Amanda Furgiuele Of AF Consulting Team On How To Hire The Right Person

An Interview With Ken Babcock

Connect with your current team. Who knows the position better than someone who would be working directly with a new hire? I like to get feedback directly from the source! Sit down with your favorite (yes, we all have favorites) employees and learn what attracted them to the company and to their position. What type of person do they want to see in the position? You’d be surprised how insightful your team can be! I have even seen tremendous success with an employee referral program.

When a company is looking to grow, the choice of who to hire can sometimes be an almost existential question. The right hire can dramatically grow a company, while the wrong hire can be very harmful to morale and growth. How can you know you are hiring the right person? What are the red flags that should warn you away from hiring someone? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights and stories from their experience about “How To Hire The Right Person”. As a part of this series I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Amanda Furgiuele.

Amanda Furgiuele is the CEO of AF Consulting Team, a business dedicated to helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, increase profits, and streamline their systems. She is a sole parent, multiple-business owner and entrepreneur, international performer, elite athlete, and an expert in creative problem solving and time management. She challenges her clients to stop making excuses and start making progress through innovative solutions to even the most mundane problems.

Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?

I have a rather diverse background and have been buying, selling, and creating businesses for over twenty years. Because of a wide range of passions and interests, I have found myself working all over the world in everything from television production to personal training, Pole Dancing, Burlesque, Media management, coaching, podcasting, writing, and so much more. I believe that everyone is a combination of experiences and those experiences, however random or seemingly inconsequential, shape who you are as a leader and how you will, in turn, run your businesses.

You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?

I am where I am today because I wasn’t afraid to take a huge risk on myself. Years ago, I was working a job I loved as a television producer. I genuinely loved the work and still take on the occasional freelance job just for fun. So, there was no real reason why I should have quit that position, and it was a huge risk to do so, especially considering my cost of living at the time. But I knew I wanted to strike out on my own. I knew I wanted to create something and so that’s what I did. I started a new business, helped it thrive, and then eventually sold it. And that business really launched me into the business owner I am today. It wasn’t my first business, but it was the one that really helped me develop as an entrepreneur.

What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?

I’ve always found it incredibly important to give back to my community, which is why every business I own makes it a priority to host various charitable events throughout the year, from smaller clothing and food drives to larger-scale events and community expos. It’s part of the legacy I want to leave behind.

How about a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away?

I am a money and numbers person (not a math person, but a numbers person). That being said, it was particularly mortifying when I once wrote a $50,000 hot check! Nothing will teach you the value of proper and thorough bookkeeping like making that kind of horrendous blunder! It basically came down to proper reconciliations. If I had truly paid attention to the money going out and coming in, rather than just the number I saw on the bank statement, then I would never have made such a stupid mistake. Lesson learned. And I still thank the banker who called me about it before I incurred the fees.

How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?

I am a huge supporter of coaching! I work as a business coach and consultant and I, myself, have a coach. Yes, even coaches have coaches! And I think it is so important to really look at what you want in your business and how quickly you want to get there, and sometimes the best solution is to get help from someone else who has been there. Even though you may know the action steps you need to take, it can be vital to have someone else take a second look, help you make tough decisions, hold you accountable, and provide constructive feedback.

Some people might consider coaching an extraneous expense, but looking back at my career, I would not be where I am today had I not invested in that support and guidance. Coaching accelerates your efforts and gets you results faster, and with less stress. It’s 100% worth it.

Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?

I absolutely believe I was born into leadership. When I was younger, I steamrolled everyone and was basically known as the slave driver (to be honest, I still fight that instinct, and a lot of that influence comes from the work ethic instilled by my father), but as I got older and more experienced, I found that that style of leadership doesn’t exactly inspire.

It was actually moving to Hawaii that forced me to make the biggest shift — moving from an East Coast mentality to the island life was certainly an adjustment. And in that transition, I discovered the power of compassion and connection and met several incredible leaders there who helped me develop that side of my leadership style. I still have a no-nonsense, go-getter approach to all things business, but at least now I temper that by forming genuine relationships and working to inspire a vision, rather than force my own ideals on everyone around me.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s change paths a little bit. In my work, I focus on helping companies to simplify the process of creating documentation of their workflow, so I am particularly passionate about this question. Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?

A team is only as effective as its leader, so I always look to myself first. What can I do better? How can I inspire, lead, or teach better? Some of the most important aspects of growing and scaling my team have to do with creating proper expectations, teaching my team the way they want to be taught and instilling the company vision in each person so that we all go up together.

I rely heavily on knowing more about my team than just their names, positions, and duties. In order to scale from within, it’s important to understand how your team learns best, what motivates and incentivizes them, and what I can do to facilitate that. I love using personality and learning style assessments to discover key insights into how I can best communicate with and motivate my team. By incorporating these assessments into something as straightforward as internal trainings, I have seen exponential growth in productivity, efficiency, and morale.

The pandemic forced many companies to adapt. Implementing remote onboarding and professional development — in addition to maintaining culture — challenged organizations. Can you share with us the challenges you have faced, with remote onboarding and hiring? How have your internal processes evolved as a result?

Recruiting and hiring remotely has definitely been a challenge, especially when I so often rely on my intuition and instinct in face-to-face interviewing. Covid changed everything. As more and more day-to-day interactions and operations were forced into isolation, my processes have only become more thorough and involved. Because I am unable to get a true “feeling” for a person and see how they interact with the team before hiring, my hiring process now includes a DISC assessment, references, multiple interviews over the phone and zoom, and a slew of other considerations. It’s a lot, but it also separates the real candidates from the rest.

With the Great Resignation/Reconsideration in full swing, many job seekers are reevaluating their priorities in selecting a role and an employer. How do you think this will influence companies’ approaches to hiring, talent management, and continuous learning?

If Covid taught us anything, it taught us to pivot, and that same mentality applies to hiring, defining positions, and more. I believe much more emphasis should be placed on continued education and what prospective employees did with any time they had off in the last few years (forced or not). Looking at a candidate as a whole person is essential — only then can we determine if someone would be a mutually good fit for a position and/or the company as a whole.

Super, thank you for sharing all of that. Next, let’s turn to the main focus of our discussion about hiring the right person. As you know, hiring can be very time consuming and difficult. Can you share 5 techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill? Please share an example for each idea.

Beyond a gut feeling, hiring encompasses so much more because most jobs require so much more versatility and adaptation than even a few years ago. With that in mind, I always look to a few specific tactics to ensure I’m not wasting time on a candidate who isn’t right for the company:

1. Clearly define the position. What and who am I really trying to hire? What are the exact duties? What kind of skills and education are required? Can that be taught? As the leader, you better know the answers! The job title of “Manager” can mean many things to many people, so it’s important that you get specific with your expectations from the very beginning.
2. Clearly define personality requirements. Let’s be honest, some people are better suited to some jobs. It’s not a judgment, it’s a reality and when you are hiring you need to take this into consideration just as much as what’s written on a resume. That’s not to say that a shy introvert can’t lead a group meeting or that a hot-head can’t excel at customer service, but it’s important that you set your team up for success from the start.
3. Don’t rush. We are all short-staffed and there is work to be done, but that doesn’t mean putting just any old body into the position. Sometimes less is more. It can be tempting to hire anyone who wants to work to fill the position, but hiring the wrong person can be even more detrimental than overworking your team (and can actually create more work and resentment).
4. Connect with your current team. Who knows the position better than someone who would be working directly with a new hire? I like to get feedback directly from the source! Sit down with your favorite (yes, we all have favorites) employees and learn what attracted them to the company and to their position. What type of person do they want to see in the position? You’d be surprised how insightful your team can be! I have even seen tremendous success with an employee referral program.
5. Have a vision and share it. I don’t just want employees — I want someone who will share my vision for the future. When I am in the process of hiring, I make sure to update my company vision statement. It sounds a bit woo-woo, but it helps to explain to a potential employee where I see the company going and how I plan to get there. As an expansion of the mission statement, the vision statement helps identify where an applicant might fit into the future of the company, and gives them an opportunity to see it themselves (and convince me they are the best choice).

In contrast, what are a few red flags that should warn you away from hiring someone?

My two biggest red flags are punctuality and communication. Nothing gets me riled up faster than a potential applicant arriving late and under-prepared. And to be clear, arriving early is actually arriving on time. On-time is late, and late is a waste of both our time. Communication is much the same. With all the advancements in technology, there is absolutely no reason to communicate poorly. It’s very simple but very important.

What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?

If you want something done right, you do it yourself…right? I have always preferred to use my own training systems, videos, and manuals and it has taken me years to fine-tune those. However, because of the more virtual nature of my current teams, we have also had tremendous success with Zoom, Trello, Refresh, Gusto, and Rippling, depending on the business.

Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.

I have always believed in education and empowering women. Ultimately, I would love to spearhead a non-profit that helps provide educational opportunities for women everywhere, including a safe environment for childcare while seeking self-improvement across all fields of study.

This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!

About the interviewer. Ken Babcock is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tango. Prior to his mission of celebrating how work is executed, Ken spent over 4 years at Uber riding the rollercoaster of a generational company. After gaining hands-on experience with entrepreneurship at Atomic VC, Ken went on to HBS. It was at HBS that Ken met his Co-Founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz and they founded Tango.