FBC – 343 – How to make sure you get the very best person for the job

How to make sure you get the very best person for the job.

Today, I am going to give you my secret sauce to find the best person for my company. Alright it's MY secret formula that works for me and other people might tell you otherwise.

The key is looking at the problem from a different angle. Extraordinary moves bring extraordinary results and I believe that you should differentiate yourself from the herd.

All the details in today's episode.

If you are serious about finding a way to get a glimpse of true freedom and get as close as one can be, then click on the link below.

https://martinebongue.com/profit-machines

Key Takeaways

The best hiring strategy is simple: stop reading resumes and start giving real work tests. A paid trial task reveals more than any interview ever will.

Hire for attitude, train for skills. A great mindset and strong work ethic cannot be taught, but technical skills can be learned in weeks.

The one hiring test I never skip anymore

You do not find the best person for the job in the interview. You find them in the first small task you hand over.

I stopped trusting polished answers years ago. Anyone can rehearse a good story. What I watch instead is how someone handles one real, paid trial task before I ever talk salary.

My rule is simple. I give a two-hour paid task that mirrors the actual work. Not a puzzle. Not a hypothetical. The exact thing they would do in week one. Then I read three things: did they ask sharp questions, did they hit the deadline, did they own the gaps.

Out of the last dozen people I tried this way, four cleared it cleanly. The other eight looked great on paper and fell apart on the task. That gap is the whole point. Harvard Business Review has written for years that structured, work-sample evaluation beats gut-feel interviews, and McKinsey Digital keeps finding the cost of a wrong senior hire runs into months of lost output.

I learned this the expensive way, hiring on charm and paying for it. I told that story in my story, and I keep unpacking the operator side of it across the Freedom by Choice podcast. Test the work, not the words.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best way to hire for a small business?

Focus on practical tests over resumes. Give candidates a paid trial task that mirrors real work. This shows you their actual skills, communication style, and reliability better than any interview.

How do I avoid bad hires?

Set clear expectations upfront, use trial periods, and trust the data over your gut feeling. Most bad hires happen because entrepreneurs rush the process or ignore early warning signs.

Should I hire for skills or attitude?

Hire for attitude and train for skills, especially in small businesses. A motivated person with the right mindset will learn faster than a skilled person who does not care. Technical skills can be taught. Work ethic cannot.

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So yesterday I was doing something that I haven't done in ages, which is recruiting people. I forgot how complicated it was to go through people's lives, having to read all the descriptions to figure out who was interested, who was not interested and who has the other attributes that I want and stuff like that, you know.

So I'm looking for someone to join the team. I have to scan through a lot of CVS and people's cover letters and all that stuff.

So typically what people do is they will look at the skills that people have. You went to school and blah, blah, blah. That's it. I want you, OK? And, you know, one thing that I look at more than Skills is people's attributes. It's hard to see it directly from a cover letter because everybody just looks nice on the cover letter, like, oh, I'm so motivated.

But the skills are something that you can teach someone. So if you don't have the skill, let's say you have to work on a construction site. You don't know how to break a rock with your hammer. I think there is a technique. I'm pretty sure there is one after like two hours of doing it. That's it. You know how to do it.

But in my case I am actually going to give them a lot of the things that they need to be doing already, giving them pretty much everything. So the most important thing for me to find a candidate is to look at their attributes.

And what I mean by attributes is people who, instead of what they know, what they know is good. But again, as I said, if you don't know something, I'll give you a training. You follow the training. At the end of the day, you know it. All right.

If you don't have the right attributes, you are not a go getter, you're kind of lazy or you need someone to push and be behind you and micromanage you and all that stuff, you know, as good as you are, it's not going to work for me. That's not what I'm looking for.

There are some people who didn't have the skills that I needed, but I felt like I could give them a chance because it looked like they were ready to step out of their comfort zone and learn something new. And seemed to be motivated. Right.

How to make sure you get the very best person for the job

If I see that someone is going out there and actually putting themselves out there and getting internships and positions and stuff like that, even if it's in different industries and stuff, it really doesn't matter to me. What matters is the attitude of those people.

So sometimes, you know, based on what they're saying in the cover letter, they have two or three sentences, I will give people a chance. So there are a lot of people that I shortlisted. They will be a great fit and a great addition to the team because they seem to have the right mind-set.

I'm all about the mind-set. I think the mind-set makes the difference. You know, again, you can acquire skills. It's not complicated. I'm just repeating like a broken record, but it's very important. And a lot of people don't understand this.

So anyway, I found a really good candidate. I really like the dude. And in addition, he actually had experience. He actually did the task that I wanted that person to do. And I said, well, I want the person who has done that and the person who has experience and knowledge in this field, because a lot of the tasks that I want him to take care of are going to be around this.

This is years and years and years of experience that this guy is going to get because he was motivated enough to put himself out there. If he does a good job, then I want to reward him with something that's way more valuable than some money that I would have given him. I will give them the knowledge and the power to go and create his own business and stuff.

And the relationship I have and I have with people in my team is if they have a question, they want to understand something they ask me. I tell them and I always tell them if we're doing something, I'm going to give them the full spectrum of what we're doing.

And so they understand everything. Right. And the same thing that I want to do here in this case, because I think when people are valued and when they learn, they grow every day, then they're happy to stay in that kind of environment.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches , from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms , while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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