Greg Toroosian 3:52
Yeah, it’s definitely a success. You know, you have the pick of so much talent and so many different locations. And you know, I’d say now, slightly going off topic, but obviously we’re in the middle of quarantine and everyone working remote anyway. So everyone’s very much heavily leaning on technology. So really location doesn’t matter. But the problem is when you have a European team working with a West Coast US team that time difference is that pretty difficult. So, you know, even being in a similar time zone helps so much more hiring even if the team’s remote. So that’s a great background. Thank you. super interesting. Can you give me a little info and obviously the listeners a little bit more info about your founder, co-founder? Is he technical by nature, like you or—
Renato Ricci 4:28
Sure. No, we’re both actually business persons much more, you know, sales and marketing and product-oriented, and much more operations, finance and you know, greeting details and like project management-oriented, so we actually complement each other fairly well. And also, you know, world support from very different cultures, we do share something that I think is important. And that I think really solidified our bond is that we’re both from families that have their own business, small businesses, like, you know, 10 to 15 employees. Okay. But you know, we were born and raised in an environment. So I think for us, it sort of gave us It sort of was a natural path of entry to find your own business if you see like your parents, you know, running for like growing up in yours, right?
Greg Toroosian 5:26
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that’s what stops a lot of people from actually becoming founders, you know, not that their family wasn’t in there by any means. But it’s the fear of the unknown, you know, not seeing how businesses run, not seeing how it started, not knowing how to actually form a company or dive into it. And you know, that uncertainty, and yet that’s taken away from you from such a young age and you see people being successful or even ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. Let’s be honest, nothing smooth sailing. But, yeah, it definitely sets you up for success in that respect.
Renato Ricci 6:00
Absolutely. And I think for us, you know, I feel blessed because I was lucky enough to have my co founder the radio adventure, your radios really responding before so it was what first, you know, in the first TV early days because if I came from like a concert you know, given my consulting background, I saw things in a very different way and I couldn’t find the woods, I would have made you know, I still made mistakes, but I would have made probably like, way more mistakes and thankfully, you know, you already learn from his mistakes, which are like tremendously in the process.
Greg Toroosian 6:27
That’s huge. Not huge with fast tracks. Yeah. Fast tracks the success of your company. And having those those relationships and those contacts, you know, once you start building that rolodex as a founder, friends, or serial founders and stuff like that, they know which investors they want to lean on and which investor—again, a whole minefield that can, you know, cripple people from moving forward if they get worried about it. Cool. So tell me a bit more about the company. Now, obviously, You’ve moved your HQ a few times, which is pretty unique in itself. I’m assuming the team is very dispersed or global. So yeah, give us more info.
Renato Ricci 7:12
Yeah, of course. So we, you know, as part of basically the deal that we scored with Greycroft, Moonshots, and the Village Global, which are our VC firms. As part of the investment, we had to create, you know, an America as a C Corp, and to essentially shift the focus of our operations to the US. So sort of, stop operating in Europe, which is what we’ve done. So unfortunately, we had to split ways with most of our team in Europe. You know, in the Berlin headquarter at least, we did retain our development team, she’s scattered between Poland and Ukraine. It comes with, it comes with, you know, the bottleneck of a time difference. So that’s our product manager to pick up the area for the productive conversation. You know, we were very clear when we hired him. So that that did that is going on while But aside from that, we, you know, as you mentioned, like, besides from the people in Iraq, we have, the team is pretty much scattered now. So we have our product managers in San Diego, our head of supply chain is in San Francisco, and then myself and three other staff members and my co-founder are here in Los Angeles. And yeah, we had to shift, you know, completely away from and thankfully, we’re really sort of versed in terms of working remotely because we had some team members that were remote. But we really had to completely restructure in a way, the way we operate as a comp as a business, right as a company, and not only with teams to really adapt to this but dynamic and to make the most out of our remote working hours.
Greg Toroosian 8:40
Hmm, interesting. Yeah. And very relevant, like you said, for this current situation with the pandemic. So a timely topic for sure. But how, let me take a step back. Is this the first time as part of not that you’ve actually built your own team or been recruiting heavily? Or did you have to do it previously?
Renato Ricci 9:03
As far as family business and stuff like that, no, it’s mainly for knock. I did some interviews in consulting, I was, you know, part of committees in some of the hires. But of course, it’s you know, it’s you can compare like an early stage hire versus a consulting hire for sure.
Greg Toroosian 9:16
So, how have you actually gone about learning? Obviously, you’re going to be doing it on the job, right? How to interview, what you’re looking for, how you’re going to structure things, but how have you gone about learning and shaping your process and your strategy for getting the right people for your company?
Renato Ricci 9:33
Yeah, so thankfully, we didn’t have much experience in the field. You know, once you get a VC on board, and you have amazing advisors, but opens, you know, a lot of doors and they can open it in all phases of the business. So we’re really fortunate to be able to tap into our network and to, to be able to, you know, tap into those resources. We, they, you know, they guided us essentially from how do you actually create the job description that makes sense so not just like, you know, putting bullets first sake of putting bullets were really like thinking through what are the competencies that you need to have in these people hire by competency first and not by, you know, by by just JD. And then sort of from direct cascades, you know, how are you going to assess this person? What are the metrics? How are we going to work cross team within a team, so on, so forth.
Greg Toroosian 10:20
So, that’s great. So they really helped you to be as thorough as possible in shaping your interview, but then also pinpointing the type of candidate that you want.
Renato Ricci 10:32
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And we also talked to like other people within our networks as well, like, you know, overhead of Thailand to recruitment in different portfolio companies or the firm’s but not only elements like shape, the process, and the content, but also referred as candidates.
Greg Toroosian 10:49
That’s amazing. Yeah, I think that’s where, you know, obviously as an internal recruiter, or someone heading up a recruiting team, but then also external adding the most value and it’s something I’ve taught pretty heavily about previously. But that intake process that alignment intake meeting that you have with a hiring manager to really help them on Earth, what they’re looking for, how they’re going to assess for it, and not only thinking about ticking the boxes, but then also, what does success look like in this role? How is this person going to get on board? What’s the time to productivity going to be like who else we’re going to be working with? And then what’s the next step is key because you can hire for the short term, but then how do you keep people engaged and retained? Yeah, especially when there’s a lot of competition, you know, to hire your stuff.
Renato Ricci 11:35
I think it becomes particularly relevant when you’re sort of going through the later stages of the company. So I think once you’re like a series A or B and beyond, you, you know, you can have like a much clearer overview of his process, I think, but you know, sort of contextualizing to where we are, but he’s, you know, like a seed stage company. So we’ve early, early traction, the type of people that you want as an early stage team are really different from that. people you know that we sort of had this conversation just before the podcast? Oh yeah. Like the people that you hire when you’re like 50 Plus, right? When you’re early stage you’re looking for people that have like, you know, they’re here because they’re greedy, they’re here because they don’t care about their salary they want to make a dent in the world they want brand name to be associated with a great success. And you’re really looking at much more intangibles and sort of you know inner motivations when you when you also carving out sort of your interview interview process and and content versus people that you know, maybe we feel like more of a siloed role in a more structured or a great because like, we’ve been jumping around one day like an hour ops person went from doing like Ops, then the next day customer service The next day, some legal next day community management The next day, helping us you know, activate some influencers so there’s really like a ton of jumping around.
Greg Toroosian 12:49
Yeah, exactly. So what you want at an early stage is like to use the metaphor, a Swiss Army knife or Swiss Army Knife candidates and team members that can really lend their hand to anything he likes to go hungry and determined just want to make a difference. And then after a certain stage, you’re looking for more of that precision tool, right? We really know what they’re doing. So I’m assuming you’ve gone through that as well, especially in some areas. How have you kind of managed or helped manage your team in that shift? And that adjustment?
Renato Ricci 13:21
So yeah, great. I mean, I get the question. It’s one of the toughest ones I think, for us, so it was always clear that this was gonna happen. So the key is really to set expectations straight. I, you know, from the very, very early stage, we always say like, we’re sometimes even uncomfortably honest with candidates, because you know, you’re putting your life at stake as much as we are putting our chances of making it at stake. Right. So, we’re always honest, in terms of you an example like, someone we hired, we say, like, Look, you know, we like we love the way you fit into a company’s culture, we think you’re extremely greedy and talented. Moving forward, right? If you’re able to show us that you can fulfill the competitive To have sort of a position that looks to be more senior than the one you’ve ever done before, but you’re great without in your that potentially are sea level executives of the domain. But if we see that, you know, that’s not the case. Or you see what you know, your maybe your focus wants to change away from a troll towards refeeding on overhauling the company, when you need to be fine with having somebody skilled, you know, and impactful potentially overseer, somebody who you can learn from and you know, basically out shape but function together. So better is always important to us, because it also tells you if that person, you know, tries to join and immediately oppose the expectations of having a particular role, and you know, maybe it makes you overthink whether that’s the right cultural fit, right?
Greg Toroosian 14:42
That’s perfect. Yeah, I mean, we’ve heard it time and time again by the rings. So true. Transparency is key in all of this right? But then also setting and managing expectations, right. You want to make sure that people know what they’re getting in for and know how to get ahead if they don’t and they don’t fit that mold and this is just what to expect really right? It’s not like you’re looking to get rid of people you’re just going to say you know, it’s not the right role and we’ll work with you and you’ll learn from someone else until you get to that point it’s it’s key you know, balancing the business need and what’s right for the business and what’s right for your team. And it’s a it’s a fine art right and it’s all in that communication how you frame it to make sure that people aren’t upset and on her you know, because that a lot of the time is why people end up leaving.
Renato Ricci 15:32
Oh yeah, yeah absolutely demand because also hyper toxic for the company right? If you have like one rotten apple right or one rotten banana is better. Yeah. Comparison than the rest of the team can go you know, things can go sour real quick.
Greg Toroosian 15:47
Yeah, cuz they become disengaged and then they start you know, being disruptive or can be or it’s a ripple effect. You know, one person sees that Yeah, so yeah, for sure. You want to either address it head on or when you know Something like that. Nip it, you know, address it, figure out what the problem is and then figure out how you can work that person or repurpose them or, you know, figure out if that’s not going to be a long term solution and be part of the company. Yeah. Which is painful. It’s never easy, but it’s business right?
Renato Ricci 16:17
It is business.
Greg Toroosian 16:18
Yeah, yeah. And it’s gonna be right for that person at the end of the day anyway. Yeah. So how big is the company now?
Renato Ricci 16:26
So right now we are eight people total. We used to be almost double before COVID hit. So unfortunately, we had to downsize a little bit. And we are now before we’re offering our service in LA in New York, but we’ve now expanded to being able to offer it nationwide. And we know we launched our marketplace you can check it out and try not.com essentially, we you know, you can try any any high end product for free from home when we first same or next day delivery, absolutely free of charge your gutters down and return pick up from your door if you can’t decide to buy.
Greg Toroosian 17:00
That is great. Very cool. Very cool.
Greg Toroosian 17:04
And I guess for us right now just to understand so with the eight people team, and then being dispersed, are there any key tools or things like that, that you’re using that you can advise other people?
Renato Ricci 17:17
Yeah, for sure. Game Changer? Yeah, I mean, for me, we’re game changing somebody’s personal talk because people use Asana or Mondo or like project management stuff. I think what’s really key is to define your OKRs objectives and key results. It doesn’t matter if you’re like, you know, early stage like AWS or CVC. And beyond, where you have more predictability, what you need to manage is, you know, sort of what we see, what you know, OKRs stands for objectives and key results. So, what are for early stage because things change so quickly, you know, we can do it like on a two week basis or monthly basis versus usually these are done quarterly or advanced companies. And then from there you really like this needs to come more from the top management team sort of understanding from a company perspective. Where we want to have in the next weeks and months, whatever events are being, you know, passing these sort of objectives and key results to your team, so that they all can independently develop on objectives and key results, but basically sustain the higher level over the company. And that’s really proven key because then it also does a lot of things, right one, it aligns everyone’s objectives to insets responsibilities, because every person owns a sort of objective. Three quantifies them. So every time varies a sort of, you know, because of course, part of managing talent is also doing performance reviews and having honest conversations with your team. And sometimes if you don’t have an objective baseline, it’s sort of hard to have these conversations because then everything becomes subjective and a matter of opinions. But if you have everything documented, and you know agreed upon by the entire team, then it’s a very different story, right? Then the conversations become much more focused, less, much more objective and really, really way more productive. And it also, you know, Of course, I want to speak to one thing that I think is very important to mention also for founders, like, if things do go south and empty, especially given states like California, you need to have like, a sort of wrapper or like a proof as to why you know, this performance was not satisfactory, in order to, to fire them, and you know, to minimize your liability. And that’s a great way as well to do it, right? Because you’ll always have, you know, objective budgeted versus objective achieved. And, you know, if you haven’t achieved a certain objective, maybe they achieved one over but you know, that could always be that can always be tracked. So that was really key.
Greg Toroosian 19:34
That’s perfect. Yeah. And it’s actually something that hasn’t been mentioned on the show so far. So I’m glad that you brought that up. If anyone hasn’t worked with okrs beforehand, or you know, founders haven’t thought about putting them in place. They’re so so powerful and so useful. Like you mentioned, they ticked so many boxes and allow you to do things but also you completely get rid of micromanagement empowers your team to be self sufficient and also self directed. It makes your one on ones and your check ins a lot more. You know, you start with that basically like where exactly, okay, exactly. Yeah, but right now I do some advisory work through Excel exchange who are part of the Chamber of Commerce and first and foremost thing and it’s all for tech startups. And the first thing that they do is they provide them with blueprints for okrs. So everyone works with OKRs. Like you said that a lot of them do it quarterly. But right now everyone’s pivoting, everyone’s changing, which we’ll talk about a little bit in a second for you pivoting and changing, so it’s good to stay nimble, it’s good to stay current and you don’t want them to become outdated. When I was previously at Sweetgreen, we had like you mentioned a bigger company, overarching company OKRs. And then you broke them down by department. So each department you figured out where you fit in who was responsible, what were you actually going to provide in terms of resolution are sold every month and that was talked about in leadership? So everyone had to stay accountable. You know, you can’t hide from that. Right? It’s very, it’s very transparent in terms of expectations. So, onto pivoting, what is your, I guess we’re all in the middle of it right now. But do you have a philosophy on it? Or is there like, Is there any advice that you can give other people and other listeners about how to stay on the pulse and think about, you know, what’s the best way of doing if you get to that point?
Renato Ricci 21:30
Yeah, I think one thing that was key for us is to accept your fate sometimes. So you know, how a lot of founders or people when you start, you know, investing time or money or effort or whatever it is into into something, you sort of have this forgot to exactly what is the scientific term, but you are this, you know, you already put so much effort into something that you want to see through, you know, escalation of commitment is called escalation of commitment. And, you know, a lot of businesses may think like oh, like for you, an example: into COVID we always felt like okay, this thing is going to stop the economy for like two years. And then this is the worst case scenario, right? And we have to be very two years out, we sort of, you know, walk back from there as opposed to trying to think okay, you know, okay things will be fine like tomorrow. So just, you know, operators we are and then CEO things are in six weeks where we would have burned over cash and it would have now achieved probably suboptimal results. So one is really as I said, like accepting a second your fate and always thinking like a worst case scenario, and sort of trying to draw your plans from there. The second thing is, you know, to maintain, as you said, like keeping a pulse on the market while a lot of experts and advisors and you’re really building your network allows you to have the sort of polls, because there’s people that we, you know, particular sub segments of news every day that you maybe never consult so these guys will be able to tell you on a trade by trade basis, what they think is most likely and you can also take that advice and incorporate into your own sort of planning and overall Again, he’s also being, you know, extremely transparent with his stuff, and then it will run because, you know, they signed up for something that it was very different than the reality that is today. And again, having a very transparent and honest conversation with these people say, like, Look, you know, things have changed. This is how we, you know, we were kind of things here, like you were told, you know, since day one out to be transparent. This is, this is the plan we foresee for yourself, you know, do you see yourself fitting his plan, given these are the activities and the competencies that we would expect you to evolve or acquire? And if not, then you know, it’s better to again, be very transparent, and we will do our best to help you find your next home. You know, and we take it from them, but again, like Mexico conversations are usually very difficult, but they’re easy, right? Because you’re always planning for the worst. So that.
Greg Toroosian 23:46
Yeah, again, great advice. Thank you for that. key things that you know, keeping that pulse and those advisor relationships going and strong. And then the conversations with your team. So I’ll dig into both of those, but with you in the advisors, do you have a set list of people that you have regular calls with? Or is it just, you know, you ask people to send you information as to when they see anything relevant.
Renato Ricci 24:11
And it’s a bit of both. It’s people that, you know, we’ve got, you know, conversations, like, I’m sure, like, you know, we had a conversation earlier, if one day, they can advise something to ask you to shoot you an email, and within a couple of days, you know, 20 minutes shout about it. So that’s sort of a relationship. So it’s not necessarily advisors that have equity. So people that we know, are no experts in a particular domain field. Then there’s also the more structured calls where of course, you know, there are advisors that have equity in our company, whether it’s executives, you know, from brands that you want to sell to all the phones or whatever, but these are more, you know, this is more for recurring structured events. I’ve been visiting investor network, right, which again, late, you know, looking on LinkedIn, if you want to be advised, you know, maybe I don’t know you want to know what the company you know, certain people in retail are doing when you ask like your VCs or your network if they know anybody that experts connect to. And usually a guy needs, you know, people tend to be I think it’s changed a lot since we got funded, you know, like big investors behind you makes it a lot more, people want to know you, so more eager to share.
Renato Ricci 25:16
But yeah, so it’s, that’s how it’s not I think reading and being shameless, right like as a founder, I think you’d be you’d be stupid if you think he knew it all. It would be really alarming if you didn’t ask for advice and even ask dumb questions right? Most of the things you’ve not done before, and people have done it countless times.
Greg Toroosian 25:34
You are literally mimicking stuff I’ve been saying on the show so far. So this is great. Yeah, no, this is major—
Renato Ricci 25:40
I shouldn’t say, but you sent me all your previous recordings.
Greg Toroosian 25:44
Yeah, for sure. Scratch that. No, no, but that’s ideal. So basically, the power is in your network. And don’t be ashamed to reach out to your network. Don’t be worried about seeming stupid and have that self reflection and awareness of what you know what you don’t know. And don’t feel bad about it. Right? Right. Utilize the specialists to utilize people that have that pulse in the market that you might not have. And frankly, being a founder. Regardless, if you’re a small company, large company, at one person, company, your time is so limited. You can’t know everything that’s going on, you can’t be aware of everything. So use the people that do know for that area of the business. And the other topic that you touched on, there was the conversations with your staff about pivoting. And I’ve got that firsthand experience of hiring people for very specific projects to build some to build x, whatever it is, whether it’s a platform, a marketplace, a product, whatever it is, sometimes people get so bought in and so pinpointed you know they drill down on this is what I’m here for this is there and I’m not going anywhere else because this is all I want to build. It’s a great interview question and also As you mentioned before, like expectation setting conversation to have about, you know, you’re joining a startup, we things are ever changing things, you have to be nimble, we may have to pivot and set that expectation if that does happen, which is likely they may, especially in the world that we live in right now. Is that going to be okay? Are you going to be able to handle it if your role needs to change? If you know, your duties change? Or if we need to repurpose you into another area of the business? Is that going to be a deal breaker or game changer for you? Because the reality is the market may dictate where we go next. Right? Yeah. So those transparent conversations are key, whether it’s at the interview stage, in your check-ins, or at a point where difficult decisions need to be made with the company.
Renato Ricci 27:46
Yeah. And again, I think to sort of contextualize it where your stage company, you know, people join a stage because they believe in the idea in the team really mainly right, because everything else is unproven. So as long as you really do your Best to sort of understand from them like a you know, how much research Have you done about the companies it’s something that they really see the value off for just looking for a job you know, these sort of questions usually are from my experience for you like you can tell right away if someone you know, if someone is really passionate about what you’re building and you’ve often come You know, it’s it’s easier but this person will stick around as opposed to someone but maybe, you know, he’s not, you know, he’s very good at what we’re doing. Could be working for your company or another one, you know, as long as he’s sort of in that field environment the times become hard but you know, that person I think would be the first one to maybe look around. Right so that’s I think it’s very important to structure your use of your interview, even ask like when you apply to us, the first thing we ask is, why not? You know, two sentences work but if you don’t put the effort of writing those two sentences in your application, then you want to consider right because then why would I waste my time looking at your CV?
Greg Toroosian 28:53
Yeah, they need to know who you are, what you’re about, have done their research and already been bought in before because People just you know, jump on indeed and apply to every role with the same job title. And you don’t want that. I call them informed job seekers, right. They’ve gone on whether it’s built in LA, paid your LinkedIn page or Glassdoor page, whatever it may be, looked at some articles, looked at your website and stuff like that. And now they’re informed and they’re still choosing to apply for whatever reason that may be and you want to know why. Before you engage with them. Yeah, definitely. Cool. Well, I think that for now almost wraps this up. Because this has been very, very informative, a great conversation. Before you go, any things that founders or heads of departments should stay away from things that they should completely avoid while trying to build their teams. Any gems of advice in that?
Renato Ricci 29:49
In a second, I think that’s a good question. Something they should not do.
Greg Toroosian 29:54
Yeah. Anything that you might have learned along the way that you’re like, Oh, I wish I knew that when I started this No, it would have saved me a lot of either time money heartache.
Renato Ricci 30:06
Yeah, I think it’s I mean there’s two things one which is more directed towards recruiters and I you structure your your deals with them you say I want more internal so i think you know sometimes like to contextualize it to us right when we first moved to the US we literally had no network right because we had to create a business in Nigeria for the most part, yes, we did our best to network, but investors usually out you know, mainly for other things, but talent per se, right? Because I always defected to recruiters. So we got directed to a recruiting firm and then you know, a recruiting firm essentially told us look, what are you looking for and JD whatever boom is going to start finding us candidates. We never worked for a recruiting company before we never really hired many people either before right, we’re in stages we were and so we you know, we started receiving like, you know, terms like for instance, like you know, whatever percentage on you know, your your first year salary and then there’s gonna be like, even guarantee right basically Spend so you have like three miles, four miles or five miles or six months guarantee you either get cash cash refund or credit card next placement. Exactly. So we didn’t know like, you know, there’s also payment terms, right the way people feel these are the payment was paid off across installments and so forth. So we didn’t know most of this. So you know, we got like a worse deal essentially paying like a lot of physical prompt on things like a free guarantee for replacement of the cash, so on and so forth. So, you know, making the mistakes once especially if you make a mistake, or an expensive hire, more senior hire, I think will teach you a lot of lessons. But you’ll quickly learn the hard way. And since then, you know, we’ve been paying much more attention. You know, we’ve been doing some of the recruiting ourselves or really pay much more attention towards which recruiter relationships we want to be in, and how we really want to construct the team.
Greg Toroosian 31:48
That’s great. That’s great advice. Yeah, I think again, as you mentioned, going to advisors or people that might know more about a certain space. If you’ve never done this before, if you’ve never worked with a real recruiting company, whether they’re a headhunter or an agency, or wherever it may lean on someone else who knows. Because of those terms, some of those contracts, I’ve seen a ton of them, obviously being in house, and then setting up my own business or working for agencies before. And I’ve seen some that are very lengthy and designed to confuse you. And it’s and it’s tough, right? Yeah. And you want it to be as clear as possible. You want it to be fair, because a lot of them are weighed heavily to one side or another. And I say that from both right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, as I mentioned, I’ve worked internal and sometimes you have your own agency agreement that you like. We won’t work with this agency unless they sign our agreement, which isn’t. I mean, it’s good for you to know, safeguard that you’re not being screwed over, frankly, and then be having to review or send over to your legal teams all the time, a new contract. So I definitely see it from the internal standpoint, and my level team would love it. When I’d say look, let’s just create our own we’ll get the recruiters to sign It’s fair, we can just change percentages as we need to.
Renato Ricci 33:03
And you also want to build the relationship with the recruiter right? Like you can tell right away somebody’s like, you know, they believe in your business, right? And we’re going to be more lenient around the terms and also the way they want to work, you know, versus like, if somebody that just doesn’t believe as much in your business, I think most of it will be shown by the sort of terms they’re trying to impose your right.
Greg Toroosian 33:22
Definitely you can tell a lot from that. Right, if someone’s coming to you. And I think this is key for early stage companies. If you are seed series A, and you’re looking for long term relationships you want there’s certain types of recruiting recruiters and recruiting firms that you should or can partner with. And then there’s some that you should definitely avoid. And you’ll see how the communications are done, how the flexibility is in there, how they buy into your whole story or where you are in your growth. All of that stuff is key because you can’t just be all about that transaction, if it’s a transactional relationship, but transactional recruits So they’re not adding much more value to working with them to the process or even to helping you stage your growth in the best way. You probably want to find someone else so you have a few more conversations. Spending another week or two to find the right person is going to save you a lot of money, heart ache, you know, probably time span and money spent on legal as well.
Renato Ricci 34:25
Absolutely.
Greg Toroosian 34:26
Yeah. And you said there was another point as well so there was firstly the—
Renato Ricci 34:33
Yeah, the recruiters and then yeah, I’ve seen from my end like really just don’t you know, don’t do a job description just for the sake of doing a job description really full time You know, a lot of companies later stages of generic manager but usually helps to start on early stage it’s up to you really to do it is really think like what are the competencies what I need from this person, not the tasks per se because the task is going to change every week. Really? What are the competencies right so free cinema marketing manager, if I want if I want a marketing manager tools to do a customer service, but one requirement would definitely be like, you know, I think that the bat, right having shown me that in the past, we’re able to pivot from one role to another and I’ve been able to do so successfully, as I’m using that and sorry, we didn’t touch upon one critical critical thing. But I think he’s been overlooked by a lot of people because of the reference checks. So especially these particular moments, right stories, you really want to incorporate those in your in your structure to make sure but especially for you know, a bonus like flexibility, adaptability, great for things that you want to make sure what are the most important characteristics on your scale, right, because different companies and different scales. Then tailor your questions to making sure that you have a full story about God. And then very, always verify you know the accuracy of that story with that person’s reference, right. And always, always do a backdoor reference and ask converse questions that you think are, but maybe you know, you have sort of red, you know, red flags, or maybe you have a little bit of inconsistency or maybe look too good to be true. Always ask those difficult questions to backdoor references. Because that’s where, you know, we’ve seen a lot of interesting, interesting content, both from the good and the bad, right?
Greg Toroosian 36:18
Yeah. Yeah. And as your network grows, I mean, if for anyone who doesn’t know can you explain from your side how you go around doing backdoor references?
Renato Ricci 36:25
Yeah, sure. So, for reference essentially means contacting someone in the previous person to not least as a potential refer. And you know, they work together in another company. And so for instance, you know, it’s like this guy, you know, this person used to work for Company A a while ago, the company will never ask our network like, Hey guys, you know, our VCs and when our advisors you guys know anyone second degree connections that work in this company, and specifically that department. I would say a good chunk of the time we managed to get somebody but he’s like, second or third degree connected and you know, Eventually, it will give us a reference all the time. It’s just, you know, long pages, contact the company directory and just say like, Look, I just need to verify a couple of things. This person worked here who, you know, January, they would say, Yes, we wouldn’t give you much information, but they can definitely even, you know, put a note in for you and be referred to one of our managers, for our people.
Greg Toroosian 37:22
Perfect. Yeah. And, as you mentioned, you know, going to your network, as your network grows as your employee base grows, you’re gonna end up knowing people, especially somewhere like LA, frankly,
Renato Ricci 37:33
Smaller, smaller.
Greg Toroosian 37:36
Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna know. So it’s good. It’s good to do, definitely to find out firsthand, especially if it’s a role that you really are going to invest in. I have a love hate relationship with references to be frankly, honest with you for references that people provide for the reason that no one’s going to provide a reference that is bad. I think in all of my years, I’ve taken one where the person was like, Is, and it wasn’t really a bad reference. They just asked, Are they going to be leading people? Are they going to be managing anyone in this role? And I was like, no, it’s an individual contributor role. They’re like, okay, cool, that would be my only thing. They’re not really great managers. And that person was self aware enough to to not go into a managerial role after being in one. That’s the only negative thing I’ve ever had from doing very deep references that are provided. But they provide them Right, exactly. Yeah. So the backdoor references, that’s where you really, really get value. That’s where you really are on Earth. I mean, there’s sometimes horror stories, right? That you kind of want to know. And then sometimes you just hear stuff about red flags that you weren’t aware of. And it’s good to do that. If you’re if you’re sure about someone and you’re going to that latter stage and you find that out earlier on. Maybe you address it during the interview process. You know, you’re able to dive into it a little bit more and nourished around it in your own way.
Renato Ricci 38:55
Yeah, and also think it’s a what’s your learning for references both back door and back door? But the thing that was proven very successful for us is to sort of incorporate the learnings on the onboarding. So on the first day seeing that person and saying, Oh, look, these other good things, I’ve heard the server less good things I’ve heard, you know, it’s perfectly fine. Right? We would make the decision regardless, right? We are like or cards, you know, make a decision. Just make sure that we capitalize on your strengths and turn your weaknesses in your work and your weaknesses. And that really people like, no, they look at us like, Oh my God, thank God, you guys. You guys like to know me so well already? Yeah, I mean, for us, you know, it’s like, it’s like accepting a new family member, right? Thank you for hopping on. If you have a father and your daughter’s getting married, you want to know who the husband is gonna be. So definitely, you do your due diligence, and that’s, you know, that’s what we do and, and, you know, working for vi also helps them and set their own sort of plan and KPIs. We’ve seen video, you know, overarching okrs to develop on those strengths and weaknesses that we are dry. So it’s really like a cohesive story from the first dog to the to the ongoing monthly performance assessments.
Greg Toroosian 40:03
That’s great. I mean, we can go down this whole rabbit hole that now that I’m thinking about management style and how people respond to leadership and all of that stuff, which is, which also causes people to act a certain way in work or become disengaged or maybe seem disruptive, or whatever it is, but you can go so deep. And I think that’s a whole other episode.
Renato Ricci 40:25
Right now.
Greg Toroosian 40:27
But, ya know, this has been, as I mentioned, really, really interesting, really informative. Thank you very much for taking the time. And speaking with us today. I really appreciate it.
Renato Ricci 40:40
Thanks. Thanks for having me. So it’s always a pleasure. It’s really good that you know, you have this podcast, I think with a lot of people, you know, navigate through waves of uncertainty and I wish I had you sort of content before and so thank you all for making me so they can be available to other people.
Greg Toroosian 40:59
Thanks. You’re not so now I appreciate that. And I hope it is useful. I hope people get a lot of value from it and share and, you know, take some of these points because this is, like I mentioned and very, very informative. And there’s some great gems in here that people can really take and put into their work right now. So we’ve been speaking to Renato.
Renato, where can people learn more about you and your company or follow you?
Renato Ricci 41:24
Yeah, surely you can check us out on trynok.com, spelled n-o-k. And from there, you’re able to access like all of our social media channels, LinkedIn, sign up to our invite on our platform, and you’ll hear from us in your inbox whether you are perfect or not. So thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thanks, Greg.
Intro 41:48
Thank you for listening to the Elevate Hire podcast. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. Until next time.
