Hire Power Radio Show

In this episode, we’re diving deep into the art of setting clear expectations before you hire—a critical step to attracting and retaining top talent that truly fits your mission. Our guest, Melissa Ortiz, CEO of Activate Human Capital, is a seasoned expert in talent optimization and employee engagement. Melissa helps businesses match the right people to the right seats by aligning talent strategie...

In this episode of the Higher Power Radio Show, host Rick Gerard discusses essential hiring techniques and leadership strategies with Randy Wootton, the CEO of Maxo. They delve into the importance of frequent team communication, the value of planned and celebrated resignations, and the various stages of company growth from Series A to scaling up. Randy shares his vast experience transitioning comp...

Proactive Hiring: Avoiding Surprises & Building Stronger Teams A resignation should never be a surprise—it should be a planned and supported event within an organization. Yet, when leaders are caught off guard, they scramble to fill a role, often making reactive hiring mistakes that hurt company culture. In this episode, Bryan Neale, founder of Blind Zebra, shares his Red Light, Green Light framew...

Monetary compensation is no longer the primary reason people accept job offers. Career growth, learning opportunities, company culture, and meaningful work now take center stage. To hire and retain the strongest people, businesses must understand and align with what truly drives employees. In this episode, Bonni Pomush, CEO of Working Wardrobes, joins Rick Girard to discuss how she transformed Wor...

Hiring in a Hurry? Beware of the Hidden Costs What happens when you rush to fill a role without properly vetting a candidate? The consequences can be costly—both financially and legally. Many business owners have learned this lesson the hard way, including today's guest, Jonathan Hard, CEO of H2L Solutions. In this episode, Jonathan shares a real-life hiring horror story that led to a lawsuit, exp...

Conflict is an unavoidable part of business, but how you handle it determines your company's success. Many leaders shy away from conflict, presenting an idealized company culture during hiring, only to create friction when reality sets in. Today’s episode tackles embracing and managing conflict effectively to build stronger, high-performing teams. Rick Girard sits down with Ryan Redding, founder o...

Hiring Smarter, Not Harder The hiring process hasn’t evolved much in the past century—we source candidates, review resumes, and invite people for interviews. But here’s the problem: resumes build bias, not results. We assume someone is a great fit based on a prestigious company name or top-tier school, but does that actually translate to job performance? Kristen Prinz, Founder & Managing Partner o...

Listening to what your customers desire and having the courage to uproot your business model to accommodate them, takes guts. It’s essentially disrupting your own short-term profits for a long-term bigger picture.  Your employees who are “comfortable” will most likely leave as most people do not like change. Especially, radical change! Leaving the opportunity for others to step up and help to driv...

As a founder, your first hire is always the hardest. Most often we take the first person who will say yes. Not putting a lot of diligence into a conversation about setting proper expectations.  What ends up happening is that we either get really lucky (if it works out) or it becomes a cautionary tale of what not to do when starting a business.  Often an expensive lesson to learn.  Starting with a...

Today let’s start with the question, “Does our company make your life better?”  Ideally, the answer is yes. But in my experience as a top Silicon Valley headhunter, the answer is almost always NO.  This is one of my favorite questions to ask when I recruit people because it opens the door to providing a stronger opportunity with another company… Usually my clients. If all companies just asked thei...

Hiring great salespeople is not as tough as you might think… And the key to this is a great phone screen (aka: Discovery call).   Here is why the discovery call is so important. First, People are the most truthful in their first conversation because they have invested very little time or emotional bandwidth.  Second, interviewees are not expecting a level of diligence early on so they are not as g...

Tom’s shoes started with the mission of donating a pair of shoes for every pair bought. A powerful mission that attracts a lot of people. However, resonating with the mission is not enough.  To be successful in any organization, one must also naturally operate in a manner that is in alignment with the company’s core values.  What makes this critical to successful hiring is that it gives people the...

We have all heard the phrase that people do not leave jobs, they leave managers…  This truth is supported by data from Gallop, 75% of over 1 million workers surveyed,  left because of their bosses and not the work or the company. So how do we combat this?  First, let’s train our managers. Second, let’s do a better job of hiring people who will align with the values of the company and the manager....

The classic blunder I have seen hundreds of times during my career is the “vanity hire”. Pulling out all the stops to get someone from a name-brand company who, in your mind, is the answer to all your prayers.  The reality is that that person turns out to be the cause of future nightmares. Not fitting in with the culture, pace, or the expectations of the team. This happens because your little entr...

It’s human nature to get away from pain as quickly as possible.  As painful as it is to have an open role, it is even more painful to fill that role with a person who brings more pain. And that pain is most often delivered in the form of the Wrong Person in the Right Seat.  Today we are going to discuss what this means and how to have the patience to work through finding the right person for the r...

Having a need often clouds reason. Especially when it comes to hiring and the interview process. There is work to be done and no one is doing it. So you prioritize filling the gap with a warm body, rather than focusing on the right person in the right seat. How’s that been working out for you??  Short-cutting the interview process is never a good idea because when you do, It will most often bite y...

People like to join small organizations because they are challenging and fun. There are few rules to follow and very little red tape.  As the company grows, it becomes necessary to formalize business processes. With process comes rules and before you know it… Poof someone gets shot in the eye and the Nerf guns get taken away. Some might view this as a good thing, but the high performers who built...

How do you change company culture when the values of the CEO evolve?  We all understand that to grow as a company, people need to embrace change. Yet a lot of us fear change because it requires us to work on ourselves. Which is uncomfortable.  But here is the truth, when you fear change the business will outgrow you and then change becomes inevitable! Guest Bio: Jason Lippert, President & CEO of L...

Core values are powerful. But core values driven by purpose are unstoppable! Today we are going to take a deep dive into an entrepreneur who has built not one but two highly successful businesses by not just living core values but tying purpose and giving back into the daily routines of the company.  And their results have been extraordinary!   Our guest today:  Jay Wilkinson,  Founder of Firespri...

Being a startup entrepreneur is a struggle.  As some of you know, I recently joined the ranks of a startup founder. In November we launched Intertru and boy, my world has moved to light speed to a totally new dimension. It has become ridiculously exciting! But there is one huge challenge… maintaining operational discipline.  My struggle comes from the need to put out fires and execute critical pro...

We all understand the concept of right person, right seat. But as the company grows the demands of each seat change. What is required from zero to $5 Million will most likely shift on your journey to $10 million in revenue.  So hiring ahead of that curve becomes the biggest challenge.  It is important that, in the earliest stages of the company, everyone in the organization identifies as a “builde...

Over the past few years talent has been scarce. And when talent is scarce, fear leads hiring decisions. We don't want to lose (what we perceive to be) “good people”, so we shortcut the interview process.  Here's the thing, our perceptions are often wrong.  Our gut is often wrong. And it is wrong because the data we input is either assumed or circumstantial. Resulting in marginal hiring that hurts...

Let’s talk about building an advisory board. I think we would all agree that having strong advisors and mentors in your corner brings huge benefits to every organization. Not just as sound advice in making business decisions but also providing introductions and bringing credibility to the business.  So when is the right time to build your advisory board? As soon as you find the right people who wi...

What are the common characteristics of every successful person at your company? Think of those characteristics and write them down as standard operating procedures. This is critically important because when we operate under the same frequency, pace, and purpose… growth happens. But this can change instantly when a new person is added to the team.  Too often we hastily add a person to the mix witho...

Let’s talk about performance metrics for a minute.   Do you have performance metrics drawn out for every person before they are hired? Are they clear on the expectations for the first 90 days of employment?  If not, you are setting people up for failure because expectations are never in alignment. We're going to leave it to you to “figure it out”.  Then we scratch our heads when the person fails,...