How To Hire Winners

NCF Hiring Process How To Hire Winners

National Credit Federation is no different from any other business looking to grow:

We need good people!

Good people are the hottest commodities in the business market place, and finding them can be a draining process.

Ever put an ad out on Ziprecuiter or Monster only to get inundated with resumes?!

Who can look through all those? Much less look through them without pulling your hair out? Then you have to weed through the list of people applying for a sales job whose only sales experience is working behind the counter at a fast food restaurant.

Yeah, not helpful…

I set out to make a substantial difference in our hiring process and in return, hopefully retain and attract the type people I want in my office.

See that’s another thing, I want winners working for me.

I’m looking for drivers.

I’m looking for people who want to be the best.

I’m looking for the guy or gal who just bought a new BMW, and needs to crush it this week to make the new car payment.

It seemed to me (before I implemented this process) that finding those people was harder than finding a needle in a haystack in the middle of a field full of haystacks…

Until I changed the way I looked at what I was actually trying to accomplish.

See the old way of hiring was putting out an ad or contacting a recruiter and bringing people into the office, interviewing, wasting time, bringing them back for second interviews, and wasting more time. All this only to accomplish absolutely nothing except throwing something at the wall (the new hire) and seeing what sticks.

I couldn’t handle it any more so here’s what I did…

I broke our hiring process into 8 distinct steps and I didn’t look at a single resume.

The outcome: I hired 5 new high level sales people for only $1,000 and 8 hours of my time.

Step 1

The ad.

The ad is the first critical step in this process. Look at NCF’s ad:

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
NCF is Looking for Problem Solvers! Highly Compensated!

***PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE AD BEFORE YOU APPLY***
National Credit Federation is one of the nation’s oldest and largest credit repair companies. We give people a second chance by helping them accomplish their financial dreams.

We believe that strong people are the backbone of a business and we are currently looking for 2 salespeople with problem solving abilities.

This job requires our salespeople to be critical thinkers and make decisions quickly based on the information the consumer provides.

We’re looking for savvy individuals that are hard workers, money-motivated, and career-driven. If you think working a 9-5 is an ideal setting, this is probably not the job for you.

Serious inquiries only!! If you have a great attitude, are willing to learn, want to make great money, and always strive to be the best at what you do, we may be a good fit for you.

You should:

– Love to make money
– Desire to be a top salesperson
– Be willing and able to learn quickly
– Be goal-oriented
– Have proven success in past sales positions
– Be proficient with a computer
– CRM knowledge preferred
– Not be afraid to pick up the phone 50 times a day and call
– Have a strong work ethic
– Be able to compassionately speak with people about sensitive financial topics
– Be team-oriented (We are a very close group and do a lot of things together outside of work)
– Adapt to and accept change
– Like to work in a fun and exciting work environment (We work hard but we also play hard too!)

IF YOU DON’T MEET ALL THE REQUIREMENTS ABOVE, PLEASE DON’T APPLY.

We can offer you:

– Competitive base salary
– Great commission structure
– W2 employment (not a contract position)
– Full benefits, including 401k
– World class sales and product training
– ALL LEADS PROVIDED by warm referral source, no cold calling
– Plenty of room for growth within the company

We conduct a lengthy interview process to be sure each candidate is a good fit for our team. If you follow the steps below and meet the requirements above, you can expect the process to include an initial phone interview, two in-person interviews, and a 1/2 day job preview in our office.

If you think you have what it takes to work with us, please follow the instructions below:

Please go to www.discoverncf.com

There is a questionnaire you need to fill out. After the questionnaire you will be asked to select a time slot to schedule your own interview. The time slots are on first-come, first-served basis.

We look forward to meeting with you.

**NOTE**

Do not respond via our contact form. All applicants who want to be considered need to go to www.discoverncf.com and fill out the questionnaire. No phone calls, please.

Thanks for your time – we really look forward to meeting you!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Three Things To Notice

The ad says a lot about who they would be coming to work for. Notice the title: “NCF is seeking problem solvers” This conveys we need people with high cognitive ability (we’ll talk about this more later) and the ability to think on their feet.
In addition the “highly compensated” was strategically place to attract top talent.
The final statement : “Do not respond to this. All applicants who want to be considered need to go to www.discoverncf.com and fill out the questionnaire.”

This particular one was an excellent weed out for who actually read the article and who didn’t. We had well over 200 resumes come in and I didn’t open a single one. I wanted them to opt in.

So that’s enough about the ad. Go ahead and use it. It got me 5 rock stars.

Plug your info in and play.

Where did I place the ad?

Zipcrecruiter
Monster
Craigslist
Indeed
Linkedin

Like I said, I spent $1,000 on ads and that was it.

Step 2

The lander

There’s a few things to notice here:

I gave them a short video to watch that auto plays. They get to put a face with a name and its not just another boring application to fill out.
I made this page in 10 minutes including shooting the video
“Join a team with a purpose and a vision” – My experience has been people want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Step 3

Question time

I ask them to dig deep and complete a questionnaire.

What I can tell you about the questionnaire is there were a lot of personality questions but there were also industry specific questions.

So you can take your own industry specific questions and see if they’re even in the ballpark

**Truthfully, I scanned the answers. I really just wanted to see if they would do the questionnaire.**

Here are the results: Out of 253 opt-ins, 83 people filled out the questionnaire.

Right there I eliminated 66% of the “potential employees” by just seeing if they can follow directions.

A sample of the questions asked were

Why do you think you will be a good fit for this position?
What interests you most about National Credit Federation?
What are the 3 Things that will separate you from all the other applicants?
How long are you willing to fail at this job before you succeed?
Is it better to be perfect and late, or good and on time?
What parts of work drive you nuts?
Would You Call Yourself A People Person? (Why?)

Then lastly I tell them I am only going to hire the best and request they send me a video resume. I want to see how interested they are in the position and to what lengths they will go to get the job.

Step 4

The Thank You page & calendar

At the end of the questionnaire they are redirected to a Thank you lander page with another auto play video they thanks them for their info and directs them to go check out some other cool stuff on our website. There is also this a scheduleonce calendar below the video, where they can schedule their phone interview. This is also another test, can they follow instructions again and can they keep an appointment and follow up appropriately. As you can see they are to call me a the requested time!

Scheduleonce is an appointment scheduling system. Which is linked to my google calendar only letting them schedule during times I was available .

I made the employee prospects schedule the time that worked best for them. We allotted 2 days, broken into 30 minute blocks, over 8 hours, for a total of 32 bookings.

This was done on a first come, first served basis.

So when I came into the office the day after the ads posted I had 32 scheduled calls between myself and one other person.

Our show up rate: 94%!

Can you believe that? We actually had only 2 people not show up for their phone call.

What a breath of fresh air.

Like I said, I did all this over the course of 5 days.

Step 5

The initial phone call

Here’s our initial phone script:

Hi {firstname} My name is Da Fulk and I’m the President here at National Credit Federation. First, I want to thank you for taking the time for this phone call.

So our hiring process may be a little bit different than something you’ve gone through in the past. First, I want to tell you a little bit about our company and then I have 3 questions for you. Sound fair?

Our goal is to help 100,000 families reach their financial goals in the next 5 years by helping them take back control of the credit and finances.

So here are my three questions for you:

Tell me about your sales experience
When can you start?
What’s the most amount of money you’ve ever made and what amount of money do you think you need to live the life you want?

Man, I’ll tell you what. I could find out nearly everything I wanted to about my applicants with those three questions.

Here are the goals of that phone call:

I had to keep it short. I only had a 30 minute block of time.
I wanted them to know who we are and what our BHAG (Big hairy audacious goal) is
I needed to hear the way they explained their sales experience. This was for a phone position so ability to explain clearly and thoughtfully on the phone was marked.
The money question was simply to see motivation. How much money motivates you. This is a sales job and typically sales people are motivated but all people have a difference meaning of the word “success.” I needed to know what success meant to these applicants.

If I liked the outcome of the call I directed them to a customer portal with a video.

Step 6

The video.

I directed all people who passed the initial phone call to a 45 minute video!

The video was an explanation of basic credit 101 things.

At the end of the video there was a test. They simply needed to complete it.

What did I accomplish here?

I got some free training for potential sales people. hehehe

I also made sure they could follow instructions, complete an easy task and retain knowledge by passing a test at the end out the credit course.

ALL of this before they ever step foot in my office for an in person interview.

Step 7.

The initial interview

If they passed the test, we called them and scheduled the interview for Tuesday and Wednesday. We booked 12 interviews. Each was 30 minutes long and they all went the same (except some applicants stood out much more than others)

All we did was role play.

Based on the video they watched, they knew what we were going to test them on, and we role played as if I was a client and they were the loan officer.

6 severely outperformed the others.

Yes, I know. You’re probably saying, “But Dave, I don’t have time to do that!”

And I would respond, you don’t have time for this? But you do have time for turnover, lost time, lost money, more turnover, and more headaches though right?.

While this was tedious, I got to see how each applicant would interact with our clients.

We brought 6 people back

Step 8

RJP and cognitive test

So I’m a big believer in culture and having fun at the office. One bad bird in the bunch can cause everyone to be miserable.

With that thought in mind, I have always been a big believer of having someone do the job before they are hired for the job. I call this an RJP or Realistic Job Preview.

This is where I bring the candidate back for 2-3 hours and they sit and shadow someone in the roll they are applying for. This way they can actually see what they will be doing on a daily basis. Then I give them a 5 min crash course on our script hand them a copy and faux leads and say call them. The candidates however don’t know the leads are fake. Prior to their arrival I contact 3 of my employees that are off site and not here at the home office and tell them to expect some calls between X – X time and to play along as a client.

I do this for a few reasons, I am looking to see if they are scared of calling the leads or if there is any phone reluctance. After they get shut down by the first person how fast will they pick up the phone and call the second. I give them some quick feedback after the first call and I look to see if they take it and implement it in their second call. Are they coachable? Can they take a no without destroying their ability to move on, are they resilient?

After the RJP I ask everyone on the team what they thought. Every sales person, processor, manager, and my assistant, “will they fit in the group” kinda thing.

Based on the RJP and feedback from the group I give them a cognitive test using Revelian just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

It took 20 minutes and I had my best closer and my Sales Team Lead take the test just to have a base as a scoring module for the applicants.

We hired 5 at the end of the day.

Conclusion

I implemented this in my business and it’s surely been one of the best things I’ve ever done. I didn’t look at a single resume, I didn’t pay headhunters a ridiculous rate, and I ended up changing my thoughts on what talent pool was available in Tampa, FL.

Before I was just hiring wrong. Now I know that, and I’ll never make the same mistake again.

I hope you’re able to implement, or use, some of these strategies in your hiring process and you only hire winners for your organization moving forward!