How to Interview Like a Boss - Interviewing Techniques and Skills from THE Cal Fussman

Welcome to Chris Collins Unleashed. All you have to do is listen.

So we're here with. With Cal. How you doing, Kyle?

I'm doing great.

So you invited me to lunch today. Oh, yeah. You have a cold.

I got a cold. So if my voice sounds a little nasal, I apologize.

Sniffle a little. It's okay.

It's okay. But I'm happy to be here. We just had a great lunch.

Yeah. So thank you so much for inviting me to lunch. We went to. It's called the jewel of New Orleans.

That's correct.

A little place you found in a little corner somewhere off the beaten track.

Downtown la. We did kind of place.

Yeah. We had the chicory coffee and all that. It was good.

PO boys.

You came all the way downtown, which I appreciate.

That's a travel long distance to have fun with you, Chris.

Yeah. It's funny how when. When we're here in la, it's like. It really is like going to a different state, going from different parts of L. A. Because it's a trek, it's a commitment.

But every time I come downtown, I feel like I'm in your neighborhood.

Oh, I like that. I love downtown. I've always. When I lived in Seattle, I lived downtown Portland. I like a gunshot. I like sirens. I like the diversity. I used to say, like, you know, I want to hear a gunshot every once in a while to know I'm alive.

Whenever I go back to my mom's house in Washington, I can't sleep because it's so quiet.

She's out in the country, eerily quiet.

Oh, that's the worst. Then I'm alone with my thoughts.

Which isn't good.

What might those thoughts be?

It keeps you awake, I'll tell you. I need that white noise to kind of keep me in place, I think. So I'm so excited to pick your brain about a couple things because you're such a genius when it comes to, you know, reading people, storytelling and just really. I would say it's the psychology of it, really. But I don't know if you see it that way, but I would love to pick your brain first. About.

One of the biggest issues for entrepreneurs. And one of the biggest questions I get is about hiring people and having some sort of process to make the right decision when. When you're hiring people, if that makes sense. And I think you get that same question right.

You use the bullseye word, process, process. Because when people don't have it, they are in big trouble.

Yeah.

I can remember one of the first hiring workshops I Ever gave.

Hand goes up. Question.

What do you say to the applicant.

Two minutes into the interview when you already know you're not going to hire them and you got 58 minutes left.

What questions do you ask?

And I said, well, I don't know what you asked the candidate, but you better start asking yourself what's going on with our screening process. You're in that situation because.

You really shouldn't be in this day and age bringing in people who after one minute, you know, nap not for us. I mean, you can screen them pretty carefully so that everybody who comes in.

You'Re saying this person could fit in the job. Yeah, that's solid. And then you're choosing the best. Yeah, but I think to your point, a lot of people, a lot of companies don't invest the time to see it all as a process. For instance, I've heard stories of an applicant, they'll come in at 8:30, they'll have breakfast or whatever, and then there'll be a series of interviews set up throughout the day. There'll be a 10 o', clock, 11 o', clock, 12 o', clock, move them around, see all different kind of people. And yet oftentimes the questions are not coordinated so that the people at 9 o' clock are asking the same questions as the people at 10 o'. Clock.

And basically they can all come to the question about what's your hobby? And it turns out the person is a skydiver.

And that may take the conversation 20 minutes. Wow, that's amazing. And then the person gets out of that interview and then the next interview starts up, what's your hobbies?

And they go to the whittling.

Yeah. Whereas.

The, the idea being you want to have this carefully coordinated, where one person or one group of people is asking about the certain skill set that is needed, another person is examining the cultural fit.

And down the line you can really look closely at a person through a whole range of questions asked by different people. And then at the end of it, you assemble everybody together.

And you can talk about it, or you can have people type up their notes immediately after the interview. You don't wait a week where everybody's thoughts have evaporated and they've really forgotten what's happened and you can make good decision.

So you, you would say that the first thing that companies do wrong is that they leave it up to their intuition and they don't have a process that's consistent. They let the interview kind of take them where it goes. Instead of having a desired outcome and a system to create that desired outcome. Did I explain that right?

Well, the interesting thing is, you know, there was a behavioral scientist, I believe, at Harvard, who made a point.

About hiring that at first I started to go along with, and then it caught me way off guard. And what this scientist was saying was that in, in cases of auditions for an orchestra, when they brought up the violinists on stage and everybody saw who they were and they heard them play.

Quite often, the male violinist got the job.

And when they had a curtain over the violinist so that the people who were in the seats could only hear the music.

More times.

The woman got the job, not more times than the men, but there was a higher percentage of time that the woman was hired because people weren't seeing that they were female.

They were hearing the music.

They were just hearing the music.

And what you're hiring a violinist for, that's music.

And so this behavioral scientist, fascinating, put forth this theory that all interviews will only be fair when the interviewer asks the same questions to all the applicants in the same order.

And that's where I thought, sister, you have gone way too far now. Because the bottom line is, an interview is like a piece of art. And I know how much you love art. You.

Don'T want to turn this into a factory where your question one, what's your answer? Okay, that answer gets an 8.5. Question two, okay, that answer gets a 7.75. You ask a good question and it's going to take you somewhere, and then you're following where that goes. And so you can ask a question to candidate A and.

You might have a 15 minute conversation around that because it goes into a lot of different areas. But if you cut that off just to get to question number two, you're really destroying the flow of the artwork. In my opinion, once the interview gets started, it's art and the person doing the interviewing should be letting it flow. And I almost see it like the person doing the interviewing is the casting director for a movie.

They know the role that they need to fill.

And they have to fill it with the best available talent.

And so this interview process is going to, just like a river, start flowing to the point where you're going to look at that person and say, yeah, yeah, that's, that's what we need. That's.

That'S going to feel good here, as opposed to just chopping things up question after question after question and judging people by numbers. Because I think there's a real soulful, spiritual thing about putting the right players together on a Team no different from basketball or.

Yeah. It becomes a family if you do it right.

Exactly.

You're letting them into your secret little world.

And so. And you tell me about this because you've hired a lot more people than I have.

But I find it smart for the interviewing to start. Before the interviewing starts, you got an empty seat to fill.

Let's start asking questions about the people who are working or to the people who are working next to that empty seat because they know what that job entails. Has it changed much in the last two or three years?

No.

Well, I guess it depends on the business.

But they also know what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are. And by talking it all through.

You can really, almost like with a basketball team, saying, well, you know.

Joey over there, he doesn't rebound that well. Great shooter and so. And Phil, great dribbler.

But he doesn't rebound that. We need a guy who can rebound or a woman who can rebound in there.

That reminds me of that scene in Moneyball. Where have you seen.

I haven't seen it. I'm sorry.

There's this great. There's this great scene. So there's all these old baseball scouts and Brad Pitt is the new general manager of the Oakland A's. Well, he, Brad Pitt's playing somebody, but. And so, yeah, he's sitting around with, with all these old scouts and they're like, oh, you know, they're talking about players because they lost Giambi and a couple people and they're the, you know, that their payroll is nothing compared to everybody. And Brad's like, you know, okay, well, what do we think? And they're, they're talking about a player and they bring up a player and they're like, oh, the ball just, you know, just flies off of his bat. And he's a good looking kid. And when he walks in a room and all this and, And Brad's like looking at the numbers, he goes, so you're saying he can hit, but he can't hit. Like, the stats say that he can't hit, but you're saying the ball flies.

They're like, he's a good looking kid. And then one guy's like, well, you know, they're talking about a different player and they're like, he has an ugly girlfriend. And they're like, what does that mean? Well, he has no confidence.

Like, what?

Like. And Brad's looking at the numbers, he's like, but he can't hit. I don't care if he's got an ugly girlfriend or he Can't. And so Brad asked him. He's like, so what you're saying is if we bring him to the big leagues, he'll be able to hit because he can't hit in the minor leagues. But it's kind of. Kind of like that, right?

Yeah, I think so. And you can pretty well.

Tell if somebody has the skills to do a job.

Either through the conversation or putting them in a place where they have to kind of show it. But the fit. Very different story. How does the person who come into that seat, how are they going to react to the people on each side of them and everybody else? Because you bring in the wrong person, and it can upset everybody down the corridor. Yeah.

And if you do the first style of interviewing where there's this natural human thing where you want to be friends with people, and so if your interview style is to let them kind of lead the interview and you don't have a system, you'll end up being friends with people. 90% of the time. You don't want to hire your friends. You want to hire, like you were saying, the right person for the part in the play. And so that's where you get in trouble is when you're hiring people you like and not hiring people that are right for that job.

And it can start in as silly a way as resume comes across the table. Oh, you went to University of Missouri. I went to the University of Missouri.

Oh, yeah. I remember Club Labouche. You remember those burgers there? And you're getting a very good feel for the person. Maybe they're an A student. They got good references. Sure. It looks great. But again, are they the right character for the movie? That is your business.

Yeah. One. One of my. My favorite things to do when you're hiring somebody that's like more of a support role. So like, somebody who might be a cashier or a hostess or something like that is to do group interviews where you'll have 12 people. If you can 10 or 12. And you do a group interview and you ask everybody kind of two questions. But you go around the room, and you can instantly see who shines in the room, who's personable, who can handle the pressure. You'll see, like, I don't know, three or four people out of 10 or 12 will just, like, close up, and you can see their posture, and they're nervous. You know, just an easy question to go around the room is like, what's the last thing you posted on Facebook? And it'll go around. And those can be funny. It's a good icebreaker. But you can just see who's the person who loves to serve, who loves to kind of perform and can, can see outside of their, their little introverted world or they're extroverted. And so the group interview for those sort of positions is one of my favorite things because that does the pre qualifying for you and you can, you know, you. I always hold myself to the rule of only calling back one or two out of 10 or 12.

So 12 applicants in a room at once.

Yeah, 12.

And how many people are doing the one interviewer?

No, you got to have somebody. And so it's kind of like what you were saying is you got to write your notes right there.

Right.

And so the first thing you do is say, well, okay, there's another, there's another part to this that I'm, that I'm gonna explain.

This is good because it's all about process. You have a process.

Oh, it's a system. Yeah, it's a system. So you tell them when you, when you have somebody called to schedule the interview. So you'll go through the resumes and pick out people that look good. You know. One question I wanted to ask if you had any thoughts on it. It does appear like the younger generation in the Millennials, when you look at resumes, have a new job every year and they see that as a badge of honor where when I'm, I'm looking through a resume, I'm old school, I'm looking for L stays. Yeah. And so I just think if you have a job every year, I'm going to spend all this time training you. Just about the time you're going, you're going to decide you want to go, you know, work for Adidas or something. I don't know. You're gonna have a change. But so the first part of it is you'll have, you'll tell them you're, you know, you're coming to a group interview and you probably want to schedule 15 people because you have some no shows, which is weird, but you will. And then you have a sign in sheet, like in your lobby and have them sign in and so you can see who's on time, who's not. Here's. And then if you have a person or a receptionist working there, they can kind of overhear what people are saying. So you can kind of get a feel. Kind of like Southwest Airlines does, where they have the shuttle driver.

I was going to bring Southwest Airlines up, but keep going.

Okay. Yeah, you want to use that little Trick if you can and get their feedback. So then you put them all in a conference room and you explain, this is a group interview we're going to call back. You know, the, the ones that we feel like we connect with for an in person, one on one interview. But this is just a great way for us to get to know each other. So we're just going to ask a couple questions and it'll be really easy. And then, yeah, I usually have somebody in, in the company with me because you got to keep good notes. So the first one is what's, what's your name and what's the last thing, the last like, headline you posted on Facebook. And then you're just writing the names as you go. Joe and Blue Shirt, Tim and Pink Shirt, you know, because you're gonna forget because it goes really fast. And then you just ask him some, some questions that, you know, usually three questions is enough for you to understand who in the room is an extrovert and loves to serve. And, you know, you can ask questions that lead you to that, but that, I mean, that cuts the work in half.

Yeah. Especially if, you know, okay, we got an empty seat and we need an extrovert.

Yeah.

Because as long as you go in looking for that, boom, there were three. All right, now we start to narrow from there.

And that style of interview doesn't work as well for the, the type of employee that is more the, what we call like the engineering part. That might be like a programmer, a technician, a chef. They're. They're creating the product. Those, they're introverted most of the time. And it wouldn't matter if they're introverted or extroverted, then it's about the work and you, Those are more one on one. But the group interview works great for the support person that you want to have the enthusiasm and the need to serve people, if that makes sense.

Agreed. I'm thinking, as you were describing that of a cybersecurity conference that I spoke at. All the engineers, a bunch of extroverts.

A bunch of bubbly.

You could see them walking into the room. And the first group of people took the last seats.

In the auditorium.

More people walked in the room and they took the second row to the back.

Nobody wanted to sit in the front.

The only.

The last people to come into the auditorium were forced to sit in the front. That's just not their makeup.

Yeah.

And, but it's interesting though, because on the way over here after lunch, we were talking about storytelling.

And these cybersecurity People.

Really need help with storytelling. And you would say, why they're in a room temperature is 68 degrees or less, just the way you like it. And they're staring into their computer, somebody's trying to take down their system, their life is on the line. It's like a video game with huge consequences.

Why would they need to tell stories?

And as it turns out, number one, they have to communicate with people who don't understand what they're doing.

And.

They have to be able to sell certain concepts. If they need something, they have to be able to go into a meeting and say, we need this. It's going to cost this amount of money and you can lay out facts.

But like the expression goes, facts tell, stories, sell.

If you can't make a convincing case for why what you need is really necessary, you may not make the sale to your own boss. And so a lot of these people really needed help with being able to understand their situation and to articulate it in a way that at the very least somebody who understood the technology and who was operating as a liaison or a bridge to people who really didn't understand the technology.

Yeah, it's probably rare the person buying it understands the technology. They just know that they're not safe and they need to be, or that they've been attacked and they need it fixed. But they wouldn't understand all the code and all the different nuances of it. But those people probably tend to talk in code and way over our head, kind of like a doctor might talk over our head.

And they need to be able to tell a story. Yeah, because.

It'S not always speaking among themselves. And it reminded me of another story. And here's a interesting story. It's not specifically about hiring, but it's what happens after somebody's hiring and is doing a good job and where things could go wrong. So there's this engineer at company in Silicon Valley.

It was a startup and it started doing really well and this person was just killing it. You know, he was just sitting in that air conditioned office, just zoned in on that code. Everybody just marveled at this guy's work, Right. And so a year and a half, two years later, they call him into the office and say like you just great.

What, what do you think they do? Yeah, they want to give him more money. So what comes with more money? A promotion. And what do they promote him to? Manager.

The last thing this guy wants to do is going to be talking to. He just wants to be sitting in his frigid icebox of an office looking at code and solving problems. And yet we often put ourselves into a situation where we see a rise in terms of promotion, and that turns to a completely different skill set. And the guy took the promotion and he hated it. Like, get me back.

I didn't want to deal with people. I like code.

Now, on the other hand, and this is like, this is the ultimate success story. Mary Barra, now the CEO of General Motors. So she grows up in a home where her dad worked for GM all his life. And once a year, his dad would get to drive a new car off the plant for a day or two, and everybody on the block could crawl around it and look at inside. And it was just a really great company feel. And so Mary gets her first job working on the GM assembly line, and she's got a clipboard in her hand, and she's examining the fit.

I hope I got this right. It was between the hood and another part, and the cars are coming along, and she's got to make sure that the measurements are right and mark it off on her clipboard. And they're coming at her one after the next, after the next, eight hours straight, Hardly any breaks. And.

They are very aware of her. They know she's got a great mathematical mind. She goes to the engineering department, she's doing great. And her mind is a mind where numbers solve problems and she's advancing. Everything is looking great for her. And then one day, somebody very smart at GM called her into the office and said, you know, we'd like to see if you would think of taking a different position. Promotion.

Mary says, well, what's the job? The head of human relations, human resources.

Now all of a sudden, math might not work.

Place where there's no math, it's people. It's all people.

You know that Warren Buffett saying where says, business problems are easy, people problems are hard.

There you go. And to her credit, she took it. And the.

The.

Maybe. I don't know if she realized how good she'd be at it. Her parents were the type of people who always had guests over at the house and were making tuna fish sandwiches. And so I imagine that a good part of that rubbed off on Mary. She felt comfortable around people, and she really shined in that position. And what it did is it put her in a place where she had the math and the human side, the magic. There it is. Now you understand why she's the CEO at General Motors.

Yeah.

It's funny how a lot of times it's not the best artist that succeeds. You know, it's not the best doctor. It's the one that has the mix of the people and the skill, right? Like the insurance companies have spent a ton of money trying to figure out how to get doctors not to have malpractice suits. And there's no correlation between the amount of mistakes a doctor makes and how many malpractice suits they have. And so there'll be some guy in the Midwest that they'll be interviewing the family and they're like, well, you know, Cal, he just had a bad day and that's why he killed little Johnny. And they don't sue. But then there'll be some other guy who gets sued every time he turns around. He's never killed anybody. And it's all about that people bedside manner and that connection that.

I completely get that.

And so, you know, my. My attorney has a big firm here, and he. He spends a lot of money getting his attorneys to. Well, actually, you know, I have a funny story, and I'd be curious what, what you think, but I have a friend who was asking me advice. He owns a security company, so he. He's a bodyguard for a lot of big celebrities, and he wants to expand. But the problem is all the celebrities asking.