President of Herrenkohl Consulting

Eric Herrenkohl talks with Bill Ringle about how to hire A-Players for Small Business Leaders.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com  for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

Interview Insights

Key points that you’ll learn from this interview:

  • The fatal flaw of treating hiring as a transactional process
  • Understanding that outstanding performers often need to be managed and supported differently than others
  • Recruiting is a critical leadership skill
  • The magic of involvement leading to buy-in
  • The precaution that C-players may be able to sell themselves better than A-players
  • The best questions to ask to discover the real responsibilities that a candidate undertook
  • How to coach your team to find the best fit for the role without worrying about offending candidates (you’re actually doing them a service, too!)
  • Even very good businesspeople have blind spots that can limit their effectiveness (in hiring as well as in performing)

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

  • 3:04 Eric discusses what it was like meeting Bob Perkins at YoungLife.
  • 3:19 “Great leaders lead other leaders.”
  • 4:01 “If you want to hire and keep great people then you’re going to have to be prepared to invest in a few and have that team be the core that impacts the many.”
  • 6:08 Why “A Players” can sometimes be difficult.
  • 7:48 “I think there’s a difference between disagreeable [people] and people who are behaving poorly because they’re not getting the attention, and not getting treated the way that they need.”
  • 9:25 Why leaders should always have a Plan B when it comes to dealing with toxic A Players.
  • 12:02 “You’ve got to get your whole team involved in recruiting.”
  • 14:25 What it means to have an A Player scorecard, and what the process means for team buy-in of new recruits.
  • 14:51 How asking questions can create a whole new level of employee engagement.
  • 16:23 “We get better at things that we practice.”
  • 18:03 Tested tips and tricks for putting interviewees at ease before and during an interview.
  • 18:08 “The most important interview question is the follow-up question.”
  • 20:54 “What you’re doing as an interviewer is working to ensure a good mutual fit: good for the company, and good for the person.”
  • 22:45 “There are not that many great leaders out there, so if you invest in your own ability as a leader, if you get better as a leader, then you’ll attract other leaders.”
  • 23:25 “I’m committed to finding and hiring the best people that I can.”
  • 23:57 What inspired Eric to write the book How to Hire A-Players.
  • 26:54 “Over the last 6 months the talent markets have gotten hotter, making it harder to find and hire the best.”
  • 27:35 What Eric does to stay productive and on track. 

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Expert Bio

Eric Herrenkohl is the President of Herrenkohl Consulting, a consulting and retained executive search firm that he founded in 2002. He works as an advisor to CEOs on building superior leadership teams.

Eric is the author of the upcoming book Crowbar: Pry away top talent, surround yourself with the right leaders, and create the team your customers demand.

His previous book How to Hire A-Players is an Amazon bestseller published by Wiley that is described as one of the top 10 recruiting books of all time by Recruiter.com.

Business Week, Fox News, NBC News, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Philadelphia Business Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Inc.com, Careerbuilder.com, MSNBC.com, Monster.com, and the LinkedIn Talent Blog have all featured his work.

Eric holds a master’s degree from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis and an undergraduate degree in economics and history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He and his wife and four children live in the Philadelphia area.

For more information, visit Eric Herrenkohl’s website.

Contact Info and Social Media for Eric Herrenkohl

Resources Mentioned by Eric Herrenkohl:

Below are key people, places, books, quotes, websites, and other resources that we discussed so you can explore further.

Bob Perkins – WRTI

Published by Eric Herrenkohl