Toss THIS Salad Out!

"Toss THIS Salad Out!"

Transcript (for general use only – machine-generated and it may not be accurate)

[00:00:00] Kelli: When was the last time you had a great interview for a job? I mean an encounter where you walked away from it going, wow. Holy shit. What an awesome interview. Well, the answer is likely never, and that's because the decades-old interview process is hopelessly broken, potentially illegal, and almost always stupid as -bleep- Today's episode: I have one last question. Tell me, please, if you were part of a salad, what part would you be?

[00:00:33] Intro: Hi, I'm Dave and I'm Kelly. And this is my job here is done.

If you really want that next promotion or you're a rising star entrepreneur, we have some stories to tell that will absolutely help you. I've been starting and running businesses all my life. And I've worked for the man, like a dog for decades, together. We'll share stories, ideas, and notions that will help you absolutely soar past that cruiser sitting next to, and if you're grinding forward with your growing business, we know where the landmines are. Let's find them. Hey, it's only about 20 minutes. What do you have to lose? Nothing! Or everything.

[00:01:18] Dave: Okay. Thanks a lot for joining us today. Welcome back to the program I'm Dave. And this is Kelly, and today we have a really interesting program for you. It's all about interviewing and you might think this is going to be kind of boring, but

[00:01:35] Kelli: not really. Not really. I've had some interesting ones.

[00:01:39] Dave: Hey for more information on the show, head over to our website. My job here is done.com. That's all one word. My job here is done. Dotcom. You can sign up. Subscribe. We've got some cool stuff over there. It's growing every day. Check us out. And again, thanks for listening. This is the one about stupid interviewing techniques.

[00:02:03] Kelli: Yes. So, you know, interviewing is a really important, valuable skill and tool. And most people look at interviewing really through the employer's lens. It's very one-sided. It is, but you know, there's another side and that's the applicants, the potential employ's impression about you.

[00:02:26] Dave: Nobody cares about that

[00:02:27] Kelli: and your company,

[00:02:28] Dave: nobody cares about that.

[00:02:29] Kelli: And the people they meet during the interview process,

[00:02:32] Dave: all they want to do, they just want to get the new candidate in a position where that person is as uncomfortable as they can be.

[00:02:40] Kelli: Well, you know, what, what people have to realize when they're doing an interview is. The candidate is sizing you up as well. And trying to figure out if this is a place they'd like to work. If these are the people they'd like to enjoy spending a majority of their day with five days a week, typically, you know, we both conducted interviews and had been on the other side of the desk and interviewed for a job, but I can answer the question of when was the last time I had a great interview and that would be never.

[00:03:09] Dave: And that's probably because of the way we're doing interviews. I mean, it's so. It's all about the employer. It's never about the employee. And people walk away from these things aggravated and feeling beat up. People are applying for jobs. It is the most serious thing that they could possibly do landing that great opportunity is so important to them that we don't give them the time of day in an interview. And it's just wrong.

[00:03:36] Kelli: One-sided, and you know, some interviews are more formal than others. And some are just downright weird, leaving the candidate, wondering what the heck did they get themselves into and not very enthusiastic about joining your company or spending even another minute with these weird people that are interviewing them.

[00:03:55] Dave: People come away from interviews feeling as if they've been interrogated, I mean, almost like, you know, Hey, listen, you've done something wrong, everybody in the building needs to interview you. Right? This is all wrong. This is everybody who is listening to us right now are saying to themselves, I've been there. I've been there. And, and there are so many things that are wrong. We're to talk about them today. We're going to talk about the gang interview. You know, the gang interview is right?

[00:04:21] Kelli: Oh yeah. That's when you have the whole team. They are firing away at the candidate, stale questions, and they don't learn anything about, you know,

[00:04:31] Dave: you don't know how to answer because you're not in a conversation you're like playing jeopardy

[00:04:36] Kelli: as if the interrogation environment isn't bad enough candidates have shared an endless amount of weird interview questions they've been asked. Here are a few of my favorites that I found when I did some research. So, Dave, you're a new addition to the crayon box. What color would you be?

[00:04:55] Dave: You know, I kind of want to say like, fuck that question. Move on to the next one. Right.

[00:04:59] Kelli: But let me give you a couple more of these weirdo questions only been asked you.I can't wait. Here's a, here's a goodie. Yep. If you were a pizza delivery, man, how would you benefit from scissors? Here's a good one. Why is a tennis ball? Fuzzy.

[00:05:12] Dave: This was actually an interview question? Yeah.

[00:05:14] Kelli: If there was a movie produced about your life, who would play you and why? And my all-time favorite, if you were part of a salad, what would you be and why? And I was asked that in an interview, I can tell you

[00:05:30] Dave: what part of the salad, where you?

[00:05:32] Kelli: so of course the candidates going to think to them, What do they want to hear? Right.

[00:05:38] Dave: Right.

[00:05:40] Kelli: What is the most important part of the salad? So I made up a bullshit thing and I said, oh, I would be the dressing because I would be holding it all together. And without me, the whole thing would be so bland. Right?

[00:05:54] Dave: Oh, you're so hired!

[00:05:58] Kelli: There's one more. I have one more, a little story. And this was years ago, early on in my career. In healthcare. I was asked the question during an interview: it's after hours and we've had a long day and you have a dinner party this evening, but I need you to work late. What are you going to do? Please tell me what this has to do with my skills and what I bring to this job?

[00:06:24] Dave: Or are they aren't they looking for you to make a personal choice on you or the job?

[00:06:32] Kelli: Well, who knows what they're thinking, right? That, that could be one train of thought. Another train of thought would be how important is your work-life balance? I don't have a dinner party tonight. We could just keep on talking! -laughter-

[00:06:48] Dave: Hey, you've likely had some stupid questions asked of you in an interview, go over to our website. And in this episode tell us, we'd love to hear more about some of the real oddities out there. We're giving you a couple of examples here only the set the stage because I think we've actually got the answer to the stupid interview process,

[00:07:11] Kelli: you know, and yes, I would love to hear your stories because they seem to be endless anybody we talk to has a million of them, but anyway, so, you know, there's no right or wrong answers when you get one of these ridiculous questions,

[00:07:26] Dave: hold it, is that true?

[00:07:28] Kelli: What is the right answer to, if you're a pizza delivery, man, what would you do with scissors?

[00:07:36] Dave: Here's what I would say. The person who asked that question also did not know what the answer was that they were looking for. It's uncoordinated bullshit, right? It is unfair. And it happens all the time. Right? We are done with that.

[00:07:51] Kelli: And you know, nine chances out of 10, the guy asking these crazy questions is not a psychologist. So these techniques are a waste of time and an exercise and intimidation, really, all it does is put the applicant on edge and, and make them feel ambushed because isn't the whole point of asking something out of left field? Question to catch you off guard. So now you're defensive. Then the potential employer is learning nothing about you. And all you're thinking about is I could never work here. These people are crazy.

[00:08:29] Dave: Don't Google interview questions your applicant already did and asked Google for the answers.

Absolutely. Okay. So if you want to try something different, um, there's a couple of techniques here that I think that we should all consider. Now, this is not a lesson in how to create the proper interview environment. This is more a conversation about how can we make the proper interview environment work well for both the employer and the employee.

Let's be smart about this. We have an opportunity to kind of do this our own way in a meaningful way. There's no rule book on doing interviews because if there was, and this was the rule book that we'd all be in sad shape. What we've been doing is we've just been copying the interview process year over year, over year, just doing a carbon copy with a little bit of change in order to kind of make it yours.

But we're asking the same questions. We're putting ourselves in the same position where the employee or the potential employee never has a chance to talk except to answer questions. And we got a couple of ideas here, and I think that they're going to have merit and we want you to consider. The first topic is, make sure you do not run afoul of the law, check your local laws on employment, and what questions you can and cannot ask.

As an example, you can't ask any questions in most of the world about the age of the employee, because age discrimination is right there on the top of the list.

[00:09:59] Kelli: And you know, you also have to be careful about leading questions. So for example, You'll have a young woman in front of you who shares that she was on her honeymoon last year or something, and you can't say, oh, you're a newlywed. Are you planning to have a family? Soon?

[00:10:16] Dave: These are called proxy questions and they look innocent in a lot of cases, but they're not. Here's another one. So, uh, when did you graduate from high school? Right.

[00:10:28] Kelli: Right? In other words. What year can you add 18 to, to see how old I am?

[00:10:36] Dave: Exactly. Exactly. Do you have any children? What's your spouse's name? Is it a far drive for you to get here? Right? All of these questions are off-limits

[00:10:45] Kelli: and they're leading questions. There's something behind them and everybody knows it.

[00:10:50] Dave: I'll give you another example. This is a new law that applies to the United States and actually applies to California, which introduced the law. It's  AB 1 68. It bars, employers from inquiring about a job applicant's salary history and actually make it a misdemeanor offense. If you ask you know, Hey, listen, what were you making at your last job? Right? It's bullshit. You shouldn't care about that. Nobody should care about salary. Another pet peeve of mine when you're posting for a job. And you do not put the salary in because you think, oh, I don't want to put the salary on because I don't want people to like, not apply if you know the salary. It Isn't right. I don't want to apply if the salary isn't right,

[00:11:36] Kelli: Another way to waste everybody's time. Because, some employers wordsmith the job description, making it sound like so much more than what it really is. And then the salary doesn't match up and you think to yourself, why did I, you know, find a babysitter, take off work to come to this interview, and completely waste my time. It's, you know, $20,000 less than what I started at five years ago, not interested. And then you're sucked into a whole day of the interrogation with the team and throwing questions at you about what your manager would describe as your personality trait or your biggest weakness?

[00:12:20] Dave: Another thing is the gang interview. I love to call it a gang interview because all you're trying to do is intimidate the applicant or save time for you.

So you take the people who are going to interview and you put them all in a room and let them gang fire questions at you. It's Intimidating. Now, if you're hiring for an organized crime family, and that's what you're trying to do, you're trying to intimidate the person into, you know, then I guess it's okay but for all other types of jobs, gang interviews should be one of those things that never ever happened.

Again, there's an alternative to gang interviews by the way. And that is just having the right amount of people interview the candidate and the right amount of people. I think you should take three people who have been trained in interviewing who know the law and give them themes. So, Kelly, did you ever go to an interview where you had the same question asked by multiple people?

[00:13:16] Kelli: Absolutely.

[00:13:17] Dave: Now, do you think that that's a technique, like if I ask you a question. And then somebody else asks you a question. What do you think the chances are that everybody got together and said, let's see how she answered the question differently between all three of us, right?

[00:13:32] Kelli: Like the personality tests that ask the same question in a variety of ways to see if you're trying to scam it or not.

I think the answer is that the interviewers are unprepared. Absolutely. Because nobody really prepares for the interview except the applicant. Right? So themes are a great way to actually split the workload up and create an environment where you've got control over how you're going to do your assessment. Like what would be some examples of themes that you would use?

[00:14:01] Dave: I would use a theme on technical acumen. So if you are bringing somebody into the organization, let's just say this was going to be an engineer. Have somebody focus on the technical acumen, make that a theme. So Kelly, today you're going to be interviewing Jane, and I'd like you to lead with the technical questions. So when you're in there only ask these questions and have a conversation, and you arrange ahead of time, what questions you're going to ask. And most importantly, you understand why you're asking them. So I'll give you an example. So I was hiring for a welder at one point in time and I didn't want to find out not how well does this person weld, because I can see that if I were to just watch them in a skills assessment. Right. Plus if they've been a welder for many, many years they know how to weld, one can assume they know how to weld, right. But in a lot of cases, you've got some choices you can make.

And, you know, for the technical folks out there who are doing welding, if you're welding, say stainless steel, you could use TIG, welding, or MIG welding. So they're both possible. And they're both logical. However, if you ask the question, Hey, Jane, how do you make the determination of whether or not you'd use TIG versus MIG? Open-ended questions.

Another theme would be on sociability skills. Don't concentrate on any technical aspect. Don't concentrate on anything else. Make your theme on culture on the social issue. Try to see if you can get a feeling from this person, if, whether or not they're going to fit within your organization

[00:15:44] Kelli: and what a great opportunity for the candidate to conversely find out that same information, whether this company is, it feels right and is a good fit for them.

[00:15:54] Dave: I would say pick three themes that are specific to your industry and assign it to three good people to go and provide that portion of the interview. Shouldn't last more than half an hour. You really don't need any more time than that.

[00:16:08] Kelli: And here's another fail, Dave, the courtesy interviewer. Oh, I know where you're going.

So this is the person that they drag in to interview an applicant that really has no purpose other than they wanted to be included. And they wanted to be included in the process. And they're likely asking many of the same questions that everybody else has asked.

[00:16:32] Dave: It's a courtesy interview for the person in the company that needs to feel included. Right. You know, oftentimes, and you know, I'm, uh, I'll tell you I'm guilty of this. Oftentimes it's the CEO, right. You know, the CEO does not have to interview every. I had to learn that, you know, you've got to trust the people that you have in the positions to bring on good people by having good process and procedure in there. Not everybody needs to interview everybody. Here is a, another waste of time and an unfair position to put people in. So, Kelly, have you ever been part of the interview process where you're interviewing your potential next boss?

[00:17:19] Kelli: More times than once absolutely.

[00:17:22] Dave: The team interview. I have no idea why people think this is a good idea

[00:17:27] Kelli: and here's the thing. What does the team know typically about interviewing for someone for a leadership position?

[00:17:34] Dave: Nothing, nothing. And could ask the same accidental. Illegal questions. I've never seen anything good come from this tactic. And most of the time, it just ends up being an illegal and confusing mess for everybody.

But there's some merit in this. There's the merit of having more people have an opinion. And I think that's important. What I do subscribe to, and I think is great. Is the meet and greet. You never use the term interview. Because then you take it out of the interview stage and you take kind of the legality out of it.

And what you do is you simply say to the applicant, Jane, I think it would be great if you had an opportunity to meet the team, to have a quick lunch with them, socialize a little bit, your chance to ask some questions to the team can ask you some questions, not part of the interview. You say those words not part of the interview - but an opportunity for everybody just to get to know each other. That's a great idea and make it 30 minutes. It's over, right? It's over. When you go to the folks that are going to be part of meeting the potential applicant, you absolutely say to them, this is not an interview. Don't ask interview-y type questions, because that's not what this is about.

This is about socialization. Afterward, I'm going to ask you one question and only one. I'm going to ask you, what did you think of John? Right? That's the only question I'm going to ask. I'm not going to ask you any questions about his background, unspecific. All I want to know is what you thought. That's it. I'm going to ask John the same question. What did he think of the team? That is the only question I'm going to ask. And by doing a meet and greet, instead of a team interview, you will not run afoul of the law. You'll actually get some meaningful information back.

[00:19:38] Kelli: Won't that be refreshing for everybody? These are all such great ideas, but let's get to the really great one. The last part.

[00:19:46] Dave: Hi, Kelly. My name is Dave I'm with the company as well. And I'm so glad that you spent some time with us today. I know you've been through three other people and you've had the opportunity to talk to them. And they probably asked you a lot of questions, didn't they?

[00:19:59] Kelli: Oh yes. Lots of questions.

[00:20:00] Dave: And I hope we found it enjoyable.

[00:20:02] Kelli: I did.

[00:20:03] Dave: What I'd like to do in the next 20 minutes is give you the opportunity to interview me

[00:20:09] Kelli: a great technique to put the candidate at ease. And puts them in the spotlight. And, and guess what, you can just sit back and watch them in action and see what's important to them, by what they ask you.

[00:20:21] Dave: It may actually be the most telling part of the interview. You're looking for somebody. That naturally can converse because unless you're working on robots and you don't talk to anybody, most people are in teams working with customers, public-facing in meetings. However, you want to see their personality come out.

And if you ask the interview me question, here are the rules. You don't say a word, shut up, shut up, shut up. That's what your job is after you tell the candidate, Hey, you've got 20 minutes. It's all yours. Interview me. Even if there are long, uncomfortable pauses, don't break that silence.

Wait it out and wait it out. Let the candidate get their act together. What you're judging here is how well the candidate works on their feet without asking stupid questions about pizzas and scissors or salads and fruit, right. You're actually now allowing the person to think with their mind, they don't have a right or wrong answer.

[00:21:31] Kelli: What they're trying to do now is they're coming up with questions that they want to ask meaningful to them.

[00:21:38] Dave: Absolutely. And that's kind of where you want to be. The way I do it is I like to do that in the very beginning or the very end. I kind of prefer the beginning because I think it sets the stage.

[00:21:53] Kelli: It's a good icebreaker too.

[00:21:56] Dave: Exactly. I mean, it's like all of a sudden you're having a conversation where you really were expecting to have the stupid questions fired at you. Right.

[00:22:04] Kelli: And now you're the interrogator. Whoa,

[00:22:07] Dave: what happened there happened there. So here are some of the things that you look for in the interview.

How nimble is this person? Is this person able to put together a conversation where they ask you questions? Some people have a very, very rough time doing that. That could be an indication of somebody's inability to socialize correctly. It could be an indication of somebody's inability to think quickly enough on their feet. And your job may involve thinking quick on their feet.

[00:22:39] Kelli: But outside of the normal few minutes to get over your nerves and the shock of, oh, wait a minute. I get to ask the question. Right. Because typically that doesn't happen and the, and the person will be a little surprised, I think.

[00:22:55] Dave: So it's important that you don't coach them along or lead the applicant, just be quiet and let them have their time.

And when they ask you questions, Answer them, honestly, one that I get all the time is why are you with the company?

[00:23:07] Kelli: That's a great question.

[00:23:08] Dave: Sure. They want to know what drove you here. You're in a leadership position. You should have the right answer to that question. You may find yourself caught off guard. I have a number of times. I, you know, what would really be. And it's never happened. If an applicant were to say to me,

[00:23:27] Kelli: If you are part of a salad. Oh, you know, I love that. Uh, if that ever happens to me, I'm going to remember

[00:23:35] Dave: don't do that folks do not listen to Kelli. That's not probably a good idea. Anyway, interview me is a great technique. So let's sum this whole. Interviews done the way they have been done for years are generally bad, actually horrible for both the interviewer and the interview

[00:23:57] Kelli: hiring the right employee is crucial to success

[00:24:01] Dave: and hiring the right employee correctly. And the interview process is actually the biggest part of ensuring success.

We talked about the legal aspect. Nobody should interview an employee unless they have gone through the appropriate training. We hopefully have convinced everybody that having the gang interview or the team interview are two of the worst techniques that you could possibly employ for both yourself and for the candidate.

We like the idea, however, of the meet and greet, not an interview, but an opportunity for everybody to get to know each other. Themes are a way to keep the interviewers on track and actually prepare to provide meaningful feedback. And finally interview me, the ultimate interviewing technique that allows the candidate to actually have the opportunity to get on the stage and be the star.

[00:25:00] Kelli: Thanks so much for listening today. Really? We appreciate it. I think everybody can relate to having some sort of weird interview experience. So we hope we gave you some tips and helpful advice to improve that. Moving forward.

[00:25:13] Dave: Thanks again for listening. We really, really appreciate it. Share the fun. Tell just one friend about us. Head over to my job here has done.com. Tell your friend they can listen to this podcast. Anywhere podcasts are available.

Whoa, don't go yet.

[00:25:29] Kelli: And now it's time for, BUZZWORD BINGO!

[00:25:33] Dave: This is the part of the show where we just take stupid buzzwords and we just make fun of them

[00:25:36] Kelli: practice using "let's take this offline" in a sentence that has nothing to do with business.

[00:25:43] Dave: You want me to take this one?

[00:25:44] Kelli: You take this one.

[00:25:46] Dave: I was on Tinder last night.

[00:25:47] Kelli: What

[00:25:51] Dave: I was on Tinder last night and met this Hottie. I said I had a huge -bleep- and a wonderful -bleep bleep bleep- and I knew I was going to get, -bleep- -bleep- bleep - when I saw the words, let's take this offline ... right now!