KEY HIRING QUESTIONS

I will give you some simple to use hiring questions. Here is the first question:

WHAT IS OR WAS YOUR PRODUCT?

You might sometimes have to explain what you mean by product. You have to tell the candidate that a product is the valuable result of their job, it's the very reason they are there. You can ask this question in different ways. For example “In your last job why did they pay you? What were you supposed to deliver in return for the pay you received?” We know he received the money, what we are interested in is what was he supposed to deliver back? What was that? With this question we are asking the job applicant for something quite specific.

If I am a Receptionist and I figured this out I would tell you that my product is to connect people who called as fast and as professionally as possible. However, when you ask this to applicants for Receptionist positions I would say, probably in 80 percent of all cases, the answer is going to be what the person did.

“Ohhh, you know. I was answering the phone.”

That is not a product. That is an action. And there might be lots of different actions in order to get a product. However, it is much better if he answered with an action than if he answered with a what he was being.

I once was in Moscow and went to the University there. They had lots of problems with one of their Professors and they asked me to interview this guy and so I decided “Okay, lets check his products.” And I asked him “Being a Professor of Moscow University what is your product?”

He looked at me and said “I am the Professor!”

I said “I understand that you are the Professor. But being the Professor what is the real valuable you bring to this university?”

Then he looked at me real angrily “I am the Professor!!!”

End of interview.

That was his idea about a product. To BE the Professor. And it was not strange they had lots of problems with him. He never did anything, much less produce anything of value. He just had a status and he wanted to get paid for that status.

So that is the first question. The second question is:

“HOW MUCH DID YOU PRODUCE IN WHAT TIME?" or “DURING THE TIME THAT YOU WERE THERE?”

Lets take a simple example, a salesman. You ask me “What is your product?”

I say I don’t know what you mean. You tell me what it is. I say I get it. I say I drove around and gave demonstrations to our clients. Is that a product? No, it is an action.

You know what a product is. It is a signed order. You can even ask me directly “Did you get signed orders?”

“Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.”

Good, now you ask “How much did you sell?" or "How much did you produce for?”

“You know in this company we didn’t measure it but it was pretty good. I cant give you figures but it was pretty good.”

End of interview. Next.

Who has hired sales people? Here is a simple experiment you can do because you don’t have to believe anything we are telling you here. The only thing you can do is take this information, go out and compare it to reality. If it works use it. If it doesn’t work throw it. You cant believe in this information, you need to know it.

Now, you ask your worst salesman a very simple question “How much money did you sign orders for last month?” And then you ask you best salesmen the same question.

I guarantee your best salesmen is going to say, “Last month I sold for 345,400.” And your worst salesman, he is going to say “You know, I don’t have that information in my head. I am going to go and have to look in the books.” What is the difference here?

Your best salesman is living and breathing with that result right in front of his mental eye. He is trying to reach a certain target and every day he is looking at that target and trying to get there and he knows if he gets above it or below it and he knows how much. For him that is no mystery at all. When you ask him that question it is like asking him “What do you have in your pocket.” But for the guy who doesn’t even care about the target its like “What are you asking for? I don’t get it.”

Most Managers are more product oriented than the rest of the staff. One mistake they make is assume that other people think like they do. They don’t. But there are people who do, there are people who like to have a product and who like to deliver it. So, when you ask this question to the guy who has been running a warehouse.

“You were a Manager for this warehouse.”

“Yeah.”

“What was your product?”

“I should make sure goods were delivered in time. And that we didn’t loose goods.”

“Okay, how did it go, how much did you deliver?”

“When we started the normal delivery was two days. Now we are down to two hours. And when I started working there, there was 2 percent of storage missing every year. Now we are down to 0.5 percent.”

This is a guy who understood his job, who understood his product, this is a guy we can go with. Whether he looks good or not, forget about it. This is a guy who knows his product who figured it out.

Now all we need to do is ask the third question: “WHO DID YOU REPORT TO?” or “WHO WAS YOUR SENIOR?”

And I tell you. If this guy hasn’t been lying here you will get names very easy. You can also ask “Who also knew about this result?” And if the guy is honest he will tell you “You can call the manager. You can also call my immediate boss.”

If the guy is generally unproductive or has been lying to you you will find that all people who have ever seen this guy have disappeared from the surface of the earth, they don’t exist anymore. “He moved to another city. I don’t know where.” “He moved abroad.” “Oh, no, this was a long time ago, I cant tell you.” There is just no way you can get hold of anybody. “You can call my cousin or brother or my colleagues.” Those people you can get through to, those are not a problem.

MAKING INTERVIEWING FAST AND EFFECTIVE

Lets run a few examples. I tell you, this looks very simple. The best thing with this is to do it right. If you become a complete expert in this, interviewing people is fast and effective. You will not waste your time with the wrong candidates. You will find the right candidates and with them you can spend more time.

EXAMPLE

So, lets take a construction engineer. That’s a very interesting animal to hire because engineers are quite funny. Engineers are always right. They don’t even know what being wrong means. You know, I am right and you are wrong.

You will see very often in companies how there is a fight between the technical engineers and sales people. You have wars going on between those departments because the salesman comes home “I have a big order. It should be delivered by Wednesday.”

The engineer goes “What are you talking about??? Are you crazy. I cant possibly deliver it.”

And the sales man goes “But I bring all of this money.”

“Yeah but with me you can’t deliver anything.”

Both these groups have something to learn. But these are creating wars.

Anyway, Engineers, when they look at life they normally look at what is wrong with it. Because their viewpoint is based on this: Here you have a machine and this machine does not work. How do you get it to work? You find out what is wrong with it. The Engineer goes “This works. This works. This works. Ahhh, this is broken! Yes! I found it!” So, when he finds something wrong he knows he got it and now he can fix the machine. So engineers get drilled eight hours a day in finding whats wrong, whats wrong, whats wrong. Now they go out in the coffee room and here comes another machine “How do we fix him? Ahhh we tell him whats wrong with him and then he will work better.” So they go “Look at this. This is wrong with you.” And the guy doesn’t like it.

The engineer goes “I showed you whats wrong with you and you don’t appreciate it.” And they go “People cannot be understood.” Some of these engineers are more in love with their computer than their wife. Because the computer makes more sense. I can understand my computer. If it gives me the wrong answer I can always go and figure it out. But with my wife, today I say “I am going to go out with my dogs.”

She says “Great honey.”

And the next day I say “I am going out with the dogs.”

And she says “But you never spend time with me!”

Same command, different response. She is crazy.

Now, the salesman. What does he do? If you are a salesman and you come up to a client, what do you do? What do you look for?

Can you imagine a salesman coming into your office and going “You really have dirty… erm… you are going to clean this right?” That is not the salesman approach. He is looking for something right, something he can agree with. He goes, I cant see anything in the room. And so he asks “Do you run this production department here?”

“Yes”

“How many people do you run?”

“Sixty people.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of people.”

And the guy says “Yes, that’s a lot of people” and he has some agreement here.

And the salesman normally has this attitude until he gets the order. But then when he comes home to the engineer he completely forgets this style and he says “This is for you to deliver.” So he stops being a salesman when he comes home. So, smart salesmen they keep being salesmen even when they come home. So when they come home, they go to the engineer and go “I got this order today and I am sorry. I may have even done something totally stupid. I promised to deliver it on Wednesday. That’s probably impossible right.”

And the engineer “Huh, Wednesday.” Laughs “Thank you so much. You are cool.”

See, now you are going to interview an engineer and here he is in front of you. “Okay, so you are going to work as an engineer in construction. So, being an engineer what do you consider your product to be?”

And the guy goes “I don’t have a product, I just do construction.”

Okay “Let me explain what a product is. A product is a valuable final result of an action. The reason you get paid. What did you deliver.”

“I don’t know. I just work in this construction department. I spend a lot of time there. There is a lot of drawings to do all the time.”

“Okay. What did you feel the most valuable thing you did was?”

“Oh, I tried to make the other people there feel good.”

Okay. That’s a very interesting thing as a product “So, as a construction engineer you try to make people feel good.” From this point you can basically ask any question. You know “Tell me about yourself. Who are you?”

Because, from this point the only game is - how can you end this interview as fast as possible. You see. Because you cant afford to hire engineers who think their product is to change the atmosphere of the company. No we cant afford that. We need construction engineers who love to construct and make drawings. And if we have a lot of those we will get a very good atmosphere.

THE HIRING INTERVIEW CAN BE OVER FAST

And that is actually one of the problems with this interview technique. Is that sometimes the interview is over so fast. You ask two questions and you say “Okay, forget about it.” And so here we have a precept that we suggest – and that is that when we invite a person for this type of interview tell the person that it will be very short. Because it is always easy to make it a little bit longer. But when a person is expecting an hour interview and you start to look at your watch after three minutes you kind of upset them. And we have to treat our hiring line as a major PR influence on the market. So, whether a person is productive or not he should feel well treated.

Because if you hire more productive people your companies are going to grow and you are going to be able to hire more people and this is a way you can solve unemployment. However, if we only employ good talkers who can’t produce the companies are going to shrink and we are going to get higher unemployment. So actually everybody wins if we hire the most productive people first.

And the higher the person is going to work in the company the more important it is that he flies through the interview. A General Manager who is not flying through the interview, just forget about him, forget about him.

So, lets take this engineer again. Here he sits and I ask him “So, being an engineer whats your product?”

“I do construction drawings and I deliver them to the production department.”

“Good, can you tell me is there anyway you measure your production, how many drawings you deliver? Is there anyway you do this? And can you tell me how many you draw and how many you deliver each month?”

“No. Its very different complexity on different drawings. But we have a system, some drawings cost a lot and some cost less. So I just calculate how much the cost is on each drawing and I keep track of them.”

So you can ask “Good. What is this number? And how was it when you started? And what is it now?” Or “How many drawings did you do when you started in a month and how many do you do now?”

WHY DO WE ASK THESE QUESTIONS IN A HIRING INTERVIEW

You are just trying to find out if there is a change in the production and which direction is this change. Is it flat or is it going up or is it going down? So, these questions are more a concept than a direct question. You ask around these concepts. And then finally okay, “Who can verify it.”

And if it is right he says “Yeah you can call my boss. You can also call the production manager. He knows how many drawings that came from me.”

This is unbelievably effective. You will not believe your eyes and believe your ears when you start to ask these questions. You will realize that there are people out there who have never ever in their life thought about a result.

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF WILLINGNESS IN THE PROSPECT

The brutal truth is that there are not even enough people who would pass this interview right away. So you need to also be able to hire people who are more Do oriented and therefore, throughout this whole interview there is a very important thing to look for and that is WILLINGNESS.

Willingness is the foundation for ability. Unless you are willing you will not be able either. For example, you ask a person who works as a cleaner. This person has explained to you “My job is to clean and I clean tables and floors and walls and so on.”

And then you are like “Is there anyway you can measure what you clean in a month?”

And you see a blank expression. “What, why should I do that?” You see, the person is unwilling.

Or the same question “Is there anyway you could measure how much you clean in a month?”

“Hmmm, wait a second, let me see. I never thought about that really… But you know, yeah, I cleaned this place, this is about 400 square meters. This place is about 1,300 square meters. And that place about 200. That’s about 1,900 and I do it four times a month, that’s 7,600. Its somewhere around 7 or 8,000 square meters a month.”

They are willing to look. And even if they cant find the figures you can see they are willing to look at it.

So, WILLINGNESS is a big plus factor. For example, lets say that in your company or in your department something happened. The water pipe broke and now there is a lot of water in a big section of your company and you have to go and ask everybody “Can you come and help us?”

Am I right if I say you know which people would like to come and which people would say “No, I don’t have time.” Right. You know already which people would say “Absolutely, I will come immediately.” And am I right if I say those people who come immediately have generally higher willingness and are generally move valuable and important to your company than those guys who don’t. So, willingness is definitely something you should look for.

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO YOUNG PEOPLE

Now, to complete my point on young people – what do you ask them? You can ask them a very, very good question.

“I know you are right out of school. Can you please tell me what accomplishments or results have you produced in life that you feel proud of?”

You have two guys. One will tell you – I played in the basketball team and I was awarded the best player of the year. I also collected stamps and I have a very nice stamp collection. I helped my father build two houses, the first one I just helped a little bit, the second house I actually did a lot myself. And since my mother died when I was 18 I had to take care of my little sister and I have taken care of her now for four years and I am very proud of that. And then for sure I did some school.”

The other person you ask the same question “What products or results have you achieved?”

And the person says “You know, I have mainly been through school. I actually didn’t have a chance to produce anything.”

“Okay, but when you were not at school did you do anything?”

“No, then I was mainly with my friends.”

“Okay. You didn’t do any sports or anything?”

“Yeah I played football.”

“Did you compete or anything?”

“No it was just for fun.”

I am not saying this is a bad person. But all you tell this person is this “Okay. You go out, take a job anywhere and then produce something, some real results, and then come back to me.”

“And you,” the first one “you are hired.”

KEY HIRING QUESTIONS - SUMMARY

If you hired like that your failure rate would go down unbelievably. This is hiring based on production. In Performia we have four main areas that we really focus in on. The first of these, the one we have just talked about is PRODUCTIVITY. It is a key area.

That is also the reason our company is called PERFORMIA. Because we look at Performance. If the person at this time produced products and he is here now we can predict that he will still produce products in the future.