5 Rules To Interviewing

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal diary made public for the world. I just wanted to share that I am sitting on exactly one shit ton of emails from you all, probably 150 of them, and I've probably answered like 25 of them. So please be patient. I'm reading every single one and I'm working through responding to every email as well right now. But that said, as I'm dealing with the shit ton of emails, I would love for you to add to the pile of shit if you haven't yet done so. So shoot me an email at alex@morningbrew.com. You can either say, hey, literally just those 3 letters, and then I'll do the rest of the work. Or if you're feeling crazy, share a little bit about yourself and why you like Founders Journal. With that, it is time to hop into today's episode where I am sharing 5 non-obvious rules for interviewing well. Let's do it. So I have started interviewing again. I'm back in the hiring game. Storyarb, which is my executive ghostwriting agency, is making its first hire. We're hiring for a content strategist, which is basically half account management and half content strategy. So, you know, this hire will be working with all of our executives who are our clients to both build relationships with them, but also help inform what their strategy is on Twitter and LinkedIn as they build up their brands. And as we've started the interview process, I've been reflecting on some of the non-obvious internal rules that I followed when I was hiring at Morning Brew. And now I'm doing the same thing at StoryArc. And my hope is that you, the listener, can implement some of these rules the next time you hire someone so you can increase the odds of a successful hire, because the cost of making a bad hire is excruciating. So let's run through all 5. Rule number 1, send questions in advance. I am not sure why the default for interviews is to surprise candidates with questions they haven't necessarily prepared for, unless one of the skills that you are evaluating for in an interview is quick thinking and how someone reacts in uncomfortable situations, which was done many times to me in my banking interviews. I'm not sure why you wouldn't let a candidate prepare for the interview. So what I've started doing with all of my interviews is sending candidates interview questions ahead of time. Of course, I can still ask questions I didn't send and test someone's ability to think on their feet, but I would way rather give someone the time to prepare answers to questions so I can best understand how clearly and deeply a candidate thinks when they've been given the opportunity to do so. So as an example, I sent all of the content strategist candidates that we're interviewing a set of questions that test their ability to both build strong relationships with exec-level clients, and think strategically about content. One question I sent was, if I am new to Twitter and LinkedIn, teach me how I should think about setting my content strategy in 2 to 3 minutes. Another question is, talk me through a time you've crushed it for a client. What was their goal? How did you get them to achieve that goal? What were challenges you or they experienced along the way? And I just think this is a way better way to approach evaluating the most important skills for a potential hire. Next up, rule number 2, immediately reflect. Something that I've learned over the course of my life is memory is highly imperfect. And in the context of a business and hiring, once an interview is finished, your memory of the conversation and the qualifications of the candidate get fuzzier every minute that passes. And so you should make it a habit to schedule 5 to 10 minutes after every single interview that you do to reflect and assess whether the candidate embodies the superpowers that you require for this role. And the easiest way to do this, kind of the mindless way where you don't have to actively think about it every interview you do, is say you're doing a 30-minute interview, create a 30-minute calendar block for the interview, only take 25 minutes to do the actual interview, and then you have 5 minutes of buffer to debrief. Now, if you're making the decision to hire with someone else at the company, ideally you'd go through this reflection process with them as well. And if you really want to get to black belt status with making interviews as valuable as possible, you should create a quick scorecard that you use across all interviews to standardize the process. And it can be literally as simple as listing the 2 to 3 superpowers that you need for this role, and then create a scale from 0 to 10 and circle where a candidate falls on the spectrum right after the interview. And then you can have a place below for notes just to jog your memory if you're kind of reevaluating a few days after the interview and you can't remember everything. Okay, now time for rule number 3. But before we hop into that, a quick word from the folks that pay the bills. So before the break, we talked about 2 non-obvious rules for interviewing well. Now let's talk about rule number 3. Rule number 3 is connected to rule number 2 in the sense that your ability to remember a candidate's fit for the role goes down significantly as time passes. And so rule number 3 is, assuming you get permission, record interviews always. Assuming a client gives a thumbs up, I always record interviews. I use a tool called Otter. There's another one called Fireflies that I know a lot of people use. And all you do is set up an account, connect it to your calendar, and when you start a Zoom or Google Meet with the candidate, you'll see your Otter ask to join the call, and then you can either accept or decline it. And I'm actually shocked that this isn't the standard for interviews now that so much of our work happens remotely. Even if you've followed rule number 2 and you have a debrief for each candidate immediately after the interview, there is still so much time that passes during the interview process that will make your memory of a previous conversation basically useless. Here's how I would think about it. Let's say your interview process is first interviewing 10 candidates, then having the top 5 do an assessment, and then having final round interviews with the top 3. Likely 1 to 2 weeks has passed to get through all of those steps. And if you're having to make a really tough decision between the top 2 candidates, wouldn't it be good to remember exactly how your first interview with each of them went 2 weeks prior? If you're two weeks in the future, there's no shot that you're remembering all the nuances of your first-round interview with them. So that's where having a recording of both is an absolute game changer. Next up, rule number four. Rule number four is no JD, no interview process. It sounds crazy, but I know so many people that don't create job descriptions before starting to hire for a role. And I think people think about a job description the wrong way. Everyone thinks about JDs as this mandatory checkbox that you need to check off when you hire someone so that you can then send a link to candidates that describes the role. And sure, a JD is an important, let's call it marketing tool and a tool for setting expectations for potential hires as to what the role is and what it isn't. But I actually think about a JD as an internal tool as much as I think about it as an external tool. If you think about it that way, you approach a JD as a force function for knowing exactly what you're looking for and basically Acting as your interview and assessment guide during the process of hiring. So next time you write a JD, don't ask yourself, "Is this good enough to put up on a company site and send to candidates?" Ask yourself, "Does this tell me exactly what I'm looking for in the perfect hire and what superpowers I'm optimizing for?" If the answer is no, keep working on the JD and refining it before you actually start the interview process. And last but not least, rule number five: prioritize 1099s over W-2s. Let me explain. The best hires I have ever made started as freelancers or contractors. Yes, I've given 4 rules so far that can increase the odds of making a good hire, but there's no better way to actually understand if someone is right for the job than actually having them do the job. Morning Brew's COO started as a consultant, and we joke that StoryArb's first hire before this content strategist that we're hiring for is an auditioning CEO because she is working as a consultant before a final hiring decision. Decision is made. There is simply no better way to know if someone is right for your business and also if you are the right business for them. So as you interview for roles moving forward, I would highly recommend that you do the 1099 to W-2 move, and I would put significant value on candidates that are willing to consult before going full time. So those are 5 non-obvious hiring principles that I live by to help me hire well and hopefully increase the odds that I get to work with truly world-class people. With that, I would love to hear from you. Shoot me an email at alex@morningbrew.com and let me know what interview strategies you think I'm missing. Strategies that make a world of difference in finding the right hire. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.