume?
Desiree: Yes, you can. One of the things that I do, for example, I’ve got some resumes that come in and through certain websites it shows, we asked the question, “How much experience in bookkeeping do you have?” Well, I have some people that have listed, “I have six years’ experience in bookkeeping.” Okay. Well, let’s take a look at the resume. I look at the resume and there’s absolutely nothing there that shows anything related to bookkeeping. At that point, I remove them out of my process because they have not been able to speak to what they can do on paper. If they can speak to it, that would get them the phone call.
Dave: So the resume gets you in the door or gets a look.
Desiree: Yes.
Dave: And then it’s the phone call and then after that, anything’s possible, face-to-face interviews, etc.
Desiree: There’s a debate in the recruiting world about cover letters. Some people say, “Oh, yeah. Cover letters are great. You should write one every time.” Some people say, “Oh, they’re not that important.” It really depends on the recruiter and the candidate. If you want to write one, if it shows in the job description that it’s a requirement or preferred, a preference I should say, definitely write one. I know I get some in, especially for some of the more professional roles that I’ve recruited for, when they send me a cover letter, I read it. When they can really sell themselves in that, I think it’s awesome. Now that doesn’t mean every position, send one. Some recruiters I’ve talked to, they say they don’t read them. They just go straight to the resume. I always think it’s an extra plus just to push out their experience.
Dave: What about grade point average?
Desiree: Grade point average really isn’t a factor when you have a degree. I’m not looking at grade point average. If you say that you graduated from a university, I’m taking your word for it. We want people that have integrity. When you put that on a document and you have this listing, a lot of times we still do a background check and then a lot of times if somebody reaches out to that organization that you graduated from and it comes back as a no-go, then unfortunately we have to resend your job offer at that time.
Dave: You’ve covered a lot of territory and as I walk away, it’s change my mind about hiring strategies. In my mind I’m thinking, “Gee, we have to make sure we create a positive company culture for the interviewer and the interviewee. Certainly job descriptions are important and diversify your network. Open up, think outside the box.” A lot of opportunities, and there’s a lot of competition for the job so you’ve got to be on your toes with a strategy. You’ve covered some great territory in a short period of time and certainly appreciate that. Before we wrap up, I know you like to read and go on vacation. What’s one of your favorite vacation spots?
Desiree: One of my favorite vacation spots is Cancun, Mexico. I have a lot of fun at the beach. I just enjoy being in the sun and having a fun time with my friends and seeing the water. That’s just the best place to be.
Dave: Doing any karaoke?
Desiree: I haven’t lately. It’s been a long time.
Dave: Lately? Well, we can go back a little bit. You used to do some, huh?
Desiree: It’s been a while.
Dave: You remember your favorite karaoke song?
Desiree: Oh, wow. I think the last one, it was something by Michael Jackson, I can say that. Michael always gets the crowd going so why not go for that?
Dave: There you go, probably good. Thanks again for joining us on unsuitable today, Desiree. Our guest has been Desiree Lyon from Rea & Associates HR talent acquisition expert. That’s my new terminology for you. There are so many moving pieces to balance when it comes to hiring the right person for a particular position. I’m sure our listeners were able to get a lot of information and great tips from you today. Listeners, don’t forget to tune in next week when Pat Porter will join us for part two of our HR miniseries. Now that we know how to hire top talent, Pat will give some tips that will help us keep them happy, engaged and productive.
If you want additional insight, visit our website at www.reacpa.com/podcast for a variety of great resources. If you like this episode, let us know. You can share it, review it or give us a thumbs up. If this is your first time listening to unsuitable on Rea Radio, please consider subscribing to the podcast on iTunes. Until next time, I’m Dave Cane encouraging you to loosen up your time and think outside the box.