The Best Applicant Ever!

In the early days of having my first real estate agency, me and my two business partners would conduct all our interviews for new staff.

We’d spend what we thought was an appropriate amount of time with each applicant – about 40 minutes in a first interview. What was strange though was that we loved every applicant, they were all the best applicant ever!

After sitting down to look at our interview process to find out why we loved everyone we found it went something like this:

• Applicant enters the room
• Applicant introduces themselves
• Myself and my business partners proceed to speak for 38 minutes about why our company is awesome
• Applicant nods politely
• We love applicant

We were just so darn excited about our company that we did a sales pitch to the person who we should have been hoping would do a sales pitch to us! When we figured this out and started letting the applicant pitch to us we had a lot more success.

We also discovered some great interview questions along the way, these are a few of my faves:

• What do you know about our company? (c’mon a simple google of your business should give them some great info here if they’ve bothered to take the time)
• Why are you leaving your current job? (as soon as anyone started to have a go at their previous boss, regardless of how justified it might have been, they’ve shot themselves in the foot – after all what will they say about their next boss? Discretion is key.)
• What would you do this situation…? (use a real tricky situation you’ve had happen at your workplace)

Depending on the type of organisation / type of staff member you’re looking for I also love:
• An in workplace trial period (maybe a day where they come and work for you)
• After this ask them what they think can be improved about your workplace, what did they enjoy, is this the type of place they can see themselves working?
• Where you can’t do an in house trial period, set them a task to do between job interviews 1 and 2 such as look at our 3 biggest competitors websites and tell me what they have that we don’t… go to this open home and tell me what we could be doing better… rewrite this piece of literature… (find a task that will give you an indication 1. of their work ethic and 2. of whether they’ll be good at the job you’re hiring them for!)

And above all else, hold off on the sales pitch during your interviews! (I still find that a hard one!)

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By Kirsty Dunphey with No comments

Is there a bomb on your bus?

Have you heard that much touted employee hiring practice of “getting the right people on the right seats”? Whenever I hear that I always think of seating people on a bus… and then I always think of the movie Speed.

You remember Speed right? Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock burning down the road jumping broken bridges, looping cameras, staying above 50 miles per hour, flirting like crazy and all so the bomb in the bus doesn’t detonate (ok, the flirting may have been optional in terms of bomb safety but you get my point).

How different would this movie have been if Ellen Degeneres were cast instead of Sandra Bullock?

She almost was you know! Now don’t get me wrong, I think Ellen’s a riot (and I dance with her daily) – but I can not imagine that movie with her in that role!

In my early days in real estate I almost put on a staff member who I’m sure would have been good, but would not have fit in with my organisational culture. In short, they wouldn’t have been the right fit for my bus. The short term loss of not putting them on stung (but nowhere near as much as the long term pain of having that cultural clash would have).

Now the bus analogy works equally well when you’re looking for work. Don’t do a Meg and miss the fabulous bus.

Meg Ryan has had some great hits, but Top Gun not withstanding, what about the movie lead’s she turned down – Pretty Woman, Basic Instinct, The Silence of the Lambs and Ghost. Some great busses for sure there.

Whichever bus you’re hopping on or loading people on today – I hope it’s the right one for you!

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By Kirsty Dunphey with No comments