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DECEMBER 3, 2020 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Mind Y
ur Business
Dr. Rich Roberts: Loyalty Begets Loyalty By Yitzchok Saftlas
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very Sunday evening since July 2015, Yitzchok Saftlas, CEO of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts 77WABC’s “Mind Your Business” show on America’s leading talk radio station. The show features Fortune 500 CEOs, CMOs, and top business leaders where they share their business knowledge and strategic insights on how to get ahead in today’s corporate world. Since Q2 2017, the 77WABC “Mind Your Business” show has remained in the coveted Nielsen “Top 10” in New York’s highly competitive AM Talk Radio market. Guests have included John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; Beth Comstock, former vice chair of GE; and Captain Sully Sullenberger, among nearly 200 senior-level executives and business celebrities. TJH will be featuring leading questions and takeaways from Yitzchok’s popular radio show on a bi-monthly basis.
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n a recent 77WABC “Mind Your Business” broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas (YS) spoke with guest Dr. Richard H. Roberts (RR), M.D., Ph.D., medical doctor, doctor of biophysics, and former pharmaceutical industry CEO for 24 years (URL Pharma).
YS: Could you please discuss the process of hiring new people? RR: Hiring is one of the most critical areas of a business. It depends what kind of position you’re looking for – there are obviously very different qualifications that are needed for different roles. Then you need to try to sort through all the applications and figure out if you’re actually getting that right person. If you make a mistake and you get the wrong person, it could be a whole lot of headaches and potentially legal entanglements. So, hiring is really, really critical. Let’s just talk about the basic hiring of people. You must know what you’re looking for and you need to write a somewhat detailed job de-
scription. Don’t bypass this. If you’re looking for someone who’s going to work in your warehouse and is going to be able to pack boxes, that’s one skill set. If you’re looking for someone who’s going to run finance, that’s an entirely different expertise. Then you’re going to get in a resume for this position. First of all, look for how long this person has stayed in previous jobs. If you find someone has changed jobs many times and they’ve been in five different jobs in the last ten years or less, that’s a real warning sign. Now they’re going to tell you all the reasons – this management team didn’t know what they were doing, that company is going out of business – everybody’s got an excuse, but it’s a real warning sign. Did they not get along with people? Did they talk a good game, but then when it came to performing, they really didn’t perform? Are there other skeletons? Is there theft? Is there fraud? I’m not saying it can’t be good. And there are some people who switch jobs every couple of years because they are on an upwardly mobile path. With those
people, you’ll see that they were a supervisor, and became a manager, and became a director, became vice president. But even with that, if someone’s trumping jobs all the time, there is no loyalty. So that’s one warning sign, when you see them changing jobs a lot. Another thing to do is to question them on the details of their resume, especially as you get to higher levels of capability and expertise. If you don’t have the expertise yourself, have someone in the room who does. For example, if you don’t know research and development, make sure you have somebody from R&D in there. Look at what they put on the resume, and find out if they really know the things they claim to know. YS: Another question that has to do with the resumes. What’s your take on the references that someone lists on a resume? RR: Generally, the references on a resume are worthless. If someone applying for a job is even mildly capable, they’re going to make sure that they spoke to these people first.
These are their supporters. When looking at the references of the resume, it’s helpful because it tells you who not to call. However, you must check references, so call the companies the person worked for. Or you can speak to the references listed and ask them for names and numbers of other people who worked with this guy. And then you go to them and that’s how you get information. YS: Do you have any advice on what to look out for during the actual interview? RR: When I would hire people – this was at any level – I would see what they look like during the interview. Are they sitting back in their chair or are they sitting forward looking bright-eyed and bushytailed, ready to go, high energy? You want someone who’s ready to charge forward. No matter what the job is, you really want to get someone who’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Additionally, when I would hire people at higher levels, the one question I would ask them is: what jobs
