Hiring Interviews — Transcript
[00:00:00.00] Jim: Okay, so we’re going to talk about hiring interviews and this could be a multi-podcast topic, but I think we’ll get into some good stuff here, and I’d like to start with a story about one of our less fortunate hiring interviews because I think that’s where you learn, and to come in with some practical stuff but so Ken there was an interview that you and I the two owners of the company flew into the Denver Airport for and we also had our chief operating officer at the time and our chief financial officer at the time fly into the Denver Airport to interview this person who I think was doing some work either locally or had a layover I can’t remember but we thought she was an impressive candidate from staff I think interviewing her and the four of us met and interviewed her at length So the four top people in the company at the time. In the interview, I thought went well, and I thought that we would be discussing before you flew home and the other two flew home. I thought we would be discussing an offer, but I’ll never forget, we’re getting up from the table after we had concluded the interview. I really don’t talk that much, but I flipped out a question that went something like, “So what are you doing this weekend?” to the candidate, and she said, “I like to drink.” Do you remember this? Because she thought I was such a dope, she looked me in the eye. and said alcohol, we did not extend an offer that candidate. So with that–
[00:02:08.09] Ken: Talk about lack of situational awareness, right?
[00:02:11.05] Jim: Yeah, so the point is we nearly– you know, even with our– Or I thought we had pretty good hiring practices the way we went about it and still we almost made an offer to someone or if I had to ask that question and I honestly don’t care what she does on the weekends if it’s not illegal or going to hurt somebody or unethical. But I do care that somebody can’t filter, didn’t know that that was inappropriate to say to me at the end of an interview, and so who knows what that person would say to a client. That’s my problem.
[00:02:49.94] Ken: I remember this. This isn’t the story I was going to lead with. The story I was going to lead with interesting fallacy. We had hired the person who became the chief operating officer, one of our colleagues had extended an offer, and at the time, anyone could hire. We really had no process or criteria. telling we had begun to develop a bit of a process and some criteria for hiring, including the, you know, don’t be inappropriate in an interview criteria. But at this point, the company had started, we were not HR people. We were not, you know, we were there. We were consultants. We were all extraordinarily skilled. and deep in our subject matter, but we were not HR people. So one of our cohorts had hired a woman and anyone could hire and also anyone could fire, and he apparently forgot he hired her ‘cause he was, or forgot who he hired. We also at the same time had to get rid of an individual. So we called up this individual that we’d extended an offer to and fired her, and this was within a week of her being hired, and she was like, “Ah.” And she called you and said, “What is going on?” And you called the individual that hired you and said, “Oh, crap. I didn’t mean to do that. I was gonna fire.” or so-and-so and that was just kind of a I’m trying to set the context of how how poorly we began our business in terms of HR practices and hiring and firing practices. We spent a number of years trying to develop criteria and and a process to, yeah, criteria for hiring and a process to address the issue, and we went through many, many iterations, including trying to turn ourselves into HR experts, finding HR experts and asking them how you hire, you know, all those sorts of standard things. We kind of came to the conclusion. conclusion, ultimately, that what we looked for, the obvious things were, you know, skill and knowledge, the things you’d see on a resume or curriculum vitae or something like that, and that was fairly easy to digest. you would occasionally get, you know, get resumes that said… One of my favorites was, well, I’ve been a consultant in the hair care industry for 20 years, and in my experience there, and you can probably remember the exact phrase I’m paraphrasing there, but, you know, there were early ways to weed things out, but the harder part were the intangibles. service-oriented personality, teamwork mentality, appropriate, you know, appropriateness in front of the client, which your story at the beginning kind of talks a lot about that. We had other things that you and I, I think, looked for, low drama, hires. We weren’t into having a bunch of office politics. So probably the biggest criteria we ended up with was would others support this person? And to answer that question, we really came up with the crux of what became our hiring system was, which was we’d let you and I kind of backed out of the hiring process. we remained in the sending an offer letter just because. there are some legal complications, but we’d let others recommend the hiring, and as part of their recommendation, they had to be willing to take these people under their wing and use them on projects. You know, so the process is basically we checked for qualifications before they came in, a number of interviews that were to assess fit with staff and ultimately came up with a good hiring process by doing that last piece where I said, “Okay, you can hire them, but you got to deal with them.” At least at a hiring level.
[00:07:24.54] Jim: Does that– - Yeah, no, I agree. and I love your story I’d forgotten about that person being extended the job offer and then fired and then being fired and and I think he I think he actually called her and said on sec I think the conversation was very brief he just said this is so-and-so on second thought we’re not we’re we’re sending the offer, you will not be working here, and then, you know, have a good life, that type of a call, and she was stunned. I mean, she ended up being a top employee and did become the chief operating officer. But what I love about it is, I think that illustrates the broken hiring process. process in just about every company, very few get it right, and people who are applying for jobs, I mean it just illustrates how hard it is to get in somewhere without actually knowing someone because, I mean, just in our small company there wasn’t enough communication He had essentially fired the wrong person.
[00:08:41.09] Ken: - Right, yeah.
[00:08:42.45] Jim: - Didn’t realize it.
[00:08:43.89] Ken: - You gave me, one time you and I were talking and one of the, and we never did this, but one of the best job interview things that I’ve ever heard was you saying, we should take him to a soup kitchen for half a day and see how they do volunteer. you know, feeding the homeless or something like that, and for the kind of person we were looking for, again, a very service oriented person, we had people with, you know, just absolutely brilliant credentials, went to all the best schools, had, you know, PhD or, or, you know, JDS, or JDs, I guess, lawyers, which is the equivalent of a PhD in law, just brilliant, brilliant people apply to us, but they couldn’t relate to our clients or their teammates, and like everybody else, we’re gonna hire the best, and we thought the best meant academic. credentials initially, but it turned out there was this nebulous criteria that really made much more of a difference. We had people who, we always had people with college degrees, but we had people with, you know, from some third-tier colleges who were brilliant consultants, simply because. They could manage expectations with people. They were relatable, you know, all those criteria that are so nebulous and hard to figure out, and like I said, I think the smartest thing we ever did in the whole hiring process was simply place that decision that had to deal with them on a day-to-day basis. So, you know, I mean, that was the ultimate question we asked was, okay, this person meets the minimum qualifications to get in. Can you work with them? And can you put them in front of one of our clients? And if there was any brilliance we ended up with in our hiring process, it was that, but it was such a long process to get there. silly, like, “God, why didn’t you guys think about that to begin with?” But, you know, you’re always looking for some system or method that worked, and it just took a while.
[00:11:03.66] Jim: Yeah, I stand by, I agree, and I stand by the soup kitchen. In fact, we don’t need to go into any of the specifics, but the worst hire that I think you and I made as owners, or at least, maybe not the worst hire, that’s too strong, probably the biggest mistake we made affecting the direction of our company, I always thought that that hire would have been excluded. if we would have given him a choice of either volunteering at the food bank, at the local Humane Society, or the Ronald McDonald House at the nearest hospital, if we would have given him the choice of volunteering there with at least one of us and maybe a couple of employees, I think it would have… poke that candidate out as a mistake. That’s sort of where that came from.
[00:12:07.98] Ken: - Yeah, I’m not sure I know the candidate you’re talking about and it doesn’t matter,
[00:12:11.69] Jim: we can’t name names, but yeah. - Well, so let me put a finer point on it. I don’t think that what I described is necessary for a low-level candidate. it. I think that what I just described is almost imperative for management level on up. Yeah, and I would even say the higher the level, the more important it is to see if that person has the humility to work with others in a situation that. Yeah.
[00:12:45.22] Ken: Yeah, humility is part of it too, but also there’s just some almost chemistry among teammates and with clients and stuff that’s just so hard to pick out and ultimately you had to let the teammates decide what that chemistry was and we took a chance with the clients because we never brought. clients into our interviewing process but, well not directly, when we’d hire the individual and then clients always had the right to refuse someone. Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:22.29] Jim: I think the other trick is good, good interviewers don’t necessarily make good. candidates and I had at least one experience where an interviewer just flew through the interview and I mean you would have thought they already worked there by the end of the interview and it turned out there were some sociopathic issues involved and not valid. valuing other people that allowed them to come in and sort of be comfortable immediately with all these strangers and just present herself well.
[00:14:02.86] Ken: Yeah, I think if I were to summarize, you know, hiring is a crapshoot. You can make it, you can narrow it down a little bit. You can have a funnel. always something bad is always going to get through that funnel, but the best the best resource for getting opinions about who to hire are the people that you know that the hires going to impact most again, if we could find a have found a way to bring our clients into the hiring process that may have helped to but certainly having our staff interview them and say, you know, you’re responsible. for making this person successful in the organization was a big win for us.
[00:14:42.55] Jim: - Absolutely.