Interview and Hire the Right People Key Terms Term Definition … · 2017-12-07 · Interview and...

Interview and Hire the Right People Key Terms

Glossary

Term Definition Introduced in:

Body Language Interactions that allow individuals, in a sense, to "read" them without having to say or write anything Module 3

Candidate An individual who is being interviewed for a position within a company Module 1

Four-Step ProcessAssists personnel in quickly identifying the best candidate (date, role, results, and prioritized capabilities) Module 1

Hiring Goal Filling the core requirements for a position Module 1

Interview Guide A document that allows you to successful interview candidates Module 3

Managing Conflict The way in which an individual addresses negative encounters Module 1

Open-Ended Questions Questions that require an explanation instead of a "yes" or "no" answer Module 3Social Media The way in which people communicate in electronic communities Module 2Team Building An act that brings a group of people closer together Module 1Verbal Communication Spoken words with another party Module 1

HIRE RECRUIT RIGHT - ARH120517-1 - MAY, 2013 Page 1

FRED PRYOR SEMINARS HIRE RECRUIT RIGHT MODULE ONE – PREPARING FOR THE PROCESS ARH120517-1 MAY, 2013 Female: Module One – Preparing for the Process. It’s exciting

when we have a job opening. This is an opportunity

for us to hire a great candidate. It’s an opportunity

for us to increase the level of awareness in our team

and increase the skills and talents. But

unfortunately if we’re not careful, this also could be

an extremely time consuming adventure. See, too often

it happens that when we need a great candidate, we

want them right now. We don’t consider the time it

takes to bring them in, so sometimes we rush the

process. We find ourselves getting someone just to

fill a spot rather than really holding out for the

great candidate. Now in order to get a great

candidate, it really requires that we have a process,

that we have a roadmap. And effective leaders begin

with the end in mind before they ever engage in the

hiring process. And the end is really, what is your

goal? What are you looking for? What does that ideal

candidate look like to you? And your goal could be,

you know, simply to fill a position. And that’s okay.


Sometimes there are time constraints that we have to

live with. Sometimes if we don’t get the position

filled, we may not have the opportunity to fulfill it

later. So sometimes it is better just to get somebody

in the position. But most of the time, we want to get

a great candidate. And getting a great candidate

means we have to have a specific process in place that

allows that candidate to be able to see our company,

to evaluate our company as much as we’re evaluating

them. And this really means that hiring is a process.

It’s not just an event. And if what we’re trying to

do is check off the interview box, we’re going to end

up with ourselves just hiring someone to hire someone,

and we may not get a great candidate. So in order to

achieve our hiring goal, it’s really critical that we

pay attention to three specific areas. That is,

before the interview - what we do to prepare for that

new candidate; what we say to the candidate and how we

act during the interview; and then of course after the

interview. These are the three critical areas that

we're going to want to monitor. And in this first

section we’re going to prepare ourselves to make sure

that we have everything in place to be able to go

through those three sections effectively and


efficiently. And it really starts with updating our

tools. See, In order to hire a more qualified

candidate, we need to shift our thinking. We can’t

keep using the same old things that don’t work and

expecting different results. In fact, Einstein told

us that was the definition of insanity – doing the

same thing over and over and over again, expecting

different results. So I’m going to share with you a

four step process that’s going to help you be able to

quickly and clearly identify the best candidate. It’s

also going to shave hours off your recruiting time and

help you see through the masses of resumes that you’re

getting for the few golden nuggets that will really

bring value to your organization. That first step is

you need to define a date. What I mean by this is you

have to pick the final date by when you’re going to

hire someone. Now I understand this is very early in

the process. You might be thinking, well I haven’t

even gotten a resume. How am I going to know how long

it’s going to take? Well, what happens is if you do

not set a time frame, you end up dragging the process

out. Then it becomes a – well maybe another resume,

and maybe another interview. And before you know it,

you’re losing great candidates. They’re getting job


offers from other companies, and because those

companies are moving faster, you’re losing out on the

best candidates. We see it happen time and time and

time again. So we don’t want that to happen to you.

So here’s my suggestion. Take a look at the position

that you’re looking to fill. In your mind, say okay,

this is the day by which I’m going to hire them. Now

if it doesn’t happen, that’s okay. You can move that

date out. But start with a date in mind. This will

force you to work on a specific process and to move

through that process quickly. Otherwise the

distractions of everything else getting in the way –

which happens on a regular basis to all of us – ends

up delaying and delaying and delaying, and we end up

missing out on those best prospects. So go ahead and

think about that position that you’re hiring for and

circle the day. Is it 30 days out? Is it 60 days

out? Is it 90 days out? What is it for you? How

fast are you going to move through that process to get

that position filled? Now that you’ve got an action

plan and you know when you’re going to have it done

by, let’s look at filling that position. And this

comes down to the fourth step, which is the role. The

role is we need to identify what role this person is


going to have. Are they going to be a customer

service manager? Are they going to be a customer

service representative? What are they going to do?

Are they going to be an executive? What specifically

is their role? And when you define the role, let’s

take for example a customer service manager. For

example, her role might be that she’s responsible and

accountable for answering phones from 8:00 AM to 4:00

PM. Of course she’s going to get some breaks for

lunch and all that stuff. But she’s going to be

responsible to customer service emails,

troubleshooting product issues, and general overall

customer satisfaction. That would be her role. Now

that we have that defined, we want to go ahead and

look at what results are we going to be expecting from

her. This is where the results are what we want from

her as a result from bringing her or him on board.

This could be three to five items. Now by describing

these results, I want you to think of them as broad

accountabilities or responsibilities. By doing that,

we solidify our general expectations of the role.

These are the core performance details of the job,

along with the tangible gain that your organization

expects when the activities of this position are


performed well. So that’s the third step, is defining

the results. Now the fourth step is prioritized

capabilities. What we’re going to look at here is the

skills and talents of that individual that they need

to have. This is the third, excuse me, this is the

fourth part of the formula. So to get the results,

that individual has to have specific capabilities.

Now normally I would encourage you to brainstorm a

list of six to ten capabilities, then write those

down. Now after you’ve gone over those six to ten,

you’d want to go ahead and prioritize them. So first

you want to develop the list. So think about that

after today’s caller session. What capabilities are

you looking for? What is most important? And then

through a simple set of comparisons, choose your top

three. What are the top three? And really think of

them as non-negotiable. What are the characteristics

that you need to have, that someone needs to have,

that really are not negotiable for that role? Let’s

take for example, let’s go back to our customer

service manager. So the couple we might say here is

that she has to be customer service satisfaction

results. She has to be oriented towards getting

results. She has to team development. Department


development is part of her capabilities, performance

improvement, bottom line profitability, and

contributions. Those might be some of the examples

that we might want to look at. So once we’ve used

that four step process of defining the date, the role,

the results, and the prioritized capabilities, next –

so that defines pretty much kind of our job

description, and I know some of you at this training

today may be saying, well we already have job

descriptions. And those are good, and they’re

helpful. But let me ask you this. If you were to

read through that job description, is it really 100

percent accurate? Does it really completely define

that job? And the reason I ask this is I find

oftentimes when I’m consulting with HR, HR

representatives and managers, that a lot of time those

job descriptions are dated. They’re older. They’re

oh yeah, you know what? That person really doesn’t do

this anymore. That’s someone else’s responsibility.

Or you know what? Yeah, but we now have them doing

this. A lot of times job descriptions just don’t keep

up to date as quickly and as much as we need them to.

So it’s important that we go through this four step

process in order that we make sure that the


information that we’re putting out there really is up

to date, and it really does meet our needs. Wouldn’t

it be a shame if you went through, used your old job

description, found someone that met your old job

description, and then found out when they came on to

the job that they really didn’t meet the new job

description? I mean wouldn’t that be a shame, a waste

of time, of effort – certainly of yours as well as the

candidate’s? So by taking that time to prepare

yourself, understanding the four steps, setting a

date, identifying the role, the results, and the

prioritized capabilities, you can assure that the

target you’re aiming at really is the target that you

have today – not a target that would establish three,

four, five, maybe as many as ten years ago. Once

we’ve got that defined, we want to look at what’s

called top grading. This terminology comes from

Bradford Smart’s bestselling book called Top Grading.

He explains that top players – these are the A players

– consistently exceed objectives and expectations and

are considered by team members to be major

contributors to the team’s success. Then he contrasts

that with B and C players. Let’s look at the A and C.

That’s where we’re going to see our biggest contrast.


C players, those are the ones who seldomly reach their

objectives. They blame others for failures, and then

they bring a very negative attitude into the work

place. We can all kind of picture an A player versus

a C player. Now the B players, well they’re right in

the middle. And the B players, they’re stable

contributors. Sometimes they meet their goals and

sometimes they don’t. For today’s purpose, we’re

going to focus on the extreme examples. That’s why

I’m using the A and the C. So as we’re identifying

what a candidate looks like, we’ve got their roles,

responsibilities and capabilities, but we also have to

look a little bit deeper and grade them. So let’s

look at what an A player versus a C player might look

like. So when we’re evaluating candidates, we’re

going to use a simple form – something like this. And

we’re going to choose our top three to five, maybe

seven capabilities. Then we’re going to identify what

an A player would do and what a C player would do. So

let’s take a look at that. So if we had verbal

communication, an A player would be interesting and

succinct in their presentations. They would be calm

and confident. They’d be convincing and influential,

whereas if we compared that to a C player, they’d be


rambling, ambiguous, disorganized. They’d get off

track easily. They’d frequently be nervous in front

of groups. These are two very different types of

candidates. Now we can do the same thing for managing

conflict and team building. What’s important here is

not the specifics, but that we specifically identify

the difference. By identifying an A player and a C

player ahead of time, we can identify and suggest

questions on what to ask to identify these key traits.

See, if all we do is rush in to hire somebody, we

ignore all of this. And oftentimes we make decisions

that are less than optimal for ourselves as well as

for the candidates. And it ends up wasting a lot of

people’s time. Have you ever heard the saying that if

you don’t have time to do it right, then you probably

won’t have time to do it again? Well the same is true

here. Take the time to hire – I always used to hire

slow and fire fast. You want to take as much time as

you can in this hiring process to truly understand the

position as well as the person, and make sure that

they’re a great fit. Now as a hiring manager, let me

give you a shortcut. Work with your HR department. I

know not everybody’s going to have access to HR, but

if you do, use them as a collaboration tool. See, HR


practices – I understand they do and can vary by

organizations, and they vary by the range of services

and activities provided. But please keep in mind that

HR support can also vary in their workload and work

cycles. If you have an HR department, they could do

you a huge favor by helping you through several of

these processes. They can save you time and headache.

They certainly can work you through any of the legal

issues as well. So it’s important that you do engage

your HR department if you do have that luxury.

[End of recording.]


FRED PRYOR SEMINARS HIRE RECRUIT RIGHT MODULE TWO ARH120517-2 MAY, 2013 Female: See, it really all starts with a resume, doesn’t it?

We got the description ready. We’ve got everything

going. We’ve placed our ads out there. And now the

resumes start coming in. But what if you don’t know

where to find those great candidates? You won’t get

any resumes. So let’s start really with where do the

great candidates come from? It used to be years ago

you could put ads in newspapers. And ads in

newspapers are certainly still very popular.

Unfortunately, we’re finding that only about five

percent of the resumes that come from newspaper ads

are truly qualified. Do you really want to spend a

lot of time wading through unqualified resumes? So

that may not be your best source. But what about

other sources, like your HR department? Maybe they’ve

got a list of candidates. Maybe they keep a database

of qualified candidates. What about your website?

Many companies today are going for a specific

recruiting and hiring website to where they are

looking for those high qualified candidates. Now


another way is through referrals. What about your

existing employees? They may have a referral, or they

may know somebody that they can refer in - job boards,

job fairs. Now recruiters is another interesting

area. But let me put a little note here. When

dealing with recruiters or headhunters, do check with

your HR department and make sure you’re clear whether

they’re retained or if it’s a contingency fee. You

want to find out how they get compensated. Certainly

establishing an ongoing relationship with a recruiter

familiar with your industry can provide a huge ongoing

source of qualified talent. And many of the A

candidates are not actively looking for new positions.

But a professional recruiter can locate them and help

them consider your company. So they may be well worth

it, depending on your industry and business. Social

media is another interesting one. It’s one that

certainly comes across somewhat controversial right

now, but what about putting ads on Facebook? What

about using LinkedIn? Certainly posting on Twitter,

“Looking for,” and then the specific type of person.

That can also generate new resumes for you. Also, we

mentioned internal candidates. What about promoting

from within? Don’t forget about your internal


candidates as well. These can be a great source –

certainly lower cost, because they’re already employed

with your company. And you’ve already got a track

record. You know what you’re going to get when you

work with an internal candidate. So these are

multiple ways to be able to start getting that flux of

resumes to come in. But once they do come in, you’re

going to have to figure out what to do with all of

them. And sometimes, depending on the posting, you

can get a whole lot of resumes in a very, very short

period of time. And this can become very

overwhelming. I know working with many HR directors

and hiring managers, they often get frustrated when

they get five, ten, 20, 50, sometimes 100 resumes.

And they get overwhelmed with what do I do with it?

And they do the old method, probably that we’ve all

tried, which is read every single resume. And we know

what really happens when you do that. You start

looking at the resumes, and the first five, maybe the

first ten, you really give them a good look at. But

by the time you get to the 11th, the 12th, the 15th, the

20th, you’re just skimming it, you’re scanning it. And

the truth be known, most recruiters – whether it’s HR

or a manager – don’t get to the bottom of their resume


list, which is sad because your best candidates may be

at the bottom. So let me give you a simple several-

step process in how to sort through those resumes in

the quickest, easiest way possible to make sure you

don’t miss your best candidates. The first step, it

truly starts with sorting based on keywords. And

you’re thinking, what the heck does this mean? Well

sorting based on keywords means to decide, based on

your prioritized capabilities, your results and the

role, what specific words you’re looking for in a

resume. And these could be words as simple as

customer service rep, customer service agent,

Microsoft Word experience – specific keywords, buzz

words, that if someone was looking at that resume,

they should be able to say yes or no, this person has

this keyword in their resume. Now some online

services, some computer software services, will do

this for you and automatically scan the resumes.

Otherwise you may have to hire someone. This is a

perfect job, actually, for a junior individual –

somebody that maybe is newer into the organization –

is to have them review every single resume for some

specific keywords. Now in this step, you’re probably

going to want to use a handful of keywords – maybe


five, six at max. Too many and it gets overwhelming.

Three to five is often good; six is probably on your

maximum side. So, that’s the first step. Now the

second step is after that pile has been sorted through

based on keywords, then a more senior individual can

review and evaluate every one of those resumes. This

is a more careful review. The second pass is designed

to verify some of the second order criteria on the job

description. For instance, the level of education,

years of experience required, salary range, location.

These are the more specifics that we’re looking for.

This phase can be much more in depth and understanding

of the job description and requirement. For instance,

to determine relevant years of experience, the

reviewer must add the years of the relevant jobs up to

make sure it meets the experience. So this may be

somewhat a little bit more experience with reviewing

resumes, and they’re going to have a much shorter

pile. So this will allow them to evaluate, which is

your second step. So your first step is you sort down

the big pile based on keywords to a smaller pile.

Then the smaller pile gets rigorously evaluated to

make sure it meets all the criteria. Then the third

pass is that it’s a qualitative review. That means


the resumes that reach this step meet many of the

requirements. This final step is to examine the

subtle subjective qualities of each candidate. The

objective is to remove candidates with any red flags

that could potentially mean job fraud, or could

separate the top candidates from the remaining

resumes. So you really have three steps. You sort

them based on keywords; you sort them based on an

evaluative process; and then you sort them based on a

qualitative review. Let’s take a look at a couple of

those red flags that we’re definitely going to want to

know about. The first you’re maybe looking for is

gaps in employment. Now this isn’t necessarily that

we want to throw that resume out. But it may be that

this is of note when you do a phone interview or a

first interview. This is a question that you have for

the candidate. The second one could be job hopping.

Another one could be multiple moves to different

states, significant drops in responsibility, or new

career directions altogether. So these may be some

red flags that you want to note, and again, not

necessarily eliminate them, but certainly ask the

question about what happened and get a further

explanation to understand this candidate. Now there’s


a couple of other factors you want to consider. Like

for example, does the candidate have a history of

advancement, including more responsibilities and

challenges in each subsequent position? Does the

candidate have experience working at a company of

similar size and resource? Does the candidate have

the correct industry experience? If this person

applied directly for the position, would it be a

significant drop in responsibility or challenge? Is

this person over qualified? Why are they willing to

accept a much lower salary? See, these are some

factors used to evaluate candidates already deemed to

meet the basic qualifications. So these can help you

to further refine that resume search. Now once the

sorting is all done, you want to decide what’s your

process. And today, many companies are using really a

two, maybe a three or a four or a five process. The

first step is most certainly a telephone interview.

Let’s find out how that candidate sounds on the phone.

When I was interviewing for a real estate investor

years ago, we interviewed on the phone 15 candidates.

But out of those phone interviews, we only brought in

three. The others just, we wanted someone who could

communicate, and the others just couldn’t communicate


effectively. So once we did the interview, we brought

them in a face to face interview. Then we did a

second interview where we tested their skills. Then

we brought them in on the third interview. So we had

a four step process. You need to know up front before

you start bringing your candidates in, what is your

process? What is the steps that you are going to take

them through? And keep in mind, your goal is to find

out the real person. Many times people will polish up

and they’ll show you one face on the phone. You’ll

see another face when they come in. And by the time

you meet them the third and fourth time, you’re really

starting to see who they really are. And remember,

you have to match the individual with the position.

Are they really going to be happy at your company in

that position? And your position and your company may

be very, very different than what the competition

offers. So it’s very important that you evaluate many

of those different aspects. And by doing this, you

also want to determine who’s going to make the calls.

Who is it that they’re going to need to interact with?

Remember, different personality styles bring out

different reactions in different people. So consider

carefully who’s going to make the phone calls. And


then who’s going to be involved in the interview

process? For example, you might choose the planning

process. It might include anyone from their

teammates, they might include peer reviews, they might

include multiple stage reviews, they might include

dinner interviews, they might include lunch

interviews, might include webinars – I mean there’s

all kinds of different types of interviews. And of

course practices vary by department, organizations,

and leaders. It’s important that you consider your

process. What is it that you want to take that

prospect through, or that candidate through, to make

sure they’re going to fit within your organization?

So here’s a few tips. Best practice is typically to

engage HR in the initial steps of recruiting. It’s

standard in most organizations. But please make sure

that your HR department truly understands the full

nature of the position. It’s also great if the HR

professionals have spent time alongside people in the

department that they’re hiring so they can kind of

observe and get a firsthand experience of how things

work. And this will help to speed up the process as

well. Now you may want to involve members of the team

in at least one round of interviews. Again, having


the team take part in the hiring process really gives

them ownership. It’s a great way to make sure that a

new hire personality is going to fit in great with the

organization. And lastly, let’s take a look at

checklist of what we need to accomplish before we

bring them in to the interview. First, we need to

make sure that we’ve developed a written goal. What

is our goal for getting the person into this position?

What’s our date? When are we planning to have them

hired? The next one lists the six to ten critical

competencies. Are they interpersonal, motivational,

communication, what are we looking for for this

position? The next, make sure to develop examples of

your behavioral comparisons – your A and C candidates.

Create questions for each team to interview. Make

sure you have your assessment tools in place, whether

it’s skill testing or behavioral styles, or whatever

assessment tool you’re going to be using. And then

identify your prioritized lists. And lastly, screen

the candidates before the face to face, which would be

the phone interviews. So those are our checklists to

making sure that we get our best interviews possible.

[End of recording.]


FRED PRYOR SEMINARS HIRE RECRUIT RIGHT MODULE THREE – DURING THE INTERVIEW ARH120517-3 MAY, 2013 Female: Module Three – During the Interview. Let’s start with

the psychology of recruiting because it’s important to

remember that top performers – they’re willing to work

for it. They don’t want a handout. So when you’re

bringing them in for an interview, it’s important that

you make them, well for lack of a better term, jump

through some hoops. Let me share with you why I mean

that. It wasn’t too long ago that a company had

brought me in, and I was interviewing for a Chief

Marketing Officer position with them. It was going to

be a startup. It sounded very, very interesting. But

something was wrong with the interview, and let me

explain. I talked to the individual. He found me on

the Internet. Okay, I’m certainly easy to find. He

called me in for an interview, and the whole time, he

was convincing me of what a great company it was.

It’s going to do this and it’s going to do that, and

it’s awesome. And it was a startup, and we’ve got

this and we’ve got that, and there’s going to be a ton

of money and it’s going to be incredible. And in the


end, he’s like, are you ready to join us? And I

hesitated. It was like he was selling me the company.

And because he was selling me the company so hard, I

kind of backed off, because it was weird. He wasn’t

interviewing me. He was selling me. And that right

there threw up a red flag. Well, upon further

research I came to find out that the CEO of this new

company happened to have multiple lawsuits against

him. My understanding was, having talked with others

who had worked with this individual, that he needed a

name for the CMO, and my resume was really, really

good for this. And he knew if he could get me on

paper, he could get his funding. And because of that,

he didn’t really want me to say no. So he did

everything he could to sell me to yes. And that

turned me off. I didn’t want any part of that. But

interestingly enough I spoke with another company

about a Director of Sales position. And when they

spoke to me, there was, tell me why you would be a

good fit; tell me how you’re going to do this; tell me

what expectations you would have. They didn’t sell me

at all on their company. They showed me their

product. It looked pretty good. But they put the

ball in my court to prove to them that I was good


enough. And because of that, I wanted it more. I was

going after them. I was following up. I was chasing

them. I wanted that position, and the funny thing is

that position paid half of what the other guy offered

me. Now why was I more interested in that? It’s

because a top performer is willing to prove

themselves. They’re willing to show that they can do

it. They know they’re good. They’re willing to go

the extra mile because that’s who they are. So when

you’re interviewing top performers, don’t sell your

company too hard. Let them know you’re a great

company. Let them know some of the things you offer.

But make sure to allow them to sell themselves. Let

them tell you how great they are. So how do you do

this? It starts with asking great questions. And the

questions are going to be based on your prioritized

capabilities. So if we take a look at the prioritized

capabilities of verbal communication, managing

conflict and team building – let’s just say we take

the first one, verbal communication, and we break this

down into some very specific things that we want this

candidate to be able to do. We want them to use

facts, not personality, when resolving conflicts. We

want them to determine everyone’s expectation and


integrate best ideas for win/win solution. We want

them to be approachable and easy to talk with. We

want them to listen more than they talk. And this is

very, very important. We also want them to listen

with more than just their ears. We want them to watch

what’s happening, we want them to FEEL what the person

is saying. So if we were to take that one module, we

would start to ask questions around that specific

module. So a sample question might be when you

receive negative feedback about your work, how do you

respond? This gives us an opportunity to see, what

are they going to do to respond to this? How do they

work on this? What is their perception? And during

this, we can watch how they answer. Are they

listening to what we say? Are they responding to more

than just our words? Are they paying attention to our

body language? So these are all things that we start

to watch when we start interviewing for top

performers. Now we want to remember there’s good and

there’s great questions. Good questions might be

something like, well what would you say your skill set

is? Are you beginning, intermediate, or an advanced

user of Microsoft Word? And that would be a good

question, but it’s not a great question. Great


questions force them to tell us about things they’ve

done, and if they’re very good at communication,

they’re going to interweave the things that we’re

looking to hear. They’re going to pay attention to

what we want. So for example, a great question might

be, tell me about some of the recent projects you

completed using MS Word. This would be a much better

question. You would get a much better answer from

them. And based on what they tell you will tell you

their skill set, versus them saying I’m an advanced

user. That really doesn’t tell you anything. Now in

asking questions, you want to make sure that you avoid

yes and no, or short, one word answers. We want them

to elaborate. We want them to talk. I remember years

ago when I was learning sales, my mentor taught me,

“Kim, if all you do is let people talk, they’ll sell

themselves into anything.” And the same is true for

hiring. See, ultimately we’re going to offer them,

potentially this specific person, a job. They have to

say yes, too. So it’s a two way street. Ideally we

want them to convince us they’re the right candidate

for this position. And when we ask yes and no

questions, that doesn’t give them really an

opportunity to convince us. So we want to ask more


open ended questions – tell me how you. And I

remember not too long ago, I was reading an article

and it talked about Bill Gates. When Bill Gates used

to hire people, he would ask the question of, if we

were going to send a computer to the moon, tell me

where you would start on that project. And he would

just wait, and watch to see what they said. See, it

was more about their thinking than it was about the

right answer, because there really isn’t a right

answer. We want to understand the thought process of

each of our candidates, and then evaluate, does that

thought process work within our company, within our

organization? And that’s what really want to look at

to be able to hire the best people. Now I want to

talk a little bit about an interview guide. This is

simply a guide that you can use and you can develop in

your organization to be able to interview each

candidate. You’re probably going to bring in three,

maybe five candidates. And before you know it, they

start to blur. It’s kind of like looking at houses.

After you look at the first three or four, they all

kind of run together and you start to forget who said

what. An interview guide is a guide set up with all

your capabilities - prioritized capabilities in there


– where you have the specific capabilities, you have

some questions, and then you have notes by each of the

interviewers. And then at the bottom, you rate the

candidate. So let’s say, for example in this

interview guide, we have the verbal communication

skills. We have the specifics that we’re looking for,

and then we have the questions that we’re going to

ask. Now of course, we may ask other questions, but

the purpose of this is to be able to show everybody in

the organization the questions that were asked and the

answers that were received. This way, we’re not all

asking the same question of the same person, and they

don’t feel like we’re all kind of like trained

parrots. It helps us to get more information from

them, and we can leverage off of each other’s

information. Now this is an interview guide. Some

companies, some pass this as they interview someone.

They pass it off to the next person. Others just keep

multiple copies. It’s completely up to you how you

use it. But this will help you to track each

candidate and see how that candidate fits, as well as

to rate the candidate. Now do notice at the bottom it

says on a scale of 1 to 4. Notice it’s 1, 2, 3, or 4.

There is no 2.5. There’s no 3.1. Just go ahead and


make a decision when you valuate the candidate whether

it’s going to be a 1, a 2, a 3, or a 4. Now after

we’ve interviewed them, we’re also going to want to

keep in mind of the people in the agendas. This is

something else we have to consider, because each

person that interviews the candidate should have a

copy of their resume. They should get the interview

guide, the questions, a note pad, and what questions

have been asked. And again, this could be in the

interview guide, this could be a separate document.

We want to make sure that each person is on the same

page so that we’re organized. We show a professional

front when we are interviewing top candidates.

Remember the types of interviews. There are two main

types of interviews. You’ve got your team interview,

and then your panel interviews. Your team interviews

are going to be more informal. This is going to be

closer to the workspace of the team. Now panel

interviews, you typically don’t want to have more than

three people on a panel as this can become

overwhelming very, very quickly for the candidate.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same people

from the same teams. It could be an HR person, it

could be a manager, and it could be a teammate. Any


of those combinations for the panel interviews will

work perfectly. Now when you’re considering where to

have the interviews, your logistics and your locations

make a difference, because remember – this is the

first impression that your candidate gets. And your

first impression certainly is lasting. It can be a

valuable opportunity to sell your culture as well.

Consider everyone as a part of your interview team.

For example, the first screen from the receptionist is

a critical – make sure that receptionist is smiling

and pleasant. This is the first interaction that the

candidate’s going to have with your company. And

what’s interesting is many candidates kind of let

their guard down when they first walk in. They don’t

think they have to turn it on until the meeting with

the interviewer. So this person behind the desk could

actually get a more accurate read on the person’s true

colors. So make sure that she or he is definitely

part of your interview team. Also, make sure you

create a company package with a notebook, pen, mission

statement, values, organization chart – all of these

things to help the candidate understand your company

and your business. And one last tip, with your tables

and chairs, make sure that they’re out of the way.


Don’t have unnecessary barriers between you and the

candidate. However you choose to do that is great,

but try to keep it close enough that you’re not

putting extra barriers in the way. And remember, it’s

two way communication. They’re selling you – excuse

me. They’re selling you on themselves as much as

you’re selling the company. But remember to keep it

balanced. Keep it balanced on how much selling you

do. If you oversell the company, it sends off red

flags. So why are you selling me so hard? You want

to remember that you’ve got the position. They’re the

candidate. Let them convince you, but make sure that

you share with them the most critical perks, and let

others tell them why working there is such a great

place. And lastly, remember you have two ears and one

mouth. A lot of times when I work with hiring

managers or interviewing managers, I find they spend

about 70 percent of the time talking. That means the

candidate’s only getting about 30 percent of the time.

And this can truly be a challenge because how are you

going to learn about the person if they’re not saying

anything? So we really need to flip that to about

50/50, if not 60/40 – 60 percent of the time let them

talk. You will learn more about your candidates when


you listen than when you’re talking. So develop great

questions ahead of time, and really take good, quality

notes so that you can remember their answer

afterwards. Now when you are interviewing, you want

to use some phrases to kind of fish out the truth.

What’s happening? What’s really going on with this

candidate? And our job is to be able to ask behavior

based questions that would lead them to give us an

answer. And therefore, we could see how their

behavior is. When you’re thinking about creating

behavior based questions, you want to make sure you’re

getting the right requirement. So here’s some

starting phrases you would want to consider. Describe

a situation when; or give me an example of; tell me

about a decision you made when; how would you handle

...? See, we’re going to prompt the interviewee to

describe in detail how they would handle or

successfully handle a situation. And if I were the

hiring manager, I would want to explore in depth the

extent of the candidate’s experience in managing

conflict. I would list managing conflict in one of

those boxes on the left side as one of those key

things that we want to make sure – regardless of the

position, if they’re going to be working with people,


they need to learn to manage conflict. Let’s take a

look at a couple of examples. We could use something

like, describe a situation where an angry,

dissatisfied customer wanted resolution to a product

problem and it was not clearly the responsibility of

the company you work for – and let them talk. Let

them share what they would do. Next, what was your

approach with the customer? Or what steps did you

take with the customer in ultimately identifying the

core problem? What was the end result of the

interaction? What did you do well when dealing with

this situation? What would you like to have done

differently? Of course you may not rapid-fire these

questions as quickly as I did. You might take a

little bit more time, and you might not ask all of

them. But by going through this process, you’re now

starting to see how that candidate thinks. And I

truly believe in hiring candidates for talent and

teaching skill. Talent is what’s innate to them.

It’s how they are. It’s who they are. It’s the way

they act. So it’s important that when we interview

candidates, we want to get down to their core – who

are they? What’s their personality like? What are

they going to do? Where are they at? I used a saying


years ago, and I love this saying, and I use it very

frequently – zebras don’t change stripes. Whoever

they are is who they’re going to be when they join

your business. So you want to know who they are

before you offer them a position. Find out if they’re

going to be a great fit. Find out if they’re not

going to be a great fit. Another way to get insight

is to read their body language. The body will never

lie. The mouth may lie from time to time, but the

body will never lie. So you want to get good at what

are their arms saying? Are they crossed because

they’re frustrated or hiding something? Or are they

crossed because they’re cold? And you want to be able

to distinguish that difference. Are their legs

pointing towards you or away from you? Typically when

someone has their legs crossed towards you, that means

they’re in contact. They’re paying attention. If

they’re away, what they’re really saying is I want to

get out of here. I want to leave. And the body will

never lie to you. So you want to be able to read the

body language and be able to pay attention to what

they’re really saying in spite of what their words are

telling you. And one last thing – when you’re having

your interviews, make sure that they know what the


next steps are. The next step could be an additional

interview, it could be background checks, it could be

reference checks, it could be when the final offer

deadline is. Make sure that you’re communicating with

each candidate so that they understand what your

process is and where you’re taking them through that

process. Here’s our checklist for during the

interview. First, make sure to develop interview

linguistics – who’s the interviewing manager, the

time, and the locations. Make sure you have a company

materials package. This could be the mission

statement, your products, your services, a little bit

about your customers. Make sure the team interviews

with the interview guide. Be sure you have your

interview guide developed ahead of time. And team

discussions to make the selection, decision matrix.

And then finally, make the final decision. One last

tip here. Sometimes we get into a quagmire where

we’re not really sure what to do. We get stuck. And

we want to be proactive and solicit input from staff

members and peers. You not only gain perspective, but

you gain buy-in. This is another great benefit. It’s

essential to the new hire that they have buy-in from

all the potential colleagues. No manager or


supervisor has all the answers all the time. And I

know that might be shocking or overwhelming to hear,

but the truth is we all, with a little bit of help,

can get a lot more insight – and this becomes a

valuable resource in the interviewing process. So

don’t hesitate to reach out to others to help you as

you start to make the decisions for this process.

Now, we’re also going to have to sort the good from

the great. It can get frustrating if you move from

interview to interview to interview to interview

without taking good quality notes. I just want to

mention here very briefly, do your homework and make

sure you give candidates homework. If you’re going to

be in a multiple interview situation, ask them to

complete something before they come back the next

time. This will show you how serious they are and

show you if they are willing to follow instruction.

Also, their level – if writing is a requirement, write

an essay on something. Give them homework to let them

show you they’re really the great candidate you’re

looking for.

[End of recording.]


FRED PRYOR SEMINARS HIRE RECRUIT RIGHT MODULE FOUR – AFTER THE INTERVIEW ARH120517-4 MAY, 2013 Female: Module Four – After the Interview. Okay, you’ve

interviewed all the candidates. Now you’ve got to sit

down and decide what’s next – who are we going to

choose? And it becomes a process. So let’s go

through that process. It starts by rating your

candidates. You want to rate each candidate

independently. As you speak with them, ideally you

want to be rating them. Review your rating and your

notes with the other interviewers. Find out what they

liked. Find out where they had concerns. Sometimes

different personalities interact differently with each

other. So this is an opportunity to get more insight

on the candidate you’re evaluating. Number three,

evaluate the process and as you’re going through the

process, look at how you can improve the process as

well, remember – the candidate is evaluating you as

much as you’re evaluating them. And of course you

want to make your hiring decision. Decide who you’re

going to offer the position to, make and obtain the

acceptance to the offer, and communicate your final


decision to all the candidates. As you’re rating

candidates, let’s take a look at what a rating sheet

might look like. This rating sheet is a very simple

one. You can see we have four candidates across the

top – candidate 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then we have specific

items across the left side that we’re going to

evaluate them on. So for each candidate, we would

evaluate them maybe on a scale of 1 to 5, and then

we’d total it up, and we’d see which candidate has the

highest score. This is a rating system to be able to

rate candidates and to be able to make the decision a

whole lot more objective and remove the subjectivity

of having looked at so many candidates. Now it’s

important that we use a proactive selection. This

means it’s great that when someone feels right, we

just think they’d fit really well. But we want to

make sure not to forget to do our – check our

references, to document their skills, document their

abilities, and make sure to ask the important

questions. I know sometimes we get sent a candidate.

Perhaps it’s the friend of the owner, or perhaps it’s

an uncle or a cousin that they recommend. Just

because we were sent that person doesn’t mean that we

don’t have a right to do the checks. If this person’s


going to be in our organization, we have every right

to check their references, to document their skills

and abilities, and to still ask them important

questions. We don’t want to forego that just because

they might be a friend of the owner. Now after the

face to face, you want to make sure to follow up in a

timely manner. If we have the opportunity, we want to

make sure to provide a hand written follow up, to

thank them. They took time out of their schedule to

come sit with you, and one of the biggest complaints

today that we hear from candidates across the board is

that they never hear back after an interview. It’s by

far the biggest complaint. What that does, is that

really leaves a sour taste in their mouth for your

organization. Because candidates do interview

multiple times with multiple companies, it’s important

that you don’t close or maybe slam that door with that

candidate. You never know if they might be back

again. So it’s important, especially with top

performing candidates, that you communicate openly

with them. Allow that door to be open so they can

call and find out. But more importantly, let them

know what the process is. Let them know what has been

happening, if you’ve made offers. Provide that


information so that they can feel that they understand

what’s going on. Just a quick legal alert here –

there are some questions that you just can’t ask in

interviews, and there are some things that legally you

cannot do. It’s important that you make sure to get

up to speed on this with your HR director and your HR

or legal department. These vary from company to

company, and depending on your company specifics, you

want to know what are the specifics you can ask, what

can’t you ask, and where you can go, and what are the

options you have? So let’s say, though, you get down

to it. You’ve narrowed it down to two candidates.

Now what? The reality of selection is that 50 percent

of the hiring decision is attributed to the chemistry

of the interaction during the interviews. Intuition,

gut feeling, whatever you call it – that’s what ends

up choosing our final candidate. The weighted

capability model should provide a way to contrast and

compare candidates, but ultimately you’re going to end

up hiring who you feel best with. And this isn’t

easy. This hiring process, you know, can take months

to go through, and weeks to get the final answer. So

another idea is make sure that when you do prepare to

hire someone that you have a 90 day agenda and


itinerary ready. Of course many companies today are

doing 90 day probation periods. They want to make

sure that person is a great fit before they lock them

into the organization. So what they’ll do is they’ll

prepare an 89 day summary to the team as an overview

of what the new team member has learned, the improved

ideas they have, and any help they might need in

contributing in moving forward. And one last tip –

you want to make the hiring process continually

getting better. Every single step, you want to get it

better. The military has a system for improving every

mission. They call it the “After Actions Report,” the

AAR. You plan the same follow-up questions. What did

we do well? What didn’t we do well? And what can we

improve next time? And under this close scrutiny,

you’re going to find that you get better and better at

this process. You get better candidates. You share

more information, and you find that this process

becomes easier and simpler every time you implement

it. What about those near misses? What do we do when

we have a candidate that is really a good candidate,

but they end up not being a great fit for the team?

Well, there’s a couple of options here. Of course the

first option is consult with your HR department. See


if maybe there is another position. You hate to get

rid of a great candidate or a great employee just

because they don’t fit in the position that you have

them in. And of course all candidates have something

to offer to your company. Of course they wouldn’t

have made it through the hiring process if they

didn’t. But just because they didn’t fit into your

box doesn’t mean they aren’t a viable candidate for

somewhere else. So get a system. Create a system

that identifies company needs, and check against it

people who don’t fit in your matrix. If they’re non-

hired candidates, they’re going to feel comfortable

about developing that rapport with your company,

because then there might be a fit somewhere else. So

this is an important key to be able to help you bring

in top performers and key performers and not lose

them. So let’s look at our checklist. So after the

interview, we want to make sure to contact all

candidates, new hire paperwork and prepare for

signatures, make sure you send a personal note to all

candidates within 24 hours of their interview, de-

brief with all interviewers to improve opportunities,

and make sure you have a 90 day itinerary for the new

hire to implement after the hiring date. Now these


checklist steps will help you to streamline your

interviewing process.

[End of recording.]


FRED PRYOR SEMINARS HIRE RECRUIT RIGHT MODULE FIVE – COMMON HIRING MISTAKES ARH120517-5 MAY, 2013 Female: Module Five – Common Hiring Mistakes. The first

hiring mistake is that we use our prior job

description. I know this sounds logical. Why not use

it? It’s worked. We know what their job is supposed

to be. But here’s what happens – organizations are

continually changing, growing, and evolving. Why

should the position in your company not grow as well?

See, requirements for positions morph and change. How

can we optimally hire based on past information when

what we really require may have been changed or

dramatically altered? I’ve known many managers who

have been frustrated by their lack of hiring success,

and many times, it’s because of this gap – the gap

between the position as it’s been described and as

it’s been historically understood, and the real needs

of the position. So if we’re going to change that, we

need to start by using the four step process - we need

to identify a date, identify the roles, the results,

and the prioritized capabilities – and this will help

us from falling into that same old trap of hiring what


we thought we wanted and finding out it wasn’t really

what we needed. Another common myth, or a common hire

mistake, is only sending out a letter to the person

I’m offering a position. I know you’re busy. I

completely understand you’re overwhelmed. Your desk

is piled over with tons of things to do. I mean

consider hiring is only one of the many

responsibilities that you have. It’s easy to get

myoptic and focused on the candidate that you want,

and to forget to provide information back to the other

candidates. So make it part of your process. Make it

part of the process that every candidate gets a

handwritten letter, because remember – it’s a people

business. You’re hiring PEOPLE. And how people feel

about you is going to influence whether they want to

work for you or with you. And just because they

weren’t a good fit today or this week doesn’t mean

they won’t be a great fit next week or next month or

next year for an additional position. How they feel

about you is going to carry over. So take the time.

Make a checklist for yourself if you need, and every

time you interview a candidate, the first thing you do

afterwards is you write a thank you note for their

time. This will help them feel great about the


experience, and you’ll know that you’re never going to

lose out on a top performer because you ignored them

that one time. Now another common mistake is having

deeply defined needs and requirements. I’ve seen many

managers do that. They have a list a mile long – this

person needs to do this, and this, and this, and this,

this. I just get tired of hearing the list. It’s

crazy. And what happens is they have it so tightly

defined that nobody could ever meet all their

requirements. And the reality is probably only three

to six, maybe seven of those, maybe ten of them, are

really absolutely non-negotiable. I’m going to

challenge you to pare down that list to three non-

negotiable must-haves. And what will be interesting,

is as you start to see candidates come in, you’ll be

surprised at the candidates that do come in and how

they do fit the rest of the criteria. Again, get rid

of the non-negotiable stuff. Simply choose what’s

negotiable and make sure to go after it. Another

common mistake is, “I’ll just let our HR do the

interviews.” I mean, I don’t blame you. I would do

the same thing, and in my early career as a hiring

manager, I did the same thing. I gave HR the

requirements and I said, go find me a great candidate


– as if somehow they had the magic power. And the

reality is they didn’t. And many times, the person

that they brought that they thought would be a great

candidate really didn’t fit. See, HR wasn’t in our

department. They didn’t understand our needs, really.

They understood the paper and what I asked for, but

they didn’t really translate that into the

capabilities of the individual. So you really need to

be doing your own interviews. And remember, the

person you’re hiring is going to have to work for you,

so they better get along with you. YOU better have a

good fit there. It’s important that we not abdicate

our responsibilities here and say, oh no, HR can do

that. Let HR be a part of the process, but don’t give

them all the responsibility. It’s just not fair for

them. And lastly, waiting for all the resumes before

you start sorting through them. I remember I was

working for a real estate investor at one point, and

we were hiring for an assistant. And he brought me in

as a consultant to help him hire the right person.

He’d had five people in there in about four and a half

months. And he just couldn’t seem to get the right

person. What he was doing is he was waiting until he

would get 15, 20, 30, 40 resumes instead of looking at


the first resume, evaluating it and moving on. He

would wait. And what would happen would be all the

good candidates were gone by the time he wanted to

hire them. So it was only the people who were late in

submitting their information that we would look at,

and sometimes those weren’t the greatest candidates.

So don’t wait until you get a bunch of resumes. Start

immediately. Start with your keyword process. Know

which keywords you’re looking for. And then start

with the evaluations, and then do your qualitative

searches. As soon as you find someone that meets all

three, start interviewing. Start speaking with them.

You have a date set. You know when you’re going to

hire by. So start moving through the process. And

what you’ll start to find is you get better qualified

candidates, you’ll get more proactive candidates, and

you’ll find hiring becomes a whole lot easier.

[End of recording.]

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