VANNOY:

Behavioral interview questions, how to hire the best candidates. I think this is such an important topic today. With, with the War for Talent fully hitting Main Street there’s, there’s an absolute labor shortage in, in so many of our customers and, and so many small businesses and large businesses that I think sometimes we’re tempted to, to bring on a the next warm body that whose resume makes ’em look like they’re a fit. But there’s some real danger in that and there’s some best practices to follow to get the right candidate. And, and to help me unpack this conversation, this topic I got a great, great person to do. So, Mary Simmons, vice President of HR Consulting SHRM Certified Professional. If you are a regular watcher or listener of this show Mary is our VP of HR Consulting. She’s for, for the last eight years, been an adjunct professor at the New York Institute of Technology. And prior to Asure, she was the director of HR consulting for a 55 year old HR consulting firm in New York. Welcome back to the show, Mary.

SIMMONS:

Thanks, Mike. Great to be here.

VANNOY:

Okay. So I, I wanna unpack this topic of behavioral interviewing. I think there’s a lot of people who just don’t know what that even means. They’ve never heard the, the term. I think there’s plenty of people who have, and even have gone through a little training, but I see managers just slip up all the time and either think they’re asking behavioral questions and they’re not, or they ask, but then they let the candidates off the hook. They don’t force them to answer behaviorally, right. And they give them the spin zone answers instead. So right. Let, let, let’s back up. First of all before we even start talking about any kind of defining what behavioral interviewing is, what, what do you think that hiring managers in, in, in, in and employers should be thinking about the planning process that precedes an interview in, in the first place?

SIMMONS:

Yeah, that’s a great place to start, Mike. And it is very important. So, the first thing that I would say to employers is, you know, some use applications and some don’t use applications. And of course, I’m always gonna add compliance to every topic that we talk about. And just be aware that if you’re giving all your salespeople an application, they all get the application. It doesn’t mean that a different job class has to also get the application, but everybody in the same job class needs to get an application if you’re giving it. Now, I do tend to be a fan of an application because it does ask different questions than a resume would normally have be included on a resume. Right.

VANNOY:

Can you give, gimme an example?

SIMMONS:

So the application will say, list every job you’ve had in the last 10 or 15 years. Usually. Well, on a resume, if I’m only giving the years that I worked someplace, if I worked someplace for three months, I might leave it off my resume. Right? And I think it’s important for employers to understand the complete employment history of an applicant of a candidate so that they can make the best decision. And so that’s why I like the application. What I was starting to say though, is far as applications, you also have to be really aware that there’s a lot of compliance you have to think about when it comes to your application. I would say 90% of the applications, Mike, that I look at are out of compliance, right? In in many states, you can’t ask last salary. I see a lot of employers asking for social security numbers on an application, right?

There are some, right? No, no. There are some unique situations where you would be able to do that, but they are very small instances and you really need to check with professionals before giving out an application. Absolutely. and then you, you really wanna look at all the information you have before you interview the candidate. And this is why I always say interview training for your managers is very important because you need to teach them how to look at that application. What are they looking for? What are they looking for in the cover letter, right? So all of us are gonna have to communicate in the job that we have, right? So when we look at a candidate, that cover letter is an example of their writing skills, right? It’s an example of how they put thoughts together and put them on paper.

And I would maintain that that should be something that is, you know, their best example of their writing skills. Cuz if they didn’t take it that seriously, I don’t know how serious we can take them as a candidate. So you’re gonna look at that cover letter and the resume and look for consistencies in dates and titles between the application and the resume and even the cover letter if they’ve, you know, given examples of things that they’ve done. And I’m a real big stickler Mike for looking at typos. If you are looking at candidates for a position where they’re gonna have to communicate, and I’ve maintained that every position <laugh>, they’re gonna have to have communication skills, be it verbal or written, or both. If they have typos on that resume, I don’t know that I’d interview them, right? I don’t know that I’d go a step further.

And like you said, I think too many of our clients are saying, but I need somebody, I’m desperate, Mary. Right? Right. And, and I would say this document, the resume that the person’s giving you should have been reviewed and reviewed and shown to other people, right? This should be their best example of how they can put their thoughts on a piece of paper if it doesn’t read well and if there’s typos. You know, my opinion and we go over this of course in our interviewing training cuz we like to start from step one is, you know, you know, what are we gonna ascertain about that person from typo or multiple typos on a resume and an application? I don’t think that, you know, it gi doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the candidate, let me put it that way.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And maybe last thing I would add on there, and we’ll move on to kind of what some looking for competencies on resumes and whatnot. It’s one, it’s easy to dismiss. Oh, it’s just a little typo. This person is junior in their career regardless of age. Right? But junior in their career don’t, they don’t have as much experience. Maybe I’ll let that slide, but those little things, it, it, you, it may, they may not have to have, be English majors and, and understand great grammar, but there is a a, an attention to detail what job doesn’t require attention to detail, what job doesn’t require being sure that your work is correct, right? And, and, and, and, and what job are mistakes. Okay? And even if the person is not a good writer, the self-awareness to get a friend or even a professional resume writer to do it for them, it, it might not be a demonstration of their writing skills, but it is a demonstration of their awareness, their social awareness, their skill awareness to know this is an area that I need help in. And you want employees with that kind of awareness, right?

SIMMONS:

Well, a hundred percent. And, and I know a lot of people wouldn’t be able to hire, you know, somebody to help them with career transition or write a resume, but there is so many programs out there that could help them. That in this day and age, we do usually want somebody who’s tech savvy and attention to detail. Yeah. And communication skills. Let’s face it, Mike, that’s important for every single position.

VANNOY:

All right, so here, here’s where I wanna go next. One of the key tenets of behavioral interviewing is you are mining for skills and competencies in, in doing so in a way that kind of forces the candidate to describe what their actual skills and competencies are, rather than letting them just wax poetic about how awesome they are, right? Right. And so, before we could even talk about behavioral interviewing and why that style of interviewing is so important, we first have to understand the purpose of the questions. We’re gonna ask, what are these skills and competencies? What, what’s your guidance when looking at someone’s LinkedIn profile, their resume, an application to understand what their current state is, and then develop a strategy for the call for the interview. So this is tailored, this isn’t the same conversation you have with every candidate.

SIMMONS:

Correct. And to, to a certain extent. Going back to compliance, of course there are standard questions that we ask every single candidate, right? So we wanna make sure that we’re utilizing the job description and we’re saying, what are the key competencies that we’re looking for in this position? And we are developing questions that every single candidate is asked. And the reason for that is yes, compliance. Because we don’t want to ask one candidate if they can work weekends and not ask another candidate if they can work weekends, right? Because that may be discriminatory for one person because they already stated they have kids, right? So, well, can you work weekends? Do you have coverage for those kids? We, you can see where you get into problems. But the other reason that we wanna stay consistent is that we wanna make sure that we are comparing our candidates to those competencies in a consistent manner so that we can compare one candidate to another.

And those behavioral questions are the best way for you to ascertain how did Mike perform in his last position? Gives me the best indication of how Mike is going to perform in my position that I have. But without developing those questions, based on your job description and the key competencies you’re looking for, you’re kind of operating in the dark. So you’re setting up those questions in advance, their resume will give you additional questions that will be unite unique to that particular candidate, right? Because everybody has their own resume, right? So we have core questions and then we have questions that we’re asking from their resume,

VANNOY:

Right? So, so if I’m trying to build an organization, I’m, let’s say I’m, let’s say I’m looking for a, a head of sales,

SIMMONS:

Right?

VANNOY:

And I know that internally our product is, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a new product. We’re gonna bring it to market. It’s never been tested before. We’re super excited about it, but this is an unknown thing. And this person’s gonna have to come in and build a sales team. Well, if I look at resumes and LinkedIn profiles, I could find a bunch of former heads of sales that are gonna brag about their numbers, what did they produce? But the competency I’m looking for is someone who has gone from nothing to something who’s brought a new product to market, who’s built a team, right?

SIMMONS:

Right, right. Exactly. So you really have to dig deep into that job description, right? And, you know, I’d maintain that, you know, we do job descriptions with employers all the time. Your job descriptions need to be looked at every single year. And doing this exercise, Mike might show the organization, oops, we need to update that job description cuz it’s not reflecting the key competencies. Or there is a shift in our key competencies because it’s a new position, or the team has grown. The the other things that I want employers to think about. And, and you know, something that we go over certainly in interview training is additionally you wanna prep for that interview is a very clear job preview for your candidates coming in, right? So, again, this might not speak to behavioral questions, but you wanna give candidates a very clear explanation of what your position is gonna be so that they can make the decision on their own to opt out of the position.

It’s gonna save you a lot of time and heartache rather than interviewing them and, you know, lots and lots of times. And then having them decide, give them a good job preview, make sure that your managers have an outline for what they’re gonna do for the interview, which is this is what our organization is about, this is what the position is about at the end of this interview, next steps are, because remember, we are marketing our organization. Whether this person takes the position, whether we offer them a job, we wanna make sure that we are marketing our organization in the best light we possibly can. Every time we touch a candidate.

VANNOY:

We probably won’t go deeper there. But that’s not to say it’s not critically important. You and I had, we, we, we talked about exactly this in one, in one of our recent shows that in, in today’s climate with today’s unemployment rates and the war for talent, make no mistake, you’re selling them as much as you’re, they’re selling you. Hundred percent. So, you know, yeah. Okay. So, so you’ve got a good job description. You from that job description, you understand what are the competencies required. So you’re not just hiring outta sales, let’s stick with this use case. So I’m not just hiring a head of sales, I need someone who has brought a new product to market as a skill. I need someone who has built teams from scratch, recruiting, training, onboarding from scratch. Let’s just, and we’ll just stick with those two. What would be, what would be some bad ex be before we go to examples, go deeper on the definition of what is behavioral interviewing? How is that different from traditional interviewing? And why is it so important you started down that path, but go a little deeper for me.

SIMMONS:

Sure. So we are looking for the candidate to give me an example of when they exercised the key competencies that we’re looking for. So what does this do? This does a couple of things for us, Mike. When we ask a question where the candidate has to give us examples, we’re finding how they can think fast on their feet, how they can articulate, I’m going back to communication skills, right? Right. Always. So how they can articulate that example, what happens, A lot of times when I’m, when I’m asking a behavioral question, the person says, yes, I’ve done that many times. You know, if I ask them, have you built a time team? Have, yeah, I’ve done that a lot.

VANNOY:

No, I’m a

SIMMONS:

That doesn’t answer my question <laugh>, right? So, so when we do our interviewing training, and what I wanna impart to everybody today is how do you dig deeper? How do you make sure that you are asking the question in the right way? And I would maintain that if they don’t answer it the right way. You say, that’s a great answer, but I’d like you to give me more detail and give me a specific example of when you displayed this behavior.

VANNOY:

Yeah. So let’s go back to the use case. I’m looking for a head of sales that have to, I, I need someone with experience bringing a new product to market and building a team from scratch. Gimme a couple bad example questions that I think really smart, talented, experienced managers make all the time when asking questions and they end up with a bad head of sales.

SIMMONS:

Right? Well, I, I think they ask close que close ended questions a lot of times. Like, have you ever built a team? And the candidate says, yes, I’ve built many, I’ve built about five of them, and they leave it there. But, you know, without having an example of how they built it, and when you start to dig deeper, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, you might find out that they think they built a team, Mike, but they didn’t build it in the way that our organization can build it. Right? So yes, I built a team, we brought in three professional coaches to help me build that team. Yeah. I had three people from HR help me build the team, and then a year later we had the team that we looked for. Yes.

VANNOY:

And by the way I used a retained search firm to, to go find them off clinic, right? I mean

SIMMONS:

Exactly. Exactly. So we need to know the, how they did the things that they did, right? So when we are not asking behavioral questions, when we’re asking close-ended questions, or a lot of times the example that I’ve seen when I ask managers, Hey, give me your best behavioral questions, the question is leading, right? So they say, Hey, you built an internal team by looking at your internal team and seeing if that, if there were any skill gaps and giving them the training they, and going on and on and on about how they would build the team or how it’s been built in the back, back in the past, right? And then that just leads the person to person goes, yes, that’s exactly what I did.

VANNOY:

What an amazing coincidence. Right? I’ve done the exact same thing. Yeah. Right,

SIMMONS:

Exactly. So you don’t want it to be leading the question, and you also don’t want the question to be close-ended. And if you don’t get the answer that you want, or they didn’t answer it specifically enough, you reask the question, Mike. Yes. And if you don’t do it right then and there, you can come back to it. And that’s one of the reasons that we will set up interview forms for the managers that we work with so that they can write some notes you wanna say ahead of time, you know, to the candidate. I’m taking some notes so that I make sure that I get all the information you’re giving me. Right? and you wanna make sure that those managers understand that they are not writing anything discriminatory in the notes that they have, right? So notes are important, I think, when, when managers are interviewing candidates.

VANNOY:

A hundred percent. I’m gonna press on this, asking the question easy and enough with good pre-call planning to come up with a list of the behavioral questions you’re gonna ask. But candidates, you know, coming from a sales and marketing world, I’m used to dealing interviewing a lot of salespeople, they’re like politicians. They’re, they’re, they’re born to not answer your question and give you the answer that they want, right? Right. and in the short term short form format of, you know, a 32nd news clip, they get away with it, but not in an interview. If so, if I’m asking the, asking the, this this candidate the question and, you know, have you built tell, tell, tell me about a time you built the sale. A great sales team. Well, I did such and such, but you think they dodged it just a little bit or glossed over it?

No, I, I, I appreciate that. Give me a specific example in your work history. I wanna know, what was the name of the company? How many reps did you hire? Where was it? What was some of the challenges you faced? And some candidates will go right to it. Many candidates are gonna start literally sweating. They’re just not used to it. And a very successful tactic I’ve used before is like, they’re not used to being pressed like that and just put ’em at ease. Say, Hey, I’m putting you on, I’m putting you on some pressure on you here. You might not be prepared for this. It’s okay to think about it for a second. We, yeah, we, we have, we have plenty of time here together and really let ’em think, but do not let ’em off the hook for ask, answering the question they want to answer. Force them to tell a specific example or force them to admit, you know what, I actually haven’t done it exactly that way. Here’s how I have done it.

SIMMONS:

Right. Or, you know it’s acceptable in some situations. Like, and I appreciate honesty on an interview from a candidate, and that’s certainly a value that we should all think is important for every position for them to say, well, I haven’t built a team, but here’s some ideas on how I would build a team. Yeah. So when they say to me, I haven’t done that, I’d say, oh, well, let me know how you would do it. Again, I’m looking for those basic skills. How would they build the team right on the surface. But I’m also looking, can they put ideas together when they’re put on the spot? Are they articulate, in articulate in communicating those ideas to somebody? Because if we use that example as a sales leader, they’re gonna have to think on their feet all the time, and they’re gonna have to be articulate Right. To make the sale and to manage a team. Very important skills.

VANNOY:

Yes. Yes. And, and I wanna come back to, so I, I wanna jump into probably a whole bunch of different examples here. Let’s make this really practical for folks. Yeah. Yeah. Listen today, but in order to ask good behavioral questions, and I’ll give this example, keep, keep coming back to my use case of a head of sales. So many times we see small businesses saying, you know what? I gotta grow my business. I’m the operator. I’m a, I’m a technical person. I’m a finance oriented person. I need somebody else to run sales for me. Perfectly reasonable, good self-awareness. But they, they think about what they think about traits that they think successful people have. I need somebody who’s upbeat and outgoing and hardworking, but those aren’t the real competencies, right? It it, and so it goes back

SIMMONS:

To personality.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Have you brought a new product to market? Or maybe, maybe I don’t have a great product, maybe I’m kind of a below average product and I need somebody who can succeed in a really tough competitive environment. Right? Two very different types of skills, bringing new products to market versus competing in a bloody red ocean of competitors, right? <Laugh>

SIMMONS:

<Laugh>, absolutely. And I think employers need to be self-aware. They need to know exactly what the competencies are that they need, not personality traits, right? Because yes, personality traits can go either way, right? Somebody who’s outgoing can be successful in sales. Somebody who’s outgoing may not be successful in scale in sales. You want core competencies, right? Yes. Have they delivered on, you know, key performance indicators from prior organizations? And the employer needs to again, be very clear with the candidate, this is the specific skill that I need. This is my problem. Can you solve this problem? And how would you solve this problem for me?

VANNOY:

And, and you, you, you hit, I think you hit it. So in the head when you say it’s the how is what matters. Yes. Because I could have that sales, I might have one sales rep really successful because they’re a chatterbox. They’re, they’re they’re high I

SIMMONS:

In

VANNOY:

This world, right? Yes. and their energy is just contagious. And that’s the reason they’re successful, right? You could have somebody who is a high C and they are just thoughtful, methodical, great listeners, maybe even low energy, but they create such trust and present such, right? Solutions that’s so two very different ho two very different personality types,

SIMMONS:

Right? But,

VANNOY:

Right. So defining the how, defining the how. So great behavioral interviewing starts with a great job description, great self-awareness of the company, and pre-call planning, listing the competencies that you are mining for. And then what is the best behavioral question you’ve been asked to mine for that competency?

SIMMONS:

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Okay.

VANNOY:

Let’s, let’s, let’s do this. Let’s, let’s go through a bunch of examples. And I, I really want to frame for, for folks maybe what a good question looks like, what a bad question looks like around a competency, right? Right. So and, and I, and I wrote us a couple samples down here to, to, to get us, to get us going. So, so let’s say we’re talking about conflict, right? I could ask what I think is the typical way to say so. So like, maybe I just know there’s a lot of conflict with employees, cuz I know they’re walking into a really tough environment, right? Maybe it’s a, a tough bunch of customers, whatever the case may be, right? So, so Mary, you know this can be a rough place sometimes. Tell me, how do you handle conflict? What’s wrong with that?

SIMMONS:

Right? Oh, I, I handle it really well, Mike. I handle it well all the time. That that’s the answer. That’s the knee jerk reaction that they’re, that you’re gonna get. I, when you say you want a mind for competencies, you wanna add to that? You know, how did you handle that conflict? And can you give me an example of it? Right? Yeah. So when I ask any kind of question, we’re looking for those competencies, but I’m also looking for red flags. So you should know ahead of time, you know what the answer is. That is not the right answer for you. Right? So, you know, you don’t, you certainly don’t want somebody to answer, you know, have you had a conflict with a team member? And then to say, yeah, you know, I, I’m very touchy feely and that didn’t go over so well with my teammates, so I, so I stopped doing that, right?

Yeah. I would say that that may be a red flag, right? So yeah, when we’re asking these questions, not only do I want you to think about as an employer, what am I looking for? I want you to also say, well, you know, that’s a red flag, right? The thing that I want you to also be aware of that I am always driving home is compliance, right? So, you know, if you hear something about the candidate that is a disability or something that leads you to understand that they’re in a protected class, that might not be evident, please understand, we cannot use a disability against an individual or a protected class as the sole reason not to hire them if they can perform the job duties. So I just have to say that, you know, upfront, cuz you know me in and compliance Yes.

And I, and I, I would be remiss not to tell employers that, but, you know, gimme an example of a time you had a conflict with a team member and how did you handle it? Two different competencies, right? I’m looking for, you know, is the person engaged with their team, right? Which may or may not cause a conflict. Now, a lot of times when you ask, and this is a weakness question, right? So, very often our questions can be lumped into weakness and strength questions. This is definitely a weakness question. And a lot of times a candidate’s gonna say, I’ve never had a conflict with my team. I get along with my team. Great. Then what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna shift, like we said before, and said, well, if you had a conflict with a team member, how do you think you’d handle it? Because I still wanna know how they handle conflict. That is still a competency that’s important to me,

VANNOY:

Right? Right. all right, let’s take another one. So let’s say I’m mining for the competency of someone’s ability to resolve problems, right? Problem solving skills. The, and this will become self-evident. These are, these are cans stupid questions, but Mary, how, how are you at solving problems? That’s a really important thing to us,

SIMMONS:

Right? And again, that kneejerk reaction is gonna be, I’m, I’m great at resolving, you know, problems. You know, we haven’t had a lot of course, but I’m really great at resolving them. So under

VANNOY:

My watch, there are almost no problems. But the ones that do arise, I’m fantastic at it. Yeah,

SIMMONS:

Yeah. You know, we’ve interviewed enough years to know what those canned responses are, right? And that’s not the candidate we’re looking for. So let’s help them by reframing that question to say, tell me a time you made a mistake that affected a customer, and how did you resolve it specifically, right? Yes. So gimme a specific example again, can they think on their feet? And let’s face it, anybody who’s been in client services for long enough can give you an example of this situation. And what we’re really looking for is how did they resolve it, right? Yeah. The issue, the mistake may not be theirs, but they had to resolve it. And because client services is important to our organiza organization, how they resolved it, doing the problem solving, as you said, is that core competency we’re trying to mine for.

VANNOY:

Yeah. And, and I’d say a, a couple things. You might be talking to someone who is really just a fantastic candidate and they haven’t made a lot of mistakes, or maybe they’re a junior in their career and they haven’t been, they haven’t had any major screw ups yet. You could take people off the hook and say, okay, maybe the mistake wasn’t yours. Maybe it was a, maybe it was the company made a mistake or a coworker made a mistake. But clearly all, not every customer is always 100% happy about everything. You know, tell, tell me about the most difficult time. So if you haven’t had any really hard ones, tell me about the most difficult inter, inter interchange you’ve ever had with a customer. Right? What was their name? What was the situation? How did you respond? What was the outcome? And right. And then they start freaking out a little bit. Cuz you’re for when you say, when you say, tell me their name, it’s like, oh my gosh, they’re not gonna let me go. I’m gonna actually have to answer this question.

SIMMONS:

Right? And that, look, I, I don’t wanna say the candidates lie on interviews, but they may, you know, stretch the truth a little bit. And Yeah. You know, when I, through all the interviewing training, I’ve been asked that by managers time and time again, Mary, how can I tell if somebody’s lying? If they say they hit 150% of goal as a salesperson, how do I know if they’re telling the truth? Behavioral questions are gonna be, show you the real answer by giving client names, by telling us how you hit 150% of goal. If there’s not some, you know, really market, you know, examples there, you know, the person may be exaggerating a little bit, maybe.

VANNOY:

Yeah, yeah. All right, let’s take another topic. So let’s say we’re in a high, high-paced environment. Lots of things to do. Time management is really critical. Cuz you can’t, once you’re behind, it’s really hard getting caught up. Maybe that’s, maybe that’s what we’re our, our current environment. So, so Mary, you know, how, how are you at time management? We’re, we’re a pretty busy shop. We gotta, we gotta keep clipping along here. How, how do you manage your time?

SIMMONS:

And again, I think if we ask it in that manner some people might say, I, I manage it very well. Right? And I think specifically right now, time is very important, especially with remote or hybrid examples, right? Yeah. That is a very hard task in office for people, Mike. But now when we take people out of the office and their home with all the distractions that, that includes managing your time is important for almost every position. So give me an example of how you manage your time. You know, what steps do you take to manage your time? What are some, you know, technologies that you use utilize to manage your time? If they don’t have an answer for any of that, Mike, it probably means they’re not managing their time well. Somebody who’s managing their time has got an organizational path that they go down and they stick to it, right? Yep. and that is, I think, important for every position that you’d be interviewing for.

VANNOY:

Yeah. I I, I agree with that. And I also think this, this is hard because this is, and it goes back to the how and what do you, what is, what is it you’re actually, what is it you’re really mining for here with this question, right? Because is it, is it the fact that you have really big projects that have a lot of contingent steps and therefore the stuff can’t fall behind? Or is that you have it’s a front desk for a, a retail operation that you, people are coming at you a mile a minute, right? Yeah. Yeah. You’re, instead of saying, asking the question, tell me about a time where you tell me specifically how you manage your time, ask more detailed questions that fit the job description and the competency you’re looking for. Right? Right. Tell me the most transactions, the most people you’ve ever had to interface with at once. Right?

SIMMONS:

Right.

VANNOY:

Tell me about the most complex project that had the most contingencies involved in, in, in what happened? What was the outcome? Right? Right. Ask. It’s not just being behavioral, it’s really getting to what you hit at the, at the top of the conversation. The how, the what is the, what is the real kernel you’re mining for here.

SIMMONS:

Right, exactly. And, and I think the beauty of behavioral questions, Mike, is that you are going to ascertain multiple skills when you ask a behavioral question. So that one, for example, managing their time organization you know, detail oriented, there’s so many skills that we’re gonna ascertain based on their quest, their answer to our question, that we can make the best decision for hiring that person or not hiring that person by using behavioral questions.

VANNOY:

So we started out with some of the tough ones. Like, tell me about a time when you had conflict. Well, I don’t have conflict cuz I’m so amazing. And we talked through Gabriel ways to handle that. Let’s kinda maybe flip the positive side of the of the equation here. So tell me about a time, Mary, where you motivated some employees or coworkers to, to do their best. That’s obviously the, a setup for you. How, how would you, how would you rephrase that behaviorally?

SIMMONS:

Right. So I think we’re always asking for them to describe a specific example of a time that you motivated coworkers. And I like this question because even if it’s not a managerial team lead or supervisory position, yeah. I think that we can recognize that in most positions we want leaders, right? So a leader doesn’t have to supervise somebody, but we want somebody who keeps our positive culture that keeps our productivity moving forward. And having somebody who is, has those leadership abilities, even in a non-supervisory managerial position, is important to the organization. So you wanna know how they did it when they did it, and an example specifically of, of this behavior. And that, again, will help us ascertain, right? You know, it goes back to, you know, do they get along with their coworkers, right? You know, what kind of skills are they demonstrating by motivating their coworkers, right? You know, are they good trainers? Are they, do they have coaching skills already? So that question I think is a great one. And I think you’re right, this falls in that strength category and usually people will sit up a little straighter and be able to answer this question easier than some of those strength questions. Weakness questions, excuse me.

VANNOY:

And, and, and ideally your candidate is super self-aware of all their strengths and weaknesses. They’ve thought through all this stuff, they’re gonna be able to answer your questions. But the reality is, a lot, lot of people just aren’t that self-aware. So you can still help people along, right? So maybe what might start out as a bad closed ended question, like how do your coworkers see you? Do they see you as a positive person, a negative person? Well, well, they see me as a positive person, or they see me as a, as a quiet supporter or let ’em describe it in a closed way. Yeah. But then the follow up is behavioral. Why is that? How, what, what, what are the, what are the things that you do that create the perception that people feel that way about you? Right. Right, right, right. So sometimes you gotta ask the closed ended question or the specific question to get ’em talking, right?

SIMMONS:

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And that’s the, that’s the name of the game. We do wanna make our candidates feel comfortable. I know that some, you know, interviews are high pressure, right? Because the position is high pressured. In my opinion you want that candidate to feel comfortable because you want them to share as much information as possible. The more information you have, the better decision you can make on whether to hire that decision person and whether they will be appropriate for the position they’re interviewing for.

VANNOY:

Yeah. I mean, this might sound stupid, but I, I think about try, you and I have had both teenage daughters try asking your teenage daughter, how was your day at when they come home from school? Fine <laugh>, that’s nothing, right? But ask him the question, who’d you have lunch with today? Right? What, what, what was their, what was that name again? I don’t know. I I don’t know them. Where are they from? How’d you meet them? And all of a sudden, and maybe you’re still not gonna have any success with the teenage daughter, right? But ask the closed-ended question to get ’em talking. Open the door, follow up with the behavioral questions. Right?

SIMMONS:

Right. Absolutely

VANNOY:

Agree. Okay. here, here’s one that, the one that I love. As much as all employers would love to say that they have this really robust onboarding, learning and development training process, some do, it’s great and we coach people to do so. The reality is most entrepreneurs are running around with their hair on fire trying to, trying to save, run, grow their business while serving customers, right? Right. So not all employees are are properly trained and you need people who can roll with it and figure stuff out on their own and Google it and, and be okay. Right? So, right. So, so maybe may, the bad question might be, you know, tell me about a situation where you didn’t receive the full training, how to do something, but you had to figure it out. What, did you know what, what, what’s, what’s the behavior? I kind of screwed myself there cause I asked that behaviorally, what’s, what’s the right behavioral way to mind for that competency? <Laugh>?

SIMMONS:

Well I think you want self-starters, right? So, you know, when when did you learn a new skill on your own? Right? When did you recognize you needed additional training and what did you do about it? Give me an example of, of that. Love that. Right? And being a self-starter is really important right now because we’re short-staffed. All organizations are short-staffed, right? I know that I talk to a lot of employers who can’t afford to train their staff, right? So you need people who are going to take it upon themselves to either look for the training and do it on their own or come to you and say, you know, I have a skill gap. Here’s the training that I need. So this is I think an important question given the, the current climate that we have. A lot of times we’re gonna have to settle for somebody who doesn’t have all of the skills we need because we have so many openings.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna take one more positive, one more critical, and, and, and just to, to illustrate this. So I think everybody on the call knows better than to say, tell me your greatest strength, or tell me your biggest weakness. Right? My, my biggest my personal biggest weakness is that I care too much, by the way. But if I wanna know how someone handles mistakes, cuz we all think, we all know that everybody makes mistakes. Coach around the behavioral question, tell me about your biggest failure to g try to get them to tell a story how they, how they handle that. Is, is that even the right way to go into it? What, what’s your guidance on mining for this old fashioned terrible question? What’s your biggest weakness?

SIMMONS:

Yeah. And, and I like that we’re bringing this up because this is the, I think, knee jerk reaction for employers, right? They just go with those easy, you know, questions that they’ve always asked. But you have to go back to your job description. Why are you asking for the weakness and what in particular are you looking for? So I would reframe it. Let’s use our example. This is a sales leader that we’ve been using as an example. Yeah. And so I think what I would say is, tell me a time that you made an error in training motivating or coaching a staff member at how did you recognize it and how did you eradicate it? How did you fix that, that error, right? So I wanna look at the competencies that I need, right? Yeah. And then create a weakness question that gets me to that competency to just ask, what’s your greatest weakness?

They have that in the can. They’re gonna say they’re, they’re a perfectionist or one of those canned responses, in which case, you know, I would say, well, I hear that from a lot of people, but I need to know specific examples of when that’s been displayed. But I would maintain that you don’t ask, you know, don’t use that easy answer, Mike, use a weakness question. But it needs to be directed towards the competency that you’re looking for and you’re looking for red flags, right? So a weakness can be, it’s fine if the person has who none of us are perfect, right? So I think it’s important for people to be honest, and I like when they’re honest and they say, you know, what their weakness is, but if the weakness precludes them, right? If their example right, that we get from the behavioral question that we’ve customized to this position that we’re interviewing for, precludes them from being successful in the job. Like, I don’t like clients and I, I don’t do well with client, you know, complaints, you know, that gave us a lot of important information when we go to make our decision on whether to make a job offer or

VANNOY:

Not. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let’s, let’s take the inverse. What’s your greatest strength? I mean, so probably most candidates are prepared. What’s your greatest weakness? Pretty much everybody is ready to handle what’s your, what’s your greatest strength, right? Why, why is that a terrible question in what should we be asking?

SIMMONS:

Again, I think that you’re inviting the stock and that doesn’t help us and it doesn’t help the candidate if, if I, you know, can go so far to say, get the job because it should be focused on the position they’re interviewing for and where they’re interviewing. So my organization is gonna look for something different than another organization in a sales leader. I have to know what I’m looking for before I ask the question. So when I ask a strength question for this example of sales leader, it has to be tied back to what is the job responsibilities of this position? What are the expectations? You know, and I would go so far as to say, how have people been successful in the job prior and how have people failed in the position prior? And be uber aware of those factors so that when the person answers, right, we’re looking for, you know, and again, I, I don’t wanna say that we’re only looking for a finite amount of answers. That would be impossible, Mike. We need to be open-minded, right? But we need to know what we’re looking for.

VANNOY:

Yeah. So, terrible question. What is your greatest strength? Better question. Tell me about a time that you had a success building a team. Better question. Tell me about a time that you built a, a, a team from scratch. Better question. Tell me about a time you had to source your own candidates and train and onboard them and we’re successful, right? The more you’re self aware of the job requirement, the more you’re self aware of the competencies required to be successful. You have to know all that before you can do good behavioral interviewing.

SIMMONS:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and you really, as interviewers have to be very cognizant of those wide open questions, right? Because any information that you hear that leads us to understand they’re in a protected class puts the employer at risk, right? So that narrow mining for competencies is, is how you wanna direct your questions.

VANNOY:

Let’s, let’s maybe wrap if you could kind of put a bow on what is behavioral interviewing for folks, and then just give some practical tips for employers. Is there, is there planning for interviews and then conducting these interviews and even post-interview?

SIMMONS:

Absolutely. So behavioral interviews are asking questions of the candidate so that they can give us an example of how they’ve displayed a behavior that we are looking for in their past experience. So how they behaved at their prior job is our best indication of how they’ll behave in our position. So that’s behavioral interviewing. And I think some of the other tips that we wanna be aware of, Mike, is as we said before prepping so that we have a set questions for each position and we make sure that our interviewers are asking those questions. Number two, are we training our interviewers so that they understand what they’re mining for and how to mine for them? And again, to stay away from illegal questions, which we’ve discussed on other presentations, right? And you wanna make sure that that interviewer understands they’re leading the interview. A lot of times I’ll ask a question and the candidate starts to go down this dark hole and give me information. A, they’re oversharing, or B they’re not answering the question that I asked. The interviewer maintains control of the interview, not the applicant.

VANNOY:

Yeah. You know what you, you have to have, you have to walk into an interview with a plan, right?

SIMMONS:

A hundred percent.

VANNOY:

The old saying, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re certain to get there, right? Right. you have to have a plan. You have to know what you’re, what you’re mining for. Mary, we could go on forever on this topic. We’ll probably do some follow up sessions with some really tactical how-tos on, on, on, I think further upstream, the actual identifying of the competencies. Right? but, but I think we’ll use that as a stopping point today. I love talking to you. I always learn from you. Can you just maybe 30 seconds, how is it that Asures HR services team that you lead, how, how, how do we help customers with these areas?

SIMMONS:

So this is a, a big topic right now, as you said, right there. There’s definitely a shortage of employees out there so that employers are finding it hard to meet their business goals. And we’re always partnering with businesses to meet those goals. And one of those ways is starting at the ad writing pointed ads that show the culture of the organization, show that they’re an employer of choice. We go from the ad to creating job descriptions with the employers, then we go to the interview questions and further we’re training their managers on how to interview and make the best decisions on the candidates that they interview. And this leads to a lot of success for employers.

VANNOY:

Mary, you you, you poke fun at yourself rightly so about always bringing things back to compliance cuz it’s so critical <laugh> and it’s so hard these days as it gets more and more complex. I think what you just said is the single biggest way that we can add value to clients today. This war for talent isn’t going away. Right? Right. The the war the term was coined like in from a McKenzie consultant back in like 1998 and it was really some big company kind of a thing to think about, right? Is right. You first had like offshoring of functions and, and globalization and, and, and a different, a different context. Yeah. But the reality is based on productivity per person, based on GDP growth rates and birth rates and retirement rates of baby boomers. That, so that’s a whole lot to say.

The labor shortage has been, has been baked to hit us right about now, mid 2020s, certainly by 2030. This has been baked for 30 years now. Right? Right. And, and we’ve known this is coming and it gets masked by presidential elections and political cycles and yeah. Recessions and the occasional war that we all think it’s those things. And a, a pandemic, right? That steals all the news story. The reality is this war for talent has been baked for a long time. And small businesses, just like large enterprises, they have to have a plan. They have to get ahead of it. And you, you can’t run and grow your business without great people rights. And so you gotta have a plan in this area. And I think this is probably the single biggest way, way that we can help folks. So that, Mary, thank you talk. Thanks so much Running and.