How to Pass a Job Interview: Avoid These 5 Red Flags (Hiring Manager’s View)

Good to hear. Toby should be joining here in a second. Yeah, no worries. He is.

Hey Greg, how are you, buddy?

Good, thank you. How are you today?

Doing great, doing great.

Good to hear.

What's that?

Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

How's the weather in Georgia?

You know what, it's actually kind of mild for a change. Yeah, yeah, about 50, 60 degrees roughly.

Man, that's sweet.

Two weeks ago it was like 80 though. It's really bizarre.

Yeah, we were like in the mid-80s ourselves. I think we got up into almost, uh, I think we're getting close to 90.

Oh, wow. Where are you from again?

Dallas. North Dallas. That's right.

Yep. That's going to be a home.

Real quick, buddy, tell me about Greg and why Greg is a perfect fit for what we do here at The Unshakeable Investor.

Well, I think I got some experience you guys might be able to leverage and work with. It's transferable. I've been in sales for the longest time. So just to give you a quick overview of what I've done in my career so far, basically I started out in a family construction company. And got my real estate license there in order to expand our sellable, basically commercial and residential properties that were also residential. We worked on our custom homes, so they're very high-ticket items in a sense, million-plus. And that was back in the late, early 2000s, the late '90s. So those are, you know, hefty price back then, a million-five house custom built. So, you know, I did that for over 10 years in real estate, probably 14 years in the construction business itself. Was the lead project manager there over time. And basically, I ran the job site, worked with federal, local inspectors, architects, learned a ton about engineering, construction, and of course, the real estate business itself. And that really helped me basically grow into a position where, you know, not was just a real estate salesperson, I also knew a house inside out and backwards, which is great. After that, my career took a little turn in 2008. And the housing market crashed at the time. And so I said, okay, what am I going to do? I had, um, basically through college, I've been a graphic designer and also a business minor. So my friend basically got me hired for Wolters Kluwer CCH, which is a software firm that creates, um, basically a digital platform out of a paper accounting office. So they would basically scan their 1040, 1041s, upload them to their scan software, also engagement, and worked with something called Document, which basically a cloud software storing the accountant's files. It can be anywhere from, you know, 1040 to 41s, K-1 statements, and any other thing that would be used to process a tax return. It turned everything digital from inside and out, and basically file— e-file at the end with the IRS. So that was a really neat experience to be a pretend accountant. It was actually interesting because there's such a huge crossover between graphic design software Adobe and what they use too. They also use Adobe Acrobat. So I got, you know, some really neat experience on how to, you know, talk to accountants and also learn, uh, how the firms run inside out and backwards. I also upsold the software, which is very important because we would have modules that were needed for certain types of accounting people. Like, you know, there are some people file more business returns, people work at different K-1 statements. So we basically had different types of, um, I would say, um, modules and stuff for them. Um, so we customized and just basically made sure they were happy with everything we did. And I put, you know, kind of a thumb of approval on everything for the fact that, you know, we just want to make sure we had happy customers that were getting the job done. Um, after that, I went into professional recruiting because I knew a lot of things from construction and engineering and accounting, and I sold executive recruiting services with Insights and Solutions and Precision Partnerships, which I'm currently doing right now. Precision Partnerships, the reason why I'm stepping away a little bit more than I want to is because they're going away from executive recruiting, but I'm also kind of burned out from it. And I figured, you know what, while they're in a transition to do other stuff, I would like to, you know, go into more, go back to real estate and, you know, go back to my roots where I was. Kind of born into. And, uh, you know, I just basically think that with my accumulated sales experience, my life experience, and also, you know, understanding of the businesses, um, I can be a valuable asset to your, uh, company, have transferable skills.

Great. So, um, what do you know about my company and what we're doing and, and how you can take your life skills and past and transform that into monetization for clients and transformation of lives?

Haven't done a ton of research yet because I've just been so busy with other stuff and unfortunately somebody got really sick in the family. But I do know enough that, you know, you guys do sell software itself, um, real estate, um, coaching, mentoring software for people. So I figured, you know, with those types of agents who are looking to expand their businesses and like multimillion dollar, you know, businesses in order to go to brokerages, they're going to want something to support them in order to get in the proper training and coaching in order to market themselves out there and be successful.

All right, um, that was definitely not the answer I was looking for. Um, tell me, you, you talk about being awarded the 1% Sales Producer 206, 207, 214, 2021, 2023. Tell me about those.

Oh, basically, uh, I was able to market myself in a much different way than most recruiters did at the time. And essentially, and also that was going back to real estate as well and was very successful in my career. So what I would do is cast a net out there to get the proper people coming to me. So if it was recruiting, I'll give you that example because it's the most recent one I have. Essentially, I would, as an executive recruiter, look for companies who are hiring in a certain sweet spot in order to— let's say I have a great candidate as a civil engineer. I would go to several civil engineering companies in the area, ones that were hiring. Also, I would also go on LinkedIn, use social media, SEO, some marketing with it. If we needed to, you know, find basically a VA that would do data mining in order to find the contact information of these people, it would be great to find the candidates that way. And also with the business itself, and I'm signing contract business, I'm going You know, how did she know about executive recruiting? Um, essentially what we would do is go to a company with one of the most possible candidates, as I said, great person, or we would just show them we do different, um, ways of finding candidates with AI technologies, different softwares, and proprietary, proprietary in-house, um, basically softwares we've developed in order to find people.

Tell me about your martial art career.

Martial arts, uh, basically I know 8 different martial arts, have 3 different black belts currently. Um, I'm a black belt in an MMA style of Savate Khali, and, uh, it was a mix of, um, judo with it. Then the other one was Kenpo. I had a 4th degree there. And also I have a black belt, Alex Wilkie's Freestyle MMA, which was mix of Systema, Krav Maga, judo, jiu-jitsu, and, uh, Thai boxing. And we also did, um, firearms training. And I was a volunteer for law enforcement for 10 years because we had the firearms instructor of DHS and West Orange Field Office with us. And, uh, we were role players. And what we would do is SWAT tactics, hostage rescue scenarios, um, room clearings.

Um, how long ago was all this?

I'm still currently training.

I don't look like it right now because, uh, I don't want to judge a book by the COVID but you look a little hefty.

Yeah, unfortunately I had COVID, got really sick, and I gained some weight, and I look terrible on camera.

6 years ago?

Well, I got it recently. You got COVID? Really sick?

Really?

Yeah, again. So it took me out of training for a while, took my wind away, and now I'm getting back into it.

Okay, um, um, tell me about your custom homes, uh, work in New Jersey from most recent, I guess around 2010.

Sure.

What were you doing? So tell me about that, that project or that career path.

So basically we would do custom homes, uh, from start to finish for a customer, uh, whatever they needed, interior, exterior, whether it was tile or um, you know, carpet choices, window choices, architectural designs. We would do it from start to finish. And, uh, essentially that was the bread and butter of our business. We did a lot by referrals, a lot by the real estate license, the self-marketing through the New Jersey MLS system. And that exposed me to over, you know, 80,000 other realtors in the tri-state area, right? And where we were building was basically a desirable area, so It was— attracted a lot of people.

Gotcha, gotcha. What question?

Known for Pharmaceutical Valley, they called it back then. Yeah, so pharmaceutical sales reps would be there and also VPs and stuff, right? The, uh, house of, uh, oh, um, Johnson Johnson, uh, Bill Weldon, okay, CEO back then. It was interesting.

What questions do you have for me?

What are your expectations? As far as, uh, day in, day out, um, you know, what do you guys, as far as your sales pitch go for real estate agents who are looking for training coaching?

So expectations are that, um, your focus, your platform is all about transformation of lives, not selling products or programs or SaaS. It's all about understanding the client, what the client's looking to achieve, where they're currently at, where they need to go, what's holding them back, and how you can help them get there. Um, the expectations is more, um, being inquisitive and not being so much of a, uh, salesperson. Okay, awesome.

So basically it's more the listening consultant type sales versus I'm trying to tell you something high ticket, I gotta make money in a second.

Yeah, cool.

Yeah, yeah, that's what it was with, um, real estate in general too. It wasn't so high pressure. It was just, okay, we have a product, do you like it, and are you a good fit for it?

So yeah, what really makes this interview hard for me, Gregory, is that you don't know who we are, what we do, and how you're going to take your years of experience to help us grow this business. I understand that things happen and life comes up, But this is a $300,000, $400,000 a year position and you aren't prepared. So that causes me great concern.

I understand. How about this? Let's, uh, would you like to reconvene again after I do more research on your company?

I would not.

Okay, then I apologize for wasting your time and I really, um, I'm sorry I was not prepared the way I should have been. So thank you for your time, and we'll call it a day.

All right, buddy, thanks.