Speaker 1:
As a bank that focuses on business, we work with business leaders all day, every day. We have a front row seat to what's working and what has potential. The First Business Bank Podcast is dedicated to sharing insights to help you work better, smarter, and faster to achieve your goals. Let's get into the show.
Mark Meloy:
Hello, I'm Mark Meloy, CEO of First Business Bank, and welcome to another edition of the First Business Bank Podcast. Today's topic is hiring the right employees and the role it plays in building and sustaining a culture of success. Here with me today are two important people, Corey Chambas and Jodi Chandler. Both have over 25 years experience with our company. Corey's role of course, is president and CEO of our holding company. And Jodi is our Chief Human Resource Officer.
Mark Meloy:
So we're going to start today, Corey you're often quoted as saying, if you weren't the CEO, you'd be the chief culture officer of the company. Talk about the connection between hiring the right people and building a great culture.
Corey Chambas:
Well, I think it's critical. I mean, if you miss out on the hiring side, you're not going to have the culture that you want and that you need. So it's the most critical thing you can do in an organization is to have the right people. So the cultural fit is absolutely imperative. It's fairly easy to understand the technical aspects of a job and the skillset that someone needs to have. But it's much trickier to figure out if they're going to be a cultural fit for your organization.
Corey Chambas:
So that's really where I think most of the emphasis should be in the hiring process. That's what I do when I'm interviewing is I'm trying to assess cultural fit. Because if somebody doesn't fit culturally, they're not going to work out. Those are the people in our organization's history who have been here for a year or less, and then are gone. They weren't a cultural fit. They didn't fit the team atmosphere that we have. And they moved on because it didn't feel comfortable for them and or vice versa. Skillset, somebody's kind of deficient in something, you work on it, you train them up, you coach them up. You kind of can work through that. But if they're not a cultural fit, you're in big trouble in terms of longevity.
Mark Meloy:
Good, Jodi, and your role as chief human resource officer, you and your team led an effort in the past few years of developing our cultural competencies. Talk a little bit about that and why that was important to our company at that point in time.
Jodi Chandler:
Yes. Well, we've got a competency framework that we have established for our company. And it was probably five or six years ago now where we really made an investment in the development function, the talent development function of our company. And it was at that time, we hired a director of talent development that we really started to focus on building out this framework. It was important to everyone that was involved, that we put some cultural competencies at the center of the framework and hold everyone accountable. No matter what level of the framework you were being developed for. That the cultural competencies were equally important in any one of the other four levels that we have in the model.
Jodi Chandler:
So we had a team that we assembled of about 20 people in the organization, representing all different levels in the company. Way different perspectives that people brought to the table for this exercise as well. And we also had a consultant that we hired that is expert in putting together competency models. And she led us through a process and it included identifying again the core cultural competencies.
Jodi Chandler:
We also had another guiding document that we used. And that was our statement of beliefs. We have beliefs that have been part of, kind of the fabric of who we are and very much embedded into our culture since the very beginning. So once we got the framework established, we identified six cultural competencies. We went through a process, I'll call it a validation process, of making sure that we can map each of those beliefs to one of the six competencies that we had identified. Just to stay true to what we knew worked really well for probably 25 years. Building a culture and the culture that we have today. And it was a way for us then to be able to sustain the culture that we have and scale it. And also to develop to it. So it's worked really well for us.
Corey Chambas:
The beauty of a validated model. Like the one that we use is it comes with a lot of tools. And one of those tools are a series of questions that you can use in the interview process. So once you've identified those competencies that are core to your organization, you can then interview every candidate around those competencies. So if it's around innovation or collaboration or whatever that attribute is, you have specific questions to ask in the interview process. And a couple of things that are important about that one, they give you the questions that helps makes it easier for the interviewer. Because a lot of people in organizations are doing interviews. But it creates consistency across those many people who are doing interviews, because they're asking the same questions, and you're asking multiple candidates the same question. So you're not trying to think, well, do I think they could collaborate well?
Corey Chambas:
And yeah, it kind of seemed like it. Well, no, you asked each of the candidates the same series of questions about that. And so you have something more uniform and empirical when you're assessing that. So that's a huge advantage. And that's the difference from what Jodi mentioned, our statement of beliefs. We use that in the interview process still do. But it's really just a list that was made of behaviors that we expect to people. So ultimately we show that to people, we have them read it and we say, "Can you live by this? And will you do this?" Because if you don't, it's not going to work. That's not a great interview process. That's more of, hopefully we scare them off, if they think "No task is too menial. I'm not going to... No, I'm not going to clean up after myself after a lunch in the whatever it is." Maybe they self screen when they look at it, but it's not something where we can really assess in the same way that you can using these cultural competencies and the questions that come along with them.
Mark Meloy:
And I know that what has been built has also been focused on different roles in the company or levels of responsibility. Jodi do you want to talk a little bit about that? And it kind of goes along with what Corey was mentioning too, in terms of structuring questions. But it also talks about sort of particular behaviors that you're trying to get to as an alignment with the cultural competencies and the role that they have.
Jodi Chandler:
Yeah. It was important when we were establishing the framework to really keep it simple. And we had a blank sheet of paper when we were doing this. And there's a library of almost 40 competencies from the library that we were using. So we could have built out a model that had...
Jodi Chandler:
So we could have built out a model that had 10 different roles that we were trying to develop for and establish these competencies for, but we really challenged ourselves to keep it simple. And we've got four different types of positions and/or levels in our framework. The first one is individual contributor. And a lot of our employees, in a lot of different departments, are individual contributors. So it's a broad enough category that you can really develop an employee in the same manner, no matter if they're in the HR department, the finance department, the marketing department, or in a sales position.
Jodi Chandler:
Once an employee goes from an individual contributor position into a manager role, we have a different set of competencies that we are then developing for and that we have defined as being really critical to being successful in that role in our company. We have a senior kind of technical expert level, if you will, or a senior manager role. Whether you're in charge of a function or in charge of a team, these competencies are flexible enough that we can really identify the right types of development, again, to lead towards success in that role.
Jodi Chandler:
And then we have an executive level set of competencies that we are doing the same thing for. Again, it doesn't matter if you're in the individual contributor, the manager, the technical expert, or the executive, different competencies identified for each, but the development philosophy and approach is the same.
Mark Meloy:
Good. Well, I know that's not the only thing that we have used over time in history of our company. There's some other things that we do, obviously what has been built there on cultural competencies, as we talked about, is question-based interviewing for the hiring process. Creates consistency, but you're going to get different responses in different ways from people. And so there's some other things that we do that create even more consistency in matching up to expectations of roles and things like that. Corey, talk a little bit about one of those that is most important to us.
Corey Chambas:
The one that's been a tool we've used from the very beginning and has been really critical is a personality profile tool. The one we use is predictive index, you might be familiar with DISC, or Myers-Briggs, or some other tool. They're all validated, they've been around a long time, and they're a way to assess somebody's personality profile. There's not a good or bad, or right or wrong personality profile, but there is a right or wrong fit to a specific job. So the idea here is to put somebody in a job that is a good fit for their personality. So you don't take somebody who's very extroverted and put them in a job where they don't get to interact with people all day long. Or you take somebody who's not detail oriented and you put them in a job that's extremely detail oriented. So it's matching what a person's natural behaviors are like to the job.
Corey Chambas:
And we do that by doing what's called a pro, or a proforma, for the job. So for any job, we have a pattern that we're looking for as a good fit, and then we match candidates against that. And it's either a good fit, not a good fit, close, off on one thing or another, and it helps you to understand if somebody will likely be successful in the longterm in the job. And what I mean by that is somebody can go against their natural personality and they may not be detail oriented, but they can really focus for a while and get it done, or they can not have the people interaction, if they're extroverted, and they can still do the job, but they're not going to be happy doing the job. They're not going to be energized doing the job. It's going to be an energy drain for them to do a job that goes against their natural personality profile.
Corey Chambas:
So it's a fit for success, longevity, and we've used it for a long time. It's proven to be very true. We've had a few circumstances where we've gone against it and rationalized, and it never works out, ever. Every single time we've gone against it, we ended up kicking ourselves later because it doesn't work out.
Mark Meloy:
Right. So for the business leader that's tuned in today listening to this conversation, they might be saying, "Sounds like a great idea. Sounds like a lot of work. Sounds like it might slow down a hiring process, make it clunky. I'm not sure how the candidate or candidates are going to react to it." How do either one of you respond to that?
Jodi Chandler:
Well, Mark, I've got so many different thoughts going through my head when you ask that question, but specifically to the predictive index tool, from a candidate perspective, it is such an easy assessment to take. Again, as Corey said, there's no right or wrong way of answering questions. You're actually just checking words. So it takes less than 10 minutes for a candidate to fill out a predictive index survey. So from that side of things, I think it's very efficient and very effective.
Jodi Chandler:
From a company perspective, once you're trained on this tool, administering it is super simple, but you have to make sure that you're trained and you understand the different behaviors and traits that you're looking for in different positions, and then how to compare and contrast that to the candidate profile that is there. So anything that is really going to give you any benefit, I think, you've just got to make a commitment to take the time, to devote the time, to learning the tool, the process, whatever it may be. We've all read statistics, seen statistics on what it costs you if you make a bad hire or you turn a position over within the first year of somebody being employed, that cost far exceeds any kind of commitment or investment that you're going to make in some of these tools. And then in the training of your team, to be able to effectively use those tools.
Jodi Chandler:
Again, we've been using this one in particular that we've been talking about for 30 years. So we have a lot of people that are trained, we have a big investment in it over time. And I guess that would be part of the message too. You'll just get better at it every hire that you make, because you're going to become more familiar with it, and you're going to really see the value of it.
Corey Chambas:
And from a candidate perspective, I think is not very intimidating. It's really easy to do. As Jodi said, it's a five, 10 minute test. It's really simple. And we share the results back with people. So they get the output, which is comforting to know you're going to get the output back. So it's not some secret black box situation where you don't know what happened or what the outcome of it was. And it's just verbiage that expresses the output of what they did in terms of how they behave, and how they act, and how they naturally are. And the other aspect, I think, that's comforting too, is we share ours. So if I'm the hiring-
Corey Chambas:
What's comforting too is we share ours. So if I'm the hiring manager, I'm going to share my PI as well and let them see that. And so they know it's not some secret thing used against candidates or employees, it's something that this is playing cards with cards all face up. Everybody knows everything about everybody's profile, and so you share that back.
Corey Chambas:
So I think it helps them if they want to make sure they're getting into a position where they're going to succeed because that's part of what it is and where it's going to be a good fit and they're going to feel comfortable. And they're going to also learn more about their hiring manager too if we share back our profile with them as well. So it's kind of a two-way street and very open, so we really don't get hesitancy.
Corey Chambas:
And then in terms of the time and effort in it, besides the cost of making a bad hire, as Jodie said, it's a great, easy screen. Because if you have a lot of candidates, you can easily screen out folks who really this isn't going to be a good longterm fit for this person. They're not going to be happy in the longterm if it's not a good fit. So it's a quick and easy screen that you can use, so it can save you a lot of time running through candidates as well.
Mark Meloy:
Yeah, great point. And the other thing that I think about as it relates to both of the things we talked about today was the utility that they provide after people are onboard. I understand our conversation today is about making the right hire, but it's also the retention and development. And in particular to PI, let's talk a little bit about some of the ways that kind of post hire that predictive index comes into play and is of value.
Corey Chambas:
I'll start with a couple of things that come to mind. One is it can be used when people are working together to help them understand how they operate and, "Why aren't Mark and I kind of clicking on this? I'm asking him for something and he's giving me something different, and it's not quite working out. Let's look at our PIs." And we've done that many times when people, it's just not going smooth, and then we look at our PIs, and we go, "Oh, well, Corey is really detail oriented and Mark's not detail oriented. And Corey's asking for detail stuff, and okay, that's what's going on here," or vice versa or whatever the issue is where it's, "Oh, they kind of see things different and operate a little differently than I do."
Corey Chambas:
And when you understand that other person's PI and their personality profile and how they naturally act, they can say, "Oh, okay, well, boy, Mark has an extreme sense of urgency. No wonder he's already gone and done that thing. I thought we were going to talk about it more and plan more. He's ready to go, so he's just gone." So it helps you to understand how you work together and how things work with people, so that's a big tool in working together.
Corey Chambas:
And then in a grander scheme of teams, the sailboat analogy, I thought was really a good one when they did it because some profiles are sales and they power things and they make things happen. And some folks are rudders and they keep you steering, and they keep you online and [inaudible 00:19:11] ballasts. I'm not a sailor, so I don't know all the different parts of the sailboat, but you got to have all the parts of the sailboat or the boat's not going to move or it's not going to go in the right direction or whatever else is going to happen. So it helps drive across that you need a diverse team with different personalities to make things work.
Corey Chambas:
So that's a great way of team-building and getting people to understand each other and value other perspectives. Because if one person is the sail and they're just making things happen and go, go, go, they think other people are just slowing them down, as opposed to realizing, "Wait a second, they're actually keeping me out of trouble and keeping us out of trouble by making sure we're going on the right path." So those are a couple of things that come to mind for me.
Mark Meloy:
So we talked about cultural competencies. We talked about the use of a third party, process-like predictive index. There's other things out there similar to it. What else have we employed to try and draw consistency and get us to the right best decision for employees?
Jodi Chandler:
We use another complimentary tool to predictive index. We've got an evaluation that we can do from a cognitive perspective too. And again, we put together a pro forma for each of the positions that we are recruiting for. Very researched, very validated, so that we can understand based on the complexity of the role, what the requirements are going to be in order for somebody to be able to do that job successfully.
Jodi Chandler:
And it's a range, and it's a pretty wide range, but you can quickly understand from the results of the assessment if somebody's going to have at least the minimum ability to be able to perform the job at that level that you need them to. So you use the behavioral evaluation and the cognitive evaluation kind of hand-in-hand. One really does impact and influence the other.
Jodi Chandler:
The tool is able to combine the results of both of those assessments and give us an overall score for fit in that particular position. And it's, again, pretty simple. It's on a scale of one to 10, and it helps us understand if we've got somebody that's got just the natural behaviors and traits and cognitive ability to be able to perform this job. So it's worked really well for us.
Corey Chambas:
And folks might be familiar, Jodi, with the Wonderlic test, which we used for many, many years for that same kind of cognitive information, especially like the NFL draft because that always comes up, the Wonderlic test. So it's similar to that in that it's a cognitive assessment and you want to have certain levels for certain positions. So that's helpful.
Corey Chambas:
The other thing I think about, Mark, is, again, back to cultural fit, and this depends on what's important in your culture, how you would describe your culture and how do you try to figure that out? And one of the things in that statement of beliefs that Jodi mentioned before was no task is too menial. And we have a very much of a team-oriented culture and that means everybody's working together. We don't even have an org chart, which shocks people sometimes and befuddles people sometimes, but that's how non-hierarchical we believe in being.
Corey Chambas:
And so one of the things we'll often do in interviewing a candidate is if you take somebody out to lunch, for us, it's really important how they treat the server. Do they treat that server with respect or is that server somebody who's working for them and they're demanding of them? Because that's not going to fly in our culture.
Corey Chambas:
Now, that's not every culture. Not every culture is a team-oriented culture. There's some that maybe are hierarchical, maybe are command and control driven, and that's different. It's about respect and I'm at this level and you're at that level and things like that. But for us, that's really important. So trying to get somebody out of just the interview room where they're prepared to answer the questions and they're ready to go and they're bringing their A-game for the hour that they're talking to you and you can get fooled. If you can move them out of that environment into a real-world environment like a restaurant, now you can see how they interact and how they react to the people around them. You can pick up some other clues as well.
Mark Meloy:
Great points, great points.
Corey Chambas:
Are close as well.
Mark Meloy:
Great points, great points. So we've talked about a bunch of different things that we do as a company in that hiring process. Now, we're talking to that individual who's tuned in today, trying to figure out where to get started. What's the best starting advice that you can provide, given the experiences that both of you have over time and using these different processes and tools to make the right hires? How do they get started?
Jodi Chandler:
Well, Mark, I would say, start to introduce some of the objective tools that are available to you to really help make the decisions. So much of hiring practices, I think, and we can be guilty of this as well, focus too much on the subjective factors. When you have research tools in place, that really forces you to pay attention to the objective pieces of the puzzle and make sure that you're really hiring the right fit for the role.
Jodi Chandler:
And don't bite off more than you can chew. Do your research. Select one assessment. You're probably going to have to use that for a while to determine if it's the right tool for you. Ask around. Ask different companies, "What are they using? What are the common tools that you're finding out there?" Use behavioral interviewing. There's just a lot of resources out there to help you put together some good behavioral-type questions to be using in the interview process. As Corey alluded to before, be consistent in the questions that you're asking candidate to candidate to candidate for the same position that you're interviewing for.
Jodi Chandler:
So it's going to be a journey. It's been a journey for us for the last 30 years. We've added different tools to our process. We have a lot of different people interview a candidate too, but that also helps us formulate our decision. So again, it's a commitment, it's a process, and it's a journey that you're going to be on for a long time.
Corey Chambas:
Yeah. Just to piggyback on your comment there, Jodie, with multiple interviews, that's a simple one. Even if you don't do anything different, make sure you're getting multiple perspectives, not one person interviewing and going, "I really liked Jodie, so here we go!" Well, that's not all there is to it.
Corey Chambas:
And as many people as you can have interview... It can be fairly rigorous, but it does another thing for you, too. If you have good people in your organization already, that candidate's going to meet more good people and become more impressed with your organization. But I think it solidifies that candidate's desire to want to work with that group of people that they've met with. So it's not just, "I think I like the person who's going to be my manager. I like him, I like her, I like him, I like her, I like him, I like her." They're all great. That's going to make it really compelling for somebody to want to work there. So that's an easy one, is just to make sure you're rigorous on that.
Corey Chambas:
But also try to understand your culture, and you can go all the way through to the cultural competencies with these validated models that we talked about. That's great. But if you're not going that far, at least try to understand and write down and articulate what's your culture about, what traits are really important, and that kind of gets back to our original statement of beliefs. Those are just simple behaviors, just really simple behaviors. And thinking about things relative to that cultural fit and what's important to your organization, the tools are... If you keep going with the tools better and better, making sure that there's a good fit, but understanding what's important for success in your organization beyond just the capability of doing the job. That's what I would try to assess and try to address.
Mark Meloy:
I agree, great points. I know that we do have multiple interviewers take part in interviewing candidates and we try to share notes as quickly as we can in that process, as long as they're not all back-to-back-to-back, but learn from each other what's been left uncovered or we didn't get to because we ran out of time or whatever.
Mark Meloy:
So I think that's important in the process, but I always talk to candidates in the process of... Just as it's an important decision for us, it's a really important decision for them to do too. And so they, to your point, Corey, which I think is a good one, they get to meet a lot of different people in the company and get a broader sense of what it's like to work here. Hopefully at some point in time, they say, "Yeah, I really want to be on the team" kind of thing. So I think that's a really good point, is to have different perspectives interviewing people as they onboard.
Mark Meloy:
Well, thanks, Corey and Jodie, for taking the time today to share your insights about hiring the right people. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us today, and I hope you've got a takeaway that you can implement at your company.
Speaker 1:
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