MBA1942 What to Ask in an Interview To Find The Best Hires + Free Ride Friday

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. Tune in because later in the episode we announce this week's Free Ride Friday winner. In today's episode, you will learn what to ask in an interview to find the best hires. As an entrepreneur, your job is to find the best talent and the best people who can help build your dream into a reality. If you want to create something significant, something big, it often means doing it with other people. But being able to identify who people really are in an interview can be challenging. How do you know they're not just telling you what you need to hear just to get the job? Furthermore, making the wrong hire or a bad hire can be incredibly costly. I personally experienced this, where I made a bad hire in the past and cost our business hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the stakes are high. So in today's episode, I'm going to share with you some tried and true questions I ask in any interview for any position that allow me to really understand who is in front of me. Are they a good fit for me and my company? And will they actually be able to do what I need them to do when I hire them? You may want to take some notes in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. Interviewing can be tough. There's a lot of pressure on you to make sure you find the right candidates for your team and make the right hires. Luckily, I'm going to share with you three types of questions that really are my tried and true. Questions allow me to understand who's in front of me and if they're a good hire, if they're a good person for my company. And I'm going to go into a bit of detail on how to ask these questions and how to make sure you're getting the answers you're looking for. Sometimes you're going to have to stop the candidate and say thanks, but I need you to give me this information. This is what I'm looking for. Let's start there. When I start an interview, when I start a conversation with a potential candidate with a potential hire, I say, hey, this is going to be a free flowing conversation. I can interrupt you. You can interrupt me, you can ask questions, I can ask questions. So I'm going to apologize in advance. I will interrupt you to make sure we're on the right track with this conversation. I also say this is your chance to give me as much information as possible to make the right decision when it comes to choosing you as a hire, as somebody to join our team. This kind of lets them know, hey, I need to hear from you you need to elaborate. You can't give me surface answers. And the third thing I say is that we're going to go a little deep. Some of these questions are going to be a little challenging. And I just say this is just the nature of our company. We like to challenge our team members. We want to see people grow. And that starts here. If your journey is to join us, then this is going to be part of that journey and that sets up, hey, we're not going to be throwing softballs here. We're going to ask some serious questions to find out what you're all about. And we're looking for honesty here. We're gonna go deep. Now, the first type of question or question I ask in an interview is sort of like a storytelling question. I actually got this interview question from Elon Musk and his biography, and he asked every candidate, because he interviews every single candidate at SpaceX, this question. And it's actually a really strong question to start with. And it's a simple question and it is, tell me your life story. I often just pause for a moment, I say, tell me. Tell me your life story. And it's helpful when you kind of give them a starting point, like, tell me from 10 years old on or when you're 18 on, or whatever it is. I like to start at 10 years old because that's usually when you start remembering decisions you made. So I say, tell me your life story. You can start from when you were 10 and walk me through some of the decisions you made throughout life and why you made those decisions. And if you'd like, you can share with me some of the challenges that you've had throughout the way. This often kind of catches people off guard. They're like, oh, you just want me to tell you about my life? And the reason why I think this question is so powerful is because there is no reason they can't answer this question. You know, this is your life. It's an open book test. You know exactly what happened, okay? You have all the information in the world. Second, they don't need to search for answers, right? They have to be honest if they're giving the right answer. And third, and most of all, you get to learn how they solve problems, how they overcome challenges. Because how you do anything is how you do everything. How you overcome challenges in life is pretty much how you approach challenges or solve problems at work. Throughout my experience of asking this question, I've learned so much about these incredible people that are applying for our company. Challenges they had where they maybe had to drop out of school so they can save some money and pay for bills and then persevering and go back to school. Or maybe they talk us through some challenges they had with their family life. Or maybe they talk about their decision to switch majors in university or switch careers or along the line. And what I love about this is that this gives them a chance to just talk. I want them to talk for maybe 10 minutes straight because often in interviews you find yourself talking too much. You want them to talk as much as possible, and it just sets the tone. You are talking, you're telling me the information, and you learn a ton of about somebody and how they approach problems, how they approach challenges by telling their life story. And at the end of the day, this allows me to know, is this person qualified to join my team because they are going to face challenges, they're going to face adversity, they're going to face problems. This is the nature of business. I need to know they are equipped, mentally, emotionally, strategically to be able to at least attempt to take on these challenges. Now, a couple right flags when it comes to the answers to this question. If anybody offers you a story of their life with pretty much no challenges, pretty smooth sailing, I often try to dig a little bit deeper and say, well, how did you get to that decision? Was it difficult? Did you have any challenges along the way? If they refuse to kind of share, they're not giving you the information to be able to make a decision. So for me, that's a red flag. It also means they're not really telling you the full truth or they're not sharing enough for you to be able to know they can solve problems. So either one, whether they don't want to share or they don't want to show you they can solve problems or not, or maybe they're trying to show you that they're better than they are. To me, it's a red flag. I just don't have time to try to convince them this is important after I've already told them at the start of the interview. Of course I try to help them along the way. And I try to kind of ask and dig a little bit and probe. But if after all my attempts I still get shallow answers, I. I know that they might not be a good fit for us. The next type of question I ask is another storytelling type of question. Now, every position will have, you know, requirements, things you need that person to be able to do. And I literally just take the top three things on that list. Say, for example, you're looking for a marketer to be on your team. And the top three things you care about is running successful Facebook campaigns, being able to tweak a sales funnel that's not going well, and thirdly, has the ability to write quite impactful copy. So I will literally ask them the question. I want you to tell me of a time where a campaign was not working, a funnel was not working. You put it all together, and it was not converting for your client or converting for your company. Tell me about that story and what did you do about it? I'm going to stop here because big warning. A lot of candidates, I would say about 80% of candidates will answer this question by saying, I usually do. X, Y, Z. You need to stop them there. And you need to say, hey, remember I said I was going to interrupt? I'm interrupting now. Okay, I don't want to know about. You usually do. I don't want a generality. I want you to tell me of a time. I want you to literally say, hey, one time in Company X, we were working on this campaign. I remember like it was yesterday. I worked on the funnel. This is what happened. They need to tell you an actual story, an actual example, because actual examples of what really happened in the past will prove you can actually do this. You can actually do what we need you to do. And sometimes you're gonna have to bring them back to that. They might go off on a tangent, say, okay, keep going with that story. Keep telling me what actually happened in the past. And what you're trying to learn here is, okay, how did you solve that problem? How did you actually manage to turn a not so successful campaign or funnel into a successful one? What their strategies? How do they overcome that challenge if they can't think of one? If they're like, oh, I can't really think of a time where I was having trouble with a campaign and I had to fix it or tweak it. One of two things. They're hiding something. They're not telling you the truth, or they literally have never done this before. Because in most things in life and in business and in work, you don't get it right? And you're not perfect, and you're not an expert. The first time you do it, okay, you're going to have challenges. Nobody has ever experienced that in anything in life. You ever learn how to skateboard? No one just jumps on a skateboard and it becomes Tony Hawk, right? They fall a few times or they fall a bunch of times, and then they learn how to, you know, just stand on the board. You get the point. If they're not telling you an actual story of overcoming challenges in an area that you need them to perform at, they haven't done it, or they're holding back something, and this is great because it's going to weed out people that just can't do the job for you. The best people are going to be giving you some really honest stories that are really going to show you what kind of creator, innovator, worker they are, if they're resilient, if they're able to learn from their experiences, if they're able to use the resources around them, the team around them, all that kind of stuff. So I literally go through the top things I need them to do, top three things I need them to do in this position, and ask them to tell me a story about when they had a challenge in that area, when they overcame it. Tell me of the last thing that they did in this area. So if you run Facebook ads, tell me the last successful Facebook ad campaign you did. Walk me through it. How did you come up with a creative? How many ad sets did you create? What was the budget? Tell me a story. Tell me, tell me, tell me. I'm really trying to pull out information. So that covers the first two types of questions. The third type of question I ask is literally straight up, why do you want to work for us? In particular, why did you apply for our job, for our opening? Why do you want to work for Webinar Ninja? I literally say that, what about our company? What about the position compelled you to apply? And to me, this is a very important question because this really shows you. Did they actually do their homework? Do they know what your company's all about? Do they just, you know, kind of apply for every job possible and they don't really care who they're working for or they're not really passionate about the product? I need people to really care about our product, our service, what we do, who we serve. I owe that to my customers. I owe that to our members to find people that care about them and care about what we're trying to do here. We're trying to change the world in our own way. I need people on board. I'm not a fan of trying to rah rah and pump people up and motivate people daily. I need people coming in motivated. The easiest way to have a motivated team is to hire motivated players. So this is a very important question to me. If they come to me and they say, I really was interested in xyz. I signed up for your actual software. I really like this and this and this. I love the way you guys differentiate from the market. I was really inspired by this customer story on your website. Those are signs that somebody actually cares, that actually did their homework, that actually is weighing their options. Maybe I want to work for this company versus this company because of their values and they're not just looking for a paycheck.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico to wrap up today's lesson. Interviewing to find the best candidate for your open position seems like a lot of work. Because it is. Because you really need to take the time to find somebody that you can entrust your business, your customers with. You need somebody that really cares, somebody that really is qualified, that can do the job, that can do their best work at your company. This is why it takes a bit of time to hire the right people. But it's an investment because like I said, you can lose a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of stability amongst your other team members. If you hire and fire quickly, you want to make a very weighted decision. You want an informed decision when you're making hire and choosing somebody to join your family, really your business family, hopefully. These three types of questions tell me the story of your life, the challenges you went through, the decisions you made, and why you made them. Give me three solid examples from the past when it comes to the three top things I need you to do in this position. And number three, why do you want to work for my company? Why my company in particular? Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show, but today's episode is not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is Brooks W. Lemon. That's the handle on Apple Podcasts. 17 year old high schooler turned business owner. 5 stars I'm Brooks Lemon and I'm the founder of Rest Assured Pet and House Sitting Services. I listen to the $100 show because Omar teaches me everything I need to know about starting, running and optimizing a business. They didn't teach me this valuable information in high school. That's why the 100 All MBA show is my favorite class of the day. Brooks, thanks so much for that amazing review and congrats on that amazing business you started. Pets and house sitting. I love it. You are our Free Ride Friday winner. Your mission is to email us at support Net so that we can hook you up with a free ride to our program, the Automated Webinar Challenge, where you can learn how to automate getting new leads and sales for your business. It retails for $99, but it's yours for free because you are our Freeride Friday winner. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review just like Brooks did and listen in on a Friday to see if you won. It's that simple. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 RBA show, but before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I look for at the end of an interview. How do I feel after speaking to this person for 30, 40, 50 minutes? Do I feel energized? Do I feel pumped? Do I feel positive? Or do I feel kind of down and out of energy? A good conversation with a good team member, future team member, will energize you, will make you feel like, hey, this person's awesome. I want to have them on my team. Gauge how you feel after the interview. It's actually a huge indicator if you should hire this person or not. Thanks so much for listening to the Hunter lmba show. I'll check you in Monday's episode. Until then, take care.

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