E577 | Tests To Help Your Hiring Process

Today, I am discussing assessments that can be used as part of a hiring process. I believe that these assessments can be beneficial, but also would like to warn that people might be putting too much emphasis on them. I encourage you to look up each of these assessments to learn more.

• Using Assessments to Evaluate Potential Employees
• "Optimizing Your Hiring Process for Maximum Efficiency"
• How this can help mitigate staff turnover

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: So here's the question. How do physical therapists like us who don't wanna see 30 patients a day, who don't want to work home health and have real student loans create a career and life for ourselves that we've always dreamed about? This is the question, and this podcast is the answer. My name's Danny Matte, and welcome to the PT Entrepreneur Podcast.

What's going on guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and today we are talking about assessments you can use as part of your hiring process. Now this is something that we've actually been looking at quite a few of these as something that we're actually trying to vet for which one we wanna recommend our mastermind members use.

And we haven't done so yet because there's. There's a lot, right? You've got the Enneagram, you've got the DISC profile, you've got Berkman, you've got Colby, you've got Wonder Lick. There's probably a whole bunch of other ones that Myers Briggs. There's another one that I haven't even mentioned that are these they call 'em like personality assessments and.

I, I think Colby is technically, they say they're not a personality assessment, but it definitely looks at personality traits and I've actually done basically all of it. I've done every single one I've mentioned. In the Army, I did a couple they used the the disk and Myers Briggs. We used Berkman with our own staff.

We've used Colby with our own staff. I've done the Wonder Lick assessment as well, and. I think that these can be very beneficial, but also I think people put too much they, they put too much emphasis on these, and if you don't know what I'm talking about look these up and they're, I would say they're beneficial in a lot of ways.

It is interesting. It's almost like somebody reading your horoscope. They're generalizable enough where you're like, oh my God, how do they know so much about me? But not detailed enough that it's really that specific to you as well as people can change over time too. So these tests can change.

So I don't even think you could, you can't just give these to a child. I think one of 'em you can but. You, they'll change, your personality will change and your interests will change. So when we look at these though, how do they fit into a potential hiring process? And some of you might, maybe you actually took one of these as part of a hiring process.

I actually had to do an entire Wonderlic assessment for a a group that was interested in potentially acquiring our company. And it was very lengthy and it, some of it's like IQ testing, but then it's a lot of personality stuff. And they obviously put a lot of faith into that assessment.

But when we look at where these fit, I think they fit as a component piece of your hiring process mainly to help you reaffirm or to rule out your, your thoughts on somebody as a potential fit for your employee, a as your employee, I should say. So for us, one thing that we looked at, and this is probably my favorite one, and now if I had to say the front runner for what we might try to standardize for the businesses that we work with within our mastermind.

It's probably the Colby test. It's k o l b e is the how it's spelled. And Colby basically falls into four different buckets of your strengths, I guess you should say, are where you fall in these different areas. In fact, I'll pull mine up and I'll tell you exactly what they are. So there's four buckets.

There's fact finder, there's follow through, there's quick start, and then there's implementer. So when we look at these and there's a lot of education that goes into people actually being able to effectively leverage these with the team. I will tell you how we have actually used these.

It's probably the simplest way to do it. So I've done this, Ashley has done this. We've had a number of people on our team at Athletes Potential do this. And now we're basically having everybody in PT Biz do this as well as we look at these different assessments. But what we're doing is we're basically finding people that we like for certain roles or are doing really well in certain roles.

For instance, let's say for somebody that's running our front desk, We look at Ashley's Colby assessment. And what she scored on that. And as we interview people or we talk to people about potential opportunities for a job, if they get to a stage where we look at pulling one of these assessments we are going to look at comparing that person's assessment to Ashley's assessment because we know her skillset, it does really well in that role.

So what we were looking for is somebody that's going to look somewhat similar. To that person on their assessment as well as the interview process that we're doing. So this just gives us a little bit more of an objective way of assessing somebody and not just necessarily, oh, I like this person, or, they interviewed well, or their referrals checked out.

You obviously wanna do all of those things. This, I wouldn't say carries as much weight as as you actually having that interaction with that person and seeing how they work with your team and all of that. But if you're coming down to two different people and you're torn, which do you pick?

I pick the one that's more similar to the person who already has shown me that they can do well in that role based on their assessment as well as it helps me rule people out. For instance, if we look at these buckets, so for me, the one that I score the highest in is called the quick start bucket.

I'm like an eight out of 10 on that and. That means that I'm quick to start stuff. I am not very risk averse when it comes to, starting projects. I'm creative. I don't mind getting out in front of people. I'm natural with sales, things like that. But I am not the most organized people.

I will just like piece things together. I don't read directions. Like literally I will assemble stuff. I'll look at the directions and I'll be like, oh God, this is taking too long. I'm just gonna figure this out. And then I just get going. And then obviously it typically doesn't work out so well.

I'll have a half assembled bookshelf and then guess what? Ashley loves directions. Then she comes in, she tells me all the things I did wrong. We disassemble it and then we. Put it back together. This, it's my kryptonite. I'm terrible at that. So imagine somebody that has my profile, trying to run and manage a front desk that requires a massive amount of organization and follow through that I would be a terrible person for that.

Like I might be able to get them to say yes to coming in for a visit because I can communicate well and I'm pretty decent with sales. But when it comes to. All the other component pieces of that, no chance, like it would be awful. So I'm not the kind of person you want in charge of front desk or HR department or something like that.

And you can see it on my assessment. It's interesting. So as a component piece of that, it can definitely help you rule out somebody, like maybe that person's better in a different role based on what they're naturally inclined to be interested in. Because that's what this is it's like, what are you interested in?

What things do you find energy from doing and what things are draining for you? And you don't wanna match somebody up with a role that is gonna be like really just it's not natural for them to want to do because that they're just gonna be unhappy and they're not gonna be a very productive employee in that position.

So I'm gonna think about I think that if we're looking at all of these in my experience I think the Enneagram is pretty interesting, but I think it's a bit more of an art and a science. It's really more of I don't know if it's quite as scientific, but it is interesting, and I think from a relationship standpoint that one's really good.

Berkman is one that we've used. Berkman is difficult. You needed an implementer typically to come in and help facilitate that, but Berkman is all about. Mainly like communication style, like how you receive information, how you like to give information and how if you could understand how your team receives information and how you give information, you can match it up better.

That's great. That's probably the best thing we took away from it, but it's pretty expensive to to get that thing set up and go the the disk profile is I thought was really interesting. We did that when I was in the military and they have, you're, I think that's like the red, yellow, blue, green one.

And it's funny, you start seeing people as those colors or they can be shades of each together. Like an orange is like a yellow and a red. But I think that no matter what you do, whether it's any of these Adding this in as a, as another layer onto your employment process, I think can be really beneficial as just an another objective measure to help you with this.

So anyway, it's p top of mind for me. It's why I'm bringing it up and I think it's something that you can definitely look into if you're interested. Like I said, we're actually working on trying to figure out, what's the one that we wanna recommend as a hiring process cuz we just have so many people, like we have hundreds of businesses we're working with now within the mastermind.

And that means that there's literally like hundreds of people being hired on a. In, in a year, over a hundred people will be hired for sure. Clinicians, administrative staff, other roles, things like that. So it's a lot of hires and getting your hiring process dialed in and as good as possible is really important because turnover will really crush your business.

If you just hire the wrong people. And sometimes you hire the right person, but then other things happen. They decide they wanna change careers, you just, they decide that they they're gonna move. They decide that. They, whatever, they wanna do their own thing. And it's hard to say if that's gonna happen or not.

Cuz people don't always tell you everything and you can't blame 'em for that, right? They're gonna do what they think is best for them. Everybody is selfish. You can say you're not, but if you. If someone takes a picture of you and your friends and you see it, like what's the first thing you do?

You just look at yourself. Everybody does that. So it's not abnormal. You have to just be okay with that. Don't think that someone is necessarily I don't know, being nefarious and going behind your back to go do something or whatever. Like they just. They're just gonna do what's best for them.

And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. As part of your hiring process, the more objective you can be to go along with a really good, interview process and vetting those people and getting recommendations from people that they know and they've worked with. This is just an additional layer that can help make that as systematic and as effective as possible because turnover in a service-based business is just the thing that slows you down the most.

You lose, especially if it's just you and one other provider. Think about this for a second. If it's you have one other provider and you have an admin, 50% of your like workforce that's actually fulfilling is gone. What if 50% of Apple left all at one time, it would cripple that business. And in these small businesses, it's not uncommon to have turnover where you just have one other staff member and then something happens.

They decide to take a different position, they decide that, their spouse is moving or something like that, or changing careers. This happens and I think even more so now. The landscape for employees is if you keep somebody for three years, that's amazing. That's like keeping somebody for 10 years back in the nineties.

You just have, everybody's a free agent and everybody's constantly looking for other opportunities. I see this over and over again. So you gotta maintain a really great culture. Have them have a reason to say they have to have upward mobility opportunities to improve and grow within the company.

Otherwise they leave, right? No matter what they're. No matter what your hiring process is, you might have hired the right person, but then you handled them the wrong way. So keep that in mind too. It's not all about the hiring process, it's about what happens afterward as well. This is just an example of some things we're looking at to help dial that in a little bit better.

So hopefully this little nugget we're sharing helps. I try to share stuff that we're learning from these, 225 businesses that we're actively working with within the Mastermind. We just have a lot of pooled information and data and resources and it's just, honestly, I think it's the biggest.

Benefit of that community is just how many people there are, how much information, we get from that, and how well we can share that across across all those other businesses is almost like a franchise without actually owning any of the businesses that we work with. They're all theirs.

Like they, that's not our businesses. We don't have a chunk of them. It's a very, it's a very unique way of going about it, I believe. But I think the most fair way for the business owners and and, but yet we get the benefit of that shared information and willingness to see best practices in real time and adapt ahead of the curve typically.

So this is something that we're working on. I hope this is helpful for you. Look at your hiring process. If it's not so great and you need some help, I think maybe you should think about reaching out to us. We definitely work with a lot of practices successfully have, so for years and years. And if you're trying to figure all this out on your own, like I just, I literally just named Six fricking assessments you can add in, like how much time you're gonna spend, just even looking these up and trying to figure out what's the right one for you, as well as what does this mean?

Reading the damn tea leaves of these assessments and how it fits into hiring process. Just think about the time and effort that's gonna take you versus our entire team trying to figure this out so they can help our staff. And that's just a small component piece of the things that they have to work on.

So if you're trying to figure it out on your own, I get it. You can do it. It's just a slower way to go. There's no doubt about that. And if something like this is appealing to, to what you're doing, definitely go to physical therapy biz.com, check out what we're doing with the Mastermind. This is more of a higher level thing if you're just getting started.

Don't worry about any of these assessments. You just gotta learn how to market and sell. And there's plenty of resources we have for you on that with especially something like our Clinical Rainmaker program, which is really designed to get people up and running in, in as short as three months.

And. Hopefully gets you to a point where you can go full-time within your own business or at least have an awesome side hustle and make that decision within a short period of time after that. If if you're figuring it out on your own, Yeah, I just, I think it's a slow way, honestly.

I'm very biased, no doubt. But I've just seen too many people that we've had conversations with and we follow up with them a year later after they've decided that they're just gonna figure it out on their own. And they're in the same damn place. They're in the same spot, and they're still frustrated.

They've wasted entire year. They've made a ton of mistakes that they didn't have to make. And if you really added up all the hours and the money that they've wasted it's just, it would've been so much cheaper if they just would've gotten help. Not to mention the stress they would've avoided and the challenges that maybe they would've eliminated within some of other parts of their life that that the business drags into it.

Anyway, guys, I hope you like this one As always, thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.

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