Rob Kornahrens is in the roofing business, but it’s the bricks — his 400 employees — that keep Advanced Roofing Inc. standing strong.
To make sure he hires staff that can uphold his company’s 26-year reputation, Kornahrens approaches the hiring process with keenness and intensity. The founder, president and CEO starts with behavioral profiling, and after people are hired, he keeps them on track through a rigorous annual review process.
After all, how do you grow a company you started with a $15,000 loan from your father in 1983 to the No. 6 roofing contractor in the nation in 2007, according to an industry magazine?
“You do it through people, through processes, through culture,” Kornahrens, whose company posted 2007 revenue of $75 million.
Smart Business spoke with Kornahrens about how to hire employees who will meet and keep the standard you’ve set for your company.
Separate hires from their personal lives. Obviously, you’ve got to start with resume selection. I
generally look for stability in a person’s life. I know some people get into bad situations, but if I’ve got a resume with five jobs in seven years, it doesn’t go to the top of the pile. I look at resumes for stability.
I appreciate honesty. I’ve had people be honest with me, ‘Hey, I was going through a divorce and this is what happened.’ Something happened in their personal life, something bad, and they had to move on, and they get it straightened out. Things happen to people, and you’ve got to be open-minded and fair with people.
Don’t have a direct manager make the hire. I rely heavily on the interview process, bringing in a couple people to interview. We generally use the manager-once-removed philosophy, which is, if you need to hire somebody for a position, it should be the manager that’s one up. If you allow the manager to do the hiring, in some cases, they’ll overlook somebody that’s better than them.
If we’re hiring a person to be a business development person, I’ll get involved in that rather than just having my head business development guy do the interview himself. Not that I don’t trust the guy, but you want somebody that’s over the person doing the hiring so you’ll get a better hire.
Sometimes they feel threatened if somebody really good comes across in front of them. People have a tendency to fear for their jobs a little bit.
