HOW TO HIRE THE PERSON YOU WANT

There is an enormous difference between baker, baking and bread. When you hire a baker what is it that you want? You want bread, right. You don’t really want a baker, but you have to have a baker in order to get bread. However bread is what you are willing to pay money for and actually that bread is the only think you can pay money for.

If you hire me as a baker and I go around the company being the baker, you know, I have the job description… “I am the baker, really the baker, I am a cool baker.”

And people say, “But where is the bread?”

“Bread; what are you talking about? I am the baker, you should be happy.”

“But we need bread. PLEASE!”

“Hmm, oh... you know my status is senior baker. I am not supposed to go into that. I am just going to be the baker.”

Honestly you cannot pay for that. However if you get a guy in, he bakes like crazy and he produces tons of bread and when you taste it, it taste perfect. You don’t really care if he thinks he is a baker or not because he gives you what you need: the bread.

Now, let’s see how we translate this into a hiring interview.

A TYPICAL HIRING INTERVIEW

Let’s look at a very typical hiring interview. It normally starts like this – first question “Welcome to our company. Tell me about yourself, who are you?” Has anyone been asked that question? I am not saying it’s completely wrong. I am just saying it’s not going to show you what the person can produce for your company.

“I am a very optimistic and positive person. I like working with people. I’m very dynamic, I can do a lot of different things and I am especially interested in interrelations between people.”

“Okay and what was your last job?”

“Oh, I worked as a marketing assistant in this company and I contributed to a lot of coordination and participated in a lot of meetings, I worked with marketing campaigns and…”

“Okay, have you ever worked as something else?”

“Oh yes, I’ve also been a secretary.”

“And what did you do there?”

“There were a lot of different things, writing letters, taking care of clients, making phone calls, arranging conferences…”

“Okay, and tell me about your family, how are you as a father or mother?”

“I am very caring, I really care for my family…”

“And what hobbies do you have?”

“I like football, ice hokey, skateboarding, golf…”

In a normal interview the Human Resources Director or Hiring Manager will keep asking these kind of questions about what jobs the person held and what he did, over and over.

After spending hours in this interview there is still a big question mark. The question is “What results can this person produce for us?” Take a look at it, all we have asked this person about is what jobs he or she held and what they did. We didn’t ask one question about their product.

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU ARE REALLY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IN A RECRUITMENT INTERVIEW?

You are trying to figure out if this guy can help your company?

OKAY, BUT HOW DO YOU ASK QUESTIONS IN A RECRUITMENT INTERVIEW THAT DETERMINE IF HE CAN HELP YOUR COMPANY?

Here is a new idea, I am not saying that it’s completely new to you, but I’m telling you if you really focus in on this area right from the beginning when you do a recruitment interview you are going to have a much clearer picture, in fact it’s going to be black or white, hire him or don’t.

You ask about results, products!

When you first start doing this you are going to be amazed at the answers because when you start asking about results you are heading straight into an area where a lot of people don’t want to go.

When someone is working he is either producing results or not. So when you get familiar with this type of recruitment you won’t be surprised with the answers anymore, you will simply know that these questions give you the same result you get when you ask someone if they are pregnant, it’s either yes or no! There is no “a little bit.”

TO RECRUIT OR HIRE SUCCESSFULLY YOU HAVE TO BECOME AN EXPERT IN ASKING QUESTIONS THAT LOCATE RESULTS.

This is one of the most important factors to recruit good people. If you want to get any product, you had better know that a product is the end result. Before you have a product you always have an action, ALWAYS. And before the action you have an idea. It goes 1 (idea), 2 (action) and 3 (product).

WHY DO I HAVE TO BE ABLE TO FIND RESULTS?

It’s simple if you can determine that a person has produced results in the past you know they will be able to do so again.

The sequence with how a product comes about is one, two, three!

One: It starts with the idea “I would like to build a new office. That is what I’m going to do. I am going to build a new office.”

Two: Now I have to go into action. I am going to buy a piece of land, I am going to call the architect, I am going to call a building company, I’m going to start looking at drawings and figure out a thousand different things. When I go into action I go straight into a ton of resistance, a lot of resistance and problems and if I can pull myself through all of these problems I might end up with:

Three: the result, the new office, installed, ready for use.

This is the way any product goes, from building a government to selling drinks on the school playing field. It very rarely goes like this: “Oh, I have a new office! Wow I had no idea.” And if you can find someone who is able to push a cycle of action all the way through from idea, through the action to the result, then you have someone who is effective, causative and can assist your company to expand.

LET’S GIVE YOU SOME MORE DATA ON PRODUCTS SO YOU CAN REALLY SEE HOW THIS HELPS HUMAN RESOURCES

In a company every position can control their product. For example, what is the product of a salesman? Yeah, I think most of you would agree if I say it’s “A Signed Order.” And a real good salesman would also care that the client really gets the delivery of the product. Do you think a good salesman knows this? If you ask sales people, yes, some know it. There are actually quite a few who know it. They say “Yeah I should get orders signed.” But you will also find a lot sales people who, when you ask them “What is your product?” They tell you things like “Err, going to meetings to meet with clients. It’s informed clients.” Yeah right, you can inform a thousand clients but maybe you didn’t get one signed order. Would you be happy? No, if you were the boss you would be upset.

But that’s a key question you ask in a recruit interview. Oh, you are a salesman for Vovlo, great. What was your product?

HOW TO HIRE THE PERSON YOU WANT - SUMMARY

Cut out the “What was your job? What did you do?” Endless torrent of questions. No, you want to ask “What was your job?” and then “What did you produce? How much did you sell over what period of time? How did that compare to other people working in sales for your company?”

I am going to cover more questions you can ask and give you a clearer idea about this the next lesson but if you understand this simplicity: anyone you hire is going to be producing a product for you and so in the recruitment interview you want to know if they have a past record of producing products or not. If you get it that simple you have it made.

NEXT LESSON: HOW TO HIRE THE PERSON YOU WANT – PART II