If you’ve ever scrambled around at the last minute to prepare to interview someone, and then not felt good about the results, you’re like a lot of other managers we know. For some reason, even though we have all been frustrated at times by team members who aren’t as good as we want them to be, we STILL under-invest in the process which could improve the quality of our team — recruiting.

We think interviewing is a real opportunity for most managers — it’s not hard to understand, or to do it right, but we’re guessing that no one’s ever told you how or given you a detailed process. We’re going to show you how in detail over a series of many podcasts. In this first one on interviewing, we tackle interview preparation - what questions you need to ask yourself and your team/org about hiring someone new. We’re NOT going to tell you what questions to ask in the interview (yet). If you wonder why, well, give a listen. When you hear it, you’ll understand.

During the show, we made reference to the Manager Tools Interview Preparation Form. We think you’ll find the tool useful in preparing for your next interview. You can download it here!

First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham, Curt Coffman

Why We Like This Book:

We love data, and Gallup had a pile of it in developing the key insight here: great managers find people with the right skills for a job, and then focus on enhancing and rewarding what’s already there. They DON’T try to teach everything to everybody. Unlike In Search of Excellence, they didn’t fake this data. Gives detailed guidance, so we REALLY like it.

This cast shares our most important principle in The Manager Tools Effective Hiring Process: Set the Bar HIGH.

We believe that the biggest invisible organizational personnel failing is hiring poorly. It’s that simple: the vast majority of companies do a terrible job - compared to what they COULD DO EASILY - in hiring the right people.

We’ve said what follows a hundred times. We have systems to test the quality of raw materials coming in to our plants. We reject anything that is even a LITTLE off. We have non-destructive testing methods for inbound materials, and for our own manufacturing processes. Tolerances are incredibly tight. We have financial standards for investing capital that are incredibly rigorous, and monstrously difficult to prepare for at times. We have RIGID standards for EXPENSE REPORTING, for heaven’s sake.

And then, for the most important decisions we make - personnel - we leave the decision to some senior manager who’s never been trained, never been given feedback, is never held accountable, and mostly goes with her gut.

This is like trying to make a gorgeous wedding cake substituting dirt for flour, and adhering strictly to every other step in the process.

We can’t cover the entire process in one cast. But we can start.

This cast explains a simple way to make a job offer to a candidate.

If you’re a manager, you’ve got people working for you. If you have people working for you, you’re going to either lose some, or your team is going to grow. That creates an opening, which, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to fill. And that means interviewing, and hiring someone.

While we think it’s funny (and sad) that so many managers don’t like the hiring process, it seems silly to punish ourselves by not knowing how to do it. Look, even if you hate the process, why mess it up and increase your chances of having to do it again right at the very end? It’s like being in the lead of a mile long race, only to fall down and then have to run an extra mile.

Interviewing candidates for your organization is one of the most important things managers do. And yet, somehow, it’s one of those things that doesn’t seem to get taught anywhere. What this means is very few managers know how, or at least, they just do it “their way”. That’s not a very effective approach for an organization to have regarding the key talent screening process that it has, but the data are overwhelming:

Your interviews stink!

Most managers simply don’t have a good way to always ensure that they are conducting an effective interview. Some managers routinely create false positives with shallow questions, little probing, and a lack of understanding about the role. Other managers routinely create false negatives…and usually, for the very same reasons on the surface.

Conducting Effective Interviews is too big a topic to cover all at once..unless you wanted a 30 hour cast! So, in this cast, we’ll talk about the steps effective managers take to get ready for an interview.

More and more, companies are using psychological and behavioral tests as pre-employment screening devices. They supplement their interviewing processes in order to ensure less false-positives.This is wise, in our judgment, based on what we see of interviewing. Too many companies don’t screen rigorously enough, and have started enlisting more cerebral and/or technical techniques to be certain of new hires.

Even if you haven’t experienced one yet, it’s becoming more and more likely.

What does this mean for you? What’s the best way to approach and be successful at pre-employment tests? This is Manager Tools, and we’ll walk you through it.

This cast describes how to create a simple behavioral interview question.

We believe that behavioral interviewing is the best systemic form of interviewing evaluation a manager can use. There’s nothing that even comes CLOSE. Sure, there are those who think testing is important, and we don’t disagree. But we also think that a professional manager can, with time and an effective interview process, approximate what amounts to a “test” of any candidate that ‘is reasonably certain to be an accurate predictor of future success’. Those quote marks indicate that that is a claim that a popular screening test makes.

The question, of course, is: HOW?

There are two ways. One is to use the Manager Tools Interview Creation Tool, which we’re due to roll out shortly for premium members. Answering about a hundred questions on a scale of 1-5, in about 45 minutes, and you get an interview printed out immediately afterwards that is so good some managers will cry about it.

The other way is to use this simple model described in this cast. It works, and it’s free.

[Note: This is a repost of a previous corrupt podcast file.]

This cast describes how to increase your chances of re-hiring someone who has left your organization. They’re called Boomerangs!

There really IS a war for talent going on today. Demographics are in many ways working against us, reducing the labor pool, as well as changing the nature of work and the relationships “employees” have with their “employers”. Frankly, it’s harder than ever - and will KEEP GETTING HARDER - to find and hire high caliber associates.

One effective technique is hiring former employees, or “Boomerangs”. 20 or 30 years ago, it was unheard of. The reasons then seemed to make sense … but now?

This cast will tell you what to do with Boomerangs.