Are you ready to hire?
How many times have you made that mistake where the person you hired didn’t work out?
I have 11 questions that are going to bring out the true character in your next hire so that next time you’ll know if the person is right for you.
I’m Ron Ramsden, I am a DYB coach, also a painting contractor up here in northern Massachusetts.
The reason I tell you that is, I live it every day.
Let’s go over the 11 questions, we are going to break this up into two videos just to let you know ahead of time, this is video 1.
We’ll go through the first 6 questions right now and then we’ll add the next 5 questions in the next video.
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Also, here’s a free download of these 11 Interview Questions for Hiring an All-Star, so if you don’t want to write them down, that’s perfectly fine.
You need to do this interview in person, so you can read their actions, you can read their facial expressions, and you can pull more out of it with additional questions.
We are going to sit down over a cup of coffee, you are not asking them whether they are good on a 24-foot ladder, that’s for another time.
What we are looking for, is to hire that person who is going to fit in with our team.
Maybe it’s your first hire, you want that first person who is there more for the 8 to 4:30 with their half-hour lunch.
You want someone who is going to grow with you, who is willing to learn, who is going to be challenged, who is going to bring ideas to the table.
You are looking not just to have a warm body, holding a paintbrush, but someone that can build character and if you hire enough of these people, you will be able to step away from the business.
So, let’s build character, let’s build the business, let’s not just have warm bodies holding paint brushes.
Question 1: Tell me about a time when a job/project went badly?
We’ve all had jobs go poorly.
We may have painted the rooms the wrong colors, we’ve actually painted the wrong rooms in a house.
They may say something like, “well, I was painting the trim in the house and I grab a kind of oil and I didn’t know I was supposed to put oil over latex.”
Or, when talking about a situation when something went wrong, if they say, “I didn’t do anything wrong,” and they point the blame to someone else, that’s a huge red flag.
You want to see if they take ownership of the problem and if they fixed it or at least say they accepted the blame and said, “l really messed up, I dropped a gallon of paint on someone’s driveway then it took me all afternoon to clean it up, the boss was a little upset, I’ll never do that again.”
Maybe they’ll tell you how they corrected it and what they do now, but it’s great for humility.
Question 2: Describe a time when you did not perform to your abilities.
I had this happen to me, where I was getting to a job site and it didn’t seem like things were going so well.
It turned out that there was too much partying the night before with a couple other guys, they got to the job site late, and they were working at a snail’s pace.
Maybe they decided at that point that this is the example they gave you, then they may say, “we stayed a couple of hours later and I fixed it.”
This is humility and ownership, you are looking for that as a character.
Question 3: Tell me when you went above and beyond what was required of you.
When you ask these questions, just stop, if they are not saying anything, just wait, they are eventually scared to say something, just wait.
So, above and beyond, we want to look for them to bring up an example and then draw that out of them.
We’re looking for a great way that they went above and beyond on their job sites.
Maybe, “the dog had to go out and the homeowner wasn’t home, so I took a piece of rope from the van and I made a leash.” or “I got to the site and the dog had made a mess so I cleaned it up.”
That’s just the dog as an example, or you know, “we were doing this and we noticed something else needed to be touched up, we were ahead of schedule, so we did that.”
I have actually had painters bring the homeowner flowers because the homeowner had flowers in the yard or bought them some vegetables because they had a lot of leftovers.
Those are the little things that really show true character, actually, you hope someone would treat you this way.
Question 4: What is the top lesson you have learned in life so far?
Don’t rack up debt, work hard, head to the grindstone, nose to the grindstone, those are the things, you want to listen for.
Also look for insights, you want to see how they present themselves when you ask these questions.
Debt is a huge thing for a lot of people and I like to hear financially how they are doing, if they are struggling.
Then we just have to pull a few things out of them from there.
Question 5: What is the biggest misconception others have of you?
Sometimes you would hear them say, “I’m really quiet but I know what I am doing and I want to be a leader, I want to be a crew leader,” but he is quiet, so they doubt themselves, thinking, “I could never do that.”
At one point we had a couple of languages being spoken on the job site and one guy never said anything but he could actually speak the other language, so he knew what the guys were talking about the whole time.
or one of the guys said that he was dyslexic and he couldn’t always read things well.
He’d actually take pictures of the product and send it over to his wife and his wife would tell him what it was.
These are little misconceptions that people don’t know about each other; but if they bring it up and they are willing to share that with you, it opens your eyes up.
Question 6: Tell me about the best boss you’ve ever.
By asking this question, you get insights of what really motivates them, it touches their touchpoints, maybe it’s, “oh, my boss, he was great, every Friday afternoon he brought pizza.”
Or, “anytime it was hot, he let us take off early and he paid us,” or, “my boss let me take some other classes, I told them I would really like to do some spray classes, he found some for me and he offered to pay me for it.”
This means they’re really into learning and growing.
If they say, “they are all jerks, all he did was keep pushing us and pushing us,” that is probably not a good character trait that you are looking to hire.
For me, this really pushes a lot of buttons and it really shows me what’s going to motivate them in the future if we do decide to hire them.
Those are the first 6 questions of our 11 Questions for Hiring an All-Star like I said, there will be a free download for the complete 11 questions.
We will have the other 5 questions in the next video, if you need to get in touch with me feel free to email ron@dybcoach.com, you can also leave a message here, add me on Facebook as many of you have.
I am a coach for DYB, I am also a painting contractor up here in northern Massachusetts, I help painters work on their business, so they don’t have to work in the business.
Click here for questions 7-11!
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