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Hiring the Right Fit: Emphasizing Performance and Cultural Fit Over Pedigree
88 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of The Better Contractor Podcast, hosts Brent Oberlink and Travis May dive into the evolving landscape of hiring practices. They challenge the traditional emphasis on formal education and status, “pedigree”, advocating instead for a focus on “performance”, the work they did and how they did it. Through engaging discussions, they highlight the importance of asking the right questions during interviews, understanding the real drivers of job stability and loyalty, and recognizing the diminishing necessity of some of our most trusted modern indicators of value in today's workforce. The conversation covers how to identify and nurture true high performers, the pivotal role of company culture in employee retention and success, and practical strategies for both employers and employees to thrive in the modern job market. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to build a stellar team or a job seeker aiming to showcase your strengths, this episode offers invaluable insights and actionable advice.
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Transcript
Introduction: Performance over Pedigree
00:00:11
Speaker
All right, welcome back to another edition of the Better Contractor Podcast. Today I am joined by my wonderful co-host, the quote master, Travis May. How are you Travis? Fantastic. Good to see you, Brent. Well, today's podcast, let's talk a little bit about, actually this can kind of be for the audience. It could be for people who are doing the hiring. So HR, it can also be for someone looking for a career or a job. So performance over pedigree.
00:00:40
Speaker
what skills are necessary for success. So I wrote three little notes down in the sky and my three bullet points. I'll just hit them all at once so we can kind of dive in a little deeper. But I've seen a lot of resumes over time where it's a whole lot of words and it looks great on paper. The degrees may look great. All this stuff looks great. And at the end of the day, what I'm asking the question is,
00:01:05
Speaker
What are your results? You know, I can put a lot of stuff on paper. It looks good. I can go get a lot of different degrees. I can go do all this different stuff. And those are all important. Fine. But what I want to know is someone doing the hiring. What have you actually done? You know, so, you know, if you look at like the degree, okay, what leadership roles, what awards did you get? Did you go above and beyond or did you just get a diploma or a degree somewhere? You know, who are you as far as work ethic?
00:01:31
Speaker
Who are you as far as delivering? And who are you as far as delivering on time? You know, so actions and results.
Red Flags in Resumes
00:01:37
Speaker
Number one, number two, loyalty. If I go through a resume and you change jobs every six to 12 months, you talk about a red flag. That is a red flag to me as someone who's done hiring before. You know, I like to see a little bit of loyalty here and there. I understand here and there, you know, the job just didn't work out. So, hey, that was six months.
00:01:59
Speaker
But if you've worked 14 places in 14 years, that is a red flag. Because to me, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be number 15 for year number 15. And it's not worth it to me. So is there a little bit of loyalty there? Or inside of that as well, though, did you hate every place you worked? Of those 14 places, was every boss bad? Because then it's kind of one of those things, though. Was it the boss or was it you? It may be you.
00:02:28
Speaker
And then third, do you fit the culture that I need?
Cultural Fit and Consistency
00:02:33
Speaker
So, you know, I just kind of wrote down those three, just to kind of get the thing started here. But, you know, you're going back to the first one of actions and results. Um, you know, Travis, I think you have a quote in here and I'll let, I'll let you go ahead and say that quote. If you, if you remember what you quoted earlier, just because you're the quote master. What, what, what, what did I have in there? You're actually speaking so loud. I can hear what you're saying. So that's, I think a Ralph, uh, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
00:02:59
Speaker
I think he was the first one attributed to you, but it's been used by several. And that's such a relevant quote. And people might chalk it up to intuition, but when you're talking to people, you typically feel their vibe.
Interview Strategies
00:03:15
Speaker
You can, you can feel energy or whatever you want to attribute it to, but you know, something's off in that something's not consistent or congruent with what they're saying with what's actually
00:03:28
Speaker
happening or what you witness. That's if you have repeated exposure to that person, because if it's the first time that you're meeting in the context of hiring somebody, you're not necessarily going to have that. Sometimes people are really good actors and they can pull it off. Sometimes you can actually feel like, hey, I'm just not feeling what they're saying.
00:03:53
Speaker
doesn't seem to fit the personality or I'm asking questions. I can't put my finger quite on it. I got a lot of great little buzzwords, but the person can't necessarily put their finger on a project that they move forward or they haven't really won any awards or just said that there's no auxiliary context to validate that I had these nine bullet points and I was in charge of whatever.
00:04:22
Speaker
$3 million worth of equipment and then they can't add any additional context to validate that. You might not, in some cases, be a high.
The Evolving Role of Education
00:04:34
Speaker
This isn't consistent, or maybe they're not telling the truth. A little voice in the back of your head, like, man, something doesn't seem right on this. You got to start looking at the actions. Your actions speak so loud, I can't hear what you're saying. Yeah, I like that.
00:04:49
Speaker
I know it's been a while since I've done hiring personally, but I know when I was still doing it, and that was a skill that got a little bit better with time, but towards the end, I was very big on letting the person just talk, like shut up and let them just talk. And then when they would do their, hey, I've done this or I've accomplished this,
00:05:09
Speaker
Can you tell me specifically what you did to accomplish that and then I would just shut up and let them talk you know and a lot of times they can either give you something pretty concrete specific where you know hey they actually did have a hand in that that was something they actually led or you can feel pretty quickly that hey.
00:05:28
Speaker
They just knew the company grew during that time and they're trying to get on that bandwagon, but they were actually fired for this reason or let go for this reason, or they never actually contributed to the group for this reason. But I think that ask the very specific questions, either very pointed to ones to dive deep and then just shut up. And if there's a little bit of awkward silence, be okay with it awkward silence, but let them fill that space. And scenario, but get them to tell stories.
00:05:55
Speaker
If they've been a high performer, they should have some stories, some struggles, some successes, some details about what they did, projects they worked in, people they worked with, challenges they overcame. I mean, there should be some stories in there. Get them to, and then, I don't know, I never, so I never used it like ask them, Hey, let's role play your scenario. I mean, sometimes that can be effective.
00:06:21
Speaker
If they're an introvert, they're probably not, you know, probably getting their best self in there to do a little role playing, but scenario based stuff. Get them to, you want to see how they think through things that can illuminate when they've got that experience or not. But the performance or pedigree. So, I'm trying to not make this a long story, but the
00:06:51
Speaker
patting the resume or putting bullet points, you want to make sure you're fully represented on there. Everybody has experienced the kind of padded or the embellished resume where they're taking credit for putting things on there. But the performance or pedigree piece, it's came about in several different ways in that
00:07:19
Speaker
people have indexed heavily education is not a bad thing. We should always be learning. But over the past couple decades, so that there was a couple things that you mentioned, I don't want to lose track of both the performance of a pedigree and the education piece, but then also the changing jobs. They're kind of tied back in here, but the going to school and getting a four year degree and then potentially a master's or a doctorate or
00:07:46
Speaker
over the past like 15 years, that's really been the main mantra of in order for you to be successful in society, you need to go get a four year degree, maybe a master's and then go enter the workforce. That's had positive and negative connotations. I think a lot of that there's been a lot of cases where their higher learning Institute became a business and they really took less and less
00:08:15
Speaker
interest in what happened on the other side of that, in that it was we need for profitability to get as many degrees through here as possible.
Resume Evaluations and Career Narratives
00:08:26
Speaker
And so you start pushing out degrees and people and kids through these institutions. And there's so many things that as that started to become one of the focuses or main focuses, instead of producing people out into society that can contribute and provide
00:08:45
Speaker
a lot of value out into the workforce for those institutions that adopted the it's a business and I need to make money off degrees, produce people back out into the workforce that didn't really have a ton of value whatever their their focus was. And so and then also when you tie into
00:09:04
Speaker
the financial component of it. Now they got huge debt with the degree that they're not able to really get what they were promised. It was a bait and switch. You get this four year tracks, come here, get this degree. This is what those people are making if it was a legit degree or career field. Not really considering, well, is anybody hiring for that when you get on the other side? People might be making that, but it's a small
00:09:33
Speaker
or niche market. And so now they're out of the workforce with a huge amount of debt and can't find a job. So they go back and it gets recycled that the success, verbiage and strategy will go get a master's. Okay, well, we're gonna match. And now they got six years with that debt and they might be able to get a job but maybe not enough to really compensate. And so we've got a couple of generations now who have experienced this and they're so jaded.
Generational Job Market Shifts
00:10:03
Speaker
on that in that they can't and there's other factors in there too, but the realization that they're not going to have the same quality of life that their parents did. They're not going to go be able to buy a house. They're not going to go work for an organization and it's legacy thinking for a time that doesn't exist anymore too. For like my parents, the success was go get a degree.
00:10:29
Speaker
go work for a company, you'd be loyal to that company, and they'll be loyal back and you'll be there for 20, 25 years, 30 years, retire from there, get a good pension, that entire thing's been broken for a long time. But that's the advice being given to younger kids is still the same, even though that world doesn't exist. And I think there's been a great disservice through that too, and maybe veering off into a different topic, but where
00:10:58
Speaker
where the performance or pedigree is, it was Lazlo Bock, it was Google. This was in the 2000s, I mean, it might be 15 years ago, 20 years ago, he was the head of HR. And he came out and he, I think it was through an interview that he said Google had stopped looking and I don't know if this whole still holds true today. He hasn't been a part of Google for several years, but he was doing an interview and he said we stopped looking at degrees.
00:11:26
Speaker
we stopped looking, there was a time where that was an indicator that they put in dedication and work and study and learn something and they're bringing value. But what we're finding is people more and more people are coming out with degrees that can't work well with other people that don't actually have the knowledge and the skills necessary to have impact out here. And so they stopped looking at degrees and he said, we actually, the ideal candidate is they don't have a degree and they made it anyway.
00:11:56
Speaker
What I would really want to see is somebody who went up, maybe it shows grit, learning agility, adaptability, teamwork. There are other things that if they didn't have the degree and unlocked doors and they still went out and crushed it, those are the ideas. And so I know when I've hired, I would always look for, because the resume would look great. Someone didn't.
00:12:20
Speaker
A lot of them look great, but one of the key indicators because you only get, and especially like for a major corporation, you can't do the, I want references and I call those references. I think lawsuits and things killed that entire strategy of trying to peer into who that person was. So really you go off a resume, maybe a phone call, the HR person screened them. Now they're in front of you. They can maybe be coached, have somebody else write the resume.
00:12:48
Speaker
They can be coached to perform well in an interview. And it's really tough to gauge them. And like a big corporation, you hire them. If early on, you realize, wow, this is very different person than what I thought I was getting.
00:13:08
Speaker
You're stuck with them for six or seven months of performance improvement plans or. Yeah, it's kind of one of those things that it's a higher slow and fire quick, but I know even internally like.
00:13:19
Speaker
There's been a lot of times where we've hired someone that it looked great on paper or even during the interview. Like it went well and you get in the field or whatever and you realize really quick, that wasn't, this is not what I thought.
The Future of Education and Job Training
00:13:33
Speaker
And I think at that point you got to really quickly determine, Hey, this is your trial period with us to see if you like working here, but it's also our trial period with you and this ain't working. But that also goes back to the resume.
00:13:44
Speaker
to look at those dates and see if there are some gaps because I've noticed sometimes people won't put down you know I worked at this company x for a month you know so if there's a gap in that resume of hey you were here from december of 14 to january of 15 but then
00:14:01
Speaker
February of 15, there's nothing listed. Tell me about February. You know, asking those kind of questions too to kind of see, you know, that type of stuff too. But I used to talk about like the degree to make me think about that a little bit because I've been a little bit conflicted.
00:14:15
Speaker
You know, I kind of view the college experience and the degree as more of a tool, you know, in a chest that you have. Is it the only tool? It's absolutely not. Is it the only way to success? It's absolutely not. But can it be a tool that you use? Absolutely. It's part of, you know, the core value of, you know, we talked about before of continuously learning. It is part of that. But I think, like you said, there's too many people that graduate thinking, hey, if I have this diploma, if I have this degree,
00:14:44
Speaker
then I am automatically hireable. That is 100% not going to be the case. And as someone, I honestly, in my management staff, I do not know the degrees of anyone that works for me.
00:14:56
Speaker
you know, but I do know what they produce or won't produce. So that is ultimately what matters. Does that mean not, do not go get a degree? That doesn't mean that, but use it as a tool and don't think when you get it that it's automatically guaranteed you a job at a hundred K a year because most likely it's not. You've got to put in the work. You've got to be someone who gets results. You've got to be someone who gets stuff done. That's all employers actually care about. I'll take grip, drive, desire, and passion.
00:15:21
Speaker
over a diploma any day. Is it nice if that person has great drive, passion, desire in a diploma? Yeah, that's awesome. You know, but it is definitely the one does outweigh the other though, as far as work. And you should be looking, is giving the HR and the hiring, I mean, you should be looking at the things around that job of what did they just sit in there and collect a paycheck and just do what their job tasks were as far as spelled out when they were hired.
00:15:50
Speaker
Or were they pushing the bounds? Did they take on new projects? Were they active in the community? Did they push the bounds and win some awards? Were they innovating? Did they take on multiple roles? Did they have additional scope of responsibility outside of what their maybe job title was to show maybe they had capacity to expand out and learn?
00:16:14
Speaker
If you don't have a degree, there should be something representative on there that shows that you were learning. You were learning something, whether it was certifications, whether it was, I mean, there's learning tools and things in companies that are out there now that are trying to track holistically books you read, seminars you attended.
00:16:39
Speaker
Online because the world has shifted to as far as the education and there's a reckoning coming to is this is evolving that the universities and it's not this is going to sound again because I'm not going to university is not but it used to be that to doubt.
00:16:57
Speaker
knowledge and higher level learning and additional learning was centralized in a geographic location, a university, a school. And if you wanted access to learning beyond what you learned in high school, you needed to go to one of these central locations where all the knowledge and expertise was focused and housed. With the rise of the internet, that's all changed. Now you can learn just about anything you want.
00:17:27
Speaker
online YouTube or the whole host now there's whole online training platforms and certifications and micro credentialing the four year degree where I go in and I spend four years first two years on just random stuff and then we focus that might be increasingly limited to very narrow career fields that actually need that and the rest of this with the certifications and the credentialing and things
00:17:57
Speaker
that might actually be the future of learning and education. But in your resume or in your career, you should have things in there that clearly articulate you've learned and that you put some things into practice. And this is maybe a little more nuanced, but the resume itself, there's, it seems like it's gone both ways. And I get it. As far as how long should your resume be? If you're somebody who's applying for jobs, what do I put in there? And there's
00:18:26
Speaker
this trend towards a one pager. Well, if you've done a lot of things, it's really hard to articulate. And for me as a hiring manager, I can't get a sense of the work that you've done and who you are off of a one pager, but at the same time is you're probably not going to get people's attention. And it's probably too much to have five pages and paragraphs and blocked forms of text. Most people, you get 30 seconds to capture their attention in the resume.
00:18:56
Speaker
And then they're on, they got a stack of 50 resumes and your one job of 15 that need to be filled. And so whoever's going through this, they don't have time to read and they're probably not going to read five pages. So there's a balance in there, but I've heard also recruiters talked about the other, and in some cases it's been true for me too. I will read, and I do want the context is that your resume needs to be as long as it needs to be. Don't worry about the one pager. But I'd say that there's, there's a limit to that as well.
00:19:26
Speaker
But you need to articulate yourself in there. You need to be able to show some context of who you are. Yeah. No, I agree with that. I know, uh, one, like if, if I was back in that predicament again, I need to resume and send it out. I do think, you know, I realized I would need to sell myself in a page. I think that is true. I need to be able to take someone, they're glancing through resonates, flipping them. Mine stands out.
Career Advancement Opportunities
00:19:50
Speaker
Creatively, it stands out with the content. Everything about it is concise and to the point. Because to me, that also shows a little bit of a level of intelligence. Because I realize who's reading this does not have the time to actually sit here and go through this entire resume. But what I do like to see is, hey, I have this one. And at the bottom of the section, it will maybe say, C, Attachment A. So maybe there's further pages behind it. Like, if I want to know more about this section, I can flip the page and then go to it. But page one sells me.
00:20:20
Speaker
There was something you said that she wrote down. Why are you thinking? Because I don't want to lose track of this. You were talking about, I don't want to see job hopping. You know what's super interesting is that's even been a cultural shift with some of the younger generations. There was, this is like four years ago, five years ago, there was a millennial recruiter that was on a panel somewhere and she wasn't arguing for it. It was just kind of a matter of fact. She didn't see any other way.
00:20:51
Speaker
in that as she's looking through resumes by people that she's considering hiring and moving them on in the process, and this is a large corporation, moving them to the hiring manager. So if they've worked for a place for more than like four years or four years or more, I automatically throw them. That shows stagnation and thought diversity and they just got,
00:21:17
Speaker
a narrow mindset, and that they're, they're probably not as agile as but so she viewed it as a negative that they were there for any period of time beyond like four years, not loyalty, not stability, not it was stagnation is and so that, that mentality of it's better for you to hop every two years or something is truly a vein within the younger generation that they see that as, well, I'm getting experience.
00:21:48
Speaker
in all these places, which may or may not be true in some cases. But when you see that job hopping, they don't see it as a negative thing. They see it as a serious. Yeah, here I am. And so it's important for them to understand from the employer side, I'm going to invest in you in training in giving you education in in corporate units, my culture, I'm going to put a lot of investment in time and money and resources.
00:22:15
Speaker
And if you're going to be gone in two years, that's a huge commitment that I've put into you that it's not worth it if you're, unless you're just a cog in the wheel and you're easily replaceable. Well, and that goes back to even the employee being a little bit picky about where they even accept a position at. So, you know,
00:22:34
Speaker
So I'll plug the Better Contractor here for a second because we're kind of a contractor focused podcast. But the Better Contractor training platform exists partially to help people move up the ladder. So you acquire this certain training and you become an operator. You do this and you become...
00:22:52
Speaker
so on and so forth. I'm going to look at like places like stuff like that. Did you have training opportunities where you worked for those three years? And then if the answer is yes, did you take that opportunity? Did you learn how to become the operator to get that extra pay advancement? You know, was there leadership courses? And if so, did you take those to try to move up the ladder to a four person status? You know, so that's the kind of stuff like I would look at. But knowing as well, though, from the employee standpoint,
00:23:19
Speaker
Did you go work at a place that doesn't provide any of that? Is that why you left? But if they did provide it and you didn't take the opportunity to learn, then you obviously do not fit the core value of continuous improvement and constantly learning. So there's a whole element there of how hungry are they? And you look at management staff too, when you're hiring for those positions, how quickly did they climb the ladder for leadership?
00:23:44
Speaker
Most companies are so hungry for good leadership right now, especially in their management staff and stuff like that. If you've exhibited those characteristics at all, gosh, you can climb the ladder pretty quick. And that's one thing I've told some of the people we talk to is there
Impact of Hiring on Team Dynamics
00:23:59
Speaker
is actually a lot of opportunity right now as well though, in the market, in the industry as a whole for people who are like, you know what, I'm an action taker. I want to climb this ladder. I want to lead people.
00:24:11
Speaker
There is so much opportunity out there. If you are someone like that that has that passion, that grit, that desire, you know, there's so much opportunity to showcase that right now and move up that ladder because as employers, we want that. You know, that is probably the number one skill that we want. And when we see it in someone, gosh, the sky is the limit to me.
00:24:33
Speaker
I think too, as like someone at an HR, I think you have to look at these details though. You've got to see and ask the question. Some people don't like to ask the hard questions, but if you see that jumping from job to job, find out why. They may have a reason. They may have got a job at a place that was absolutely terrible. And they were one of the 100% turnover that place had that year. So ask the questions and find out. But I do know for the most part, from my experience, if every boss has been terrible over the course of 10 years,
00:25:04
Speaker
Probably not always. What's the common denominator? What's the consistent thing there? Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
So performance over pedigree, you know, we're kind of looking at this from the eyes of an employer, but we're also looking at this through the eyes of the employer, you know, things you can do to help. You were talking a little bit earlier about like the millennial generation and younger, you know, and the job jumping and stuff like that, and the previous generations, you know, working somewhere for your entire lifetime was actually a thing back then. It's not really so much a thing now.
00:25:37
Speaker
It doesn't mean that it can't be. I think I'm from the employer perspective. I think the newer generation, this is not a bad thing. They catch a lot of heat for job jumping. But I think they want more. They want that culture. They want to work somewhere that doesn't view them as a number. They want to work somewhere that they have a feeling of upward advancement, that the ownership is someone that they actually want to work for. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I think they catch a lot of heat.
00:26:05
Speaker
for that, but I think what it comes down to really is a lot of things are more public now. You know, we know who owns these companies and we know maybe their political stance or we know their culture or core values and stuff like that. That's not stuff that maybe is shared as much 20, 30, 40 years ago. So I think the companies that will sell more
00:26:28
Speaker
will have a culture that is a little more public, but they will also hire by that culture. So I think also when we say performance over pedigree, you know, does that person possess your culture? You know, if the answer is no, regardless of their pedigree, they're not your person. You know, even if they have everything else, you know, degree wise, if they don't have their performance side or the culture side, they're not, they're not your person.
00:26:58
Speaker
Um, and they can affect your hyper. I was looking at my notes here a second. They can, they will affect your high performers. And I've seen that before where you have an a team and you take someone that's maybe looks great on paper. You plug them into that team and they end up pulling them down because they don't fit your culture. They may have the knowledge in the head, you know, but that's it. Um, so, you dissect that a little bit further is when you bring in somebody that's not.
00:27:27
Speaker
Maybe if they don't have grit and the ability to power through difficult times. Maybe it's a lack of teamwork. So maybe they're a good person. They just lack some of the maybe attributes or specific skill sets that are needed for that team. Maybe they don't have great learning agility. They don't pick up things that have learning intelligence where they can learn several things and then actually apply it.
Qualities Employers Seek
00:27:52
Speaker
So that's why it's so important to look at the attributes
00:27:56
Speaker
and look at their performance because that's how they've taken those skills and applied those to the job. So if some of those things are missing and you plug them into a high performing team, you plug them into any team, what's going to happen is as they're
00:28:10
Speaker
Any new person unless they absolutely did that job somewhere else, somewhere high performer, which is probably not going to be and did it the way that you guys do it. And you just plug them in and hit the ground running and nothing skips a beat. That's probably the very, very, very, very small minority of the time that you can get somebody like that. So when you plug somebody in, you're automatically going to be draining time resources, adding additional stress to the people around them in that.
00:28:38
Speaker
They're going to have to be compensating a little bit for errors that this person makes. They're going to be cross training. So the performance is going to come down from just a perspective of they can't get to as much as fast. So if you've got a high performer, that's going to add additional stress, especially if you have timelines that need to be met. So just introducing somebody new to the team is automatically going to pull down some of your high performers.
00:29:07
Speaker
Now, if the person's a really good fit and a high performer themselves, very quickly, they'll compensate for those deficiencies and become a contributing member and a valuable member of the team. If they're not the right fit, it's going to continue to drain those resources. And now, not only do you not have somebody who's filling the gap of work that you were hoping to plug the hole with, they're actually causing more
00:29:36
Speaker
work. So now your team is now having to not only do that work, where this person was supposed to come in and perform, but now it's a negative element, maybe they they do have some pretty major character flaws, they're not a good team performer, or they're just negative in general, or they're, they're really culturally a bad fit. So not only and now the high performers now doing that work in addition, so it's adding stress, but now they're completely disrupting in other ways beyond just the work or tasks that they're supposed to do.
00:30:06
Speaker
And that entire team is in threat of colopsia. So, so important to look at the, who is that person? So, when you dissect this, it's beyond just hey, they got a bad attitude. There's, you got to look at, it affects everybody in there. And so, if you love your team, you love, and you care about your people, understand even the good ones are going to put additional strange
00:30:30
Speaker
And you're hiring typically that person because you've got work that needs to be filled. And that work is being filled by your current team. So there's going to be stress no matter what you do. Even if you get a good one and you put them in there, there's going to be stress initially. But it's so detrimental to your entire team if you get a bad one. And that's, I think we're talking about performance over pedigree. That can really help.
00:30:57
Speaker
And that can really help alleviate or mitigate some of those potential threats, is really looking at how did they perform it. It can help you identify key people to bring onto your team, even off of the resume a little bit. But then also you're just saying, too, this is for the employer and the employee.
00:31:18
Speaker
for all of those looking to get on to a good team and to a good culture and find a good job. These are the things that if you can help highlight those, you automatically stand out from anybody else. Yeah. People have got really good at bullet points. We're chatting GPT with resume writers. Resumes are looking pretty polished these days. So you can start adding context, adding the stories to your resume into your interview.
00:31:48
Speaker
you automatically add color where the others aren't, where they're just competing on, I've got these two degrees and here's 13 jobs I've held in the last two years. You can add color through stories and performance, you will automatically stand out and in ways that the employers are looking for.
00:32:08
Speaker
So as we start to wrap this up, I like to always summarize stuff. But if you think of the, through the eyes of an HR, I think one of the big takeaways in this podcast would be to ask the tough questions. So look at that resume, fill in those gaps, ask questions to fill in those gaps, find out a lot more about that person than kind of the, the one pager, the bullet points. As the employee, I can say I want to know
00:32:36
Speaker
how much grit and passion that you have as an employer. I wanna know, did you take the opportunity to constantly learn? So actually, I'm gonna look at the core values that we have as a company, and I wanna see if I can find out if you have those core values. So in this situation here, we're talking about learning a lot and advancement and stuff like that. So I'm going to ask, you know, and you wanna find out, did you have opportunities to advance? And if so, did you take those opportunities? Meaning, did they offer a training? If so, did you take it or did you not take it? You know, if you didn't take it,
00:33:05
Speaker
And you say you want to go up the ladder, but you didn't take the opportunity that was right in
Conclusion and Insights Summary
00:33:09
Speaker
front of you. I'm probably not going to hire you because you're not doing it already. So why, why do I think you would do it? You know, through my organization, but I'm going to want to find that stuff out. I'm going to want to know, you know, are you someone who's going to take action or do you think you just deserve a pay raise or something simply because you exist, you know, because you've been in the business for 10 years or 15 years. If you're not trying to constantly learn and improve or show leadership skills here and there, or train someone else,
00:33:35
Speaker
If you're not invested, just because you've got the experience you've been there or you even have the loyalty, it still doesn't mean a lot. I need to see that passion, that drive and that fire as an employer. And then culture. Do you, and I would say for those going out and, you know, trying to find a job, a lot of companies will put some sort of culture mission statement, something on their website, see if you actually fit into that.
00:34:00
Speaker
You know, in hours, I'm going to try to see through the interview process if you fit mine. And if you don't, you got some really good criteria, but you're really off on some of those culture things. I'm probably going to pass to someone who has more of the fire, the grit, and that also makes my culture. So that's kind of my thoughts Travis. Do you have any closing, closing thoughts for yourself? Focus on, uh, focus on performance areas in the talent war.
00:34:28
Speaker
In the talent war that we have, this is a potential key in being able to identify key talent for your organization. But then the flip side is, too, for those that are looking for their next career move, stand out through your actions, stand out through your performance, highlight that, look for those stories. If you're brand new into the career market out of high school, even in high school,
00:34:57
Speaker
or in college, just add a degree, look for those opportunities. Did you volunteer in your community? Did you start a program? Look for those opportunities to add color. If you hadn't had the first job and the first job wasn't stellar, there are other things you can do. Start a side hustle and it doesn't have, I mean, if you can make money at it, awesome. If it's giving back to your community, teaching younger kids, you started a program to transfer your passion about
00:35:26
Speaker
a technology or about a skill or about safety, you're looking for those differentiators. Those mean way more than a couple fancy bullet points for somebody who sat in a job and just collected a paycheck. So look to add color. If you've had some experiences, look to tell those stories.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And I think we've never been in a time where learning is so easy. Like you can Google and learn about whatever you want, almost.
00:35:57
Speaker
I can't really think of a topic you cannot learn about more easily now than ever before, but it's not just that. That shows the core value of constantly learning, but it doesn't show that you implement or actually take action on it. So I think if you can show in your resume or you can be a person that is constantly learning, then also constantly taking action. That's the golden ticket, I think. That's what employers are looking for. If you want to advance, that's how you can advance. You've got to be an action taker and an endurer.
00:36:25
Speaker
Travis, thank you for your time today. For those of you listening, if you like this podcast, please share it. If you didn't like it, man, just don't tune in again. Otherwise, we'll see you next time. See you, Travis.