Interview Questions to Find A+ Employees
Does your interview process get the right people in the right roles?
This week, Drew Cameron and Gary Elekes build on last week’s discussion about recruiting mistakes, sharing practical strategies for screening candidates over the phone, leveraging multiple interviewers, and asking the standardized questions that reveal who is truly a fit.
You’ll discover a repeatable system to streamline your hiring process, save time, and zero in on A+ performers who can help drive revenue and strengthen your business.
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00;00;00;00 – 00;00;11;05
On today’s show, one of the interview questions you need to ask to find the eight players that you want to hire.
00;00;11;08 – 00;00;31;06
Now, today we have drew Cameron and Mr. Gary Alex back in to follow up on last week’s conversation regarding recruiting mistakes. This week, they’re going to dive into the interview process and how you should approach it to find the right people for the right positions in your company. In this segment, they will talk about phone screening using multiple interviewers as well as standardized questions to ask.
00;00;31;12 – 00;00;52;00
Take it away, fellas. Let’s talk about the interview objectives, right. Because the interview is a big piece of the hiring process. And so what are we trying to accomplish on the phone screening? We’re phone screen candidates to meet the criteria for the interview. I’m going to share with you tool here in a minute and a few minutes that you’ll understand what I mean by that.
00;00;52;02 – 00;01;13;16
It is basically you have to just kind of get over the bar. So for example, one of the questions that you’ll see is do you have any, sales experience? And I literally had you know, somebody who had responded to the person doing the screening that, oh, yes, I do. I, basically take orders at Wendy’s. Yeah. That’s not that’s not sales experience.
00;01;13;21 – 00;01;32;20
That’s order taking experience. There’s a, you know, a little bit of a bit of a difference. And so you’ll see when I give you that framework is that people have to go ahead and respond, because I’m not asking the person on the phone screen to kind of make a whole bunch of, you know, deep introspective decisions as to whether or not they’re going to put somebody onto my calendar for a phone interview.
00;01;32;22 – 00;01;49;05
So you have to decide what that looks like for you as to what is, you know, are you willing to work on a performance based compensation plan? No, I want to salary. Thank you for your consideration. You’re not going to be worthy of the opportunity for a face to face interview. That’s just the way I handle those types of things.
00;01;49;11 – 00;02;11;27
So you have to decide what are your zero tolerance markers for that phone screen? Gary mentioned obviously doing these, video interviews. You can do them with Google Meet or, teams or Zoom or how do you see that? Here’s a neat little tool specifically geared towards, doing webcam interviews. And that’s interview stream.com. So I’ve had some, some success with that’s neat little tool for interview then.
00;02;12;01 – 00;02;38;29
Okay. Phone screen. You got qualified. You’re worthy. I schedule you for let’s say 8 a.m. on Friday the 11th for your 30 minute phone interview. The recruiter, you’re told the process the recruiter will contact you, his or her phone number is going to be coming from a such a such phone number so that, you know, like so, you know, when you start seeing 600 phone numbers showing up in California, you know, hey, better answer that phone whether you recognize that phone number or not, because that’s the recruiter calling you.
00;02;38;29 – 00;02;57;05
And if you don’t answer and you miss your time, you miss your opportunity. Even if you call back in that 30 minute window. All right, you get whatever time I got left for you. If you miss your opportunity right again. Can you follow instructions? I missed it. My dog does anything. Well, then you should have called me and told me that you couldn’t make it again.
00;02;57;07 – 00;03;17;09
I’m as serious as a heart attack. These positions are $100,000 positions, sales positions. And again, if this is how you’re treating me, how are you going to treat my customers? So talk about those two steps in this phone screen to the phone interview, what you look for. Well, the first thing I want to know is, are they a fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes?
00;03;17;09 – 00;03;33;05
That’s going to eliminate you right now if you’re a fan. I tell you right now, if you if you’re in Michigan or you went to Michigan, just go now. Obviously. So I think the idea of setting up hard and fast, you know, you this is a gate. And what do you need as a company to come through that gate?
00;03;33;05 – 00;03;52;01
I think you have to decide what those questions look like, and you have to have them. And and I don’t think it’s a time we’re not going to play games with that. Like our a filtering system. Again, you’ve got a bunch of people that are going to be doing this. So you have to sort of have a system that is for you, not for the candidate.
00;03;52;03 – 00;04;11;20
I hate to say it that way, but that’s kind of the hard and cold fact, you know? So if you got 200 phone screenings to do, you can’t be goofing around. And so you need that. And then I think the second part of that process is you need a system, to be able to say, this this person doesn’t make it through the gate.
00;04;11;20 – 00;04;35;21
And so that system tells you what that data point is, not necessarily how I feel about it. So they may show up and go, hey, you know, I love Ohio State. And so Gary feels emotionally really connected to that. That’s going to fail you as a system. Yeah. So that person may not be the right individual. So hard fast questions, create those, gates and then make sure that you stay rigid relative to your system.
00;04;35;28 – 00;04;50;12
That’s initially, as you get into the other interview process, we’re going to obviously get more subjective. We’re going to talk more culture. We’re going to talk more attributes. Those are the kind of things. But, you know, the truth of the matter is, is that a lot of people are going to want to want those opportunities. $200,000 opportunity is pretty interesting.
00;04;50;13 – 00;05;08;21
Yeah. So and I respect my time and energy too much as well as my candidate’s time and energy too much. I understand there might be other players out there playing the game a different way. I don’t care how other people play the game. I respect you and your time and your energy way too much to waste it. And so this is why we do it this way, to be effectively efficient for both of us.
00;05;08;22 – 00;05;30;10
Right. And when I think when you tell people that like, I appreciate that, it’s interesting. Over the years when I’ve done this, how many people tell me they appreciate the professionalism and attention to detail? I’ve gotten people who’ve taken jobs with my clients on behalf. The fact that we had a process that they felt, you know, was worthy of them.
00;05;30;12 – 00;05;46;04
And, and, and they basically said, listen, I turned down other opportunities because I think if you guys are going to run your show, this way, I think the upside for me is a lot better with everything else that I do. Right? So again, this is kind of you also pass a litmus test on on their validation of you.
00;05;46;07 – 00;06;03;28
Right. So, we’re looking for the most qualified interview person to get the phone interview appointment and that phone or I mean, that face to face interview appointment. And so at this point on an initial interview, it’s up to you again, if you want to compress time, I typically just have the sales manager in this particular case do the initial interview.
00;06;03;28 – 00;06;22;26
Some people, when I got hired as the sales manager, regional sales manager, Connective Services, utility company who bought my company back in the day, and I was taking over 40 salespeople in five, five locations. I went through a multi-person interview. I had, multiple people interviewing me separately. And then I had a panel interview.
00;06;23;01 – 00;06;39;23
We talked a little bit about this yesterday, making sure that you have a sequencing. And so, in fact, when I interestingly enough, I worked at Service Experts back in 1998 and they were looking to kind of, they were getting rid of the whole middle management team that I was a part of. They wanted to retain me.
00;06;39;23 – 00;06;58;27
And they said, listen, we’re going to bring you down to Nashville. We’re going to walk you through six different opportunities. One of them was working with Gary. He Gary didn’t hire me, unfortunately. But we were looking to work together about, you know, dealing with troubled centers that, you know, at the time. And I say that jokingly, Gary didn’t even know he was supposed to be interviewing me that day.
00;06;59;05 – 00;07;17;17
So the flying formation and no think none of the six people knew they were supposed to be interviewing me that day. And what are you doing in my office? That’s what I am, really. And, so it became quite comical. That was the reason, interestingly enough, that I quit. I said, I am not only an employee, but I am a shareholder.
00;07;17;17 – 00;07;31;26
And if you don’t honor, you know, value my time and know what to do with the resources that you have, you know, we’re probably not a good fit for each other. And I’m going to I’m going to jump ship. And I and I did, because again, it had nothing to do with Gary or any of the other five other people that were interviewing me that day.
00;07;32;02 – 00;07;49;16
I was kind of like you said, throw it upon them. You know, at the last minute, because they did not have a sequencing. We’re flying formation plan in place. Once you have that, we talked a little bit about this yesterday, you want to basically score independently. So if Gary’s driving the questions, Gary can’t be taking a lot of notes and scoring this thing.
00;07;49;16 – 00;08;06;14
Other people are doing that based on the questions that he’s asking. And then when somebody also in a panel interview takes over, you know, they’re scoring that. Now when I do things individually, I’m going to give you the scoring system that I have for a sales position, here very shortly. But like I say, the first interview template typically focuses on experience, accomplishments or results.
00;08;06;20 – 00;08;27;06
And that key criteria match up for the company, right? To see if you’re worthy of further consideration. The second and third interviews, focus on the candidate selling themselves on aligning their talents and skills with the companies, in this case with the sales position or the position, the company, the culture, the fit, the chemistry. That’s where you’re going to determine that in that second and third one.
00;08;27;13 – 00;08;43;12
Right? We get past the the basics. So as Gary said a little bit ago, and I want to bring him back in on this, as Gary said a little bit ago, as we get deeper into the process, it becomes more personable. Yeah it does. And so we’re going to have our questions are going to be a much different style of question.
00;08;43;15 – 00;09;03;24
Obviously that initial question is, hey, can you hop through the gate? Can you show up on a video interview and not have vodka in the back of your credenza? Those are kind of things that we care about. So not I’m not against vodka, but probably not in the interview process. So once you’re into that second interview, we’re going to establish a manager like you talked about a sales manager for the company advisor.
00;09;03;24 – 00;09;27;25
So you probably going to have that individual. But our history has proven that the individual manager may not be as professional as an interviewer as you are. Like, you’ve got this deep, long experience. You’ve got all kinds of success patterns. So if I’ve got a sales manager and my sales manager is not you, right, okay. The problem with that is, you know, the bias gets in the way.
00;09;27;27 – 00;09;45;13
So we personally have decided that we’re going to pair a second manager into the interview process. Okay. And we only do that as a check and balance against ourselves. Yeah. Like Gary sees them and they’re they’re like Ohio State fans. And so he thinks great we’re going to hire because they’re Buckeye fans okay great. That’s a personal bias.
00;09;45;15 – 00;10;15;16
So that other manager is there to basically check me to make sure that if this individual is going to pass through the second interview process or the third interview process, depending on which position you’re talking about, that both managers understand the key objectives of this position, what we needed to have done in the company, so if we’re talking about a service manager and we’re talking about leading service technicians, they’ve got to be skilled at being able to train, educate, develop technical training.
00;10;15;16 – 00;10;37;11
They’ve got to be competent, they’ve got to be reliable, they’ve got to have a good culture. So there’s all these attributes that we’re looking for. A individual manager might make the decision to hire somebody because we need the body, and the two managers together rarely make that particular mistake. It is a added layer of time constraint. I will tell you, though, that we’re pretty good at hiring.
00;10;37;13 – 00;10;59;10
So we’ve experienced, you know, a lot of failure. And so that that’s just one of those things we’ve added to our element that’s personal experience. This isn’t necessarily something that you’re going to read on runner or, you know, some of the human resources type places that you might find best practices. This is just a plain and simple, I’ve skinned my knees enough times that, hey, we got to figure something else out.
00;10;59;10 – 00;11;16;22
We’ve we’ve made a poor decision, and we’re. And when we and we do the postmortem on a poor decision, we ask the question why? And the answer is, well, gosh, you know, it was a little bit of a bias. Okay. So the third interview, and in our case, sometimes the fourth interview is very much a, culture.
00;11;16;24 – 00;11;34;18
It has nothing to do with job technical skills, like if the service manager of the sales manager, or in this case, we’re talking about a comfort advisor. If they’ve proven that, they’ve got some of the skill sets that we like, and they’ve got some of the ideas that they’re like, we’re going to interview them for, you know, are you going to be a good cultural fit for the organization?
00;11;34;20 – 00;11;55;16
Because if I hire somebody that’s not a cultural fit, that tends to end up creating problems down the road. While the performance might be there for a period of time, eventually that creates, catastrophic problems. And so, you know, we end up with a cancer inside of the organization. And we’ve done that. And so we’ve learned that, okay, the culture interview might be the most important interview.
00;11;55;16 – 00;12;17;27
So getting it is another layer. Yeah. And it does slow us down. But I will tell you, for any manager position or any position where there’s going to be interface amongst the internal teams and you’re leading other individuals, that’s our step. We add that extra step. And so I wouldn’t say that to be true for a CSR dispatcher, or even a basic service technician or plumbing technician.
00;12;18;04 – 00;12;35;08
You know, we’re we’re probably not going to be quite as rigid on that third and fourth interview. Yeah. But for manager positions, I just want to be clear. We’re differentiating in the org chart. Those kinds of things are good elements to have because they’re part of a management team. Yeah. And we need them to function. Yeah.
00;12;35;11 – 00;12;53;23
So basically what you’re hearing is the higher up the chain of command as you go, the more responsibility that you have for people in your charge, right? The the more detailed, the more layers to this process that there are, the more people are probably going to be involved in this process. I want to come back to that because I want to go back to Brian’s question.
00;12;53;23 – 00;13;15;04
Right. If I’m hiring, let’s say, you know, just a, you know, let’s say just a runner. But if I’m hiring a runner, okay, probably a few layers quicker, more time compressed, right? Phone interview, video interview, manager interview. Yeah, yeah. And pretty much a decision can be made. Now I do want to also, you know, kind of take it, you know, get your take on this because you work with all sizes of companies.
00;13;15;04 – 00;13;43;06
You’ve been doing this a long time, you know, as a consultant coach, longer than I probably have. I’ve been only doing it since 99. You were doing it? That’s how I met your service expert. Sadly, I was doing it in the 80s. Yeah. So, so you’ve seen all types and shapes and sizes? I know we have all, all sizes of shapes and sizes of companies on here doing, you know, one discipline in multiple disciplines, and maybe in some of the people that are watching this, it’s maybe like just a husband and wife saying, okay, okay, we’re just the husband or just the wife or, you know, single person here doing this
00;13;43;06 – 00;13;58;24
on their own. And so if you don’t have somebody else to run things by and you’re basically building your team from you and to other people to like the third to fourth, the fifth person. Yep. How do you handle some of this, this stuff when you don’t have multiple layers and other people to to run these things by?
00;13;58;27 – 00;14;18;05
I think you go to the site and you pull off the tools and you leverage the templates and the information that’s available to you. We’ve already made a lot of these errors, like we’ve we’ve created a lot of the tools out of the pain points, you know, and and so I think that that’s the first step is to leverage the site, leverage the tools.
00;14;18;08 – 00;14;36;03
Honestly send and ask the expert and ask that question, hey, I’m a I’m a smaller organization, you know, I’m a 3 or 4 man shop or I’ve got two service techs and one crew. You know, maybe it’s me and my wife or my me and my husband. And so, you know, what would you recommend? And the answer is we’ll come back and we’ll and we’ll suggest some resources.
00;14;36;06 – 00;14;54;16
And I also think that you’re going to be in that smaller business. You’re going to be building layers of experience for yourself, too, like we didn’t get to be, you know, 60 years old with all these lines in my forehead, you know, because we made every decision. Well, that’s just not how it works. Right? So a lot of the success patterns that we’ve developed came from the failures.
00;14;54;16 – 00;15;12;11
And the, you know, the post-mortems, the autopsies. So we’ll help you. That’s our job. That’s what we love to do. And that’s that’s personally that’s my mission in life is to help other people figure out how to be better at what they do, but, you know, reach their potential. So that kind of stuff is is exciting. So in addition to the tool, then I think you also have to take some risks.
00;15;12;11 – 00;15;30;26
Like I think you just have to say, well, I’m going to need to hire this person, you know, so this particular position needs to be hired. So you’re not going to do it perfectly the first time, but you should also do what you discussed, which is journal out, you know, what you learned from that experience. And so I think too many people don’t do that.
00;15;30;28 – 00;15;54;01
They’re not really constructively reviewing their own processes and what they could have learned once they’ve experienced it. And so that’s a great discipline. You know, I’ve heard, countless successful people you know, start with Napoleon Hill, go through Tony Robbins. We were talking about Mark Madison yesterday. You know, I mean, just the smartest people around Journal what they learned, and they remember that.
00;15;54;01 – 00;16;11;02
And so I think it’s okay to make mistakes. I think you should expect that you’re going to probably do some things that aren’t perfect. It’s only really an error or a mistake if you repeat it. It’s tuition and learning. And I think that’s the way you have to approach a mindset. Yeah. Now good stuff. And, and and that’s the other thing.
00;16;11;05 – 00;16;28;09
I mean, you can also get to a place where you’ve taken it so far. So in this particular case, this isn’t a commercial per se. But again, you might say, okay, I will head down. I got, you know, two candidates left. I got two salespeople. Would drew would you phone interview them? Okay. Yes. I will not free of charge.
00;16;28;09 – 00;16;48;29
Okay. There is a small fee to do that. But again if it if it gets you $1 million, a salesperson is, you know, investing 500 or $1000 to get some phone interviews done, you know, worth it, you know, or zoom interviews. I would, you know, typically do because I’m going to if I’m going to do that, I’m going to do I’m going to spend 60 to 90 minutes doing a, an interview, a very detailed interview.
00;16;49;06 – 00;17;15;27
And I tell you what I see, and I don’t want any of your bias that you got through your interview process. Certainly want to review the resume and the application and, any, any, assessments that you got, and then I’ll make my own judgment. But then I can kind of give you feedback that way. And, you know, it’s probably better to invest at 500 to $1000 to avoid, like we talked about, a $10,000 or 20,000 $100,000 mistake, you know, in the long run.
00;17;15;27 – 00;17;38;18
So that’s an option for you as well. I’d love to just dive in on one little topic, right, which is a business topic that attaches to, I’m going to hire Drew Cameron. Right. Because Drew Cameron knows what he’s doing and he’s had experience. And so what I want you to do, and the same thing if you hire me, is I want you to create a hiring process document on your cloud.
00;17;38;21 – 00;17;59;08
I want you to take what you learn from Drew Cameron’s process, like I’ve done probably 20 interviews of CPAs and accounts for different clients over the years because they don’t necessarily know the questions to ask a formal CPA or tax accountant or an estate accountant. You know, succession planning. They don’t have the background. Like I’m a small business owner.
00;17;59;08 – 00;18;22;01
I didn’t come through that education system. I don’t have that. I’m paying Gary to do that. So I always ask them, take notes, write down the process, watch the model, understand that, put that in a document, get that on your cloud. If you’re not on the cloud, get on the cloud folks. Okay. And put that tool in play so that as your company grows and prospers, you can go back to that.
00;18;22;01 – 00;18;48;10
And you have a system now that has your DNA and pawprints all over it, which is going to be pretty good. So anyway, just some unsolicited advice. Take it or leave it. I’ve had a lot of clients over the years be blown away by the process that I have. And, the results that we get through that process, it’s a literally why I have a 97% success rate in hiring people, you know, for my clients, as well as even all the way back to my days at Cameron and Sons.
00;18;48;13 – 00;19;04;11
Here, you’re going to see a slide at the end of the day that summarizes this entirely, because that’s what Gary’s about. That’s what I’m about. We’re about the end game in all of this. So in this particular case, what are we talking about? Standardized set of questions. We said that’s part of what we wanted to teach you today.
00;19;04;11 – 00;19;17;14
We gave you the framework of the process. We talked about the mistakes yesterday. We talked about this. You know, some of the trade secrets are there, the play off of those mistakes. I gave you the framework of the process. But then I want to give you the tools. I want to kind of really dive into the nuts and bolts of this.
00;19;17;16 – 00;19;33;28
But what are we talking about here? Open ended and targeted questions versus closing questions. I just again, I don’t want to, you know, talk down to you or be kind of sending it off, but I know there are some people here because I get people who come through the, you know, the classes that don’t know the difference between these types of questions.
00;19;34;00 – 00;19;51;07
An open ended question. Let’s start with closing it. The closing question is a yes or no question, or only get you a data point or a fact. Like if I were to ask you your name, you’re going to give me your name. That is not an open ended question. That is a closing question. I learned nothing about you.
00;19;51;10 – 00;20;11;24
Right? An open ended question would be more along the lines of, you know, how do you feel about the current state of the economy and what’s going on with inflation? Right. That’s a wide berth that gives you the opportunity to either just respond in a very shallow fashion or, you know, be very introspective and detailed and very thought provoking.
00;20;11;26 – 00;20;37;14
You know, with your response, a targeted question would be once I get a data point, whether it be coming from your, your closed end question or your open ended question up, play off of both of those, a targeted question plays off of that. So if you were to basically say, like, you know, ask me, you know, ask my son his name, he’s going to say, you know, Tyler, Evan, Andrew, Cameron, and what and where.
00;20;37;15 – 00;20;57;13
And then you might say, okay, that’s a closed ended question. Okay. But a targeted question would be, which also, you know, becomes an open ended question. Says, well, Tyler, how did you get your name and why do you have three names plus the last name? And now that gives Tyler an opportunity to tell you that his first name came from the fact that mom and dad always wanted a Tyler.
00;20;57;16 – 00;21;15;00
Evan is Scottish for John, which is my dad and my ex-wife’s town. You know, father’s name. And then Andrew, I didn’t want to take away the ability if it was going to be my only son. The ability for my son to be known as drew, if that’s what he so chose. So, And that was something that somebody had advised me on.
00;21;15;00 – 00;21;30;18
I was like, okay, that’s it’s out there. And of course, Cameron is the last name. Right? So it gave an opportunity based off of that open ended question on a targeted question, on the open ended question that I asked about, which, you know, how do you feel about the economy and the state of inflation? You’re going to say something.
00;21;30;18 – 00;21;44;25
And I think, well, 7% inflation is a 40 year high. Did it, did I say, yes, 7% inflation, you know, is a four year high. But you know, what do you think inflation should be? And why do you think it should be that. Right. Because you responded something. Now you gave me a data point to play off of.
00;21;44;27 – 00;22;06;05
And so that’s what a targeted question is all about. So that’s the framework that we use. And the way of the tools. What are the topics. And the topics are personal education. And people don’t think they can go personal. But you know you certainly can. Anything that they walk into is now fair game. Right. And we’ll come back to, to Gary in a minute.
00;22;06;05 – 00;22;32;20
Education experience results or achievements that you’ve gotten, scenarios, creativity and thought provoking, questions. Right. And what am I talking about? Creativity. LinkedIn for the last three years has basically said that the number one trait that most employers are seeking is creativity. The person who’s going to take an initiative or be innovative and think outside the box, or just think differently and challenge precepts and concepts within organizations.
00;22;32;23 – 00;22;49;16
What would others say about you? What would others say about the work that you’ve accomplished? So forth and so on. You can play off of that. And then obviously we talk about core values, culture, chemistry, fit so forth and so on. Talk to me about your thoughts about that, and we’ll come back to the tools. Yeah. So, love the open ended questions.
00;22;49;19 – 00;23;14;27
That gives us a broad range of information, and we don’t know where that individual is going to take us. But tied to your ideas, their education, experience, results, etc. the most important thing that an interviewer needs to do is listen. And so, listening with intent is about then formulating those targeted questions. So when we start targeting, that’s when we start discovering, you know, those are also called discovery questions.
00;23;14;27 – 00;23;33;09
We call them targeted question. But discovery is the purpose of that. And what it does is that that’s where I start drilling into, the facts of who you are, the data points of who you are, the data points of how you see the world, whether or not you’re going to be a fit organizationally, that can be skill related.
00;23;33;09 – 00;23;51;20
That could be, you know, cultural related. It can be core value related. And so the targeted questions are the probably the most important part. Like we can script the open ended question. Sure. What you can’t script is where that individual takes you. Right. And so the targeted questions that’s the skill set of the interviewer. That’s where you have to have, you know, people that are focused.
00;23;51;22 – 00;24;11;05
And so one of the things that we do is we talk about our flying formation, like what’s going to happen when we ask this open ended question, who’s going to drill in? So it’s okay for you to ask an open ended question, and then you’re responsible for targeting, but you also will check with the group at that point whether or not I have some targeted questions.
00;24;11;05 – 00;24;32;06
Yes. I’m not going to interrupt you and jump in. I’m going to wait until you’re finished with what you’re, exposing and then I’m going to dive in because I’m listening. And while you’re asking those questions and that open ended information is coming out. Right. So give me an example. You know, of your core values. And so the company, you know, the individuals going to talk about that okay.
00;24;32;06 – 00;24;49;26
And so you might say okay give me a specific example. In your career, you know where that’s happened to you. And so that individual will start talking about that targeted question. Well, right now our group is over here. We’re listening. And we might have some interests of targeted questions too. So it’s a little bit like Piranha. Yes it is.
00;24;49;27 – 00;25;13;09
And our goal remember, our goal here is to understand the individual, to learn as much as we can about them, their strengths, their their words, if you will, to know as much as we can to so that we’re buying this individual, basically bringing them into our family, our culture. And so it’s a big deal. And so our purpose in targeting those questions and figuring you out is not to necessarily disqualify you.
00;25;13;09 – 00;25;30;14
It’s to understand you. And so some of those things may disqualify you, but we need to know. And so the weakness I see in most interview processes is we ask an open ended question. And of course, we’ve given you some of those open ended questions. And then we just keep going and we just accept that is okay. Great.
00;25;30;14 – 00;25;44;20
You answer that question and let’s get done telling you guys. Yesterday, my son, you know, read the book, knock him dead. And you know, he’s going through those the questions in the book and he’s going, well how would you answer this question. So he’s getting coaching and then he sits in a couple interviews and he’s like, oh boy.
00;25;44;20 – 00;26;05;23
He’s like, yeah, that is not in the book. And I’m like, it’s not supposed to be in the book. We’re trying to figure you out. Obviously, everybody could read the book and they can basically present a front of who they are, which isn’t necessarily representative, really who they are or what they’re going to be inside the organization. My job is to figure out all the layers of that individual, and that’s what targeted questions do.
00;26;05;23 – 00;26;21;01
So, I’m wicked when we come to those interviews, my my team laughs at me. They’re like, man, you know, that was a hard interview. Like, it’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be hard. Yeah. And you and you say, you know, be hard on the problem, soft on the people. And that’s not a problem per se.
00;26;21;01 – 00;26;36;29
But it’s hard on the opportunities. It’s vetting this this individual and so targeted. I love the word right. As well. And the reason it’s targeted in this particular case, obviously on a sales call, it’s different when we talked about that in the sales training, which we’ll get into, you know, in the next few weeks when we do some training.
00;26;37;07 – 00;26;57;09
But, targeted here is about the things in this particular position that you identified as key criteria for this position. And so if we start touching on topics and a red light goes off on one of the topics or something like that, I mean, everybody on the team knows what the key criteria is. And so a flare went off.
00;26;57;13 – 00;27;14;29
And so that’s the next thing you know is, you know, somebody kind of you know, they’re probably usually like a hand signal or an eye signal in the room or something like that. It’s like, yeah, yeah. Or chat at the chat this video. Right. But if we’re in the room together, it’s a little different. Right. But it’s like a it’s like Jake from State Farm, right.
00;27;14;29 – 00;27;33;10
It’s like blink twice if you’re in trouble. No. And the woman, she’s a sinner, you know. And so, yeah, I’m going to have a high sign or something like that. I might do a double tap because I’m going to make sure that. No, he’s tapping pens and clicking pens in the room. Right. But if I do a double pen tap, that’s signal to hey, you know, somebody jump in, right?
00;27;33;10 – 00;27;39;21
And so have a signal between your team as to how you kind of trigger and play off each other.
00;27;39;23 – 00;28;17;28
Well, that’s our show for this week, folks. We’ll see you next week here on Cracking the Code. Until then bye bye for now.
