An HR expert’s perspective on hiring and managing talent with Vicky Brown

Hey, everybody. Drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long, and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

And then Agency Management Institute, all one word. Subscribe and search the existing video database for all sorts of actionable topics that you can implement in your shop today. Alright, let’s get to the show.

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run, traditional digital media buying, web dev, PRR brand, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build, a Better, Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ, will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build A Better Agency. And this one is a good one. Well, they’re all good, but this one is focused on a topic that I think is on many of your hearts and minds, and it’s really all about our people. And so our guest is gonna help us sort of navigate some of the things that we’re facing as employers today, and give us some best practices and some ideas of how to have tough conversations, how to find better people, how to keep them, lots of stuff. I’m gonna try and pack it all in in this hour. So before I do that, though, very quickly, just wanna remind you that we’ve got a lot of great workshops coming up this spring. We have the Advanced AE Bootcamp, the AE Bootcamp.

We have Money Matters for the first time in the spring. We’ve always taught that in the fall or winter. So we’ve got that that’s, you know, really aimed at agency owners, CFO types, that kind of thing. And we talk all about every aspect of money for two days. Everything from financial be benchmarks to best practices, to how to know objectively when you need to hire someone else, can you afford to hire someone else. We’re gonna talk about pricing, we’re gonna talk about tax strategy. Got it all packed in there. So it’s a, that is a, a gangbuster two days of money conversations. Then we also have one of my other favorite a workshops to Teach, which is called Running Your Agency for Growth and Profit.

Here we look at the areas in every agency, so leadership, and that’s both you as an owner, but also your younger leaders. So Leadership, biz Dev, getting the work done, systems and processes, HR, money, all of those things rolled up into one. And we talk about it for two days. All the best practices in each of those category areas. So you can run a more profitable agency and a better place for people to be and to stay. So if you’re interested in any of those, you wanna read more about them or you wanna get registered, head over to agency management institute.com. And under the How We Help tab, you’ll find workshops.

And they’re all listed right there. We would love to have you join us. So with that, let me tell you a little bit about our guests. So, Vicki Brown owns an HR firm. Think of it as a outsource. Just like sometimes you guys talk about being an outsource marketing department for your clients. She is an outsourced HR department for their clients. They work with agencies and other kinds of businesses, small to large. So a couple of their clients have two people, and a couple of their clients have 300 people. So they are right in our sweet spot. They work with agencies just like us every day. Another thing that’s cool about Vicki is she actually started her career as an employee at several agencies in the California market.

And so she understands our world, but more importantly, she understands the HR world. So we’re gonna dig in and talk about hiring and, you know, hybrid versus remote versus in office. We’re gonna talk about having tough conversations. We’re gonna talk about career pathing. I’m gonna try and pack in as much as I can in the time that we have with her. She’s also got a really great podcast called More Human, more Resources, HR for Entrepreneurs. And they’re, what’s cool about ’em is they’re 10 minutes long or less, and she just gives you one tidbit in each podcast episode. So you’ll wanna check that out as well. But for now, let me introduce you to her and let’s start to pick her brain.

All right, let’s do it. Vicki, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for the invitation. I’m really excited about our chat today.

Me too. Tell everybody a little bit about your background and your expertise and how you came to have it before I start pummeling you with questions.

Sure. Well, I like to say I’m an accidental HR professional. So as probably some of your audience has experienced, you know, you get into a company and you’re hiring people and all of a sudden you realize, oh, someone has to handle that paperwork and someone has to handle onboarding people. And so I was the executive assistant for the head of the sales division at HBOA hundred thousand years ago when we had a little teeny tiny sales division in here in LA in Century City. And someone had to handle the paperwork. New York said, California’s weird. We don’t know California labor law. We do have an attorney out there, talk to them, figure out what you need to do.

And so I learned HR actually at the foot of an employment attorney who is still my attorney this today strangely. But, so that’s actually how I got into it. And then, you know, I got certified and started actually studying the discipline and became my career. Kind of went in that direction. And then in 2000, well 19 98, 99, I was, I had various roles in you as Chief HR officer in various companies. And then in 1999, I went to a tech financial services company. Hmm. And we had a great time. We grew from, I think I was employee number 12 or something to like 300 employees.

And unfortunately in 2001, if you remember technology Yep. In 2001, little bit of a bubble. Yep. So our investors said, yeah, we kind of, our, our book is looking different, so we probably won’t be able to reinvest. So we actually had to close the company. And at that time, the president of the company said to me, you know, you should start your own company. You do HR in a way, I’ve never seen it before. You’d be great at that. And I said, thank you. No, I’m gonna go get a job. Right.

I don’t want to be self-employed. Exactly.

Yeah. I said, you know, my, my interpretation of myself was that it was a great, number two, I sit on the shoulder of the CEO, I’m their confidant. I tell them, did you think about this? Don’t forget about that, et cetera, et cetera. But I never thought of myself as number one. So he, in his very sneaky way, got a new gig as CEO of an of another company and brought me on as an independent contractor to do just one little project, and then another little project, and then another little project. He was sneaky. He was very sneaky. So from April of 2001 through, I think I probably got through my, no. and in August of 2001, I was just doing more and more and more. And my compliance gene finally, you know, kicked in and said, oh, we need a contract and I need a corporate veil, and you need confidentiality agreements and blah, blah, blah.

So I incorporated, and that was the beginning of the domino in 2001.

I I love that it took you eight months to realize that you were running a business.

It did.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So ever since then, your role in your, in your company is to come alongside organizations and help them do what?

Yeah. And so fantastically, I found out I could create a company in my image and do a whole lot of what I love doing, being the number two. So they’re about 15 of us on, on the team now. And we are the HR department for our clients. But we do every, we do it across the board. So not just the administration onboarding, offboarding, making sure the personnel files are properly, properly filed and right and completed. And signatures have happened and the new policy has been rolled out, and you have employment posters and you know, all of those things. So we do all of those things. But the other thing that we do is we really work closely with, we’re lucky we get to work closely with the leadership teams of our clients.

So typically we’re dealing with the CEO, the CFO, the COO, and actually acting as I call it, their HR priest. We’re kind of their confidant. We’re the ones that they can kind of let their hair down a little bit, tell us what’s going on, how they’re feeling. We generally will start those, those conversations with, okay, we understand what’s going on, what would you, what outcome are you trying to get to? Yeah. And then, we’ll, we’ll talk through the possibilities of getting there. And maybe it’s not possible to get there. But, so that’s our role, our role. It really ends up being a, a nice consulting role. And I really like that.

Yeah. So your world, because all of ours has, your world has changed in the last few years. HR is like a whole new wild, wild west all of a sudden.

It is. It is. And because we’re in California, we’ve always had a little bit of the wider earp going on out here,

But Yep.

Yep. But it really is a different environment because the work horizon has really changed. It has certainly when going through the pandemic issues and then getting to the point where, you know, a lot of people took themselves out of the workforce. Right. Just took themselves off the board. And so that really impacted the talent that was available to, to search and, and bring onto your team that is slowly, like ever so slowly beginning to change now, but what it’s leaving behind is kind of the leftovers of the shutdown working from home.

I like working ho from home. I wanna continue to work from home. It real, and it’s causing a myriad of challenges. It’s certainly causing challenges for company leadership. They, they, we, me, all of us very often feel like there is something, some intangible that is missing when people aren’t in the office. There’s a, a team building. There’s the kind of incidental conversations you overhear in the hallway and you can add something, right. That will be helpful to solving that problem. Also, building those relationships. And so, you know, now that we’re at a place, and certainly the pandemic, I wouldn’t say is over, I think we’re probably gonna be tussling with that for a while, but certainly leadership by and large is feeling like, okay, it’s a good time to come back into the office.

And I know that very often people say, well, it’s because you have all this real estate and you don’t wanna waste it. And, you know, and it’s really not that. It really isn’t, is it, it isn’t. It really is that there is something, there is the X factor that happens when you bring a group of people together because they’re more than the sum of their parts. Yeah. And so that is the piece that I think we’re all striving to reignite and, and, and maintain while still being able to provide the flexibility that will keep our teams engaged and, you know, kind of really rowing in the same direction.

Yeah. I’ll tell you, Vicki, if you can solve that problem, you’re gonna be the richest woman on the planet.

You’re not kidding. Yeah. You’re

Not kidding. Yeah. You’re right. You know, before we hit the record button, I, I said to you, you know, if when, when agency owners are whispering in my ear and they know no one else is listening, they’ve, they feel stuck. They are, they are sad, they’re frustrated. They, even if they love working from home, they feel the that missing piece. What, and and you’re right, you can’t really articulate what it is, but there’s a magic and an energy that happens when you bring a bunch of smart, creative people together and you let them co-create both formally and as you said, informally, like, I’m eavesdropping on a conversation you’re having with someone else. And I’m like, oh, you know what?

At my old agency, we solved that problem this way. And it’s so hard to do that in a remote environment. And not only are they feeling sort of stuck with that in terms of, I, I, I want to bring people back, or I want to bring them back at least part of the week. Or if it were fully remote, but also feeling incredible pressure with constant demands for raises. And, you know, kids coming right outta college asking for six figure salaries. And, you know, the benefit demands and the, the challenging time of hiring people who’ve actually never worked in a professional environment. They started, they started their professional career during COVID, they’ve worked in their pajama bottoms their whole lives.

They don’t know how to show up as a professional. They don’t know. And, and agency owners are, they’re so traumatized by not only what happened during Covid, but what happened during the great Resignation where honest to Pete, we as an industry were hiring anybody who could, you know, walk in a door and, and knit together a sentence. So a lot of agencies went through a couple years of having really expensive mediocre employees. Right. Which it’s getting better, but they’re so sort of traumatized by that, that they are tiptoeing around their employees because they’re so afraid that they’re gonna go back to the revolving door of people checking back out or taking another job or doing whatever.

So I think, I think the listeners feel a little powerless right now is are you seeing that all across the board or is that just us?

It is not just you. I’m seeing it absolutely across the board. I mean, honestly, you know, I, there have been moments when I felt some level of that. Sure. And I have a fantastic team and we’ve actually recently brought on some additional talent and they are spectacular, I hate to say because I’m not anymore, but young engaged. Yep. And, and really chomping at the bit. I think that that actually is a little bit of the key to unlock the issue. Because also what we’re beginning to get is feedback from individuals who were just going into the workforce or been in the workforce for maybe a year or two.

And they’re feeling the loss of creating the kind of mentorship opportunities, career opportunities Yes. Relationships that will help them further their career as they move forward. So there is actually a little bit of feedback that’s beginning to happen happen in that vein. And I think the key, you know, people overuse the term culture and engagement and kind of makes you cross your eyes. But the reality is that actually is the key to the answer. It is such a delicate tango. And back in the day when I started, it wasn’t a tango. Right.

You know, the employer was very much leading the dance and you were following as much as, as fast as you could. Yeah.

You’re right.

And that’s not the way it is anymore, but it is, it doesn’t have to be completely flipped, but it is more of a balance and it’s a really delicate balance. So it takes more from leadership, from management, from, you know, team leads, et cetera, to understand the kind of work. And I specify the kind of work that will engage your team because it’s not really about having a foosball table. Right. It’s not really a big, you know, it’s really about are they doing work that not only engages them but fulfills them. And I will say that with a caveat of that’s not gonna be work every day 24 7.

That’s right. Because that’s right. Work is work.

So Yeah. Nobody’s job is, is fun all the time.

Right, exactly. Exactly. But being able to, and I said this years ago, actually, my team and I used to have this conversation all the time. There is because the early part of employment, the early part of your career has so much changed, looks so different than it used to. That there’s a lot more onus on the company now to, I don’t wanna use the term fi it be a finishing school, but to Hmm. Really kind of give that last little bit of professional polish Yeah. To new employees who are coming into the workforce to teach them how to communicate with one another, how to communicate with clients, how to self-manage when things don’t go well.

Yeah. Right. And you know, you’re, you’re feeling a little salty about it. How do you manage to calm yourself and get the client to a place where they are really listening? ’cause you know, both parts parties are at loggerheads. Nobody’s listening to anyone. That’s

Right. That’s

Right. So how do you get the client to a place where they feel like they’ve been heard, so now they’re ready to listen to the solutions you can bring forth. That’s a, that’s a talent, that’s an art. And that kind of thing happens with experience. And back in the day, you would’ve been partnered with, you know, a more seasoned person, you

Would’ve watched it. Right?

Absolutely. And so you’d soak it up after a few months, you know, but that’s not the environment that we’re in now. So you have to figure out another way as a corporate entity to really, because honestly, you know, I say this all the time, the definition of company is a group of people. Right. Like it really is. So you have to figure out a way to help that group of people navigate their way through the challenges that happen throughout the day. And also to help them create relationships that will help them navigate the day, you know? Yeah. Right. It’s not just about self-management, it’s about, you know, I’ve got Mary down the hall and she knows me. We go to lunch all the time, and you know, I just have to go into her office and just spill for a minute because I had this phone call.

And, and when you’re remote that, that element can be lost.

Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking as you were talking, it was so much easier to train young talent because you honestly, you didn’t have to overtly have the conversation. Right. You just partnered there with somebody who was good at all the things, whether it was showing up at a meeting early, or how you dressed, or Right. How you addressed a problem or how you collaborated and they learned it. So you didn’t have to say, you know what, that outfit doesn’t fly here. Right. Right. You didn’t have, so, so I think that’s part of the discomfort for us as employers, is I don’t really wanna have these hard conversations. Right. And I didn’t use to have to. So how are you helping your clients think about how to show up differently and teach differently because we are, the old way isn’t as easy anymore.

Right. Or as accessible. Right. And you said the critical word teach. Right. It really is a training thing. And the way it used to happen was wonderful. And that’s how I learned. And that that’s how I taught, you know, many, many, many people. But it also is the easy way. Yeah. I’m just gonna have you shadow. Right. And you’ll, you’ll absorb it. Yeah. That is the easy way. This is an opportunity because if we think back, the easy way also meant that sometimes people absorbed bad habits.

Right? Absolutely. Right.

So this is an opportunity to train that team member with all of the best of practices. And that means that, you know, you have to, to understand how people learn. It’s not just telling them I’m a big advocate because of course we have an online university that we’ve built, but I’m a big advocate of online training because everybody gets the same information in the same way. Right. It also creates a great foundation for new employees coming in because when you’re giving them, and you know, onboarding isn’t just a one and done, there’s an arc.

I used to say I used to actually have onboarding classes, groups of people that came in around the same time. And I actually at, at the time I was like a cohort. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And so they stuck together through a 12 month onboarding process. Wow. And it, you know, it, it, in the beginning it was intensive, it was, you know, every, it was the first day one and day two, but then after that they’d come together weekly. And then after that they’d come together monthly and then quarterly. And we’d have, you know, different department heads come in and talk to them. But what that meant was that cohort then had relationships cross-departmental relationships. And that is so important. You don’t just wanna be in your silo. Right. So I think even though we’re dealing with an environment that has a lot of a remote element to it, you can still do something like that.

The 12 month thing, I, I have to stop you because as you, so one of the things Vicki and I shared before we hit the record button is that early, early in her career, she started in at agencies. So if you remember your early days in an agency, our version of onboarding for the most part was really nice to meet you. Here’s your desk, here’s where the bathroom is, here’s the supply closet. You have a client meeting at 10, go.

Exactly right.

Exactly. So 12 months of onboarding, I’m sure people listening are like, wait, what? Like, did you, she mean 12 days? Right? No, 12 months.

It sounds a little intensive, but Yeah. All that really means is, I mean, you know, after you get past basically the first month or two Right. You’re coming back to, you’re, you’re, the group is coming together Yeah. And maybe doing a lunch and learn or something like that. Right. It’s not a two three hour intensive. Right. But they’re touching base again. Yeah. And then after 12 months, then you know what, you know enough about how we run and how we do. Right. What we do. And by the way, you’re gonna be the person coming in doing the lunch and learn for the next cohort that’s

Coming through. That’s right. That’s

Right. So, so it’s, you know, 12 months sounds daunting, but if you just think of it as an arc and you can, and it also gives you an opportunity to touch base with people who are excelling and people who might be struggling a little bit. If they’re struggling, of course they’re talking to their manager, they’re talking to their team lead. You know, you’re trying to develop them through that. But it’s good for them to come back together with all of the people who started when they did. You can kind of self level because you know Right. Mary seems to be doing kind of well, and I’m, I’m struggling a little bit with the SOPs, that kind of thing. Yeah.

So, well, and I, I do think there’s value in sort of them being able to gauge their own performance and Absolutely. Improvement against other people at sort of the same level.

Exactly. Exactly. So, so I think that that’s really valuable. What I’m seeing a lot of is, and I, and where I think we’re probably gonna end up is hybrid. I think that there will be some companies that will be completely remote. Those will probably be a small percentage. Yeah. And a little bit of the out outliers, as will be the companies who insist on being a hundred percent, you know, on site, depending on obviously what the job is. Right. But I think the vast majority in the middle are going to have some sort of a hybrid environment. And it might, that might mean you come in three days a week or you come in four days a week, or you come in, you know, the sales department comes in on Tuesdays and the, and the operations department comes in on Wednesdays, that kind of thing.

We have

Settled. Yeah. Or on a week off a week or whatever it is. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. We have settled into a hybrid environment that is four days on, one day off. And the one day is very specific because scheduling, like, I can’t have people everywhere and not know where they are when I need to do a meeting. So, so Monday through Thursday we’re in the office and Friday we are work from home. Yeah. And you know, I’m, I’m a little bit of an old dog, so that certainly was something I had to get used to and I’m here five days a week. But, but it is an opportunity for the team to work from home one day a week that, you know, gives them, that’s kind of their catchup day.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the important things too is sort of really thinking about what happens on the in-office days that takes advantage of the fact that we’re together. So, you know, if we’re all in our offices on our own computers, you know, the employees are like, I could have done this at home, but if you’re doing collaborative work and things like that, that is much easier to do in person, then I think they begin to go, oh, I see the benefit of this.

Exactly. And you know, you mentioned earlier about creative teams coming together and I think that’s a critical piece. Creative brainstorming. It is possible using technology over technology. Yeah. But you really do lose an element like Yeah. You know, video is better than the phone in person is better than video. Yeah. It just, there is, there’s a spark that happens. And obviously you have to have outstanding technology. ’cause if you’re gonna use it and the tools aren’t reliable, then you’re just nowhere, you know? Yeah. So,

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I, I, I was listening, I was thinking about what you were saying when you were talking about your own team and that you have this sort of Cracker Jacks team of young, enthused invested employees. And what I’m hearing from agencies is that they’re struggling to find candidates that show up that way, or they show up that way in the interview, but then they don’t show up that way at work. So I wanna take a quick break and then I wanna come back and talk about the hiring methodology that you use with clients and obviously at your own shop to find, because I, I agree with you. I think there are of all ages, not, it’s not just young people, but there are people out there who are hungry to work at an agency that are gonna bring their talent and their skills that are gonna bring their positive attitude, their enthusiasm.

But boy, we’re having a hard time finding ’em. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and you can teach us how you have mastered that craft.

Terrific.

Alright. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just wanna remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops. And you can see the whole [email protected] on the navigation head to how we help scroll down. And you’ll see workshops, and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver, and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody no matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered.

So check ’em out and come join us. All right. Let’s get back to the show. Okay. We are back. And right before the break I was saying that a lot of, you’re struggling to hire good people or you, it’s hit or miss. Like you hire some and they’re great and they stick around and they’re, they’re exactly that enthusiastic, hardworking, self-motivated employee that you want. And the other half fizzle out. And so I’m hoping that, well, I know. ’cause otherwise I wouldn’t have asked the question. I know Vicki has a methodology around hiring that helps us improve our odds of finding those best employees. So Vicki, how do we do this?

Well, I have to be honest and say that my secret sauce is my director of staffing. That’s kind of a cop out answer, but she’s amazing. I have been in HR for a very long time, and the one task that I really dislike is recruiting. So I have to be honest

About that. Okay. Fair enough.

But she’s exceptional. And what she has tried desperately to teach me over the years that I refuse to learn appropriately, so I’m so glad I have her, is really behavioral interviewing. So, you know, the challenges that folks run into when they’re interviewing a candidate is, and this really is across the board, this is around onboarding. This is around getting the folks that you hire to be engaged and to, to, you know, really kind of be enthused about what they’re doing. We have to look internally as leaders and say, what kind of preparation are we doing? You know, 15 years ago I didn’t have to, I didn’t have to do the kind of preparation I have to do now.

Right. I literally could sit someone down next to the person who’s doing a similar job, say, go through there. I can have my executive assistant say, show them where the bathroom is and

Right, right.

You know, sit them down next to someone and then have our regular, you know, team meeting and hurrah and maybe take them out to lunch. And that’s all it took. Now we have to plan that, you know, dreaded 12 month arc of onboarding. Right? Now we have to plan what their career development is going to look like. Right. We have to plan the kinds of opportunities we’re gonna make available to them. Are we going, are we going to, you know, are there projects that come in that, oh, we can do that the way we normally do it, but it’d be great if we put the new person on that, on this part of that project. Right. So they can learn those various things. And the same is true for the interviewing process.

Like I said, it’s not my favorite. So I am famous for, you know, okay, I have the resume. You know, Sean is here ready for his interview. He walks in, he sits down, I look at the resume, I start asking him a series of questions, whatever pops in my cute little head. And then Yep. And then I start talking about how wonderful the company is. And I’m great at selling the company.

Oh my gosh. You just Vicki you just described every, every, everyone listening is nodding their head going, yes, that’s how you interview. Right.

That is not how you interview. Right.

Right.

It’s how I’ve been interviewed.

But it’s not

Right. It’s not the way to get you the candidate that you need. So you have to first of all, be clear on what you’re looking for. So if that means, you know, you need to take another look at the job description or write a job description or figure out a job description, then you need to do that. What are the critical pieces of that job? Is someone in a similar job in your company now? And are they successful? What makes them successful? What are the personal characteristics that make them successful? Is detail important or is it just a nice to have and you just like to say, I need someone who’s detail minded, but in fact you have so many systems in place that being detail minded is probably not that important.

Right. As important as having good communication skills with the client. You know, so you really have to look at what is critical, what do you need?

And by the way, by de by role, because I think a lot of agencies are like, well, we want creative people. Like we have a laundry list of skills that absolutely are universal across the board, but they’re at the surface level. They’re not really at the, at the delivery level of what that job requires.

Exactly. And speaking of creative people, so does the job require someone to be creative at the thinking level? But once they get those great ideas out there, someone else will, you know, polish them and put them in writing and put them in a presentation. Or do you need someone who’s really good at polishing and putting in a presentation and writing and, you know, so both of those are creative jobs, but they have different focus. Each of them has a different focus. So, so you have to be specific about what you’re looking for. Once you know that, then you write the ad. And I wanna be really clear. If you are posting your job on one of the job boards, et cetera, and there’s a whole lot of labor law I can get into here that I’m not going to, but there’s stuff around AI and keywords and you know, that’s kind of a big no-no these days.

Right? Right. And it’s being legislated against and, and there are also certain things that, certain language that you need to have in the posting, et cetera, et cetera. But if you are posting a job, I’m not a tremendous fan of simply taking the job description and throwing it on LinkedIn and saying, this is the job. Right. Job recruiting is a marketing exercise.

Yeah.

And so if you keep that in mind, you have to understand you are enticing people to apply. You’re enticing or not the best talent Exactly. To apply for the job, not just throwing up a list of requirements. So, you know, most of your audience, our agency, agency folks put on your creative hat. Right. Write something that will capture the imagination. Yeah. The job description is the thing you do for me, the HR person, we put that in the file. We use it when there’s a worker’s comp. We use it if you get a letter from an attorney, that’s what the job description is. Yeah. The ad is certainly telling someone, generally speaking what they’re gonna do, but also inviting them, being inviting, come join us.

We are amazing and you will make us even more amazing. Yeah. So that then starts, starts.

It’s also a way to give them the sense of the brand. Like what is the cul, what’s the culture and personality? Right.

Right. Right. If your careers page on your website is a listing of titles and job descriptions, then you’re probably not doing a great job at, yeah. At recruiting. Throw up some videos of current employees, why they love to work there, what kind of opportunities do they have? Do you do anything that’s give back for the community? Put that on your careers page. That is another piece that I would say is becoming much more prevalent these days. Folks are interested in what that company stands for for sure. Not just what do you do. Right. But what do you stand for? So, you know, make sure you advertise that.

So once you do all of that, you bring in the candidates, now you have all these resumes. Have someone good go through the resumes. If I know mostly we’re talking to leadership at these organizations right now, so yeah, you don’t have time to go through resumes to get somebody else to do it. Right. You just, and it’s just gonna, you know, make your hair fall out. You’re just going, right. So by the time you get to the interview, you’ll be so aggravated because you’ve gone through a hundred resumes. Right. So get someone else to do that. But once you have, you whittled down the resumes, then you’re going to have to look at them well in advance of the interview and figure out what on that resume gives you the information you need vis-a-vis what you’re looking for, what hints at the information that you need.

But you need a clearer picture and what is missing, what isn’t spoken to on that resume. Number two. And number three are the things you’re gonna drill down on during the interview. Yeah. So see, it takes preparation and it takes more than preparation 20 minutes before the interview. Unfortunately, when you get into the interview, then the kinds of questions you’re gonna ask. And sometimes I get the feedback, you know, oh, I don’t know, I’m getting a pat answer. Or I don’t know if they told, you know, they’re telling me exactly the truth, et cetera, et cetera. That is why you’re going to do behavioral interviewing. So you’re going to go ahead and ask the question. So tell me about a time when things did not go the way the client wanted them to go, and you were the one who had to deliver the message.

How did you approach that? What did you say to the client? How did they respond once they tell you that story, don’t leave it there. How could the company have supported you more in making that outcome better? What could you have done when you think back on it? What could you have done to change the outcome in your communication with the client? Has anything like that come up since then? And how did you handle it? Just keep going. Yeah. When you drill down and drill into those stories, not only will you get the truth, because I mean, some people can fib, you know, for a long time, but most people, they’re surface fibbers. Right? Right. So if someone, if someone isn’t telling the truth, you’re going to be able to know that question number three or four in.

And it also gives you a fuller picture. ’cause you don’t just wanna know what are your skills, what can you do? You wanna know how do you think,

Right.

How do you resolve issues? What’s your process? What’s your internal process? What’s your emotional intelligence around solving this issue? So, and and was

It all somebody else’s fault? Was it, you know, do you own part of it? Do you, how do you Absolutely. How do you, how do you show up in the story?

Absolutely. And you wanna look for some things that can be flags. If someone is saying, you know, well, you know, John didn’t do this and didn’t do that and I had to do this and John never did that, then I’m seeing a little bit of deflection. And honestly, right. That may be the case. Maybe John was lousy, who knows. Right. Right. But if that is the way you’re approaching that issue, that’s probably not the approach that I’m looking for inside of my organization. Right. I’m looking for you. How could you help John? Right. How could you help John help you? You know? Right, right. So the interview is spectacularly important. Yeah. And so you really have to give it the weight and the attention that it deserves and then you’ll start getting in people who really matter to your success.

Yeah. And how, how many interviews should we have? Is there a cadence that you believe should be sort of followed? ’cause you know, for a while people were like interviewing someone and offering them a job the same day because they were entertaining five offers by that night. That’s gotten a little better. Right. But I do think we have gotten in the hurry up, hurry up phase. So what’s the, what’s a proper cadence?

Well, it’s whatever’s proper for you. But I will say, I am not a fan of one person doing an interview and then the decision being made, okay, you really need to get another set of eyes, lay another, set another set of eyes on that candidate. Have someone else have the experience of talking to them and communicating with them. Because they’re coming from a different perspective. They can be tremendously valuable to you. Particularly for those of us who are leaders in our organization or at the very top of our organization. You know, we may work very, very hard at keeping a, a wide lens. Right. But the reality is we are so laser focused on envisioning the future and goal setting and you know, getting over the next hurdle.

And that is our job actually. Right. Right. That there are pieces way out there on the perimeter that don’t impact us as, or we’re not giving as much attention. And someone else in your organization will be able to look at it and say, you know, she, Vicki does seem like she’s a really great candidate. Except it turns out she told me that she’s never typed ever. Right. Like ever on anything. Well that would be a piece that I would probably miss. Right. ’cause I’m not asking people can they type, you know? Right. So it helps to have another set of eyes on that, on that candidate. So whether you’re interviewing three people or five people or 15 people, make sure that you have another set of eyes. And so, I will tell you what Kate, my fabulous director of staffing says to me, ’cause she really trains me on this and keeps me in line.

So what she says to me is, first of all, don’t offer in the room because I’m notorious for offering in the room. I’ll do that. Okay.

Someone walks in

With them,

I love have ’em. Right?

Absolutely. And she’s like, remember last time you did that? So don’t offer in the room. That’s number one. And number two is make sure that you give the candidate an opportunity to talk. Because I am great at selling my company. And I’ll spend a lot of time doing that. I will sell you on the vision. I will sell you on where we’re going. I will sell you on, you know, what our campus is gonna look like in three years. I will do all of that stuff. And that’s not the purpose of the interview. Yes. Some of it is to tell you about the company, but I’m primarily there to learn more about you. So she’s very good at that. And she says, you know, she gives me, she knows my tolerance.

So she gives me no more than three candidates. Some people want more, some people want fewer. I kind of, my eyes glaze over if I’m looking at more than three people.

Yeah. You, you’re the description of you selling the company. I swear to God that is a trap that every agency owner falls. And we’re s we are so enamored with our own company and rightly so. We’ve built great companies. Right. And we know how awesome it is to work there. So you’re right, we spend half the time selling the candidate who by the way, already has decided they wanna work there, otherwise they wouldn’t have applied for the job. Exactly. That we’re the right choice. Right. Yeah,

That’s exactly right. So, you know, again, it all comes back to, it’s like the issue around remote work and hybrid work that we were talking about and onboarding people and how you get them to be engaged and you, you know, start reinforcing a great culture. It all comes back to preparation. Like we have to look inward, we have to do the proper level of preparation and it’s not all on us. Get help. You have team members who’ve been with you for a while. They don’t try to do this in a silo. Right. And also, if you have great candidates that you’ve just hired, ask them.

Yeah.

Ask them what would’ve made their onboarding process easier or better or faster. Ask them what Drew them to apply in the first place so you can do more of that. You know? Right. So use all of the resources that you have available to you.

Yeah. Oh gosh. I still have so many questions, but I, I wanna talk about, you are a big advocate of the midyear HR checkup. Tell us what that is and why it’s so important.

It is important because you wanna catch things while they’re still fixable. And so the first thing, kind of the elephant in the room around any kind of HR checkup is you’re gonna take a look at payroll, make sure that the taxes are appropriate every quarter. Whether you are running payroll or you have someone in your organization running payroll, you’re working with a payroll processor. Sure. Every quarter they’re gonna file your taxes and send you copies of those tax returns. I know most of us get them, we file them. We don’t think another thing about it, what you should do is look at the last checks, the final checks for that quarter and look at the balance on those checks.

The total amount paid, the gross salary, and what’s on the tax return. Those two things should match up. If they don’t match up, then something’s out of alignment. And it is better to figure that out in the quarter than to get to the end of the year. Or worst yet to get to March of the following year. The employee’s gone to their accountant, the accountant goes, your taxes don’t look right, looks like you were under withheld or over withheld or something. Oh the employee calls you and starts screaming about it. You’re now, you have to go and dig through all of this paperwork ’cause you’re like, I’m sure I put in the number that you put on your form. Let me go find the form and then let me prove it to you. And you still have an upset employee.

If you find it early, you will probably still have some payrolls in the year to do some corrections on that. If they’ve been over withheld or under withheld. Yeah. You can kind of fix that for them. So, because I know one thing that, that I have always marveled at as an HR person, people don’t read their pay stubs.

They just

Don’t actually, I don’t read mine. So they’re not looking at the taxes, they’re not looking to see if they’re properly, properly withheld. We all ask them to, but they’re not looking at that. It really behooves you yourself to do that spot check so you can fix that before the year goes. Before the year has gone. So that’s the first thing is payroll and taxes. You wanna take a look at the benefit deductions. Are you properly deducting? We have clients on more than one occasion. We’ve had new clients come in and we look fantastic because oh guess what? We’ve just, you know, we’re gonna save you $80,000 next year. ’cause it turns out you weren’t deducting anything for healthcare last year.

Wow. And we’re gonna start doing that now. Right. You thought you were, but you weren’t. You know, that kind of thing. Right. So make sure the deductions are happening, make sure they’re up to date. Again, if you’re over deducting for someone, right. Make sure that gives you time to kind of fix that before the year is over. So there are all those things. And then there are some of the record keeping things you wanna make sure you have. I nines on everyone. You really are required to have those completed within three days of their hire. Now granted, if you haven’t done that, the exposure is already there. Not much you can do about it. But at least you can go back, do an audit, do the correction with the date. So if some official official comes in and wants to audit your records, they see that you did an internal audit and corrected it, that will put you in a much better situation than if it’s just happening and you’ve never done anything about it.

Look at the files, make sure that you have all of that new hire paperwork that you do. Sam decides that you know he’s not going to perform well. You’re going to terminate Sam and you’re gonna remind Sam that he has a confidentiality agreement with you only. Oh no he doesn’t. He never signed that particular document. Right. Or you don’t have a copy of it in the file or whatever the case may be. So it’s always better to be ahead of those things and then start taking a look at what’s coming up for the next year. Almost always there’s some sort of minimum wage increase. Again, I’m in California. Right. Nationwide though that is definitely going to happen. New York, Florida, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

And also your local city or county maybe changing their minimum wage. Like I said, I’m in la we have, we’re the republic of la, we have our own minimum wage. Yes, you do. So, so you know, you need to be on top of that because if you’re falling below the minimum wage, that’s problematic and you need to correct it. And it’s better to correct it as early as possible. Because if the longer you go, the more you owe. So, right. You know, you don’t wanna do that. And

There’s fines and all kinds of other stuff if you get caught. Right.

Absolutely. Yeah. Right. And the thing that most people don’t think about is there, and this is not just California, but certainly in California, not only is there a minimum wage for, you know, non-exempt or hourly employees, there’s actually a minimum wage for exempt level employees. So if you fall below that, they lose their exemption, which means now you, they’re eligible for overtime and you have to go back and calculate that. So it’s a problem

Not only calculate it but pay it.

Exactly. Which is the worst part. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So it’s important to make sure that you’ve checked all of those boxes and that you are clear on where you stand. It’s just a good idea to do a checkup and again, do it as early as possible. I advocate doing one midyear and then doing one around November-ish of the year, you know, prior to the end of the year.

So if you were, if you’re working with a payroll processing company, which most probably listeners are, I’m sure they think this is all being done. So yes, they do. Do they, do they just ask for verification that is being done? Or do they need to do it themselves? What do you, what do you recommend?

Well, everything that the payroll company is doing for you, they’re gonna send you copies of it. So if they’re filing for you, they’re gonna send copies. And one thing that’s a little bit of a quicksand pit that I think most folks haven’t thought about, particularly with all of the remote work happening, when people have moved to a different state, you are now doing business in that state. Congratulations.

Right.

So that means those taxes for that state need to come it, it needs to be set up in payroll for that state. And if that’s something that you’ve missed and talk about penalties, the states absolutely adore going ahead. Right. And giving you penalties for not having paid those payroll taxes. And you need to have workers’ comp in that state now. So there’s a whole myriad of things that happen when people move outta state. Which is why part of your policy needs to say employees need to notify you. They need to keep you informed of their home address because that gives you a little bit of protection. But in any event, so if the payroll company has not set up another state or hasn’t set up the taxes for that other state, you’ll find that with most payroll processors and payroll companies in the fine print, it does say the employer remains responsible for all of the, so just because you’ve outsourced it to them, it does not mean that they now have the liability.

You keep that liability. So it’s important to double check.

Yeah. Don’t abdicate all of the, of the checking. So we were talking earlier about the whole idea of hybrid and remote and certainly as you say, this challenge of having employees in five different states and all of the different taxes and reportings and all the things is a hot mess. So as agencies begin to think about, and you were saying that a lot of your clients’ agencies are not, are thinking about okay, it’s time to come back to the office in some way, shape, or form. How are you coaching your clients to begin to broach that topic with their employees? That that is a, a shift that is either being considered or is coming?

I’m kind of an advocate of ripping off the bandage. I don’t like the kind of incremental conversation. Oh, we think that in a month we might be calling a few people back. You know, first of all, people know better. Right. And second of all, that’s a little disingenuous for me. Just go ahead and say, we thank you so much. We all got through the pandemic. We’re so happy that you’re really, you know, hung in there. It’s time for us to get our secret sauce like right on track again. and in order to do that, we’re calling people back. We are gonna have a hybrid environment. This is what we’re gonna do. And of course you’re gonna have conversations with maybe a select few people or Sure.

You know, prior to that to see what makes sense. What, before we went to a Friday remote day, I had conversations with a couple of senior team members and said, because actually I was thinking of one Friday a month. So there you go. And they, one person in particular actually gave me some really valuable feedback and said, you know, I think if we can manage to do it every other week or weekly, this is the benefit that we would see from that. And she kind of went through what those things were and it made perfect sense for me. So then we went to a weekly, so make sure again, you’re not doing things in a vacuum. Yeah.

Enlist the, the information and the help and the perspective of other people that you trust on the team. But once that decision is made, then make the decision. Yeah. And it requires planning on your part. Will some people quit? I hope not. In many cases that is, that doesn’t happen. But that’s what everyone’s afraid of, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Sometimes it does happen. Yeah. And so have a plan. Right. You know, put a plan in place. It requires, I think leading in this environment requires a lot more preparation from us. Yeah. Than we’re particularly used to having to put in. So you know, so have a plan, have a backup plan and then call people back.

Not only have a plan for if you lose a couple people, but have a plan for what people are gonna do when they come back. It’s not gonna look the same as it did, you know, pre 2020, pre 2020. So if you’re, you know, what kind of development plans do you have in place? And development by the way, now that I’m mentioning that is really important. Ah, we’re out of the place where you can have a great team, have them do the work and that’s it. Right. People wanna grow, right. They wanna get better, they wanna learn different things and so they wanna earn more money. Absolutely. Yeah. So you need to have a plan in place for that as well.

So it real and have a plan in place for bringing people in the door. How many people have internship programs? Right. You know, it’s like, it’s important to look at both sides of, of your team and have a, have a plan in place to bring in additional talent, maybe through an internship program or something like that, and have a plan in place to grow your current talent. So yeah, those are the things that you really have to focus on.

Alright, last question for you before we wrap up. You said that you have the ideal job and that you get to sort of sit on the shoulder of your CEO clients. What’s the most common thing you’re whispering in their ear these days?

Exactly what I just said. I, I get that it’s hard and it takes more preparation, but it does take more preparation. And the upside of that is not only all of the benefit that you get from getting the team that you want and getting them rowing in the right direction and being enthused and having a great culture and all of that, but the organization will be more successful. The organiza, you know, it won’t, success won’t be a happenstance. It will be planned, it will be organized, it will be measurable, and you’ll be able to adapt those plans and that organization as you need to, to adjust the level of success. You know?

So yes, it takes more, it does take more, but honestly that’s a good thing. It’s, it’s kind of a akin to having a circumstance fall apart in your, in your agency with the client and you realize, you know what? We need to have a an SOPA standard operating procedure for how we do that. Is putting an SOP together a fun thing? No, it is not. Right. Is it something you’re going to automatically do just because you think it’s a good idea? Probably not. I mean, I will, but I’m just a weirdo, so probably not. But once you have it, it’s immeasurably helpful because those kinds of misses won’t happen in the future. And if they do, you can measure exactly where the M happened, why it happened, and whether it was a lack of information or a lack of skills.

Yeah. So, you know, it may not be the most fun thing to think about right now, all of this preparation that I’m talking about, but it’ll make you a better leader and it’ll make your organization more successful.

Yeah. Yeah. We have, I think this is an area for most agency folks that we have kind of flown by the seat of our pants on HR stuff for a long time. We’ve sort of gotten by with, you know, our Witt and charm and that was a fun place to work. And we had a foosball table, right? And, and I think the shift that Covid forced, and it was probably coming anyway, but the shift that Covid forced is that we do have to be more intentional about how, how we bring people into the organization, how we help them grow and nurture them inside the organization. And that upside of that is how long we can get them to stay and keep adding more value to the organization.

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

This has been great. Vicki. If folks wanna learn more about your work, if they want to try and steal your chief of staffing from you, all of those things, what, how, what’s the best way for them to get in touch to learn more about the work you do for folks like them? Sure. And, and, and keep learning from you.

Well, the name of the company is, I domino, I’m not gonna force everybody to spell that, but I do have a little gift for your, for your audience. So it is, you can get it by going to more human, more resources.info/podcast gift. So, and I’ll go ahead and, and send that information over to you, because I know it’s a mouthful as well. Yep.

Put notes. Yep.

Perfect. But it’s not only a little gift from us to kind of help you through some of the HR thicket, but also it has all of our contact information and gives you information about how to get in touch with me.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much. This has been helpful. It has been hopeful, which sometimes HR doesn’t feel like that. So I am, I’m really grateful that you came on the show and that you shared your expertise with us. Thank you.

Oh, well, thank you so much. I’m really, really just overjoyed with the opportunity. Thank you. Yeah,

You bet. Alright guys, so you know what we gotta put on our big boy pants and our big girl pants, and we gotta get serious about HR. We have to get serious. And you know, I’ve been talking about this for a long time, that you’ve gotta have career paths mapped out. Your people need to know how they can grow, but it starts with having a path into the door that attracts the right folks, and then all the things we have to do to keep them. And you heard Vicki say it loud and clear, we can’t just phone this anymore. We have to be prepared. We have to think about it from a different perspective. And when we do, then we get to run the company the way we want to. We don’t have to live in fear. We don’t have to make decisions in fear. We don’t have to stay remote if we don’t want to.

We don’t have to go hybrid if we don’t want to. We don’t have to stay in the office. All like, you get to actually run the company the way you wanna run the company when you don’t live in fear of losing your people all the time. That you know you have a good team that’s committed to you, that’s committed to the agency, the clients, and that they’re gonna follow you into battle and, and that they’re gonna have confidence and trust in you. We, we have to earn that, and we earn that by really being prepared and be more thoughtful about how we show up as leaders through all phases of our interactions with candidates and employees. So you heard it from Vicki. I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree with her more, said it better than I did, but I could not agree with her more. And you know what?

This is an opportunity for us to build stronger, better agencies. So that’s a plus for us. So, all right, so take some of these learnings, go over and get the free resources. Reach out and connect to Vicki. Don’t try and steal her chief of staffing. That wouldn’t be cool, but learn from them. And you know what, bring this in. This is a great topic for a leadership team meeting for an all team meeting. You know, our employees want to be a part of shaping the culture and the work we do. So invite them in, let them be a part of the conversation. Don’t be so afraid to be honest about the fact that you’re trying to figure this out too. It’s okay for us to admit we don’t have all the answers. All right. So lots of learnings from this episode.

Hopefully you apply them. This is not a just listen to it and move on episode. This is a do something with this stuff episode. And I’m hoping you do, and I would love to hear what some of your takeaways were and some of the things that you’re implementing. So I would love to learn from you and, and learn from the things that you are experimenting with. So that would be great. A couple more things quickly. Thank you to our friends at White. Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor of the podcast. So they help hundreds of agencies do with, with white Label, PPC, design and Dev. And as I have told you many times, because they’ve been a good sponsor of ours for a while, they’re born from an agency so they understand how to partner with agencies and help you do great work and make great profits.

So they are, they’re great partners. So head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami and check them out. And you know what I, I really like doing this. This is fun. I learn every week. So you know what, I’m coming back next week. I don’t know about you, but I’m coming back. I hope you come back too, because I promise may not be somebody quite as engaging as Vicki, but it’ll be somebody smart who’s engaged in trying to help us get better. And it’ll get you thinking a little differently. So I’ll be here next week. I hope you will too. All right, talk to you then.

Come back next week for another episode, designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and other professional development [email protected].