by Beth | Mar 27, 2025 | Uncategorized
Last week, I was scheduled to present to a group of business owners in Omaha, Nebraska. I got on the plane on Tuesday on time, and we took off. On the 1 hour flight to Omaha, we got ½ way there and turned around, because a woman on the plane had a medical emergency. We landed at DIA, Denver Fire/EMT’s pulled her off on a stretcher (she is doing fine now) we re-fueled and headed back out. We landed 3 hours after our original landing time.
I retrieved my rental car and drove to the hotel. It was 62 degrees with bluebird skies. So beautiful! I arrived at the hotel, got organized and went to bed. At 1:47 am, I woke up panicked, because I thought someone was pounding on my door. It was the sleet banging against the window. The snow was blowing sideways. I finally dragged myself out of bed at 6 am when I got a text message cancelling my flight that night at 5:30 pm. I called my client, and he said “Don’t worry! I have an F-150! I’ll pick you up!”
My presentation went really well, though I spoke to 4 people in person. (There were a few more on zoom.) We had a ball. It was casual, looser than normal, and we laughed a lot. Plus, they had a floor-to-ceiling white board! BLISS! (See photo!) My client, Greg and I, found a hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant, (The only thing open for MILES) and I got enough food to cover my dinner that night. It was fabulous.
The next day, my re-scheduled flight was at 5:30 pm. I had nothing to do, so I went to the airport early. I struck up a conversation with a guy behind me in line, and turns out, he is a COO who turns companies around and sells them. He lives in Erie, Colorado, 20 minutes from me. He was VERY interested in my work, and we have scheduled a meeting for next week. He told me that “God wanted us to meet.” I was able to fly stand-by on an earlier flight and pulled into my driveway at 4 pm instead of 9. I nearly cried with relief at being home.
This is PRECISELY what your hiring process will look like, if you do it right. You want it to be straightforward and short. It never is. You want the right person to walk through the door minute one. Doesn’t happen. Sometimes you have to fly to Omaha, get picked up in an F-150, eat Chinese food twice in one day, all to bump into a potential client/employee/friend/connection in the TSA line, while complaining about taking off your shoes.
I will never forget this trip, and I would do it all over again to experience the things/people/food that I did. I experienced delays, wrong turns, disappointment, and waylaid plans. Did it turn out how I expected? No. Would I change a thing? Also no.
POWER THOUGHT: Quit micro-managing your hiring process. Open the door, and let the life-changing people/experiences/detours/ come in when they are ready.
by Beth | Mar 14, 2025 | Uncategorized
I have a former client in the tech industry who called me out of the blue. He said that he was worried that he had just gotten off a zoom interview with a fake candidate. I said “How did you know?” “Well… frankly, I am just not sure.”
I will tell you this: he is right to be skeptical. According to Inc magazine, deep fake candidates are definitely a thing, and they are especially a thing in the tech industry. Read more here.
What my client did right was to NOT ignore his instinct. You as the employer have the right to not hire someone that you think isn’t on the up and up. But what if you can’t tell and you are still interested in them? Here are a few tips:
- Set up an in-person interview. Yes, it will cost money to fly the candidate to where you are, but that money is nothing compared to being scammed out of your intellectual property.
- Fly someone from your company to them. I have flown to many a different location to have an in-person interview with a candidate.
- Call the university where they attended college, if they went to college. Confirm all information that is on the resume.
- Check ALL references. A lot of companies don’t call references, or only call 1 or 2. Call every single one listed.
- Don’t accept the excuse that the camera isn’t working, they don’t have references, or the dog ate their homework. If they are legit, they will make sure that you can vet their legitimacy.
- ALWAYS trust your gut when something doesn’t feel right. No candidate is worth your business.
And finally, I actually think that some “Deep fake” candidates aren’t trying to scam you. I think that there is a valid language barrier. Either way, fake is fake. Hold out for real.
POWER THOUGHT: “Deep fake” candidates feel fake. Don’t let them fake you out.
by Beth | Feb 27, 2025 | Uncategorized
I had a client call the other day, and we were talking about his company culture. He was telling me about his company core values and how he has worked so hard on developing a culture that he is proud of. Then, out of the blue, my client asked me “Do you have a trust fund?”
I was quite taken aback by his question. I quipped back “Isn’t that a bit personal?” He laughed out loud and said “I’m not talking about money, Beth. I am talking about trust.”
My eyes opened wide, and I said to him “Tell me more!”
He said to me, “Think about it. Trust has to be earned. Trust has to be built. If you have a trust fund with your clients, your employees, your vendors, then you have a bit of leeway if you make a mistake.” I have spent the last 2 weeks thinking about the concept of a trust fund, not being about money, but about trust and faith that you have in your relationships.
This concept is especially helpful when you are talking about your employees. Employees want to be at a business where they are valued, where they feel heard, where there is transparent leadership. In other words, where they can trust the powers that be. If you as the leader focus on building a trust fund, your staff will be more forgiving when you make a bad call.
I told my client that I felt like I had a trust fund with my clients already in place, and I am going to make sure that it is healthy and thriving. After all, there doesn’t seem to be anything better to focus on than that.
POWER THOUGHT: If you don’t have a trust fund in your business, I recommend building one as soon as possible. Trust me on that!
by Beth | Feb 13, 2025 | Uncategorized
If you haven’t read part 1, read it here.
When I made my horrible bad hire that made national news, I immediately started reading every hiring book I could get my hands on. I needed help! I needed guidance on how to hire people so that I could run my restaurant. It was completely daunting. Almost every book that I read had a list of questions at the end. One book Hiring the Best by Martin Yate had a list of over 400 questions.
Who has time for 400 questions???
What I have found after interviewing almost 20,000 people in my career is that the questions are less important than the structure of the interview.
Here are 5 tips that are more important than the actual questions:
1) Put a list of 8-10 questions together and ask the same questions in the same order to every single candidate. The analysis is so much easier when you don’t have to question your questions.
2) Ask the question. Listen to the answer. Ask the question. Listen to the answer. An interview is not a back and forth. Your answers to the questions don’t matter, so let the candidate say their answers.
3) Interview in a group. This protects you all from any liability, and you will hear things that your counterpart won’t and vice versa.
4) Limit your list of questions to no more than 15 per interview. I find that after awhile, the candidate gets tired (and so do you). If you have more questions, schedule another interview.
5) And finally, if you are talking, then you aren’t listening. There is a reason that you have 1 mouth and 2 ears. And if you find yourself talking too much, see tip #2.Interviewing a candidate is hard work. It is even harder when you are making up questions as you go along. When you have some structure and consistency in your questions, it becomes way simpler to focus on your candidate.
My clients regularly tell me that just listening helps them make better hiring decisions. And isn’t that what we all want? Don’t forget, if you don’t have the time, energy, or bandwidth to hire yourself, A-list Interviews is here to help.
POWER THOUGHT: Avoid questioning your questions. Put a list together and use it in every interview.
by Beth | Jan 30, 2025 | Employee Hiring
Every year when January hits, I get inundated with emails from people who are hiring. They are overwhelmed with applications, and they MUST start interviewing candidates. In a bit of a panic, they email me this question:
“What questions to you ask potential employees, Beth?”
As if somehow a magical list of questions will solve all of the hiring issues that you have ever had.
In order to come up with questions that work for you, you have to know what you are looking for in a candidate. “But Beth, I just want a good person to come work for me!”
No, you want a good “employee”, not a good person. There is a difference. A good person may not be the best fit for the job. A good employee is a great fit for the job AND a good person.
Now we are getting somewhere.
Here is the first step to a fabulous interview process: sit down with your team in front of a white board and ask yourself this question: if I could have the absolute BEST person for this job, who would they be? After you write your list of the Ideal person, type it up, add your company logo, and print the list on actual paper. Then, take that list and hang it up in your office, in your house, in your bathroom, and place one in your car.
The single most important part of the interview process is the mindset of the Hiring Manager, and the mindset must be clear: in order to get the employee you want for the job, you have to be able to picture how that person will be in the role and describe that person’s demeanor.
This mindset is the vision for your hiring process, and without that vision, you are wasting your time with your hiring process.
POWER THOUGHT: When hiring, don’t start with questions. Start with the vision.
