Business Productivity Practices to Streamline Your Hiring Process with Michael Mehlberg

Fletcher Wimbush:

Hey, I want to welcome everybody to the Hire Talent's podcast, hiring for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Today I've got a special guest, Michael Mehlberg. Welcome, thank you for joining us.

Michael Mehlberg:

Thanks for having me.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Awesome. Before we jump into this, today's topic, we want to talk about optimizing our hiring process, which for many of us as leaders can be an afterthought, because it's not our core business activity. How do we apply business productivity practices to streamline the hiring process and produce superior hiring results consistently? That's why we have Michael here today. He is a master of efficiency, organization, and taking back your time. He's recently written a book, Home Early: Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner. That's such a key topic for so many entrepreneurs and business leaders. We're all struggling with these things. We're going to talk a little bit about Mike's book and then we're going to talk about how maybe we can apply some of these practices to this activity that isn't our core business activity of hiring, so we can be more efficient and have better teams and more productive businesses and better business outcomes at the end of the day.

Fletcher Wimbush:

A little bio on Michael, he's a husband, a father, entrepreneur, a business professional, author, fitness nut, organization freak, and a productivity junkie. So definitely the right person to do that. He currently is a VP of marketing at Star Lab, which is an aerospace defense cybersecurity company. When he's not doing that, he's writing articles and books to help high achievers consistently save time, get productive, become more organized so that they can live their passion and achieve their dreams, and maybe even more importantly, spend more time with their families. I saw that in here somewhere, I love that.

Michael Mehlberg:

Absolutely.

Fletcher Wimbush:

You can check out his work at michaelmehlberg.com. Mehlberg is M-E-H-L-B-E-R-G, so michaelmehlberg.com. You can check out all his work, his latest book. We'll share that with everybody in the notes and everything as we move forward. Again, Michael, thanks for having us. Tell us a little more about how did you end up with these two jobs? How did you end up becoming this thought leader on productivity and organizational best practices?

Michael Mehlberg:

It probably did have to do with family. I got three kids. I always like to say when we had our first kid, we felt like we had it under control, and the second kid came along, and we thought, "Yeah, we got this." The third kid came along, and the wheels fell off the bus.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Wow, I'm sure many people resonate with that.

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, I mean with the full-time job and then trying to do a side hustle and a family, and then just this desire to always be efficient and the access to the internet and all these articles on productivity that I really just loved reading. I just started to get into it and apply it to my own life so that I could spend more time with the family, out of necessity really, and still be successful and performing at work at the same time.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. That's awesome. This led you to ultimately writing a book, tell us a little bit about the book, and how that came about and maybe a little more about what we would learn if we read it.

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, as you said, it's called Home Early. I think it's a book about balance disguised as a book on productivity. There's a ton of productivity stuff in there, but the goal isn't to be like I described myself, productivity nut, right, where you're constantly focused on getting something done and you're sweaty all the time. It's trying to do meaningful work and get it finished in a timely manner so that you can not only feel a sense of accomplishment for having gotten that work done but also have time for the other aspects of your life, like family or side hustles or hobbies and friends and all the other things as we all have in our life. There's so many different aspects to it. I think if you read it you'd probably, hopefully at the end, come out with a system that we've created together through reading the book that you can get all of those important things done, really focus on what matters in your life and still feel that sense of accomplishment and have time for friends and family after dinner.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. I love that. I spent the early years of my life being what I call a workaholic, and so now I'm what I call a recovering workaholic, and I go to meetings for these things.

Michael Mehlberg:

Sure.

Fletcher Wimbush:

I mean, I used to work like a dog, man, and a certain point in my life some life events occurred. I just sat back and said, "I don't want to live that life. I mean, I'm a highly productive person, and I've achieved great results in the organizations I've been a part of, but there's more to life than just working, right?" And so I guess my backdrop here, that was part of a personal mission and vision statement and plan that I created for myself seven years ago. I said, "Look, I want to enjoy the finer things in life like living by the water and being in the water and surfing and fishing and kiteboarding and just being able to take my dog for a walk on the beach." You know what I mean? My mission was to accomplish this, and I still have a lot more to go in regards to my family and my community, things that I want to do. So I really respect what you've done there, and I'm sure we can all learn a lot about how to continue that journey, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, it's super great. It's awesome to hear, and it's so important. Not only just to balance work/life, but I've heard of so many entrepreneurs that they're just busy throughout the day, they're just hammered right there. They're putting out fires left and right, and they get to 5:00, 6:00 at night, and then they look back and feel like they haven't actually gotten anything important done, which is the absolute worst feeling in the world. And so it takes some of the things that you mentioned like coming up with the, "What am I doing here? What is important to me?" And so that's really what I'm all about, is figuring that out for myself. Eventually, people started asking you about it, and I started writing these things down and trying to turn it into a system that you can use to just get a ton done, get to the end of the day, feel accomplished, and then just feel like you can relax and do your thing after work.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, I'm an EO guy, and so we talk a lot about working on our business rather than in our business. And that resonates a lot for me because, I mean, my life's passion is hiring and getting the best people on the team and optimizing those things. I think that's, to me, is the single most important business activity is hiring great people so that I, as the leader, or even at each individual, doesn't have to carry so much weight on their shoulders. The people on our team can have work/life balance and that us as leaders, and I can have that work/life balance and I'm not spinning my wheels working like a dog and wondering what I did all day long, that I can switch off too when I need to switch off, right? Because that whole workaholism thing, man, I mean, I spent many nights just plugging away all night, and it's like I need to turn that work brain off.

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. When we're talking about becoming more efficient and optimizing our performance, talk to me a little bit about how you see that relating to us in the hiring game, when especially it's not something that's our core business activity. I mean, you work for an aerospace engineering company, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

The chief engineer, his core activity is not hiring, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. Right.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Or you're the leader of a marketing team, I mean, hiring is not your core business activity, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. A long time ago we were talking to a guy named Brian Roberts. I don't know if this quote came from him but I heard it from him, it's my favorite quote of all time now, he said, "Only do what only you can do." It just stuck with me, and I think is really applicable to hiring here too. Because if you hire somebody, it's obviously helping you be more productive, but it's also helping you focus on the things that you're uniquely good at. It's allowing somebody else the opportunity to focus on something that they're uniquely good at. The combination of those two is a force multiplier effect, right? It's not the one plus one equals two, it's more than that. Because you get to hunker down and instead of dabbling in a whole bunch of things that are causing you to be stressed out at the end of the day because you didn't get the important work done, you can literally focus on your important work and let somebody else do something that they're phenomenally good at as well.

Michael Mehlberg:

And so I definitely see hiring as a productivity enhancer for yourself, if not only for that reason just also for the sanity of it all, being able to run a business and still get sleep at night, being able to get more accomplished, being able to grow a business at some point. That's not for everybody, but at some point for everybody, the amount of time in the day catches up to you because the clock doesn't expand at all. And yet if you're trying to grow a business, the number of things you have to do does expand, so hiring is super important from that perspective.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. Find people who are better at doing certain tasks than you are. So many times I find myself doing things I'm not very good at, I don't really like doing, and it's like, "Oh man, I got to get that... You got to stop doing that."

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. And it is hard to give up. I know from myself, I mean, if I use my website as an example, that's me out there, that's my website and my name and my face is on it, but there were things that I was doing like tagging articles and categorizing things and going back and updating dates or putting new webpages together. I'm not a web designer. I can do it, there's tools out there that let anybody do this kind of thing now, but there are other people who do that extremely well and way faster than I ever could. And so I feel like I'm giving up that little part of myself, but in reality, when I finally came to terms with that, I realized, "Man, I'm able to get more done faster and ultimately at the end of the day, it's even better than before."

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, you could focus on doing what you like, writing that article, making it perfect. You don't have that deadline of like, "Okay, now I've got to just spend another hour and a half trying to get it all optimized on the website or something."

Michael Mehlberg:

That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, focus on the writing instead of all of the other things that come along with it. I mean, that's super important.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, I mean, I think for many business leaders hiring is more of a distraction, again because it's pulling us away from our core business activity, but it's something that they've got to do. Maybe it can be outsourced to some degree, but at the end of the day, you can't outsource hiring decisions or that particular task completely, right? You can use tools to maybe streamline it and things like that. So how do we make it less of a distraction, and how do we optimize the hiring process so that I don't spend an unnecessary amount of time getting it right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, you're right, you can't really have sort of hiring to somebody else. They don't know your business the way that you do. I think, or related to this system that I put together first and then related to hiring when you're trying to get your important work done and avoid distractions, I find it's really helpful to start with the five steps like what is my purpose here in what I'm doing. Not the broader new agey purpose, but why am I doing what I'm doing, right? In the case of hiring, why am I hiring this person? Why is hiring important to my business?

Fletcher Wimbush:

What problem will they solve, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, what problem you solve, yeah. And then from there, once you get that defined... These steps don't take long, it's easy to answer these questions. Once you get that defined, what's the vision? How do I want this hiring process to work? I can't have it be a distraction in my business, but I know I have to spend some time on it, so what's an ideal way of getting that hiring work done that fits into the broader schedule of important work that I'm doing? How much time do I need to spend? How much time can I spend? And then from there, it just becomes what I call a goals, habits, and skills exercise. Who exactly am I bringing on board, and when do I need to have them on board? How am I going to measure progress? That's encapsulated in the goals of hiring. And then from there, do I have the right skills for hiring somebody or tools for that matter? That may not come naturally, everybody. You may have to listen to a podcast or read a short book on it, just to understand what other people have done in the hiring process and not have to reinvent the wheel. That's totally okay. I would go through that process and note that hiring may feel like a distraction, but it really is... I mean, Instagram is a distraction for me. Instagram is a huge online junk-

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, mine's Facebook. I mean, I don't know. I'm about ready to delete the app. So many people I know have done that. It's just a black hole of time

It pulls you back in and then you become addicted.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, it pulls you back in, And it's really nothing all that interesting there.

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Puppies are cute.

Michael Mehlberg:

Those things are truly something-

Fletcher Wimbush:

Oh wait, we're getting distracted here. I think a lot about SMART goals and you're familiar with that, it sounds a lot-

Michael Mehlberg:

Very much so, yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

... productivity, what you're describing is, what is the problem I need to solve by hiring? What is my vision? I like how you phrase this because I see this all the time. People go like, "I need to hire a salesperson." "Okay, why?" A lot of times you get a response that's a little wishy-washy. Maybe you haven't really thought through exactly what it is. Well, how are they going to operate in your business, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

What goals do you have? What do you need them to accomplish? And then is that even realistic, right? Sometimes..

Michael Mehlberg:

Right. Right.

Fletcher Wimbush:

That's where the smart side... This exercise doesn't... Like you said, I don't think it takes very long and too many hiring managers, I think, we just skip to this end thing that we have a nebulous idea of what we're looking for, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

... thought it through carefully, which then makes it maybe a daunting task, I think, because it's still pretty unclear what I'm trying to accomplish, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, absolutely. If it is unclear, you can easily procrastinate, you can easily get distracted, or you can easily feel like you're doing a lot of work, or actually do a lot of work. But it ends up being big work that... Ultimately for doing busywork that isn't helping you accomplish this meaningful objective of hiring the right salesperson. Then you're not actually being productive, you're just being busy, and that's a really important distinction.

Fletcher Wimbush:

 

Yeah. If that vision isn't there for what you're really looking for in the salesperson and what you want them to accomplish and how their job is going to operate, then you might go through the process, think you've got the ideal person, now you've hired him, now you're spending time training them and teaching them. And now you're doing more of that busywork, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Now your time is being consumed in ways that ultimately will fail. You're going to either have to restart the process or just remain frustrated and not maybe fill that need, and then you're still doing that work at the end of the day, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

You're still doing the work, yeah. It's almost like you're spinning that roulette wheel, right?

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah.

Michael Mehlberg:

There's very few people you're going to land on. If you haven't designed a plan for how you're going to hire the right person, what that right person looks like, you're just spinning the wheel and hoping they land on... It's not even whether they land on red or black, it's like they're landing on a specific number. It's very unlikely that you'll get the right person.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's something we talk a lot about. We've created tools we call candidate scorecards, where you identify those qualities that you're looking for. We also had another guest on, Lou Adler, who talks about that performance-based job description. It starts with the end in mind, what is it that I want this person to accomplish? And then you can reverse engineer that, well, how are they going to go about doing it? And then that then allows you to identify the qualities that you're looking for in somebody, and then you have a system, a scoring system to evaluate people. It all works together pretty seamlessly. I think it's really important that we spend that 10 minutes prior to launching a job search or candidate search there to clearly identify those things and then make sure that they're realistic. Again, I think a lot of times some of the expectations are unrealistic.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Another area where I think it's a lot of times unrealistic is the timeframe for hiring. We talk to a lot of people, and they're like, "I need to fill this job right away, as like now." Well, it's not possible. I mean, even if you found the ideal person today and you figure you do a phone interview, then an in-depth interview, you check references, maybe you have them go through some assessments, and then you ask them to do a working interview. These are all the things I recommend by the way. But I think most people's process follows something along this line anyways, right? They maybe do multiple interviews instead of a working interview, but anyways. I mean, that's only three interactions and maybe some assessments and some reference checkings, those things take a little bit of time. I mean, it takes at least a minimum two weeks to get through that process, and that's assuming that you're available and the other person's available to fit that into their schedules.

Michael Mehlberg:

That's right.

Fletcher Wimbush:

So you're really more like three to four weeks to get through that process. Oh no, by the way, I mean if you're going to hire somebody good, they're probably already employed. Now they got to put in two week notice.

Michael Mehlberg:

They need their two weeks. Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, they got to put it in two weeks so you're like looking at least six weeks before somebody actually shows up to work in your office. Again, that's assuming that you've found that person today.

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That can be demotivating, I mean, for hiring and for just setting goals and any goal that you set and you don't achieve on time can be very demotivating. There's this concept out of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People called lead measures versus lag measures. The lag measure is that goal, right? Did I accomplish that goal in time? The problem is by the time you get to the part where you can measure that, did I hire this person within two weeks, which was an unrealistic expectation to begin with, the two weeks has already passed. There's nothing you can do about it. It's a lag measure. It's lagging the actual work that you've done.

Michael Mehlberg:

But you can flip it on its head and take this lead measures approach where you're more focused on the process, what is the next step, right? What is the next thing that I have to do to get to that end goal? Maybe I don't know how long it's going to take to hire this person, but I sure as heck know that they're going to have to spend two weeks putting their two weeks in. And so I got to get them to that point. That's more of a lead measure that you can follow. And then it just comes a matter of following that process, taking that next step as quickly as you can, and eventually you get the hirer in place. Along the way, you've had a whole bunch of smaller milestones that give you momentum and make you feel like you're actually are making progress through this entire process.

Fletcher Wimbush:

I would add to that then is, okay, step one is you have to build a pool of candidates, so how do you go about doing that, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

I'm going to post jobs on Indeed and ZipRecruiter, which I highly recommend by the way if you're going to do it this way. I wouldn't bother with anything else. And then I'm going to get a certain number of candidates every day, and now I've got to spend five or 10 minutes reviewing those candidates to decide who I'm going to spend time with. And then I need to do a certain number of interviews so that I can better understand the talent market, as well as make sure that I'm making the right decision. I can't just pick out one resume, and then run with that person all the way to the end, they may not work out. Maybe I need to set a goal of, I need to interview about 20 people, and I could probably get that done over a 30-day period. If I spend half an hour with each one of those people, it's 10 hours of work over four weeks. What is that? Two or three hours a week that I can now set aside, and now that's a manageable goal.

Fletcher Wimbush:

I think all of us as leaders can, if this is a priority for us, I can set aside three hours a week to work on my hiring and I know I can guesstimate reasonably, it might take me about a month to get through 20 people. And then it's going to take me another two weeks to get through my finalists, another two weeks after that. Realistically, I'm 60 to 90 days before I can get somebody in. Now I have a clear idea, and I don't get frustrated when I don't fill the job right away-

Michael Mehlberg:

That's right.

Fletcher Wimbush:

... and Wondering why nobody's any good. Well, because maybe I haven't interviewed enough people at this point, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's a great process because you don't know how any one interview is going to go but you can make a reasonable guess that over the course of 20 interviews you'll have found somebody that's pretty good, right?

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah.

Michael Mehlberg:

Maybe that number is 30, maybe it's 40, depending on your though industry. But over time, while you can't guesstimate how each one will go individually, you know that over a large number that you'll get it right. And so I love the way that you broke it down, right? I know each one's going to take 30 minutes, and I know I can dedicate three hours a week to this thing, and so I know that it's going to take this many weeks to get through those 20 candidates. Maybe you find somebody before then, and maybe you have to extend a little bit longer, but either way, you're in control of that stair-step process to get to the end.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. I really like how if you could block that time out, that's a more manageable, realistic goal. It's not as nebulous. It's not like this process and it's all... One of my questions was, how do you make this more organized? And we're sort of talking about it, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

You chunk the time periods of time. It doesn't have to be a lot of time, I mean, I could spend 10 minutes a day reviewing resumes. I could spend a three hour chunk of time each week interviewing six people. Now this is a much more manageable task for me. Like you said, now I have these goals. These are leading indicator-type goals where I can do that. I can end my week and say, "Oh, I did what I was supposed to do." Right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's an important thing that you mentioned too, is actually scheduling that time. If we're talking about process, you can design the perfect process. If you don't block out some time to actually do it, then you're going to get pulled in every... I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, CEO of your company, even a manager, you're going to be pulled in a thousand different directions. If you don't scheduled time, literally schedule time with yourself to do these tasks that are important, hiring being one of them, then something else is going to look more important in the moment. You're going to go fight that fire and get to the end of yet another week and realize that you haven't made any progress towards your hiring goals.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. Yeah, or whatever other goal you've set for yourself or-

Michael Mehlberg:

Anything else, yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

... some process that you've put in place. So yeah, all these things are applicable across different things.

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Well, this has been really great. I always like to end with a couple of things, one, what are three things that we can all do tomorrow, we can implement in our lives, super easy and just will make a difference in our lives.

Michael Mehlberg:

Great. That is a great question. I was just talking to a friend of mine who runs a fitness business. He's got all these ideas about how he can create a website, create these online coaching groups. He was just throwing ideas at me and he was telling me how overwhelmed he felt, which is a feeling that I know a lot of people share. The first thing I would say is get your to-do list out of your head and onto paper.

Michael Mehlberg:

The analogy I used for him is you've got all these socks that are tumbling around in the dryer that is your head. You can't pluck them out and match them, right? You got to stop the dryer, lay them out on the floor, getting your to-do list out on paper. When you do that, not only will you be able to see what things are most important to work on first, you'll also be able to see some efficiencies where you can maybe kill two birds with one stone. That would be number one. And once you have that, setting your priorities, what are the most important two or three things that you need to do this week, this month, this year? And then finally, something I already mentioned is building a schedule with your priorities to literally block out time with yourself, right? Schedule a meeting with yourself. You never miss your meetings, right?

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, totally.

Michael Mehlberg:

So set a meeting with yourself and say, "I'm going to match these socks today, right? I'm going to do these tasks because they are the most important things to get done by the end of the week." And then when that meeting notification fires, get to work.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. Yeah, I love that last one. I mean, that has been the key for me to taking back my time and my life, is scheduling. I don't do anything that's not on my calendar. Free time... Oh, oh, the dog's going to start barking.

Michael Mehlberg:

It's work from home in this environment, right?

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah, yeah and door knocking, there we go. But yeah, that's been the biggest key. It's om my calendar, I do it. I refuse to do anything that's not on my calendar, unless I've got that free time set aside where I'm allowing myself to do whatever I want, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, I often-

Fletcher Wimbush:

I've also scheduled that, right?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah, I often jokingly say I only do what my calendar tells me to do.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah.

Michael Mehlberg:

But great thing about that, it sounds self-deprecating, but the nice thing about that is I've set my calendar the way that I want my week to run. And so when he tells me what I'm doing next, I can get to work on it, and it's an important thing. And when I get to the end of the day, I feel like I've really accomplished things.

Fletcher Wimbush:

It has literally set me free in life, so I love that-

Michael Mehlberg:

[inaudible 00:29:47].

Fletcher Wimbush:

... a lot. Yeah. We can find Michael at michaelmehlberg.com. Again, it's M-E-H-L-B-E-R-G. It's also here on the page. Check out his articles, his social media handles. Won't you give us those, and some of the things we might find on the website?

Michael Mehlberg:

Yeah. Everything's on the website, the social media handles, I'm not fortunate enough to have gotten my social media handles all the same. Probably just go to michaelmehlberg.com and you can click on the Instagram link and Facebook link and anything else that's out there. My new book, Home Early, is on there in the upper right hand corner. Just click on, Get Home Early, it'll take you to the page. You can download the first chapter and a couple of other tools that I'm giving away for free to just help organize your days and weeks and get all that important work done so you can spend time on other important things in your life.

Fletcher Wimbush:

Yeah. Awesome. Well, Michael, it was really great having you today and I look forward to maybe spending some more time with you again. We'll sign off here.