Delivering the Systems and Expertise You Need to Make Great Hiring Decisions
Maximize Your Reference Checks
I got a reference phone call yesterday by a temporary staffing firm who was inquiring about someone who worked for a previous company I was involved in. I’m not sure why I got this call, nor was I expecting it. The poor woman on the phone sounded exhausted and defeated even before she asked me the first question. I found myself wondering, “What box on a piece of paper is she trying to simply check off to say she’s completed this task?”
Two weeks ago I tweeted (are you following me? I’m @HireBetterCEO) about how significant we’ve found Reference Checks to be in our evaluation process for prospective employees both for the Hire Better Team and for roles within our Clients’ companies. The statement I made was that we typically can glean about 20% of what we learn about someone through the reference process. I got a lot of questions about this statistic. I wish I could take credit but it was actually Geoff Smart who was the first person who helped me figure out that references are a lot more than just asking about dates of employment and whether or not someone is rehire-able.
Here are some examples of what we’re seeking during a reference call (and don’t be shy – we ask for permission but don’t apologize for wanting these calls to take up to 30 minutes):
- Why did you hire him?
- What were the top 2 or 3 biggest Outcomes that the Previous Manager hired John Doe to achieve?
- Did he achieve them?
- How much direction did he need at the beginning and during their tenure to be successful? (a GREAT question for both micro-managers & hands-off managers)
- What things did you witness that frustrated John?
- How did he mature during his time with you?
- What advice would you have for me, as his new manager, for on-boarding him effectively and getting him productive quickly?
- Likewise, what advice would you have for the people that will report to him to maximize their relationship with him?
If you’ve ever asked a previous manager, “What were John Doe’s weaknesses?” and gotten the answer of, “You know, I can’t think of any…” it’s because you’re not asking correctly. Everyone has weaknesses and if you’re not validating them in the reference process you’re going to significantly slow down your on-boarding process. A better technique: document the self-admitted weaknesses of a candidate during their interview and then re-position the question that you pose to the previous manager to sound more like this, “Mr. Manager, John shared with me that he felt like his biggest shortfall while working with you was that he struggled to prioritize his time and that it resulted in him missing some pretty key deadlines. Would you agree?”. By showing that previous manager that you’ve established enough rapport to have acquired this kind of information from the candidate, you’ll find that the previous manager is much more willing to talk not only about that stated shortfall but also about other areas of weakness and, if you’re really good, follow-up by asking, “How did you see John address this weakness while he worked for you?”
And one last tip: during your interview with a prospective employee, ask them who their previous managers were. Write down those names & titles and then, when you’re ready to move to the next step of evaluation with that candidate ask them to make an introduction that former manager on your behalf. We found it’s even better if the candidate CC’s you on the email to that previous manager. Brad Smart (Geoff’s Dad and Author of Topgrading) calls this process “Truth Serum“. I couldn’t agree more!
Finally, a parting shot meant as a challenge: because you’re now empowered to get so much more information out of the reference process, are you comfortable telling a prospective candidate who says, “My previous employer has a policy of not providing references” that YOUR company has a policy of not hiring people who can’t introduce you to their previous manager as a reference? In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve NEVER seen a situation where an A-Player hasn’t maintained a great relationship with their managers of the prior 10 years.
Tags: @hirebetterceo, A-Player, A-Players, Brad Smart, conduct reference checks with past managers, gepff smart, hire better, hiring, Interview, Reference Check, smarttopgrading, threat of reference checks, Topgrading, TORC, tweets, Twitter, who the book
Noise Goes Up But Quality Remains The Same
It’s not often I’m floored by the comprehensiveness of a Blog Post simply because too many people write them with speed in mind or just for Search Engine Optimization.
Today I was floored.
Gina Kleinworth is one of the Team Members at American Workforce. A significant amount of her role here is being responsible for combing the web every day to find articles that reinforce our goal of helping companies HIRE BETTER. (Are you following us on Twitter? You should – we invest a lot of time in making you a better leader. We’re Tweeting 2-3x per day under the moniker of @HireBetter.)
Gina found an article today written by Auren Hoffman on his blog Summation. It’s title: “Why hiring is paradoxically harder in a downturn“. Its subtitle is what I chose for this blog post’s title: “Noise goes up but the quality remains the same”. You can also read it on the Huffington Post.
His comments rang true with me again and again as I read the blog 3 full times. Here are some of the points that he makes throughout this well-written post (read it, seriously):
“Great people are more likely to be employed with a company since a great person is often over 3 times as productive as a good person. Joel Spolsky argues in Smart & Gets Things Done that an A-player is anywhere from 5-10 times as productive.”
“In troubled economic times, anyone can get laid off, but a disproportionate number of layoffs tend to fall on C-players. This is because they are the lowest performing people in a company and there generally are more C-players at a company than any other caliber. Note that this isn’t always true, as evidenced with Yahoo!, a company that has recently experienced many layoffs but doesn’t have many C-players. In Yahoo!’s case, majority of the lay-offs fell on B-players and even some A-players. Yahoo! is an exception and is an exceptional company — most large companies, however, are chock-full of C-players.”
“There are A-players that are MORE likely to leave. Tough times often paint companies into a corner and force them into maintenance mode rather than continuing to innovate. Great players love to innovate and usually NEED to innovate. It’s usually very hard to keep these type of A-players caged-up and thus this presents a big opportunity for recruiting.”
“Great people are often first to leave sinking ships. They don’t feel they need to stick around for a severance because they are confident they can always get another job.”
“Unfortunately, it is really hard to tell the difference between an A-player, B-player, or C-player just from a resume. Which means you need to engage with candidates and therefore you’ll have far more candidates to deal with given this economic climate. My guess – for a standard job announcement, you’ll have three times the number of C-players applying, twice the number of B-players, and the same number of A-players.”
Tags: A-Player, A-Players, american workforce, auren hoffman, B-Player, C-Player, hire better, hiring, hiring is hard, Interview, joel spolsky, Recruiting, Scorecard, talent acquisition, topgrading methodology, tweets, Twitter, unemployment, unemployment rate
Questions to ask when Assessing your Company Culture
The Austin Technology Council held a CEO Roundtable on May 18th about “How Healthy is your Organization’s Culture”? The featured speaker was Dr. Carol Kallendorf, the Founding Partner of The Delta Associates. I made a commitment to Tweet more often and so I maintained a Twitter Stream throughout the whole event. If you’re not following me on Twitter, why not?
The event wasn’t an exceptional one as the featured guest has been in business of telling companies what they do wrong for over 27 years. Further, no matter how pointedly people asked her questions she had a political answer that wasn’t based on experience and instead, sounded like rhetoric. At the end of the event we all got handed a piece of paper (how very Baby Boomer) of the 10 questions you can ask to assess your organizational culture. While the document wouldn’t surprise you even if you were from Mars and didn’t even know what culture was, there were a couple on there that at least bore repeating:
- What are the issues that tend to align your Executive Team? What about fractionalize it?
- To what extent do the people in your organization have shared goals, vision or fate?
- Could your employees explain to their family members what it is that they do within the company that contribute to its success?
- Do people at all levels in your organization know what business you are in, how you make money and who your customers are?
- What’s your culture for handling mistakes and failure? What would your employees say is the culture for handling failure or mistakes?
- Do people like to come to work?
- How big a priority is culture?
Again, nothing earth shaking or really insightful but they ARE thought provoking. Can you make any changes today inside of your company that could represent a baby step in the right direction?
Tags: alisha ring, amwf, Austin, austin technology council, brian wong, carol kallendorf, change management, culture, delta associates, drive culture, Fame, Family, Fortune, Fun, hire better, talent acquisition, tweets, Twitter
In Defense of our Culture at Hire Better
Earlier this week I found myself on the phone with one of our service providers at Hire Better. The company: Monster.com. We’ve used their service with average satisfaction for about 5 years. Every year we step back and evaluate it but ultimately, we’ve chosen to invest the $10,000-$15,000 that they want to charge for access to a huge database of largely uninteresting people – many of whom need work Visas to make career moves.
Our account comes up for renewal at the end of May. We haven’t heard from anyone in their company since last September when our account was nearly cancelled FOR FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY.
A little bit of history – Last year an interesting thing happened: their Compliance Department caught wind of a report that the “seats” that we paid for were being used by IP addresses that weren’t in Austin, TX. This set off all kinds of alarms at Monster.com and I received a disturbing voicemail from a woman who more than suggested that we were guilty of fraud because of our usage and that the legal team was looking into canceling our account without a refund – essentially a loss of $10,000 for us.
Why were they accusing us of Fraud? Because our Corporate Address is in Austin, TX. ”If your address is in Austin, why would you have anyone with an IP address in Iowa, Kansas or Arkansas?” they asked. How very 1993 of them. I challenged that same Legal Team and their Compliance Team by asking,
“Have any of our seats EVER been logged into by more than one person simultaneously and in different geographic regions?”
“No, never once.” they responded.
“And is our usage on any of these accounts outside of our terms of use or so heavy that it would make you think that we were trying to be fraudulent or mis-represent ourselves in any way?”
“No, not at all.” was their answer.
It took me a week and about 20 hours of our senior team’s time to explain to their Legal Department that we’re a Virtual Company that’s built around team members who work from their homes because of the Balance that it provides to each and every one of us. We finally settled on an agreement with their team that we could give each and every one of our employees their own usernames and passwords and split up the usage of each “seat” into what was the equivalent of 50% of a traditional license. This satisfied their Legal team and it allowed us to avoid a $10,000 loss. My Account Representative at the time was a gentlemen named Chris Shaw. He stuck up for us, was the internal champion for our cause and put his reputation on the line with that same Compliance Department to vouch for us and insist that there wasn’t any fraudulent intent or activity.
Fast forward to this week: my new Account Representative called me 4 times over the course of a week – only bothering to leave a voicemail once (a hint: while we’re virtual we do have “real” phones that have caller ID). When Cortney, my Assistant, finally reached him to book our phone meeting, we were less than a week from our renewal. Here’s the breakdown of the conversation:
9:15 AM Central Time comes and goes (our agreed upon call time)
9:21 My phone finally rings. It’s my new representative. It’s clear he doesn’t understand how OCD I can be about the timing on phone calls. He starts the call with, “So how’s your business doing these days?” with an artificially chipper tonality. I politely asked if he had turned on the news in the last 9 months and then reminded him that we had 15 minutes booked for the call and we were down to 7.5 minutes left because of his tardiness.
9:32 I’ve had to explain, at length, what the entire situation was that had happened during the previous September. Apparently, the CRM system at Monster.com isn’t equipped to keep track of week-long legal boondoggles with clients that have paid them nearly $75,000 over 5 years. If you’ll remember, I mentioned earlier that Chris Shaw, our representative at the time, was a great advocate for us. Our new representative made it a point to remind me, at least 3 times during these 11 minutes, “Well, based on all of these exceptions that you benefitted from in the past year, you’ll clearly understand why Chris isn’t with our company any more.”
9:34 I’m now 4 minutes late for a commitment I made to call a prospective candidate for one of our biggest clients. As politely as I can muster, I shared with our representative, “Look, I appreciate that you’re not a fan of Chris. I also respect that you have a precious “rate card” that you’re allowed to discount from by 75% (side note, if a sales rep can discount by 75% off of a rate card, what’s the point of even having a rate card?), but unless you can wrap your brain around the fact that I’m VERY familiar with your legal contract and that I’m not willing to buy ONE seat (as he suggested) and pass around the username to everyone (which is in violation of their agreement) or 9 full, individual seats for our employees who spend about 1 hour per week each on your website, we don’t have much more to talk about. And I’m late for my next call. I need to go.”
9:36 It’s starting to get ridiculous. Every effort that I’ve made to be polite so that I can move on to my next commitment has been ignored. It’s as if I’m speaking an entirely different language. My representative has shared with me things like, “You know, 2 years ago we were only permitted to discount by 15%” and “What you received last September was clearly a one time thing and there’s no way I could get that approved again.” His arguments were as pertinent to our conversation as the amount of snow they received in the Napa Valley last year. ”I know we’ve gone a bit over our alloted time this morning Jonathan. Why don’t you let me go back to my managers and that Compliance Team from last September and see if I can work something out for you.”
3:10 Central Time – My representative called me back to share the news with me. ”Jonathan, what I’ve gotten approval for is to sell you 9 individual seats at 75% off of our rate card. This is a great deal. Can I send over the agreement?”
If you’ve hung with me and read all the way down to this part of this blog post I hope you’ll let me clarify something: My intent of this post was NOT to air the dirty laundry of my discussions with Monster.com. However, sharing that level of detail was critically important because this is what I want every company who acts as a service provider for us to understand:
- Our Core Values are NOT something that we just hung on a wall for everyone to ignore. Earning Trust, Having Balance, Adding Value and Respect play a significant part in every decision that we make every day.
- I (and We) will never apologize for or alter our decision to have hired the team that we have in place that just happen to work from their homes all around the country. Because we have Balance in our lives, the quality of the work that we do for our clients is TOP NOTCH. When we work, we work hard. And then we stop and spend time with our families. We don’t waste time commuting, attending pointless meetings or waiting in line for lunch in the same 15 minute period that everyone else has to run to the local fast food joint.
- We may need a concession or two from you, as a service provider, because we ARE different. Here are some of the companies who have acknowledged that and will be Partners of ours for a long time:
- Pioneer Bank in Dripping Springs, TX
- 8×8: the providers of Packet 8 Phones
- Apple
- Otherinbox
- 37Signals
- Jintech
- Clutch Creative
- Spross & Associates
And one final note to Monster.com: it’s 2009. It might be time for you to take a good hard look at services like LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Recruiter’s Earth, Door64, Google, Craig’s List and a host of other websites that passed you by a long time ago. For me, I’ll take the $13,000 I just saved by not renewing with your service and I’ll spend it on training our employees on AIRS. After all, our commitment to our clients is that they’ll HIRE BETTER. Your website simply doesn’t help us do that any more.
Tags: 8x8, A-Players, AIRS, american workforce, amwf, bad hires, career history, clutch creative, hire better, hiring, LinkedIn, Monster, monster.com, OtherInbox, pioneer bank, proactive recruiting, purchasing decisions, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, research, talent acquisition, talent vault, Topgrading, tweets, Twitter, unemployment, unemployment rate, virtual bench, zoominfo
CEO Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-09
- The EOers who are improving the world for Emerging Entrepreneurs: @lead_by_change, @andreazdril, @strategista, @sweetriot. #EOGLC #
- @sweetriot love the energy, passion & insight you brought to Accelerator’s Global Cmtee meeting this morning. Welcome aboard! #EOGLC in reply to sweetriot #
- When Facilitation goes right: identifying Dangers get people engaged, reviewing Opportunities gets them inspired! #EOGLC #
- The benefits of EO continue to amaze me. I simply can’t imagine trying to be an Entrepreneur without it. #EOGLC #
- #EO member just shared with me: Topgrading looks great! I read all 600 pages. How do I do it? #EOGLC (via @Topgrading) #
- Stunned! Sitting with Remington Green in NoLa. His company employs all WAHMs in a virtual company. I’ve met my soulmate. #EOGLC #
- EO staffers backstage with the most incredible Mardi Gras Floats. Once in a lifetime! #EOGLC http://yfrog.com/0espgxj #
- Jindal flw-up: if you want new biz in LA we need access to talent. If the Ritz is example, the gene pool is shallow #EOGLC (via @HireBetter) #
- #followfriday Anyone at #eoglc – @sjagger @jmb3883 @amwf @matthewweiss @sweetriot @govindh @dhassell (via @JeremyBrandt & @HireBetter) #
- I’ve proudly accepted my new Global Committee role for #EO under the Leadership of @andreazdril. I call it: Head Whackamole-er. #EOGLC #
- Tried to scare 6 new Accelerator Site Champions away w/ the daunting work it takes to launch. All 6 said, “Bring it on!” #EOGLC #
- Developing your Human Resources in a downturn. Compelling point: it isn’t coming from the HR Dept http://bit.ly/kYc8O (via @HireBetter) #
- Results.com’s @stephenlynch provides great insight on Mgmnt By Walking Around in The Economist http://bit.ly/bR1er #
- If the growth & improvements of EO’s Accel Pgm are indicators, Entrepreneurs ARE the most qualified to lead us out of Recession #EOGLC #
- Hey GLC, thanks for the invite to your awards, I had a blast!!! Congrats to all the winners!! #EOGLC (via @ace_frehley) #
- RT @jmb3883: EO’s Managing Director Bob is cracking up the staff office at #EOGLC. Best. Managing. Director. Ever. (AMWF: I concur) #
- Enjoying the innovation & energy of 30+ EO member-leaders that will shape Accelerator in 09-10 #EOGLC http://yfrog.com/5323176772j #
- Jindal gave best “entrepreneurs are welcome here” pitch I’ve seen & he meant it. His policies prove it (via @adrobins) #EOGLC #
- The hosts for tonight’s Rock Star awards. #EOGLC http://yfrog.com/0hiu9j #
- Ace Freeley from KISS attempts to compare Emtrepreneurs to Musicians: “we all wear blue nail polish, right?!”. #EOGLC #
- Jackie Berry (@jmb3883) named #EO Employee of the year in front of 600 members at #EOGLC. That drives culture! (via @HireBetter) #
- Don’t know where in Louisiana I could live that’s as cool as #Austin but if there was, I’d pack up the family. Jindahl’s impressive! #EOGLC #
- LAGov Bobby Jindahl is giving entrepreneurs incentives to move their companies.. #EOGLC. (via @dhassell) #
- Jindahl: “Why are unemployed insured & lose health insrnce when they get jobs? People behave if you incentivize. #EOGLC (via @HireBetter) #
- Bobby Jindahl live! So wise & eloquent. Awesome to hear an Indian American with a sweet Southern accent. #eoglc (via @sweetriot) #
- RT@adrobins: B Jindahl: As long as who you know is more important than what you know, businesses are going to hold back investment. #GLC09 #
- Your 2012 Republican Nominee for POTUS: Bobby Jindal. #EOGLC. http://yfrog.com/0gmoeuj #
- Getting the chance to hear Bobby Jindal at #EOGLC. Only state in US to lose more population than it gained for 15 straight years. #
- Very cool: 09-10 Incoming Austin Prez for EO gives each Board Member a Texas Football Jersey. #EOGLC. Look out NoLa. #
- @sweetriot #envy. in reply to sweetriot #
- @JeremyBrandt is #EOGLC our official tag for the weekend? in reply to JeremyBrandt #
- The 3 Defining Moments of GenerationY (born 1977-1995): Challenger, Gulf War on TV, 9/11. #
- GenYGuy: Boomers consider this GenerationY group “lazy” but they are the 1st generation that will work for more than 60 years! #
- GenYGuy: whole room moans when he shares falling home values, dropping retirement accounts but their 28 yr old w/ a Masters just moved home #
- Listening to the GenYGuy in #Austin explain to the Baby Boomers why GenY isn’t remotely affected by the Recession #
- Single greatest challenge of a globally distributed team: meetings that start at 11 PM get you fired up and you can’t sleep. Sigh… #
- My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. Thomas Jefferson #optea (via @dcjc) #
- @Coachjimbo Not unless the company doing the interviews is strong enough to “land” an A-Player. If not, they’ll get frustrated fast! #
- @snasta I believe Corey Bell at TriFusion would be a good place to start. in reply to snasta #
Tags: A-Players, american workforce, amwf, capitalism, capitalist, hire better, Recruiting, Topgrading, tweets, Twitter
CEO Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-05-02
- AMWF CEO Jonathan Davis will deliver “Topgrading: Your company’s not ready for it” on June 4th in #Austin. (via @Topgrading) #
- Snowboarding in the woods & navigating the trees is like moving thru life: don’t look at trees…focus on the spaces (via @SteveSavad) #
- @SteveSavad will there be an #EO twitter feed today? What’s the hashtag? in reply to SteveSavad #
- Cloud Potential is just incredible. Thanks to Rackspace & Mosso for hosting the first Lunch 2.0. #
- Headed to meet @jbryce and @lewmoorman for the Mosso Cloud event in #Austin. #
- It’s not my normal tweet theme about Talent or Capitalism, but this is important about #swineflu: http://doihavepigflu.com/. #
- @GamePlanHayden the time you waste drinking the High Life is not time wasted at all. in reply to GamePlanHayden #
- Brad Smart suggests Topgrading Interviews save $60,000 per hour you spend. Do you agree? (via @Topgrading) #
- Google continues to do cool stuff: compare & chart unemployment rates in any area – http://bit.ly/9Q962 #
- “Bigger than Texas” – a blog post from results.com about the EO Texas Roundup http://budurl.com/bigger (via @andymeadows) #
- Just joined http://twibes.com/EntrepreneursOrganization. If you’re in #EO you should too. #
- @FrontRowDave buy-in for a Topdrading can’t come on the backend. People run from pain, they wander towards pleasure. in reply to FrontRowDave #
- 190 babies will be born in the next 45 seconds. India: 25 / China: 20 / USA: 5 / UK: 1 #
- “We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today.” – former RNC Chair. #
- Congrats to @neelan on the acquisition of Lexcycle by AMZN – less than 18 months after launch! http://budurl.com/ykfj #
- GDP Down >6% but Consumer Spending was UP 2.2% http://budurl.com/rpug #
- @FrontRowDave What kind of “elevator” pitch are you trying to create? I’m a bit of a Topgrading Junkie. in reply to FrontRowDave #
- Dig your well before you’re thirsty: Tips for building a Virtual Bench – http://budurl.com/2ejg #
- @BobGambert the irony in your question is that the one candidate to “decrease taxes” in Austin might be the one to raise them the least. in reply to BobGambert #
- @ChrisFerdinandi check out budurl.com. Comprehensive click stats. in reply to ChrisFerdinandi #
- Passionate about Improving Hiring Success, Topgrading or Technology? Visit http://twibes.com/hirebetter to join the HireBetter Twibe. #
- Just started a Twibe. Visit http://twibes.com/hirebetter to join. #
- Jeffrey Miron’s case for the Government doing NOTHING. http://bit.ly/DGQ0A #
- Thank you Quickbooks! They released a beta today that allows their Online Edition to work on Safari. Welcome to 2009. #
- Liberty never comes from gov’t but rather from its Subjects. Its history is resistance & limitation of gov’t power not expansion – WWilson #
- RT @Topgrading – Brad Smart: “Our society is in need of an ethical transplant.” He believes at least 50% of people LIE on resumes. #
- 72 hours of “vacation” at the Texas Roundup and I’m utterly exhausted! Thanks Houston for a great time. #EOH09 #
- Mid 50’s 4 cylinder Testarossa. 1st to carry the name. #EOH09 http://twitpic.com/40c9k #
- Private race team garage at Ferrari. #EOH09 http://twitpic.com/40c43 #
- Verne decided to hang out with us. #EOH09 http://twitpic.com/40b9h #
- Private party at Ferrari of Houston. #EOH09 http://twitpic.com/407q9 #
- 80% of Americans do not like their jobs #eoh09 (via @salesby5) #
- Cool non-profit: efefoundation.org. Helping young adults in the Middle East realize that there is opportunity available! #EOH09 #
- 1st real takeaway from Sinek: “When you compete against everyone else, no one cares. Compete against yourself & people will help” #EOH09 #
- Verne Harnish: everyone taking furious notes. Simon Sinek: they draw a bullseye and then zone out. #EOH09 #
- Simon Sinek on stage now. Interesting: yes. Applicable: maybe. Unique: not at all. Everyone talks about Jobs, Dell, Gates. Yawn. #EOH09 #
- Big ?s Bizs are asking: Pricing? Add new services/products? Srvc Biz Productizing/Prdct Biz Servicing? To decide: ask customers! #EOH09 #
- Changed our Blog’s title, bought a domain, registered a new Twitter handle and bought a book in the last 20 minutes. Thx Verne. #EOH09 #
- China’s biggest business challenge: CASH (they see so much opportunity). #EOH09 #
- India’s biggest business challenges: PEOPLE & EXECUTION. #EOH09 #
- Western Culture’s biggest challenge in 09: STRATEGY (by a factor of 4) #EOH09 #
- 4 Challenges in Business: People, Strategy, Execution, Cash. Will tweet the Global Priorities in 1min. #EOH09 #
- What does Toyota think of Six Sigma? “using a nuclear weapon to take out an ant hill”. Verne Harnish at #EOH09 #
- Price Cutting is this economy’s cocaine. Reducing your price will NOT increase demand, it will just kill your margins. #EOH09 #
- Verne’s challenge to us: what are the 1 or 2 words that your company can OWN? AMWF’s: “Hire Better” #EOH09 #
- Verne Harnish: “I don’t actually enjoy doing everything I teach.” Find a great #2. #EOH09 #
- Michael Dell now realizes the primary reason for Dell’s woes is that he turned his back on Marketing. #EOH09 #
- As a leader, we think we have all the answers. What we lack is the questions. Listen more, talk less, ask questions. #EOH09 #
- To start the morning: “We are all food for worms”. Are you awake yet? #EOH09 #
- Are you a Lion or Gazelle? #EOH09 http://twitpic.com/3yktd #
- A first for #EO: Ben Richter gets a morning event started on time! #EOH09 #
- @andymeadows couldn’t agree more. in reply to andymeadows #
- Looking forward to Verne Harnish @thegrowthguy in Houston. Follow #EOH09 for the feed #
- Hash update for the EO Texas Roundup: #EOH09 #
Tags: A-Players, american workforce, amwf, capitalism, capitalist, hire better, Recruiting, Topgrading, tweets, Twitter
CEO Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-24
- M.Luttrell quote, “If you’ve ever quit once you’re a quitter & it’s only a matter of time til you do it again”. This guy’s a badass SOB. #EO #
- @stephenlynch got to hear Simon Mundell this morning. Awesome! #EO in reply to stephenlynch #
- Seriously: how does anyone run a company without the help of #EO? #
- @lead_by_change I wrote about just that last week. Check it here: http://bit.ly/2ocC in reply to lead_by_change #
- Cultural Change can’t be achieved by a one-person Army. http://budurl.com/aexw #
- Word of caution: upgrade BaseCamp account to get SSL. Our GroupHub got hacked & that’s how hacker found FTP info needed to hack our site. #
- RT @Topgrading: Smart&Assocs is offering free phone consulting to co’s that License the Topgrading Forms & Guides for a limited time. #
- FU to previous tweet on Topgrading: company stands to drop $8mm annually to the bottom line with A-Player Middle Managers. #
- Quote from a prospect today, “We simply can’t afford to execute on Topgrading”. Wow. #
- Art show for Maggie Weaver tonight. Please come join: http://budurl.com/maggie #
- In Negotiations with a domain squatter. Offering him a 3,000% ROI. If he turns it down I’m dropping the legal hammer. #
- Blog with Wordpress got hacked! Anyone know how to fix it? #
- RT @dcjc: in teaching Economics, this would work for kids today…maybe they could teach their parents! http://tparty2.com/ #
- Headed to lunch with the “Gen Y Guy” Jason Dorsey to talk recruiting, on-boarding and managent strategies for Gen Y. #
- Called Dr to pay bill. VM for Girl says, “Due to volume I will call you w/in 2 days”. Is volume due to ppl paying or crappy billing? #fail #
Tags: A-Players, american workforce, amwf, capitalism, capitalist, Recruiting, Topgrading, tweets, Twitter
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HIRE BETTER CEO
- Sign of a great client: I send an email, "This guy's great-we need to hire him" & the CEO's response is "Right on - do it". #TrustIsEarned 10 hrs ago
- Teaser for tomorrow morning: new blog post about why hiring an unemployed salesperson is probably a mistake. http://www.HireBetterBlog.com 11 hrs ago
- There are now 6 unemployed people for every open position in the US. http://bit.ly/cWmR5Z 20 hrs ago
- For all of you who are descending upon Austin this week for SXSW - here's the list of the free parties: http://bit.ly/dfOB30 1 day ago
- More updates...
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