Avoiding the Biggest Recruiting Mistakes
Hiring the right people is hard enough. What happens when the wrong person is already on your team?
In this week’s episode, Contractor University faculty members Drew Cameron and Gary Elekes dive into the real-world challenges of recruiting in the trades, and what happens when personal relationships complicate professional decisions. They share lessons learned from their own experiences and offer proven strategies to help you avoid costly hiring mistakes.
Whether you’re growing your team or managing the one you’ve got, this episode will help you recruit smarter, build a stronger culture, and protect your business from the inside out.
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Audio Transcription (in beta, please be wary of typos)
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;09;29
On today’s show, you’re going to learn all about avoiding the biggest recruiting mistakes.
00;00;10;02 – 00;00;32;06
Now, today we have Gary, Alex and Mr. Drew Cameron chatting about the biggest recruiting mistakes that all of us make from time to time. They’re also going to talk about how to avoid them, which is really important. Take it away fellas. But management becomes glorious, laborious because of the poor recruiting. Your job becomes time consuming and tougher because you got the wrong people on your team and you can’t understand why.
00;00;32;09 – 00;00;47;17
You know, you keep having to jump in back into the fire. It’s because you probably shortchange the process up front. And so I want you to kind of keep that in mind. And so these are, you know, what I or what I call the biggest recruiting mistakes. And these are the ones that I will say, the most consistent.
00;00;47;19 – 00;01;04;23
That’s why they’re the biggest, because they happen the most frequently. They’re not the only recruiting mistakes. I’m sure we probably uncover a couple others and happy to entertain some conversations and questions from our, our viewers. And I’m going to, you know, draw the line on, on these as well. And these are not in any specific order, but they are numbered.
00;01;05;00 – 00;01;21;02
I think it was about, you know, about 25 of them or so. But anyway, we make the wrong hire by hiring from within or hiring a relative. Right? Been there, done that. You know, John Cameron and sons had two brothers and a sister and a mom. You know, it was actually you visit the family that was there.
00;01;21;02 – 00;01;51;15
But, you know, I, I tell the story. I had to d hire John twice. Ron, on the other hand, my younger brother, unfortunately, both those guys were passed on, but, Ron was a hard worker. I mean, he was the hardest working on the installer. He ran our warehouse, you know, eventually. And, I mean, he right up until the end was just, you know, one of those most solid guys that you could count on, probably in later years, had he matured, before passing away, he probably would have been an operations manager.
00;01;51;17 – 00;02;12;09
You know, John, I saw sales management in him, but he was not ready for it. So his younger brother, I got the job after college as well as the general manager position. John eventually went on to become a, iconic manager, for a very large company on the East Coast. But those were easy hires because obviously we were all given jobs from the age of 12.
00;02;12;09 – 00;02;31;15
But I’ve gone into companies and I know you have as well, where people you know are related were married and, you know, they have no business having the job that they have. And I know one company, down Louisiana, the, the, the marriage split as a result of that. I know another company down in Louisiana, and maybe they’ve perhaps things are happening.
00;02;31;15 – 00;02;47;06
Things of why you think there might be value thing down there in Louisiana. Had a daughter as a dispatcher, and, you know, she she needed to go. And everybody on the team told me that she needed to go. And the husband and wife that were working there, you know, you were reluctant to do it. Eventually, they faced reality.
00;02;47;06 – 00;03;16;07
So talk about making the easy hire or hiring a relative. I just hired one of my boys today. That’s right. I heard that’s not going so well. Yeah, there’s the landscaping gave me that performance. You got to get the job done on time. You not get paid. So yeah, we’ll we’ll see how it goes. But, yeah, I, many instances where I’ve done coaching and consulting where, you know, husband, wife and the one in particular in Chicago when I was a business consult for Lennox and, and the guy’s, name was Bob, and he’s like, listen, I got a problem with my accounting.
00;03;16;13 – 00;03;31;13
You know, my wife’s doing my accounting, and she’s not an accountant, is not trained for accounting. But, you know, she she wants to control the books. And, you know, I can’t fire her. And so I sat down and visited with Bob, and I’m like, do you mind if we bring your wife and talk to your wife? Bring the wife in.
00;03;31;15 – 00;03;48;15
And she sits down and she says, well, I’m only here because Bob can’t hire anybody. Like nobody will work for this guy. I’m just doing the books because I have to, like no one else will do it. She goes, I don’t want to be here. And I just kind of looked at Bob. And, so the wife left and I’m like, well, you know, that’s pretty clear what we need to do.
00;03;48;15 – 00;04;07;03
She doesn’t want to be here, and you don’t really want her doing the books. And he’s like, I can’t fire my wife. He’s like, I sleep with her. He’s like, I can’t let you fire. I’m like, I’m not fire your wife. Yeah, so the goal was we had to find somebody to do the books. So the complexities of that discussion, those two just never even talked about it.
00;04;07;03 – 00;04;27;13
Like it’s insane that they didn’t have that conversation about what’s going on. So we get back to the job functions, the org chart and just the family dynamics. And I think, family members have to be held accountable to the standard that the job or the role description hires and accountable to what the culture requirements are. So, you know, you mentioned you fired your brother twice.
00;04;27;13 – 00;04;51;21
That’s probably a cultural decision. Yes. As opposed to performance. Let’s performance on the paperwork out. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, it’s important that people understand if we have family members in, It’s okay. It’s a fantastic environment, but they have to be responsible and accountable to the culture and to the business plan and not necessarily look at the family and say, well, I’m related to you because we’re blood.
00;04;51;23 – 00;05;12;21
Because unfortunately, what happens is the rest of the organization sees that, in my own experience with Linux industries, I didn’t get a job that I had earned, literally, I had spent five years at the top level of every every metric established in the branch position. And the general manager of the organization called me and said, just need to have a talk with you.
00;05;12;24 – 00;05;30;27
And he said, there’s going to be a promotion. And he said, you deserve the opportunity. But one of the family members of the Norris family is going to get this job. And he said, I just want to let you know, you know, it’s there’s a level of nepotism here and that’s the right word. And he said, so I wanted you to hear it from me.
00;05;30;27 – 00;05;50;10
I didn’t want you to be, you know, upset that you didn’t get interviewed or hired because they are going to interview you, but you’re not going to get the job. He’s like, they’re going to give that to the son who is a family member and who will eventually be the president of the organization, which he was eventually. And, so that screamed to me that they didn’t care about performance, they cared about their family.
00;05;50;10 – 00;06;11;05
And I get that, and I’m okay with that. I’m okay. But obviously I’m not there anymore. So there’s some reasons why people start looking around. All your employees kind of know what’s going on, what the culture was about. So family members are terrific, but they have to maintain the level of, discipline, accountability, meritocracy, performance. All those things have to be consistent.
00;06;11;12 – 00;06;25;19
And by the way, none of my kids want to come to work for me because they know I’ve got a hold of accountable those stats. Right. All right. Yeah. Dad, dad, you you’re you’re way too firm about that stuff. Yeah, well, I’ve always said a business is business. Get your friends and family elsewhere. That doesn’t mean we can’t have friends and family work with us.
00;06;25;19 – 00;06;41;04
But, you know, like you said, I love that you have to basically operate and execute to the level of the requirement of the role and the position. And while John was a great salesperson, John struggled on the paperwork, you know, you know, really, really poorly. And he ended up paying one of my guys to do his paperwork.
00;06;41;04 – 00;07;02;05
And that became an issue. And and my team is looking at him and looking at me and saying, okay, if he’s willing to tolerate this, what can I get away with? And my team knew that basically, listen, I’m, I’m, I’m a straitlaced as you are. You’re probably the straight, more straight laced lawyer. But yeah, there’s a certain level of excellence and expectation that, you know, that I demand and is required because you all get what you tolerate.
00;07;02;05 – 00;07;20;16
When you start to tolerate little things and you tell yourself a story around these things, that’s where the, you know, the cracks in the Liberty Bell start to show up if you know if you will. So making the easy hire from hiring them. I’m not saying you shouldn’t hire from within, but is they go through the recruiting process just because my installer or service technician wants to become my next salesperson?
00;07;20;19 – 00;07;36;16
And they they’ve done well as a selling tech does not mean they become my my covered advisor. They have to go through the process just like anybody else would, and they have to be worthy of doing every aspect of that job. Do they have a little bit more of an inside track? Yeah. Here’s the interesting thing, though.
00;07;36;19 – 00;07;51;00
The people that, you know work for me. I say I have to be even a little bit more qualified because they’ve been part of the vision, mission, culture, core values. They understand how we operate. So they may have to be a little bit more qualified than somebody coming from outside the organization. You know, quite frankly, I did expect more from my older brother.
00;07;51;04 – 00;08;11;23
My father should have expected more from me when I hired my best friend to be our our our parts manager, out of high school, you know, Butch had to be, you know, Premier, right? Because they his friend, his friendship got him considered for the position. His skills and ability got them. That got him the position. But I was able to.
00;08;11;27 – 00;08;26;07
You know, what kept him in that position was he showed up before anybody else in my service department, and he stayed late. He always helped out with inventory. He worked on the weekends. He did the stuff that my father had us telling his camera and kids, you know, on the side on the weekends, you know, he showed up.
00;08;26;07 – 00;08;57;08
And so people literally didn’t have his job because he was my best friend. Right. And so that’s what I’m saying, is that everybody has to earn their job. One last comment on that. So we always favor hiring from within as a philosophy. But we to your point, they have to be equal or better within. So the trick is the org chart, the employee development plan we talked about yesterday, the role description and the metrics, the merits, the performance.
00;08;57;10 – 00;09;16;12
So it’s not just about that job. A mentor of mine once told me, you know, if you want the next job, you have to prove that you actually can do the next job while you’re in this job, like you have to behave into the next job. And so that’s stuck with me. And I think that goes right back to clear, culture in that discussion.
00;09;16;14 – 00;09;38;15
We we want to give you the opportunity to raise up inside the organization. But you have to prove that you’re willing and capable of doing the next job, as opposed to just saying, I’m entitled to that. And I think that not just family members, but just anybody that’s a team. Yeah. And John, you know, thought he deserved the job because he was John Cameron Jr and also because he was the older brother.
00;09;38;15 – 00;09;55;07
And you know, my father basically said, hey, you know, drew went to school for this truth. Putting in the effort for this truth is more organized, you know, so forth and so on. Right. And so that’s what it became about in reality. Bye bye. And here’s maybe something that will be helpful for you that do have relatives there at that business.
00;09;55;07 – 00;10;11;10
John Cameron senior was the president of the company or the owner of the company. He was not my father, you know, at work. You know, people call my dad. They said anything. But when people say, hey, isn’t that your dad? Yes, but he might. Well, not when I’m at work, right. My brother was not my brother. He was my salesperson.
00;10;11;15 – 00;10;29;11
Right. And so if that helps you keep, you know, the lines of, delineation, you know, a little bit more clear that I think that’s that that’s what sort of hiring for technical experience. And this is, again, the framework a lot of the framework is built around, you know, my experience of hiring salespeople. That’s what I really wrote the article on a couple of years back.
00;10;29;13 – 00;10;51;07
But again, I hire for attitude, I hire for fit, I hire for chemistry. You know, I can teach them what they need to know and I think the, the easy hire, again, is the one that has the technical expertise. When I was looking for a service, taking maintenance tech, you know, or, installer or a salesperson. So a granite again, you could also be saying the same thing when it comes to a bookkeeper.
00;10;51;10 – 00;11;13;16
So talk about that a little bit. Well, I’ve, I’ve got, a classic story of hiring the wrong bookkeeper. Okay. So, I totally agree with you, though. Attitude, culture, chemistry, mindset, willingness to learn. You know, coach ability, adaptability. Those are the characteristics that we look, we can train people, now they can bring some technical experience.
00;11;13;16 – 00;11;35;06
That’s fantastic. But, yeah, I hired, Andrew and I both Andrew’s probably, you know, rolling over in his, you know, head office right now going, oh, my. So we had our CPA, we have an accounting test. You know, we interviewed this guy, we called his references. We checked everything you could possibly imagine. We went through all the same steps that you’re going to tell me to go through.
00;11;35;08 – 00;11;52;19
But his references lied about it, because when we actually hired him, it turns out that he didn’t really even understand debits and credits and, so yet he was able to get through the accounting test. And my CPA, you know, ask him about 5 or 6, you know, key questions. And he was able to answer those as well.
00;11;52;22 – 00;12;12;26
So, the the lesson there is we were really looking at technical competency. That’s what we were looking at. And it just turned out that it wasn’t a good culture fit. He didn’t last very long, obviously. You know, we’re not very forgiving about cultural problems like that. So we made that transition very quickly. And we’ve since rehired somebody that’s a great culture fit.
00;12;12;26 – 00;12;30;22
And we’ve trained that young individual a little bit more on bookkeeping. And it’s just been fantastic. So technical expertise can be trained on. So once again, I think you need to be careful when you’re looking at technical expertise is the primary reason. Zero culture attitude mindset. All those things are key. Yeah. These are these are data points right.
00;12;30;22 – 00;12;48;13
No one thing is going to make the make or break the scale, here. But these are just things to kind of take into consideration. So yes, if somebody has it, you know, the technical expertise along with everything else that we’re looking for in this industry, my experience has been that we overvalue technical experience way too much. Right.
00;12;48;16 – 00;13;07;27
That’s the easy hire, right? There are skills and and skills and techniques and whatnot that can be taught very easily. You go down to, you know, one of the interplay learning. We’re talking about that, you know, virtual learning today. You could go down to the ultimate technical academy or the perfect technician academy or technical arts center and get it, get a technician.
00;13;07;27 – 00;13;26;29
You get a maintenance check in two weeks, I get an install or, you know, trained in two weeks. I can get advanced diagnostics trained in a week. Right. We can at IGA, we can train you and, you know, customer communications within a week so we can teach you what it is that you need to know. But the thing I can’t teach you is being a good human right, having a good attitude, showing up on time.
00;13;26;29 – 00;13;49;02
Right. Those are, you know, some of the things that we we just undervalue. My in my mind, this was the one that, rang true for me at Cameron’s. And my dad always thought he had someone who just thought like him. And God bless my dad, he’s still with this, and he’s down in Florida. And, he always thought somebody was going to be like him, be like, to hire these guys that had the work ethic, like him and but like him.
00;13;49;02 – 00;14;06;23
And I said, dad, the problem, like I later learned, is, you know, the day they stopped behaving like you were thinking like you and you realized this person’s not you was the day you actually hired them in your mind. But it may have been a year or 2 or 10 years later when you finally actually got rid of them.
00;14;06;25 – 00;14;26;06
Right? And and realize no one’s going to be like you, right? I mean, there is only one Gary. Alex. Right. And, and there’s only one bank. God, yeah. Thank God. And it’s a good thing, right? You’re unique and special. I’m unique and special. My mom tells me that all the time, and, she reminded me that on my birthday, we should go.
00;14;26;08 – 00;14;45;07
No one is going to be just like you. And that’s why, you know, when we get into the stuff tomorrow, we talk about the interviewing process. And the hiring process is realize that, you gotta not be the sole interviewer in this. Now, when you’re small, I get it. You’re that person who’s hiring, you know, hiring everybody when you’re small.
00;14;45;10 – 00;15;07;25
But you talk about that a little bit. Well, I think that it’s something that we actually just talked about last week in our executive team meeting is, you know, we’ve got we’re growing the business. We need some positions. We’re hiring. So we’re staffing to an org chart. And, and part of that conversation was work life balance and kind of a new, mindset about that work is a particular event.
00;15;07;25 – 00;15;25;26
And it’s a thing. It’s it doesn’t define who you are, where maybe sort of in your dad and my dad’s generations, that that did it. It was part of your identity. It was a larger part of the identity. So part of our discussion is that, hey, you know, where I’m at my life, I enjoy the extra work.
00;15;25;26 – 00;15;49;05
Like, it’s not a big deal for me to work 20 hours a day. I worked almost 18 hours yesterday. Probably going to have another 20 hour day to day, you know, starting at four in the morning and sort of quitting at 9:00 at night. A lot of people aren’t going to be able to do that. So when you say, well, hiring somebody like you culturally, from a mindset point of view, you know, are the same experiences I think have the same desire work ethic, attitudes.
00;15;49;05 – 00;16;06;01
And the answer is they’re probably not. So part a part of what we try to do is create that culture and say that we’re hiring for the cultural fit. And I have to put those biases that I have about work ethic on all of that. You know, Saturdays to me are work days. I never really looked at her.
00;16;06;03 – 00;16;28;05
Heather. What do I mean? I’m got to work until, you know, the Ohio State Buckeyes kick off. And if Ohio State stop playing, I’m probably just going to work. And that’s okay. It’s what I like to do. Most people today are probably going to look at and hey, I would rather work for ten hour days and have a three day weekend and have my leisure time and my activities and those types of things and hobbies are more important to me.
00;16;28;05 – 00;16;44;26
So I think, that’s one of the hardest things I have to do is to not try to bias or judge people based on the standards that I’ve created for myself. But again, you know, that’s why we are where we are. That’s who we are. So we don’t judge that. What I need them to do is I need to be a great teammate.
00;16;44;26 – 00;17;00;03
I need them to be great with the culture, and I need them to be great with customers. Yeah. And if they can accomplish those three things, we’ll work around all the rest of that stuff. So, I’m going to need more for myself, but I don’t need more from you. Yeah. So I think that’s part of that issue.
00;17;00;05 – 00;17;19;13
It is. And I and I love that you talk about the bias, right? Yeah. This how I learned all this, by the way, was my father gave me the, you know, my parents my mom had been out of the company by this point in time. But my father, when I, after I graduated college, gave me not only the college degree, my mom and dad put me through college, but after that, my dad put me through all of this education.
00;17;19;15 – 00;17;35;09
Anything that came along he sent me to, I was at the time like, oh, I got I got another class. That’s right. But I got this amazing as an education about what to do and what not to do for people, not only in the space, in our industry, but outside. Now, the best, the best in class, you know, in any, you know, from all walks of life.
00;17;35;12 – 00;17;52;25
And so, you know, I’m sharing with you what people were telling me is the reason you’re struggling. And I’m like, looking at my business and they’re telling me what’s going on. And I’m saying, yeah, we’ve done that, we’ve done that, we’ve done that. And I’m like, that’s what I thought we were supposed to do. How did you, as contractors, learn interviewing?
00;17;52;28 – 00;18;10;15
I would imagine most of you have not read a book, not probably watched videos, and have not probably attended a class. I don’t know if you’ve done it through your best practices, groups, and even up to that point, my father had not done that, nor had anybody else on the team. So I became that person. But my dad gave me all the things that everybody else probably on the team should have gone through.
00;18;10;18 – 00;18;33;09
Now we have a resource like Alegria, where it is literally Google for running your contracting business, and so you’re going to have access to this along with other stuff recorded by this gentlemen right here. The biggest thing that I also found, was the improper allocation of time, money, resources, personnel being involved in the process. You know, when you need to hire badly, you’ll probably hire badly.
00;18;33;12 – 00;19;01;09
And, it’s because you don’t allocate the time. You don’t plan it. It’s not planned out. So you you do it in a haphazard fashion. People show up, the phone rings, an email comes through, or, you know, I worked with one company earlier, at the end of last year, they they would place ads electronically, and all these job postings would show up, along with resumes and attached applications and these resumes and applications would sit in somebody’s inbox.
00;19;01;12 – 00;19;20;09
And when I started to find out, we were looking for salespeople, you know, I’m asking, where are these applications? And they told me, well, and, you know, the sales manager’s inbox, you know, through this application that they were using tied to their payroll system. And anyway, long and short was some of these applications have been there for months.
00;19;20;10 – 00;19;39;09
I’m like, they hadn’t even the people hadn’t even gotten a response, you know. And so that to me is since two bad signals, number one, it shows us how little we value people and this, this opportunity and whatnot, how little we value, our company, how little we value our customers. But it sends a thing, a message to these people.
00;19;39;11 – 00;19;55;17
These people. While they may not get hired in my company, they are potential customers. And it would say to them, I maybe I should do business with these people. You know, if I need a new heating and air conditioning system. Well, that we, we we turn that around real quick. So you got to make sure you allocate the right time, the right amount of money.
00;19;55;23 – 00;20;25;11
I got people that, we were advertising in the newspaper back in the day. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette run a quarter page ad for a sales person was going to be $10,000. And the owner of this company got triggered by that. And I said, well, let me ask you a question. I have somebody who hopefully can bring us some million dollars in revenue, and you’re telling me is not worth 10,000, but because they had never run a one ad, okay, for that kind of money, they were not willing to kind of spend that kind of money.
00;20;25;14 – 00;20;41;08
And that became, you know, became a little bit of an issue. So I finally convinced them to run the ad and we got 250 responses. He said, I’ve never gotten more than 25 responses to any one of my ads. I said, now you know why it’s worth $10,000, right? And so I’m not saying we have to do that today.
00;20;41;08 – 00;20;57;22
But again, think about what is the investment that I got to make and what’s going to be the return on that investment time, money, energy as well as I know we’re going to get into this tomorrow, more so that getting the other people involved in the process beyond yourself, because I know you involve your teammates in these as well.
00;20;57;24 – 00;21;16;21
Yeah, I know the team. I just, on the comment about responding to some of those inboxes. It’s also a brand issue, like people are going to judge your company. So I’m and not only are they potential customers, but they’re networked. And in today’s environment, yeah, they’re networked on social media. Yeah. And so everybody has a voice.
00;21;16;21 – 00;21;31;27
And so the ability to write a review or write a post on social media or make comments or just generally even in next door, you know, on the neighborhood things. Yeah, I can tell you not to buy from, you know, I’ve seen some of those posts or not the work, even though you’re not supposed to write that, you still see them.
00;21;32;04 – 00;21;49;27
So I think you just need to be really careful that your process not you’re talking about time, money, preparation. It just having a tight process so that there is accountability and follow up around those responses. You know, when, when, when you’re not going to move forward with Drew Cameron and we’ve filled the position. We just need to say, well, first of all, take the ad down.
00;21;49;27 – 00;22;36;18
Right. Ship it off your website, take it off LinkedIn, but also respond back to people and say, you know, we’ve filled the position. Thanks for the opportunity to. Well, that’s our show for this week, folks. We’ll see you next week. You’re on cracking the code. Until then. Bye bye for now.
