The best people to hire are those who want to learn as well as earn.
Last week I was asked to have a coaching session with an underperforming employee of a business client.
Over several years, I have conducted many of these coaching sessions for staff of clients and a common excuse for underperformance is “they don’t give me enough support”. The client has given them the time off to come and see me and is paying me. This leads me to ask a few questions about the employee’s commitment to their role and themselves.
Hiring staff is a time consuming and costly process. Brian Tracy said once that the best performance you get from an employee is at the job interview. When you hire the best people that is not true. The best people want to learn and grow. There are many people I have hired who have later left to take up a better opportunity somewhere else because we had nowhere to promote them too.
When you use an expert recruiter for a position, they send you a short list of candidates for interview who they believe have the skills, experience and temperament to adequately perform the role in the position description you supplied. The effectiveness of the interview you have with candidates depends on the questions you ask, and the outcome depends on the answers you get.
Some of the questions I might ask are:
- What was the last work course you were on and what did you learn?
- What was the last work book or program you took that YOU paid for?
- What was the last non-fiction book you read?
- What did you get out of it?
- What TED Talks do you watch?
- What do you listen to in your car when you are driving? (Or traveling on public transport)?
Spaced out in an interview these questions can lead to a conclusion. In the instance above I asked the question:
“Why do you expect someone else to invest in you when you won’t invest in yourself?”. He looked at me and said “I’m not taking any responsibility, am I?”
These types of questions are useful at performance reviews also.
If you have good questions that you use share them with me.
You can contact me here.