Finding the Right Hire for Your Business | With Expert Michael Beck

So you say, you know, seeing the person, seeing the person in person, and then once you have that person on the interview, I know it's kind of difficult to say with, you know, different job posting, different positions, but in In general, is there any favorite maybe recruitment question that you'd like to ask, whereas a founder or CEO should be asking their candidates to help maybe dig into something that they probably wouldn't already find and why?

Yeah, you know, it is role dependent and probably industry dependent as well. But I've hired hundreds of people from in my previous roles in financial trading to be within the sales space as well. But For me, I always start off with standard getting-to-know-you type of questions. And then I go into kind of behavioural types of questions as well. But ultimately, it's all about— the way I can phrase it is peeling back the onion. So, you know, the example would be if you're asking behavioural type of questions such as, tell us a time where you had success, you know, in your previous roles. most often not, people have already prepared a question for that, you know, and they'll just read off a Post-it note. So what I'll do then is, and I'm genuinely interested in people, and I think that is really important, you know, these candidates have spent time researching the company, they've spent time to come and interview. I think it's really important that the employer is interested in what they have to say. So this, I always have follow-up questions, and for me it's peeling back the onion. So Why was that a success to you individually? And what you will find is more often than not, the candidate is kind of caught on the spot, you know, 'cause they haven't prepared for that kind of question. So that's where you really find out the true personality behind that candidate when you ask these follow-up questions. But, you know, a genuine candidate that has integrity more often than not will answer that kind of question quite easily. So And then if it is, let's say it's a sales role, again, we've hired multiple salespeople in my time. I'm asking myself, you know, why would I— would I buy from this person? Would I even go for a drink with this person? Is this person personable? You know, that kind of thing. So, and then I'll end also, and I always just being this kind of target-driven, kind of analytical type person, I always end with a brain teaser. And that brain teaser A perfect example, and this is quite a common question, is, you know, how much money does an average cinema make in a week, for instance? And then I'm trying to work out, well, you know, trying to understand, you know, how are they working this out in their heads, you know, the process that they go through in their head to kind of give you the correct answer. There isn't really a correct answer for a lot of these brain teasers, but more often than not, it's a nice question to kind of put the candidate on the spot and really understand their true personality.

I really like that question. So the brain teaser really just gets them— it gets to see how they think and how they approach a problem, and more so than the actual, you know, solving of the number of the problem, right?

Exactly. I mean, so for me, the general structure is standard intro questions, you know, about the person, behavioral questions. I may delve into their, you know, their goals going forward. But then I'll more often go into the brain teasers. And, you know, you don't— you can ask hundreds of different types of questions. So the key is not to ask too many. You know, you should be asking key questions that you get enough information out of the candidate as quick as possible. So yeah.

Nice. And then if I'm a recruiter, right, I'm looking at some alternative ways to kind of improve my process, you know, such as how you guys do instructing the candidates right in the job posting to ask those questions using a video. What are maybe some other advantages that maybe the, like, the value that employers can leverage by using a solution like yours and why?

Yeah, so I guess, you know, if an employer is not using our platform, and they want to receive videos, ultimately, they have to probably send a list of questions via email to the candidate. The candidate then has to record themselves, you know, more often than not holding up a piece of paper with the questions on. And what you find is you get this, and they'll then send you this MP4 video of them answering the questions. But more often than not, that video is quite disjointed. It doesn't flow well. And I guess what employers will get with Reworking, our system is super easy to use. It enables employers to create a pack of questions, generate a unique link, and they're able to share that link socially or directly to the candidate. And they can do that within, I'd say, less than 2 minutes. The candidate then clicks that link, they're taken through this bespoke candidate journey because that's one of our key features. The candidate journey is fully customizable in our platform. And the employer then can— and the candidate can record themselves answering the questions that pop up on screen. So there's— what you end up getting is a structured video interview and the candidate gets the best candidate experience, you know, that they can possibly get from that company, which I think is also really important, you know, because it reflects on the company and what they're looking to achieve. The employer, from the employer side, when they're reviewing the candidates, they have this beautiful user interface that allows them to watch back the videos, comment, and share the candidates amongst their teams. It's almost like a central hub for sorting the candidates. And we've built it in such a way that employers can watch through the videos as quick as possible, so they don't have to back out of the video screen. They can go from watching the candidates they can skip questions because we've timestamped each question in the video. They can shortlist, accept, and reject, and then they're straight into the next video. And which is a really nice feature because, you know, ultimately going through 100 CVs is probably going to be quicker than going through 100 videos. But where we save them the time is not having to conduct all of the phone call and face-to-face interviews in the later stages.

Right.

But, you know, the candidate then— and the other thing, the other feature that we have, which is really useful, is a screening question feature. So the employer can add in screening questions and then based on how many correct answers the candidate gives, we'll sort the candidate videos based on this traffic light system. So the employer can focus on the greens, then the ambers, then the reds. So they know they're getting the most out of the, you know, the best candidates and they can reply to them as quick as possible.

We've got to find a way to do that for podcasting next day. We just start getting Questions popping up, we don't need to actually show up and, you know, just people start answering them, right? That'd be cool. That's a good idea.

That's brilliant. Okay. So we've had so many, it's been fantastic because we've, we're predominantly focused on the recruitment space, but a lot of our clients have been using our platform in different ways. You know, they've been using it for, let's say, staff wellbeing. They've been sending links internally to staff to say, hey, how are you feeling today? Because COVID restrictions, not being able to meet them face to face, they're making sure that they're just saying to their employees, look, we're still here. We want to know how you're doing. And And we've also had some of our customers using it for, well, investment pitches. So rather than just sending a text document to an investor, they're sending a recording of themselves and sharing that recording with the investor. And it's a bit more of a personable kind of view, a way of receiving the investment. So yeah, it's been nice to see Our clients naturally use it in those different ways.

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the beauty of video. I mean, I personally love doing that as well in my interviewing process. I always ask them to record like a 1 to 3 minute video because I, and I also find that's a huge filter. A lot of people might be good. They send their interviews and then they see, I'm like, hey, send me a 1 to 3 minute video of why you want this position or whatever it is. There's some question I ask. And you know, you just filter a lot of people just like, I don't want to do that video. You see how much effort they're willing to put in. And then yeah, I get to see their kind of personality shine, you get to see how they are, but then also, you know, skips a step. But then yeah, though the issue is I'm doing it manually, like they're sending me a YouTube link, sometimes it doesn't work, or a Dropbox. So this just kind of makes it a lot more streamlined, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you touched upon a key point there about, you know, for us, it's not just about helping the employer. I mean, that's obviously a big part. We save the employer a huge amount of time, huge amount of money. But it's also about giving the candidate the best opportunity to present their personality at the earliest stage. So rather than just receive— just relying on their CV, now they can actually present themselves, actually show what they're all about, who they're all about, and stand out from that crowd.

Exactly.

And go that extra mile.