In this interview, Mark Murphy, author of Hiring for Attitude and CEO of Leadership IQ, shares practical insights for job seekers and leaders. He defines “emotional vampires” as technically skilled individuals with toxic attitudes, explaining that organizations would rather be understaffed than work with such people. He discusses a key warning sign for CEOs: not being the first to receive bad news, which often precedes a CEO’s ouster. Murphy debunks the myth that most middle performers lack talent, noting that only about 10% fall into a “bless your heart” category—well‑intentioned workers who lack the mental oomph to make a leap. He contrasts CEOs’ preference for BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) with the more common SMART goal framework. Finally, he advises candidates to discard the three most common interview questions—“Tell me about yourself,” “What are your strengths?” and “What are your weaknesses?”—because they elicit rehearsed answers and add little value. Throughout, Murphy emphasizes attitude, clear communication, and realistic goal‑setting as critical to hiring and leadership success.
Chapters
Mark Murphy, author of Hiring for Attitude, is here with some tips on how to get hired. Hey, Mark.
Hey, Tori. It's great to talk to you.
Thank you so much. So you say that companies don't want to hire what you call emotional vampires. So tell us what that is and how do you know if you are one of those?
Ah, yeah. The emotional vampire is the person that just sucks the life out of you. This is the person, they've got great technical skills, but their attitude is just absolutely lousy. And if you go out and you ask leaders in organizations, would you rather work short-staffed or work with somebody with a bad attitude? Universally, they will say, I would rather work short-staffed than work with somebody with a bad attitude.
That's right.
Stakeholders, my next guest is the author of a study about why chief executives get fired. Mark Murphy is the the CEO of Leadership IQ. Two big things a leader has to focus on is the direction for where we're going, and that ties into the change effort. But then you've got to have the clear lines of information. And I will say that one of the worst signs for a CEO is whenever you're not the first person to get the bad news.
That's—
in our studies, that usually spells the ouster of that particular CEO.
This is sort of a myth that middle performers aren't high performers because they just don't have the talent. It turns out that that represents about 10% of the cases. Are there people who just aren't going to take that next big leap? They want to, they're trying, they're giving it their all, but— and they have the right attitude, they're there, "I just, I want to be great, I want to be great," but they just kind of lack the mental oomph to take that next step. Are those people in existence? Absolutely, they are there, but they are not 90% of people. They are about 10% of our middle performers. And we sometimes call these folks the bless their hearts. Because I live in Georgia, I live in Atlanta, and so in the South, bless your heart is a nice way of saying you're trying but it ain't working. It's usually said along the lines of, "Well, bless your heart. That was so sweet. That was just so nice. Thanks for trying." That was wrong.
You're an idiot.
But bless your heart. That was so sweet. That was so nice. Now, I live in Atlanta, so I can get away with that. But I actually grew up in Buffalo. And so in Buffalo, we never said "bless your heart." No. But what we used to say to be nice was we would always say "God love him." God love him. He's out there trying. He's a moron, but God love him. He gets up every day and he's giving it his all. And then of course, for all my buddies who live in the Bronx and Brooklyn, They would just say, "That poor bastard." CEOs don't set SMART goals.
CEOs set BHAGs, which stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. They're big and they're messy. You can walk into any CEO's office and go, "What's your BHAG?" They're gonna go, "Yeah, I'm gonna tell you what my BHAG is." Yeah, we're going to achieve 80% market share by the end of 2015.
Great, where are you at right now?
2%, but I feel it coming.
The first 3 questions that I would strongly recommend you get rid of are the 3 most common and famous interview questions: Tell me about yourself. What are your strengths? And what are your weaknesses? The reason we want to eliminate these questions is not that they're evil, it's not that they're illegal, it is simply that every person on Earth has a canned response to these interview questions. So, "Tell me about yourself." "Well, I'm a motivated self-starter, I love individual accountability, but I also love working on teams and collaborating with others." Wow, that's great. I don't suppose, given all that, you have any weaknesses? Well, I— since you asked, I don't like to talk about this too often, but I have been told that sometimes in the past I care too much. I give too much of myself. I'm sometimes too perfect, and it intimidates the people around me, and this can be a struggle.
