How Waident WINS the best technical talent

Winning Strategies for Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent in the MSP Space

In this episode of WIN (What's Important Now), host Carrie Richardson talks with repeat guest John Ahlberg, the CEO of Waident Technology Solutions. 

They explore Waident's successful strategies for recruiting and retaining talent, especially in the Managed Service Provider (MSP) industry. 

John explains the importance of a people-first culture, work-life balance, and a unique hiring process that emphasizes culture fit, talent, and experience over traditional qualifications. He also shares insights on maintaining flexibility, providing opportunities for employee development, and avoiding the pitfalls of settling for less-than-ideal candidates.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:45 Recruiting and Retaining Talent

01:48 Flexible Work Culture

03:44 Onboarding and Training

04:08 Encouraging Innovation and Change

06:36 Hiring for Culture and Weirdness

10:09 Transparent Job Postings and Interview Process

16:59 Advice for MSPs on Hiring

19:17 Conclusion and Farewell

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

Carrie Richardson: 0:53

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Carrie Richardson. I'm a partner at Richardson and Richardson, and today I am your host for WIN, What's Important Now. Welcome back to John Ahlberg. John is the CEO of Waident Technology Solutions in Chicago and was recently featured in Channel Pro Network, which was where I caught A few tips that I wanted to learn a little bit more about, primarily around how Wadent over the last 20 years and through five acquisitions has managed to retain many of their employees for over 14 years, which I think in the MSP space is very impressive. John, welcome. Thanks for joining us again.

John Ahlberg: 1:36

Thanks for having me.

Carrie Richardson: 1:38

So what I wanted to talk to you about today was your process around recruiting and retaining talent. It looks like Waident has done an exceptional job of finding the right people and incentivizing them to stay long term. How'd you do it?

John Ahlberg: 1:56

Yeah, I wish I knew exactly what I planned on or doing it. It's just one of those, I do what I think is right and it works. Again, we're a bit different in a sense'cause, we'll have prospective clients and we'll ask the question okay, tell me about your tenure with your team. And that's usually because they worked with another MSP and it's I really love Bob. And then six months later, Bob was gone. Then I got Dan, and I really don't like Dan. But then six months Dan was gone. So it was like a revolving door. we just don't have that problem at all. I remember one time in an interview, I'm like, we fired more people than quit. And she's what? And I'm like, I guess this is not good. To say on a job interview. But the whole point is, people don't want to leave and we don't take, firing lightly at all. We haven't done it a lot. a lot of it is more on the culture side where, I try to give as much flexibility as they need, part of the one culture aspect, is, people 1st, it's family 1st. We'll bring people on and we're like, look, we're an organization that if you work more than 40 hours, you might get yelled at. Not because we don't want to pay overtime or any of that. It's just we want you to have, good home life and free time. And we can all help manage our calendars you're not stuck working all weekends and stuck working at nights and working 68 hours a week. You just don't have to in our company. That's never happened. So that's 1 of the drivers that people, look at and get, we're big enough and we have a team. I remember hiring, someone out in our Milwaukee office and, he has two young daughters and I have two older daughters, When I started the company every day, I'd walk home for lunch because my office is walking distance. I would have lunch with them, and when they came home from school, I would manage my schedule. I'd come home when they're home from school and that work later a night when they're in bed. So I told him, I'm like, I never want to hear you. Say, I couldn't make my kids thing at two o'clock cause I had to work, that's complete BS. Your schedule. If you absolutely have to do something, hand it off to someone else. You need to do that. A month later, he was talking to me going, Oh, this is the first year I'm going to miss the brewers home opener. I'm like, why? And he goes, I just started working here? I need to work. And I'm like, no you don't. Take that off and go to the brewers. People get mad at you if you missed it because, quote, you had to work. You're not going to remember that day at work, but you are going to remember that day where I started a job and I went to the game. We have that core philosophy that people do work as teams, we don't have egos. So the techs like it and they learn. What I found is, if a tech has worked in another MSP were different In a lot of ways. So we brought on someone who's yeah, I'm working a ton. We're like, yeah, you're not do that here. And he's geez, when I started, they talked to me for a day. And then day 2, it's just here's clients go do your stuff. We don't do that here. We have a 2 month. Onboarding for employees, so we know what they're doing, how they're doing it, how we're limited and what we're training They sit with peers. So you don't have to worry about that again. We're a big open. Book here. We want somebody great. Take somebody who's only worked here three months or on a help desk. Say, Hey, I wish we could do this or I wish we could do that. It's a really good idea. Let's look into that. we have policies and procedures all over the place, but none of them are written stone. We fully expect, having an eraser because these are going to change and we love changing them. And someone has a good idea. And we're like, okay, we're all in. The last one was years ago. And we switched to a new documentation platform. We just invested 50 grand into this documentation platform and a whole bunch of hours. It was good. We weren't in love with it, but it was better than SharePoint and everything. then suddenly a new tool came along. I saw it and I'm like that's interesting. So I flipped it over to my CIO who's in charge of it. He's we just built this other thing. I don't want to look at this. And I'm like, just look at it. And then he came back the next day and he goes, all right, you're going to hate me. I want to throw away what we just did and go use this new stuff. And I'm like dig into it a little bit more. And he did. And he's I know we just spent time and money. This other one's better. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. you can't just stick with something that's just okay. If there's something better. And we dove in headfirst and, changed how we document things, which is, key for us. We document everything. So once we change our documentation process, that's a really big deal. So we give people a voice, we communicate with them, we want to hear their ideas. we pay fairly. You're not going to make the most money here, but you're certainly not going to make the least. You have freedom to do what you want. Now, after the pandemic, everyone has freedom to work from home two days a week, and they're in the office three days a week. Some people are all over that. Other people, like me, it's just like now I'm going to the office all the time. It really doesn't matter. So it's kind of 50 50. Half the people just come in all the time. The other people don't. early on, years ago, I remember talking to my operations person and I said in the corporate world, we used to have summer Fridays, where you could just take the Friday off once a month That'd be cool. How come we can't do that? And of course we were a company of six people. And my office manager operations person was like I don't know how we're going to do that. And I'm like let's figure out how. And then we figured out. Yeah. Again, I think oddly, for me, I'm like, okay, if I, what I would really like to do, since I can take off whenever I want, but if I was an employee, I'd want to take off every month, a Friday and a Monday, so I can have a nice long weekend, You don't have to take vacation time. You just work a little bit more each week to, make up your time. And now you've got a four day weekend every single month. Now, the interesting part is there's only probably Two people in the company has ever done it. is this a good thing? For me, I'd be mapping it out like every other month at least going, Oh, I'm going to go do this. But people just don't do it, so I think a lot of it's just the culture then we hire for culture. So we meet with them. That's where we're, different. I remember working with a recruiter a long time ago. I'm telling the recruiter, I'm like, we hired culture first, talent second, and skills and experience third. And the recruiter is I can't do culture. I don't know how to do talent. I have to anchor off of skills and experience. I'm like that doesn't work. we tried that years ago, where, you hire someone for all the skills and experience, but if the culture is not there and the talent's not there, given a certain amount of time, they hate you and you hate them. So it just doesn't work. So we flipped it all. And again, we have a 10 page hiring protocol of, we ask all the same questions. We know what we're doing.

Carrie Richardson: 8:09

So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is one of your corporate policies is hire for weird.

John Ahlberg: 8:14

Yes.

Carrie Richardson: 8:15

What does that mean?

John Ahlberg: 8:16

I started calling it that probably 10 or so years ago, there's a CEO that I know of a company. I really like him and respect him and everything. And I would go to his office and he would every summer bring in an intern and they were in finance, real estate. So these interns were like Yale and Harvard and like incredibly smart people. And I'd be like, wow, they're, they're great. I would talk to them and be super impressed. And then one year he brought someone in and I'm like, eh, and he goes, yeah, I'm the same way. And he figured out later, he was like, I figured it out. And I'm like, what? And he goes, the person I hired was just not weird enough. And I'm like, we started laughing. Actually, that makes sense. Cause then I started thinking on my own team, we hired people with odd backgrounds or odd hobbies. They're weird in a good way. Like now we have someone who used to be a probation officer. Who's a business analyst doing project and client management. For me, I talked to him and I'm like all those skills that you had to deal people out of jail, and all that transferred directly over. And like within a month, it was just like perfect fit. And, it's amazing. We have someone else who used to be a professional poker player, that, did ID, but that's what they did. And, again, just. Made sense. Our CIO is, you talk to him, you never know he's an IT guy. He's in a band, he homebrews, does all the anti stereotypical IT guy stuff. That just started becoming part of our interview process where I stole it from, I think, the CEO of Zappos. I just say on a scale of one to ten, how weird are you? And it's actually, for us, it's a really interesting question because we have some people that are flat out. Expression no comment. They're like, I don't know. I don't think i'm that weird and it just doesn't go over and you're like Probably not weird enough, but you ask the right person and they start laughing. They go, I'm a solid seven and here's what I do. And this is what I think it's weird. And then they'll talk for five minutes on themselves. And that's what we want. We need to know who you are. So we just ask that question among others, I ask if you were on a reality TV show, which one would it be? And that one goes crazy. I've literally had people go. I'd be on Naked and Afraid. I'd be on The Bachelor. I'd be on, Survivor. I'd be singing. It goes all over the place. But again, you get the right person, they'll talk for five minutes on why they want to be on that reality TV show.

Carrie Richardson: 10:37

Wait, what reality TV show do you want to be on?

John Ahlberg: 10:40

Oh, for me, it's always been Survivor. Problem is I'm too old now, but years ago when I was younger, I wanted to go on with my best friend, he's a X marine, big, strong guy. And I'm like, I want to go on with you. Cause they had like friends and family, some episodes cause I think he would love it. And I would have fun with it. Sadly, I will not go on it.

Carrie Richardson: 11:00

There's still time.

John Ahlberg: 11:01

Yeah. Someday.

Carrie Richardson: 11:02

I understand that one of the things that you guys do differently is put all of your expectations right within your job postings. Tell me what they looked like before you started doing that.

John Ahlberg: 11:14

We just write some sort of job description and, let's do quote the standard interview process. And we did it, but the problem is it's time consuming, then we took a totally different angle and I stole part of it from a friend of mine, when he was hiring, so we like, okay, here's the job description. We just want to put everything in it. So there's no surprises. They know where it is. We're not going to hide the salary or anything. It's just all there. So when somebody looks at it goes, okay, I know what I'm getting into, in a bigger picture, I think, and I tell people all the time. How you get hired is. Reflective of the culture of the company, and I feel bad because we've interviewed people who are like, oh, thank you. You've communicated, we interviewed, we did all this stuff. You turn me down, but still thank you. Cause I can't tell you how many times I'll go in for an interview and I hear nothing or I'll apply and I hear nothing. We just think that's rude. So we have to get around that, to make things more efficient. What we do is, we'll put the job posting out there and pretty much anyone who can somewhat qualify for the job then gets a list of a dozen questions and some are basic, how much money you're looking for. And Hey, do you have a car? Cause you might have to drive around to different clients, even if it's tech position. And then we asked some culture questions. You don't tell me a story when you help somebody. And then we'll ask a few tech questions that we fully expect somebody Copy the question, put it in Google and then paste in the answer. That's fine. That's what techs do all day long for a big part. But the interesting part is for the tech positions, if a hundred people apply and I send out a hundred questions, usually 90 people won't even answer the questions. So those are 90 people. I would not want to interview, waste their time or anything out of the 10. Five usually just answer. Yes. No, not too much there But you always get one or two that are excited going. Oh my gosh, I get to you know I get the right to tell you Why i'm so good for this position takes five minutes and they just write and we look at it And those are the ones we go. Okay That makes sense. So then we, we'll schedule a 15 to 30 minute culture video call. It's just to know each other. You can ask questions. We can ask questions. If they pass that, then we bring him to an office. And then we have kind of 45 minutes to an hour. Two of them. First one's culture. And we tell them this is about culture. This is just get to know us. We want to learn about you to make sure we want to work with you. But more importantly, you need to learn about us to make sure you want to work with us. So we do that. That's where I ask the weird questions and. It's interesting, because the HR person's asking very traditional HR flat questions, and then I pop up with Hey, what reality show do you want to be on? And I come out with those earlier if they seem nervous, because that helps with that. And then after that you Then there'll be more of the technical side, no matter what the position is. Right now, we're hiring a project manager So that is people who are involved in project manager. You can sit there and go tell me how you think what you do in project manager. So it's getting down to the actual job on the tech side. Our site will literally put the fear in them in a sense and say, this is what it's like to work here. You got so many tickets, it's high pace, you need to do this, but you have all these opportunities. And, we want to let them know day one what they're getting into not. Bs our way in and say, no, this is really mellow and it's great. And then they start and go, what did you sell me? This isn't it? if it's a technical person, we give them a tech test. it's our homemade tech test. It's more of a. Test for us in the sense of how they think that we just created, I don't know, 50 different help desk questions. How do you do this? We give it to them. We say you got 30 minutes. You can use any resource you want and end of 30 minutes. Just go to this last section and say, why did you answer the ones you did in what order? So we want to know how they think they'll never answer all 50. We do that on purpose. We've only had one person

15:01

answer all 50. Amazingly,

John Ahlberg: 15:03

they got them all right. So we're not too sure how they ended up doing it. But usually they don't. They'll do 25 or 30, but then they have to explain what they're doing. And then our CIO and other techs will look at it and go how did they answer questions? Was it wrong Wrong answer? Some of them are basic. Some are more. Complex. But by the end of that, we're in a good space to figure out, would they be a good person or not? We vetted their talent. We vetted their culture. We vetted their skills. But the good thing about it is, we can hire a position. We end up. Only spending time to physically interview, probably 3 or 4 people. We're not interviewing dozens to find the right person because we've already weeded that out and made sure that the process goes. So that's how we do it. That's worked. Great. We've been doing it that way for 10 years or more. And, rarely do we find someone who's not a good fit. The only time we find which we can't do is OK. You bring on a frontline tech. He doesn't have a ton of experience, but he's showing that everything's good. After a year, if they're not advancing on their tech skills, it's okay. so we're walking through that and, some people in tech just hit their limit, whatever that is, and, they're good at what they're doing, but they're never going to be the network administrator. They're never going to be. Doing different things and, as a company we go, okay, great. Are we okay with that person just stalled in this position and they're happy and we're happy or, do we, for their own good, push them out to go find something better, or do we. Push them to advance and do a different role. Again, we usually find a bad hire if there is one months and months later, because we can't figure out how to predict how they're going to be in six or eight months, but there's still good culture fit and everything is there usually. So it feels bad.

Carrie Richardson: 16:46

Oh, is there a difference when you're hiring someone in a non technical role?

John Ahlberg: 16:51

Yeah, not really. Like right now, we're doing project manager and we want some technical knowledge, but

16:56

they're not a tech and we do

John Ahlberg: 16:57

the exact same thing. Natalia, you've met. She's marketing and we did the exact same thing.

Carrie Richardson: 17:03

50 tech questions.

John Ahlberg: 17:05

No, but we gave her 12. Questions. We stripped it. We left them all except for the last three that were tech and just put him in for, what, what project management tools have you used or, tell me a time when a marketing thing you did failed. So we just replace those. No matter what the role is, we take the 1st, 1s that are kind of culture. And then it's the last three, they're about the position. We just replace them and we do the exact same thing. We asked the same interview questions. There's usually not a test, so marketing didn't have a tech test

Carrie Richardson: 17:32

imagine trying to fill that out as a sales rep, like this. I guess I'll just make up all the answers and see what happens.

John Ahlberg: 17:40

That would be funny though, and weird going, okay, I know you're not a tech, but we do tech. Answer these 50 tech questions see what they do.

Carrie Richardson: 17:48

That sounds very stressful.

John Ahlberg: 17:51

A little.

Carrie Richardson: 17:53

Are there any other pieces of advice that you would give to MSPs that are looking to hire great technical talent?

John Ahlberg: 18:01

The first advice is don't settle. I learned that a long time ago, where it's oh, we really need a tech, really need a tech, really need a tech. And then you're not really happy with anyone to go. Okay. Bob's the best that we talked to. We think they'll be okay. We just don't do that. So we might be

18:17

desperate for a tech and we'll

John Ahlberg: 18:18

spend 3 months to find the right person. Always. Because inevitably the wrong person, doesn't fit, there's problems, there's cleanup, and you're looking for another person anyway. So just do that, treat it seriously. The challenge with smaller MSPs, and I was there, is when do you hire? And it was always when I hit this threshold, we can afford it, we'll hire. But that threshold is usually past the time when you really should have brought someone in. Cause when we bring someone in, we know there's going to be three months of ramp up and learning before they're in a good productive spot. you absolutely need someone. And if I find someone tomorrow it's going to be three to six months before they're making a good impact. So it has to be a, I get it. I'm willing to accept that. And, hold out for the right person. And again, my advice is the right person is culture fit, talent, and skills and experience. And as techs know, because, I explained it to techs, it's like this every day. You don't know what that is. You don't know what's changed. Yeah. You need the talent to be able to figure that out, so why would I hire someone for static skills that, in two or three years are going to be meaningless. They need to be able to move for it. So that's why I anchor off of the talent side and talent is, it's actually easier than you think to interview for most people are like, Oh, you can't do that. For me, it's stories, tell me a story when you're fixing something and blew up on you. If you're on the other side of the table and they're saying all the right stuff, you're going, yep, you get it. Tell me a time when you were thrown into something you didn't know and you had to figure it all out. You get it. It's good indications of, where talent is. And again, we hire culture talent and skittle second. People don't want to leave, we do lots of fun stuff at work and treat them like family and know their person and give them flexibility and, it's a win.

Carrie Richardson: 20:10

All right. I think that's a great place to wind down today. I want to thank you for joining us yet again here on WIN and sharing your knowledge with the rest of the IT channel. Wish you a lot of success in the future and hopefully we'll think of another topic and get to do this again real soon.

John Ahlberg: 20:26

Sounds good. Thank you.

Carrie Richardson: 20:27

Thanks, John. Have a great day.