How to Find the Perfect Job Candidate - Follow This Simple Interviewer Strategy for Hiring Managers
Are you a manager who is tired of hiring candidates that don't work out?
I've been there before too, and I know what it's like, the candidate will deliver a perfect interview. But then when it becomes time for them to actually do the job and deliver for you, they don't pan out and it leaves you wondering what went wrong.
How could I have figured this out in the interview? Why didn't I notice this up front? Now, if this sounds familiar, stay tuned because I'm going to teach you a super simple interviewing strategy that will help expose bad eggs up front, so that you can identify ideal candidates that will be a perfect fit for your team.
Now, If you're new to my YouTube channel, welcome. My name is Doug Howard, and I'm a leadership coach, and I help engineering managers and all types of leaders increase your impact throughout your organization by teaching you the soft skills side of leadership.
Most Hiring Managers and Companies Use Interviewing Strategies That Don't Work
Today we're going to hit on a really important topic, which is refilling your pipeline.
A lot of people right now are struggling to figure out, , how do I find talent? How do I find people that are going to be a good fit for my team? How do I find people that are going to produce right away and get up to speed and actually match what I need in them?
I want to start by just talking a little bit about the main reason that we struggle with hiring. Quite frankly, it's because companies aren't teaching you the right way to interview. Companies take this cookie cutter approach to the interviewing and hiring process. They try to standardize it. They tell you to ask the same questions to each candidate and guess what? When you take that approach to interviewing people, you're going to attract cookie cutter candidates that don't really fit your team, your company, your products, your systems, your operations, et cetera. You basically run the interview in a way that teaches you nothing about the candidate and you don't learn whether or not they're a good fit.
If you've been interviewing people this way, where you're following this same boilerplate model for all interviews, you shouldn't be surprised that you're not finding the right candidates because people are unique, which means you need to treat each interview as a unique experience.
Now I want to talk about the resume versus the interview, because this is something that a lot of hiring managers seem to get wrong. The resume should be used to determine if this person is capable of performing in the role. What I mean by that is, do they have the right skills? Do they have the right experience to do the job?
So the resume should just be used to figure out, can they do the job? The interview, on the other hand, is used to determine if they will be successful in the role. Those are two different things.
Someone can be completely capable of doing the job, have all the tech skills and the background and experience. They've worked at companies that are similar in your industry, etc. But if they don't have the right temperament, the right personality, the right work ethic, the right character, then it doesn't really matter what their capabilities are. They're not going to fit in well on your team, or they're not going to fit in well with your systems and your way of doing things.
What to Look for in Their Resume vs the Interview
So I'm going to talk a little bit more about that and how to draw that out and how to figure out what that is. But I just want to point this out where, the resume is how you're determining if this person is capable of doing the job. The reason I'm pointing this out is because you have limited time to interview this person and you want to use this time wisely.
After you review their resume, you should already know if they're capable of doing the job. Maybe there's a few items that you'd like clarifications on during the interview, but in many cases, you can figure those things out through initial phone screen interviews. Asking them for clarification on which type of software they've worked on, or how many projects have they done with this, are they familiar with this type of tool.
These are all yes or no types of questions. You should be able to figure them out before the interview. But the interview itself, we want to use this time wisely and you want to use this to figure out everything that you can about this person that doesn't show up on the resume.
You're looking for three main things. First is would you like working with this person? Now that might sound shallow but the reality of the situation is we want to like the people we're working with and we don't want to dread dealing with the people that we're supposed to be managing. So you should really be thinking about what type of person would I enjoy working with? Would I like being around this person during the interview? Do I like this person's give and take with me? Do they seem to understand me? Do I understand them? It's hard to quantify that, but you really want to give that some thought because you're going to be spending a lot of time with this person, especially up front whether it's you training them or someone else. You want to make sure this is someone that you actually like.
The next thing you want to think about is, will they be a good fit on your team? Like I said before, they could have all the right tech skills and background, but if you have a team that's very collaborative, and this person seems to want to work in isolation and doesn't really work well with others, that's not going to be a good fit.
Or if you have a company culture, let's say, where, people go out for lunch together a lot, and there's a lot of company parties. If this person doesn't really buy into that type of company culture, they're going to feel on the outs. They're going to feel like they're not really connected with everybody.
There's just things to think about here that you don't really show up on the resume that you can't really measure, but you want to think about, will this person be an actual good fit on your team?
Now, the last thing, number three, that you want to figure out during the interview is will they be successful in the role? That's the biggest part here, right?
We're going to talk about how to figure out if they'll be successful in the role throughout the rest of this video. We're going to focus on a five point interview strategy that you're going to use.
Identify and Categorize Every Characteristic of the Ideal Candidate
First, what we want to do is we want to identify who the ideal candidate is by creating a list of all the characteristics that you're looking for in this position before you even post the position opening. Let's figure this out before we start bringing people in.
Now, obviously, there's going to be some specific hard skills and experience and background that you're looking for. But, that will be pretty black and white. Like I said earlier, you should be able to identify this type of information by reviewing their resume. You're looking for AutoCAD skills, are you looking for some type of software requirement? Are you looking for some type of system that they're familiar with? Whatever it is, those things are pretty yes or no.
Either they have the experience or they don't, but where most hiring managers go wrong is they don't spend enough time getting clear on what are the traits and the characteristics that are more difficult to quantify, such as soft skills, personality, attitude, character. It's these factors that typically have way more impact on whether the candidate is going to be successful in the role or not.
Now, just to paint a picture of what I mean here, if you work in a rapidly growing startup environment, let's just say. There's probably not a lot of structure. The company's growing really fast. There's probably not a lot of, proven systems and standards in place. Everything's just being figured out as you grow. I've worked in these types of environments. If that's the case, then you probably want the type of person who's going to be a self starter, someone who's very adaptable. Someone who's very flexible. Someone who's capable of taking the ball and running with very little instructions from you, right? These are all characteristics that are really important for someone to be successful in this environment. Meanwhile, if it's someone who tends to be more rigid. Someone who needs crystal clear instructions to do something. Someone who, wants predictability and, wants to follow the rules versus create their own path. That type of person won't be as successful, regardless of what their skills and background are and their experience. So I'm just trying to point out a, a clear picture here of what I mean here by these soft skill sides of the considerations, right? Someone could have all the same skills, but because of these hard to quantify characteristics, they may or may not have a success in your environment or in the role that you're hiring them for.
Likewise, the inverse of this, if you work in an established company, it's been around for a long time, you have an established product systems, rules, processes, and operations and all that's in place, then your ideal candidate probably wouldn't be someone who's going to thrive in a startup environment. You don't want someone that's going to be playing cowboy all the time and making up their own rules. You want someone that's going to fall in line and, follow rules and be more meticulous and pay more attention to detail and, things like that. You don't want a robot, but you want someone that's probably more comfortable with following the rules versus someone who challenges the rules.
Take These Considerations Into Account When Identifying the Ideal Candidate
Now, some things to consider when you're figuring out what are these things that the ideal candidate has. I think a good thing to consider first would be what type of communication skills and what type of interpersonal skills does this role require, are they going to be communicating with a lot of different stakeholders throughout the organization? Are they going to be dealing with a lot of different peoples at different levels throughout the organization? What type of communication skills is this going to require? Maybe they're going to need to be able to explain complex things to non technical people or vice versa. Maybe they're a non technical role, but they need to know how to understand technical communication. Other things to consider is, do they need to be detail oriented and organized? Just think about what goes into the role. Is there a level of creativity and innovation required for this position?
As I'm going through these considerations, you hear this and you think, yes, I want someone who has all these things, but you really got to narrow it down to what is most important because nobody has it all. You're most likely going to have to bend a little bit and figure out, what are the deal breakers and whatnot, which I'll come back to in a second.
Some other things to consider are does this person need to demonstrate leadership potential? Does this person need to demonstrate leadership potential? Maybe this is a position that needs to, indirectly manage other people, maybe they need to mentor other roles, or maybe there's a role where you see this position growing into a leadership role in the future. So you really want to give thought to, do I need to see leadership potential from this person? Do they need to work well with teams or will most of their work be performed independently?
So you want to really just give a lot of thought to what these ideal are that don't really show up easily on the resume.
Use Your Current Team to Gauge What You're Looking for in New Hires
If you're stuck, what I would recommend doing is taking a look at your current team and take a look at the people who have had the most success on your current team. Ideally people that are going to be in similar roles to the role that you're hiring. When you take a look at those people, pay attention to what characteristics do they have in common? What makes them good at their job? What are those things that, make them outshine their peers. And what are the things that they're doing differently than everyone else?
Now, make a list of what those things are and then try to quantify those, and think if I were to interview that person again today, without knowing them, how would I identify what those characteristics are in the interview? What questions would I ask them to figure that out? Or what would I be looking for in their resume? Or what would I be looking for in their responses?
If you already have star players on your team, use that as the benchmark to figure out, okay, I want people that are like this. Or likewise, if you have people who are struggling on your team or people in the past that didn't work out and didn't do so well, take a look at them and what characteristics did they have in common? What were the common traits that they shared and why were they not successful in the role? Where were they lacking with respect to maybe it was technical skills or maybe it was personality traits or, culture fit, just try to quantify what were those things.
One more to think about on that is if you were to hire those people today that didn't do well, how would you expose those characteristics during the interview? What type of questions would you ask? What would you be looking for? What were tells that you should have noticed when you interviewed those candidates that didn't work out? Did you have a funny feeling about their responses? Did you feel like their answers in the interview weren't thorough enough? Try to just reflect back. What should I have been looking for differently in those interviews?
3 Categories for Ideal Characteristic
Now, after you get a list of all these ideal traits and characteristics, I want you to categorize them into one of three categories.
The first one would be critical. Now that means they need to have this criteria, they need to have this characteristic to do the job. There's no negotiation about this. This is a mandate requirement. They need to have this skill. Now there should only be five to ten of these things. You can't have a list of a hundred things because it's just not realistic to find. The first one is going to be critical.
The next one is going to be ideal. This means, yes, the perfect candidate will have this skill, but it's not critical or I'm willing to bend or I can train them on this, or, maybe the role can be adjusted a little bit so that they don't have to do that part of the job if I find someone I really like. So we want to distinguish between critical and ideal.
The third one would be bonus. That means okay, it'd be great if they had this, but it's doesn't really make or break anything. It doesn't change the world. It might help us with certain areas in our department, or it might open up a few new opportunities for us. Sure there's some benefits from it, but it doesn't really accomplish the core responsibilities of the job. It's a bonus. It's a would be nice.
Now we're going to come back to how to use those things later on, but for now, just make sure you categorize all these characteristics you're looking for into one of those three categories.
Designing Your Interview Questions Read the Candidate
Step two of your interview strategy is designing your interview questions. Remember like I said before, the entire purpose of the interview is to determine if this person will be successful in the role or not. Don't waste any precious interview time asking questions that won't give you insights on this.
Instead, we're going to intentionally design every single interview question around each characteristic and trait that you're looking for in the ideal candidate.
Here's a few examples. Let's say you want to know if the candidate is adaptable. A good question to ask would be, can you provide me with an example of a time when you had to quickly learn a new skill or adapt to a new situation at work? What was the outcome? You could also ask, tell me about a time when you had to shift your priorities or change your approach to meet a tight deadline. What steps did you take and what was the result?
If you want to know if they're detail oriented, you could say, tell me about a situation where you were asked to create or update documentation, manuals, or standard operating procedures. How did you ensure that all the necessary details were included? You could also ask them to describe a situation in which you had found an error or discrepancy in the document process. What steps did they take to rectify it and what was the result?
A few more examples, let's say you want to know about their organizational skills. You could ask, how do you organize and prioritize your work to ensure that you meet deadlines without sacrificing attention to detail? Can you provide me an example from your previous work experience? You could also ask, describe a time when you had to manage a high volume of information or data. How did you structure and organize it for easy access and retrieval?
Lastly communication. Communication is obviously a very important one in most roles, so you could ask them to talk about a time when you had to deliver difficult feedback or have a tough conversation with another team member. How did you approach that situation and what was the result? You can ask them to give an example of a time when you had to explain a complex concept or idea to a non technical or non expert audience. How did you ensure that they understood the information?
Going back to your list of all the characteristics and traits and skills you're looking for from them, you should aim to create one to three interview questions for each characteristic and trait that you've identified. In some interviews, you'll only need to ask one question per characteristic and trait to gain the insights you need from the candidate. But in other cases, you might need to dip into your second and third question to gain more perspective because they might not give you a straightforward answer.
Outside the Box Ways to Draw Information About the Candidate
Here's a bonus tip on this. When we think of interviews, we think... Okay, I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to listen to their answers, but something that a lot of people don't think about is there are some outside the box ideas to draw information out of the candidates and learn about them.
I want to start by just telling you a quick story from back in my corporate days. Whenever we were hiring a high level position, let's just say director level and above, we had, the typical interviewing process and there was a few more rounds of interviews, but our company had another outside the box way of really figuring out how this person operated under stress. We would take this person out to lunch, after one round of the interviews. We would take every candidate to the same restaurant, and it was a restaurant that we knew that was nearby the office, and we would intentionally ask the servers there to mess up the candidate's order.
So we would tell them to, not give them French fries or something like that. Or give them the wrong soft drink or something like that, something harmless. We told them to intentionally screw up their food order and then we would observe to see how they handled it. Did they speak up for themselves? Did they ask the server to fix the order? Did they get mad? Did they lose their cool? Were they impatient? Or did they just take it , not speak up for themselves and just accept something wrong. You can learn a lot about a person when you put them in a situation like this and just see how they handle themselves. There wasn't necessarily a right or wrong answer, but you got to see, how this person thinks and how they respond to these types of situations.
I'm giving you this example because, this is an extreme example. We're hiring executives, so we wanted to make sure we had the right person, but I want you to think about this. If you're a hiring manager, are there ways that you can use outside the box ideas like this to learn about your candidates?
Some ideas that come to mind, if you're a middle manager or director level or below, one thing you could do is you could simulate this kind of idea by putting some very specific instructions for them to follow before the interview and then take notice if they follow those instructions. You would use that type of stress test to see, are they good at following instructions? Are they good at paying attention to details?
If this is someone that needs to explain complex information, to non technical people and they need to simplify it, you could ask them to do that for you right there on the spot. You're looking at their resume, you could find some type of project they've done in the past. Hey I see that you worked on project X, Y, and Z. Most of the people in this room don't have experience with mechanical engineering. So could you please explain this what you did here in a way that they would understand? Then you can see how they explain themselves on the fly.
Another thing you could do is, you could give them information that is intentionally unclear, or you could, ask a question that isn't very clear in the interview and just see if they ask you to clarify what you meant. These can draw out things like, are they detail oriented or are they going to stand up for themselves? Are they going to take initiative of figuring things out? You can learn a lot about people by not necessarily asking the question, but just creating an outside the box situation for them to show they're going back to your list of traits and characteristics that you've identified.
You don't want to screw with people too much, but are there some outside the box ways to draw out this information and just see if they have this skill or not. The point I'm making here is don't just think about the interview questions as the only way to draw out this information, get creative with it, have some fun with it. Think of some outside the box ways to make the interview a little bit different and unique for them, but also to really just really put them on the spot and see, can they do these things that they say they do.
Before I move on, if you're finding these insights helpful, let me know by hitting that like button.
Always Ask These Questions in Every Interview
Moving on to the third part of your interview strategy, these are questions that are specific that I think you should ask in every interview, no matter what type of position you're hiring or, what the skills requirements are. These are the foundational questions that I would encourage you to ask in every interview.
The first one is one that I actually pulled from Simon Sinek. I saw this in a video of his and I thought this was brilliant. I wish I used this question back when I was a hiring manager.
At the beginning of his interviews, he'll ask a question like this. I hate surprises, so can you tell me about something that might go wrong now, before we get too far in the interview, so that I'm not surprised when it happens? This question is basically another way of asking the candidate, what are your biggest weaknesses? But instead of getting a generic answer where the candidate tries to explain how a strength is a weakness, Oh, I'm a workaholic or I'm a perfectionist. You're actually going to get a more genuine answer from them.
The reason for this is because you're not making it about them and their weaknesses. You're making it about you and you're asking them to help you make the interview go smoother. You're saying, hey, I don't do well as an interviewer when I'm caught off guard. Can you call attention to some of these things that I might be surprised by during the interview?
The types of response you'll get, according to clients of mine that I've advised on doing this technique, apparently you get a lot of insights into things like, sometimes I have a tendency to take constructive feedback personally, and I'll take offense to it, and I struggle to put it into action. Or you'll hear someone say I'm not the best listener. I really struggle with that. It's something I'm actively working on. These are powerful insights to know to learn about that other person.
I also think it really goes a long way when someone shows humility like that and opens up to you. If you watch my YouTube videos and if you follow me on LinkedIn, a lot of the things I talk about is how to really influence people and get them to open up and how to win them over and how to motivate them and drive their behavior. This is a great way to, to do this at the beginning of the interview, because, think about it most people, the interviewer and the interviewee or the candidate don't enjoy the interviewing process, right? If you're a manager, you don't like interrogating people and asking them to, to merit their ability to do the job to you. Likewise, if you're the candidate, you don't enjoy it. It's a very stressful situation. It's a very stressful process. Asking questions just in a slightly different manner like this goes a long way in making the other person feel comfortable with opening up to you. I'm going to give you another technique on how to make the other person feel comfortable with you in a little bit. So I'm going to come back to that.
Some other good questions to ask that I would almost insist you ask in every interview is how would you describe your preferred learning style? Listen closely to their answer. Do they have to do it themselves? Hand on? Maybe they need visuals. Maybe they need to learn by failing. Maybe they need to learn through reading. There's a bunch of different learning styles. Get them to explain their learning style in as much detail as they can, because then you can look at whether or not their preferred learning style is going to work in your environment. If this type of person needs crystal clear instructions and they need, to read these things thoroughly and you don't have any training manuals. Might not be a good fit to hire this person, right?
The next question, you want to ask it like this. You want to say, think about the different companies and environments you've worked in throughout your career so far. Which environment were you the most successful in? Some followup questions to this would be, what did you enjoy the most about this environment or culture? Why do you think you excelled in this type of environment? You want to listen closely to their answer and gauge how closely their ideal environment matches your current work environment.
For example, if they say they need structure to succeed and your company lacks structure, this would be a red flag. Now you also can follow up to this question with the inverse of the last question. You would ask, what type of environments did you have the least success with? Again, why did you struggle? Where did you struggle the most? How did you try to improve your situation? When did you realize this wasn't the right fit for you? Those are great follow ups to this to really gain more perspective. Just like with the first question, if they did poorly in an environment that sounds like your current environment, Again, it's a red flag. It means they're probably not going to be a good fit at your company.
If you'd like me to create more videos specifically on interviewing questions and strategies, let me know in the comments, but I'm going to move on to the fourth step in your interviewing strategy, which is actually delivering the interview.
Do This at the Very Begining of the Interview to Get the Candidate to Relax and Open Up to You
At the very beginning of the interview, the first question you want to ask them is you want to find something about them from their resume or from their LinkedIn profile, or maybe it's something they've already shared with you in the preliminary interviewing process. You want to find something about them that you're genuinely interested in and you want to ask them a loose, relaxed, open question about that topic to kickstart the momentum. Ideally this would be something more personal, like a hobby or some recent travel or vacation details they shared with you. Maybe, that they do volunteer work, or maybe they told you about a fun experience they just had. Maybe you have mutual connections or common interests that you've identified. What I would do though, is I would bring up a question about that and then ask a few follow up questions too.
For example, you could say I know you just came back from vacation in California. That's awesome. I've never been to California and it's gotta be beautiful this time of year. What did you do while you were in California? How long were you there? Have you been there before? Would you go back there again? Or you could say something like, I see that you do volunteer work with company X, Y, and Z or with charity organization X, Y, and Z. I really admire that because of these reasons why I care about that charity. How did you get involved with that? I've always been trying to get involved with something like that, and then again, ask follow up questions too. How long have you been doing this? What got you into this?
Doing this is a great way to really relax the candidate. Remember, like I said, this is a high stress environment. They're very stressed out. They're going to be very rigid. So starting with very simple questions like this is going to make them feel comfortable, relaxed, and open. Why this is important is if you make them feel this way, you're going to get clearer, better, and more honest answers from them throughout the rest of the interview. By getting them to relax, they're going to be more open and honest with you. They're going to feel comfortable and you're going to get more insights into what this person is really all about, how they think, and if there'll be a good fit or not for your team.
Use Follow Up Questions to Gain More Insights into How the Candidate Thinks
The next tip I want to give you for how you deliver the interview is make sure you ask follow up questions to every question.
Most candidates are going to fall into one of two categories. Category one is they'll have predetermined scripted answers to the behavioral questions that they're anticipating from you. Category two is they're going to give you very short answers that don't give you the information you need to evaluate the candidate.
A simple way to break through both of these barriers is by asking follow up questions that begin with what, how, when, where, or why. For example, if they share a story with you about how they solved a conflict at their previous job, you could follow up with questions like, why did you decide to use that approach? What did you learn from this experience? How would you handle that differently next time? Where did you get that idea from? When did you realize this? Simple follow up questions like this force the other person to open up, which gives you more insights into how the candidate thinks. It also gives you the opportunity to gauge if you trust their initial answer.
One more thing on follow up questions, and there's actually scientific evidence and studies to back this up. When you ask someone an initial question, and it's someone, you're just getting to know, like in an interview, it's not a familiar friend or co worker or colleague or something like that. When you ask them an initial question, you're typically going to get an answer that's one to two sentences, until they're comfortable with you. But if you ask a follow up to that question, you're going to get an answer that's double the length. So you're going to get two to four sentences. And then if you ask a third follow up question, it's going to continue doubling. So it's going to be something like four to eight sentences. That relationship continues the more you ask follow up questions. Of course, there's some certain point where that drops off.
My point here is that If you're not getting enough information from them on the initial answer, continue asking those what, where, how, when, and why follow up questions until you get enough of a breadth of answer from them that gives you, what you're looking for to gauge if this person is going to succeed in the role. Watch, pay attention to this. When you talk to people that you're building a relationship with, just pay attention to the duration of their response. How it gets longer with each follow up question.
That's different than switching, with a pivot question. I'm talking about a follow up question, but I digress. I can't help but share these random nuggets of information with you because I'm all about just teaching you how to utilize people skills to be a more effective leader, manager, and have more impact throughout your organization. But let's move on.
Ask This Question at the Very End of the Interview
So getting back to interview tips, the very last question you want to ask in the interview is this. If we were to make you an offer, is there any reason you wouldn't accept it? Now I ask this in every interview I conducted as a hiring manager. I ask this in every interview that I conduct today too, because it gives you perspective into any reservations that they have about you, the company or the role, and it gives you a chance to address their reservations if anything comes up. One more thing, it also gives you an open view into what they're thinking about the role and the opportunity.
For example, they might say something like, I'm a little worried that I wouldn't do well with X, Y, and Z because I don't have much experience with A, B, and C. Or, I'm worried about the commute. Or, I'm worried about the hours. It's going to give you some perspective into why they feel like they're not going to be a good fit for the role or maybe there's concerns they have about what you've told them. But it gives you the chance to clarify that and speak to it. Instead of letting them leave the interview assuming that it's not a good fit. It gives you a chance to clarify any misconceptions before they walk away. It gives you a chance to share any more critical information with them, too
Here's Why It Pays for You to Be Transparent During the Interview
The next interviewing strategy I want to give you is be transparent during the interview. That means show your true colors, be who you are. Don't put on an act. The reason I'm telling you this is one, people can detect BS. They can tell if you're being fake. But the real reason you want to do this, because remember, we're all about trying to identify the ideal candidates that are going to be a perfect fit for working with you. So that means show your true colors. If you have blemishes as a manager, let them know about that.
For me, when I was a hiring manager in my old life as a director of engineering, when I interviewed people, I would tell them that I was very talkative. I have a tendency to overwhelm with information. I would tell them that, I was very excited about ideas and I would want to pull people together if we had an exciting idea. I would make sure that they understood what type of manager I was.
I would also make sure they understood exactly what type of environment they were walking into. For a large portion of my career, I was working at a startup environment that was rapidly growing and bursting at the seams. We were constantly experiencing growing pains too. I made sure to paint that type of picture for them. I didn't talk about everything's perfect here, everything's great. Everyone gets along. No, I talked about, hey, this is a startup environment. We're growing fast. There's some stress, there's some holes in the system. That's why we're growing. We're hiring people to help strengthen this and build systems and build operations and scale up. But we're in the middle of that process right now and, I want you the candidate to think about if you're up for that. Is that type of environment that you'll do well in? Because a lot of things are undefined, and you're gonna have to go track down information.
So I can go on and on with the examples, but my point is, I wanted to make sure they understood what type of environment they were getting into, so that they could make the decision if this is the right type of environment for them. Versus me selling them a bill of goods and them accepting a job offer thinking that this is the right fit only to find out that it's not and now I got to go back to the drawing boards and hire another person in three months when that didn't work out. Likewise, I said I made sure to emphasize my style as a manager. I talked about, what my strengths were. I also talked about my weaknesses because I wanted to make sure that they were comfortable. Working for a manager like me, and I wanted to make sure that they were up for that challenge as well. So I didn't want to paint a false picture of you're walking into this perfect environment.
I think it's really important to be transparent about you, your style as a leader, the company, the environment, the team, the culture, because ultimately the candidate is going to report to you and it's important for them to have a fair chance of evaluating whether they're like you or the company.
Don't Be Afraid to Be a Salesperson During the Interview
The next strategy is you want to be a salesperson. The interview is a two way street. Yes, the candidate is selling you on why they're qualified for the job but you also need to sell them on why your company is a great place to work. Now I'm not saying lie. I'm not saying, you know play any tricks. I'm just saying you want to let them know what makes your company unique.
So during the beginning of the interview, when you're introducing yourself, I would include a few statements that explain why you enjoy working for the company and a few statements that in your opinion, what makes your company so unique.
So you could say Hey, I'm Doug Howard. I'm the director of engineering and this is my role X, Y, and Z. I've worked at many different companies in structural engineering throughout my career, but what I really like about this company is the work life balance. This company really practices what they preach when it comes to making sure our employees are taken care of. You just don't see this at other companies. That's what I value the most about working here.
Share something personal that you feel about the company, as well as just what makes this company a good place to work.
Make Sure They Understand Everything That's Included in the Offer
My last tip on delivering the interview is you want to help them understand the full offer. Think about it this way, when people are shopping for something, they naturally default to the price comparison. I'm going to buy object a or b based on object a being a dollar cheaper or something like that. But we tend to forget to consider the full value comparison. That thing's a dollar cheaper, but it's going to break in half the time. I'll be spending more in the long run. The same is true for job seekers and weighing offers.
Even if they think your company or your job is the perfect fit for them, they'll still decline the offer if it doesn't match their salary expectations, because we get tied to this number. That's why you need to make sure that they understand the full offer you're giving them. What I mean by this is the full benefits, the work life balance, 401k contribution, the culture, the growth and advancement opportunities that are at play and anything else that you think is important and that separates you from other similar jobs or other competition or companies.
For example, at the company I worked for, we had some of the best health benefits In our market, and it was because we were owned by a big parent company, one of the biggest companies in the world. So we got the same insurance plans that they had, which is very rare for companies of our size when we were a startup growing into a big company.
But that's not something that a lot of people think of in the interviewing process. They don't really think about comparing the benefits of these job opportunities, the healthcare benefits. So that was a big plus for us, a big pro in our favor. So I made sure that every candidate understood that in the interviewing process, and I would talk about how that was one of the big luxuries of being owned by our parent company is that we get the world's best healthcare benefits, for this job.
If your company tends to be on the low side of salary offers with respect to the market and averages and the numbers that people are going to find on indeed. com or any of these places, then you want to make sure to point out how your company compares to the market in these other areas that they're not probably thinking about.
The fifth and final part of your total interviewing strategy is what do you do after the interview? This is actually the simplest part. If you followed all the advice and the tips and the tactics I've walked you through here, then after you've conducted the interview, you're just going to review all the qualities and their answers to the questions. Remember, we've designed all the interview questions around the qualities and characteristics and traits that you're looking for. You're going to review the candidates answers to all the questions, and you're going to first make sure that they meet all the critical requirements. If they did meet all the critical requirements, then I'd say, go ahead and make them an offer.
If you have multiple candidates that meet critical requirements, and you only have one position available, that's where you get into the next layer, the ideal and the bonus characteristics. How many ideal characteristics do they meet? How many bonus characteristics do they meet? Whichever one meets more of those, you can use that as your tiebreaker, so it's an objective way to figure out who the best candidate is.
Now, this is assuming you have more than one candidate you like. But let's assume the other case scenario, let's just say we were interviewing one candidate and they missed a few of the critical requirements. Now it boils down to a judgment call. If they missed a few, one or two of these requirements, but they met a lot of the ideal and bonus characteristics, then it might be worth taking a chance and making that person an offer. But if they're lacking in the ideal and bonus characteristics too, then it's probably too risky and you might want to dodge that bullet.
We covered a lot of ground here in this video so I encourage you to rewatch this once or twice, just to make sure you didn't miss anything. But what it all really boils down to is one thing. You got to get crystal clear on what characteristics you're looking for in the ideal candidate. Then you need to design your interview questions to draw out whether or not that candidate will be successful in the role.
If you follow the strategy we covered in this video, you're going to be in great shape for that. But one thing I forgot to mention in this video is the importance of how to introduce yourself at the beginning of the interview because this sets the tone for the rest of your interactions with this person throughout the interview.
If you want to learn how to create a positive first impression right away, check out my episode called The Best Way to Introduce Yourself In Any Setting.
check out my FREE mini masterclass - “increase your impact as an engineering leader”
Learn How to Influence People to Create Efficiencies and Save Time
Stop following, waiting, and letting other people dictate your time.
Start leading, inspiring, and creating impact for your team and organization
Join me for this FREE 60 minute on-demand MINI MASTERCLASS to learn how you can INFLUENCE decisions, INSPIRE change, and MOTIVATE behavior at every level of the organization.