(upbeat music)
- Hello everybody, welcome to Answers to Questions.
This is episode 29.
I'm John T. Meyer, and this episode is all about hiring.
So the first question of the day is
how does Lemonly hire?
And we actually wrote a blog post about how we hire,
which we'll link here and in the show notes.
But the just of it is we actually created a formula,
which we've visualized, we love to visualize things,
on how we hire, and what that formula does
is give us a blueprint on how we hire people.
And so, the blog post will tell you
how we post the jobs, and how we look for candidates,
but I wanna talk on the formula,
and we'll put it up here on the screen
so you can see it.
But basically, this formula helps us look for
the right candidates at Lemonly,
and so if you think about your math
and the order of operations up here in the corner,
we talk about first, do you have the skills?
If you're a designer, if you're applying
to be a designer, can you design?
If you're a developer, can you write code?
If you're a copywriter, do you write good words?
Do you have the job?
Next, do you have a good attitude?
Are you gonna be fun to work around,
come to work, are you gonna make the office a better place?
And then the most important part in that formula
is the superpower.
So, what's the one thing that you're gonna bring to Lemonly
that you're gonna be better at than everybody else?
And so, even at a company of 20 people,
I still believe every single person we hire
needs to bring a new superpower to the team.
And so if you're hiring at four or five people,
or at 400 people, if you stick with that attitude
that every single employee is going to bring a superpower,
you're gonna hire A-level talent,
you're gonna have a great team.
So we add those things up, we divide that by core values,
which we all know is super important to us at Lemonly.
So, collaboration, integrity, adventure.
Do you stand for the same things
that we stand for and believe in?
And then we multiply that by culture fit,
which is just basically an extension of our core values,
but are you gonna be a good fit for Lemonly,
and conversely, is Lemonly a good fit for you?
And I think that's a really important question
for employers to ask.
Make sure you're the right company for them,
because if it's not a fit both ways, a two-way street,
then ultimately they're gonna leave,
they're gonna move on, it's not gonna work out.
So that is our formula for how we hire at Lemonly,
and what makes a Lemonly employee.
I encourage you to think about
what your formula would look like.
So the second question of the day is,
when is the right time to hire?
Should you hire early, should you hire late?
And this is a question that I think
doesn't have a wrong answer.
There's a lot of different philosophies to
when is the right time to hire,
and I think even the different role depends.
So when you're starting a company in the beginning,
I think it's really important, as a founder or CEO,
that you've at least kinda touched every role.
Now, I'm not a designer, but that's what
our co-founder, Amy, does.
But I did the accounting at first,
until we outsourced the accounting.
And, you know, I did the operational things,
so you at least get a sense of each
type of job and role at the company.
But, in the terms of the core of what Lemonly does,
you know, telling stories and creating beautiful design,
I always am of the philosophy of
being a little overstaffed,
now meaning, you know, maybe one extra person.
We're in the services business at Lemonly meaning,
you know, we get paid for our time,
and one thing about the services business
is it's not flat, and straight, and simple,
and always the same thing every month, right?
We have busy months, we have slower months.
It generally is, you know, kinda like the stock market.
It's generally up and to the right,
like slow, steady growth, but it's not a straight line.
It's up and down, up and down.
And so that's hard to staff for,
and so one thing that can be good
is to have some variable cost,
which can be freelancers, part time work contractors,
to help you get through the busy season or the slow season.
So, some people's philosophy would be
hire late, hire slow, and don't put any more
added expense to the business than you need.
I think that's a smart and wise philosophy,
especially during peak, if you really know
your peaks and valleys of the year.
But in general, as a design company,
I like to be a little overstaffed,
so that we can try new things,
we can do internal work that helps market
and tell the story about Lemonly,
we can take our time to grow our craft and learn more stuff.
So that's my philosophy, but as far as the question
when is the right time to hire,
you just have to experiment and try it out,
and I think the easy answer is
when you have the best talent.
If there's someone that's coming along that you know
is gonna make your team better
the moment that they walk into your doors, hire 'em,
and you'll figure the rest out later.
I think bringing the best people into one room
to create one team, even one room,
even if they're remote people,
will make your team better.
That's the right time to hire.
So the last part of the hiring episode is about onboarding,
and so if you've ever read the book Good to Great,
which is a great read by Jim Collins,
he said, in terms of the team,
it's about getting the right people on the bus,
so that's hiring, right?
Using a formula, hiring the best people,
getting them on the bus.
But then also getting them in the right seats.
And so, you might hire a great talent
that seems like the perfect fit for the team,
and at first it's not working out,
and maybe they just need to change their role
or be on a different team and get them in the right seat.
And so to me, that's thinking about onboarding.
And so you've hired the right person,
but how do you bring them on?
And one thing we do at Lemonly
when we make our job offers
is we actually ask people to rank things
that are important to them.
So all of these things are important:
salary, PTO, benefits, being able to work remotely,
the type of work you do, the job title,
we put them up here and we ask you to rank them,
saying all these things are important,
but rank what's most important to you
so we can start to customize and tailor
Lemonly's job offer to you,
within the realm of, you know, what Lemonly does
with our policies.
And that helps us to know, you know,
how you wanna grow, what you're looking for
in your job and in your career.
So that's the onboarding as far as coming to the team,
but then, you know, it's so important
to just get to know your people.
You get a buddy when you start at Lemonly on your first day,
so you have someone you can always go to and ask
the dumb questions, or the random things you wanna know.
And they take you to lunch on your first day.
They say that people are way more likely to stay at a job,
if in their first week, if they establish
a relationship or a friendship.
And so we give that person to you right away
with your buddy.
So really think about onboarding.
Don't just stick someone in orientation for two weeks
and say, "Hey, we'll see you in two weeks."
You can watch videos, you can learn, you can sit on calls,
but really mix up the onboarding.
And sometimes it's even good just to throw them in
and give them a task.
But, you know, don't throw them in too deep.
And so it's that right balance of watching a video,
getting an actual project, and having a person,
a buddy who you can talk to and ask questions.
So really think about how you onboard
when you bring talent onto the team.
So that's all we have for this episode about hiring.
The question of the week is, what is your superpower?
I wanna hear that.
Think about that, and the reason why I love that question
is it not only makes you do your research
about the company, in our case Lemonly,
what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses,
but secondly it makes you brag about yourself,
and most of us here in the Midwest
aren't very good at bragging about ourselves.
So what's your superpower?
That is the question of the week here for episode 29,
and if you have a question for a future episode,
here's how to get in touch.
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