The Secrets to Interviewing and Hiring the Best Talent

When you think that employee turnover can cost you 300% of your annual wage for every employee you lose and then have to replace. And if you choose the wrong people to replace them and you put them in the wrong positions doing the wrong things, the damage to your effectiveness, to your business, and to your reputation can be long-lasting and fraught with countless other consequences. But what do you need to know to interview effectively? And that's coming up next on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to Marc Haine Live Episode 23. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. It is so nice to have you here. And I hope you get a lot out of today's broadcast. I'm always interested in other people's experience and their perspective as well on any of the topics. So, feel free to drop your own comments and your own insights into the comment box. I'd love to hear what your experiences have been like. You know, when I first started doing interviews, I thought I had it down pat. I was assigned to do interviews in my very first, in my very first job. I was given like a 22-page list of questions with spaces in between that I could fill in. And it, it started with questions like, tell me a little bit about yourself, to what do you think you, uh, or rather, why do you think you're a good fit for this job? To if you had a choice, would you be a tiger or an elephant? I have really— I've never understood the relevance to that question ever. And yet, it was part of our question survey. Would you like to be a tiger or an elephant? Ah yeah. Honestly, when I started doing interviewing, all I was doing was filling out a form. I had a bunch of questions. I had a space and I was just asking the questions and filling in the form. And then, at the end of the day, At the end of the interview, I would then make a recommendation on who we should maybe hire based on, really based on a person that maybe I liked. I had no idea what I was doing. So I'm interested in your experience. So I'd love to know from you our question of the day. So from 1 to 5, 1 being I am so brand new to interviewing that I am more nervous than the candidates, and 5 being I should be on your show to lend some insight on this topic. I am such a specialist. So in the comment box below, 1 to 5, put down how comfortable you are conducting job interviews for your company. I'm really interested in seeing that. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. It's so nice to have you back. Anna is probably my number one fan and she's excited. She's writing she's excited about this episode because this is a really challenging topic for people. Being able to interview people, interview effectively is such an essential skill. And when done well, the interview process can be a meaningful exercise to get you and get— it'll help you get you the exact person you need for your company and into the job that they're best suited for. It's really important to realize that you are essentially, you are bringing a stranger into your business. It's an unknown variable. Enter your business, the business that you built. Choose well and all the pieces come together. They fit together like a glove. And when it works, it's amazing. The person becomes part of your culture, a part of the fabric of who you are, and it is just wonderful. Choose the wrong person and you spend an inordinate amount of time problem solving, correcting behaviors, putting out fires. And if you choose really, really badly, well, you end up with a cancer on your team that can really disrupt your business. It can destroy relationships and affect your brand's reputation and really rip your team apart. So, job interviewing, no sweat, right? I just want to let you know that today's episode is brought to you by the Speaker Presentation Timer app. I'd like, you know, since when in any presentation did the phrase, oh, how much time do I have left? Or I have to hurry up, my time is almost over. When does those phrases have ever become part of a strong persuasive and motivational speech? And yet I see it happen so many times. So many speakers use the phrase like this, or they use phrases like this, and it destroys what I call the fourth wall to their presentation. The Speaker Presentation app was designed to discreetly let you know where you are in your speech at certain times. So between one section of your speech or one topic of your speech to the next, and it lets you know that you should move on to your next sections. So in case you get carried away, it discreetly reminds you that it's time to move on. It also discreetly lets you know When your time is almost up. It works on smartphones and on the Apple Watch. It's a brilliant little thing on your Apple Watch because the discreetness is it vibrates. It is so cool. So, it can sit in your pocket on a smartphone or it could sit on your wrist as a smartwatch and it vibrates to let you know each of your sections. It helps you stay focused and stay present. And it helps you to stay being of service to your audience. It's available for iOS and Android-powered devices, and it's at the App Store and on Google Play. So, if you want a quick link, a little bit more description of what the Speaker Timer app is all about, go to the website speakerpresentationtimer.com. Okay. So, Anna says, I would rather— here, let me put it up on the screen. Thank you for the comments, Anna. I would rather have someone be honest about what they know and don't know. Then I can train them properly. Right. So, Anna, that's a really good point because as the interviewer, you are there to try to measure capacity. Right? You are responsible for interviewing candidates for job openings that you have. But before getting into the actual steps, we need to set some ground rules because you can't just go in and say, just interview properly. I think it's really important that the onus is on us first as the interviewers to be able to pull information out of the candidates. So before we get into the actual steps, let's set some ground rules about interviewing. First off, it's really important that you make your candidates feel comfortable. I remember back in the '80s when I was being interviewed for a job and There were so many managers playing so many different games. They would do things like they would lower the seat in whichever seat the candidate was going to sit in. They'd lower it so they made the candidate feel lower than the manager. They'd do things like they'd make the candidate wait. They had a 10:00 appointment and they figured, let's let them sweat a little bit. Let's let them percolate. They'd power trip. I mean, really, the only reason for doing any kind of that those kinds of manipulations is because you want, as the manager, you want to have power over the candidate. But here's a funny thing that goes on. The candidate is coming into an unknown situation. They're coming in for an interview. Do you think they're nervous? Of course, they're nervous. They want to get the job. So, when we're nervous, when we're scared, when we're frightened, our lizard brain kicks in. Now, when the lizard brain kicks in, it's a small Part of the brain. But when it kicks in, that's our survival mechanism as human beings. From when we had to be on alert for the saber-toothed tiger come chasing us down. Or the elephant with the big tusks. The elephant or the tiger. Ah, here's the thing. That lizard brain kicks in. And when that lizard brain kicks in, our logic brain gets shifted aside. And so, if we were to make the candidates super nervous and super uncomfortable, they're in defense mode. Do you think that they will be able to answer really good questions with really good responses? So, it's really important that we make people feel comfortable. Rule number 2, this is a conversation. It's not an interrogation. This is where I made my first mistakes as an interviewer because I had my list of questions and I would really just go through and Fill out the questions. And I would then go on to the next question and then on to the next question and on to the next question until it was all done. But your job is to find out who the person sitting in front of you is authentically. Who is the authentic person sitting in front of you? And so, it requires more of a conversational thing than a survey or an interrogation. Rule number 3, let them do the talking. And you would think, well, duh, of course. I'm blown away by how many times I have seen interviewers feel that they need to do the talking. In fact, I remember I was being interviewed for a restaurant and the manager called me into the office and he starts talking. He looks at my resume, he goes, Mr. Haine, I see you have been a manager since you were 17. And I was like, yes sir. Yep, yep, I have been. And he says, oh, and I see that you led a team of 15 people on shift. Yep, yep. And I see that you really like restaurants. I mean, you've been in there since you were quite young. Yeah, I started in restaurants since I was 15. Well, I just want to let you know we have a special kind of environment here. We have an environment that is so focused on making sure our customers have great experiences. And we have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he punctuates all his blah, blah, blahs with, so does that sound like it's something you can work with, Mr. Haine? My response is, yes, of course. You know, this has just been a really great conversation. Thank you so much for coming in. We shook hands. I walked out. He hired me. And then, a couple of months later, I found out from another manager. He says, boy, oh boy, he was so taken with you. He thought you had the best interview ever. And I thought, what? Did the other people come in in their pajamas and drool? It's like I didn't say anything about myself. He did all the talking. And here's the interesting thing about talkers in the interview. When you talk in the interview, what you essentially are doing is sending your values to the person and reflecting it back to you. Because as long as a person does this and you say, honesty is really big in our thing. And it's so important that we get people who will not steal from me. And the candidate's doing this. And tardiness. We don't accept tardiness. We have to make absolutely sure everybody's on time. And the head's nodding like this. And the candidate is just reflecting back your own values. So, at the end of the day, you walk out of that transaction going, wow, this person, he's pretty on the ball. He Believes what I believe. So it's really important. Let them do the talking. And one of the biggest challenges with that is that you will ask a question and then there's silence. And I think this is where sometimes the interviewer feels that they have to fill in the silence. They ask a question and the person across the table is trying to think of a response, and then their next step is to then justify the question Or make something up in order to fill that time, maybe even to clarify the question. So, a question could come up and then the interviewer, not even knowing, will let the candidate know what the answer is. So, if there is silence, give the candidate time to formulate an answer. Just sit there and wait. And yes, it's uncomfortable because it's uncomfortable for both of you. But give the candidate time to formulate a response. If he turns around and says, I just can't think of anything, then you can move on. But don't fill the silence in. There is no need as the interviewer. There's no need for you to be doing the talking. And then, it's important for you to come prepared to the interview. We say that the interviewee has to be prepared. But as the interviewer, you have to be prepared. That means you have to review the resume. You have to review the COVID letter. You have to ask— you have to define questions that you want clarification on. It's up to you to come into the thing prepared. One of the worst things you can do as an interviewer is pick up the resume for the very first time, and then you waste the first 15 or 20 minutes of the interview going, oh, I see you attended college. That's great. Oh, and you worked for— oh, that's great. And that is a waste of time and it does a disservice to the interview process and it disrespects your candidate. Rule number 5, save the company orientation for when you hire the candidates. Too many times we are giving way too much information about the company. It's almost like we're trying to convince the person to take the job. It's like, oh gosh, I have somebody with a pulse in front of me. This is so good. I'm gonna— I just want to let you know what we're all about. Save that for the orientation. You can at the end of the interview, you can ask the question, do you have any questions about what you're applying for or the company? And that's the perfect time then to because it's part of the conversation. It's not some desperate attempt to make yourself look so amazing that the person's not going to say no when you offer them the job. And lastly, remember the time the candidate spends with you sets the tone for how they view you and your brand. All too often, I cannot tell you how many times that we stop thinking that the person sitting across from us because we're going to be hiring them, we start thinking about them as employees and not as customers. These people, whether or not they get the job, whatever happens in the interview, they're going to go out and tell other people. So, it's really essential that we treat the person with respect, with kindness, and with understanding. Because no matter the outcome, you want to make this a great experience for them. You want them to go out and go, I had the most amazing interview with the most amazing company. I hope I get the job. Right. And if they don't get the job, it's like, oh, I wish I'd gotten that job. It seems like such an amazing company to work for. And so they tell people. And so the next time you have another posting, because of what they said, other people will be influenced. So I hope this is helpful. Please give me a thumbs up if this is resonating with you, if this is something that is making sense. And feel free again, put in comments if you have any comments about what we're talking about. And please do stick around to the end. Because in the end, I will be revealing a surefire way to get that new employee you need. Okay? Last Thursday, I spoke with Chelsea, a wonderful business owner in Calgary, Alberta. She mentioned how difficult it was to interview. And that really spawned me doing this episode today because I realized that people who are new business owners or people who are specialists in their business don't necessarily have the skills that they need in order to move themselves forward as HR managers or as human resource interviewers. She said that even though there are so many resources out there on the internet, it was really hard for her to decide what questions should she ask. And so I wanna kind of talk a little bit about what is it that you're trying to hire for. So let's Jump back to rule number 4, which is, if you remember, it's to be prepared for the interview. It's really important that before your interview, before you interview the very first candidate for the posting, you need to know what you're looking for. And so, turning around and go, well, I just need a cashier. Well, there's something deeper you need in there. You need to set a criteria for what you're looking for. And if your only criteria is that You are so desperate that you only want somebody who is breathing and has a pulse, I can guarantee you that at some point in the future, you will wish you had more. So, what does your hiring criteria look like for your positions? Well, first of all, you're going to need a job description. You're going to need something that pens out exactly what the responsibilities are of the particular job. There's tons of job descriptions on the internet. You just have to find one that fits the one closest. You don't have to invent the wheel. But you need to know what the requirements of the job is. Do they need math skills? Do they need an ability to lift heavy objects? Are they going to be doing repetitive tasks? You need to have an idea of what the actual physical person is going to be doing in the job. So, one of the things I would suggest is that you Google the acronym NOC. That's the National Occupational Classification. You just type in NOC and maybe even put in Canada and it will open up a website, the National Occupational Classification. And they have all sorts of breakdowns for different types of jobs that the industry has set and/or has helped set. And so, you look at that code and that'll give you a great start to being able to put the job description together for the basic idea of the tasks. Right. So that is the physicality of I have somebody with a pulse, I have somebody who has 2 hands, people who can do the work. But now you need to know the type of personality you need to fit your team and the outcomes of the job. And yes, that means you have to play a little bit like a psychologist. It's really important. I think it's really important that you kind of sit down and you kind of list the traits of what would work well. What traits would complement the existing traits of your team? Sometimes, you look at your team. I would start with your team members. Just sit down and say, Donna, I really like that she's very kind with customers. She's very patient with customers. And find out what is it that you like and respect about your team members about what they're doing. And then, ask yourself the question, boy, I wish I had somebody on my team who could do blank. And then fill in that trait. And then see how that would fit in. By making these lists, you then figure out, okay, for this particular job that needs to be done, is it better to hire an introvert or an extrovert? And that was something I learned about when I was running hotels. I found that the introverts were really great at housekeeping. Extroverts were better in food and beverage, but then I could never ask a housekeeper, oh, I really need your help in the restaurant. Can you come and help serve customers? It's like, oh gosh, no. Right? Introverts, uh, housekeepers were very detail-oriented, whereas food and beverage servers were a lot more focused on making sure the timing was right, making sure that they had the presence in front of the guest, making sure that they were putting on their show. The housekeepers were a little bit more focused to the details and to repetitive tasks. And so, that's something you need to know in the job descriptions. What kind of personality would fit this job the best? Do you need a go-getter or do you need someone that needs to follow set processes? For this particular job, will you be tapping into the heart, which is their passion and their purpose? Will you be tapping into their hands Because it's manual labor, you need somebody who's got a lot of dexterity. Or will you be tapping into their minds? What knowledge are they bringing with them? Or is it a combination of the 3? And you have to decide that. What is it that you're actually looking for? And I realize that when I start talking about psychology and stuff, it sounds hard. But in your heart, in your mind, you have a sense of what that looks like for you. And I just challenge you to sit down, just write it out, right? Another criteria is do they need to be natural caregivers? Do they need to be a leader? Are they good with repetitive tasks? Are they good from creating systems from scratch? Do they have to be creative in their jobs? Every business, every job, and every corporate culture is different. So, I can't stand here and tell you, you have to do this. You have to do this. You have to do this. As a leader, it is up to you to define what you are looking for. And so again, part of that is if you don't have the capacity inside your organization right now, maybe from a customer's perspective, you've seen it in somebody else's store. You've seen, I really like that clerk who worked at that store. And then, you sit down and you go, what were the traits that I really appreciated? I appreciate she took her time with me. She was conversational. She Gave me the time of day. Shoot, right? And you write these traits down and you make this part of what you're looking for to set you up for success. I do hope that this is making sense. I do cover a lot of this in my upcoming book, Lights! Camera! Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater. Boy, that's a mouthful. It is due out in November. I do talk a little bit about this because I talk about this from the perspective of if I was casting a play, I would need to know the exact capacity I would need to put on stage in order to put on the best show possible. And that's what you're doing as the hiring manager. Do we have any questions at the moment? Perfect. We don't. Good stuff. Excellent! So in the meantime, if this is of value to you, please do feel free to click the like button and share it with someone who could benefit from this information. And please do subscribe to this channel. It's really important to me that I know that I'm putting out some really good information, information that you could use, that you could apply right after this broadcast. Okay, so we have the rules. We have the criteria. What is the magic bullet to get employees, the employees that you want? I know as a leader so many years ago, I would have given anything for this kind of information. There was so much. When I became a manager, it was before the internet. And so I really floundered with trying to figure it all out, trying to figure out what does it mean to be able to ask a good question and get a good response back. I mean, just having the criteria is powerful enough. Just having that criteria of saying, geez, now I know what I'm looking for. But when that's mixed with our next strategy, it provides amazing clarity. Wouldn't you like to know what that is? Okay, I teased you enough. The magic bullet to get the person you need. Well, actually, there are 2 magic bullets. My question to you is, how do you find out if the candidate has the criteria that you personally are looking for? One way is you review as we did. Number 4, prepare. Review the COVID letter and the resume. Is there anything that sticks out? Is there anything that supports the criteria? Is it past jobs that might need the kind of personality that you're looking for in your position that you're hiring for? The most powerful way is to ask. Here is where it gets kind of tricky. Because you cannot ask closed questions. You cannot say something like, I expect everybody to work well together. Do you play nice in the sandbox? What are they going to say? Well, yeah. The question must be open-ended and the questions must be behavioral questions. So, to give you an idea of what that looks like, that's a really complicated term for something that's really, really easy. For example, is being trustworthy an important criteria for you? You could turn to the candidate and you could say to the candidate, so trustworthiness is really important to me. Are you a trustworthy person? What are they going to say? They're going to say, yeah. And if they say no, well, the interview is over. No, I'm kidding. Of course, they're going to say yes. So, the question needs to be phrased As a behavioral question. And that is— and this starts as every behavioral question— can you tell me a time when you were challenged with maintaining your honesty? What a great question. Now you'll see right away. Now the candidate's eyes will go up as they start looking for a story. They're going to be looking for something to tell you. And if they, so if they say no, never. So then you can then prod a little bit deeper. You can then say, so you're telling me that you've never been challenged with any aspect that challenged your integrity or the level of honesty that you bring to your job? And then if they turn around and go, no, well then I guess that's the end of that. However, When you say, tell me a story about when it was, you're not saying whether or not they have it. When you say, tell me a story of when your honesty was challenged, when the compulsion to be honest was challenged, and then they look for a story. So you're already saying, we know that people have this gray area where they tell white lies, they do funky things. You're saying to them, tell me a story about it. It's the same thing with dealing with conflict. You could turn around and ask the question, do you get along well with others? What are they going to say? Yeah. So, the question should be, can you tell me about a situation where you clashed with another person? And right away, their head is going to go on the job because you're interviewing for on the job. Sometimes, they'll clarify. They'll say, like, on the job. Then you could say, wherever. It could be in school, it could be on the playground, it could be wherever. They will then look for the story to tell you. The same thing with tardiness. If tardiness is a value that you think is important, you could say, can you tell me a story, or can you tell me about a situation where you had a really hard time Getting to work on time. And wait for the story. And literally, you have to just sit there and wait. Don't clarify. Don't do anything. Wait for the response. The longer you wait for the response, the more they will answer the question. But all the good questions start with, can you tell me about a time when... Can you tell me a story? About when... And so, what this does, behavioral questions is asking how you behaved in the past. When you say, go back to the past, you could use hypothetical questions. What would happen if somebody came in and held you up? What would you do with the money? Right? But what power does that have? Really, at the end of the day, it's easy enough to engineer a response they know you want to hear. What would you do if you saw one of your employees, one of our employees stealing? As opposed to, can you tell me a time when a co-worker was being dishonest? And then, they could tell you the story. And then, you could ask questions like, and what did you do about it? And here's the other powerful question after you ask that one question. You can then ask, And what else? And keep asking, and what else, until they said, no, that's it. So you could say something like, can you tell me a time when tardiness was an issue for you? Well, there was this one time where the buses were on strike and I just couldn't get in on time. Okay. And what else? Well, I had a babysitter issue, and because my babysitter was late, I was late. Okay, and what else? Well, I think that's it. That gives you some really strong things to start asking about. So, can you tell me a time where your need for daycare was challenged that it really affected your business? And then, you can ask other questions like again, through curiosity and kindness. So, as a single mom at home or as a mom at home, What kind of support do you need in order to make sure that if you have babysitting issues that it's not going to affect your performance? Right? And then you can use that information. If you hire them, you have all the information you need. And again, remember, don't— please, please, please don't talk over the silence. By using behavioral questions, you will see how your candidate processes information. You will see how they internalize the question and you will see them tell you a story about what happens in specific situations. It is super, super powerful. And finally, the second of the magic bullets. And this one is an absolute doozy. Maybe I should tell you next episode. Nah! So, you tell me, how would it be If you could get free insights into your candidate, would that be valuable? If you could get insights, real-world kind of focused insights on your candidates that you knew exactly how they used to behave in the past, wouldn't that be valuable? And what happens if it was free? We do it all the time. It's called reference checks. I am amazed at how many businesses, how many owners, how many managers don't do reference checks. Reference checks is free insight into this person. And yeah, you might turn around and go, well, maybe they're just mad at the candidate. Well, then you do more than one. If the whole world is mad at this candidate, then there might be something wrong. But the free insight It is absolutely amazing the information you will get from doing reference checks. Now, keep in mind that when you do reference checks, you can ask the same questions. If you just say, hey, were they a good employee? Yeah, they were a good employee. Were they ever late? No, they were all right. But if you take the same questions, can you please tell me a situation about when they clashed with another coworker? And again, wait for the response. And it's amazing. Oh well, she's really good. But I do remember this one time. Now, you will come head-to-head with people who will turn around and can't answer the question. Sometimes, people are skittish about the privacy laws and that sort of thing because ultimately, you're not asking for private information. What you're doing is you're asking for stuff that's on the public record. And if the manager on the other end of the phone is good, they're giving you the information that is on public record, on their public record. But please watch out for a response when you're calling somebody and they tell you, oh, I can only confirm that they worked here. That's a tough question. And really, people will answer the question, the reference check question with that when they're just really cautious about what they might say. And so I always— yeah, fair enough. That's all you can confirm is that they work with you. Great. Just one other question. If given a choice, would you rehire the employee? Some of them, and it's so rare that some of them will say, I can't answer that question. Most will give you a yes or no answer. Most, most will say no. Most will say yes. And if the response is no and they can't give you anything, Then you know there's a problem. Usually, if the person is a really good employee, they will be more than happy to give a reference. More than happy to give a reference. But if you ask the question, given a choice, would you rehire this candidate? And they say no, then you're in a world of hurt. Then you really need to consider what the heck's been going on. So, I hope this has been helpful. Screening effectively can be the difference between getting the right person doing the right job in the right position, or having some incompatible— somebody who's incompatible with your corporate culture, with your team, with yourself. The time and energy invested in the interview process can make all the difference in the world. And as much as you have hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of responsibilities running your business, The last area that you ever want to shortcut is going to be the investment that you make in your people. And I realize sometimes it is so hard. The time and attention it takes. And I'm not whitewashing this in any way because it's not easy. It means that you have to gather all the resumes. You got to sit down. You have to screen through them. You have to ask yourself these questions. You have to make the list of criteria that is good for you. And then you have to take the time to actually interview them. And you have a thousand things to do in a day and I know it's challenging. But if you shortlist it, then you shortlist your team. Or shortcut it rather. If you shortcut it, you shortcut your team. Please give me a thumbs up if this was valuable. And as always, my offer still stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, please feel free to book. Time on my calendar. The link is below. It's the one that says meetme.so/MarcHaine. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please, please, please hit the subscribe button, ring the bell, and that'll give you first dibs whenever I bring the content, new content to you. And please go ahead, share this with people that we know. We know this is a problem. We know interviewing is tough and we know we need to get out there. We need to share this information. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.