The Interview Question That Makes Bad Candidates Disappear

Let's see, all right.

Most founders talk about growth as a systems problem, but growth usually breaks when hiring judgment breaks. Today's guest is Ryan Farley, co-founder of Lawn Starter. Ryan is known for analytics, systems, and scrap execution, but this conversation isn't about growth tactics. It's about hiring decisions and the judgment underneath them. So the moments where judgment matter, where trade-offs were real and things didn't go as planned and there's a specific reason why I wanted Ryan to be part of season one. He's the person who put me onto the who book and it changed the way I think about hiring. So as you listen, ask yourself this. Are you hiring to move faster or are you avoiding a hard leadership decision? I'm really excited to introduce Ryan Farley, the co-founder of Lawn Starter with over well exactly 444 employees as of today and with a global workforce. Ryan, thanks so much for being here.

Excited to be on board.

All right, Ryan, I want to anchor this conversation back in time. When you think of lawn starters, early days, you know, how big was the team when hiring decisions really started to matter?

Yeah, it was probably about a year in we raised a little bit of funding that we started hiring people and like most founders we had no freaking clue what we were doing. We were really winging it and it took us probably three or four years actually maybe longer before somebody finally One of our investors said, look, guys, you got to read this book. It'll change your game. And that's the who book that you mentioned.

The Who book, absolutely fundamental, right? It's become the hiring Bible here at LATAMSEN. And I remember you just being really, you were a young entrepreneur and we had friends that were decades older than us, but I saw you going and hiring executives with 30 plus years of experience. And I was thinking and... I asked you, was like, how, you know, what are you doing? How are you doing this? is, you know, incredible. And you told me specifically it wasn't how, it's who. And, you know, so once you read that book, like, how did you start applying that? Can you take me back to that season where, you know, hiring became a superpower of yours?

Yeah, was maybe four or five years in. We had hired an executive coach to kind of help us implement another book called Scaling Up, which is kind of like a collection of different frameworks and whatnot to run a growing business. And what I like remember learning there is like 80 % of problems in business that aren't related to like your core product, your core differentiation, your core go-to-market have been solved before. So why not find somebody who spent their entire lives working on this one problem and kind to just steal what they have and that was who. So he had us read that book. I started doing it kind of like on my own. We were still kind of doing hiring by look and feel, but I like did a couple of the top grading interviews and I immediately went out and told her like. Dude, this is very uncomfortable to ask people these questions. What are the names of your last five bosses and how will they rate you on a scale from one through 10? But like, gotta watch this. Like you go from like, you know, a signal of like a three out of 10 to at least an eight out of 10 just by, you know, asking those questions.

And in terms of top grading for those that don't know, what is it and how natural does it feel now?

Yeah, I mean, it feels like supernatural. So to give a recap on what, who, there's also a book called Top Grading, which is kind of like a more complex version. I would read Top Grading and then read who, so you kind of have the context, but who is like more manageable to implement. But basically, like there's four steps, a screening interview, a Top Grading interview, focus interviews, and reference interviews. The intro interview, you're starting to use the process and there's a few questions, but the last one is at the end of this interview, we're gonna ask you to introduce us to all of your former bosses and we're gonna do an interview with each of them. I'd like to you to go through your last five bosses and tell me what's their name, where did you work with them, and how do you think they'll rate your performance on a scale from one through 10? And what's funny about this is you start getting all sorts of people withdrawing from your process for reasons like, you know what, it's not the right,

Love it.

time for me or you know what I thought about it I'm not ready to make a move and it's because they don't want you to talk to their past boss. So that's step one. Step two is the top grading interview where you kind of go there's a series of questions you ask starting with high school or undergrad kind of where whenever you want to start and

Thank

again during every you kind of conclude each chapter with all right remind me who you reported to it's John Smith is Smith smelled S-M-I-T-H and then you go a little bit more deep and you say so how what was it like working with John all right well you know what did you like about working with him And then you kind of flip it and it's like, what will he say were your biggest strengths? What will he say were your biggest areas for improvement back then when we speak with him? How will he rate you on a scale from one through 10? And it's really, that combined with the other questions get you a really like honest take on what they accomplished and what they learned from that. you know, step in their career. And what you're basically looking for throughout that process is does this person have a track record of excellence in every role that they've been in?

Love it. The best predictor of future success, better than any personality test, any assessment. It's going to be their past behaviors, right? And you nailed it with the back then, right? And there's an emphasis in the book where back then is really important. And then when you go and ask their manager, because you do, you go in and you go and you talk to their manager and they might actually open up more because it, back then, right? They could have improved it.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. As soon as you say back then, you're giving them permission to have made mistakes, which like, I mean, we've all made mistakes and screw ups in our career. like, usually the people who have a track record of excellence recover from them in future roles. So like, yeah, you're giving them permission to tell you about, you know, what they fell short on during that period of time.

you know, in the last three years.

Love it. So, you I remember you hiring senior executives. What did you believe that a senior executive would change that you couldn't get from a strong manager back then?

Yeah, really, like when you hire an executive, you're looking for them to typically, at least in a startup kind of growth phase company, you're looking them to transform some aspect of a business. line, whether it's engineering, whether it's product, whatever it may be. And typically like when you're hiring, when you're hiring younger or sorry, more junior roles, like, you know, they may not have done this job before, but when you're hiring an executive, like they need to be effective from day one. So typically like you're looking for a track record of excellence in addition to like, when you write up what this, you want this person to accomplish, you want to see that they've accomplished that thing in similar roles before. with younger employees, you've got some time to train, make mistakes, get coached, mentored. With executives, no. Like their job is to move the needle starting day one.

it starts with day one, they need to start with a plan. And I love where you highlighted, like they need to come to change a business function. I think a lot of the listeners here on their journey to start going and hiring executives. it's absolutely crucial hires to get right, right? Or it sells your company back a year or two if you get that wrong hire. like, what, I know you mentioned that you had recommendations to read these books from investors. You all raised over $35 million. You're in 3000 cities. You run a global workforce, but you mentioned a year in, but then four or five years in, you really started taking recruiting more seriously. Beyond that, what problems were you trying to solve at those moments? Why did the decision to really focus on hiring and develop that into a superpower if you're right over time.

Yeah, I mean, mostly because we screwed it up a lot. Yeah, I mean, like it really is, you know, people are the fundamental building blocks of any business. Like, you could talk about process, strategy, whatever, but getting people that, one, share your core values and two, you know, have the chops to actually move the needle for you. I mean, you can't really... wouldn't say you can't be successful without really good people. They're definitely businesses that succeed in spite of themselves, but they, you your team is the fundamental unit of, you know, whether you're going to be successful or not.

Love it. So looking back on it, as you were trying to, you mentioned, you got a lot of things wrong. So I want to nail that because I certainly have as well. I run a recruiting agency and we get this wrong. So can you talk to me about a hiring decision that didn't work, not to assign blame, but just to understand some judgment behind that?

Yeah.

You know, you can talk about what role was it or, you know, what stage the company was at, you know, and when you first realize that something really wasn't working.

Yeah, I mean, the first thing to like you like you could always get the scorecard wrong. What you think that this like the first step of the who book is you write down what you want this person to accomplish and then what are the core competencies that you think you need there. It's always possible that you just think about it and then reality hits you and you needed someone you know, you thought you needed somebody who is really a marketer that was really super numbers analytical or whatever and turns out you actually needed. creative or something like that. That happens. I think the biggest thing that we changed in our process was you start getting more people involved. You start hiring like, you know, more senior people, director level. And we had a string where we realized people were giving us the numbers when we would... Step three is a focus round where you evaluate competencies and that's where you bring in other people. And the numbers would all say this person passed. References were all good, but we weren't excited about this person, but we figured, okay, we created this, we adopted this process for a reason, we're grading this objectively. And what we started doing was we would basically go around the table and say, Louise, would you be enthusiastic about working with this person? And if there's any hesitation whatsoever,

Yeah.

You probably got something wrong in those numbers, right?

Wow. Wow, yeah.

It's like, it's, think, popularized the like, you know, if somebody were to walk into your office and say, I'm resigning, if you wouldn't fight to keep that person, do you really want them on your team? It's the same kind of like gut check, litmus test of that. Whereas like if somebody is, and you see people like, cause they're like, you know, in a group and they might, four other people may say yes. And then like, you see some person just like. Hesitate a little as soon as you see that hesitation, you know, okay, we missed something and you know It's not perfect. None of this is perfect But that's something that we implemented as like a gut check to our process because the process really is about humans assigning numbers at the end of the day Like you can you can try to get it as objective as you want But there's always gonna be some amount of like gut feel and judgment and that litmus test I think really helped us raise the bar

Wow, yeah, that quote is going to be everywhere. So you want to fight for people, right? You want to be extremely excited about them. It's heck yes or no. And I think a lot of people need to hear this where it's not just about a number. And if you have Jenny at 8.9 and Allison at 8.78, Jenny's ranked technically hire, so we got to choose her based on the system we designed. No, it's not about that, right? You still need to make those gut checks, as you said. And I think that's a very great point is like, would you enjoy working with this person now? Was that when, I know you all had an office and a headquarter in Austin, and I think since then you've gone fully remote, was hiring different then when you were hiring in office and in culture verse now in remote? that, you know, in the terms of... Hey, I would like to work with this person versus like, just know this person is going to execute at a really high level and I'm not going to see them that much. Doesn't matter anyway, has that changed at all?

No, not really. Yeah, I mean, we wear our mode. We were like, we, like eased into remote. then when COVID hit, we're like, why are we like 20 % in office and the rest remote? This is stupid. going remote just changed the game. Cause we could suddenly hire from anywhere versus just in Austin where we lived. and you know, am I enthusiastic to work with this person is not about would you get a beer with this person or would you want to whatever that was that stupid airport test? hear like that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of like,

I haven't heard that one.

But you should hire based on somebody like you wouldn't mind being in a layover with the airport. I mean, that makes no sense. they gel with the culture, which you want to kind of evaluate based on what your core values or your cultural norms are? Yes, 100%. But like not every employee is supposed to be your best friend and every other employee's best friend. Enthusiastically want to work with somebody means you enthusiastically want to work with them, which means you're...

You

It requires that that person, are so excited about the person and can't wait to see all the good work that they do. Not just like, yeah, I want to have a beer with them. So, to answer your question, I don't think it's different remote versus in-person. Obviously, like, you get a little bit better of fidelity when you're doing in-person, but I think we really didn't skip a beat on the hiring process when we went remote, to be honest. I don't think there's much difference.

And love to hear that. So you mentioned something important where, you going remote allowed you to scale globally. What did that enable for you in terms of talent?

Gosh, I mean, it was great. Yeah, we so long so we started in Austin. We couldn't hire support as quickly as we wanted to. So we started going through that the rest of Texas. Then we opened a few other states to try get that on board. Then we opened the Philippines where we have a large workforce now, but we kind of like kept product engineering marketing in office. But then we would start once we started adopting this process and which. you know, largely revolves around let's find somebody who's exceed succeeding right now at the job that we want. And sometimes I was a very specific role. Like I remember trying to recruit for SEO. Like you think if you're not a marketing person, you think, SEO is SEO. But actually there's like 27 different varieties of SEO. And we wanted somebody who is like an expert in two of those. And we found like a total of three people in Austin that were an expert in two of those and they all had jobs. Maybe one was deficient in something else or whatever. So we would be like, all right, well, let's look for remote for this type of role. And we started just doing that for more roles where it was like, okay, this is highly specialized. We would prefer to have the specialization versus somebody who lives near us. Maybe this would change if we had infinite venture money and we're in San Francisco and could pay whatever we want, but we weren't. So we turned that into an advantage. We figured out how to dominate going outbound, dominate job boards, really optimize the job post algorithms.

and it was awesome. Then COVID hit and our edge kind of went away for a while and then it came back a little bit as people started going back into office. So I'm a huge fan of remote. Your company has to have the right systems and processes to do it. There's definitely downsides, but you have to evaluate are those downsides worth it? the very clear advantage of you can go and find the best person in the world or the best person in countries that you're legally compliant and allowed to hire from. And to me, I prefer that advantage over I can glance over and ask my coworker a question at the office. Not everyone's the same, but that's my personal take.

Yeah, Slack exists, there's a company, Roam, that creates this virtual office, right? You could still go and create that, but like you said, you have to be intentional about it. no, weren't in San Francisco, could have never solved the problem you solved. They don't have lawns. So I remember Walt Rollison saying this and just getting so excited about lawn starter for this. And it's not a problem they can go and solve. Yeah, you really have to be intentional with the way you build a culture. And, you know, I love that you use the SEO example. I think specifically because you, you know, I was sitting in your rainy street apartment and we're playing with Tableau and SEO and it, you know, to work for you as an SEO, they really needed to be the best at their practice, right? They needed to be, and hiring globally enabled you to go and do that. Whether, you know, it's from the Philippines or remote all over the US, you really go and you're able to go and find the best talent. So I want to go to the hiring under constraints, right? So you've been through a, I think you co-founded this with two other founders, one other founder. So two other founders, it's three of you, 11, 12 years ago, this is.

too, yeah.

Yeah, 12 I think now.

12 years ago, right? And now you're 444 people. It's monumental. how, you know, going from zero to 10, going from 10 to 100, going from 300 to 400, you know, in addition to process and having like, what's changed in your head about hiring, right? And to add a little more context there is like, you know, we work with, SaaS companies, 40, 50, 50 of them that are hiring and there are some CEOs that just still have a gut check, right? That is like, what I buy from this person is my gut. like, did any of those things really change for you as time evolved?

Yeah, I think the one thing that I am totally calm now with is that it's always going to take longer than you want it to to find the right person. You know, when you're under a time crunch, when you want to be doing work and not on interviews, when there's a fire really burning and you really need somebody putting that fire out. It's so easy to just compromise your standards or start justifying why, oh, well, this person hasn't done that. But I mean, it's just so easy to justify that stuff. I now... just like it's just, look, this is gonna take a while and it's gonna be painful, but you know what's more painful is getting the wrong person in the role. Now, look, there's times that where you go out to market and you realize I'm being way too picky. I got to either choose X or Y or maybe I need to choose two people or maybe you need to pay more or maybe like you definitely don't wanna be like super rigid on your original hypothesis on what you're going out to find. But I've become like way more just cool with the fact that like, look, this is gonna suck for a while. We're just gonna have to deal with it. We're gonna have to let the fire burn until we get this person. We're not gonna compromise what we're looking for just because we're eight months in, nine months in, 10 months in. It's always worthwhile. And it always feels like, once you're worrying that you maybe are being too picky or something, it seems like that's always when you find the right person. It's like house hunting or something, like real time. yeah, yeah, when you lose one, you always move into a better place or something like that.

Hahaha.

So are you using data to inform that? Is it time? Are you getting external help? you know, it sounds like, you know, based on your experience, you may have made some mistakes about hiring too fast and paid for it.

Yeah, for sure. I'm sure we have data about this stored in our data warehouse somewhere, but it's not something that we track. You know when some you I mean we you know You always set a goal if we want to hire this person this person this person this quarter and it always takes longer Funnily enough like a lot of recruiting firms are like, yeah, I'm expecting one to two months and I'll tell them like look I don't think it's gonna take one to two months. Like I'm just gonna be honest You can not take us as a client But like this is probably gonna be four to six and they never believe me, but it always is

In terms of not lowering the standards, it's going back to the who and the top grading and getting somebody that is checking out in all those fronts and then also the gut check.

Yeah, yeah, and we didn't really talk about the focus rounds of the process, which are much more kind of like what most people do as behavioral interviews where you'll pick five or six things that you want to see, you know, I need to, you know, this person needs to be, you know, polished speaker or strong problem solving skills or whatever. And a lot of times that's where you'll see some compromising, which is like, okay, well, we said we needed a five out of five on problem solving. We rated this person a four. Do we really need a five? Like that's the kind of conversation I always found myself having.

Yeah. And then like, what's a mistake, a hiring mistake that you see founders repeat constantly? You you're now going and starting a seed fund and you're going to be giving advice as you've given me on hiring. So what is a common mistake that you see them repeat?

Yeah, I mean not having a process is like number one. I mean, it's pretty simple at the end of the day, but I mean, I'm guessing most companies don't have a process. I was surprised that it took us, you know, five years or whatever for somebody to recommend us a book. I'm sure there's other great processes other than who slash top grading, but like.

I don't think so.

Maybe not, but it's like people have saw like every company does this like you don't need to reinvent the wheel here. So just have a process. A process is better than no. That goes with most things in businesses. Having a process is better than no process.

Yeah.

I think that's the great thing. mean, I think you all have built out really good internal recruiting teams, right? We've worked with companies that have no process and they're bootstrap SaaS startup to, you know, companies that have built, 600, 700 person, you know, teams and scaled internationally in Columbia or Brazil. And what is. is interesting there is they, you the ones that I see successful all use a form of who and top grading. and they, you know, they have it in their greenhouse instance. They have the five steps. They have the gradings and the scorecards and their internal recruiters or us were following up with them and making sure everything's getting filled out. And it's like strong guesses need to be across the board. And even a soft yes is not good enough to meet their caliber, right? Cause everybody they bring in needs to level up the team. And that is a standard that they set. I see organizations that do create that really start to excel and create a culture that people want to go and work in.

Yeah, definitely.

So if you were rebuilding today, budget wasn't a concern, what would you change in the hiring structure and systems that you've run at Lawn Starter?

Yeah, mean, not much at this point. Pretty happy with it at this point.

I love it. You built it.

Yeah, you can always get better, especially when it comes to like different roles and whatever. You know, you're hiring a new role. It sometimes takes you a while to kind of like hit your stride. Like, for example, one thing that we kind of tweaked a little bit with the processes on the first round, we would try to figure out like, this takes a while to figure out what the role, but like, okay, somebody, know, career goals align with you. bosses would say good things, but we would try to find one question where it's like, okay, this is gonna at least knock a bunch of people out so we don't have to waste our time. And what I like doing with that question is like, okay, what does this role need? And then the question is something along the lines of, tell me your most impressive accomplishment was related to this. So, okay, let's say we're hiring like, product manager needs to be super analytical, able to solve kind of like tough, multivariate problems. So it might be like, all right, cool. Tell me the most challenging, analytically complex problem that you've solved in your course of career. And if it's, well, we tested different shades of button colors, you can just knock that person out. So because like, imagine...

Wait, orange works the best.

Yeah, apparently. Because it's like, okay, that doesn't mean that person is great, right? But if their most impressive accomplishment is below like what you need this person to perform at on a daily basis. Chances are that person's probably not gonna pass the rest of the process, but that can take some time to like iterate for different roles and kind of like nail down what you want as that like extra DQ stage. But other than that, mean, like I like the process now. I definitely think that there's some shortcomings on it that I personally wanna. figure out like the who is great for figuring out people who have accomplished a lot of things, but it's not the best at like determining how much potential somebody has. Usually it's pretty self-evident, but I think that that's part of an area that I'd like to get better at is like not just identifying what they've accomplished in their past, but like what's this person's ceiling. I haven't figured that out. I know some people are really good at that. I'm personally not.

Yeah.

Well, I think you're good at building the talent, right? So the other book you recommended to me was multipliers after that. you know, I, you know, I guess, yeah, it is a different power to go and say, okay, this person has a lot of potential, but I think when they're in your team, you have the ability to go and create that potential and fire in them if they're coachable and want to actually learn and grow. And I, you know, I've seen you do that numerous times where, you know, I think one of your first, employees, Alex, you know, went on and now is, you know, has his own seven figure agency from the things that he learned building with you. So that's, you know, definitely multiplier ability. And I don't think, yeah, I don't know if anybody can just say, yeah, that person, you know, I guess they're working in Hollywood scouting actors.

Yeah. Yeah, that's another good book and another example of like somebody spent a long time studying one part of business, like go steal what they have.

Well, not even steal, It's for $15 you can go and buy so much time, especially if you go and implement it. guess, you know, as we wrap up here, like what recommendations you have for founders who are trying to go and implement some process like this and maybe getting some pushback or, you know, their managers are like, really, I have to go and ask this, this is stupid. I just want to go and have a chat with them and, you know. Is it giving them an ultimatum and saying my way or the highway or what do you to actually implement process change? You're laughing.

.

Yeah, no, it's funny because I feel like as a founder, very often do like nobody wants to talk about this, but it's like a lot of times you do have to just be a dictator and say we're doing this. It's helpful if you can get people to buy in. The hiring process though is like, we've had a lot of things where it's like, this is the way we do things. usually people come around, usually what happens is somebody comes from another company, they do it their way, we do it our way. Usually they're not that different, but they're like, I wanna do it this way. Like it, without fail. And some people are more receptive to it than others. With the hiring process though, it's just so good. Again, this isn't anything I invented. This is somebody that Jeff Smart and his dad before him spent decades inventing. It's like day one, this is how we do things. But I do think that it's so evident when you have somebody that's good at it and then somebody who's kind of like riding shotgun and sees it.

Yeah.

like it sells itself internally. And it also becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cause like when everybody goes through it, they're like, okay, now it's my turn. Because it does self-select for people who actually enjoy that type of thing. Like that's the thing that I don't think the book really sells is that like you appear so much more polished, professional, disciplined.

Love it. Love it.

Hahaha

Yes.

up skilled when you go through this process? really good candidate. Like I've interviewed so many candidates who are like way more talented than me, way more accomplished, know, decades of experience that would be like, man, I've never gone through that process before. It was kind of fun to reflect on this. Like it was really interesting. Can you tell me like what this was because I want to adopt it.

I love it.

this project, like you just, appear like when we started this, we were not very good at what we did to be very clear. Like we were a couple of 20 something year olds figuring it out. Um, but people would go through that and be like, wow, they're really disciplined. And eventually we lived up to it.

it. Love it, love it. Yeah, it's, you know, for me, I enjoy interviewing now based on that process where, you know, we're interviewing demand gen and ops and sales, but I get to, you know, if I'm running a screening or a who interview, I know I don't even have to go and look at the question I'm going to ask. I know, I know the question I'm going to ask. So it, you know, it's created a really fun process for me. And also it's, it standardized it where it's also we're asking the same questions, right? It's not this, you know, and I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that I made personally when I was first hiring 10 years ago is, no, I would go and ask this person these questions, this person these questions, and it really, wouldn't give me an accurate measurement at the end of the day. I would have two whole different conversations.

Yeah, 100%.

Well, Ryan, I appreciate you being here sharing honest answers on hiring. Really fantastic to see the growth that you went through in the journey. if people want to find you, you can say don't, but where could they find you? Can they email you LinkedIn, watch your TikTok dances? What's a...

Yeah.

Yeah, I keep my TikTok dances private. yeah, shoot me. I'm not big on social media, but shoot me a message on LinkedIn is probably the best way to get in touch.

Bye.

Amazing. So we'll put a link to Ryan Farley Lawn Starter. If you want amazing outdoor lawn services, this is the place to go. They're in 3000 cities all over the US. Lawnstarter.com. Ryan, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks, Luis.