Chad Silverstein learned to interview by watching a skilled colleague work. He hires for people who are believable, genuine, and challenge the status quo, valuing diversity of thought over demographics. He keeps room on teams for both leaders and individual performers, and gives people chances instead of dismissing them for being different.
Chapters
I'll never forget when I started hiring a lot more people in my office. I was struggling to learn how to really be effective during my interview process. And I asked Chad if he can come in and sit. Sit in with me and I could watch him do a couple interviews so I could learn from him. Man, he was so good. He was so good. But he would get out of people and I would have just passed right over. Was just. It was so eye opening for me. And I eventually asked him enough that I seen enough examples that I started to get really good at it. And one of the things that we were doing is we were always looking for who's believable, who seems genuine. Do we think they're feeding us a bunch of BS or do we actually believe what they're saying? You could train people to do a lot of different things, and talent can only take you so far. But having the right attitude and really we were hiring into build to lead. I wanted people to be at my table when we'd be at practice. I figured if they weren't going to be a great person for the role that they're being hired for, then they'll be great at whatever we end up figuring out that they're great at. I didn't care. I just wanted great people around me. And when I started interviewing people and would shadow me, to watch me and shadow coach me, you know, he would love the people who would have the edge, who would fight back a little bit, and who are completely different than me. I remember it used to bother me so much because I was always hiring people who were very positive, people who, who I clicked with right off the bat. And that didn't necessarily mean that they were going to work. And Chet wanted people who were going to challenge me. He wanted people who were going to think differently than me. He always used to say, we don't need more of you in this office. And he was right, of course. And I had to get comfortable finding people that would challenge me. People maybe that I didn't necessarily like that much. But that brought a different level of diversity. I think people throw around the word diversity and they think certain things matter when I don't think they matter. I mean, you can have people of the same faith, could be very distinctly different from one another. So the diverse that I was looking for was the way they thought. I didn't care the way they looked. I didn't care what religion they were in. To me, that meant nothing. You know, I never was judging anyone on the, the. Those types of Things that that person brought to the table. But way someone thinks, the way that they are methodically and strategically solving problems, the way that they would look at an issue, the way they would answer a question, the way they would challenge authority, that was a big deal because I worked really hard on trying to break down the barriers of fear with my employees. And most people, they've been hammered away by many employers. And, you know, they'll say, you don't understand what it's like at other jobs. And I used to say it until I'm blue in the face, well, you're not there. You're here now. You got to learn how to adapt. And it just took many, many, many years and lots of reps to break down that barrier of fear. But when you can have someone come in off the bat and challenge you right away, don't write them off so quick. Sometimes you need someone on your team that's going to be the outlier, Someone who's going to kind of stir the pot a little bit. As long as they're not breaking the rules, as long as they're not causing, you know, causing chaos. Try to find people who are going to challenge the system. Those are usually the rare people who are going to really start to jack things up a little bit, be high performers. And I like to always say there's leaders and there's pilots. The leaders like to influence other people. The pilots just want to be left in a corner to do their thing, let them perform. And every system needs both of those. So be mindful of who you bring into your team. Be careful about judging someone right off the bat, and give people a couple chances when they're new. You never know who they really are once you get to know them, and you don't want to write them off just because they're different.
