Twenty-five years ago, Fred Potthoff and his partner took out a $300,000 line of credit to start their own company. Potthoff backed his half by putting up his house and his retirement savings, and from that moment, it was a race against time to see if he and his partner could sell enough before running out of money.
Fast forward to today, and the company they started, Kroff Inc., a leading water and wastewater treatment and recycling services company, has more than 80 employees, eight different businesses under the Kroff name and annual revenue of more than $50 million. Potthoff’s entrepreneurial gamble paid off, and today, he isn’t stressed about making enough money to survive but rather about finding the right talent to keep the company at the top of its game.
“We are a bottom-up run organization, and we go by the philosophy of hiring bright, creative, entrepreneurial people and giving them the right tools. Then we get out of their way to let them flourish,” Potthoff says.
Even with the company’s eight different businesses, Potthoff has remained an integral part of its hiring process and ensuring that great talent enters the company.
“Some people are surprised when they talk to me first, second or third in the organization as one of the original owners,” Potthoff says. “I tell them, ‘This is the single most important thing that I do in the course of my workweek or month.’”
Since Kroff’s inception in 1988, the company has experienced an average of 24 percent growth every year. The attention to his company’s hiring process, which he calls motivational fit, is what Potthoff focuses on to make sure Kroff Inc. will continue to grow.
Here is how Potthoff hires the best available talent.
Find the best fit
Kroff Inc. has seen some incredible growth over the years and that success is a direct result of the people Potthoff has been able to hire. In fact, each of the organization’s eight businesses started with ideas from sales associates.
“Aside from the original company, my partner and I didn’t come up with any of the other ideas,” Potthoff says. “It was people in our organization coming to us and us listening to them and running with that idea.”
When Potthoff interviews candidates, he is interested in trying to spark that kind of enthusiasm and interest in the company.
“It doesn’t mean that everybody who comes here is going to run their own company, but it’s part of our culture,” he says. “People who fit in well here think that way and look for opportunities. When we interview, the key is looking for that kind of person, so we’ve all been trained in behavioral interviewing and that’s an important component of trying to identify the right person.”
Behavioral interviewing is a key component at Kroff because when the company was first started, Potthoff put a lot of stock into resumes and conventional interviewing. While resumes can provide wonderful statistics about how much somebody sold or how many new accounts they created and a lot of facts and figures, they aren’t as effective at finding the best fit as behavioral interviewing.
“In behavioral interviewing, you get into specific examples and you try to drill down and mine for a number of examples where they’ve shown an attribute in the past,” Potthoff says. “If they say they have an entrepreneurial bent, you say, ‘Give me an example of when you demonstrated this in your past job.’
“Whatever the attribute is, we want specific examples where they’ve done it before and they can tell us a clear story about why they have that talent and where they manifested it.
“It’s a more difficult interview process because often they have to think and dig down to find an example, but that’s what you want. Then you know you’re getting the right person if they can give you a lot of examples where they have demonstrated this capability before.”
While this technique of interviewing has resulted in strong employees for Kroff, it isn’t without its drawbacks.
“Behavioral interviewing is a challenge; you have to sit and wait sometimes for the person to think of examples because you want them to give you very specific, very concrete examples,” he says. “So the interviewing process takes a little patience whenever the candidate is in front of you.”
In Kroff’s case, the company hires a lot of sales engineers, and one of the first challenges is finding an outstanding chemical engineer who wants to have a career in sales.
“Sometimes it’s mixing oil and water, and we’re often looking for personality attributes that aren’t in one person,” he says.
Another challenge is where to find the best talent. The best candidates may be the passive candidates, not the ones shopping their resume around.
“They are the ones who are successful who are doing a great job wherever they are,” Potthoff says. “To try to get their attention sometimes is difficult.”
The third thing Kroff does to find good talent is to check references or see if someone has worked with that person before.
“If you depend on the interview process and the resume, it’s more of a crapshoot,” he says. “If you can find somebody in your organization or get references from reliable people who have worked with the person, then your chance of having success with that person is greater.”
To overcome these challenges and have help in the search process for talented employees, Kroff often utilizes the services of recruiters.
“We’ve picked two or three that we work with and we bring them in to our office and try to educate them to make sure they understand exactly what we’re looking for, because when you’re dealing with recruiters, they’ll often throw resumes at you in hopes you’re going to hire somebody,” he says.
“It is important to invest some time with the recruiter and say, ‘This is exactly what we’re looking for, and don’t send us anybody else.’”
Translate talent into success
While a company’s success can benefit greatly from its products or services, Potthoff believes his hiring techniques and the talent he has been able to bring in are the true difference makers.
“You can have the best products in the world and you can have the best computer software and order entry, but it really comes down to quality people,” Potthoff says. “The key component of our success is that we’ve been very fortunate for the most part in hiring great people.”
Another key component of Kroff’s success has been that Potthoff has done a good job of listening to ideas.
“It’s one thing to give lip service to somebody, but if somebody comes to you with a good, creative idea, you can’t summarily dismiss it because maybe you tried it before or it seems a little harebrained,” he says. “You have to be willing to listen and trust the people, and if you think it’s a great idea, be willing to move and invest in it. When you do that, the culture responds to it.”
A lack of listening is one of the biggest mistakes many companies make.
“I don’t think many companies listen well enough to the people in the field who have their fingers on the pulse,” Potthoff says. “If you’ve hired the right people, they’re closer to the action and the opportunities than somebody sitting up in a corporate office somewhere.
“I’ve seen it in the past where some vice president comes up with an idea about what market the company should go after. It may be a brilliant idea, but oftentimes, it’s not. I think you are better served by getting intelligent, creative people and listening to them when they come to you with a market opportunity, because they’re in a better position in a lot of ways to see opportunities.”
To incorporate this kind of thinking into your organization you have to make the behavior part of your company’s culture.
“View company meetings and company culture as a meritocracy, which is the way we look at it,” he says. “In other words, if we are in a manager’s meeting, I set the tone for the meeting. It’s not myself and my business partner pontificating about where the company is headed and what we’re going to do.
“When you present ideas, everybody has to chime in with what they think the best idea is, and we will hash it out here and the best idea will rise to the top.”
This mentality is an easy thing to say, but it’s a hard thing to accept because you have to set your ego aside and listen to comments and criticism.
“That’s where some entrepreneurs and business owners go array because they are so vested in the company,” Potthoff says. “The way they got the company off the ground is the right way to do it, and it’s hard for them sometimes to hear somebody criticize it. It is vital to stay vibrant and alive, so you have to listen to the new people that you bring in.” ●
How to reach: Kroff Inc., (412) 321-9800 or www.kroff.com
Takeaways:
Be involved in the hiring process.
Utilize resources to help you find the best talent.
Once you have the talent use it to grow your business.
The Potthoff File
Fred Potthoff
Co-founder and co-owner
Kroff Inc.
Born: Latrobe, Pa.
Education: He attended Shippensburg University and got a bachelor of science degree in business.
What was your very first job?
I was a lifeguard in the town of Latrobe. It was a great summer job.
What is some business advice you would give to others?
The bulk of my time in business has been in specialty chemical sales … and if you graphed how much time I spend listening and how much time I spend talking, I probably listen 75 percent of the time and talk 25 percent of the time. For anybody in business, that is a good ratio. You can learn a lot more and get a lot more accomplished if you use that ratio to build your business and career.
Who do you admire in business?
Andrew Carnegie.
If you could have a conversation with someone from the past or present, who would you want to speak with?
I’m a history buff, so there are a lot of people that I’ve read about over the years that I’m intrigued with. Out of the Founding Fathers, I think the most fascinating person to speak with would be Thomas Jefferson. I think he is one of the most brilliant people that I have ever read about, and how fortunate we were to have him as one of the founding fathers.
What are you looking forward to in the future of your business?
What excites me now and what motivates me is watching people underneath me do well personally and professionally.
