Wake Up Eager Workforce 
Episode 113 Transcript

[00:00:00] Suzie Price: Today we're talking about how to conduct an interview. This is for every hiring manager out there. If you are interviewing people for a position, you are going to want to tune into this episode. If you want to reduce your risk of hiring the wrong person because there's always a risk, and you want to know exactly what you need to do to get it right. You're either new to hiring, or you haven't hired in a while, or you just want to brush up your skills, this is for you. Can't wait to share it with you. Michael – “Hit it!”

[00:00:28] Intro: Welcome to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, a show designed for leaders, trainers and consultants who are responsible for employee selection and professional development. Each episode is packed full with insider tips, best practices, expert interviews and inspiration. Please welcome the host who is helping leaders, trainers and consultants everywhere Suzie Price.

[00:00:54] Hi there. My name is Suzie Price and you're listening to the Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast, where we cover everything related to helping you and the employees in your organizations build a high commitment, low drama, Wake Up Eager workforce. Bottom line, we help leaders and organizations make good decisions about their people. We help you create a Wake Up Eager Workforce, and nothing is more important than the hiring process if you want people who are enthused, involved, and engaged in the work, who have high accountability, high eagerness. Favorite word there -- we love the eager word, which means I wake up ready to come to work, and I want to do the work because the work is a good fit for my skills and my interests, and they align. And I'm also led in such a way, and work for such a team, that we have camaraderie, have a sense of belonging to the organization. I feel like the people I work for and work with care about me. All of that plays a part in the Wake Up Eager Workforce, and that's all the things that we talk about on this episode. This podcast is supported by Priceless Professional Development. That is our company. I'm so glad you've tuned in. This is episode 113. The title is How to Conduct an Interview in Three Steps, and the show notes can be found at pricelessprofessional.com/conductaninterview all one word, all lowercase pricelessprofessional.com/conductaninterview.

[00:02:23] So you're going to want to be able to get the show notes of this, because I'm going to give you some forms and resources there to help you in the interview process. So when you think about the interview process, I get it. I have been there. I see hiring managers every day that are here. They have to sort through hundreds of candidates. You might still be feeling jaded from the wrong person not working out. You thought you had the right person and they didn't work out. You might have found that your interview process are not structured as clearly as you want them to be. You've got a group of people who are interviewing. You're not sure that they're trained or that they're really prepared like you need them to be. And then you've got, you know, the pressure of teams who need the new employee because they're suffering from too much work, and they need more staff, and they're asking you for updates all the time. It's quite a pressure point. It can feel like an organizational friction across the board, and you might be second guessing yourself about the interview process and how you're handling it. So I have to let you know it doesn't have to be this way. There is a structure and there is a process. It's our how-to-hire superior performance process. And that is what you're going to get today.

[00:03:35] And let's go into it right away. We have three steps that are going to help you create greater ease and help you reduce the risk. And we use an acronym fit F.I.T. We want you to focus on fit. We want you to have the fit fix. And so let me give you step one: F figure out what the job needs. So I want you to create a hiring template. I'm going to give you a worksheet that shows you how to do that. We could do it with assessments too. But you don't have to have an assessment. If you just use our hiring template, you will figure out what the job needs. And it's more than just the resume and the background. So I'm going to share that with you. The second step is the I in fit. And that is you need to have an interview plan. And then you now need to have a strategy and you've got to communicate it to the interview team. So we've got a process for you. It's another acronym called getting the Interview Team ready. So there's five steps I'm going to go through that. And I'm going to give you a worksheet that explains those five steps. And then the T in fit is targeted interviewing and selection process. So we've got a specific interview process. And I've got a form that you can use during the interview that will help you be successful.

[00:04:49] And I'll explain the why behind all the steps. But those are the three steps. Figure out what the job needs. That's the F. The I is interview plan and strategy is communicated. You've got to get the interview team ready. And the T is you got to have use our targeted interviewing and selection process. So follow that. And there's some great basics. And I'm going to give you all the forms and everything you need to follow up on this. So just stay with me and go look at the show notes for the documents at pricelessprofessional.com/conductaninterview. All of this is going to help you avoid the biggest interview mistakes. Help you have truth telling interviews. Isn't that what you want? Truth telling interviews? You want to know the truth about them, not the whitewash. A good answer that people give you, and then they show up and they can't do it. You want to figure out you've got these top candidates coming in. How can you greatly influence them to be excited about you and excited about your company and about this position? And then bottom line, you want to hire a superior performer every time. This is directly from my workshop. It's not everything, but it's bits and pieces. And actually I just taught it at the first of this year with a group that was virtual. It was a UK, Netherlands, and all over the US.

[00:06:01] And so there were great students and they had everything they need to hire superior performers. And I'm going to give you bits and pieces of that today. So and it's a 6 to 8 hour workshop. So I'm just distilling a lot of the high points for you in this podcast and giving you some of the basic tools that I think you'll help. I want to start with having you think about someone who did not work out. So think about all the people you've hired and you’ve worked with over the years. And out of all those people, maybe it's somebody you didn't hire, but you worked with them and they didn't. They didn't work out. They didn't do a good job. They caused problems. So think about what the person did. I know somebody's coming to mind for you right now. You're thinking, oh yeah, remember so and so, um, and think about how it impacted you, the company, and the team. And if you were a hiring manager already now, I want you to think about somebody you hired that didn't work out. So how did that impact the company? It has a big impact. So I kind of want to just emphasize the pain for just a moment. The thing with interviewing is a lot of times we don't want to really learn the skill. We just need the person in the spot. But there is a set of skills and a structure.

[00:07:09] And so oftentimes we don't want to actually learn the structure until we've suffered from the pain of a poor hire. And I understand that because I'm all about expediency and efficiency myself. But hang in here with this, use this process and you're going to reduce this pain. But let's relive the pain for a moment. There's a story I've told often about when I was working at State Farm Insurance, and I hired a new doctor. It was a doctor that did all the employee wellness checks. We had 1200 employees in that region, and it was a part time position. And the guy had all the credentials. He said all the right things. There weren't too many doctors that were willing to do this. He was pleasant in the interview. I did a happy dance after I hired him. I've hired a great person. There was a lot of pressure, all the things that I just talked about, about how you’re probably feeling when you have an open position, a lot of pressure to get the great doctor and what happened. You know, what happened. How did it impact the company? Well, the employees didn't like him, so they went in to do their wellness checks. They didn't like him. He wasn't warm. He wasn't friendly. He didn't care about them. He didn't demonstrate that he cared. He might have cared, but he didn't demonstrate it. The previous doctor did.

[00:08:16] Previous doctor had been there a long time. So we lost a lot of goodwill that came out of the employee wellness program. Um, and that was one of the cool, you know, top things that were in an employee opinion surveys that people liked and wanted, the team that worked with the doctor that were there full time. The nurses, they didn't like him. So he didn't work well with others, so their productivity was hampered. And so for me, I had to go. The nurses worked for me, so I had to go make sure that they didn't quit. I had to, you know, negotiate unhappiness with employees and talk to the doctor. So I spent a lot of time trying to fix this higher situation because it wasn't working. Um, and then I lost some credibility. Um, and I had a lot of pressure to get it right the next time. And I've seen that with hiring managers, too, when something hasn't worked out. Boy, there's a lot of pressure. When you're going to fill the position, you've got to get it right. And so with the doctor, you know, if you think about what went wrong, I didn't look deep enough. I didn't think about fit. I didn't think about does this person match exactly what the job needs? I thought about background and experience. He's a doctor. He says he likes it. He works part time. Of course, I asked deeper questions than that, but I just took it on face value and grabbed some key things that he said and said, okay, we've got a fit.

[00:09:33] So that's why this step one in the focus on fit process is we've got to figure out exactly what the job needs. And so but what happened with him, what didn't work out for on our side was that he was too fast-paced. So the way he liked to work was very direct. He's like a lot of doctors, you know, you want to get to the point and tell the bottom line. He didn't prioritize people, so he didn't really have this ability to build rapport. He was perceived as cold. He moved too fast. He wasn't didn't go at an easy pace. So he was missing a lot of the soft skills. And I wasn't looking for that as much. I thought I was, but I wasn't, based on what I know today. Um, so if you think about, you think about did you have reservations during the hiring process that you ignored? That also happens sometimes. Sometimes we have a feeling I didn't have a feeling, but you might have I think something might be off with this person, but we're busy. Uh, the person's willing. A lot of the things check a lot of the boxes. We need to fill the position, and we go with it. And so they say that that happens a lot when you go back and interview hiring managers and they say these people didn't work out, did you know? And they 90% of the time they said, I had a feeling.

[00:10:42] And so we want to dig deeper and we want to really get clear on these steps because it is very expensive when somebody doesn't work out. Turnover is one and a half to eight times the base salary of the position. So that is according to top grading. So one and a half times the base salary would be more of a customer service or an entry level position. Eight times the salary would be an executive level that touches a lot of people. So and it's the base salary and it's not just the recruiting cost, but it's all the loss of productivity. So the loss of productivity I had when I was trying to manage the doctor that wasn't working out, and the employees that were upset by him and the nurses, the time that the position was open and the time that it took to fill and get the person up to speed. There's all kinds of productivity loss there. So think about that. Think about the person that didn't work out if their base salary was $100,000. And if you say the impact of that position was, you know, as they say, one and a half to eight times their salary, their base salary, and maybe there were more like a three in regard to how many people they touch, you know, and the impact to the business.

[00:11:49] It's expensive. So we just want to want to keep that in mind. Think about the pain, don't forget it and make yourself use the steps and just start implementing them and keep coming back. It's just like leadership and communication and presenting skills. We never fully master this ability because it's the people side of the business, and that means we need to continually refine and sharpen the saw of our skills in these areas, and that is with your hiring. So not only do you need to be a great leader and communicate, and all of those things are important to your team, you have to get really good at this. So I'm kind of doing a sales job on you because what happens is we hire someone. And just like I did with the doctor, I thought I hired a champion. I mean, he thought he was going to be a champion, too. Nobody ever said, hey, I got a new job. I don't think it's going to work out. And no recruiter or hiring manager ever said I hired somebody, I don't think he's going to work out. We all think it's going to work, but it doesn't always work out. And so when it doesn't work out, people can move into different modes. You know, they look like a champion. If you think about somebody standing on top of a race car saying, oh, I'm a champion, I won the race.

[00:12:58] They look like that. They feel like that. But then they get in the job and maybe they don't drive around, they don't move the car. The car is too big for them or they're not quite ready, or they can't drive well or consistently, or they look good in the car, but they don't drive it very well. They look like a race car, but they don't. They don't race. They don't do the champion stuff. Um, and so what happens with that? I mean, I think what happens, how do people devolve? I'm eager to be here to I can't do the job. I don't want to do the job. Well, some things happen. And in the interview process, we've got to look for more than the resume in the background. So that's one of the biggest mistakes that we make. That's what determines fit and what can impact commitment to the work and work ethic is it's much more than a cool office or a snack bar, or higher pay and bonuses and giving you time off to go do nonprofit work or, you know, during the week or once every month. All of those things are great. But when we're hiring, the biggest thing that's going to improve engagement and commitment to the company and keep them the champion that they are, because we all have the champion within us, we all have an ability to excel in a role.

[00:14:13] Um, but we've got to be a fit for the role. We've got to be a match for the role. And so we've got to focus on job fit. And so the process that I'm going to share with you helps you do that. They have to be a fit. And that is their strengths have to match the job. And it's much more than their background and experience. That doctor was a doctor whose résumé was great. It was a total fit in that way, but not a total fit in all the other ways. So we're going to talk more about that. The second thing that has to happen is once they're on the job, they have to feel like they they belong there, that they connect with their leader, a sense of belonging. We're not covering that in this conversation, but some of the tools that you create for the hiring process can help you create a sense of belonging by helping them and understand what the job needs, you know, and having conversations with them about that. And the third thing that happens, which kind of impedes somebody staying a champion, is maybe they have habits of behavior, low work ethic, everything. They should be able to do the work, but they kind of choose not to. And that's something we can't control. So that's why we say there's always a risk.

[00:15:20]  So we want to mitigate as much of the risk as possible. And that's why we have our three areas of focus. I often share the three biggest mistakes that interviewers make, and one of them is over. Focusing on the background, Department of Labor says that people fail because of personal skills more often than not, and the people skills are things like not being able to accept feedback. Like for the doctor, we needed Mother Teresa and he was, uh, Simon Cowell from American Idol, you know, very direct and kind of blunt those things. He's not a match for the. A role. So we've got to got to look for those items. There was a CEO of Time Inc years ago and he was let go over after less than six months. So think about the fact of the impact of the cost of that. The article that was written about the CEO said he was incapable of being influenced, persuaded or affected with employees or peers. He was out of step with our culture. It just came down to a clash of personalities and style. He was not a culture fit. So are you looking for that in your current interviews? So don't just look at the résumé and hear what they say. What we want you to do is look at all of this culture fit personality, and I'm going to give you a tool that's going to help you do that.

[00:16:34] The other thing that happens, the other top interview mistake is we have unconscious bias. We don't even know that we have a bias toward or away something. So they have a degree in a school that we went to. They their personality matches our personality. They have had job titles that we recognize and that we associate as good. And sometimes we make a decision within the first few seconds and we decide we like this candidate, but it's false insight. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called blink, and he talks about how great our intuition is. But in hiring, it's the dark side of our intuition. We're going to make a decision on a candidate by gut instinct. And gut instinct is a good thing, except not in interviewing. So we're going to focus on more than the background and experience. We're going to eliminate bias. The tools that I'm going to give you are going to help you do that. And the other big mistake that if we correct it right away, and this is one, if you start doing this tomorrow on your next interview and you have all your hiring managers understand this is that do not show up for the interview unprepared with no plan, because then we talk too much. We're very excited. We love the company, we think they should and they look good and sound good. We talk even more, so they should talk 75% of the time in those first interviews, and you should talk 25% of the time.

[00:17:50] And the only way you're going to do that is if you have a job template or a hiring template. So that's what we want you to do. We want you to figure out what the job needs and create a hiring template. All right. So we use a car analogy to help you figure out the areas of fit that you need to know about. And I mentioned some of them. But if you go to our show notes pricelessprofessional.com/conductaninterview all one word lowercase. You're going to see a big picture of the car analogy. And I want you to I want you to go get that. And I want you to print it. And I want you to save it in your interview file. Because these are the five areas of fit that if you can match all five areas of fit, you are going to have a better candidate. And so the first step in the interview process is to figure out what the job needs and create a hiring template. Well, your hiring template should consider all of these areas in the car analogy. And let me let me tell you what the five areas are in the car analogy. The first is roads traveled and future plans. So that is the background and experience the resume. And where do they want to go? Where are they in their life right now? And as much as you can figure out both things, you look at the resume that's black and white.

[00:19:07] You look you talk to them about their background and their LinkedIn profile. That's black and white. And then where they want to go, you want to be paying attention to that, because I have seen good candidates that match everything except the future plan. So they want to work less or they want to move faster than the position advances them through. And so that's where you lose people. You got to figure out what are their aspirations, what are they, what do they want to do? Where do they see themselves five years from now? You've got to know both. So the first thing is roads traveled and future plans. And that's in the car analogy. The next thing you want to figure out is where the car is parked. And so that gets you to culture. So remember I told you about the time guy that was the CEO. He didn't fit the culture. So where's the car? If we're using the car now you're going to be parked. What's the team? What's the culture? So you need to be thinking about this person and continually thinking about who's the manager that they're going to work with, who's the team that they're going to work with, are they going to fit in the culture of the company? And that is a bit subjective, but usually you're good at that because you know the culture of the company.

[00:20:10] That is a key piece. I know this one company that's been super successful, and one of the things that they got really good at is they intuitively knew whether these people would fit the culture. They were good in many things in their hiring process, but that was one of them. So you have to pay attention to that and think about that when you're hiring. The next thing in the car analogy is thinking about how they like to drive around. So what is their communication style on the job? What are their behaviors? How are they going to have to spend their time five days a week? Are they going to be behind a cubicle figuring out numbers and making sure everything's organized and accurate? Or are they going to be need out and about, connecting with people and meeting new people? Bull in building rapport. So what are those things that they need. So that is how they like to drive around. So we've got a template that's going to help you pick that out. The next thing is what puts gas in their tank. So what are they motivated by. And so what is the job going to reward. Is the job going to reward getting results and being really efficient. Is that where they're going to spend all the time they got they're going to be judged on efficiency.

[00:21:18] Or is the job going to reward them being of service five days a week and helping, you know, going out of their way to help people? And or is the job going to mostly reward coming up with a winning plan and inspiring people to get to it? Or is the job going to reward people following the process and the rules? And do they need to be somebody who enforces the rules and the processes? So every role has some things that it rewards, and you need to know what those are. And then you need to ask some questions that help you understand whether this candidate matches those. And then the last thing in the car analogy is what's under the hood. This is those personal skills. Like my doctor was not able to build rapport. I should have asked him about interpersonal, interpersonal skills, you know, is he able to build rapport with others? And I'll talk to you a little bit about how you figure out what those interview questions are. But you have to ask those kind of questions that are soft skills, you know, can they manage their time and their priorities? Do they take accountability? All of those things are what sink the ship or cause the car wreck. Since we're using a car analogy, I need to use that. So what's under the hood? Horsepower. So we've got these five areas of fit.

[00:22:30] Go look at the analogy image at pricelessprofessional.com/conductaninterview and sear that into your brain. And make sure when you are hiring that you look at all five areas. So I'll go through them real quick. Roads traveled, future plans where they're parked, how they like to drive, what puts gas in their tank and horsepower. And so you need to be thinking of all of those. And in that first step, when you're creating a hiring template, you're going to be looking for that. And that's going to help you find the right person. Because evaluating fit in those areas is much more than aligning skills with tasks. It's focusing on matching jobs to the right people and ensuring you have the right people in the right seats. You know, many years ago that best seller Good to great talked about. You got to put they thought it was going to be all these other things when they did this study about great companies, companies that went from good to great, they thought it was going to be their strategy. They thought it was going to be their budgeting or their finance. What they really found out in their research is they had the right people in the right seats. That's how companies that were good went to great. And so it's a big deal. So how do you know if somebody is in the right seat? Well, we think we've cracked the nut on this in regard to you got to have those five areas of fit and you're going to be more likely to have a match.

[00:23:48] So when you think about the person who did not work out, think about that. What area of fit were they missing? And my doctor, I know it was under the hood and I know it was how he liked to drive around. So what people saw, you know, when he was driving, when he was doing the work, they didn't like that to direct. What was under the hood was this inability to connect with people, you know, so that I want you to think about your person who didn't work out and think about in context of the five areas of fit. In the car analogy, people bring who they are to the job and who they are is not only their background and experience, but it's how they want to spend their time. That's the environment. So they work in and they want to use their strengths. So we want to reduce the risk. We've got to focus on the five areas of fit. We've got to figure out what the job needs for superior performance. All right. What you're going to do in this step is go get the hiring booklet. And there is a hiring booklet that you can just walk through the process. It's going to just follow the instructions.

[00:24:50] There is a place where you just start to asking you about the job and you just fill it out. So the title, what are the basic requirements? It's going to ask you who are the people that they're going to interact with. So like the doctor it would have been the nurses, me, the employees, you know, who are their stakeholders, who do they need to prove themselves to and who are they going to work with the most? So you fill that out, and then there's some questions about getting clear about the level of accountability and how much is expected of them and the risk and the role. So that gets you thinking about the job holistically. The next page has you create a dashboard, and a dashboard is picking the top 3 to 5 priorities that are needed for success in the role. This is the gym. You want to have a dashboard. When you're driving around in your car, you don't think about the wheels and what's, you know, opening the hood. You look at the dashboard and you look at what's most important in front of you, which is how fast you're going, what the GPS is telling you. And, you know, it looks at all the gauges and dials. So your dashboard for the job is 3 to 5 priorities. And you cannot skip this step. This is the most important thing you need to get clear on that.

[00:26:02] We have sometimes in our head this long job description, but we don't know what the priorities are. So we can't communicate them to candidates. And we also can't pick out the attributes for the job because there's so many things that we want them to do, and people can't do everything. So they need clarity on what's most important. And you need clarity about what's most important in order to create a hiring template for that first step, figuring out what the job needs. So here's some examples of the three. Like for a president of a company, there were three things that came out one. Increased profits annually two communicate progress with stakeholders quarterly three develop an executive team based on contract guidelines. That was for one position. Let's say it's customer service. Their top three priorities were customer satisfaction. Learn new products within a specified time frame. Complete orders and requests according to protocol. Those are the top priorities. So you'll have to kind of brainstorm and you just list everything, and then you bucket everything you think about, okay, if this doesn't happen in the job, the job will fail. So if you think about customer service, number one, customer satisfaction, if they don't, if they don't have good customer satisfaction scores and aren't able to provide that, then they're going to fail in the job. If they can't learn the new products within the specified time frame because they got to learn the products to talk about them, they'll fail if they can't complete orders and requests.

[00:27:26] According to protocol, they will fail. And so that's the dashboard. You start there. Create the dashboard. You have to spend a little time. If you've got a group of people, you can facilitate an exercise. That's something that we do on a regular basis to get everybody clear. And a lot of times people are like, why are we doing this? And then once they do it, they say, oh my gosh, I've never been so clear about what the job needs. You're not putting measurements on these right now. You're not trying to say how fast it should go or what what you can do the measurements later. First, you just want to get clear on what are the priorities. If this doesn't happen in the job, the job will fail. I'll give you one other example. It's a finance executive. The number one thing for that position was finance and counting operations. The second thing was leadership. The third was people development. The fourth was continual growth in their business acumen. And then this was an entrepreneurial company. So they wanted an entrepreneurial kind of mindset and focus. So when you list the dashboard of each position, you start to get an image of what the person must look like in order to meet those priorities. And they got to do a lot of other things in the job, but those are the things that are going to keep the car on the road going forward.

[00:28:36]  Just like, you know, you got to have the gas in the tank and we got to watch that. So these are the things they're going to watch. And these are the things you need to be clear about again, so that you can communicate them and you can help them understand in the hiring process. And then when you bring them on board, this is what you need to focus on. And then you put some measurements under it. You know, once they come on board, it's a powerful, powerful tool and you need it for hiring. So if you're getting ready to hire someone, make sure you know what the top 3 to 5 priorities are in the job. Use the worksheet there. We've got the questions there. If this doesn't happen in the job, the job will fail. Or this is what must happen in the job in order for the person in the job to be successful. And you'll have a lot of things, but you can you got to group them together and come up with headline statements for the top 3 to 5. So. So I'm hammering on this because people often want to jump from it. And then as soon as they do it, they say, oh my gosh, this is the best thing. It's so simple, but I needed this, so we need this.

[00:29:35] And so you create the dashboard and there's so many benefits for a dashboard. And I've kind of talked about those in regard to clarity for hiring. It's going to give you clarity for onboarding. It's going to give clarity to the candidates. It'll allow hiring managers to all talk about the job in the same way. That's something I've heard as a criticism in hiring. If you've got a team, interviewing is they don't all talk about the job in the same way. So the person leaves like, okay, I don't think they're very aligned about what's important for the role. And so they aren't as enthused about the job. Okay. So there are lots of benefits from the dashboard. And then if you're using a hiring booklet you're going to go you went and grabbed it at pricelessprofessional.com/conduct an interview. And you're going to then use the worksheet below there where you created the dashboard. And you're going to pick attributes. There's 23 to 25 personal skills. And you can only pick seven. And so you pick the seven. All the personal skills will look great. I mean like you want that everybody to have those but nobody has all those. But they need to have the ones that are most important for your job. So you use the dashboard, those priorities that you just created and you pick the attributes and that will give you if you think about our car analogy, it's all coming together.

[00:30:51] Now. A car analogy was under the hood. This is the under the hood horsepower, personal skills, things you can't see, but things that you live with. You're going to pick the top seven required for mastery in the role, and you're going to pick the ones that most help you get priorities. Priorities that are needed for success in the job. See how it all fits together. The next thing in that on that worksheet is you're going to pick the motivators. And that is what puts gas in the tank. This is what causes somebody to take action. You can have a beautiful car and if it has no gas it is not going anywhere. So you need to understand this intangible piece about what is the job going to reward you. Look at your priorities, read them again that you picked out, and then you go pick other six motivators and you pick your top two and you could pick a third one. It's like, okay, this is what I need somebody to be good at. And then the third is the behaviors. And this is how they like to drive around. In the car analogy there's 12 behaviors and it's made from the disc assessment. All 12 behaviors are things we go in and out of every day. But you're going to think about the priority where they spend their most of their time. So if you think about finance executive, they're going to spend most of their time in the finance and accounting operations.

[00:32:04] So they're going to do all the other priorities that we listed for them leadership, people development, business acumen, entrepreneurial. But their day to day is in finance and accounting. So you think about their day to day and then you read those 12 behaviors and you figure out which ones are the best fit to help do that. Because this is how someone's going to spend their time five days a week. That is what they you know, how they're going to need to drive around in their car every day on the job. You read all of those are all going to sound good, and you're going to want somebody to do all of them. But there are the ones that you want to find the matches to, the ones that are most important. So in just very short order, you now have a hiring template. So if you use that booklet that is going to help you now have very strong clarity about what success is in the role. If you download that booklet, we have a link to 250 hiring templates. I want you to create your own, but you'll see the link to the hiring templates and you can click on that and just look, I mean, I think there's 250 jobs there in alphabetical order. So if you're hiring a finance person, go look at those and see and recognize that what you're seeing is the three pieces of the hiring template or the car analogy, which is under the hood, gas and tank and how they like to drive around.

[00:33:23] So you've got three parts of the five pieces of the car analogy just in that hiring template there. So that is a great start. Once you have that now, then you can think about interview questions for each of those, you can think about how you're going to write the job description and how you're going to write the job ad using some of those descriptors. You now have a plan of what you're looking for in the candidates. So now that you have a, you've done the first step in the fit process, figuring out what the job needs for superior performance. And you've created a hiring template. And the next thing is the AI, which is creating an interview plan and a strategy and communicating that. So you've got to get the interview team ready. So that's one of the biggest mistakes is the interview team's not all aligned. So you have this meeting with the interview team and you want other people to be involved in the interview process. If we go it alone, we're missing some of the benefits and they can be more eyes and in. Sites from others, you're able to dive deeper, because then you can give everybody different things to look for and ask for in the interview process, and we're going to talk about that in a minute.

[00:34:35] It's a development opportunity for upcoming leaders who are learning, you know, going to be a leader in the future. So they they get an opportunity to be part of the interview process. It increases buy in and support for the new hire, because if you've been involved in the process as a interviewing manager or leader, you're going to be more invested in who is hired. All of that comes together to improve new hire retention, because chances are good you can have a better fit because you've got more eyes and insights on there. And if you're going to have people in the process, you need to have a clear vision of what the job, what is success in the job? So now you've got that with your hiring template. And if you're using others the criteria, there's three things that you should have as selection criteria for each interviewer. They must have a vested interest in the success of the position. They should have some interview training. So give them this podcast and look at all of our other podcasts that we have about this. And we've got books and lots of material there. And then you want to make sure that they attend this meeting that I want you to have. It's called getting Everybody Ready meeting. And there's another acronym, uh, it's getting the interview team ready r e a d y the r is you're going to review why the position is open.

[00:35:49] You're going to look at the priorities and you're going to share the hiring template. So you want to make sure everybody's in sync on that. They know what the story is because the candidate's going to ask why is this position open. Do you have the verbiage for that. You know, what are the priorities? What's the hiring template? You now have that because you just used a hiring booklet. So that's r e. You're going to schedule an evaluation meeting. So you want to schedule it while you got everybody there. So you can have, you know, if there's four people in the interview process, you're on the phone or you're in person, you want to right then say, okay, let's pick a date and time where we're all going to talk about how our interviews went, and we're going to use our evaluation discussion to make a decision. Because I have been in companies before where you're running around trying to find people. Hey, you interviewed Sally. Uh, what did you think? And so you don't want that. You want everybody together. So go ahead and schedule that, get it on everybody's calendar. And then you're going to assign interview focus areas and you're going to do it like using the car analogy. So you're going to think about background and experience. You're going to think about all the areas that are in the car analogy.

[00:36:48] And you're going to assign focus areas and add our page with the podcast. I've got a form for you where you can assign people the focus areas, so you cover more ground, and you'll see that on the worksheet, you're going to figure out the interview questions. And I'm going to give you some information about the best interview questions. We've got our own list that we use. So that's a little bit proprietary for clients. But we won't leave you hanging dry. We've got some examples of some things. I'll have links in the show notes for you on how to create great interview questions and what they should be. They should be competency behavioral based interview questions. So if interpersonal skills was important to your job, you're going to ask competency interpersonal skills related questions. And you want them to share past behavior predicts future performance. So you want them to share examples of how they demonstrated this attribute. And then you're going to do the last part in the ready process is which practice and share each interviewers why statement. And I'm going to explain what that is in a moment. But as in everything else, this is part of our workshop that we do. We have a ready worksheet and it's a checklist that you'll be able to use. So r-e-a-d it gives you all the information you need to to remind you what to do.

[00:38:03] And it gives you links to a lot of this material. So go get that worksheet, getting the Interview team ready worksheet and that will help you. I'll have it on the web page. So when you hold the team evaluation meeting, we've got a roll up worksheet where you have everybody talk about each candidate. And they give a score on a scale of 1 to 5, five is their total fit in every area that I talk to them about, four is a good fit in most areas, three is a moderate fit, two is minimal fit, and one is poor fit. And we're talking about fit. How how well do they match the five areas in the car analogy. And so it's a it's a bit subjective based on their experience and the interview that they have. But it's good to have everybody score. And then you calculate that up. And as they're sharing their score they say, well I gave them a four because he wasn't a fit here. This is what I observed. This is what I think. So it'll it'll let you see what the follow up areas might be and lets everybody express their experience of the candidates. You get this group of focus, but it's not just everybody all over the place. They're focusing on what the job needs and what's most important, because they have that hiring template, that very first important step.

[00:39:19] So the evaluation meeting is more effective one because you scheduled it in advance and two, because you've got this. Worksheet that you can use to calculate it and and have everybody discuss it. It'll it'll make for a quicker discussion. And then again I mentioned the focus areas form. And when you look at the form it has focus areas on the side. And all you do is put the interviewer's name up top and you assign them the areas and you talk about it. The car analogy is listed there. That is going to help a bunch, because the worst thing you could do is have all the interviewers have no focus area, so they just cover whatever they want to cover, or they all cover the same thing. You're not really being efficient, and assigning areas will help people focus and help them use that one hour or however long they have each of the interviews more effectively, and they know what they've got to focus on, and so they can go a little bit deeper. So I've got examples of that, and you'll have the form on the website again on the interview questions, I'm going to give you links to some articles that could help you with that. And you really do want to pick good questions because it can really help people reveal more about who they are. And it's the competency. Behavioral based interview questions lip service, lies, behaviors don't.

[00:40:32] Most interviewers are somewhat familiar with this, but it's give me an example of a time when when you did this, you will see, like I said, some links on the web page with some information that will help you with that. One thing that we have you do in your interview meeting is have everybody come up with a why statement. We want to actually influence the candidates to think highly of our company. So, you know, strong job seekers have a lot of choices. So how do you make your company stand out? How do you help the candidate understand how great this opportunity is? How do you set the right tone. And at the end of the interview, they're leaving. Whatever happens at the end is the impression they're going to remember the most. And so at the end of the interview, part of what we want you to do is select or create a why statement, and that is why do I work here? Why is this position a great opportunity. And then you want to have everybody ready to do that because that is part of our hiring process at the end. Appreciate you being here today. Let me tell you a little bit about what's so great about our company. Maybe you talk about the mission. Maybe you talk about opportunities. Maybe you relate it to something that they said that's important to them. And then you talk a little bit about why the position.

[00:41:43] And if every leader that's interviewing does that, they'll do it in their own way. It really says a lot about the company and most people aren't doing this. So this is a really a great way to stand out. I call it your why statement. And you'll see in the ready Agenda checklist, getting your interview team ready, communicating the interview strategy and plan worksheet. How to create that. There's complete instructions and steps on that on how to do that. So we've done two of the steps in the process. We have figured out what the job needs. We now have a hiring template. You've got a form to do that. You've taken the interview plan and the strategy and communicating it to the team by getting them ready. And you use those steps in the acronym ready. And then you want to follow the interview process and follow the basics. So I'm going to go through those with you. Um, there are nine interview basics and we have a checklist for you. And each one really matters. So you want to start and end on time, arriving late as a way of saying that our time is more valuable than the time of the person who had to wait for us. So make that. It's just a basic. That's why they're just called basics. But just decide, okay, I am going to check my schedule and I'm going to make sure I'm not.

[00:42:58] I don't have a meeting from 11 to 12, and then my interview at noon, and the meeting runs over, and I don't meet the candidate till 1215. So we don't want to send that impression. We're trying to be on our best behavior, and we're trying to have good habits. And for candidates, we just need to start and end on time. We've got to clarify the overall interview process. You're going to do that at the start and at the end, and I'm going to give you a template for doing that. You're going to make sure that there are no outside interruptions. So phone off, uh, sign on the door if needed. Private place to have the interview. All of that will disrupt your ability to connect with this candidate. You're going to encourage the candidate to talk. I talked about that earlier as being a big mistake. Hiring managers are very excited about their position and very eager to fill it. But if you don't let the candidate talk, you're not going to learn about the candidate. You've got to let them talk so that they reveal more about themselves. It's simple to say, but it can feel hard to do in the interview process. You're going to be way ahead of the game because you're going to have a hiring template. So you're going to have a plan and you're going to be ready. We have a little sign that says, uh, talk less, listen more.

[00:44:10]  So think about that. You've got to figure out whether this person is a great fit for the job. And you're looking at those five areas in the car analogy. That's how you find a superior performer. And so why do we talk so much? We're excited. We're great ambassador again. Is in our house. Want to make them feel comfortable. And yes, you want to make them feel comfortable, but you really have to use the process and you have to press for specific examples because you're really trying to listen to what they say. You're taking some notes to see whether they're a fit, whether they're going to be somebody who stays there, their champion from start to end. They get in the job and they're a great fit. It really impacts performance. You're going to focus on maintaining eye contact. It's a funny thing. I mean we all hear that right? Oh eye contact is a good thing. But why is it it improves concentration for them and for you. It exudes or shows confidence. You'll remember more about what the person said. They'll remember more about what you said. And so you just want to get comfortable with that. You don't need to stare them down. And we do want you to take notes. But if you can have a direct gaze for 30% of the interaction, it will significantly increase what you remember and what they remember.

[00:45:21] So this is that whole it ties all in with the eliminating distractions, right? You want to use their name. And this is important because if you're interviewing a lot of people they can start to feel like without meaning to even though you're a kind and caring person, like they are a resume and you want to make sure you don't do that. So use their name, their person, make a connection with them whether you hire them or not. And all of that reflects on you and on, and it's just the right thing to do. It takes more focus from you and it makes more determination to put people first. Your eye contact will help. Having preparation will help. Having lack of interruption will help. Another basic is and there's nine of these basics that I'm going through. Allow silence. So what did I do? Just then? I went silent. Right. It can feel uncomfortable. We tend to want to fill the void. Depending on our natural communication style, we've got to learn to sit with it. When you ask a question and you even think the question seems a little tough, you just need to sit, hold your tongue, let the candidate fill in the pauses. That will help, because they will give you more candid and unrehearsed answers. Super important. So allow silence. What is the problem with silence? It's exactly what I said. We don't. We don't like it.

[00:46:40] We want to fill it in. We feel uncomfortable. So you're going to be pleasant about it. You're not looking at them with your arms crossed and a frown on your face. You're just waiting. And let them fill in. Let them think if they're a more cautious communicator, they will need time to think. And if they have a question, they'll ask you, but let them fill in the pauses. Allow silence. Get comfortable with this. We're going to have a pleasant but response neutral face. So this is the what I just kind of alluded to about. We're not going to have a scowl with our arms crossed. We want them to feel welcomed, and we want to make sure the candidate is not molding their answers around our expressions. And if you're like me, I have a lot of facial expressions. And so I nod my head a lot and smile a lot, and some of that is good, but we don't want them to say, oh, she liked what she said there. I'm going to say more there. I don't want to cheer them. Yay! Go! You're great. You're doing great. Or girh them. I'm going to stump you and we'll have a tendency to do one or the other. We might be somebody who shows expressions. It looks like we're cheering them on, or we might be someone who's a thinker and furrows our brows and kind of have been told we had a resting, quiet face.

[00:47:53] You know, they may perceive that we're jeering them. We don't want either one of those. So we want a pleasant and response neutral face. So, you know, there's not the we don't want the I'm happy, I love you. And this is great face that's smiling, nodding and greeting. We don't want the I'm mad and I'm going to intimidate you face. And that's when you're frowning, furrowing your brows. What we want is take a deep breath right now. Think of something pleasant and make an effort to have a pleasant but response neutral face. You're not frowning. You're not cold. You're not warm, you're pleasant. Okay, so that is one of the basics. So it's easier for some, harder for others. But it's one of those things, little big things, just like all of these add up to interview basics that matter. And so you want to know that, know what your tendency is and put on your face. So block your schedule. So if your interviews at noon, at 1130, you schedule nothing and you go and look at your questions, you think about the five areas of fit. You look at what the template is. You look at your focus areas, you take some deep breaths so you're not coming in with your hair on fire, or you're not pulling your head out of an Excel spreadsheet and worrying about a problem. You're prepared for this important discussion because this person is going to make or break.

[00:49:14] Whoever you hire is going to make or break your next year. Make this the priority that it is. Do these basics and it will make a difference. We want you to listen aggressively. That's the last basic. This is when you're focused on hearing and understanding and determined and energetic way. So I'm not passively sitting there. I'm leaning in. I'm making eye contact. I got a response. Neutral face. I'm allowing silence. And I'm really listening for are they a match for the role? I'm thinking about my hiring template. I'm thinking about their answers. So we want to use all of these skills and you'll see the checklist for the basics. I'm going to go through them real quick start and end on time. Clarify the overall interview process. Do not allow outside interruptions. Encourage the candidate to talk. Maintain eye contact. Use the candidate's name, allow silence, be pleasant and response neutral and listen aggressively. So go get the checklist. Priceless. Professional dot com forward slash conduct an interview. All right. Now I told you to follow the interview process in the basics. And this is the process we recommend. I have a form on the website that you can go pull out every time you have the interview. It is with another acronym. It's talent t a l e n t. The first t is thank you. So that is you're going to introduce yourself.

[00:50:40] You're going to thank the candidate and explain the interview plan and the schedule. You're going to make sure that they feel welcomed and appreciated. We're going to think about the basics. They're going to be on time. We're going to be calm. We're going to be prepared because we've taken some time out to prepare previously and right before the discussion, and then you're going to go right into asking. That's the a ask competency behavioral based interview questions based on the hiring template and your assigned interview focus areas. So you're going to jump right in. Don't go into long description right now about the job. They've looked up the company. Don't spend a lot of time talking about the company. Now you want to get straight answers about whether they are a fit for the role. You want to make sure they're not molding their answers around what you say in advance and what's important. You can have some small talk at the very beginning with your thank you. You're making sure they feel welcomed and appreciated. How is your day? And one way to really start a really good starting question is, tell me a little bit about you. Tell me about your journey. I like that question both of those and let them start that way. That's way they're talking about themselves. It's a good open ended question. I always think about what they're saying, what they're willing to share, how focused are they? And I'm always thinking about how they share in context of what the job needs, not how I like to share.

[00:52:02] But what does the job need to the job needs somebody that builds rapport. Does the job need somebody to be very efficient? Does the job need someone who's very analytical? So what are they portraying in how they share? Will tell you some insight about their fit for the job. So that's a great opening question that creates a great segue into. And then you're going to have your interview questions lined up based on your focus areas, and they're going to be questions that match the attributes that you're focused on. So we're going to thank them. We're going to start with our questions. And then while they're talking we're going to do the L which is listen aggressively. I mentioned that that is seeking to understand. And you're going to make sure you have the listen to talk ratio. You're 25. They're 75%. The candidate talks 75% of the time as they give you information. Your job is to tune in. Your job is to say less. Let them talk. Even if they're reserved and quiet. Press them for specific details. Take some notes. I've got a worksheet that has this whole thing lined out, and it'll be a place for you to take some notes if you want. Make sure you do all the other things the eye contact 30% of the time, but as they share examples, well, tell me more about that.

[00:53:13] Can you give me another example? If they gave you a vague example on self-management, which is how to manage your priorities, that's one of the attributes they gave you. A vague example press for. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Can you give me another example? Because like I said earlier, lip service lines behaviors don't. They should be able to give you examples of times when they did this very well. And if they give you weak examples, and then when you press for specifics, they're more weak examples. That's going to give you some insight into they're not really strong here. We're not we're we're not being an interrogator, but we are being very focused on what the job needs. Okay. So the most of the discussion is going to be the thank you and the introduction you're going to. And it's going to be the a asking the competency behavioral based questions. It's going to be the L you listening aggressively. And then you're going to towards the end explain that's the E in talent. Share the job requirements and the expectations. And you already have that right. So you know what the five areas of fit are. You've got your hiring template. You can talk about that. Here's the. Here's the top priorities and you're going to answer their questions.

[00:54:21] So that's that happens there. You're going to look at your notes. That's the end in the six step process and review your notes. Think anywhere I usually star or I'll have a highlight or something I want to follow up on, clarify facts, clarify any information that they shared. So you kind of review that and see if there's any any follow up. And then you're going to do the last thing in talent in this six step process, which is thank them. Thank them for being there. And this is where you share your why statement that I talked about earlier. I want you to know how what a great company Priceless Professional is. This is what we do. We're very proud of our mission and I think you'd really enjoy the company. Um, and so you're always being a good ambassador for the company, whether you're going to hire the candidate or not. If it's somebody you like, you say, I think you would really enjoy it based on things that you shared about this, this or this. If you're not sure you're going to hire them, you just say what a great company he is. So you're leaving that impression, you know, good impression about the company, and you might share with them about the role. And then you know why it's a great role, how they might enjoy it. And then you share the next steps in the process. So you've talked at the beginning a little bit about the interview plan and the schedule for the day.

[00:55:32] And at the end you're talking about what the next steps are. So that is a complete process. We use the acronym talent talent. And I have a worksheet that is combined with the nine basics. And it gives you an image of the car analogy to kind of remind you if you do any of this, it again will help you. And we also have another worksheet that is actually walks you through the process for the interview that you can use a fillable form. So that is the process. This is what we're talking about when we're hiring a lot of cool tools. All you have to do is use them. Start using one thing at a time. The biggest thing to start is step one figure out what the job needs. Create a hiring template. Start there and if that's all you do, you're far ahead of the game. And then the next thing the next time. If you, you know, limited on time, though, I think this is so important. I think you should take the time. But next time use that ready interview plan. You know, get everybody ready, get everybody on the team committed and rolling in the or driving in the same direction. And then use the process. Use it. Just make yourself use the do the basics and follow the process and it'll become natural to you.

[00:56:42] And you will say, wow, we have avoided the biggest interview mistakes. I had a truth telling interview. I've influenced the top candidates in a way that's really making a difference. They're saying yes to our offers because we were just hiring and interviewing, uh, race Car team. That was super winners, and we're hiring a superior performer every time. So that is our direction to you on how to conduct an interview. Those are the three steps. All the tools will be on the web page at pricelessprofessional.com. Conduct an interview. We'd love for you to leave a review if you found value from this. If you use any of our workshop worksheets or any of our other episodes, please leave us a review and we will reward you. If you let us know that you left a review and we will reward reward you with a complimentary Motivators Assessment link. So if you're not sure how to leave a review, we've got a description at priceless professional.com/review that shows you how to do that. You can go into iTunes anytime or Spotify to do that. And then let us know and we'll send you a thank you with a free tool. So thank you for being a Priceless Professional Development colleague or client. If you are. Thank you for being a Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast listener. If you have comments or questions or any way that we can help you. Suggestions for podcast interview? Send me a note or reach out to me if I can help you with any projects. Susie at pricelessprofessional.com. We'll see you on the next episode. Take care.

[00:58:17] Outro: This episode of The Wake Up Eager Workforce podcast was brought to you by Priceless Professional Development. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show, head over to pricelessprofessional.com to gain access to more professional development resources.