Amanda Painter Of Joy of Pursuit On How To Hire The Right Person

An Interview With Ben Ari

Look beyond charismatic personalities; prioritize skills demonstration. Make it a requirement for candidates to showcase their abilities. While candidates may speak convincingly about their skills on their resumes and during an interview, a skills assessment allows them to show, not just tell — ensuring that their words align with their capabilities.

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 Painter.

Amanda J. Painter, co-founder and CFO of Joy of Pursuit, is an accomplished author and Human Resource consultant, with four published books in her Team Solution Series tailored for small businesses. These books offer comprehensive implementation plans to navigate the employee journey effectively, blending Amanda’s organizational expertise with HR insights to enhance efficiency and foster a culture of worth within organizations.

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 began my career as a finance manager at a small consulting firm where, due to budget constraints, I took on additional human resources tasks alongside financial management. Over the years, I maintained my focus on finance in the small business sector but continued to be assigned HR duties as well. This consistent dual responsibility revealed a substantial opportunity to help small businesses establish and improve their HR processes. As I honed my HR skills, I uncovered a genuine passion for the human aspect of business, inspiring the creation of my company, Joy of Pursuit, and an HR-focused book series, The Team Solution Series, bridging the gap between small businesses and effective HR practices.

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?

Taking the leap to become an author was the pivotal decision. As someone who has always been a numbers person, I never considered myself a writer. However, with the support and encouragement of my business partner and co-author, Brenda Haire, I took the plunge and committed to writing my first book, The Hiring Process. This decision subsequently paved the way for the 4-book series and the establishment of my HR consulting company.

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

The most significant initiative I take pride in is fostering a culture of worth within workplaces. While this theme serves as the subtitle for the third book in my series, it is the fundamental basis of the entire series and my professional work. In a world where individuals often feel disconnected, burnt out, and lacking joy in their lives, inspiring organizations to cultivate a culture of worth extends beyond the boundaries of someone’s job. When work becomes more fulfilling, it positively impacts one’s personal life, making daily life more joyful and harmonious.

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

I transitioned from traditional in-person work to a remote career well before it became common or was necessitated by the pandemic. At that time, established guidelines on maintaining electronic boundaries were not widespread. The company I was working with exclusively interacted with clients via email. It was a small entrepreneurial business and my work was a significant overhaul of their finance and billing department and introduced improved structures, including HR processes.

However, a unique situation arose when a client complaint was escalated to me. After several email exchanges, I decided to address the matter with a phone call, which led to the client connecting with me on social media. Subsequently, she began reaching out to me frequently through my personal social media account. It became necessary for me to establish a clear boundary, redirecting all business-related inquiries, complaints, and discussions to the appropriate company channels, rather than via private messages on social media. This experience taught me a crucial lesson about maintaining professional boundaries, which I now emphasize and share with others.

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

The phrase “Be who you needed when you were younger” is a driving force in my life, influencing both my personal and professional endeavors. A crucial aspect of this commitment is providing mentorship, as there is immense satisfaction in imparting the wisdom I’ve accumulated throughout my career to those in the learning phase.

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 have deep admiration for Brene Brown and her leadership approach. Her work revolves around vulnerability, authenticity, and alignment with core values. Embracing vulnerability is undeniably challenging and requires considerable effort. However, as leaders, it is essential to authentically acknowledge our challenges to foster trust in our professional relationships. Brown’s advocacy for leaders to be grounded in their core values and to cultivate organizational cultures that reflect those values resonates with my consulting work. When business leaders can identify their core values, I can assist them in implementing strategies and tools to establish the desired corporate culture.

Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s change paths a little bit. 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?

Before launching my business, Joy of Pursuit, and prior to the pandemic, I held the dual role of CFO/CHRO at a company that operated entirely in a virtual environment. This prior experience with remote hiring, onboarding, and employee communication proved invaluable when advising clients who struggled with these challenges during the pandemic.

The primary challenge I’ve observed is establishing genuine connections in a virtual setting. Overcoming this necessitates a shift in mindset, with effective communication taking precedence. This emphasis should begin with crafting comprehensive job descriptions and extend beyond the hiring process, involving leadership and permeating the entire team. Effective communication doesn’t equate to excessive messaging but rather involves intentional, focused, and consistent efforts. When such communication becomes integral to work processes, it fosters connections through avenues like mentorship programs, well-structured meetings, employee feedback sessions, and other tailored approaches.

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?

From my perspective, The Great Resignation has compelled many companies to prioritize something they should have been doing all along — putting their people first. The foundation of a successful company rests upon a thriving team. This entails not only fair compensation and appealing incentives to attract top-tier talent but, above all, the cultivation of a culture that recognizes and retains valuable employees.

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?

1 . Start by gaining clarity on your hiring needs. Examine your internal requirements and precisely define the problem the role will address. In 2–3 sentences, articulate what success entails for this position, and use these insights to craft a clear and comprehensive job description.

A well-constructed job description serves as the initial step in candidate screening. It should provide unambiguous details about job responsibilities, skill requirements, the work environment, and — I cannot stress this enough — compensation information. Failing to provide the details about compensation wastes everyone’s time, and definitely negatively affects the hiring process. As you assess potential candidates, consistently ask yourself, “Does this individual possess the skills needed to solve our specific problem?” This ensures alignment between candidate capabilities and your hiring objectives.

2 . Incorporate your core values into the hiring and screening process. Leverage them as a guiding framework when evaluating prospective candidates to protect your current team from individuals who don’t align with these core values. As you review resumes and applications, maintain a focus on your company’s core components. Craft screening questions and interview topics that serve two key purposes: first, to underscore the significance of your core components to applicants, and second, to aid in identifying the ideal candidate who will contribute to your vision.

3 . Establish and maintain a standardized hiring process, consistently applying tools to evaluate all candidates. One example of this is an Interview ScoreCARD, as recommended in my book The Hiring Process. This tool will assist with an objective assessment of the candidate by all team members who participate in the interviews. The CARD acronym stands for Culture, Ability, Role, and Desire. Scoring on these basic components during an interview will help you build a well-rounded assessment of each candidate when used consistently.

4 . Look beyond charismatic personalities; prioritize skills demonstration. Make it a requirement for candidates to showcase their abilities. While candidates may speak convincingly about their skills on their resumes and during an interview, a skills assessment allows them to show, not just tell — ensuring that their words align with their capabilities.

5 . Utilize a team-based approach throughout your hiring process. Collaborate with your team during each step — job description creation, screening questions, skills assessment, and interviews — ensuring that you gather insights from those who will lead and work closely with the individual in this role. Foster a collaborative interviewing process that includes multiple team members; involve 2–3 colleagues in the interviews, as their diverse perspectives will provide a well-rounded evaluation of each candidate.

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

Lack of asking questions. The absence of questions might indicate a lack of engagement or preparation, potentially warranting concern depending on the role and your company’s culture.

Excessive self-promotion of skills and abilities, without a demonstrated interest in aligning with your company’s vision and mission, or a disinterest in the collaborative team and overarching mission, could be cause for concern.

Questionable workplace etiquette — such as tardiness, inappropriate attire, or impoliteness should raise concerns, signaling potential issues with professional conduct in a workplace context.

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 think this goes back to my previous response about fostering a culture of worth in the workplace but expands beyond work. We are all worthy of happiness, love, and all the joys life has to offer. And with that comes knowing what shouldn’t be a part of your life and how to set boundaries. When we know our worth we become empowered to change our futures and positively impact those around us.

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