A Podcast | Dylan Scroggins

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody to NARPM radio podcast. Thanks again for joining us today. so I have Dylan Scroggins, the co-founder of PropertyManagement.Com and founder of Kalmar Group, a national recruitment firm that places leadership roles in property management. He typically assists business owners to find in-person, direct and vice president roles in operations, marketing, finance, in addition to building out BDM sales teams. He's recruited for property manager companies around the nation and seeks to become the true recruitment partner for his clients growth. So, Dylan, welcome to the NARPM pod.

Dylan Scroggins: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Neubig: All right, man. So let's get right into it here. Okay, so tell us what it's like or how you came up with the idea of kind of recruiting in a niche industry like property management.

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah. Great question. So I guess I've always been in recruiting is one of my first jobs out of college, back in the global financial crisis, which was a terrible time to get a job, much less in recruiting. I stepped out, did a little nonprofit work, and then, went back into recruiting, working for a smaller firm. Then I left recruiting again and worked in software sales for about eight years before I started Kalmar Group in January 2024. So you see a trend. It just keeps pulling me back. But I do love recruiting. It's a really rewarding career. But in regards to property management, at my last recruitment shop and  you know, seven, eight years ago, I did recruiting for a company called GK houses, which at the time was called GK Houses.Com they had about 15, 20 people. And I recruited some, you know, leadership roles for them. As mentioned, I stepped out of recruiting for a little bit. But when I came back that GK Houses.Com had become Evernest, which is now, you know, one of the largest property management groups in the nation. So it was natural that when life comes full circle, you take another lap. So I was connected to them. They've been overly generous and a helpful, like, referral for me. but then started recruiting for Peter Lohman and then Mark Brauer and just kind of started snowballing on top of each other. So it's been a really fun space to be. I think last year, kind of accidentally, it was like 40% of my revenue. but this year it's looking to be, you know, 70 to 80% of my revenue, primarily in the property management space.

Pete Neubig: So what are some of the benefits of working with you and the Kalmar Group over, like just a national recruiting firm or just somebody who does everything for everyone?

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah. No, there's a lot of great groups out there. You know, I think it comes down to relationships and people you trust. The reason I like the property management space is that I think property management sometimes doesn't give itself enough credit. I think it's a very operationally centric business. It's a lot more innovative than people think with our teams and global talent. Like what you do. and then also, you know, AI tools and software. So I feel like with property management, there's a lot of great businesses out there that are led by really quality leaders. But it's hard to tell that story, right? We can't kid ourselves. You know, I got a three year old and he wants to be an astronaut or a fireman, not a property management owner. Right. So but when you're talking to people, you know, in their career, what are they looking for? They're looking for a place to grow. They're looking forward to be compensated fairly and a place where they can really get a lot of ownership, whether literally or figuratively. Well, property management offers a lot of that. So it's been really fun to share that story. And I would say about 80% of the people that we place in property management actually don't have a property management background formally, but they come from a more, I would say, parallel industry.

Pete Neubig: All right. You you just touched on something. So obviously VPM we do recruiting for remote team members. So we're not looking mainly not the leadership roles. And so you and I kind of fit hand in glove, so to speak, on this. But one of the things that when we're hiring remote team members for kind of the low level jobs, they're like, well, I need experience, I need experience, and we say, you don't need experience, you need you need to hire the right attitude, the right personality profile, right? Find the right person in your organization, put them in the right seat. and actually the experience. And it's been my experience that when I hire people experience I normally get rid of them. Right. People leave people end up not working out because old dog new tricks or whatever it is. So now, when you're hiring at this higher level, have you seen where you need experts in their field, like, do you need, like, you know, the super duper property manager to go work for a GK or an Everest?

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah, it's a great question. So I think, you know, and also just to back up a little bit, a lot of the what I'm going to be sharing is more for those folks at like 250 to 1000 doors. Right? a lot of times people bring me on board and I promise not to talk the whole time. Hopefully people get a lot of benefit of this, regardless if they ever use a recruiter and much less us. But that 250 to 1000 doors, right? So 250. The next goal is 500 at 500. The next goal is 1000. Unless you don't want to. Right. There's plenty of benefit in staying smaller than that. So a lot of times I'm the first recruiter that people have ever used, or they've had a poor experience with a recruiter and I'm having to like clean up the mess. Right. and so those roles are high pressure in the sense that you really want to get it right. And also at that director level, VP level, they're typically going to have people reporting to them, and they're going to be reporting directly to the founder owner. So we also do some BDM recruiting as well. but typically our comp ranges is like 80 to 120K base plus bonus. Right. We've done higher than that, done lower than that. But that's typically the right range. So going back to your question of like experience, I'm always looking. And some of the candidates we've placed recently, we've actually a little bit of a hot streak now we've done a BDM, a director of ops and a director of ops, all for PM groups in the last 21 days. So I'm in a good mood right now. Pete, it's not always like that, but I'm in a good mood. So what we look for is interest over experience, right? So a really good candidate for us is someone who's listening to BiggerPockets, might have two rental properties, has always kind of like maybe is halfway through their real estate license. These are all real examples from the last three months. And or their mom was a broker, or something like that. So they have property management, real estate, cash flow assets in their background, but they might not have ever worked for a PM group. So they're very attracted to being in the market. And once again, going back to my point earlier, they look past what we call like property management stereotypes of just like fixing sinks and kicking out frat boys, right? They see past and they say, oh, this is actually like a really good opportunity, a really good business. So, I think that's what we're looking for is people who get it when it comes to property management, real estate, cash flow properties in general. And then they're much more likely to make that move because at a deeper level, they have that, I would say, yeah, just like attraction to the market.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I think there's lots of benefits of hiring outside the industry. You might get a new perspective, you might get somebody who's really strong in people management, right? They may not know the operational sense of things, but they might be strong as a financial management or sales or something like that. And to me personally, it's like, you know, it's really hard to reteach an old dog new tricks.

Dylan Scroggins: Mhm.

Pete Neubig: You know. What is the current market for hiring for leadership?

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah. That's a great question. You know I think the story of property management, you know, and I'm always thinking how can I share the story. I get very ingrafted in my clients to make sure that I'm, you know, I take it very seriously. My wife would say too seriously about being the first impression of a company I don't really work at. Right? So learning that story, really getting embedded in the brand, etc. like helps me go to market because we don't just build applications, right? Like we're going to go out and target 75 to 100 professionals in that local area. Typically we don't do remote roles. We'll do some remote roles director of marketing, BDMs, etc. but for the most part, I would say 70% of our roles are on site. So we do a pretty in-depth synopsis with our clients to make sure that we know exactly what they want, and then we go to market from a prospecting standpoint, there's a reason our logo is a wolf. we're definitely a sales function. And not just like an applicant acceptance function. and we get some great applicants every now and then. LinkedIn takes my shirt every month to pay for the absolute biggest reach. But that's another big part of like recruiting is that I think it's important to really have a sales function or a sales DNA, regardless of whether or not you use a recruiter. in order to make sure that you're finding the best available talent. So the market right now, I'd say it's pretty net neutral. you know, we're doing this interview in July and August, or in July. So summer, July and August are a tough time to recruit, to be candid with you, because there's a lot of people out for PTO, etc. but also August kids are back in school, whatever. So but overall, I would say the economy as a whole is beneficial to the property management recruitment space. And the reason I say that is because with interest rates low, more people becoming landlords, whether accidentally or not, the whole like idea of renting etc. is way more popular than it was maybe 1015 years ago. So I think it's just on people's radar more. And I also think people, even post-Covid, are so tired of working remote. I know me and you kind of tend to work remote, and we probably have remote staff ourselves, but there's a lot of people that are really antsy to get back in the office and get back in front of people. So I would say overall like, is it massive moment? No. But is it good? Yes. So I think property management as like a, an industry as a whole is growing in popularity and awareness of people who aren't as involved and who wouldn't, you know, be familiar with a lot of what we talk about.

Pete Neubig: You know, I know, a lot of people are scared to hire a remote team member because they're just haven't hired too many people. They're scared to make a mistake. And so I can only assume that is like ten x the anxiety of hiring. Kind of like a leadership role.

Dylan Scroggins: Oh yeah.

Pete Neubig: What are some of the prerequisites that you look at or that companies should kind of prepare when they're looking to hire leadership? And what I mean, like, for example, like I'm a big core values guy. Like, so what are some of the things like they should have kind of lined up before they go look for this 70 to 80 to $120,000, you know, expert.

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah. No, it's a massive investment. So that's a great question. The the fear and the apprehension will always be there. I mean, I just made one of my first hires. It's an executive assistant. I was scared to death for that, you know, and I know you mentioned PropertyManagement.Com In my intro. You know, that's a a recent venture that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of with a former client on recruiting side who, he has his name is Matt Spear. He's the founder of PropertyManagement.Com. And he has, you know, 500 doors in Indianapolis. And, he owns the domain PropertyManagement.Com that's a whole other topic, but we're already talking about hiring for that. So no matter what business you're in, it's going to be scary. So I think even accepting that that like nobody gets super excited about hiring and everybody always loses some sleep over it. I'm losing a lot of sleep right now. I got a three and a two year old and a pregnant wife, so, I'm barely functioning right now. no. I'm kidding. So. But go going back to, like, the actual question in regards to getting over that fear and that plan. I think it's all about going upstream and really figuring out, do I need this role? I think a lot of times people have a bad day and they think I have to have a director of ops, or they have. They listen to a podcast and they think, I have to have a director of marketing. You really gotta go internal before you start recruiting external and really dig deep. Talk to mentors, talk to peers, etc. and really find out what do you need? And that's what I try to do even before I start recruiting someone. It's like, do you really need this role? Because a lot of times people get their ego involved and they want that title on their team, even if those outputs can be dispersed by remote team members or someone else or two other people. Right. So I know that sounds kind of weird coming from a recruiter, but I don't want to start a search unless we know that role is needed. So to answer your question, the first step is journal entry Long walk or, you know, taking two days just to, silent retreat, figure out, do you actually even need the role? And then you can get more defined on what you actually need.

Pete Neubig: One of the things I do, and you can tell me if this is good, bad or indifferent is, I'm always I review my org chart quarterly. and so when I build an org chart, I build the org chart for what it looks like today. And then, I then identify the next five, roles that I want to fill. And then I also built an org chart for when I think what the company looks like when it's completed. So, you know, whether what is that? Whatever that means, right? Exit where it means, like when you get to a thousand units, whatever that means, that's that. This is the structure that I need. And then I go and I build a job role for each one of those boxes, even if it's not somebody that I don't need yet. and so to me, like that tries to get me going on and look. Best laid plans by final org chart never looks like the final org chart, by the way. Things always change, you know? Uh. Each quarter. what would you do? You, would you recommend something like that, or is that just kind of.

Dylan Scroggins: No, I love that. So question for you. Are you looking at mainly like what's dictating those, forecasts? Is it mainly like revenue goals? And also two, you know, just to I'm very curious. Like, and this is a golden question I get asked a lot is like how. Like the dance. Right. Sales, marketing operations. Because I don't want to go too hard on BDM and director of marketing get a ton of leads at 150 doors and my operations can't handle it. But I also don't want my operations team fiddling their thumbs because they don't have enough work to do, and sales and marketing slow down. So just to kind of put the question back on you, how are you thinking in your mind? I know we're not talking about specifically doors and PM right now, but there's still some parallel like is revenue your main driver? Or are you kind of thinking like bandwidth in general? Because that's a hard question to answer when someone asks you for their own business.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, well, the answer is both, but I'll actually give you real world experience. When I was building Empire Property Management here in Houston, Texas, we spent a lot of our effort on marketing first and, and then sales to get the doors in. then what happened was operations was just dying, right? Originally operations sitting there. And then, of course, you know, you have to, like, hire. And you're always hiring behind the eight ball, and you have some churn and, you know, and then you read the, the the latest publication industry average like 0.4% churn. I'm like, I'm at 34%. How is this even possible? Right. And then you like you think we do a just a terrible job. One of the things that we did is we made sure we never shut the marketing and sales down. We didn't shut it down. We dealt with the crap, you know, on the back end and just kind of built the plane on, like while I was flying. Once I finally caught operations and then were. Now today you have virtual team members, which I didn't have when I first started. It wasn't a thing yet. You have LeadSimple and the APTLYs out there, and you have automation and property meld, which I didn't have when I was out there. So what I'm getting at is with these remote team members, that reduces your payroll costs and allows you to bring in more headcount. Right? So less so less people per door. Right. So, when I more people per door. Sorry. So like, I have 23 people, you know, working for Empire and we had 800 doors. And so you do the math and that's X amount of doors per person. Well, we got to the point where we're so good that we knew when we get to X amount of doors, we're going to need, this person. Right, whether it's an asset manager or a maintenance coordinator. So we kind of dial it in. Then we knew how many leads we're getting and what our sales conversion was. So then I can do the math. Okay. We get 30 new doors a month, right? We lose five doors a month because our churn went down by that by that time. So then I can just kind of map it out. All right, well, once we get here, then we're going to need somebody else. Well, I can't hire that person when I'm there. It's going to take me a month to to hire them. It's going to take me another month to train them. So then we have to start this month, our recruiting, if that makes sense.

Dylan Scroggins: I love that. Yeah. No, I might steal that because you're right. Sales cures all and.

Pete Neubig: Revenue cures all.

Dylan Scroggins: I mean, if you don't have doors and you don't have a business. And I know some people will make the argent that retention is, you know, at the end of the day, like it's all etc.. But I love that because I think you're right, like finding a very, very talented team and incentivizing them well, having very strong compensation packages. Once again, going back to like how do you bring people into property management, Really share that story and share that opportunity. You know, especially when you get to that 500 door, 800 door count, like in your past, kind of the scrappy stage, and you're the founder owner and you're not working directly with them. They they want to get paid and they want to go home and they want to enjoy the work, and they care about the company and all these things. But that's the other thing with property management is that I'm not I'm never going to think that. It's kind of like the transfer portal, right? You almost got through a podcast without me mentioning college football friends kind of going back. Right? Because it went to like just pay and get the best. But now people are seeing that, oh, that guy that was just chasing $100,000 more isn't the best fit for my company. I think that philosophy still works well. I don't think it's the answer is not always pay more. But I do think especially in this market, like you said, like people aren't moving jobs as much. So in order to incentivize them to maybe move industries, granted, we're assuming a good opportunity, right? Like if it's five K to get the person you want, pay that every day. If you don't get the person you want because of 5K, shame on you. Right? So, and it's hard to look. It's hard, especially when you're the owner and you're cash flow, etc. and I've had some really energized conversations with owners about this, but, I've always had owners who have paid that extra 5K and they're never regretting it. The problem is, when you don't pay that extra 5K and I'm using that as like more of like a symbolism.

Pete Neubig: Mhm.

Dylan Scroggins: That's the one that keeps you up at night. And that's when you're always thinking could have gotten could have gotten someone a little bit better. Right. So  I think in that recruiting and hiring like the key thing is like separating like you said, like you said, the word recruiting, most people don't even use the R word. All they say is hiring, hiring, recruiting are not the same. So the fact that and Pete, I'm not just flattering you here because you're the one interviewing, but like the fact that you baked in some time knowing that recruiting takes a little time, like that's some you you're you're ahead of the curve there. Most people think, oh, we need somebody. Let's just hire somebody. Well, to get the person you want. It's going to take 4 to 6 weeks whether you use a recruiter or not.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And you brought up the revenue part of it. So when I operate it, and I know a lot of people will say, well, I hate when people ask me, you know, how many doors do you have? Because it's not it's not that it's about profit per door. And I get all that, but I'm an operations guy. And so if you have 100 doors and you're doing, you know, whatever, 30% profit margin, I'm happy for you. But if I'm at 800 doors, your challenges and my challenge is completely different. Like my operation is completely different. So for me, I always looked at doors. But the revenue side of things, if you don't have the revenue or you don't have the profit coming in, you really can't afford, you know, the great talent. This is the reason why. And I'm going to kind of do a little self promo here, just the reason why I love VPM Solutions. And what we bring to the table is because you can find incredible talent for a third of the price, for, you know, for, you know, for great job roles. You know, the challenge that I always had and Dylan, maybe you can help me solve this, is like those, those $100,000 jobs or, you know, just whatever. Like the high, like even the property manager role, like the 70 to 80,000. And they're asking for more money to to come in. And I'm like, man, I think they're going to be a perfect fit. But I don't know. I don't know if they're going to be a perfect fit. So what are there any tools that can help me decide like this based on this? This looks like this feels like the perfect fit. And I'm going to reduce my mistakes because everybody no one wants to make a mistake hiring. And it happens. It's never 100%.

Dylan Scroggins: Bingo. So I think it's all about perspective. Like a lot of things you might not like my answer here, but you can't reduce the risk completely. But you can minimize the risk. Right. And I'm always thinking, all right, what's the best available talent? Because sometimes the best aren't available. If someone's making half $1 million working for their father in law, they ain't going to work with you. It doesn't matter, right? But sometimes the available aren't the best, right? That's not always true. But like, ultimately, you're trying to find the best available, so I think that it will always be there. We talked about that earlier. Like you're going to lose a little sleep, but it all depends on what's keeping you up. Right. Is it keeping you up that you really feel like you missed out on somebody or or or are you basically staying up because you, like, you're just still on the fence with them? And I think there is an element once again, like, this is not a perfect answer, but if you have a really good process, then that will help you trust your gut. And what I mean by that is like most people don't have a process, but like, it's just so ironic. And once again, I consider myself like inside outside PM, right? Like I don't own a PM company, but I work with a lot of owners and I've had, you know, done, you know, whatever X amount of searches the last 18 months in this space. You're not counting what I did ten years ago. So I think for an industry that's so process driven and literally everything when it comes to recruiting, not hiring, recruiting, it's like, hey, let's just hope someone walks in the door. It's like, you don't do that with your owners. You don't just like, you know, you have like a whole process to even screen your tenants and screen your owners. But when it comes to screening your own people, you got nothing. So to be very brass tacks, I think one, you need a process. And I'm there's a lot of processes you can choose. I've definitely seen some people have some very high success rate with top grading. it's a who. I got the book back here. It's Rainy Street is a book written I think late 90s, early 2000s. Fantastic. Like basic interview framework. Even if you don't use that. That's kind of like my quick trigger. What I always suggest have something. And with that also allows you to do, especially with a lot of founder owners that I work with in that 250 to 1000 range. It allows other people to replicate the interview process, because if you're at 750 doors and you're touching every part of the interview process, shame on you. That doesn't scale. So when you have a process, it allows other people to be involved with the scorecard, score sheet, etc.. And then everybody's kind of asking the same question, doing the same thing. So once again, I'm not trying to overwhelm people with like, you know, Homer's Iliad of recruiting here. But just like a very, very small morsel of a takeaway is build a process even more granular. Top grading is fantastic. And just use ChatGPT. You can find something, but you gotta have something that you can repeat. You can scale and that you trust. And that's going to allow you to say, and I'll land the plane here of saying, hey, we've done our process, we've had the video call, we've asked the questions in, we've done the in person, I've done the lunch. I'm still not sold on this person. Maybe you shouldn't pony up 5000. You can trust your gut because you've gone through the process, right? like NFL draft, they have the whole combine. They're investing millions of dollars in these young athletes.

Pete Neubig: They still mess it up.

Dylan Scroggins: They still miss. But they know they did the process. And eventually, like, that's what you can trust and sleep well at night knowing you did something that was scalable, repeatable. And over time, it's going to get better and better and better.

Pete Neubig: I got a funny story about that. So I spoke at the LeadSimple conference, last December. Now LeadSimple, it's processes like so these are the process people of the industry. And I get up and I ask anybody to stand up that has a hiring process. 100 people in the audience, two people stood up. And these are these are the process kings, if you will, of the industry, the, you know, so, you know, we have like, like you said, we have a process for onboarding, a process for, you know, resident screening, but no process for the most important asset of your business is the people, especially since we are. Property management is a people business. It is, you know, it's a service based business. And I know the minds of the world are trying to make it. Well, it's a tech business. They I think they learned that. It's not. It's it's a combination. I'll give I'll give them that if you if they want to go that route. But it is still a people business and you have to have individuals, a group of individuals that can work together as a team to achieve a common goal. Yeah.

Dylan Scroggins: And even go farther upstream with what I shared. It doesn't matter how great your interview questions are, you can have everybody on your team memorize all of them. If you don't have great talent that you're interviewing that has been cleared on compensation, have a good timeline, like they can work in person and like you reach out to them, like even backing up, going farther upstream, like having a process for recruiting too, right? I think that's like once again, that's very doable. And people think, well, that's impossible. I know a lot of people, even in home services and other industries, kind of adjacent to property management. ABC, always be recruiting, right? They have a good experience with someone in a parallel industry. You know, some of the people we've placed have been from painting franchises, from manufacturing, from different types of home services, pest control, etc., once again adjacent to property management in some form or fashion. But there are owners that are always building that bench, always connecting with people even on a quarterly basis. And that's just just next level type leadership, in my opinion, where you're kind of moving out of that operator seat and you're moving into that more visionary seat of saying, hey, this is the main part of my job, and it's a little soft skill. It's not as firm as maybe like, you know, leading a meeting or going to meet with an investor. But I think as an owner, founder, maybe some of the people listening to this podcast, even though they're not owner founder, they're just like a senior leader in the organization. Always be recruiting because it doesn't matter how good your hiring process is or your onboarding process if you don't have great people that you're hiring.

Pete Neubig: So let's dive into a little bit of details here. Before we before we exit stage left, let's talk a little bit about a hiring process. We don't have to go through your exact one. But like what is some. All right. So I got some people, you know interested in in the job role. I posted everywhere and I have some kind of recruiting process and we can do that another time. But let's, let's say okay, now I have some people that are interested. What is what are some of the things that you would put into a process or tell your clients, hey, let's put this into a process.

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah. No that's great. And once again, this is kind of this is not going to like the posting, the applications or where to post that indeed versus LinkedIn or whatever. Right. This is kind of like a warm I.

Pete Neubig: Have somebody interested. They applied.

Dylan Scroggins: Bingo. Yeah. And you're like, hey, I want to talk to this person. Here's my like favorite routine. I literally said this in an email to a 700 door owner this morning because he was like, he was he never used recruiter. And he's basically like, what is this? You know, and I was just kind of like sharing with him very transparently. Here's the expectations for me and you and walk them through it. So here's my favorite one, Pete, I'll just be very brass tacks here. Yep. I love the first contact, especially once again, I'm thinking like 250 to 7 50 to 1000 doors. I still like the owner founder. being on that first call, it's a video call. It's 20 to 30 minutes. All right, so there's some intentionality here. The video call just to make that face to face han connection 20 to 30 minutes. Because if it's not going well, they're already expecting 20 to 30 minutes ended at 18. If it's going fantastic. Take it to 40. You got some freedom there. And also too, this is a small thing, but it's important. Be okay with people taking it from their car or outside, like people are doing their best. If you're expecting these candidates to be in a podcast studio in order for you to interview them, shame on you, right? Be okay with the car interview. It's just the world we live in. They're doing their best. See it as a sign of hustle and not blaming them for not going home to do the call. Right. and really, out of respect to their employer, they're not doing it in their office. So 20, 30 minutes video call. What's the next one? I think it's an hour to an hour and a half at the office. Right. They can see it. They can get a feel. You bring other senior leadership there. You can do 45 with you more formally, maybe 45 with one of their peers, and just maximize that time. But once again, an hour and a half is a big ask from them. But I do think it's important to do that. And then lastly, if everything continues to go well, definitely a big fan of calling references, you know, 3 to 5. and then lastly, it's a 30 minute coffee or a video call if you have to, but a coffee or a lunch and it's like, hey, we want you a part of the team. This is where we're heading. This is how you've impressed us. This is how your prior experience can benefit. This offer letter is going to hit your inbox within 30 minutes of us getting done with this lunch. And I love that. Like high relational are you in or are you out type I vision casting. I think that goes really well. So 20 to 30 minute casual but intentional video call. Hour to hour and a half. Meeting with other members of the team and then like a final hey, let's do this type. Coffee or lunch. Man that's that in my opinion. That's all you need. You can add some elements to that, maybe some more input from other senior leaders, but that is like brass tacks of process that you can repeat and do pretty quickly.

Pete Neubig: All right. I'm going to throw some stuff out at you that we do. And then you tell me good, bad, whatever. first thing is we make sure that we understand our culture and our core values. So that's the first thing, because I want to find the right person on the boat. For example, at Empire, we were a stressful environment, we were growing rapidly. Things were breaking all the time, and were changing a lot. Well, if I have somebody that they are running slow, they don't like a lot of change. They, you know, I'm a New Yorker. I cuss a lot. They don't like a lot of cussing. Like that's just not a good fit. So that's the first thing we do. Now the next thing I do is before we even interview anybody, I make them. I know in my job role what their personality profile. I'm a big fan of DISC, been using it since, early 2000s. It served me very well. I know there's stuff that's more mature out there predictive index and all that stuff. but I make them take a DISC test before we even meet with them because if they are, don't match our core values. now, how do you match them? Core values. You gotta do the interview and you gotta write the ad the way the way it would, you know, reach out to somebody that has those core values, I guess, so then we do a DISC. Now for the RTMs, we actually make them take a few courses on the VPM platform.

Dylan Scroggins: That's cool.

Pete Neubig: This shows that they're interested in material, that they have short term retainment of memory and that they're willing to do go above and beyond. So I like I like giving people some red tape because that tells me that they're really interested and they're willing to do whatever it takes. Which is, again, what if at one of our core values, what are you willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Then and we actually have them. We've  just developed this is new and it's coming out on the platform here, probably the end of the quarter, maybe, maybe August, where they can take an assessment like DISC for personality traits. So you had said something about, interviewing and and having the right questions. Top Grading was a great book. I got another one called, Hiring For Attitude that were that were like, so. So what do you think? Is that too much that we're asking for?

Dylan Scroggins: I don't think so. Well, you said something about like, DISC works for you and PI and whatever works for other people. More advanced. Who cares what everybody else is doing? If you like DISC and you know that language and you know that framework and you have confidence in it. Keep doing this. Do this for the next decade. and if you're a predictive index or culture index or whatever index fan, keep doing that. So that's where people ask me and they kind of want like a hot take of what should I use? I'm just like, choose something and get everybody on board with it and really believe in it. And those are good options, right? You're not like going to like a, like a tarot card reader, you know, whatever. Like you're doing some real stuff here. So I think as long as you can choose a genuine one, that's fantastic. But yeah, I mean, sounds like you have a process. It seems like you're adding to it. And also too, like when you're when you're meeting with high performers, they want that, right. Like a thorough interview process is actually a service to them. And even you talking about the New York and the, you know, you like being honest about the good things about even you as a leader and even like things that might rub them the wrong way. Once again, that's actually a very kind thing to do. And also even like the fast pace. Like it's not like trying to scare them or like being cutesy and like trying to, you know, intimidate them. It's just like, hey, look, this is how it is. It's probably not going to change. We're not going to slow down. If you don't like that, just tell us now. And I'm telling you people, there's nothing better than someone bowing out of an interview process because it's just not a good fit. Right? And it might sting then, but it's way better than four months later. It's kind of like, you know, when you're, like, visiting colleges and you go on a college visit and you, like, hate the place. Great. At least you didn't go there. You know, so I think candidness and transparency and just not playing games. And also too, one quick thing, Pete. I'll share with you just as a quick tip for people, this goes to back what were talking about in the middle of like really knowing you need this role. Once you start a recruitment process and then a hiring process because they are two different things. There's no going back. If you start kicking the can or delaying interviews or like, I don't know if we need this role, the people you want aren't going to put up with that, right? Like, you know, it's kind of like just it gets to a certain point where you're doing an interview.

Pete Neubig: It's like you're good employees leaving, you're bad, employees stay, you're good leave, and you're bad candidates stay.

Dylan Scroggins: Exactly. Yeah, 100%. And if you're not leading, once again, I'm talking about not even using a recruiter. If you're not leading that process well, you're not following up and you're kind of slowing the pace down. People are going to think you're not serious. And also you're recruiting in the hiring process is one of the number one. And really the only indicator they have of how you run your business. So if it's a total dumpster fire or like super slow or messy and you're not showing up to calls, you're late, whatever that is a megaphone, ten x first impression of how you run your company. So I tell people like, you need to have humility in the interview process, the recruiting process, because you can't assume that people want to work for you. They don't know you, They're happy where they're at. But also you need to have a certain tenacity and really guard that time and not let good candidates float away, because they will if you don't have your ducks in a row.

Pete Neubig: That's right. Like in the NFL, if you got a good free agent, they say don't let him out of the building. Right.

Dylan Scroggins: Like don't let him out of the building. Yeah. No, I'm telling you, I have seen people get led out of the building just to go to their car, and then we never see them again. But people want to be wanted. And that's that whole element of recruiting. I think sometimes PM owners, you know, we're talking about specifically PM owners, they they think they don't have time for it or don't think they don't see it as like a business function, but they never really tried it. Like get out there like shoot a couple LinkedIn messages like, give your business card to that fantastic, ops person you met at a random event. Like, just try to like, dip your toe in the waters of recruiting and see what happens, because you might like it, and you might not need a recruiter, and you might create this recruiting culture, and you're never going to look back.

Pete Neubig: Good stuff man. All right, somebody listening to this, they're like, man, I do need to hire some top level talent but I need some help. How to get in touch with you?

Dylan Scroggins: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. So, LinkedIn is a great spot. I know people call it link cringe, and it can be pretty bad, but I'm pretty active on there. So, websites, thekalmargroup.com. So the-k-a-l-m a-r group.com. I have a specific property management page as well. So thekalmargroup.com/property-management. I'm going to shorten that up one day to just PM, but as of right now it's /property-management. And then I know we didn't talk about it a ton, but yeah PropertyManagement.Com has been a really fun venture that I'm partnered with Matt Spears. So go get verified on there as well. It's a pretty easy domain to remember, right? I mean, it's literally the name of the industry. So, you know, Kalmar Group is, my baby, but it's been fun to, partner with Matt on that as well, because we're all in on this space. It's a really exciting time to be in this space, and it's really fun for me to be on the front lines, bringing more people into this space who maybe hadn't considered it before.

Pete Neubig: And if you are interested in a remote team member, go to vpmsolutions.com or email me direct Pete@VPM Solutions.com. We have a DIY, do-it-yourself product. We have a white glove product where we it's a do it with you product which is free. So the DIY. And then we have a Gold Glove product where we will do it for you. Use our recruiting and hiring system so you don't have to worry about yours. And just give you candidates. We score them on a scorecard and you can to you get to interview and review as many candidates as you like. And if you're listening to this and you're not a member of NARPM, shame on you. Join NARPM. Go to narpm.org or give the good folks a call there. (800) 782-3452. Dylan, thanks for being here.

Dylan Scroggins: Pete, that was awesome. Thanks so much.