How I learned to spot job applicants who lied about their abilities?

Managing a start-up is an exciting and exhilarating adventure; one that i'm currently enjoying through Kabod Group .

At the beginning of the adventure, as the founder, you almost have to play all the roles, from accounting, to HR, recruitment, training, firing etc. This is a company growth stage known as the "Family" (1) where the founder personally pulls the levers of the company growth.

At the second (2) stage, known as "The Tribe", the founder manages people who are pulling the levers, s/he has a minimum involvement in operations, and the bulk of value creation comes from working with team members and helping them be more productive and performant.

At the third stage, known as the "The Village", the founder designs an organisation with a system able of pulling the lever. While the founder may know and interact with frontline employees, he is no longer a direct manager. At the fourth (4) growth stage, "The City", is where the founder focuses on making high level decisions about priorities, strategies and goals.

The firth (5) and last stage is known as the "Nation", is where the founder is able of blitzscalling and starting new product lines or expanding to new territories. Someone here needs to balance a control type of organisational culture where traditional management practices are enforced to minimize errors, while also encouraging creativity and experimentation of new grounds through a cultivation and collaborative culture.

Can you guess at what stage Kabod is currently at? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?

If you haven't been following #KabodStories, it would be difficult for you to guess. So let me help you: we are currently at the 2nd stage where I basically have a team supporting me with the execution of projects.

However, the focus of this #KabodStory is to narrate the HR challenges I had at the #family stage where most employees weren't staying for more than three months. I initially thought the problem was with them, until I recently discovered that the real problem was with me, as I was neglecting a key component in the recruitment process: Verification.

I usually recruited someone when s/he had convinced me of their alignment with the company vision, work ethics and culture and also affirmed their competence.

However, few weeks or months after their onboarding, I quickly became disappointed by both their aptitudes and attitude.

For example, I noticed that most of those in the position of digital marketing or graphic design, were using, not some, but most of their working time on their side gigs or to work for their remote clients.

There was therefore a significant gap between the time spent at the office and the concrete results presented during our Friday review meetings. I later discovered that most of the people in the digital marketing, graphic design or creative media roles, weren't fully dedicating their time to the company they were paid for. This was initially very frustrating for me, as I discovered this reality of the world of work from the employer side. Especially when you trust your team and can be deceived by their busyness at work.

The second big discovery I had during the "Tribe" stage, was that: most job seekers are seriously lying about their real competencies and most exaggerate in their CV. Most of my staff that left were forced to do so because of the pressure they had to deliver on tasks where they weren't skilled at, while having sent strong portfolio during the interview stage, to demonstrate their ability.

Since recruitment is a time consuming process that is very costly to every business, I had to quickly find out what component of my staff recruitment strategy was faulty and fix it out. This was a serious issue for me, especially because, I quickly attach myself and trust people. So having to fire people because of incompetence for business priorities, even though we personally like them as individual, was always a difficult decision to take. But which I had to for the company growth sake.

Being emotional in people management always leads to frustration and even death, but being emotionally intelligent leads to life.

Since this poor retention rate of staff was becoming a major obstacle to Kabod Group continuous growth, I took the matter in prayer and the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to realize that, we were actually missing important steps in the recruitment, leading to the recruitment of the wrong people.

Below are therefore the lessons learned, which are now enforced in Kabod policies and have led to attract and retain the right type of people:

1. Never trust your employees blindly nor be deceived by their enthusiasm. Some may be very busy at your office while working for others, and neglecting your work.
2. Continuously monitor the results, not the activities. A tree is known by its fruits, so a good employee is known by the quality and consistency of his outputs. Even though productivity is not the only metric for performance, paying attention to it matters. To avoid being cheated, Kabod instituted Key Performance Indicators for all staff so they know main job priorities and are assessed on them. For remote workers, their salary vary according to the number of completed KPI.
3. Fire when needed. Don't be emotional with unproductive employees who aren't willing to improve or change their course following multiple feedbacks. Maintaining them would pollute and eventually affect other workers who are giving their all.
4. Never trust job seekers by what they say, but what you can see them doing. Kabod instituted a competency test in all our recruitments and it has significantly eliminated wrong people who were actually excellent on CV. For example, four came for the in-person test for a digital marketing position. Only two submitted their answers after two hours test. The two couldn't do it and abandoned. By testing their skills in the 1st interview stage, the second could focus on their attitude and level of understanding of the company mission, their alignment with the company soul and its operations.

People are the most important pillar of any company. Recruitment and people management in general, are therefore the most important functions as they help to set the company culture and future. Bringing the wrong people on board can drastically affect your company growth from stage 1 to 5, and having the right team can also result in sustained growth.

So let me hear from you, what are the tips you have gained through your experience in recruitment? How do you spot the right type of person during interview? Have you also had employees cheating on you during working hours? Since most talented workers now are mainly willing to work remotely, how do you navigate their demand with the need of results? Does implementing key performance indicators, the only way to measure remote workers? What other strategies have you been using to keep your remote team both productive and motivated?

Kindly do not hesitate to share your view in comments.