[Growth Guest] Author and A-Player Expert Chris Mursau

Chris Mursau is the President of Topgrading, a company that helps to build and maintain high performing teams through proven hiring, development, and promotion strategies. He has served as a consultant and teacher since 2001 and has conducted over 3,500 Topgrading assessments for internal and external candidates and helped hundreds of people achieve their A potential. Chris has used this expertise to co-author seven books on hiring, with the most recent book, “Foolproof Hiring: Powerful, Proven Keys to Hiring HIGH Performers”, being released this year.

Also, Chris is the host of Talent Wins, a podcast that features top CEOs and business leaders and highlights their trials, tribulations, and successes in building great teams. 

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
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• 17:42 [Ad] Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
• 18:32 (Cont.) [Growth Guest] Author and A-Player Expert Chris Mursau

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hey, everybody. And

Jeff Winters: 0:12

welcome back to the growth show everybody excited, super excited today for an interview with Chris Mercer. Chris is an absolute expert in hiring. He's an expert in talent and talent development. Funny enough, he's an expert in a player's, which is something, we talk about it on this podcast and at our company quite a bit. For his day job president a top grading company that helps to build and maintain high performing teams through proven hiring, development and promotion strategies served as a consultant and teacher since 2001. has conducted over 2500 Top grading assessments, and we're going to get it very deep into the top grading process. Also coming out with a new book foolproof, hiring powerful, proven keys to hiring high performers being released. released just last month, I guess, excited to have you on Chris.

Unknown: 1:08

Thanks. Thanks. Great to be here and excited for the next hour or so. All right.

Jeff Winters: 1:14

So Chris, talk, talk to us, let's get into it. Like talk to us a little bit about top grading.

Unknown: 1:18

So there's a question like, where to start. And I think the place to start is really with a term that is very connected with top grading, and that's a player. And it's a phrase that lots of people use, but means different things to different people. For us, there are really two components of the definition. One is an A player is a high performer. And the other is a players fit your fit your culture and exhibit your core values. And so that's really where top grading starts is defining a player for for that specific role in your specific organization. And then, a little bit more broadly, top grading is setting a goal of really filling every position in the organization with an A player. Got it?

Jeff Winters: 2:13

Love it. A players, you know, it's funny, we we have a players here. And we use it we do it like a little bit a little bit differently. But it's so it's interesting to hear, I'd love to dig in more for your A players. So not only sort of high performer what you do, but also how you do it. In terms of like the what you are sort of your performance, like the what you do, as you're as you're talking to companies about this? Is it leading indicators? Is it lagging indicators? Is it both? What do you recommend?

Unknown: 2:47

So, both, you know, really, and and, yeah, some refer to them as KPIs. You know, a lot of the self backup just for a second. One of the things how so how do we define a player? We create jobs, scorecards. And really on the job scorecards a big component of that is the definition of high performer. So it's a list of measurable accountabilities. And, and not only you know, what the person is responsible for, but what the targets are in each of those areas. And that list of measurable accountabilities, let's take a sales position for for example. And so you know, what is a sales position? What did they what does it tend to be about, it tends to be about generating revenue, and could be about generating profits or gross margin, whatever it may be, when it's generating some some money in the bank? And so that is the legging indicator, you know, did you achieve those sales results or not, so of course, want to keep an eye on that. But there are leading indicators. If you do these activities, you know, it increases your probability of success. And so those are included in most of the jobs, sales jobs scorecards we create. So number of calls per day, number of emails per day, number of meetings with clients, those kinds of things are on the scorecard. Because they those activities tend to drive the results that the ultimate results that we expect. And by defining both activities that drive the results and the results themselves, we have a higher probability of one a player's knowing what's expected of them and also understanding what is going to to lead to their success.

Jeff Winters: 4:36

Got it. So we've got a score on a player scorecard. And on it, you've got leading indicators lagging indicators, every position in the company, right. And that's leading up to your how we're defining high performer at your individual organization. What about what about culture fit? How are we measuring for that?

Unknown: 4:55

So I mean, in very literally how do we measure On is on the job scorecard core values are listed. And definitions of those core values are included. And before we begin interacting with candidates, we think about Alright, so what is the minimum acceptable rating? You know, does a person need to be good, very good, or excellent in each of those core values, and we use a, often a four point scale. So one is weak. And if they're really your core values, no one can be weak in those core values. Everyone has to be at least good or Okay, so the minimum acceptable rating on the core values has to be two. And it could also be very good or excellent three or four. And so we think about that, you know, does a person need to be excellent, and all of the core values? And for a lot of our clients for their leadership positions, the answer is yes. You know, those leaders are expected to embody and role model the core values, and so they need to be excellent in all of those areas. Yeah, for an individual contributor. A lot of our clients have something about innovation, you know, or continuous improvement in their core values. And does an individual contributor need to be excellent in terms of innovation? Not always. And so we're thoughtful about that just how good do they need to be in each of those core values? So we understand what we're looking for. And then when we begin interacting with, with candidates, it's what is the evidence? Have they exhibited those core values? To what degree? And what is their pattern of behavior? So one thing we find beyond it really, in terms of one of the problems, one of the one of the top hiring problems we find is that interviews tend to be shallow. And what do we mean by shallow it is getting one example of someone exhibiting that characteristic one time, and then rating them on that based on one example, we don't know if they do that every day. Or if that is the one time they ever did that in their entire life, you know, and they got lucky. And so what we can teach our clients to do is interview in a way that gets multiple examples of that core value or behavior, whatever it may be being exhibited over time, or not exhibited over time. So we have multiple data points and the time component in there. So we can rate the pattern of behavior versus rating them doing that one time are an example of them doing that one time. Yeah, that's,

Jeff Winters: 7:41

that's really interesting. As I, as I reflect on what you just said, um, I feel like every interview training I've ever

Unknown: 7:49

been in, there's the ask them to share a story about a time when. And what you're saying is,

Jeff Winters: 7:58

if you stare share a story about a time when you exhibited integrity, that does not make integrity. Right.

Unknown: 8:08

Exactly. It's exhibiting integrity over time and consistently, that indicates integrity or or lack thereof.

Jeff Winters: 8:16

So what do you say? I mean, very tactically. So what do you say share two stories about times you've exhibited integrity, or do you go, Okay, tell me about a time you exhibited integrity, and then you wait for questions. How does it actually work?

Unknown: 8:25

Yeah. So Jeff, it's a little it's a little more subtle than that. And so, I'm going to say, like when you say, Tell me about a time when, yeah, we just prefer that as typical interview, because that's kind of how everyone interviews, even the good interviewers, like, that's how they interview the bad interviewers. They don't even do that. But good interviewers say they do it that way. And what we find is those focused competency interviews are fine for screening, you know, and really, it's screening people out of the candidate pool. Because if you can't come up with one story about exhibiting that behavior one time, you're probably not very good at it.

Jeff Winters: 9:04

Right? I can give you one story about a time I exhibited integrity.

Unknown: 9:09

Yeah, and just because you can give one story doesn't mean you have high integrity. So what we do is when when, when we get down to the finalist candidates for for a role, we slow it down a little bit and spend more time with them. And so what is more time mean, it could be 90 minutes to a couple of hours with an individual contributor, maybe three or four hours with someone who is a candidate for a leadership position. And what we do during that time is take them really through their life story. So starting, believe it or not, we started in high school, we've got some questions about high school and if they went to college, right after high school, questions about college, and then questions about every job they've had throughout their career. And so when we get into those jobs, we're asking them about examples of things like accomplishments, what are some of the accomplishments you had in in that job, and so we get a few examples and we dig in, what were the challenges you faced in achieving that accomplishment? And how did you do it? When we start getting answers to how did you do it, we hear things like integrity and creativity and resourcefulness excetera being exhibited. And we have in a leadership interview does isn't a dozens of examples of those accomplishments over time. And therefore, hundreds of examples of behaviors being exhibited. So we know like they will, if they have high integrity, there will be multiple examples of integrity being exhibited over time, as they are telling us about their accomplishments. So it's a little it's really getting someone to, in a structured way, tell their life story. And, you know, as humans, we learn really effectively from stories. So we're leveraging something we've evolved to do, as well. So, you know, not necessarily tricking our brains, but just leveraging what we're pretty good at already.

Jeff Winters: 11:03

Kind of little thief in the night mentality would seem to me, when

Unknown: 11:07

you think about it, you know, it's it's also a little easier from the candidates perspective. Yeah, you're telling the story, chronologically, that you know best, which is your own story? Yeah. Thinking about the other way that we interview, hey, tell us about one time where you exhibited creativity. What if that person has 15 stories? They could tell us? Yeah, somebody who is really creative has 15 or more stories, they need to pick the one that they think you're going to resonate best with. And they sometimes get it right, they sometimes get it wrong. But one thing is, we know, it's a hard it's a hard way to interview from a candidates perspective. So what will candidates know, in this top grading interview, which cleverly call the top grading interview, they know that they are going to have the opportunity to tell us about all of the good things that they've done throughout their career, they relax a little bit and just get into the story.

Jeff Winters: 11:58

You know, I love doing these interviews, because it's as much learning for me as it is trying to help the audience with some tactics that they can take away. And for me, it's the multi hour interview, and it's the take me through the whole life story. And it's let me check the boxes on ru values fit based on what I'm teasing out of the stories as opposed to a Tell me about a time when that's great. It's interesting. Another question, I guess, right around interviewing, what's your take on exercises? What do you think about, hey, I want you to go home and do an exercise that could take many hours to prove to me that we that you might be a

Unknown: 12:41

good fit for this job. So just the idea of an exercise. Yeah, the way that I love to talk about the exercises with with our clients is actually refer to them as an audition. Yeah, so thinking about that, like, you know, what could we ask them to do that would demonstrate they can do a significant component of this job. So the the multiple out asking a candidate to spend multiple hours doing something is a big ask. So we need to be thoughtful about that one, when are we asking them to do it, you know, if it is going to take some amount of time, hour, two hours, you probably going to ask them to do that a little bit deeper into the to the process. But if if you know, an exercise will take 30 minutes, it's a great screening, it's a great screening tool to get them to show you they can or they can't do a significant component of the job, you need to be careful, you know, say, Hey, do this take home exercise. And there's a little bit of risk there. Maybe somebody else could actually do it for them. But you know, like a for I'm gonna go back to a sales position for a moment. Yeah, if your salespeople need to present, let's see how they are at presenting let's have them present something to us. Maybe the if you're hiring experienced salespeople, let's have them sell us what they're selling right now, or what they have sold in recent years. And we can give us a chance to see them in action doing something that we'd expect them to do. Should we hire them?

Jeff Winters: 14:17

So Chris, you're pro exercise,

Unknown: 14:19

pro exercise, absolutely. Pro exercise, you know, I often get a question. What about personality tests? Because, you know, those are often they're often kind of talked about in the same same bucket. And the advice there is be very careful when, when using personality tests. They're very often misused in hiring. And the way they're misused is there's a cut off score, you know, so whatever the rating scale is, yeah, if they don't get a if they're not at least 50 on a 100 point scale in dominance, we're not going to hire that person. Now to say, all right, their dominant seems to be average they're extremely high or extreme. low IQ can be informative. But really what it does is it gives you some direction on areas to probe later on. So just be very careful with the personality tests because they're accurate in many ways, but they're also inaccurate. And you really don't know which is which until you interact with that candidate. So as a data point, analyzed by someone who really understands how to analyze the results, they can be beneficial, but so often, they're misused. And what happens is, a players get knocked out and see players make it past those personality tests and just increases the chance of a hiring mistake.

Jeff Winters: 15:44

First, I gotta tell you, a personality test almost derailed my entire life. My entire life, I scored the lowest my second job out of college, I scored the lowest score in the history of this medical device sales company's sales aptitude test. Okay, still got hired? I did. All right. I made it. Okay. Now I've done done some sales. But yeah, that would have totally changed the trajectory of my life had that person not. And now, by the way, immediately, in my next interview, he goes, Hey, would you be surprised to learn you scored the lowest score in the history of the sales aptitude test? I thought, yeah, that would be somewhat surprising.

Unknown: 16:26

Like the one thing that company was, was using that personnel or that sales aptitude test, yeah. As a as a data point, you know, and everything else, you know, your history, yeah, the interviews, whatever else they did, you know, show that there was some evidence that that wasn't necessarily accurate. You know, and we've, our clients have found similar things, you know, where, yeah, the number one person in that role, I don't want to be too specific, because you might know who it is the number one person like the best top ranked person in that role? Yeah, they did a test. And they did, they tested the test. He wouldn't have gotten hired, had they used that as an instrument when he was being hired, you know. So we find that too often. They're just, they're, they're not accurate enough to, to use as a cut off. Now, it's

Jeff Winters: 17:20

neat, we're on the topic of hiring, you got a book coming out very shortly called foolproof hiring. And that's why we're, we're digging in here, aside from the fact that I'm just now we're on a, like, an interesting path. I'm super curious about another question on that. Where do you come down on meeting the significant other or partner of an executive before you hire him?

Unknown: 18:21

Jeff, um, that is completely up to each organization. Yeah. Yeah, we've got some companies that absolutely do it. Others that that do not. And so that I don't have a strong opinion, one way or another? Yeah. I've heard some interesting stories about those. You know, with the significant other, and, you know, so yeah, for some clients, it works out with them. I'd say, though, a little bit more broadly, you know, getting someone out of the formal interview, and interacting in a bit more casual environment can absolutely be valuable. You know, and I think everyone has probably heard of the example of, you know, going out to dinner or going out to lunch, and just observing how the candidate treats the waitstaff. Yeah. Are they? Are they courteous? Are they rude? Yeah, and having that help inform the hiring decision. So those kinds of things can absolutely be valuable.

Jeff Winters: 19:27

A couple of drinks. I think if you drink I want to see you have a couple of drinks. I want to see how who you are after to wine spritzers you know,

Unknown: 19:37

there may be some some legal limitations to that. So I'm going to just reserve the right to plead the fifth abstain.

Jeff Winters: 19:48

I'm yeah, I'm gonna say I want to see not a I'm not saying I'm gonna mandate it. I'm saying I want to see it. I can learn a lot about you. After a couple of a couple of zimas Okay. Have zimas anymore, Chris. I don't know. No. Zima I have no

Unknown: 20:02

I think they may have been replaced by like, I was gonna say Smirnoff Ice, but that dates me as well. I think Oh, white claw white claws White.

Jeff Winters: 20:11

White claw. I'm looking at my producer Katie far cooler than i Who's nodding, saying the High Noon has replaced the Zima Good to know. All right. And he like alright, so um, yeah, I'm knee deep in the NFL Draft coming up and like when you get the NFL Draft. One thing that's synonymous is the weird questions these NFL teams ask their potential draftees you like these,

Unknown: 20:41

like, I'm gonna use maybe not an NFL draft question. But I think something, let's say Google used in the past, they give you a jar like, hey, how many marbles fit in this jar right here and explain why. So Jeff, and I use Google purposefully on that, because they did those kinds of weird, weird questions that supposedly showed them demonstrated how that candidate thinks. And they actually did a Google specifically did some research on it. And they were looking for correlation between the conclusions after that exercise, and whether the person actually acted like that or behave like that on the job. They found no correlation. And so they've stopped doing that.

Jeff Winters: 21:24

So I don't have to ever answer again, how many like dimples are on a golf ball? Or how many seats are on a Southwest plane?

Unknown: 21:31

I mean, Zappos. Back in the day, as they were, as they were starting. Yeah, they part of their culture was, hey, we're a little weird. So one of their questions was on a 10 point scale, how weird Are you? You know, and the right answer was somewhere between four and seven. So you're not too weird. And you're not too stiff? You know? And then you just need to be able to explain that. And so that kind of thing like that, that the spirit of that, like, what's the right answer? What are they will look into here? That gets out there, you know, and especially with, did the glass door and things like that, you know, like, it just gets out there, you know, you can Google interview questions for fill in the blank the company, especially if it's more popular company, you can probably find the interview questions, they're going to ask and prepare for it. So yeah, there's not a real high correlation. It's kind of like a Rorschach test. For any of those of you who, you know, knew and know anything, what psychologists especially back in the day, you know, there's so much left up to into interpretation, it largely depends on who's interpreting the answer. We like to say we, we favor what a person has really done, who they've done it with. And the environment, they've done it in as a predictor of whether they're going to be a good fit versus you know, how good they are at answering how many marbles are going to fit in that jar. I'm terrible. That can't I mean, unless Jeff, Jeff, unless the job is guessing how many marbles fit in the jar? Like, okay, then that's a good question. But I don't know many jobs that have that as part of the responsibilities.

Jeff Winters: 23:07

Not a lot of marble counters. If you're out there listening, and you do or that's some part of your job, do let us know. And we'll we'll retract. I know which I have a feeling you're not going to play along here. But do you have any favorite interview questions that are outside the norm?

Unknown: 23:26

I mean, I don't think super off the wall. But one that might be slightly unique. And that is, hey, if we talk to your manager, in fact, not just your manager like that one manager, but if we talked to all of the managers you've reported to individually, what would each one tell us about your strengths, weaker points and overall performance? At that time on that job? Yeah, if you were to just ask that question about every job a person has had, you will avoid hiring mistakes from time to time. So you know, what it also does is it actually brings in to kind of bring it bring it back to an important part of top grading, it's a direct connection to something we call the top grading truth motivator. And for anyone who has read, you know, some of the original editions of top grading, it was referred to as the torque technique to RC threat of reference check. And I'll say it's not that and it's not that aggressive. All we do is early in the hiring process. Let candidates know that right before a job offer, we're going to ask them to arrange for some reference calls with managers they've reported to recently. And so you know, we let them know that up front. And then we reinforced that throughout the different interviews with that kind of question. Hey, if we talked to that person, what do you think they tell us about your strengths, weaker points in overall performance? So, you know, like, what else gives us a pretty accurate view of someone's performance over time? It's just that that's the question. And as consistently knowing that we are going to verify what the manager actually will say later on. super powerful. That's good. All right.

Jeff Winters: 25:13

I'm gonna make myself vulnerable for a second, right? I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you my two favorite interview questions. I'm gonna let you rip me to shreds. Okay, go for it. There's never been done. Maybe it's been done, but it's never been done, but with us. So I say, and this is like into the interview. It's not first question. I go, Hey. I want to know two things first, like what are a couple of things your friends would say? They like people you've known and are friends with, like, what would they say about you? How would they describe you? And then next, what I'd love to know is, and we've all got people in our lives that for whatever reason, don't like us. Give me a couple of things that people who you've run across for whatever reason in your life would say they they don't like about you people that don't like you.

Unknown: 25:56

I'm ready. Hit me. Jeff, those aren't terrible questions. All right. But I'll give it a little but though, of course, there's there's a but to that, you know, those I thought you were going to ask, are gonna say, yeah, a hypothetical. Hey, what would you do in this situation? You know, that's a that's a favorite kind of question. Yeah. Not what someone would do. And what they'd actually do are two different things. And so, you know, asking, What would people in how would people in your life? Describe you can't have some value? Yeah, I'd say, can it be cautious? Because the way people act in their personal life, when they're not at work, can very often be different from how they show up at work. So I'm a bit more concerned of the opinions of those you worked with? So yeah, as I just mentioned, what do you think your managers would tell us about you? You can, like what would your coworkers like your peers tell us about you? How would they describe you? You know, some of those peers like using that same? The same kind of question, some of those peers that you haven't seen eye to eye with? How would they describe you? valuable? So I just tweak it a little bit, and maybe ask similar questions, but more focused on on them at work versus what they do on Friday night. But to be clear, you don't hate. They're not terrible. They're not terrible.

Jeff Winters: 27:19

They're not terrible. I love I'll go, hey, they're not terrible works. That's awesome. Glad you didn't trash my interview questions. That was really though, the only thing I had prepped that I really didn't want you to

Unknown: 27:30

know, Jeff, I've trashed interview questions before. Those are those stretch? Are those the worst questions I've heard before? I've heard some terrible ones.

Jeff Winters: 27:40

All right, give me some bad ones come

Unknown: 27:41

on. How about this? Not? So what's a question? But you sit down? And the interviewer says, So tell me about yourself? Like, you know, from candidates, they go, like, what do you want to know? Like, you know, like, what do you want to know, the other thing is, a lot of candidates are going to have a canned answer to that, you know, that connects with your website and whatnot. So you're gonna have, you're gonna have a really prepared answer to that. The question that I find, well, one of our clients, we're talking about this, we're talking about interview guides, and it's their core value, and helping them create some really good questions. Because, you know, the client said, if we don't create the questions, yeah, one of our core values is hungry. Yeah. He said, I know what people are gonna ask, and they're gonna ask How hungry are you? You know, and so it's like that. You we can come up with all kinds of jokes on that. But you know, but it's like, you. Leadership is really important to us. How do you define leadership? I mean, worthless, like, nearly literally worthless. It's it just so, you know, it's really like, what did you do? Who did you do it with? What environment? Did you do it in? Yeah, hypothetical questions aren't very valuable. You know, saying, Hey, we're interested in this, you know, are you good at it? Who's gonna say no to that? You know, it's these questions that rule us, you know, and hence, the title of the book will prove hiring. You know, it's very, very purposeful, that that's the, the title,

Jeff Winters: 29:31

haha. And here, I was trying to think about why and now I get it, not because we're being fooled. I, is it easier to get fooled over zoom interviews?

Unknown: 29:44

Maybe a little bit, Jeff. Yeah. But just a little bit. In and I would say it more in the traditional way that we interview the, you know, unstructured, you know, just sort of telling me about yourself kind of interviews yet probably, you know, when we're talking about our interview methodology, where it's chronological and in depth and structured. We're getting that person's full story in a are we maybe missing a little bit of the body language? Yes. Yeah, there's a there's a, a book. I'm sure there are probably tons of these books out there. The one I'm thinking about though, is it's an oldie but a goodie. The title is what every body is saying by a guy named Joe Navarro, former FBI profiler, and when I make it, so there's some interesting things in there. One of them is the direction of someone's legs and feet. Because apparently we can control our upper body language much better than we can control our lower body language. So think about your, you know, your eight year old son, and Great Aunt Millie. And so you go over to visit Great Aunt Millie, you're like, Hey, give Great Aunt Millie a hug. Yeah, you can see the body language, the body is like this, the legs are pointed to the to the door like kid wants to get out of there. You know? Because Emily maybe smells like old Amelie does. And so, yeah, but so they might miss that, because obviously, you can't see from the waist down when you're on on a zoom interview. So we might miss just a little bit, you know, we can't make quite as much. We can't arrive at the same kind of conclusions about eye contact, you know, because it just so those are some of the things, but I think people try too hard to, to interpret eye contact to say, ah, you know, when, you know, I asked that question, you know, she didn't look me in the eye when she answered, ah, what's the meaning there? You know, it's just, we do put a lot into it. So yeah, misses a little bit. But I do you know, even pre COVID I did, I'd say, give or take 75% of the top grading interviews via zoom out. One One caveat to that is hiring manager tended to be in the room with the candidate. And I was there via video, and it seemed to work pretty well. So you know that? Yes. Now, with that being said, I probably wouldn't I seriously, but I try not to hire someone without meeting them in person. Oh, that's a good tip. Even if it's a remote role. Yeah. Think about meeting that person, in person, at least once somewhere along the way, in a little Little Live FaceTime with them, like real in person, FaceTime, can be really valuable.

Jeff Winters: 32:36

I have an eight year old son. And so when you said your eight year old son and your aunt, I was like a few say, Laurie, this guy is going to be done incredible research. But you said Milly and dad is? I have no Amelie. So you're off the hook on the incredible research, I suppose. Um, all right. Ah, meet people in person wants, I think that's really good. Spend the money, right? Spend the money, fly him in, meet them.

Unknown: 33:02

I mean, in the when we whenever we get pushed back on, you know, it's going to take a little more time, you know, it's going to be a little more expensive to buy the plane ticket and bring the person in this, think about the benefit, you know, the benefit is we increase the probability of avoiding a hiring mistake. And so we reduce the probability of that person not being an A player, how much does it cost? If that person turns out to be a B, or especially a C player, it's going to cost you a heck of a lot more than a couple of hours, or a couple $1,000 You know, whatever, that whatever that total is. So you know, we don't want to be penny wise and pound foolish, which happens really often hiring I found completely agree.

Jeff Winters: 33:53

Oh, that's interesting. And in good thoughts.

Unknown: 33:58

Question for you

Jeff Winters: 34:00

around the interview process. Do you? Do you like when the the first interviews done by HR and then the next one is done by the hiring, like, what's the right orchestration for HR hiring manager? Higher ups? What do you what do you recommend?

Unknown: 34:15

Yeah, depends on the size of the company. Of course, you know, do you have HR Do you have a recruiter or somebody in talent acquisition, let's say though, little bigger company, there is an actual recruiter who is different from the head of HR, just for this example. Ideal cadence would be recruiter does the initial screening interview. Then, the the first more in depth interview is a culture fit interview, executed by HR, you know, and that HR person really does almost all if not all of those culture fit interview so they can get really good at it. And then the next interview is an experience or technical skills interview, executed by the hiring manager. And for those who you deem finalist candidates, hiring manager and HR together, execute the top grading interview, which is that longer interview that gets the candidates full story, so chronological in depth and structured that might last, you know, 90 minutes for an individual contributor. Yeah, several hours for a leadership candidate.

Jeff Winters: 35:23

You do this two part question. Do you do the top grading interview with everybody irrespective of what the position is how much it pays? That's question one. And then question two. Do you do a second top grading interview for internal candidates? So Jeff, when

Unknown: 35:40

you say a second top grading interview for internal kit, what do you mean by a second top grading interview?

Jeff Winters: 35:45

Do you do another 90 minute interview? If you're doing a promo, so let's say I've, I've hired you, Chris. Yup. Two years later, you're up for a VP title. Yeah, why do another 90

Unknown: 35:58

answers? Maybe? It really is, is maybe and again, it almost certainly depends on the size of the organization, you know, because, you know, we're in this situation right now. So I'm an internal candidate. And this is this is me, assessing leadership candidates for a client. So I interviewed this candidate, last May, for for a role, and someone else ended up getting it. And so is now up for a different role. We're not going to do a full top grading interview again, you know, because we spent three hours doing that nine months ago, are going to spend, though, an hour to 90, we have 90 minutes scheduled is probably going to take about an hour to do a mini top grading interview on what has happened over the past year to 18 months. So yeah, it's kind of using the judgment there. How long ago was the top grading interview done? If it was, you know, less than two years ago? What's probably required, there is more of a what's happened since? Yeah, what has happened since you got here versus another full interview, you know, if clients say, hey, we want to do the full interview, you know, when that internal candidate may be moving to a different area, where that hiring manager is completely unaware of them, it may be worth doing another interview. So just depends on the situation. There could be Yes, could be no. What was the first part of the question?

Jeff Winters: 37:31

Yeah, the first part of the question was, do you do that whole process, that full top grading interview, irrespective of what the role is, how much it pays how senior it is?

Unknown: 37:40

And I'll say, sort of, and with entry level candidates, do we do a top grading interview? Yes. However, it's a 45 minute top grading interview. And so how do we compress that? Believe it or not, we still ask those few questions about high school. And then for any earlier jobs, we just get the timeline, you know, spend five or six minutes just understanding where they worked and what they were responsible for. And then when we get to the most recent three jobs they had, we slow down and get a little bit deeper. And so that equals about a 45 minute interview. And, you know, for those entry level candidates, we don't need as many screening interviews very often it's just, you know, quick screening interview with recruiter, and then right to the 45 minute or so top grading interview, so we can shorten it up principal stay the same, but executed in an abbreviated fashion.

Jeff Winters: 38:32

Chris, I gotta ask, you said it twice. So what do you want to know about me from high school? So

Unknown: 38:39

what did you do other than not to trivialize it, but other than just go to class? What were you involved in?

Jeff Winters: 38:45

Oh, you want to know my extracurriculars? Yeah, that

Unknown: 38:48

in any part time or summer work? You did? Oh, work? And what are we looking for there? I don't know. Not quite sure. And so what do I mean by that? Not quite sure. Until we hear the rest of the story. Oh, I got oh, you know, we want to get a feel want to get a feel? You know, and the questions that we asked about high school, we understand sort of the details there, or just in general, or some of the high points and low points for you during your high school years, you know, thinking back to those years, who are some influential people, and how are they influential? Yeah. And then what were your thoughts toward the end of high school about what to do next? And what actually happened next? So spend five, six minutes talking about those things. Why do we start in high school? One reason is, I don't know if we think everybody, everybody went to high school, for the most part. Yeah, most of us went to high school, at least for a little while. And most of the interviewers went to high school as well. So we have a common starting point. And so we can get the interview rolling in a smoother fashion. It also gives you the opportunity to connect with your candidate, because you do know about the high school experience. And if you didn't play the, you know, the bass drum in the band, you know, somebody who did you know, if you didn't, if you weren't on a debate team, you know, somebody who was, and you can connect with that. So what is also interesting is at the end of a top grading interview, I can always connect who that person is today, with what they told me about themselves in high school. Really, yeah, they're similar, like we are all similar to who we were in high school. And we're, of course, all different. So we need to know the rest of the story to know what stayed the same and what has changed. You can always connect back though and what happens then is being able to connect, you can then be much more confident in the trajectory of some of those patterns of behavior.

Jeff Winters: 40:38

I'm thinking and I bet people listening and watching all they're thinking is, I don't think I am who I was in high school, but now I'm nervous.

Unknown: 40:48

You know, and if you were smoking, I was

Jeff Winters: 40:50

cool. I wasn't, I can tell what you're thinking this guy was really cool and probably played. No, I was not and I didn't.

Unknown: 40:56

But Jeff, that's part of the story, though. And that's part of the evolution. You know, if you were definitely if you were not cool in high school, I was No, you're obviously much cooler. Now, if you weren't cool that Yeah. How did you get there? Like what happened? You know, did you do it on your own? Was it because you got fired? And that was an inflection point, you changed your, you know, did you fail out of your first semester in college? Like, what are those things mean? I don't know, until we have the rest of the story. But those things are meaningful, you know, and then knowing the rest of the story, we can determine how they're meaningful. Ah,

Jeff Winters: 41:34

I'm totally I can't wait to do this. I'm, it's I'm going to go find someone to interview to run this process. Because what's gonna happen is, rather than the shitty interview I was doing before, we just had this discussion, I'm going to learn everything about somebody and things just jump out at you, right? Like, Hey, Jeff wrote for the news, I've been dying to can now I'm just dying to tell him my story. So he can say, look at your narrative arc. So yeah, Jeff wrote for the newspaper, you know, it was, you know, studying a lot, and this and that. And now, you know, he's here or whatever. And I can totally understand this arc and why things happened. And he didn't say any crazy shit. I think that's a big part of this. Like, at some point, you're giving people the opportunity to say some crazy shit about themselves and DQ themselves if they want, right, I mean, that is part of this.

Unknown: 42:22

And it is and you know, and in this interview format. Again, it's not we're not working to be manipulative, but just the format of telling your story and knowing you're going to have the opportunity to tell. And like it being weird. You know, if you don't tell us about that job you had for nine months, where you got fired, even though it's not on your resume, the story isn't going to make sense. And you'd really have to make some stuff up to glance to gloss over that. They just, if it's part of the story, they just tell it, for the most part. And so yeah, it's just, you know, and in a much more positive light versus like catching somebody trying to hide things. Because, yes, that is certainly part of it. But for most candidates, it just gives them the opportunity to tell you everything. Because you know, the traditional way we interview, if you do have someone who has really consistently been an A player, like all of their accomplishments are going to take more than 30 minutes to talk through. You know, and so thinking about that shorter interview, if you do have someone who has a lot of accomplishments, they need to pick and choose what the what highlights are going to tell you about. And so you don't get the full story that way. So whether it's good, bad or otherwise, we get the person's full story. And let's say you do hire them knowing their full story, their full, full history, we've gotten this feedback from clients, they say, You know what, using the top Gurney interview, when someone starts it's not as though we don't know them. It's as though we've been working with them for three to six months, because we have that foundation of a relationship built. Because we know their story and how they got to where they are today. You know, we can much more quickly just get into it and get into the work.

Jeff Winters: 44:11

Really good. So I feel like we've talked a lot about the top grading interview, which is great. I love it. What else? Anything else from the book on bulletproof? I got some, like other tangential questions, non hiring related, but anything else for the book you want to highlight as like, hey, I really want to make sure we talk about this with your audience.

Unknown: 44:32

Yeah. And so in talking about this, the new interview job scorecard. Some of these things, take a little bit of practice, you know, so, you know, saying, Do this top grading interview, you know, it's like saying, hey, golf, all you have to do is put that little white ball in the hole. Yeah, there's not a whole lot more to it than that. And it takes practice, you're not going to walk onto the Masters because you have a new set of pings, you know, and and in be competitive, so it takes it takes practice to do that. And when we know that, you know, and yes, we have clients who really work hard to get great at these top grading interviews. So we also have slopey software that fixes a bunch of the actually three of the biggest five biggest hiring problems without a whole lot of effort and, you know, without having to do a whole lot of practice. We call it the pre screened snapshot. And it's actually it's a component of the of the book and foolproof hiring. So we wrote foolproof hiring not to necessarily make people experts. We don't expect that what we're, it's more like a field manual. So you know, like first aid field manual, whatever metaphor you'd like to use or analogy you like to use, it's to, to help hire better, fast, without a ton of effort. And so, you know, we encourage people to check that out. You know, think about how you're screening, because if you are reading resumes to screen, you're reading a person sales brochure, and then trying to figure out if they're going to be a good fit. So it's their highlight reel. And it's that's a really inexact science reading the resumes so you know, the the prescreened snapshot takes a lot of that variability out. Great value a very cool, what is what are the five biggest mistakes, don't know exactly who we're looking for. So we have to find a player. And not only that, the whoever's involved in hiring, we don't all agree on the definition of a player. So we all have a little different picture hard to hit a target that you don't know that you haven't described. Then, the next day, the next problem is screening, mainly from resumes, because it is that person sales brochure, there's lots of help to write resumes, there's no law that says they have to be complete and accurate. And there's a bunch of research done. It's just a component of the book to a section of the book. A lot of people lie on the resume. Yeah. And liars, they're liars, attacking percentage, you know, and so you can't rely on that. So that's our problem, we need a better, more effective way to screen, then it is candidate openness and transparency. There's not enough, you know, they're trying to keep weaker areas quiet or whatnot, you know, and so we just don't get the full story, then it's the shallow interviews. Lastly, it's we don't verify what we've heard throughout the hiring process. So what's the solution? There, we talked about a bit, it's reference costs, you know, talking to managers they reported to, so we can verify what we've what we've heard, yes, companies do background checks and such. But, you know, we don't get verification for what they did, and how they did it, when they are in that in that role. So you need to know who you're looking for, we need a way to get all applicants just to be a bit more open and transparent. Now, what's also important is, you as the hiring manager in the company need to be open and transparent as well. Because a lot of companies are just as tight lipped about all of the challenges this person is going to face until they get there. And then they're and then they're surprised. So that's a two way street, the openness and transparency. We need to do interviews that are revealing, and then we need to verify what we've heard. Who should do the reference checks? Somebody who executed the top grading interview?

Jeff Winters: 48:40

So I so in your ideal system, that's HR and hiring manager, so either HR or hiring manager does recipe reference checks, correct? Yep.

Unknown: 48:50

And so and and if there's a choice between those two, we'd favorite hiring manager, believe it or not. So what So let's start off with why it has to be a top grading interviewer. It's because that person heard the story about that job. So they are much better equipped to talk to that manager about that job because they know about it. And then why would we favor a hiring manager over HR? It's because the hiring manager automatically has a better connection, for the most part, better connection with that former manager, just because it's potential manager and former manager kind of at more of a peer level than an HR is sometimes considered.

Jeff Winters: 49:32

Alright, I'm going to try to redeem myself for my interview questions which you didn't like, but you said were, quote, not terrible, which isn't, which isn't a huge compliment.

Unknown: 49:41

I think that's a backhanded compliment. Right?

Jeff Winters: 49:44

That is in the perhaps in the hiring world. That is how you might refer to it. You're the expert, not I. So here is my reference check question. And I want you to be as harsh on it. As you were on my other question. Look, Chris, we've been we've been interviewing Sally and look, she's she's probably she's looking really good for the position. If she were to start. How would you guide me to coach her to be better in some areas of

Unknown: 50:13

opportunity? So Jeff, either you're pulling my leg and you did actually read the book, or you just came up with a great question. That is actually the last. We recommend asking in a reference column. So yeah, seriously, excellent question. Excellent question. Yes. Oh, man,

Jeff Winters: 50:35

I feel like I've really redeemed myself. Yes. I'm not sure I didn't make that up. Quite sure I did.

Unknown: 50:42

It's a good one. And, and an excellent way to, you know, in a disarming way, maybe get, you know, some other developmental areas out on the table? Oh, I've

Jeff Winters: 50:55

gotten some good answers to that. That really is a very real, you know? Yeah, I don't want to say, but I've gotten some revealing not so good answers. Okay. All right. I have another question. So looking back at the scorecard. Do you have clients where they have super high performers that are not, whether you call it a values fit, playing well with others or whatever? Like, it's that, you know, I'm reflecting on like, the hard thing about hard things, the book, they call it the the asshole or I forget what it is. But like that person, you've seen this, talk with me? What do you coach clients to do in these situations?

Unknown: 51:28

You know, some, some, some refer to those people as toxic A players. I'm a little reluctant to even refer to them as a players at all. Because, you know, when you look at the bigger picture, yeah. What, what are the ramifications of that person being a jerk? And very often it is, yes, that person is a super high performer, but at the expense of the performance of a lot of other members on the team. And we have, you know, I'm going to go back to sales, because it is, that's a pretty, it's pretty stereotypic. situation, lots of not last, some clients have fired their best salesperson, because they were not a good culture fit, disruptive to others. And what happened is, they're actually the overall sales increased when that person left, because the rest of the team blossomed, and they reached their full potential. So yeah, it really need to think about what the negative ramifications are, and what the positive consequences may be. If that person is not around, I mean, for sure, without question, give them feedback. And clearly communicate the behavioral expectations. So and you also may lay out some consequences, maybe not in the first conversation, but hold them accountable for exhibiting your core values. And if they don't, you know, have the have the make the hard decision.

Jeff Winters: 53:05

Do you do you think we're done given your global view on hiring? I'm just curious, your thoughts on you think we're done with like the benefits, like arms race, like you gotta have the DJ in the coffee shop below and the nap pods? Like that was going bananas for a little while? Are we done with that? And if so, what are the benefits that really, really matter?

Unknown: 53:25

Yeah, I don't know that we're necessarily done with it. But I certainly don't hear about, you know, beer fridges and picking up your dry cleaning, or whatever it may be the way we used to, you know, or have getting a Jeep Wrangler as a signing bonus, if those things that

Jeff Winters: 53:43

did somebody do that

Unknown: 53:45

I could be making, I could be making it up. But you know, back in the late 90s, I can almost certainly, I think I heard about some of those things, who did it, I can't I don't know who exactly did that. But you know, there was a talent or in Silicon Valley. And you know, somebody could go, you know, just from down the street and make a whole bunch more money or get a Jeep or whatever it was,

Jeff Winters: 54:08

if you're offering the Jeep to me to work for you, Chris, I am, I am out the door, I will be in your interview process, I will talk about my high school journey, I will do whatever you want, if I get a Wrangler,

Unknown: 54:20

and that's a little bit different, that's more of a signing bonus than it is a benefit. But the whacky benefits, you know, are sort of the over the top benefits, they're becoming less, there's less prevalent, because it's not really what matters to to employees, you know, or to team members or whatever, they're however you're referring to them, you know, what matters is, it doesn't have to be top of the pay scale pay. But PE needs to be competitive, you know, and why does PE need to be competitive, because if it isn't, somebody is going to offer them a lot more to leave. And so we don't want we don't want to lose our best people. The other thing, you need to be sure that they're reporting to a competent manager, you know, somebody who is not an a hole, you know, someone who is thinking about their development. So lots of people have aspirations to rise in the company. And so we need to address that, you know, help them achieve their career goals, give them feedback, etc. So that that's really important. And the overall organization culture can't be toxic. You know, it doesn't Have to be rainbows and unicorns all the time, but it can't be toxic. So, yeah, the manager, pay some career development and career pathing you know, some light at the end of the tunnel, maybe for working really hard for a couple of years. Those are the things that matter, and, and some meaningful work to do. And you might say I, you know, all we do is, you know, make nuts and bolts. How is that meaningful? Well, what are the nuts and bolts hold together? Like what? So just thinking about a bit more deeper meaning than, than shareholder value? I know, that's terrible to say, and maybe a little blasphemous. And yes, we do need to make money to stay in business and have money to grow, etc. So yeah, that is that's a component but the making the work a little more meaningful. And a little bit deeper meaning for coming into work every day is also important. All things that are achievable. All right. That was awesome, man.

Jeff Winters: 56:44

Thank you. Thanks for doing that.

Unknown: 56:46

My pleasure. My pleasure. Anytime. You let me talk about top grading for an hour. That's a fun hour for me.

Jeff Winters: 56:54

Dude, that was a super fun hour for me. That was That was awesome. And I think our audience is gonna get a ton out of it. Seriously.

Unknown: 57:00

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