“We’re a sales culture,” Folkestad says. “We had worked at another company where if someone produced, but they were a jerk, well, at least they were a producer. But that’s not how we think. Those people don’t help long term to maintain clients and our pool of candidates. Here, people are measured on how they fit in with the team. So we’ve put hiring controls in place to make us overly cautious, even when we’re under pressure. We would rather lose someone who could have turn-ed out to be good but we just weren’t sure, than to hire them and have them turn out not to be a fit for the company.”
“We’ve become hypersensitive about who that team is,” Langer adds. “I think a lot of times in a fast-growth mode, you feel a bit of desperation, a bit of harriedness. A bit of ‘I’ve got to do this now—I’ll take anybody!’ So one of the most important things is to focus on putting together sound practices around who you’re hiring.”
Folkestad and Langer eke out the time for their rigorous hiring process by working overtime. But what if you’re already stretched to the limit? Many growing companies swear by outsourced human resources. Outside HR people can’t do the final interviews for you, of course; that’s too personal. But they can free you up and give you the time you’ll need to do it yourself.
“We outsource all of our payroll and HR management,” Anderson says. “They take care of the blocking and tackling. It frees up our internal resources to focus more on the behavioral and cultural recruiting. When we are in a recruiting cycle and we’re really trying to get people on board, that’s pretty much what they do for about 70 to 80 percent of their day. We interview 20 to 25 people for every one person we bring in. We put them through technical assessments and behavioral assessments. Then they go through what we call a team chat, where our entire team is brought around the campfire and given the opportunity to meet the person, talk to them, and see if they are a cultural fit.”
Restoration Professionals uses contract employees for some lower-level positions. Not only is the search process managed by the placement firm—which is a huge boon when time is tight and help is short—but the temps then serve as a pool of potential long-term employees.
“It gives us the opportunity to kind of test-drive them without putting the really heavy expenses into having them as full-time employees,” Herland explains. “Before you start paying out benefits and everything else, you need to make sure these people really blend into the position that they are working toward.”
