Ep 48 - The Truth About Interviewing

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. I don't know. What'd you think? I don't know. It was kind of serious. Should we laugh? Dude, you're killing me. You guys can't see this. Why does this bother you? I don't understand. Oh, gosh. So we're in an airport. Let's see what day was. Last week sometime, returning from a little road trip to meet up with a client and their team. And I'm wore out. I'm And dude offers me liver chips.

0:49 And in a moment, I'm like, I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm in an airport. I'll take whatever it is that you're selling. Dude, I almost freaking threw up in the middle of the airport floor. That was the grossest. Yeah. crap that I've ever tasted in my life. The texture is disgusting. The smell is disgusting. And the flavor matched both the texture and the smell. How do you do it? Liver chips. It's so gross. Listen to me, man. Yeah. I don't know. It made me question our relationship. I'm not going to kid you. Listen, I'm just trying to take care of my body.

1:30 Oh my gosh. And liver has lots And I don't like the way it tastes either. In fact, now I have some stuck in my teeth and I'm not enjoying it. Oh, geez. I'm glad we don't sit any closer, man. You know what I'm afraid you're going to do? I'm afraid that we're going to be here hanging out at Floodlight World Headquarters, all 150 square feet. And you're going to nuke something for lunch and it's going to be a big old hunk of liver. You know, this reminds me of a story. When my freshman year of college, I had a roommate and I would eat. I'd go to the cafeteria and I worked out. I got to know the ladies in the cafeteria, the cooks. And I said, Hey, just every morning, could you make me a dozen hard boiled eggs?

2:13 I was trying to get all like, I was working out, trying to get jacked. Yeah, I'm trying to. Yeah. So every morning I'd pick up a baggie and they would peel them for me. They were the sweetest old ladies. Oh my gosh. Yeah. They'd say, here's your eggs for the day, Chris. Actually, no, they didn't peel them for me at first. And so I would take this thing and I would peel them in my dorm. I was the worst roommate, dude. I was such an asshole. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but it was pragmatic. I'm just eating my eggs throughout the day. And I'm dropping the peel. And usually, every other one, I'd throw the yolk in the basket. It's just too filling. I just wanted the protein. It would smell like eggs in our room constantly. Let's be honest. And my roommate... Oh my gosh.

2:54 My roommate, Scott, if you're listening... Anyway, I'm sorry. You're like, I've matured. I was a terrible roommate. Gosh, dude. So now it's liver, man. It's a little more sophisticated. I love you. But I have a feeling you probably weren't real super diligent getting that trash out on a regular basis either, were you? Yeah. I would totally diamond you out. Oh my goodness. All right. Let's move on. Oh gosh. Liver chips. All right. Okay, dude, where are we going? Where are we going? I don't know. Get us back on track here. Hurry up. I'm feeling spotlighted. Oh my goodness. Okay, man. So a couple of weeks back, a few weeks back, we were talking about personnel.

3:37 We were talking about... people coming and going, some proper onboarding, some other things like that. But anyways, it made me start kind of thinking a little bit, interviewing process. So not necessarily the specific questions. So we might get into some examples, but we're not going to... We're not necessarily majoring on process here. Yeah. We're not going to give you 15 questions to ask in your next interview. But I think it's more for... our suggestion, our perspective on what we're looking for. And this is pretty universal. Obviously, there's some tasking, there's some competency levels that are specific for each role. But I think there are some general things, let's call them, that we're looking for when we're trying to hire someone.

4:20 And so even if we don't necessarily present the specific questions to ask, I think our hope here is... is that we equip you with what you're looking for. Yeah, mindset. Yeah. How to approach that interview. Exactly. And then that should help guide your search for or the kinds of questions then that you're asking during the interview. So that's where we're going to go today and get off the topic of liver chips. Gross. Okay. Hey, don't listen. Don't hate it until you try it. And then it's fair for you to hate it. It's all for the vitamins and the protein. Come on, man. That's what it's about. Give me a break. I'd rather take a multiple.

5:00 All right. It's all for abs. It's all for abs. Okay, man. Where do we want to start on this? Again, we're trying to identify... Yeah. That prospect we're looking for. What is it that we're trying to identify? Where do you want to start? Well, you know, in our last podcast, we talked about truth. One of the comments we made is, what we're trying to do is we're trying to just get to the truth. We're trying to get to what is real about our business right now? Or what is real about our prospects experience with the restoration industry or the last damage event they had or whatever? What is the truth, right? Yeah. That's essentially what we're trying to do with these interviews. We're not witch hunting, like trying to... Well, we kind of are, but we don't want it to feel though.

5:40 It's not like we're trying to get them to say something that's gonna... Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, okay. Well, you're not the one. No, but it's like, we just want to understand the truth about what their experience has been with other jobs, what their perspective is potentially coming onto our team, what are their normal attitudes and biases and preferences that potentially will create an advantage for us or be a positive addition to the team or something we're going to need to manage or work around or could be a real unhealthy addition to the team. We're just trying to understand as much of the truth as we can. And the interviewee, Their objective is in total opposition. Oftentimes, they want the job, right?

6:23 And so our inclination, and all of us have been in the interviewee seat, at some point, most of us in our life, we're tuned to put our best foot forward. Yeah. And we're tuned, even subconsciously, to gloss over or ignore the negative bits. We've been educated to leave out the bad stuff. And what we're trying to churn up is just a complete picture. Yeah. We're not trying to have gotcha moments. We're just trying at the end of the interview when we sit around and we talk with our other leaders or the people that are co-interviewing with us is to... We want to have a complete picture to look at together. Yeah. To be like, okay, well, I love this part. I'm a little concerned about this. How would we deal with this? How would we make this thing work that they said or they don't like or they're not good at?

7:06 Yeah. Like, is there a way for us to address that or not? Right. And to just to have a complete picture. Yeah. And so how do we go about that? I don't know. I mean, we were chit chatting about some of those topics. Yeah. And I think they're in and of themselves kind of questions, but at minimum, at least they're going to drive the kind of questions that you're asking. Yeah. Right. So I think one of the first things you and I were contemplating when it came to this was getting it out of the way of asking and identifying why they're even looking. Yeah. Right. Like, especially right now, I think there's a reality that all of us have probably been faced. Like if somebody is knocking on your door, there's a chance that there's some broken baggage there. There's some kind of performance issue.

7:47 So again, we need to know what it is that they're looking for. Why are they even interested in talking to us about our business, about what we're doing? And I think this goes back to this concept of pain and solution selling. Before we start pitching all the things and asking all the questions about the specifics to the role and technical competencies and past experience, I think we need to identify if we've even got something of value for this individual. That's a great point. What are they looking for specifically? And I think you're going to see a rhythm in this is ask more questions, get beyond that.

8:29 Yeah, the generalized answers. Yes, the general answer. So let's find out from our prospect, why are they even interested in having the conversation? Which is funny because when we were chatting about this, I have felt in the past butterflies in my stomach. I want to ask that question. But at times when your hiring goes to the desperation brain concept that we talk about a lot... You're in that desperation brain and you desperately need that PM or you need that tech or you need that office manager. You need that AR person or you need that sales rep. We can just get so locked in the desperate need-based mindset to where we're inclined to...

9:15 overlook all manner of things. And we kind of don't want to know. Yeah. Because for example, if they say, well, I'm just looking for more money. It's the last thing any of us wants to hear about the why, because then we know. And then we get overtaken by that. And we're like, okay, are we going to be able to afford this person? And then oftentimes we short circuit and we shortcut through the rest of the interview knowing that money's the top thing. And it's like, well, so we're afraid to ask. Yeah. Where instead, we just hope they'll mention it at some point in the thing. And we may never really know what's driving their desire for the job. Right. And there's a reality, right? Because we're going to summarize the profile, the most generic profile we can of what we're looking for, I think, by the end of the show.

9:55 But this goes to that fact of, if we really identify that this person, the only thing that's motivating their engagement or loyalty... is just strictly another dollar an hour. Well, then that's a flat. We need to understand that, right? Now, I'm not saying you don't hire them because they're driven by money, but... It may be exactly the right choice to have a money-motivated person in that role, assuming there's values and there's principles that are attached to that. But... It's important because I think even if we don't like the answer, it gives us more clarity. Absolutely. Right. It's the truth. It goes back to what you're saying. I know what I was going to say. I totally like how to brain fart there. So I was trying to just fill space.

10:38 Liver chips. It's supposed to be good for your brain. It's happening. So what I was going to say is when we ask that question... Sometimes money is the answer. Other times, it's the culture. Yeah. And often people will give generalized answers. And this is where we walk a little bit of a line because I think most of us that have interviewed a lot of people or that's part of our role is you definitely don't want somebody that's bad-mouthing their current company or most recent company. That's generally a red flag for all of us if they're complaining about their past boss or there's this real complaining kind of posture that they take. But that's different. Yeah. Then when we ask them, hey, why are we even here? Maybe it's a competitor they're coming from that we even respect or we see as a really strong competitor.

11:19 It's like, okay, you're with such and such. They're a worthy competitor of ours. Why? Why are you coming to us? What's the deal? And if they say something about the culture... Well, that could be a really legitimate driver, right? Whether it's the work environment, it's something about there's never any rest, there's never any care for the employee and their lifestyle is way out of whack because of just whatever the pressure or something that they... We want to hear all of that. Yeah. But we want to hear specifically. So I think just one caution around that question is... Don't stop at the generalized answer. Yes. Like you said, get the specific, almost especially when it comes to culture and, hey, I just don't like the work environment in place.

12:00 Well, double click on that. Tell me more. Yeah. You have kind of a toxic relationship with your supervising manager. Well, what does that look like and sound like? Because, and here's where we get so sideways in a lot of ways in our industry is people will tell us their first answer. Yeah. And we make all kinds of assumptions about what they mean when they say, Oh, it's a terrible culture. And of course, too, we know little bits and pieces about our competitors. And so our ego on the inside would be like, Well, yeah, of course, it's a shitty place to work. We already knew that. And our ego just fills in all the gaps. Well, the reality that I think most of us come to understand is that Most of the time, our competitors are no better or worse than us. They may have different struggles, but look, we're all in the same business.

12:43 It's a hard business. We all have things that we're struggling with. So it's really important for us to uncover what they mean by that because frankly, they may have the same dang experience in our company. Totally true. If we're honest with ourselves. Yeah. No, I was going to... As soon as you started talking about that, the first thing that came to my mind was, I've had experiences in the past where someone didn't want the level of engagement and culture that we had built. Yeah. Yeah. So my assumption, if I'm in those same shoes, okay? And I ask somebody and they say, Yeah, I just hated the work environment. I thought the culture sucked. In my mind, I'm going, Oh, they're going to be a perfect fit because they want... Because we care about culture and all the things. Yeah.

13:24 And we may find out they're just this very utilitarian in nature. They want to come eight to five. They do not want rah-rah. They don't want to be a part of a larger mission. I don't need pats on my back. Just let me do my work my way. I'm going to clock in. I'm going to clock out. I'm going to go home. And look. If that's the culture you're creating and that makes sense, awesome, hire them. Yeah. But I think to your point is we need to know the specifics because I would have launched into assumptions and been like, Oh sweet, I hire this person and find out they don't want to do anything to engage our culture. They don't want to be at all company meetings. They want to be left alone. They just want to be left alone and siloed and all the things.

14:04 In the kind of company that I personally would be building, that would not be the right person on the bus. So again, maybe it is for years. We're not here to tell you what's right or wrong. Totally. It's just ask the right question. Get in below the surface so that you don't fill in the gaps with your own assumptions. Yeah. Gosh, that's so funny. And I can remember a specific question higher that not long after we brought him on the team, I realized this person wants nothing to do with counterparts in the company. They could care less. They want to come do this thing and go away. And for some of us, we go, thank God. But it has to... Anyways, it all depends, right?

14:45 It all depends. And it's about the truth. It's like, okay, what does that actually look like? Because some people that just want to do their work, they may mean, I just don't like drama. I like to stay out of it. I don't like to get in the middle. Well, that's great. That fits. Yeah, exactly. But if you don't want to come to the happy hour at the end of the day, the barbecue we're having at the shop, you don't want to be connected to your other fellow employees, you don't want to talk to anybody. Okay, well, that's the problem. Yeah. At least for us. For us. For what we would be building. Exactly. Right. But one shoe kind of scenario. Yeah. All right. So I think another layer to that then is diving into what they want. So it's not enough to stop with, why are you here? Why are you talking to us?

15:26 And this probably goes to what you're talking about. It's just digging in deeper. And we start identifying specifically what they want. What are they looking for? Yeah. And some of these kinds of categories that we're talking about here are one to three-year goals. In 12 months on a new team, whether it be us or gym shop down the street or Lucy's shop, whatever, what do you want to see happen in that first year? And give them an opportunity to unpack. And as they're giving you answers, it's the whole, tell me more about that. What do you mean specifically by that? Can you give me some examples? Keep them talking. peeling back some of those layers of the onion, right?

16:06 Yeah. Why is that your goal? What would that do for you? How would that change things for you? Yeah. Why is that important? You can also get at some of the compensation goals to make sure they're in line, right? So I was in a meeting with a potential sales leader for one of our clients, first interview and it might have been second interview. But that was one of the questions I said, hey, just look three years out. Because that's a timeframe that most people can relate to. It's like you start to get out five years. It's like, holy cow, everything changes in five years. Yeah, I'll be 90 by then. Yeah. A thousand grandkids by that point. Three years out, what do you want your role to look like? Yeah. What kind of role do you want to be in? What sort of income range? And what is that income doing for you? Is there a title that comes to your mind? A certain type of role where you want to get to?

16:47 Or is it... And have them paint a picture. Yeah. And like you say, keep double clicking on it to get clarity. Well, okay. What does that income range do for you? Yeah. The HR bug just fired off in the back of my head. So I'm going to throw a disclaimer in here. What I'm advising you guys to do is when you start designing your questions, and I would say from just a tactical perspective, you should legitimately line out 15 to 20 open ended questions that specifically help you look for this information. Have your HR manager or partner review them. Bingo. Have your HR manager or acquaintance in the industry or an HR partner. And if you need a suggestion, we have a partner we can refer you to.

17:29 But yeah, no, I mean, it is really important, especially as you grow in size. You just take on more and more and more litigation risk. And I think there's this weird space that we can get caught into that smaller businesses are still operating like small businesses. We're all friends and family. We're really engaged in our personal lives in a lot of ways. And I think what a lot of HR folks, HR professionals are going to warn us about is, hey, watch crossing that line in our questions and what we're asking because there are things that are significantly off limits that could get you in trouble. So again, we're... We are not HR professionals. So please verify your questions against a pro that can help protect you. Sounds true. All right.

18:09 So another couple items, these subcategories that I feel like fall into this is levels of support. You actually have a really perfect example that we just witnessed just this week, right? Yeah. So this is something that's really important to take into account. Because there's a broad spectrum of people that listen to the show. And some of you are working in really large scale environments, like the First Sunsides, the ATIs, the Blue Skies, these really large networks of companies. And then many of you are working with three or four other people in the company, or 10 or 15 or 20, and you're in a smaller business. Well, people's expectation on how much training and development and onboarding and what that's going to look like, feel like, potentially is very, very different.

18:54 Because if they're coming from Jim Bob's cleaning and restoration down the street where it's a guy and his two kids and a construction guy... Well, their ability to train and really provide, equip people with training and resources and all of that kind of stuff is going to look vastly different from your large organizations like the Blue Skies and Belfours and ATIs. They have an entire university. And frankly, even like large franchises, established franchises like the Surf Bros, somebody coming from there who has all of these resources and training modules and stuff available to them. And so it's important that we understand what people's needs are or their expectations.

19:34 Yeah. That is a common problem. Somebody is coming from a larger company and they're accustomed to having two weeks or four weeks of ride-alongs and shadowing other people and not really being required to produce until a month or six weeks later. Yeah. And you may not have that environment available. Yeah. And it's not right or wrong. It's not right or wrong. It's just... Again, it's what is real. What is real? What can I provide? And so we have a client recently that's expanding, but they have limited resources at their branch for training and doing those ride-alongs and job shadows and all that kind of stuff. A second location. Yeah. And so this person came in and was expecting a lot of hand-holding. And that just isn't in the cards.

20:14 They don't have the scale to provide a ton of handholding to somebody new. And if we can tease that out ahead of time, then we know. This person might otherwise be a really great fit. Yeah. But it's just that they're going to need or expect or want two months of ramp up and... going to this training and doing these online modules at home on their couch. It's like, wait, that's not our environment. Yeah. It just isn't going to happen. It's a misfit. Wrong timing, whatever. And it might be later. Yeah, totally. So we don't want to burn that prospect and that connection. Let's keep them in the Rolodex. Yeah. Let's remain connected on LinkedIn. Yeah. But right now may not be the time. Yeah, we got to be realistic about what we can provide. And we don't want to oversell it because anytime again, it's the truth.

20:57 Yeah, we just we want to share the truth with these people before we hire them. So they're not smacked in the face by Oh, man, I'm just got to figure this out myself. So how do you ask that? How you frame that in a question? I think you just simply ask, Hey, last time you were working at XYZ company. What did your training and onboarding look like? Yeah. That's great because then you can say, what if you were in an environment where that wasn't available? Available. What role would that play or how would it affect your position on the team? Is that our door? No, there's just some shootings happening outside of World Headquarters. Oh, great. On his backfiring truck or something. Oh, okay. It sounded like a machine gun or somebody knocking on a door. Yeah, it's easy to get those two confused.

21:37 All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MitResto Mastery sponsor, Accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware, by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there, right? Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software. We've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work, Or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, you know, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all. But we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it.

22:22 Yeah, and that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission-critical information, i.e., guys, your team will actually use it. Let's talk about sales, right? After years of leading sales and marketing teams, the biggest trick is getting them to consistently update notes about their interactions with referral partners and clients. And the essential piece there is there's got to be a mobile app experience. And in our experience... the solutions that were previously out there were just too cumbersome and tricky to use. Yeah. Imagine guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system.

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23:57 For this reason, we recommend actual insights to all of our clients. Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets. and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3,700 plus page database of Xactimate templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it, bam. Database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple points and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world.

24:44 So go check them out at value.getinsights.org backslash FCG. I think we talked about motivations as another one. Can we get into the types of things that motivate that individual? So again, what do they want? Our goal in that questioning is we're looking for award elements, bonus elements. We're looking for employee of the month kind of scenarios. We're looking for the kind of communication that we have on a regular basis. Is it going to provide enough kudos? Are we going to be able to give them either the level of support that they want, not just in the training and things like that, but the kinds of things that motivate them as an individual?

25:30 Because we may identify that this particular role... An example would be, maybe in your particular business, a role is more siloed. then maybe that role is at other operations. I can think of some of the administrative tasking. A lot of people have roles called file coordinator or a project coordinator. Well, those two titles can mean very different things depending on the company. Are there commonly crossover? Yes. But that doesn't mean I don't see an operation where a file coordinator has very little interaction with other peers. And we may be all excited because somebody has had that title before or supported a team in a certain way. But again, the expectation at our company might be slightly different.

26:11 So again, it's just getting to that. What motivates this individual? Are they... I need to be around people or do they want to be left alone? What is their best case scenario, essentially? How do they function the best? So another really important thing with regard to this is salespeople. And this is a huge deal. Everybody's recruiting salespeople right now. It feels like you're hiring a salesperson away from a team of salespeople and they're going to be your solo salesperson. Yes. That is a massive, massive difference. Yeah. in job experience and team experience. Because let's face it, if you're of the size where you're just getting ready to hire your first sales professional, or maybe you've had a single salesperson, they rotated off for whatever reason, and you don't have a sales manager, it's a smallish team.

26:58 They don't have a team manager, they don't have other colleagues that are selling. That's a very different experience and it demands something very different from them than if they're coming from a team where they had two or three other colleagues selling and or they had a sales manager there. You know what I mean? So it's important for us to tease that out and not to discount that. That's a big deal. In fact, we were encountering this with another... This person said to me, they're like, I'm just so used to having a team and we talk to each other and we... collaborate and swap ideas and problem solve. And they really... That environment energizes them. And then I also think of an old sales buddy of mine, Jeff Martini. Jeff Martini is like a medical sales rep now.

27:38 Very successful. But I remember he was just a lone ranger. Yeah. He liked it. Yeah. He's just a salty guy. And he had his way with customers. He's such a good sales guy. He could take or leave. I did some of my ride-alongs with him as a trainee when I first started as a sales rep. And he I could just tell he was mildly annoyed that he sort of had me tagging along. Yeah. Because he's just a lone ranger. Yeah. And he would show up to sales meetings fully prepared and he did his thing. But he didn't need the whole team thing. Yeah. Some people do. Right. Better to find that out ahead of time, right? Right. Yeah, I think that we're going to keep beating the same drum of the goal in our interviewing process is to get to the truth. The truth, be honest with yourself about what you are legitimately capable of offering.

28:22 Yes. And be very clear on what it is that this individual wants and do not leave it up to guess or assumption. Right. Yeah. Okay, so another layer to this is kind of, again, digging beyond those first answers, is when we start to dig into performance and experience, let's get as measurably black and white as possible with the kind of information that we're looking for. Here's what I mean by that. We're kind of hammering a lot on salespeople. But this is legit for operational stuff. Here's an example. You're talking to somebody and they use language like, Oh yeah, I've been in the industry for 10 years. I've led everything from large, complex commercial jobs to residential jobs.

29:02 I can run teams. I understand T&M. Yeah, all the things. Well, my gut reaction is right on. I've got my person. He or she is design-specific. You're hired. You're hired. This is my new MIT manager. Yeah. Let's actually start digging into the specifics about them being, in quotes, responsible for these jobs. What did that mean? Yeah. Let's identify, did you establish the scope or did you execute on a scope of work that was built by somebody else? Well, that's pretty specific. We need to know. Because if I just launch and put somebody because they've got 10 years experience into running my mitigation process... I'm going to need them to teach and equip and understand how to create a scope of work from a loss reveal.

29:47 That's critical. And if I don't ask a measurable, specific question where the data, the answer can be very specific, again, I can make assumptions. I could be all excited about this person's general experience and identify the whole situation. is a critical one. I think about this for sales teams. We get all the time, we'll hear folks say, Yeah, I've been selling for 20 years. I've done X, Y, and Z. Okay, great. Let's talk about specific numbers from your last place or your current employee. Yeah, let's talk about where the business is coming from. Why? Why is it coming from there? What was the goal? How did you perform against that goal? Because we've seen scenarios where someone talks in general about a team's performance.

30:31 Oh, we produced 5 million, 6 million, this million, millions. And then it took some extra questions and we identify, well, that individual actually never sold any of it. Or... They were a leadership position only. I need someone that's going to go whale hunt, right? Yeah. And I mean, there's all kinds of things we can find out by double clicking, right? So you did 5 million in top line revenue. You managed 25 files at a time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you start to dig in and you ask about... Talk about the gross profit margin on your jobs. And you realize either they don't know what really bad sign... Yeah. Or they worked at a company where it was acceptable to have 25% GP. Yeah. Right? When you're thinking, whoa, that is way below standard.

31:13 This is not going to work. Or they're going to struggle in our environment where we have much higher standards. And one other thing too, just about like on the ops leader side, was that business storm operations? Yeah. or local operations to entirely different work environments. Did an event, a specific event affect those numbers or is that normal business as usual numbers? Yeah. So you've done everything from large loss to residential. Great. Were we talking storm operations? Were we talking localized? How much of your experience is storm versus local? Because I mean, different parts of the country, right? It is a major component of people's revenue. Oh, yeah. And it's a very different operating system. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's like the whole point of this is when you hear a first response...

31:59 and your excitement bell starts firing off. I'm going to actually say this for both because I've been in interviewing scenarios where I have shut off and already disconnected because some answer was given that I've already written the person off. And I've been with good leaders and they continue to press and they were right. We identified that this person actually is a solid candidate and I had written them off too early. So again, the adverse dig, right? Dig in because if you start to close off immediately from someone's response, Grab yourself. Yeah, you might grab yourself. I take that back. Don't eat liver chips and don't grab yourself at any point during an interview. Stop yourself and pause and say, okay, I'm checking out on this person's answer or I'm totally fired up and excited about the answer.

32:48 Don't stop digging. Let's get more specifics. Yeah, we don't want to leave talent on the table and we don't want to compromise our team by bringing in the wrong person. Right. Yeah, completely. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, one of the questions that I love to ask is, and I don't know, maybe it's just totally generic and everybody asks a version of this, but... to tease out preferences is, applicant, look back over your whole career. And sometimes if I've got a younger person, they've got four or five jobs on their resume. I'll say, you were this, you did that, you did this, you did this. When you think back over all of those roles, what were your favorite tasks in job assignments and roles? And what were your least favorite? And why?

33:28 And that opens up a whole dialogue. Yeah. Yeah. And other opportunities for follow-up questions. Oh, well, why was that your least favorite thing to do? Totally. Or was it about that? And man, and again, you're just trying to get to the truth because then at the end, the conclusion of that interview, and you should always, whenever possible, have multiple people that are interviewing this candidate, right? And so you sit down and you debrief in that interview. You want as complete of a picture to sit back together and be like, okay, I really liked this. Okay. When they said this, I have concern about that. Yeah. Is there a way for us to work around that? Is it even really an issue or did I just have a knee-jerk reaction to it? Yeah. How important are those things that were not quite right?

34:11 Yeah. And you can really have enough data. Yeah. A fuller picture of that person, right? Totally agree. All right. Now this one's kind of a little blurry. Okay. But it's come up a lot. Mm-hmm. And that is, I think you need to ask yourself the question, do I like this person? Oh, dude, I knew you were going to say that before I came out. Yeah. And I know it's hard for us to be like, because some of us will, I've got plenty of employees I don't necessarily like, but they do a great job. Yeah, okay. But do they have the kind of personality that just literally feels like oil and water? Mm-hmm. Because if that's the case, there's a strong, strong, strong possibility that every client, every peer, every subcontractor that they interact with is going to feel the same way you do.

34:55 And I've seen lots of scenarios. In fact, we just recently experienced one where... at the end of the day, maybe there was potential there. It was so difficult to get over the personality conflict that it made momentum for both people completely impossible. One person probably just felt disliked and judged and a misfit. And the other individual was just constantly frustrated by the interaction. And so I think to some extent... we have to ask ourselves, do I like them? Would I want to be around them? And if the answer is no, think about that. Push pause for a minute.

35:36 Oh, yeah. This is really an emerging value. I mean, I think you hear tech industry tends to lead a lot of things because it's super high margin. There's a lot of wealth in there. Well, and their valuations have nothing to do with profit. It's true. Yeah, we were talking about that yesterday. Right? Yeah. It's a multiple of... Of top line. Yes. Yeah. So anyway, they tend to be leading the pack in terms of business ideas and so forth. Yeah. But they've been talking about this for a while is it might be the most important. It might be the most important thing is, does this person fit the general personality and culture and attitude of the rest of our team? Because if they're abrasive or they come off as... just like they're weird to connect with.

36:16 And the chances are, right, their co-workers are going to feel that same thing. You got to trust that. And we're not speaking against diversity. No, not at all. Like I think some of the most brilliant teams are very different in terms of the makeup of personnel on the team. Everything from sex, culture, religious beliefs. I mean, you name it. Yeah. But there is a general sense of commitment to a mission, to an idea, to a concept. And those individuals, although they bring different natural wiring and different communication standards, different experiences, there's still this general, I kind of just like my coworkers. Yeah. And at the end of the day, that's important for performance, man.

36:56 Yeah. Yeah. Like when we're adapting and overcoming, when we're asking people to do hard things, when we're trying to keep enough energy to take care of our client, you can't be spending all that energy at home base dealing with drama and just social misfit. Yeah. Like it's important, right? Yeah. Now, again, I'm going to refer you to the HR rep because I'm not sure exactly what questions we can get away with. But here's some kinds of things that we're trying to identify. Could I spend time around them, right? Do they give me a sense of trust, right? Right? Do they give me a sense of confidence? How would I feel about this? How would my wife feel with this person coming into the home and them interacting with my wife, my spouse, my kids? Right.

37:36 Place yourself in the shoes of your referral partners or a client and say, what is the presentation from this individual? What kind of body language are they using? What signals are they sending? I would go so far as to ask yourself, if this individual is the only person... that our client or prospect has to gain an impression of our business? What will that be? What will that be? Oh, man. Because we discount this. We overlook this so much with techs. Yep. We let people onto the team that when you ask them that question, what if they are the only impression you're coming? And they often are. I mean, our technicians are probably 80% of the time and grade that somebody has with our brand.

38:20 Totally. Period. Yeah. Yeah. I think we forget that desperation brand again. Yeah. We need somebody to just tear stuff out and carry equipment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So dig into that. I think at the end of the day, that is just a mission critical element that you're trying to identify. And there's going to be a series of questions that can get you to that point. But that's what you're looking for. You need to know with confidence, is this the kind of person that breeds trust, breeds confidence? I have faith in this individual. I like the way they carry themselves. I could spend time with them. Could you have a beer with them? Yeah. Not telling you you have to. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe on Friday. Okay. Here's some, in general, I would say some things that we're trying to identify throughout the interviewing process.

39:05 Coachability. Right? We had an example today. Had a conversation with an individual from experience, time and grade, all the things Spot on. Excited about it. And at one point, I literally just asked him point blank, like, hey, your background is rich. You've been doing this a long time. You've been successful. You've made plenty of money. Your systems are working for you. There's a strong chance when you come onto this team because of the dynamics and because of goals and where it's going, it's going to ask of you to make adaptations to that. You're going to learn new systems and new processes. What's your perspective on that?

39:45 How does that affect you when I say that? We're looking for coachability. If we start hearing things like, well, we hear generic responses like, I mean, whatever works best is fine with me. Okay, let's get into that. No, what do you mean by that? Is that your perspective of what works best or it works best for the team based on the current circumstances, right? Like we got to get into that. And I'm not telling you to get confrontational here, but we're trying to figure out if this individual still has stuff to learn. Yeah. Because if we're honest with ourselves, when we have a team that's coachable, right? we're winning. It means that we're open to hear new ideas, techniques. It means we're open to hearing criticism on our performance.

40:28 Being coachable is probably one of the most brilliant superpowers that someone can possess. Because it just... I mean, there's so many things in regards to their ego and how they feel about themselves and their performance, blase, blase. So we got to find that out. We got to identify if this person still believes they've got things to learn. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Drama, the way that people interact with drama. These can be difficult questions to ask, but essentially what we're looking for is set up a scenario. Hmm. And ask them how they would respond to that kind of scenario. And I think there's perfect positions here to identify some conflict management capacity.

41:09 You could say, hey, this thing happens and you set up a stage where somebody comes to you and complains about XYZ. What would you do if you were in that position? And here's some things I would encourage you that you're looking for. direct to the individual that harmed them, caused them pain, caused them grievance action. Well, actually, what I would probably do is I'd probably meet with that individual and just tell them, hey, this is what I experienced in that situation. Just wanted to let you know and blah, blah, blah. Awesome. If you hear, I just ignore that and move on because I can't give a crap about someone's opinion. Yeah. Red flag. Big time. Right, right. So we can ask questions.

41:50 You can set scenarios and ask somebody how they would respond to that. And then based on their answer, try to dig in a little deeper. But what we're looking for in those kinds of scenarios is conflict management skills. We're looking for drama. We're looking for maturity. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And there's a reality that when we're hiring young people, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, that we may have some work to do as a leader to help coach them through soft skills because they're young. Yeah. Right? They're new to the workforce. That's okay as long as you know it. Mm-hmm. going in. And so one of the things that you could do with that is set the stage with that. Hey, wanted to just give you an idea of how we run conflict management here at XYZ Company.

42:33 We use the story in my head tool. Here's what it is. Have you ever heard of something like that? And again, we're looking, what is their body posturing when you're saying stuff? A lot of our employees have found that pretty uncomfortable when we first started it. Yeah. Oh man, I totally... Right? We're engaging the conversation. But here's the point of the outcome. You either A, need to identify that this person is mature enough to hold a role on your team. Or you identify what pieces are missing because of a lack of life experience. And do you have the capacity to help invest in that and coach through that? Because if the answer is no, don't hire him. If the answer is yes, well, then you may have a prospect on your hands, right? What do we say to the person listening who said, gosh dang, for the last six months, we've been trying and trying to fill three, four roles.

43:16 And we just like, if we held this standard that you're talking about, we wouldn't have the people we need. I think you really need to analyze the performance that you're getting. And again, I think we looked at this. We talked about this a couple episodes ago. If your top line's banging because you've got all this production capacity with a half-assed team, what is it doing with your margin? Are you doing another third time's number of jobs to produce the same EBITDA? Yeah. Well, then maybe it would just be better to have four technicians instead of eight do the correct amount of work at the profit margin. I was just going to say, I feel like when I look back over the different teams that we've worked with, When you have a healthy team that's communicating well, that likes each other, you can do a lot with a little.

44:03 Ton of work. You can do a lot with a little. And amazingly, when the team's healthy and the drama is absent... Yes. And it's like you've got a team of A players and they're not constantly annoyed or frustrated because they're C players or D players in their midst. They're not creating internal friction on top of... Yeah. They're not creating additional... Yes. Yeah. baggage and making the lift heavier, small teams can accomplish a lot. A lot. A lot. Dude, one of the things that reminds me of, we actually used to do this as part of our orientation is I would do a section that just basically described the relationship that elite operating military teams have with one another.

44:44 And it's this idea that it speaks exactly to what you're talking about. A lot of you may not have any experience with or exposure to it. But if we think about some of the missions that let's say, for instance, a special forces team happens on a deployment, they're responsible for massive environments, massive areas of operations. with a very small group of people because they're so talented, they're so gifted, they're so loyal, they're so engaged that they're able to maximize their competency and use the resources at hand to get a lot done with a little. And I think we just need to realize that, that it's true. When teams are firing on all cylinders, they're engaged, they believe in each other, they trust each other.

45:25 We don't have drama. It's amazing when two people are back-to-back what they can deal with. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. But when people are infighting and there's drag and friction internally, then yeah, you need two times the workforce to get anything done, right? No, I think that's a great question. Dude, I think that's it. Is there any kind of summary or is there any kind of reminder wrap-up? Yeah, I think it's just... And it's a reminder, right? And none of this is rocket science, but it's... I think the theme here that we've been bouncing around is just, we need to do a better job of getting to the truth. Yeah. Like the truth is what we're after. Yeah. The higher is secondary to getting at the truth.

46:08 Yeah. Whereas I think a lot of times we fall in the trap because of desperation brain and all of us have some version of it right now because our industry, the work keeps coming in. Yeah. And the workers aren't coming in quite as fast as the work. And so the desperation brain takes over and we compromise on the truth. We get pieces of the truth. We get some of the truth. And also, I think, too, whether it's intentional or not, we can often give off just a version of the truth about what it's like to be on our team and what they're being hired for and what's going to be expected of them because we're so desperate to get them in. We hold back some of the truth. That's the ugly details of what it's actually like to work here.

46:50 And so it's just, hey, let's get to the truth on both sides of it. Everybody wins. Yeah, I love it. Okay, hang in there, guys. Good luck. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.