Mark: Today on PowerTips Unscripted, We talk to Erin Langman, founder and CEO of Zephyr Connect’s, Finding good employees is a big challenge for most and trying to find good employees that also fit in with your company culture. That’s enough to make you want to throw your hands up in the air. Well, Erin’s here to share the strategies and tactics that have been at the cornerstone of Zafar’s 98% placement rate for their residential remodeling clients.

Mark: And we’ll hear what they are in just a minute.

Victoria: Hi, I’m Victoria Downing and welcome to PowerTips Unscripted, where we talk about tips, tactics and techniques to help you build a strong, profitable remodeling company. And I’m here with my co-host, Mark Harari.

Mark: Good morning.

Victoria: Hi there. How are you? Awesome guy. I’m excited about today. One of my newest favorite people we get to interview today, a person that’s helped us find several of our fantastic team members. I think we’ve got the strongest team right now that we’ve had in years.

Mark: Yeah, it’s really, really awesome around here.

Victoria: And this person runs a company that helped us get there.

Mark: Absolutely.

Victoria: So shall we dive in?

Mark: Jump in.

Victoria: All righty, please. Today we have the opportunity to welcome Erin Longman, founder of Zephyr Connects know after a number of years as an interior designer, then business coach Erin designed Zephyr connects to solve the grueling hiring challenges of the residential remodeling industry. Zephyr is a recording company that we have used several times to help us find some awesome people, and they are also a preferred member benefit partner.

Victoria: Welcome, Erin.

Erin: I’m so excited to be here. Thank you.

Victoria: You betcha. So you work with a lot of our members now, don’t you?

Erin: I do. I think I’m losing Count Victoria.

Victoria: that’s good. That’s a good thing. You know, and it’s great for me because a lot of the times we recommend companies and we don’t use them ourselves. But this time I know the ins and outs, so it’s kind of cool.

Erin: Definitely.

Victoria: So one of the things that you did for us when you were helping us hire with you. You folks really focus a lot on finding a culture fit between the person we bring in and our existing team. Why is that so important?

Erin: Well, there’s so many, many reasons. But let’s boil it down to psychology, actually. So if you look at how humans are wired, we are pack animals essentially. And we really at the core of who we are, want to belong to something and we want to feel like we are a part of something and we belong to something. So and work is no different, truly.

Erin: And if you can create a culture that is strong and then hire people who resonate and and blend well with that culture, then you start getting the benefits of things like loyalty. They’re super devoted because it goes beyond the job. It goes to the the community that you’ve created in your business. And people will be more committed to those people, not just the work.

Erin: It’ll go deeper because they’ll feel like they’re a part of something that’s a little bit bigger than just a job.

Victoria: So you folks have a unique system. If you don’t mind, just give us a brief outline of how you your company goes about recruiting people. Cause I know that there’s videos, there’s all sorts of cool things that you do to help find that right person.

Erin: Right. So we’re kind of broken into two phases similar to the design build faded phase. In fact, the more I got to work with design build companies, the more I kind of had an moment if we should do something sort of similar. And so our phase one is all about discovery, where we’re really going to learn all about the company.

Erin: We’re going to interview employees, we’re going to obviously interview the owner, any other key people on the team in order to truly get a very robust and very deep view of the culture, the core values, the team dynamics, the leadership style. Like we just get such a deep and very well-rounded view of who that company is and how they tick as a group.

Victoria: As well as.

Erin: Goals and what the owner wants to achieve. So we do that and then and then we also have to do some market research. We do salary research like we need to also really then pull together the information that we’ve learned to create what we call your unique fit persona. So everybody has an employee persona just like you have a target market or a client persona.

Erin: So it’s really important to think about your recruiting efforts as sort of marketing in that way because you’re trying to lure, right, and attract those right people, the ones that really will fit your culture. So you have to think about them in that way, like an actual persona. And we even write it down. We get very detailed with it.

Erin: But that creates sort of the framework of who we’re looking for, which makes it a lot easier to recognize them when they walk in the door. For one thing, like that sets the stage in that foundation. Then once we’ve kind of finished all of our pieces in stage one, which includes strategy and job posts and all these other components, then we move into phase two, which is the actual what you would iaquinta your build phase.

Erin: It’s the.

Victoria: Active.

Erin: Recruiting phase, right? That’s where we’re hands on and we start getting down to business. So we do everything, post the ads. But then, like you were mentioning, we do. We deeply vet candidates just like we deeply about our clients. So we do a video interview, which is about a 20, 30 minute interview. That’s what we call a meet and greet internally.

Erin: But that’s where we can get eyes on people. You can get eyes on them. If there’s someone we decide to introduce you to. It’s really valuable to have that video piece. Then we do a deep dive, which is a phone interview, but where? That’s where we’re going to go really deep with the candidate and try to understand how they tech, you know, really determine that deeper culture fit piece as well as the skills that they need, the expertise they need for the job.

Erin: And then, of course, we do. We take as much of the other administrative functions off our clients plate. So background checks, reference checks, desk assessments, for example. Right. You know, any of those assessments, things like that. So that by the time we’re presenting, our goal is to just take that big pool of candidates, narrow it down to the ones that are truly your persona that match your culture.

Erin: Those are the ones we’re going to present to you.

Victoria: Okay. Which is wonderful because it’s so much time. It’s a game changer.

Erin: it’s such a game changer. Yeah.

Victoria: Okay. So. So what are some of the things that an employer should do to successfully hire for a culture fit besides, you know, potentially working with a company? Like, here’s some of the things.

Erin: Yeah. So you have to start by knowing your company culture, right? Which takes some homework. Probably if you haven’t done the homework, you got to do the homework, which I know Ramona’s advantage is really big on things like knowing and being able to write down and articulate your core values. For example, we got to know your core values and then you have to step back and kind of understand again that team dynamics.

Erin: You have to be able to articulate the culture in words. So if somebody were to ask you, you know, what is it like to work there? What’s the culture? You know, kind of give me an idea as if you were describing them like a human being. Adjectives and describe your company like they’re a person, you know, Are you fun?

Erin: Are you professional? Are you, you know, down to the grind and you know, just like use those words.

Victoria: So.

Erin: You can articulate your culture and lean in on your team too, especially your key employees that you love, that you really feel resemble or resonate with that call that that culture you’re creating or you’ve created. Talk to them and get get it in their words. That’s really important to get their point of view. So you have to really understand your culture first.

Erin: Then you want to do that persona piece we talked about. Now think about your key employees, like the people you’re trying to attract to your company and be able to write down an actual description of who they are, what drives them, what is important to them, what are their core values, what’s their personality be like, You know, and it’s kind of it might be a fictional person, but it may not.

Erin: If you have all your replacing and you’ve had really fabulous employees, use them as your framework. Like who are your favorite employees you’ve had over the years and use them as your sort of profile, right?

Victoria:

Erin: And now you’ve got some foundational pieces. Then you have to, when you get into interviewing, I think, is where a lot of our clients struggle a little bit with culture fit and figuring out like what kind of questions do I ask? How do I know if they’re the right culture fat? So we recommend. And what we do here too, is you want to ask a lot of behavior based questions.

Erin: So get rid of the Osnos you want to ask. You know, tell me a time when they tell me, you know, when did you have a scenario that resembled this right? And when someone answers where I think a lot of our clients have kind of stopped or not gotten what they needed from that question is that they’ll just stop at the answer and go, okay, great.

Erin: And move on to the next question. But there’s always more. There’s always more underneath that called like you got to look under the hood of that candidate, right? Yeah. To lift the hood up. The way you lift the hood up is you ask more probing questions from that story. So if they tell you a story of, let’s say, a client that drove them crazy, what I read is common one, right?

Erin: Then you go, okay, great. I love that. Now tell me more. Like, how’d that make you feel? What was the resolution? What do you think you would have preferred to like if you could go back and do it again, what would you do differently? Like take that one story and pick it apart?

Victoria: Okay.

Erin: As you pick it apart, you’re going to start to hear common themes. You’re going to start to see their core values actually come out in.

Victoria: Your.

Erin: Case. Right? So you want to listen not just for the answer, but for what sort of under what lies underneath the answer.

Victoria: I want to step back briefly to the types of questions. Like I said, not not yes and no. But I also understand when you’re looking at behavioral types of questions, they are about the past actual things that happened. You don’t ask people about what they would do in the future. Why is that? Why is that so important?

Erin: Well, because what you did in the past is going to obviously reflect true behavior, true real scenarios. If you do what could happen in the future, anybody can make up a story and that’s what they’ll do. They’ll make up a story based on ideal situations, but life is never ideal and we never behave in an ideal way. You know, in life when reality hits us or comes up to us, we we navigate the best we can.

Erin: But it’s always, you know, you can’t predict what the other person’s going to say or how they’re going to react. For example. Well, when you give a what would I do? Everybody behaves perfectly. Everybody says exactly what you want, you know, that kind of thing.

Victoria: Yeah, yeah. The best sales job they ever did. Check that interview, right?

Erin: Exac. Always, always say yes. Look at past behavior and actual stories. True.

Mark: So when you’re actually going through this process as as a business owner or manager that may be doing an interview, are they should they be just scribbling away relentlessly trying to mark this down, or should they be recording it or how, you know, how do you absorb this, especially if it’s an hour interview, you’re going to lose stuff.

Erin: Yes, And that’s true. And so if you’re talking about if you’re doing it video for any reason, obviously you can record it. And that’s that’s terrific. That’s easy if you’re doing it in person. He’s got a couple different solutions. You can, you know, learn your own chicken scratch and just write down key things. Don’t write verbatim, don’t get too detailed in every word they’re saying.

Erin: But when something hits your mind, you’re like, that’s something I want to remember. I know that was a key point of the story. Do you take a moment to jot that down? You can share with the interviewee, You know, you control the pace or you both can control the pace together and say, you know, hold on one second.

Erin: I actually want to write that one down. You know, that was something I want. If you feel like it’ll be distracting, the other thing you can do is you can invite someone else on your team to be in that interview with you and ask them to be the note taker and actually ask them to observe nonverbal cues as well, because it’s very challenging to observe, hear their story, listen for what you’re listening for, also observe nonverbal cues.

Erin: You know all the things in one interview. So tag teaming with someone from your team and kind of training them on their specific role, maybe their role isn’t to ask questions or to even truly listen for the answer. Their role is to take notes and watch for nonverbal cues, things like that that can be really helpful as well.

Victoria: So we were talking about hiring for culture, but what about field positions? I mean, if you’re you’ve got all the people that are working in the field and it’s a very competitive right now, does it really make a difference? Should they hold off to find just that right culture fit?

Erin: I mean, so my opinion is it’s going to depend on your business. And this is what I’ve seen over the last six years of working specifically to hire in remodeling companies, is that you have to make this sort of decision for what’s best in your business. And you might even have sort of a hybrid maybe if you can ideally get a couple of core field people who really do match your culture, really embody your core values, are just a great team player.

Erin: You know, you want to hold on to them and then you might need to cycle through some people who’s maybe not your core team. And that’s just the reality of the competitive job market and the fact that not as many people are going in the trades as they used to be. And that’s really not going to change for a while ever.

Erin: So it might be that like in order to run your business and be successful, you you might need to do a hybrid model of that. And the other thing is, you know, we all know carpenters and field staff. They don’t want to sit through four interviews. They won’t.

Victoria: Write you.

Erin: For interviews and nor do they need to write. So that’s the other component to it is you might need to just fill the roles. But as you find that person who’s like, my gosh, these guys are actually turning out to be an amazing rockstar, figure out the best way to retain them. And that way you don’t have to have many as many that you’re cycling through.

Erin: So I wish I could say yes to all positions, but it honestly doesn’t always make the most sense.

Victoria: So talk a little bit more about the timing, the time of the process, because, you know, again, we were before we found you, we were doing a lot of hiring on our own lately, unsuccessfully, so but we had a whole process, right? They’d do the 15 minute intro phone call. They’d come in for an hour with one person, they’d come back for a group interview.

Victoria: We have to do the discussed personality assessment, yet it did drag out and now I’d be afraid of losing somebody.

Erin: Well, and that can definitely happen. So there’s sort of a balance you have to strike. We call that the candidate journey, by the way. So that’s sort of our jargon, I guess you could say, for like what happens from the time someone applies, the time that they get hired and what are all those stats? So if you can figure out ways to shorten the time in between steps, you can also figure out ways that maybe some steps are happening simultaneously.

Erin: So maybe while someone’s if they’ve hit your second interview, start your reference checks now, do your background check, do that, Just get all those pieces going while you’re kind of in the mode of that second or maybe third interview. But the challenge is not to compromise, especially on key roles like your PMS and your estimators in your office people.

Erin: And you know, all of those key roles is is to not get caught in the I have to get them through as fast as possible or I’ll lose them. So I’m only going to interview them once and that’s all I’m, you know, that’s the best I can do because that’s where you’ll end up with misfires. And misfires, right?

Erin: So there are ways to shorten the duration, but I wouldn’t necessarily shorten the steps.

Victoria: Okay, I gotcha. I got you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, now one of the things that happened when we were trying to hire our new awesome office manager is that we were working with you folks and we had the ad running and we just weren’t getting anywhere. And so you folks came back to us and said, We’re finding that this is more competitive.

Victoria: You are going to have to offer more money. We did. We found somebody. We hired her. She’s great. Yeah. How often is that happening and how is that perceived by your clients now?

Erin: It’s a great question. It happens. I don’t know the percentage victory, but it’s probably less than a third that it actually happens. We do. We do competitive research ahead of time, so we sort of get a sense. But the truth is it’s just like the housing market, right? Like when you look at the housing market of what what just was sold, all your comps, that doesn’t necessary really tell you what the real picture is.

Erin: You have to look at the live picture, right. How many houses are actually on the market, how many sellers are actually there, How many offers are houses actually getting That’s what gives you the picture. So it’s sort of the same. We can look at data that’s 30 months or 30 days old, but it doesn’t necessarily tell the picture of what it’s going be like.

Erin: Okay. So that’s one of the reasons why it can be different than what we anticipate. Right. And it is marketing like we were talking about before and putting your job out on a job board. These days, job boards are all thinking of themselves now, just like Facebook ads, just like Google ads, just like it’s an ad and they want to be compensated the same way, unfortunately.

Erin: So we’re talking it’s just like pay per click or a pay per application to pay per resumé, that kind of a thing. So unfortunately, the more money you give, it’s like all of it, the more visibility you’re going to get, the more open they will create that door. And that’s a door that none of us really have control over.

Erin: Right? It’s it’s it’s the people. It’s in deeds, it’s the zip recruiters, it’s the Facebook ads. If you do Facebook ads for your jobs, which we do, LinkedIn ads, all of that. And that’s the unfortunate side. Now, it used to be you could do free and some people can still do free here and there, but it’s not going to be sustainable.

Erin: They are really cracking down on free and they’re they just want to make money like.

Victoria: All right. Right. Okay. So, so, so good stuff. So what other tips do you have to help our audience better hire for culture?

Erin: Yeah. So we talked a little bit about getting your team involved. I do think if you can get your team involved, that would be great. So have them in on interviews, talk to them about what the culture is like, like all those pieces, because they’re going to be they’re going to have a little bit different viewpoint than you as the owner in terms of who’s going to be a good fit for the team.

Erin: So get them involved. Write that compelling job post. So the standard old fashioned job post is doesn’t excite anybody and it isn’t going to truly attract your people. So think of your job post as an ad and the more attention grabbing it can be so that people will stop at it is is the best. So if you have to put up a really hilarious first sentence just to grab someone’s attention, do that.

Erin: Try that because the goal is to get them to keep reading. Right? Right. So make sure it’s compelling and attention grabbing. And then the other one, of course, at the end of the day would be you could hire us to help you.

Victoria: Of course there are that you open the door. That’s all right. That’s right.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Mark: And I got to tell you this. Yeah. And I actually stayed quiet most of the time because it’s really stressful to interview a master interviewer. Yeah, and that’s that’s a challenge. But it is my time to have to show my chops. Are you ready for the Lightning round?

Erin: gosh. I don’t know. Give it a shot. Let’s see what.

Victoria: Happens.

Speaker 2 and now here’s a reminders advantage. Lightning round. It’s a trap.

Mark: Okay, I’ve put in 60 seconds on the clock. What is your favorite business book and why?

Erin: Well, I think like a lot of people, I’m really loving iOS attraction. And I think because it’s the first time I read a book that’s giving me an easy to understand framework to operate on or operate in. And that’s been really great for a visionary entrepreneur like myself.

Mark: If you weren’t helping companies hire star employees, what do you think you’d be doing?

Erin: gosh, I was like, I knew you’d ask me. I have no idea. I might actually still be in interior design. I did love that work.

Mark: What do you not very good at?

Erin: Not very good Singer I’m not good at sports. I like any kind.

Mark: Name some thing that you refuse to share.

Erin: my goodness. If I was refusing to share it, why would I leave it there?

Speaker 2 Go gets the question. No.

Mark: A thing. That’s not a

Erin: like an object. I tell you.

Mark: That.

Erin: My ice cream.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Mark: What’s the weirdest thing I’d find in your refrigerator?

Speaker 2 wow.

Erin: Probably a really old moldy jar of, like, jam of any flavor. Strawberry.

Victoria: Here you go.

Erin: It’s there, but nobody eats it, right?

Victoria: Yeah, it’s Ivy. If it’s got all mold on it, you know? And this has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to us about this. And but before I let you go, would you please share your five words of wisdom with our listening audience and why they resonate with you?

Erin: So my five words are look inward before looking outward. And yeah, the reason why these really resonate with me is because once I started really looking at me as the common denominator of the things that I was complaining about in my life, you know, I think everything shifted, everything shift. It was the most powerful work I’ve done is looking inward instead of outward.

Victoria: That’s wonderful and thank you. Now, how would people learn more about you? Where do they find out more about you? Ends up,

Erin: Yeah, a number of things. So we have our website which is Zephyr connects dot com, which is d e, p h y are in case nobody knows how to spell the word. And it means a gentle breeze. By the way, that’s because a lot of people do not know what the word means. So that is definitely an easy way.

Erin: Another way directly is my name Erin Erin at Zephyr connects dot com. I’d love to hear from you directly.

Victoria: Eric Good. Thank you so much, Erin. We appreciate you being here.

Erin: Thank you.

Victoria: Again.

Erin: I hope so. And thank you so much to both of you.

Victoria: Bye.

Mark: Thanks.

Erin: I.

Victoria: I got to say, I like her energy.

Mark: Yeah. Is it is it like looking in a mirror?

Victoria: Does it reminds me of me.

Mark: No wonder you like her so much. Yeah.

Victoria: But you know, the person, her representative who worked with us, I just loved. She was great. Just so easy going. And I love the videos, too. I didn’t have to interview these people as And to watch the videos.

Mark: You know, she mentioned the Zephyr Connects website and all that. But if if our members and listeners go through our stores, she offers a discount. So if you if you go to remodelers advantage AECOM go to the store and you’ll find Zephyr connection there or, or click on it. You don’t purchase through us. But that’s where she put where we put her offer to.

Victoria: For our.

Mark: Members, our members and and such. So that’s that’s also the place I’d recommend going for our members.

Victoria: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mark: Yeah that’s that was good stuff. I like how she she saw it as a design build project. Yeah. And and broke it up that way.

Victoria: I could tell she’s been working in this industry for a bit.

Mark: Yeah.

Victoria: Yeah. No, it’s good. You know, it’s. It’s tricky to hire people who are going to be a fit. And you want that because you want them to stay.

Mark: Well, you know, and I feel like one of the biggest advantages for us, once we switched to using them or whether you use them or anyone else, is that you’re taking yourself out of the equation. Because I know we’ve definitely been guilty at you’re feeling that you’re feeling the pressure of filling of the role. Yes. And it’s just definitely when when you have a vacancy for an extended period of time, you start to get desperate.

Mark: And we end up having done that in the past and, you know, you end up paying a larger price than having the patience. So I think one of the reasons why it’s at least been great for us is we were we weren’t we weren’t the fly in the ointment, you know.

Victoria: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Get yourself out of that because they have the objective view to to find the right candidates.

Victoria: Right.

Mark: And then you can just yell at them when you don’t have the whole left field, you know, it’s like, come on, hurry up.

Victoria: Yes, absolutely.

Mark: I and I love having other people to blame. So that’s a good thing, too.

Victoria: There you go, too. So far, so good.

Mark: Yeah. So we hope that that was helpful for all of you out there trying to hire. We want to thank Erin for sharing these tips for your hiring process. And of course, we want to thank you for listening week in and week out. I’m Mark, Harare.

Victoria: And I’m Victoria Downing. See you next time.