An interview with Alex Read, Franchise Partner, 1-800-Got-Junk?
Need hiring advice for your business? We’re pleased to announce that we’ve recently launched this new series on the blog here at SmoothHiring where we’ll be interviewing successful business owners on their experiences hiring and what they’ve found to be the best practices.
Enter Alex Read, Franchise Partner at 1-800-Got-Junk?, a successful multi-million dollar business which offers full-service junk removal for homes, businesses, offices, retail, construction, and more. Alex answers our questions and provides insightful answers below:
1) What’s the best advice you’ve ever received regarding finding employees? Why was it the best hiring advice?
Be persistent and don’t settle!
A typical way to recruit is to interview x number of people over a specific period of time, and then pick the best (i.e. ten people over five days). However, that just gives you the best of that group. What if that group wasn’t all that great?
What I’ve learnt to do is set a very clear expectation for what we are looking for in the role (but make this realistic and achievable), and then interview until we find it. There are no expectations around time limit (i.e. must find someone in a week), or around the number of people to interview. We will interview until we find the person that really aligns with what we are looking for. This sometimes takes a lot longer and involves more interviews, but we always feel great about the people we hire.
2) What’s the most effective job interview question you’ve ever used … and what was the outcome from using it?
“How did you prepare for this interview?”
I have found that you can really get a sense for how much people “want it” from this question. I’ve been given a lot of answers along the lines of “I checked out your website”, and other simplistic things like that. I also once had someone say “sorry, I was away until last night, so I didn’t have time to prepare”. Probably not candidates who are going to go above and beyond when working for you, if they don’t go above and beyond when trying to prep for an interview.
I’ve found that the best people are those who have taken the time to research the company through multiple mediums, talk to people, try the product/service, research press releases, research the leadership team, etc.
“What tools or habits do you use to keep organized?”
Instead of asking are you an organized person, this makes the interviewee prove and describe their organizational skills. I always expect people to have some type of system to stay organized—be it good or bad. I find this question is the best way to get people to actually describe it and how they use it, rather than just what they read in a book about organization. Vague answers to this question probably mean that they don’t really have much of a system, or don’t really use it when things get too busy. I’ve also found that this is an easy question to dig deeper on with by asking something like: “great, would you mind showing me that tool?” I’ve had a few people tell me how they use a smartphone to organize everything, and it never leaves their side. But then when asked if they would mind showing it, the answer has been that they left it at home, or they have not yet had time to update it for the last few days.
3) When it comes to finding employees, what is the best time/money-saving tip you know? Can you quantify your savings?
By far the best time saving tool I’ve implemented is the concept of “Group Interviews”. This is not a “panel interview” where several people from the company interview one candidate, but a “group interview” where several candidates are interviewed at the same time.
This certainly isn’t for every company, or for every role, but it’s an amazing way to quickly get through a lot of applicants. You can spend 90-mins interviewing eight people (knowing by the end the two people you want to meet one-on-one), rather than 60-mins per candidate.
It takes a certain degree of tact and gracefulness to ensure everyone feels comfortable and energized by this experience, rather than just one of the masses. But if you’re a high energy, fast-paced, open concept environment, then it’s an awesome way to filter out whether or not people fit into your culture.
4) What’s your best advice for avoiding hiring mistakes? Why?
The best advice ever has to be “slow to hire”. As an eager impatient entrepreneur I like to get things done quickly. This historically has included hiring people too quickly because it just “feels right”. However, multiple re-hiring has always proven to be a longer, more frustrating, and more expensive process in the long-run. So, I’ve learned to slow down, put more steps into the hiring process (including theoretical testing), and involve more people in the process (i.e. more of the team to get more of a diverse opinion). The result has been our hiring mistakes have been “almost” eliminated.
5) Which source of job candidates has proven the best for you to find employees? Why do you think it’s the best source?
Our best source has been personal referrals (especially from current staff) and professional recruiters. Basically anyone who has taken the time to get to know what we’re looking for in more detail than just the job ad and who understands the culture of the organization.
These referral sources tend to send people over who are already pre-qualified to “fit” what the organization is looking for.
6) What question about hiring employees are we missing from this list, and what’s your answer to it?
If you could change one thing in your hiring process to make it even better, what would you do?
I’d implement a time-saving tool that can easily assess the “fit” of a candidate before we go through the time and expense of actually interviewing them!
