Learn what questions to ask candidates and their references to spot hustle, accountability, and discipline. The speaker shares exact interview prompts like asking about times they out-hustled peers or held multiple jobs, and recommends calling college coaches or shift managers who saw them work.
Say I'm interviewing a 24 year old, couple years out of college and I'm trying to figure out if they hustle and work hard. I would say, you know, Stephen, give me a couple examples of maybe in college, you know, where you kind of put in more effort than others, or maybe you held down a couple jobs and were on student council and you took, you graduated in three years. Like, I really want to understand where, where you hustle and work hard. That's something that we've identified as like a core characteristics of our most successful salespeople. So give me, give me an example, specific examples of where you maybe out hustled somebody or where you work harder than somebody else. Like, do not overthink it. You need to directly. And you could do these for references as well. You're calling their references and you're asking like, hey, Mr. Jones, this is Lars with ABC Realty. I'm considering hiring Steven to the team and put you down as a reference. And our core values are everything to us. Most important one is we hustle and work hard. Can you give me a few examples of how Steven showed up at work and he hustled and work hard above and beyond your other people? Like, no, I don't really think he did that. Like, he was always leaving earlier right on time, clock puncher. It's like, oh, okay, interesting, right? And let's use it. Embrace accountability and discipline. You know, if you're sitting across from somebody that clearly doesn't have themselves put together and you can kind of sense that a little bit in how they talk and present themselves. I remember it was a great hire. I remember hiring someone. I asked this question, you know, Steven, give me an example. You know, one of the things that we pride ourselves on here on our team is, you know, we embrace accountability and discipline and we believe that accountability is love and it pushes us to achieve more. And that, you know, delayed gratification, which is discipline, is the thing that's going to help us bridge the gap between, you know, our goals and our actual accomplishments. So can you give me examples of how you use discipline in your life? And maybe you've, you've disciplined yourself to achieve something or, you know, you maybe held yourself accountable or held someone else accountable, or they've held you accountable. Can you just give me specific examples of that? So again, you're not going to get all the answers, but you're going to talk to that Mr. Jones or whatever that reference check and you're going to ask them a question about like, hey, can you tell me specific instances where Steven, you know, was put in a situation where he was highly accountable and he, you know, exhibited discipline where maybe your other employees didn't. Right. So it's not. You can even talk to their. If they're fresh out of college, you could talk to their college. Maybe they played sports in college. Right. Or maybe they're coming from the service industry and you could talk to their shift manager. Right. You need to figure out if this person is a pattern of being a high performer or if they're not.
