How to Recruit Amazing Employees

Caleb Agee 0:00
Think oftentimes what happens is people go to like a generational gap. If you’re in the if you’re in the older generations of of the workforce right now you and you’re leading, you may end up looking down at the millennials and Gen z’s and say, Why? Why do they need all of this? You know, we

Brandon Welch 0:19
kind of, oh, those snowflakes. Yes, they’ll get melted right away here, yeah.

Caleb Agee 0:23
And the truth is, once you give them a purpose, they will give you their lives, blood, sweat and tears.

Brandon Welch 0:38
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I am joined by Caleb. AG, this is the place where we answer real life marketing questions to help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and

Caleb Agee 0:52
achieve the bigger dream. Achieve the big dream. Caleb, it’s been a good week. It has been a good week. Why has it been a good week? I’m reading

Brandon Welch 0:58
a new book on anti gravity, uh huh, it’s impossible to put down. Speaking of put down, what kind of questions did the folks put down for us this week? Wow. What

Caleb Agee 1:11
a setup, um, brought to your dad game today. So, um, Dad advertising. Dad advertising. We’re gonna make it happen. Uh, the questions today are all about recruiting and hiring. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we have a deficit, a deficit hiring deficit. More people are retiring than are coming into the workforce. Unemployment

Brandon Welch 1:34
is low and people looking for jobs is lower, right? Yep. So speaking of recruiting, yeah, why did the recruiter hire the Scarecrow? I have no clue. He was outstanding in his field.

Caleb Agee 1:54
Wow. Yeah, we’re starting strong today. Strong, you’re starting strong.

Brandon Welch 1:58
Get a third one in, yeah, sneak it in later. We’ll better get us started, though. Yeah. Okay.

Caleb Agee 2:02
So the questions today we have. We’ve gotten questions from multiple people, and we get these questions often from our clients, from friends in different industries. All the time, people are asking, How do I find and keep good people? Yeah, and it starts at the very beginning, right? I

Brandon Welch 2:23
would argue this is one of the most important functions of good marketing and good messaging. Yeah, having a strong brand, yeah. When products, when we kind of come out of a cycle like we’ve had where products, a lot of them, just sell themselves, and there’s just a frenzy in the market, the hardest thing to find, actually, is people, not not people to buy, but not customers. Yeah, yeah. So everything we talk about with the Maven method is directly applicable to how you recruit, how your brand not only shows up for customers, but for your most important customer, which is your employees, your team. Nate. You are my, my most important customer. Nate the camera

Caleb Agee 2:57
guy, thanks. Nate the camera guy. Cool.

Brandon Welch 3:00
So what kind of questions you want to get

Caleb Agee 3:02
started? We’ve got rich asking, How do I get people, I’m assuming, applicants to call me back. John is asking, How do I not get ghosted on an interview? Randy’s asking, How do I get more applicants? Thank you Rich, John and Randy for great questions, great questions and and they’re all really asking, How do I find good people? That’s, at the end of the day, what we all want. You have a you hopefully it’s a good problem. You’re using the Maven method, and your company is growing so freaking fast you can’t handle it, and so you need some more help, and you need to find some good people to do it. Yes, usually, you know, somewhere in there, somebody’s gonna leave, somebody’s gonna change roles. We’re gonna pretend that’s like gonna happen, that that’s gonna happen. But let’s, let’s assume your company’s just growing like gangbusters, and you need more help in

Brandon Welch 3:50
there. Yeah. And what if you were a company that had a line of people who are always already sort of, kind of wanting to work for you, yeah. And so the minute a position opens up, you’ve already got people who are buying what you’re selling. Yeah, so that’s we’re going to hopefully help you do today is position your company for the things that are that hopefully already exist, but help people see you in a different light and help it. Help you get out of this competition mode where it really just comes down to the dollar or the you know, what’s in it for the employee on the money front, that is important, but we want to show how to take the heart of your company and put it out in a way that attracts the people that not only will show up, but will own and be on mission with you. So there’s a there’s a few really big problems we just talked about the first one, too many jobs, not enough people. But the biggest problem with recruiting itself is that we’re talking like the job is the special thing still we have in recruiting. Failed to realize that we are actually on the lower hand. The employee has the upper hand even now, even as the economy cools off, this is still in the trades, and it’s just a weird thing for so many you know, legacy business owners, for all the generations we. Four that have been it was aspirational to go out and earn the job and you were thankful to your employer for giving you this job. Truth is, it’s flip flopped. So yeah, instead of employers asking, are our employees wasting our time, it’s really they should be asking, Are we wasting the employees time? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 5:16
Or the employees is definitely asking that question, yes. And

Brandon Welch 5:19
the world knows that employees know that they know they have the upper hand, and even if they’re not, you know this, you know snotty, entitled type person, they secretly are looking for something deeper, and they know there’s a multitude of options, really, regardless of the field. Yep. And so today’s workforce is calling BS on just trading time for a paycheck that we’ve realized. I think the pandemic sped this up. We got face to face with what was important. We got to spend more time with family, and secretly, the generational shift in the world was already making this happen. I just think we’re seeing it much bigger way with pandemic as a catalyst and the economy as a catalyst. Yeah, so they don’t want a job anymore. They want a life. They never really wanted a job. They wanted a life, and they want a purpose. Yeah, like it or not, that’s where we’re at. So how do we convince them that our company, your company, is the one that they want to work for, and is more than just punching a

Caleb Agee 6:15
clock? Yeah? I think very often that starts with the first interaction, which is the job ad, and most of the time, the biggest mistake, I think that that every business owner can make, or maybe an HR team, that’s usually their role. HR folks, love you. HR folks, but the struggle is, it’s a job advertisement, it’s an ad.

Brandon Welch 6:38
And big difference in a job posting and a recruitment ad.

Caleb Agee 6:42
Yes, they, they make it sound like a job description. And I don’t know about you, but when we’re selling something, anything else, anything else in the world, anything else in the world, we don’t, we don’t give them the details of what it’s going to take once you buy this thing, when you’re selling a new car. You’re not going to say you’ll need to get oil changes on it every few you know, every few months you’re gonna have to fill it with gas. Better have a valid driver’s license. You’re gonna have to have valid driver’s license and insurance. You don’t do that when you’re selling a car, absolutely. But we’re selling jobs and pretending like that’s, that’s what all these details. What

Brandon Welch 7:19
do we sell? Let’s just go to the car thing that is, yeah, deep and profound, yeah. What are you selling when you’re actually selling a car brand?

Caleb Agee 7:27
I mean, depends on the brand, but, but very often you’re selling the the ability, the identity, yeah, it’s what you when I drive this car, roll up in and you feel a certain thing, right? Yes. Am I a minivan, family man, guy? Do I love, you know, drive the fast car? Do I drive trees? Yeah, yeah. Is, is, does my car brand save puppies? I don’t know, 50 trying

Brandon Welch 7:50
to be 24 again, yes, yes. So am I 34 trying to be

Caleb Agee 7:56
but, but think about, think about a good, a good car ad. It’s going to go to the aspirational identity of the person who would drive that car. We have to do the same thing in job ads, or we will more sit or more,

Brandon Welch 8:08
because cars sell themselves. Yeah, jobs come with this thing called, you know, working, work. And so, yeah, you have to let people see their identity in that ad. And we, I would say, accidentally got really good at this. We’ve been blessed to be able to say that people kind of show up here knowing how we roll, and maybe with a little bit more desire to work here versus another ad agency, and nothing against any anybody else that they would work for. But because we weren’t HR people. We like the opposite of HR people. We started from the very beginning writing our ads or our recruiting posts, like they were recruiting posts, right? Yeah. Like, like ads, sorry, yeah, like job descriptions, yeah. It’s kind of our nature and marketing. And we kind of realized, oh, wow, this is a thing that other people could use. And inherently, the higher you go up in the business office, the less in touch with this, I think they are, yeah,

Caleb Agee 9:03
and that that’s usually when you start to see problems, is when you get further away from the recruitment line. So

Brandon Welch 9:08
number one, if you’re writing descriptions, get out of that mode. Yep, most job ads talk about the position, they talk about the requirements, and do not allow the person to see themselves enjoying themselves or having a better life, and you are not selling as Roy reminds us. Bad ads talk about your product and its features. Good ads talk about your customer in their life. Your customer is the prospect of employee, and so you want to talk about that employee in their life. So give some examples. Yeah, you pulled some examples. Yeah, we’ve got, we’ve got a few here. Just fly by them. Yeah, everybody’s seen these go on, indeed. Right now you’ll see a bajillion. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 9:45
You can pull up any job ad. You probably see some of these. Successful local company seeks career minded individuals.

Brandon Welch 9:52
Don’t you work for your minded individual? I don’t work for a successful company, yes,

Caleb Agee 9:56
successful local company. I. Office, the office assistant is responsible for ensuring proper procedures and policies are followed regarding a variety of processes. That’s real, that’s often this is straight, straight off of a job at rehab techs provide support and assistance to therapists and clients and skilled nursing facilities to promote the client’s plan of care, along with helping the rehab coordinator to manage rehab staff and maintain cohesive teamwork with facility staff to ensure smooth operations of the rehab team within the element of the company, so that, what did, what did you just say? It sounds, sounds like unicorns and rainbows? Yeah, in all of that, they’re, they’re probably doing some beautiful work of rehab. A rehab tech, yeah, proud money, it sounds like a great job, competitive pay. They did not talk about, you know, the person at all. They talked about the job. And so I think we’ve got a really strong structure for how we think about recruitment, how we think about job ads. And why don’t you jump us right in?

Brandon Welch 11:02
So yeah, we broke this down, by the way. This is even though we’re a marketing company, even though we presented all sorts of fun things with media and advertising. This is probably our most well attended and requested presentation we make. Is how to hire and keep good people. Yeah, and we break it down to three things in your job, recruiting, just like in good advertising, you want to talk about the person, not the position. You want to talk about the purpose, not the position, and you want to give them a way to prove to you they are who you want them to be, long before you ever waste their time or they waste your time with an interview. So we’re going to break this down, person, purpose proof. Person, purpose proof. And the first thing is, person, we’re actually going to build an ad while we’re talking and give you some examples. And by the way, if you want to go super in depth with this, and if you want to see some real life examples of other ads we’ve created, and we have a template. We have an accompanying episode, How To Find, keep good people. It’s actually three parts take a little longer. But if you want to go deep in this and learn how to do this, we’ve done that on Frank and maven.com What else can they do at

Caleb Agee 12:11
Frankandmaven.com they can watch more of these episodes. Watch

Brandon Welch 12:15
one of these episodes. You can sign up for our newsletter, yeah, which is value packed with like three or four additional things surrounding this topic. Frankandmaven.com, cool. So back to person purpose proof. We want to do first is talk about the person in your ad. And we call this dog whistling talk at a frequency, or talk in a language that only the person you would want to actually show up the best person you could think of. Yeah. Talk to them as if they already exist. Yep. So this is going to sound like, instead of yada yada, company is looking for yada yada position. It’s going to start with, do you shovel sidewalks without being asked to do so that, what would that say about the person I’m looking for? Servant heart. Servant heart. Maybe I’m looking for somebody who cares about people. And then, instead of saying, we’re looking for a compassionate, caring individual who say, Do you shovel sidewalks without being asked to do so? Yeah, wow. And somebody goes, Yeah, I’ve done that. We dog whistled, right? Yep, the person who doesn’t give a flip out shovel and sidewalks is going, what the heck is this company? What is this? Is even a job at I’m confused. They leave and hallelujah, right? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 13:20
great. You have one less to work through. How

Brandon Welch 13:21
about are you a nerd? Nate the camera guy. That’s how we got here. Yeah, that’s why he’s here. He was like, Are you a nerd? Yep, yeah, that’s all it took. Cool. Love you Nate the camera guy, are you a nerd? Are you a video nerd? Are you a are you a Adobe unicorn. Do you know all five languages of yada yada? Or here’s another one that was phenomenally successful. These are actually all lines we’ve successfully recruited with our clients using these words, you became a nurse because you wanted to help people, right? Maybe it’s not a question, but you’re using the word what you y o u, if you’ve been around the Maven method at all, you know that is the most seductive way you can possibly wire any piece of communication, is to talk about the person, y o u, yeah. So you’re saying, Do you want to Are you tired of Don’t you wish you could? Are you? Do you Where would you like to be? Second person is what that’s known as. Yeah, we’re writing at as if it’s a voice of one person versus directly to another. Sometimes

Caleb Agee 14:28
we think about what job they’re in right now and their frustrations a little bit. So we’ll not just do you want to Are you tired of

Brandon Welch 14:39
the start one? Are you tired of being pushed around by your pencil pushing boss or something around or, you know,

Caleb Agee 14:45
we for Frank and Maven, we might have somebody who’s who’s surviving on sidewalk, side work, their side hustle and freelancing that is more we’ve used. Yeah, and Aren’t you tired of surviving

Brandon Welch 14:55
on that? Sick of surviving on side work is how we use that one. Yeah. Alliteration. Yeah. Right. Point is, you’re talking directly to this person. Do not put your position. Matter of fact, I’m going to advocate you put your position and all the details and all the stupid college requirements, save them for the actual interview. Yeah, right, because you’re probably scaring people off anyway. That would have otherwise been a good fit. Scare them off this way, scare them off this way, and then scare them in, yeah, scare them away from where they’re at. So that is person talk about the person. You can talk about what they like to do in their free time. You can talk about what they’re mad at. You can talk about what makes them happy. You can talk about, you know, some wacko office quote that only certain types of people would know. Yeah, actually

Caleb Agee 15:39
do that. All right, a little shortcut for this is if you already have a person in this role somewhere in your in your organization, so you’ve already got that office assistant and you need a second one. Go if they’re, if they’re the dream office assistant, go. Imagine what they are. Hey, sit down in front of them. How would you sell this job to them? Yeah, how would you talk to them? Let’s

Brandon Welch 15:59
say pat the office assistants leaving. We love Pat. Oh my gosh. She’s been here 18 years. Holy cow. How are we gonna do this without Pat? We go pick some of our favorite qualities. Yeah, we just say, are you? And then insert what Pat does. Yep, you stay up till 9pm cooking cookies for strangers or your co workers. Yeah, you know what I’m saying. That’s Riley. Hi. Riley. So person you get that lots and lots more examples. Frank and maven.com We’ll put the link to the three part series in this in the show notes here, the next thing we want to do purpose. So the person goes, cool, you’ve got me. You’ve got my attention already. Your ad stands out because you’re real and not you know, classified ad speak, but maybe to the dismay of some more established companies or people who are a little bit shocked about the way things used to be, the worst of the way they are. Now, there’s no way around in today’s environment, giving somebody purpose, yeah, if you don’t give somebody purpose in their job or allow them to see a bigger purpose, you are going to be a clock that they punch. They will come to you for an extra dollar, they’ll leave you for an extra dollar, and you’re just not going to be all that special, yeah? So hopefully you are special. Hopefully you’re one of the companies that say we’re proud that we treat our employees like family, you’re proud to be able to say you have some sort of benefits or flexibility, or maybe it’s just some really, really, you know, hell bent conviction towards how you do what you do. Yeah, maybe you’re, maybe you’re Elon Musk, and you’re trying to build the, you know, next spaceship to Mars that that is purpose, right for some people, for the right person, right? Maybe you’re saying, yes, you’re going to work a lot of hours here, but man, is life going to be exhilarating, whatever it is you want to show that purpose, so you’re validating who they are and giving them, even if they’re sweeping the floors, giving them something bigger than sweeping the floors. Yeah? How does what they do change the world? Make the world better. Yeah, here’s one that we did. I think this one was for a contractor company. So think, think about that like there’s not a whole lot of depth sometimes in blue collar hourly jobs. Yeah, this job ad started, are you tired of working with jerks? Tradesmen don’t always get the best end of the deal while your supervisor sits in this truck barking orders. You’re the one making it happen, but you never get noticed for it. Do you to the to the person who, and by the way, this is every human being. Don’t, don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re some hardened, you know, work only person who doesn’t appreciate validation. It’s not how we’re wired, no, but we say you never get noticed for it. Do you possibly first time this guy’s ever heard that in his life? Yeah, he took the hard route. He’s working in the trenches. He loves it. He’s talented at it. Nothing at all, better or worse about that. That’s just who he is. But somebody finally said, that’s who you are. We say you never get noticed for it. Do you your supervisor sitting in this truck barking orders, and we say, that stops the minute you put on our uniform. Wow. This was shine solar. We wrote this ad for good friends of ours. We said, That stops the minute you put on the shine uniform. We go on to say, life is different here. Family is important to us. You know, you’ll never be looked down for x, y, z, and we just give them a bigger purpose. And very often, people’s purpose can be giving them a signal of, okay, even if you don’t have, like, super, super generous time off, or some, you know, out of this world, PTO plan or something, or, yeah, benefits, you can speak to their values and let them know it’s okay to be a real person here, right? Yeah,

Caleb Agee 19:40
I think, I think oftentimes what happens is people go to like a generational gap. If you’re in the if you’re in the older generations of the workforce right now you and you’re leading, you may end up looking down at the millennials and ZS and say, Why? Why do they need all of this? You know, we

Brandon Welch 20:00
kind of, oh, those snowflakes, yes, they’ll get melted right away here. Yeah. And

Caleb Agee 20:04
the truth is, once you give them a purpose, they will give you their lives, blood, sweat and tears. You know

Brandon Welch 20:13
what? This is actually the most impactful with when they’ve had an entire life of of a career or a company or culture that’s just not like this. And you finally give a baby boomer this kind of validation, they’re not going to sit around needing it. They’re not going to be as feely and, you know, dependent on it. But when you pour this kind of validation on somebody who’s never had it before, holy smokes. Yeah, I don’t think you should do any of this stuff to keep people captive, but you earn loyalty in a way that most companies don’t, yeah, and when you do this, yeah? So it is true for the snowflakes. And by the way, there are snowflakes in every generation, every generation, and there are hard workers. Our generation got painted with about a bunch of them. But also the inverse is just saying if, if millennial culture is full of more snowflakes, guess what? They’re also full of a bunch more passionate people on the other end of that. And if you find the right person, which is exactly what an ad like this will do, they’ll go to the moon with you. That’s right. And we have a building full of people like that here. Love you. FM team,

Caleb Agee 21:19
come on, mavens, so to

Brandon Welch 21:23
whatever degree possible. And I’m going to give you an example here in just a moment where I take, like, the most entry level position. You’re thinking, How in the world could this position have any purpose to it? And I’m going to show you how you can do that even at the lowest levels. But you want to say, talk about your mission. Talk about what happens when you step into the uniform here. Talk about your first day on the job. Talk about what people are going to say about them. Talk about what their co workers are going to love about them. Yeah. Talk about what their clients and their customers, or the people receiving the product, are going to do. Talk about that stuff, because that’s actually by the largest research done in the world on employees. That is actually the thing that motivates people the most. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 22:02
and it’s crazy how well all of this goes back to just good advertising. You’re not the quote we love is you’re not when you’re selling a half inch drill bit, you’re not selling a half inch drill bit, you’re selling the hole in the wall, the result, or the shelf hung up, or something hung up on the wall. Yes, for these employees, we are not selling a job, something to do, a way to spend a lot of hours the majority of your life, we’re selling the result that you get to bring to people.

Brandon Welch 22:30
Yes. So if you’re an industry where you can’t pay more than $18 an hour, because that doesn’t make hay, and the profit won’t support it, this is all the more important, right? Oh, yeah, if you’re an industry that’s competitive, like every industry I know of, for getting talent, this is all the more important. So we talked about person, we talked about purpose. Talk about them. Give them a purpose. Give them a bigger thing. Now we’re going to talk about proof. And this is about not wasting everybody’s time. This is about maximizing your recruiting bandwidth. Yeah. And so before the ad is over, you’re building us up, building us up, building us up. The people who said that ain’t me, they’re long gone. The people who have, you’ve you’ve found them, and somebody’s finally talking to them the way that they can appreciate they’re full in. And you’re gonna say, you’re gonna prove who is in and who’s out by doing this one thing at the very end, you’re going to give them a very specific, a little bit weird instruction about how to take the next step, something that is not click the indeed button and auto apply. Yes, please don’t do that. Making it too easy, right now, making it too easy to get a bag full of jerks. And we literally have clients that get hundreds, 100 plus employees or sorry applicants. Auto app click No no friction apply, you know, buttons and you know, like single digits are actually showing up to interviews. Well,

Caleb Agee 23:56
I, I posted for job ad here for, like, a front desk. Was it? Yeah, sorry, Nate. Um, no. So we we post for a job ad here, and we got 100 applicants. Less than 30 had given us the proof that they pay attention to the details, yeah, so

Brandon Welch 24:18
the proof sounds like this. Are we talking your language? Great. Put hashtag, that’s me in an email, and send it to this specific email address, even if indeed says auto apply. Yeah. And you’re not telling these people. You’re not even telling them what happens if they don’t do that. You’re just simply going who passed the test. And so everybody who doesn’t put that hashtag in that follow up instruction and the subject line, or maybe you, maybe it’s that you say, stop by between the hours of two and 4pm this Saturday. And the people who don’t do that, they didn’t listen or didn’t it wasn’t important enough to them, yeah, you know, I. Go to this specific web page and write three sentences about yourself, like something that says, okay, these people get put to the top of the pile and in our world. And what we suggest is, if they don’t follow that step out, they go throw it out. Doesn’t matter if they’re otherwise qualified. They didn’t follow instructions, which means often following either

Caleb Agee 25:20
that means they either didn’t read your job ad all the way through, yep, or they’re too worse, they they read it and didn’t comprehend what it told them

Brandon Welch 25:30
to do, yep. So give some sort of proof. Hook, person purpose proof. I’m gonna put all this together in an ad, and soon as I tell you what this category is, you’re going, Dude, this is like, the most entry level weird or not weird, but just average job. Yeah. How is somebody going to see themselves? A lot

Caleb Agee 25:50
of times people hear us talking about recruiting, they’re like, Oh, you work in ad agency. Oh, yeah, it’s probably easy, and it is a little bit more exciting,

Brandon Welch 25:59
pinball machine and limited Red Bull. Actually, we don’t have either of

Caleb Agee 26:03
those. No, we don’t, but this works in every place. Yes, we do have coffee

Brandon Welch 26:06
mugs that double as murder weapons. They’re heavy mugs. Yeah, they are

Caleb Agee 26:11
heavy. Hey, if you send us a question, we’ll send you a coffee mug. One of the Here you go. I’ll show you Frank and Maven, Frank and Mavin. It’s it’s swag alicious, and it’s heavy, it’s strong, keeps your coffee warm. It’s still, still toasty, hot right now,

Brandon Welch 26:26
I think I just heard that rich and Randy and John all get a coffee mug because they all sent questions. Oh yeah, thank you rich, John and Randy. Thank you guys. Here’s the example ad. We’re gonna put purpose, sorry person, purpose and proof all together, and we’re gonna have some fun doing it. Okay, dude, imagine you’re a 16 year old punk cruising job classified ads, or you’re a 16 year old punks mom, or you’re trying to get through college, or you’re trying to make some summer money. Here it goes. Do you have a knack for making things shine? Have you mastered the art of waxing and buffing? Would you like to finally be rewarded for your impeccable attention to detail? Here’s the deal. Boats are flying out of our parking lot, and by flying, we mean rolling behind pickup trucks. But before they’re cleared for takeoff, there’s one extremely non negotiable standard they must meet. They gotta shine like a cue ball on a goat’s butt. We believe that new boat day should go down as one of the best days in the lives of our customers, and that’s where you come in, Caleb, that’s where you come in when they land that sucker in their driveway, you will be the almighty musician that made it sparkle with a force of 1000 stars broadcasting to the neighbors and the international space station. Look at this dude’s new boat. You said you were a master of wax and buff, and you said, you know your way around a spray bottle and rag, right? Good, because we’re about to make you famous among our friends as the anglers port delivery detail director, you will give the final finesse that will transform our boats from fine to fantastic and make our experience as shiny as the smile on our customers faces. You hear that purpose? I’m no longer a kid with a rag. I’m changing lives, right? Oh yeah, all right. Here’s the here’s the proof. Comes in. We go, are you in? Here’s a few things you should know. The pay is great and the benefits are even better. You can count on a fantastic dental, medical and vision plan, 12 paid holidays and more, paid time off for things you need to be gone for. This is an eight to five gig. If you’re magic enough to detail both remotely Be our guest, that’s good. I like that. Whiners, liars, drama queens and booger eaters need not apply. We love our work. We love what we do. So you need to show up with a smile on your face, and life will be good. If you have a lazy bone in your body, move along. You won’t make it past your first day. Bring your A game, and we’ll bring our pay game ready to get rolling. Send an email with the word cue ball in the subject line, and we’ll be in touch. So we had some fun. We obviously did some fun. We obviously did some wordsmithing there, but it wasn’t the creativity of that ad that made it work so well, yeah, it was that I took an average boring thing, and any goober, or any would be master employee is sitting here going, I don’t know what I do now, but it sucks compared to this, right? So, yeah, we said, Do you have a knack for making things shine? Have you mastered the art of blah, blah, blah, okay, talking to this person. Is that already sitting in front of us? Then we went to the purpose part. We’re about to make you famous among our friends. That’s validation. Maslow’s hierarchy. Talked about the person and the purpose, and we gave him a angler, support, delivery, detail, Director. It’s a one man department, but you can be the director of it. Be the director of it. Who cares? Yes, sure. By the way, a lot of you guys have really good PTO, or maybe even average sounding PTO. But instead, and instead of saying you have paid time off, or you get two hours a week, or two hours for every week you work off, or whatever you. Maybe you already give holidays off, as every company does, so put it in there 12 paid holidays. That sounds like a lot. That’s actually what most companies do, right? Here’s the last thing, purpose and identity and allowing this person to see everybody’s worked with a goober, everybody’s worked with somebody they don’t like, except for Nate the camera guy, he loves everybody he works with, and we love Nate the camera guy, um, you’re saying if you’re a whiner, you’re a liar or a drama queen or a booger eater. We don’t support that here. So we’re telling the guy you’re gonna like the people you work with without saying that, right? Yeah, showing him, Yep,

Caleb Agee 30:37
yeah. I think it brings those birds of a feather flock together, and you you’re doing that, that whistle for the right kind of person, right off the bat. And that’s such a such a powerful thing. So quick recap, we start with the person. We talk about them. We’re talking about who they are. We start with the word you, right, y, o, u. Then we move to purpose, which is, make it about more than just a job. Make it about the you know, the purpose, the thing that the result, the thing that that brings, and then proof you you do something that forces them to make themselves stand out among the pack. When you get 100 applications, you want there to just be a few that that are shot

Brandon Welch 31:20
Absolutely, yeah. So saves you time, gets you the right person. Yeah, so that’s the big stuff. Yeah, we’ve got more tactics inside the show notes here. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 31:33
anything else I think? Well, I’d like to just go back to our first questions here. Rich specifically asked, How do I get people to call me back? So let’s say they did stand out. They gave us the proof. They gave us cue ball or whatever it was, yeah, how do, how do I get them to call me back? I I reached out to them, yeah, but they’re not responding. Okay,

Brandon Welch 31:56
so, so you can do all this stuff and still have a hard time reaching out, especially if you’re not quick, or especially if you have to go through an HR department, my number one, which, by the way, that’s my number one suggestion, is, man, if you’re the let the supervisors have some initial contact here, and don’t try to make it go through this scary, oh, gotta come in and screen you and do all this big application process like in today’s world. Yeah, you have to get to that. You have to get to that. You have to do that for legal and all this stuff, but have the conversation with a real person that’s way less threatening. I’d call that a reasonable step, right? Yeah. Secondly, don’t call and just expect a call back. It is hard to get people’s attention, and especially in a spam world, you might have to call. You might have to text 3458, times, but if this person is standing out, like, what is the value of a perfect person on your team? You can’t put a price on that. I if I can’t get that person’s attention, I’m writing a handwritten note saying, Man, I really loved what you said. I love what I’m seeing here. I would love a chance to talk to you. Can I take you to dinner or lunch? By the way, here’s a sonic gift card on me. Like, do something that just stands out. Like, yeah, you can find these people right. White Pages com will find their address. You can they might put it

Caleb Agee 33:09
in their resume as well. Resume, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Welch 33:13
I’m also, can’t say this to HR folks or attorneys, but I’m also looking on Facebook to see if there’s somebody I know that they know. Say, Hey, Caleb, I saw your friends with this person. Well, can you tell me about them? Maybe I tell them I’ve asked you, yeah. So I know there’s legal stuff there, but go outside the box. This whole apply. Come in. We’ll determine if you’re good enough for us. Flip that on its head. They’re going, Are you good enough for them? And you got to court them just like you would any other customer, yeah.

Caleb Agee 33:47
Where do you post the ad? Everywhere

Brandon Welch 33:51
I would have it on my website, by the way. Super side. Pro tip, if your website sucks, or if your website makes you look like a corporate, boring place, get a new website, yeah? Yeah, that everybody’s first safety check. Is this a good company? As they go to the website and you have an opportunity to wow them and show them that you’re a fun, awesome place, or you have an opportunity to bore them,

Caleb Agee 34:16
yeah? A good website. Everything about you says everything about you, says everything about

Brandon Welch 34:21
you, yeah. But so I said that to say, have it easily found on your website? Are you an awesome person? Click here. We want to work with you. I would also have put, you know, put it on the major sites. You kind of have to, you have to have it on indeed. But Don’t, don’t let indeed, strip out the email address if you have to break the sentence, so email, so indeed, can’t I’ve heard that they’re removing email addresses from the bottom. They don’t let you do that. So say email and then spell out.com or something, so that robots can’t strip it out or give them some other sort of instruction. Yeah.

Caleb Agee 34:56
Sometimes I’ve seen people tell them to include. It somewhere on the resume or cover letter. We

Brandon Welch 35:02
have a client that said, hey, skip HR and talk directly with the person you’ll be working with at this number. Yeah? And they called the guy like it was the direct boss, and they’re like, that’s pretty cool. I can drive down the road and talk to this guy, and it’s not some big HR threatening interview, right? Yeah.

Caleb Agee 35:16
And it also shows it’s another signal that you’re not untouchable as a manager. So

Brandon Welch 35:22
I would also put this on social media so that people it’s probably an uncommon tactic, but so the people who know this person, a person that you should be talking to, will tag them in the comments. Yeah? And I would put some money behind it. I would, I would use Facebook, Instagram, just, maybe even

Caleb Agee 35:39
just Tiktok, yeah? And LinkedIn, LinkedIn, you can make a job post and share it, yeah? So yeah, there are lots of options.

Brandon Welch 35:46
And then last thing is, go out. Go out of your way. What if? What if this is a really hard to find person? What if this is, I don’t know why I’m talking about the blue collar folks, but they’re, they tend to be independent, they tend to be hard working, they tend to be off patterns of a lot of folks media, because they’re either shift working or there’s otherwise hard to reach. What if you went to the depot where they went and picked up their materials every day, and you put a cardboard sign that said, a better job? Want a better job? Scan this QR code and it takes them straight to a page, right? Yeah? Like, go out. Where are these people at Yes, and then, you know, if, if your labor force requires it, go mass media, TV and radio? Yeah, I had a, I had a client that ran an ad like this, and we did, we ran for two weeks on radio. We had a little under 100 people. It was like 80 something people showed up for an interview within a two hour window, wow, because we’d written and talked just like in two

Caleb Agee 36:43
weeks. In two weeks. Yeah? So

Brandon Welch 36:47
everywhere is a short answer. But try to go outside the boring, expected places. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 36:54
any warnings things you should never do?

Brandon Welch 36:58
Man, just take out your stack of requirements. I know legal says you have to have them, but take out your stack of you have to have preferred two years experience, but we’ll consider others like, why you can put it in there, right? Yeah, preferred. If it’s preferred, just, just stop. Just yeah, get the right person in your time. The person who really is, you know, going to be qualified, it’s probably going to respond anyway. Other things I probably wouldn’t do is, I would not rely on, indeed, auto posting. I would make it extremely special on the way they have to reach out to

Caleb Agee 37:36
me. Yeah, yeah. Well, that is all about recruiting.

That’s it recruiting. The The thing I’ll say, If you take nothing else away, that rhymed didn’t mean to poet, and I didn’t know it. Thing, he’ll say, If you take nothing else away, it is, write a job ad. Advertisement. You are writing an ad for a job. Don’t write a job description, describe the person, not the position. Yes, and you will be you’ll see him. Just rein it in. We’ve

Brandon Welch 38:09
got some fantastic people this way, but talking this way. So yes, thank you guys so much for listening. I hope that was helpful. We will be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions to help you grow your business, eliminate waste in advertising and help achieve the big dream. Because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week, guys.