Here's What I Learned from Hiring and Firing 1000 People

AVAlexander Volchek

Hiring is fundamentally important. Strong teams that drive explosive growth. You're doing everything incredibly well. Or generating a million dollars in revenue. And it might happen once in ten years. The most important, incredibly important rule to consider when hiring someone. Finally, I've hired someone! Today we'll talk about how to hire an employee properly, what to agree on with them, and how to choose them. Hello, everyone! You're on my channel. I'm Alexander Volchek. First, I'd like to say that I've been in business for twenty years, hired thousands of people, and fired a thousand. I've hired in completely different circumstances: startups, large companies, for tremendous growth with enormous incentives, with no money, and when things were terribly difficult. I've been through dozens, hundreds of variations in incentives, agreements, selection processes, assessments, funnels, HR systems, instructions, procedures, and regulations. I've had an enormous number of problems with hiring and firing. I've had major problems with HR managers and HR directors. I've had great HR directors, great HR teams, and strong teams that drove explosive growth, in sales, marketing, and hiring CEOs, sales directors, development directors, strategy directors, product directors, CTOs—all sorts of people.

Hiring is fundamentally important for any business owner and anyone managing a business. Interestingly, hiring also matters to someone who doesn't manage their own business. I—

manage their own business. In 2010, I headed Megaplan, a leading cloud service in the Russian-speaking world, a task manager. Today, around 400,000 companies use its task management and CRM system. I remember very clearly what a huge leap it was for me in developing my skills, standards, approaches, partnerships, volumes, leads, clients, and people too. After Megaplan, I became an owner and the chief managing partner of Business Molodost. I was then its CEO for a long time. I remember always saying that the two most important things to do in a company are, first, listen to the client and constantly get feedback, and second, constantly hire people. When hiring and building your teams, you need to understand how the process works. Hiring basically consists of two important areas or factors. The first is creating a candidate funnel so there are people to talk to, offer different positions to, and discuss different roles with. There's also, of course, the process of replacement hiring, because many teams need replenishing, especially when you're scaling and growing. The second area is somewhat different. It's more about your own thinking and perception and probably less about understanding what a system is.

It's the ability to reach agreements with these people, select them, and get a feel for them. Know what kind of person a particular team needs at a particular moment. The problem so many owners create, the mistake they make—

owners. The mistake many owners, CEOs, and other directors make is that they often don't participate in hiring or build the team themselves. They think there are professional HR managers, agencies, or HR directors who know how to hire and select people. That's a fundamental mistake. People who recruit professionally know how the process works and belong more to the first, systematic part. Sometimes they may point out potential mistakes, help you prepare documents, write out an incentive system, or suggest something. They're advisers on how to choose, hear, and see a person. Their role has no connection with making your business successful and achieving the goal you've set. If your business goal is to earn $100,000 net a month or generate $1 million in revenue, an HR manager or HR staff member generally has no connection with that goal at all.

Someone may object: “All right, let's hire an HR manager or director and tie that director's incentives to profit. Then they'll hire people and find the people our team needs.” That would also be a mistake, because the primary task of an HR manager or director is to provide a flow of people, find people whom you, as the business owner or director, will then select. Of course, if you're hiring in bulk—for example, two hundred salespeople—you won't review all two hundred yourself. Although—

two hundred salespeople. Although, if your business depends entirely on sales, and sales is your core business competence and success factor—the sales department itself, not the product, marketing, development, strategy, location, production, premises, store, nothing else, just sales—then I'd probably participate in selecting all two hundred salespeople. All you'd need to do is start holding two or three group assessments a day. What is a group assessment? Fifteen, twenty-five, or ten salespeople come to me, and I choose among them. I'd hold two or three assessments every day for several weeks and sit there selecting salespeople. Perhaps I wouldn't do it alone. We'll discuss how group assessments work in other videos, but I'd definitely participate and comfortably select two hundred people. Incidentally, that would be incredibly good, because the success rate with salespeople—the conversion rate, if you want them to join you and accept your offer—would be significantly higher.

If the owner and the person running the company participate in selection, the contact with the people who join you is completely different, fundamentally different. The salespeople register more than just a company name—say the company is called Volna. They register that this company has an owner or CEO, what that person looks like, and that they participated, talked to them, and gave them information. When you encounter them in the future, even if you don't interact weekly, for example, they'll already have a certain trust in you. Most likely, they'll have a sense of your authority—

most likely, they'll regard you as an authority, understanding that you're the authority, owner, and boss in this business. That matters enormously. Returning to the thought: if you need to hire many people, other people can participate too. But if you need two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred people, of course you need to get involved in selection. We built Agro24 with Andrey Rogachev, the founder of Pyaterochka. At one point, we had about fifty employees. I personally participated in hiring all fifty, and Andrey Rogachev also participated in hiring many of them: marketers, programmers, analysts, salespeople, various directors, and designers. We constantly participated together. Why take part in hiring them? Because it's only fifty people. Your entire business and success depend on those fifty people, or twenty, fifteen, or thirty. Your life actually depends on them. I decided to build a business, and my life depends on whether I participate in hiring, because my life depends on these people.

If, of course, this is your main business. When you participate in selecting people, you face the question: how do you tell whether someone is right for you? How do you choose? I always use two methods. Let's call one systematic, strategic, clear-cut. Let's call the second a creative approach. What's the systematic approach? You hire someone according to certain parameters or criteria. You can give them a test, check their résumé or work experience, or clearly hear and note certain aspects of how they behaved during the interview or conversation with you. The other side is crea—

with you. The other side is creative. You make a decision based on your intuition, on your own sense of whether you need this person right now. In general, I always recommend combining and balancing these two sides. If you hire only creatively, just taking everyone who comes along, there's a strong chance your team will be formed very randomly. If you hire only systematically, there's a chance you'll never hire anyone: you can review thirty, forty, fifty, or a hundred people, and under the criteria you initially established, you won't like or find a fit in any of them. Not a single one. You'll just search endlessly. In those situations, I always recommend simply hiring someone and bringing them in. Just bring them in. If you see that a position needs someone, or understand that you have a role to fill, just bring the person in. I've made decisions like this many times in sales, analytics, design, programming, management, partnerships, and all sorts of other business areas. I'd see someone who seemed pretty good and say, “Come in. Start.”

I didn't dig into every tiny detail. Why is this important? Why is it important to have that quality within you, the ability to offer someone a job simply on the basis of a feeling? People's previous success, their interview behavior, or how they completed a test are only loosely and relatively connected with how they'll behave in the future. Even being late for an interview doesn't mean someone is bad. Situations happen in life when you're late—

and it might happen once in ten years. Imagine this person happened to be late for your interview. That's how things turned out, how circumstances came together. As someone who's almost never late and arrives on time or early, of course I notice how people behave and what they do. But I allow for cases and circumstances when someone is late. It's not a disaster if you're such an important, incredibly great business owner. Oh my God, what happened? An employee arrived late for your interview! The same goes for experience. People come and say, “I earned $50 million for the company.” You ask, “But you weren't the CEO, were you?” They say, “I was the sales director, and the whole company earned that money entirely because of me. I did it. I made the company's automation great. I made its processes great. I made its partnerships and systems great.” You think, “Oh, cool. They earned $50 million there, so they'll earn $50 million for me here.” There's no such connection at all.

First, even if they earned $50 million at that company, it doesn't mean they'll repeat it. Not at all. Second, they may simply have said they earned $50 million, while completely different circumstances affected those earnings: the right market, niche, competition, particular teams, and a combination of circumstances at that particular time. I've seen an enormous number of businesses and situations where incredibly capable people failed because of particular circumstances. Or, conversely, succeeded because of particular circumstances. I've succeeded in circumstances where the market was better or the competition more favorable. The right clients came to me at the right moment. We somehow hit on the right pricing system. Our system for scaling marketing also developed. There was a particular period—

marketing. There was a particular period, and in some projects there were periods when you did everything incredibly well, properly, very systematically and creatively, with an excellent product and team, yet everything went wrong. So when hiring and evaluating someone, always keep two broad areas of observation in mind. First, hire systematically, according to criteria and parameters specifically needed by your company. Second, use a creative approach and intuition. Here's another example of creativity and intuition. Imagine a group assessment: we're hiring analysts and assessing fifteen people. Fifteen people arrive and sit down. What's the probability that I'll personally select the right salesperson? My probability is about fifty-fifty. What's the probability that an HR manager makes the right selection? About 20%: 20% that it'll be right, 80% that it won't. Of course, I'm not talking about HR managers who used to work in sales for a long time, then became professional selectors, are already on your team, have hired thousands, and know everything. I'm talking about what usually happens across different businesses.

If the HR manager's probability is 20% and mine is 50%, combining and complementing each other and listening to each other lets me make a decision with perhaps a 60% probability, which is great. If another person is present—my sales director when hiring sales directors, for example, or my deputy or COO when hiring analysts, whoever—that further increases the probability of hiring correctly. Another person will listen to the candidate and say, “Listen, I see these aspects of their behavior, or these—

aspects of their behavior, characteristics, or qualities. I think this could be interesting, or that was interesting.” I've had interesting situations when we held group assessments where I was leading or present, my partner was there, and an HR manager or HR director was there, for example. Ten or fifteen people were sitting there, and we marked checks and crosses for those we liked or disliked. At the end, you collect the sheets and see that they're different. One person liked these candidates, another liked those, a third liked others. You look for someone all three liked. If all three liked someone, there's probably a chance they're slightly better than the rest. First, that doesn't guarantee they're right for you, because everyone who came might have been very bad. They were better against that background but actually very bad. Second, they may simply have presented themselves well, and all three of you—me, my partner, and the HR manager—liked those qualities. So overall, it's good to have another opinion present when selecting someone.

That's the creative side. But there's another problem with this creative, intuitive selection. I meet many business owners who want to hire someone but have no flow of potential candidates. Because they lack that flow, they hire “creatively,” in quotation marks. What does that mean? They hire whoever makes it through the door. Many of you as owners or managers face a situation where you want to hire, but conducting interviews feels very difficult emotionally or affects your mood. It's hard to sit through an interview, you're not good at communicating, and talking and selecting people is difficult. Sometimes a candidate takes the initiative and seems more impressive than you. Then you—

more impressive than you. You automatically enter a state where you either block absolutely everyone or want to hire the first person you meet and accept them. That would mean you've completed your hiring task. You think, “Finally, I've hired someone!” I've done this many times because hiring created additional stress for me. I think, “Damn, I have to search again and deal with this task again. It's impossible.” As soon as that starts, you stop yourself, notice it, and say, “Hold on! I won't hire people just because I feel a little uncomfortable with hiring.” I'll remember and shift back to what a hiring system is: systematic criteria, assessments, bringing in candidates, phone calls, a funnel, making the right offer, everything clear and systematic. And there's creative choice and trust, adapting the interview to the person you're speaking with and asking for the information you need through conversation. Tell me in the comments if you've ever wanted to escape hiring, what position you were in, and what business it was.

It's always very interesting to hear from real, living people. But there's a most important rule, an incredibly important rule to consider when hiring someone. It provides a fundamental foundation and gives you the best chance of making selection as effective as possible. What is it? It consists of two areas or parts. First, try to find out what—

what matters to this person when taking a job. Why are they sitting here now? What are their goals in their professional work and, importantly, in their life? Your task is to see and put together the puzzle of what matters to them. A high salary may matter. Bonuses and a very well-designed incentive system may matter enormously. The product itself may matter most: it has to be something innovative. Or they've always loved selling coffee, and coffee is what they need to work with. Or they work in automation and CRM systems, and that's their field. They want to do exactly that and nothing else in life. Or it's important that their wife approves the job at home. Essentially, they don't choose the job; they go where their wife tells them to go. She'll constantly tell them whether the job is good or bad, whether they should worship this job and this boss and work day and night—

or protest, leave, and stop being there. Or the people they work with matter enormously. They come to work: what kind of group is there? Who are these people, the team they interact with every day? Or clients matter. Someone says, “I definitely want to communicate and interact with clients. Who the client is matters to me. I want to work with government, for example. It's important that the end client is government, because I need that experience. In five, seven, or ten years, I want to work in some government agency or on particular kinds of projects—

I don't know, social, nonprofit, any kind, or commercial projects. I need the skill of interacting with government and communicating with these people.” Everyone has a goal, and you need to understand it and examine what's primary and what's secondary. There's no universal rule for how important particular parameters are to a person. They're different for everyone. For some, benefits-package perks matter more than their base salary and bonus system. For some, the office and being in the office are fundamental, their number-one priority. For others, working remotely from home is fundamental. This matters. Anyone who thinks everyone wants to work from home is badly mistaken. Some people categorically don't want to work at home; they want to work in person. Being at home makes them sick. They can't stay in that space or with the people they live with: friends, acquaintances, random people, or family. They want to go somewhere else entirely, and that matters more to them than any amount of money. They come in and say, “Great!

Can I live here too, stay and sleep here, everything?” Many teams and companies are built around this and know about it. Believe me, once you know a person's goal, you'll select them completely differently. Completely differently. On the other side, there's you, your goal, where your company is going, and its expectations. It makes sense to tell the person about both the negative and positive aspects of your company and the goal you're moving toward. You don't need to tell everyone everything. You don't have to tell absolutely everyone how many billions of dollars you want to earn and how you want to—

dollars. And how you want to buy eighteen houses and sixteen cars or invest the money in developing something. You need a sense of balance. Fundamentally, within their role, you need to show the person your goal and find some alignment. What is your goal? Imagine you want to extract as much profit as possible from the business, really maximize the profit you take out. A development director, CEO, COO, marketing director, or sales director joins you, fundamentally feeling that this kind of business needs every dollar invested in development for one, two, or three years before you start taking money out. You'll have a disconnect, an unsafe state within the company, because every time you take profit out, your finance manager, sales director, or marketing director will feel you're bankrupting the company. Their inner sense says the money should be invested endlessly. You need to align and agree on this, state it immediately. Or, conversely, immediately state that you know the company won't make a profit for three or five years, while a sales director or CEO joins who has always worked and earned exclusively on the basis of profit.

They're sure the whole incentive system is based on profit. That's what their life has been like. Explain that your company's incentive system will work somewhat differently, because there won't be profit for the next three to five years. There simply won't. Of course, you could include a percentage of the loss, but, for example, that has no significance. What matters to you may be growth, the share of the market you're gaining, or your revenue. That's your main, most important parameter. Show them that goal. After showing it, tell them the company's negative aspects. I've always tried to explain the negative aspects. You say calmly and easily, “Listen, we have various internal company problems. We often have problems with employees' workspaces, or we—

lack automation in many places, many issues are unresolved, we have no databases, we're not good at marketing, we have no PR, our brand is weak, or clients complain about us. We're issuing refunds, and it's unclear what's happening with the money. Or financial accounting isn't set up, or our market is very difficult.” You don't fully understand how to move within it. That doesn't mean pouring your pessimism onto them, if you have it—and many people do—or pouring out negativity. I'm talking about actual, solid facts and describing them neutrally. Certainly not from the position that, because things are like this, everything is shit, but from the position that some things simply haven't been done or work this way. If you plan to keep operating in some problematic areas this way, that may matter to the person. For example, you plan to have everyone come to the office, or everyone work from home. Or you plan to have everyone come to work dressed only in black, white, or red.

Or you plan to have people work until midnight on Fridays. If you have things like that, it makes sense to discuss and explain them calmly, without being afraid to mention them. Believe me, it's better for the employee to know beforehand, hear it from you, discuss it calmly, and experience it through the interview than to encounter and understand it six months or a year later. Many people take a long time to grasp things. On the other hand, during the interview you communicate the great things about your company, showing what's much better, stronger, higher quality, and cooler there. Show why you're proud of the company, what you consider truly great, interesting, and important about it, and what advantages you have. You've learned this person's goal, explained your own, and explained the boundaries—

your goal and your company's negative and positive characteristics. That will move you dramatically forward toward choosing the right person. Once you've learned about each other, you've reduced the barriers created by expectations, moved closer, and begun to see each other more clearly. What matters isn't only that you see the candidate better. The candidate needs to see you better too. This mutual exchange is the most important part of selection. Give it time. As a business owner, you must firmly and constantly work with people. Here on the channel, I discuss scaling businesses and business owners, the personal growth of strong people, moving forward, and knowing your right next step at any moment. My name is Alexander Volchek. Until next time! Now imagine: as a business owner, you often don't know your business's goal or your strategy. You just move forward and work. Or you know next year's goal, but not the goal three or five years out. You don't understand it; it hasn't taken shape. Now imagine one of your employees or directors comes along and hires someone else.

What goal are they hiring for, and why? For their own narrow, small goal, their personal goal, or a business goal? Many people you ask to help hire others hire for themselves, to suit themselves, and for their own tasks and interests. Those tasks and interests can diverge radically, completely radically, from the business's interests. Pay attention to this—

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and be very careful.