Episode 93: Testing Out a Candidate on Speed and Accuracy Before Hiring

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In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Jamie Johns, together with esteemed guests Thomas Sphabmixay, Kristy Fairbairn, and Tim Causbrook, delve deep into the art and science of recruiting top-notch accounting and bookkeeping talent. 

The conversation kicks off with Jamie highlighting the critical importance of not just finding skilled individuals but aligning new hires with the firm's culture and long-term vision. Thomas, known for his innovative approach to recruitment, shares his insights on leveraging technology and social media to scout for potential candidates. Kristy, with her background in human resources, emphasizes the significance of a structured interview process and the role of behavioral assessments in predicting candidate success. Tim, bringing a wealth of experience from his own thriving accounting firm, discusses the strategies he employs to retain high-caliber staff, including professional development opportunities and a rewarding firm culture. 

Tune in and learn the practical tips and strategies that you can immediately implement to enhance your recruitment processes and build a team poised for success!

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Transcript

Wize Mentoring: 0:02

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe!

Thomas Sphabmixay: 0:23

Hello everyone. This is a very important and interesting topic on testing out candidates on speed and accuracy before hiring. This is a very important thing inside of our topic of people we want to be able to build up - the people. The people in our firm are our assets. If we don't put the investment into picking and screening out the right one, then we've all been there. You end up getting a missed hire and it just causes so much problems and you end up setting yourself and your firm back many months or years.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 1:01

In my time as a mentor, we've all seen this as mentors. Firms that aren't able to put in the proper processes to screen out hires and manage them just never seem to be able to move forward. It doesn't matter how good at sales they are. So get us started. Just to introduce the topic on testing out a candidate on speed and accuracy before hiring so often we're going into an interview, we're looking at resumes and we're looking to hire some sort of accountant or bookkeeper role, and the person on the other side of the desk or the screen seems very likable. They seem to be saying all the right things to you. They tell you to have this many years of experience. They're doing a pretty good job selling to you that they're able to tick all your boxes, and during an interview session, it's really easy to get even an emotional attachment to the person that you're talking to. You end up also hoping that this person really is the right person that you've been looking for because you've been desperately putting out your job ad. You haven't heard from people in months or weeks and you're just hoping for a solution. So really often when we follow our gut and follow our emotions, we open ourselves up to a lot of risk. We end up finding out months into their probation and often from what we've seen months after their probation, that this person is not who they say they were.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 2:37

So the most important element in any hiring process and this has been nailed down during our WizeT alent process is the testing of candidates. You need to be able to test your candidates to objectively know if they can do the things that they say they can do, so be able to test them on practical things that actually happen within your office. So if we're a tax accounting firm, there's no point giving them some sort of test that aska them what happens between the transfer pricing situation between Vodafone and Simmons or something that's never going to happen to us. You want to be able to ask them practical things such as okay, if you get this bank transaction, what would you code it to? Or you've just been given a rental statement from your real estate agent and now we have to gross it up in our accounting system to finish off their financial accounts. You want to ask practical things and, most importantly, you want to know about their speed and their approach towards those questions, as well as their technical accuracy. And when you're looking between five or six potential shortlisted candidates and they all seem friendly and they all have said the right things what it should come down to is being able to look at their test scores and seeing who scored the highest and who has completed those tests quicker than the others. That should be a good indication of how they're going to perform on the job.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 4:11

Okay, and at least you approached hiring in an empirical way and a methodical way. Jamie, I want to be able to hear and get your insight. You know we're doing a lot to do testing and sometimes people don't rely on tests. They're looking at their qualifications, like a CPA or something. I want to be able to get your insight on qualifications versus productivity. From your experience, how have you seen that play out?

Jamie Johns: 4:38

Yeah, thanks, Thomas. Yeah, well, look, I sort of took advice from Ed over the years. I guess once upon a time I was all about, you know, probably focused too much on qualifications. You know about people, you know whether they've got the CA designation or the CPA designation. Look, you've got to have a basic level of education, I guess, for any, you know profession, of course, whether that's a degree or whatever it may be.

Jamie Johns: 5:03

But you can focus too much on qualifications 100%. And over the years, some of the best- performing people that I've had in terms of productivity haven't had, you know, the CPA qualification or you know the bias qualification you get in the profession. So it's more about being competent and having the experience. And what you'll find is if you overly focus on qualifications, then you'll miss out on the people who are quite productive, you know. So, as a rule of thumb, people are either competent or incompetent. In the mix of that is qualifications, but qualifications are important. But if you just solely focus on qualifications, for example, Thomas, if you don't hire someone because they're not a CPA then you've missed the whole boat.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 5:46

We've had situations where I've seen people with masters in accounting come through and they can't do an individual tax return.

Jamie Johns: 5:53

Those examples you're talking about. Yeah, classic example. You know, if you've been part of the wise community for a while over the years, you would have heard Ed Chan say many times that you know he doesn't focus on qualifications, he focuses on people with competency being competent, and so that's the key here. You know, time and time again Ed Chan would say he'd always focus on productivity. That's what sort of you've got to focus on results, at the end of the day, is productivity. And you know even some of the most educated people I've worked with, you know the brightest minds I've seen over the last 30 years that I've worked with. Some of those people unfortunately just not productive.

Jamie Johns: 6:29

The other thing is, Thomas, you can focus on being a master craftsman versus a tradesman. You know master craftsman is prestigious. You know highly technical can be highly slow, so we can't have that in public practice accounts. See, in our industry, you can't be a master craftsman and be, you know, totally technical that you just can't get the jobs out the door. Everyone knows how busy we are or we've got deadlines to meet. It's all about productivity, Thomas, and always focus on productivity over qualifications.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 7:01

And I hear you loud and clear. You know we can't just rely on academic transcripts and the qualifications section of the resume then to determine whether this person is going to be right. So in your experience, how have you felt that tests have been an indicator of a person's productivity during the hiring process? Like where have you seen that player role? Is it always accurate, these tests and being able to determine whether that person is going to be productive?

Jamie Johns: 7:28

No, when you're hiring people and human beings, it's not an exact science. Again, another thing that Ed taught me you know, like you, when you're going to hire, with your hire yourself or you use someone, you can't just sort of have an iron clad 100% guarantee. You know, like that's just not the way the world is. However, what you do need is a process. So it's sort of the 80- 20 rule, Thomas. You do need a process so that you can, you know, minimize your risk and maximize your success. And if you do have certain testing, you know whether that's task or test or whatever. It's better than having nothing. So again, you know, I would say 80% of the time you know would get it right If you're following that method.

Jamie Johns: 8:09

Even the WizeT alent method or giving people some tests, some accuracy or productivity or task test, is better than nothing at all. Because if you've got nothing at all, then you're really sort of flying blind. But on the flip side, you can't guarantee every single hire that you do. Over the years of building sky accountants, sometimes we've had to hire multiple times to get to the destination. A lot of times people will hire and they'll say it didn't work out and they'll feel like giving up. That's where you've got to hire again, and sometimes up to three or four times, until you get it right. It's not an exact science, but you're better off having some method, some plan than nothing at all, particularly with trying to determine someone's productivity.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 8:52

Yeah, that's a really tangent to this and it just came up to me. A really interesting situation I see every now and then is a firm is hiring for, say, a senior position, right, and they give them a test like, say, some sort of practical test appropriate for a senior, and that person scores poorly on that test, but the firm just likes that person so much they're like well, I think I can improve this person, I think I can get them better. What's the right approach in that situation? Because, thinking of that situation, it feels like a hand of poker and they're really in love with a bad hand and they want it to work, but the signals are telling them it isn't going to work, but really there might be a small chance it does. What do we do in that situation? Do we follow our guard or do we stick to what we're seeing?

Jamie Johns: 9:43

Stick to the system, Thomas. Always stick to the system. Because when you're interviewing someone or someone's going for the job, you might really, really like them, Like you might, personality- wise. You might think, oh geez, such and such is fantastic, but if you just focus on the personality, you're bound to hire the wrong person. If you look at the flip side, where I've seen a bookkeeper or an accountant in an interview and they interview really badly, I can look at you so much as you'd like, or they may not say the right things, they may not be as bubbly as you would like, and then you go away from the interview going, oh, I really didn't like that person.

Jamie Johns: 10:20

That's sort of like hiring from your gut. Don't hire from your gut. Put the person through the test. What happens if you don't really get along with them that well, like personality- wise, on the surface, but say that they're fantastic with their results and with their productivity? That's what you need to focus on. Just because in the interview they might have performed so well in the interview because they're nervous or you don't like their personality, definitely doesn't mean that you don't hire them because you've got to just focus on the method. You've got to focus on the questions and you've got to follow a process. That's the key to hiring. But if you go off on a tangent and don't follow a tested sort of method, then you're not going to hire successfully on average so many good tips in there, Jamie, and all coming from experience as well.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 11:06

Only a WizeT alent process that's been able to reflect on decades of experience and hone it into a few steps like this.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 11:14

When I think of hiring I think of, sometimes I think of a hand of poker. You have to follow through wa method. You have to see what hand you've got. Where does it relate to what the other players are doing? How does it relate to you have to follow some sort of thought process? It can't just be random constantly oh my gut's feeling this at one time. Or a catcher's across the street, so maybe we should bet this hand or something. So if we follow a consistent process, then we'd be able to ease up and be able to build up our team with a lot less effort.

Jamie Johns: 11:45

That's right. If you're going to grow your firm and everyone here is or wants to you're going to be hiring for the rest of your career. So my message is you better invest in whatever method it is to hire people so that you can grow your firm.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 12:00

So I really want to be able to hear from you, Tim and Kristy, our amazing other firm owners and Wize mentors. Now, we often say this a lot in vice hire slow and act fast and, of course, the screening process can't take too long. I've heard some comments from firm owners that if you're going to take too long trying to screen a person, we might lose that opportunity. So it's definitely something that we feel. There are a few emotions and psychological things that are challenging us to deviate from our process of following the highest slow and act fast. But want to hear from you, Kristy about your experiences with one of them at least, being hiring a client manager, and hiring many great team members. You've been able to practice this in reality so many times. Talk to us a bit about this hiring slow and act fast. How should we understand it better?

Kristy Fairbairn: 12:56

Not that I've burned through staff, but we are in the growth phase. Yes, we did. In late December I needed to find a new client manager and that was a big position to fill and it took me a good few months to find the right person. But as you say, Thomas, we don't want to go slow in reacting to people as they come in through the application process. So I was constantly reviewing candidates that came through, constantly clearing space to have interviews, because I wanted to keep the momentum going with candidates who came through, because in the past I had gone slowly with the senior bookkeeper offshore and I nearly missed out on him because he'd been offered another job in the time it took me to decide was he the right fit for me?

Kristy Fairbairn: 13:44

So it is following that process, following the bouncing ball along and not deviating, because I had plenty of candidates and I was getting a bit desperate. I was a bit tired from being pulled back into the full workload and I had some candidates who ticked one or two boxes, but not all, and I really wanted to just start thinking of throwing someone at the problem. But it wasn't the right move and after, I think, nearly four months we found a great candidate who feels like she's been with us forever and will be with us for a long time. I hope so it is worth the wait. There's nothing worse than the cost of a mishire. I've talked about it before. We've got some IP in the wise bolt to help you see just how much the cost of a mishire can impact your business.

Kristy Fairbairn: 14:30

So, yeah, just stay the course, but also get rid of wrong hires. If you do let someone in through the door, that isn't the right fit. Don't allow them to fester in your business because it can affect the morale and culture of the other team members you've got by having the wrong person come in.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 14:47

That's such a great point, the last one you had. We put so much effort into having a good, clean, least semi-scientific approach to a hiring process to keep things consistent. Yet it can be our existing team members that can throw the whole process off. So I think this phrase used to be higher slow fire fast. But I can act fast, as in we shouldn't take our time too long to react to our hires. So now, Christy, what would you say in a situation where a firm is challenged to not buy a slow Like we're in a situation where we're running out of time? I need someone in the seat ASAP, right now. How do we still try to have a good hiring process? Yet we're challenged with these forces, our emotional forces.

Kristy Fairbairn: 15:41

Another way of looking at the resources you've got on your team. I know that we've talked to some firm owners in the past where their production team has been stretched and they just can't find the right person. So look outward to your admin team. What can you delegate from your production team to your admin division to take some of that load off? Just continue looking at what you can push down, what you can push across, and not throw a body of the problem. Maybe, if you're in a real pinch, you might need to look at resource sharing with someone, but that's sort of a short-term fix. If you can continue looking at refining your processes, there are a couple of steps that don't need to be done because you get the result elsewhere. Just continue looking at how you can improve things as you wait for that new, right person to come along.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 16:29

I hear you loud and clear. It basically does everything but for the trigger on a candidate if it deviates from it. Just use everything else in the firm and get some short-term solutions. Everything but succumbing to a desperate hire.

Kristy Fairbairn: 16:45

Yeah, just like you. The other week, I think, Thomas reached out in the wise tribe that you happen to have some capacity with a team member, so you put it out there to the community If anyone was drowning in work you had some capacity to help for a short-term solution. There's always a way around it without making a mishire or a fast incorrect hire.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 17:07

Yeah, we don't want to rush into it. Thank you for that, Kristy. Great insight and Tim, wanting to hear from you. How have you seen hiring slow, act fast play out for yourself and the firms you've worked with? You've been able to build up three incredible teams within your firm and you're going on to your fourth. You worked on hiring some incredibly senior people into your firm. How have you seen that? What does this mean to you and how have you seen it play out for yourself?

Tim Causbrook: 17:36

Yeah, hire slow. People don't like to think of hiring slow in this market. I think we need someone right now. I needed someone yesterday. Hire slow to me just means vet the candidate. Go through the wise talent process and make sure that you've done everything you can in terms of due diligence to make sure that the person you're bringing on board will be able to do the hiring. The flip side of making sure they can do the role is really that leadership piece making sure that you, or whoever is in charge of that team, position the person so that they can do their job.

Tim Causbrook: 18:09

One of the most common things I hear from firms I work with is we're coming to the end of the probation period and we have a probation period for a reason. I never used to use it in my firm and I have since met Ed and Jamie. One of the most common things I hear is I say at the end of the probation period, so how's the person going? Can they do the role? And the owner will say to me I'm not really sure. And I say, well, how can you not know? It's been three months or five months or whatever it is. Well, they're not playing them in position, there's no leadership or they're not being managed, that they haven't been given specifics in how to do their role or how they fit in the team and you're setting them up to fail. If I don't know in the first month or so if they can do the role that I've hired them to do, I'm not positioning them, and so probation might be three months, it might be six months, whatever it is, but the important thing is for me I know within the first few weeks if they're gonna work out or not. And it might be a weird thing to kind of brag about, I guess, but we have had folks in the last few years since I started doing it, the Wize Way. We have had folks who didn't pass probation. That's not an admission to failure, that's part of the system.

Tim Causbrook: 19:14

Part of the filtering process is probation. Probation is part of the hiring process if that makes sense. It's your insurance policy. It's way, way, way easier to build a business with the right people on board than with people who just don't quite make the cut but don't have the guts to move them on. And I've seen all kinds of issues in my own firm and other firms arise from people leaving people in a role that they're just not suited for it just provides all kinds of pain in the long term. So as difficult as those conversations are about saying to someone you didn't make it, I would say you've got to have them, not just for you and the business but for the teams. The last thing I'll say on that is one of the elements that I think is probably underrated or spoken about when we talk about hiring is the effect that we'll have on the team.

Tim Causbrook: 20:01

Jamie mentioned before keeping staff is just as important as finding the right ones. I couldn't agree more with that. There's nothing worse than bringing someone in who just rubs your existing team the wrong way. Sure, you want your teams to have enough capacity to take on the work and to do the existing client work that you've got. But I am so protective of my culture and my teams and their wellbeing that even if someone ticks a lot of the boxes, they still have to get on, not with me but with the team, because they're working with that team every day.

Tim Causbrook: 20:33

So when you've got a good thing going, that higher slow process again just rings true. I want to make sure that people who come on board will not make the work experience of my existing staff, whom I want to protect and keep worse, like make it worse, but only make it better. So I hope that makes sense. But yeah, just have the courage to act fast if you're not sure about it. I'm not sure what's the key thing there. You'll either know it's working or you won't be sure. If you're not sure, follow your gut. You probably need to act fast on that.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 21:01

One would be my advice and you know an interesting thing that you mentioned there, Tim, about protecting your culture, because, on the flip side, I've also been able to witness working with firms where they followed the Wize-standard process. You know, they tested, they referenced checks, they performed the interview with the interview guys, so they followed the right steps, yeah, and it feels like they're bringing good people into their firm.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 21:28

Yet if their existing team. That is the problem. So that might be something that's complex to navigate because the issue here seems to not be the hiring. So I'm not sure if this might even be a hiring situation, but the issue is not that the hire is wrong, but it's like you're throwing the people into a blender almost inside your existing team. What's your advice for dealing with this? Because it's quite common and normal for firms to go.

Tim Causbrook: 22:01

Totally. This is a really quick piece of advice. Get your deep and narrow team set up. So one common one this is just a real quick piece of advice. One common one I see is the owner comes to me and they want to withdraw from the senior client manager position, but they don't have a production manager yet and they're doing all the reviews and they're working crazy hours. I always say to them you know, you might have ants in your pants and you might want to get out of that client manager seat ASAP, and I understand that, but you're not going to be able to find an employee to work 70 hours a week.

Tim Causbrook: 22:32

Set up the team before you withdraw from that client manager position. Get that production manager on board, because you don't want to give your mess to someone else. You want to set the team up and give that no chaos, that controlled, organized team to someone else, not the other way around. So yeah, I totally agree with that and I've seen it a lot. Thomas, just make sure that teams are set up before you remove from those crucial roles. And, by the way, it's much easier for you to set the team up when you're heading up the team than to hire someone and say, oh, we're still in the middle of a change management process, and then try to get this new person who's new to the business, to try to make all these changes for you. So yeah, just first things first. I think Ed and Jamie like to say you know from Steven Covey. I hope that makes sense.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 23:14

That makes a lot of sense and actually, something you said. There is something I've also heard from firms a few times where they sort of have this expectation that the new hire is also going to bring with them the capacity to do change management within their firm. But actually, they're a lot more softer and fragile than they actually need to be nurtured and led. I think if they have the ability to come into a firm fresh and start doing change management. I think they should be some sort of an executive and a fortune-teller or something.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 23:45

Yeah, yeah, wrong job, yeah, so just you know. A final thing I want to hear from you is you know what expectations should we have toward a new hire. You know we followed the process.

Kristy Fairbairn: 23:56

We checked everything out.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 23:57

What other expectations should we have about this person? Especially when hiring a CEO for a good employer.

Tim Causbrook: 24:04

No, look, this is a good one. It might sound counterintuitive, but this is again. This is coming straight from Jamie. One of the biggest lessons Jamie's taught me is to be patient. If you get the hiring process right, you get the right candidate. You're not going to see immediate 100% of their role. You know doing it 100%. It just takes time to get on board. I've seen this in my own firm.

Tim Causbrook: 24:24

Even if they're the right fit, they're the right candidate, it takes a couple of months for them to really click in and for you to really start to see those results. This is why it gets a bit of a balancing act. I'm not saying if you're not sure about someone and it's because they were the wrong person, you don't give them the benefit of the doubt indefinitely, but you also can get the best person in the world. It's not a silver bullet, because people take time. Maybe the team takes time to warm up to that person. Maybe that person just takes a bit extra time getting across all your systems and procedures and whatnot. So yeah, it's not like software you can plug in and it goes from day one. People take time. So there's a bit of a balancing act there. I've never seen it click immediately. It's always a bit of an introductory process.

Tim Causbrook: 25:08

Again, that's what probation's for. You know, by the end of probation in my firm it's only three months because we really don't want to muck around, but by the end of probation they have to be 80 to 90% of the way there and I've got to be confident that they'll be able to get to 100. Jamie now got in the head there. Attitude is 100%. Everything. Look, don't listen. Action speaks louder than words. Couldn't echo what Jamie just said. Enough there.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 25:31

Yeah.

Tim Causbrook: 25:32

Thank you for that.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 25:33

Jim, you know in the basics of what hire, slow and act fast to me, but also some complex and nuanced situations where we're challenged to do something different here. Now to hear from you, Jamie, what action steps would you recommend we take away from this session around this topic of testing candidates for accuracy and their speed and hire and slow and acting fast?

Jamie Johns: 25:59

Yeah, I think the biggest thing I would mention, Thomas, is to follow a system. So follow a system of hiring. So don't just wing it, don't use gut feel. There are really three pillars to hiring. So first of all you want to assess the person's integrity. So it doesn't matter how smart they are.

Jamie Johns: 26:18

If you're hiring someone to come into your team and they lack integrity, you just need to avoid all costs. So first of all, you must assess the integrity. The other one is the responsiveness of the person. So when you start hiring, you must assess their like, their energy, and responsiveness, because how they are in the hiring process will be the same when they're working for you as well. As Ed Chan says, you know, if you give someone a thousand hurdles to get over and they do it smiling, they're going to be good for your firm.

Jamie Johns: 26:49

And the third one is that accuracy and testing that you said, Thomas, and we have some recommended tests that we recommend to all firms and they're in the wise marketplace now as well, aren't they, Thomas? Some of the testing and also the ongoing training. I know one of our staff at Sky Accountants. We're putting them through the eight weeks of training as well. So, yeah, follow those three pillars: integrity, energy, and responsiveness. And then you know give people tasks, give tests, measure their accuracy and certainly follow that method, because that's better than having nothing at all. You want to make the right decisions. People aren't an exact science, but you're better off having these steps and processes in place so that you can maximize your success.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 27:33

I completely agree, Jamie and one of the benefits I found in following the interview guide and following the process is it just takes less mental energy. And if it takes less mental energy, I have more space to actually process more candidates. Rather than put all my emotional energy into one or two people that I'm hoping to work out, I can screen 10 or 15 people and just follow the process. It's just getting work done. It doesn't have to be taking a huge emotional toll on me. So thank you for those steps, Jamie.

Wize Mentoring: 28:08

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