Recruit like the SEALS
My favorite question to ask contractors about their business and its potential for growth is: “if you were able to duplicate yourself, how much more money would you make per year?” Really think about it. What would your business look like if an identical copy of yourself knocked on your door and said they are looking for a job. Most contractors express a feeling of ease and peace of mind. They trust themselves, they know the whole business inside out, and require no training to get going. They would be able to do more with less time.
Unfortunately that type of technology does not exist today, but there are ways to achieve that result close to 99% of it. How? By finding a great hire.
Look. We know. You tried.
You found someone hopeful, trained them for months, then they ended up screwing something up and put your entire reputation on the line.
Or
You never really went ahead and hired someone yet, but dread the idea of it and can't seem to weigh the pros over the cons; the risks may seem unbearable.
Whenever I want to try something new, I would always try and find the best already at it. So when I first went ahead to hire the first person, in my soon to grow twenty man business, I made sure to really see who is already the best at this practice. Here’s what I found.
Google is one of the most revolutionary companies of our generation, they literally changed the world as we know it, and they did that by having the smartest and most talented individuals in the world working for them. Google was reported to hire 1 of every 10,000 applicants; and not everybody was able to even apply, the application process itself was hard to pass. Their intense screening methods made sure that only the best and most compatible people were able to call themselves Google employees.
*I deployed a much smaller scale ideology when it came to my business and it was THIS approach and TWO others that allowed me to run a $500,000 contracting business as a fulltime student while retaining a 35% profit margin.
The first approach I tweaked, and I made sure that I hired 1 of every 10 people that I interviewed. You would never marry the first girl you met, the same logic applies here. It really does take a lot of time to truly siphon through a group of recruits and find someone that really holds the same values and skills that you are looking for.
The second approach was that I made sure that there was a constant stream of high-quality candidates applying for my business. Attracting high-quality applications is a very similar process for attracting high-quality hires. The way I was able to do this was through the use of very specific websites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter. These websites, admittedly, can be hard to navigate. However, these websites attract the best and smartest and knowing your way around those websites is a crucial skill that will directly affect your income more than anything else. The websites have self-filtering technology and with the right words and job posting you can 2x-3x the quality.
The third approach was that I had a very particular and intentional hiring system that includes things from, the best interview questions to ask in the contracting industry, all the way to, a day to day checklist for my two-week onboarding process. When a person wants to become a NAVY SEAL, the moment that they apply they are put through very intentional, specific, and well-planned training that aims to weed out the weak and highlight the worthy. I have studied this process that the SEALS use and duplicated it within my business. Now, I didn't have them swimming in ice-cold water and carrying logs, but I made sure that I reverse engineered what the best employee in my business looked like and worked BACKWARDS to making sure that only the best got to that position.
For example, if you ran a painting business and knew that the best type of employee was one that was: not afraid of highs, has a car with roof racks, had previous experience painting, loves what he does, likes being outdoors, is physically capable of carrying equipment, is coachable, likes to work long hours, and interested in learning ways to grow his role in your business then this person would be a SEAL in the painting industry. So in that example, if I ran a painting business, then I would implement the right type of process to make sure that people who wanted to work for me were able to display these skillsets within a week of interviewing them. This example can be applied to any trade, just imagine and write down what a SEAL level employee in your business would look like and work backward to make sure that only those people with THAT criteria are able to proudly call you boss.
If you are interested in getting the hacks and tweaks that you can do to optimize your Indeed ads, get the TOP THREE interview questions for your specific trade, and a template to plan your one-week NAVY SEAL TYPE hiring system, click the "TAKE ACTION" button.