Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How To Interview Prospects Better with Anna Papalia

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How To Interview Prospects Better with Anna Papalia · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  3, 2, 1, 0, ignition.
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  Lift off.
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  Ending small business failure.
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  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with the number 1 small business expert, Melinda
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  Emerson.
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  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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  you need succeed and live the life you dream of.
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  Now here's your host, the small Biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
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  Have you subscribed to the small bizchett podcast?
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  Well, it's time every Wednesday we offer listeners bite sized actionable tips to start
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  and grow a successful small business.
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  And just 20 minutes or so a week you can get a ton of insight and resources to propel your
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  business forward.
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  Be sure to subscribe to the small beachhead podcast today.
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  Hi, everybody.
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  We're you're watching the small biz chat podcasts, and I'm so excited you're with us.
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  Now it's time for all of us to learn about the new science of interviewing.
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  My guest is Anna Papalea, and she is an HR expert with over 1,500,000 followers across her
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  social media platforms She is the author of the new book, Interviewology, the new science of
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  interviewing, and she is consulted with Fortune 100 Companies Tanya Temple University and
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  coached over 10,000 clients to interview better her groundbreaking discovery of interview
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  styles revolutionized the way we teach and under Dan interviewing.
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  She's also a public speaker at the society for human resource management.
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  For more information, You can go to the interviewology.com, and a welcome to the small
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  base chat podcast.
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  Thanks, Melinda.
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  It's nice to be here.
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  Oh my gosh.
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  So so tell me, how did you become this HR czarina of of interviewing skills?
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  Like, how did you come that?
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  Well, I you know, like most people sort of stumbled into it.
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  I went to a school for psychology, and I really thought that I was gonna become a a
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  psychiatrist or psychologist or a therapist, and I had an internship and I realized very
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  quickly that I hated that.
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  I quickly made a little detour, and I thought, well, I really like organizational development,
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  and I I really was always fascinated in work.
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  So I had another internship in human resources.
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  And I I liked it better than my previous internship, and I started right out of college
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  as an HR generalist.
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  But I was really bad at it, really, really bad at it.
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  Probably should have been fired.
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  I was making lots of mistakes.
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  And luckily, One of the corporate recruiters literally dumped a pile of resumes on my desk
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  and said, I'm just too busy.
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  Can you help me call these people?
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  And I thought to myself, they're gonna pay me to talk to people on the phone.
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  Yes.
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  Please.
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  I'll do that.
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  And it was truly love at first sight I immediately, switched into a recruiting role
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  where I was promoted several times.
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  And then I realized if I really wanted to learn how to recruit I'd have to become a contingency
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  recruiter, which I did.
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  And then I was recruited to become a director of talent acquisition for an organization And
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  in that role, I recruited everyone from mail clerks to executive vice presidents.
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  I built an intern program that the company is still using to this day.
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  I truly loved my job.
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  I I thought that it was the intersection of all the things I cared about organizational
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  development and partnering with hiring managers to find the right fit for their department.
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  And every hiring manager had different needs, and I loved it.
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  But I had this weird feeling.
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  I had this I was unfulfilled.
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  I wasn't totally content.
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  And I went to the president and I said, I'm young.
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  I don't have kids yet.
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  I have a little money saved.
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  I I wanna start a business, and I wanna teach people how to interview.
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  And like almost Emerson, he thought I was completely crazy.
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  Like, that's not a business, but I just knew that there was no other place for me in that
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  organization.
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  I could've been working there to this day.
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  But I got out in 2011 left the corporate world and started doing just that teaching job
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  seekers and hiring managers how to interview better.
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  The Dean at Temple University where I had hired all of my interns, asked me, come on in.
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  Can you teach all of the students how to interview because you know what they're doing
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  right and wrong.
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  You were hiring them last year.
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  So for 12 years, I taught at Temple University, And in that time, I collected a lot of
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  research, and I interviewed thousands of people and helped thousands of students.
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  And I realized that the way that we teach people how to interview is is really
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  ineffective.
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  So I set out to make it better and kind of calling on my background in psychology and what
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  I went to school for, I thought, what if I could write a personality assessment that would
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  determine someone's interview style, and I could help people better.
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  And what I realized is we don't all interview the same way, and I discovered the 4 interview
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  styles.
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  And that gets me to to present day.
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  So talk to me about what is the major disconnect between interview performance and
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  who will actually be good at a job?
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  Well, first of all, the biggest disconnect is that we even believe the inter interview
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  performance has anything to do with someone's performance on the job.
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  We have to step back first.
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  And think that that we even believe that how someone interviews is a good correlation on how
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  they'll be in the job.
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  So first of all, in America, especially we conduct what are called social interviews, and
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  we have conversations with people to see if we like them, to click with them.
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  But most of the jobs that we're hiring for don't require those skills.
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  So there's a major disconnect.
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  Are we you know, if you are interviewing for an actuary, for example, or an accountant, does
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  that accountant need to like, you know, have all of these social skills that we emphasize in
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  an interview?
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  No.
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  So 1st and foremost, we need to get really clear on the type of interview that we're
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  having so we can then better understand, you know, is this going to be a good correlation,
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  right?
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  If you're interviewing a salesperson, for example, then sure.
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  You wanna see if they can connect if they're, you know, client facing, if they have strong
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  emotional skills.
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  Otherwise, some other jobs don't require those things that we often emphasize in interviews.
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  What about like, I'm a small business owner.
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  I'm really busy.
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  I need to hire 2 new salespeople.
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  You know, is this something I should consider outsourcing, or is this something that I should
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  actually
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  try to do myself?
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  Well, as a small business owner myself, I've owned is for 12 years.
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  That's that's personal.
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  Right?
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  It depends on how much money you're making.
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  It depends on your skill set, some of the best advice I got when I started my business was,
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  you know, the one of your first hires needs to be someone that that replaces you.
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  And then your second hire has to be someone that is a skill that you absolutely cannot do.
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  So I think you need to ask yourself some of those questions first.
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  And, you know, making hires for small business owners is really difficult because it's
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  expensive and it's a big risk.
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  And here's the the the piece of advice I give of all business owners.
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  If you're going to hire, you need to prepare.
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  And this is one of the problems that small business owners especially fall into.
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  They think that an interview is just a conversation and I'll feel it out.
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  That's never the way it happens.
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  An interview is not a conversation.
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  In fact, it should be treated like a test you should go in prepared with great interview
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  questions that you have created from the job description.
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  If you know really well, and this is something small business owners don't do.
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  They don't think deeply about what do I need this person to do?
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  They're just busy, and they need some help.
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  So they're just like, just just gonna hire someone that can help me, but then they get
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  into a problem because those people might not have any skills that are a good match to
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  whatever it is they need.
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  So the first step is always figuring it out, creating that job description from there,
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  writing great interview questions, and then treating each interview like a test, having a
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  structured interview, you're asking everyone the same questions, and then most importantly,
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  getting really familiar with your own personal biases.
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  And biases come from your preferences.
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  In my research, when I discovered that we all interview in one of four ways, you're either
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  charmour, challenger, examiner, or harmonizer, they all prioritize different things.
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  And we all think that everyone interviews like us, but that's the great first step in really
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  building your self awareness and understanding, oh, like, that's my bias.
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  Maybe I didn't like that person because they didn't connect or they didn't tell stories, or
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  they seemed really private and closed off.
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  That's just your bias because how someone interviews doesn't mean that they're not gonna
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  be great at the job.
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  It often just means that you you you may not like how someone interviews.
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  Doesn't mean you're not gonna they're not gonna be well qualified for the position.
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  Well, what other things should you be looking for as, you know, like, the tactics?
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  Right?
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  So you said I need to prepare you know, write a good job description.
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  I need to have great questions.
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  I need to ask everybody the same questions.
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  And you said I need to understand my biases, but what, you know, what does that like, how do
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  I do that?
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  Right?
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  How do I put that mirror up to my face?
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  Hey, Melinda.
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  What your issue.
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  Yeah.
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  Like, how do I do that?
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  In this in the course of being a small business trying to to fit figure that out.
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  Well, you can start by discovering your interview style.
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  You can go to my website, theinterviewology.com, and take our
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  scientifically valid interview style assessment.
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  And if you start there and you figure out what your interview style is, you'll better
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  understand what you prioritize and how you get someone to see you as qualified.
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  See, charmers wanna be liked in interviews, challengers want to be respected and heard,
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  examiners wanna get it right and harmonizers wanna fit in.
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  And those 4 different styles go about making an impression in a totally different way And from
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  that, your biases come.
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  So I think the first step is understanding your your unique interview style.
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  And then, obviously, I have a book coming out January 30th called Interviewology, the new
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  science of interviewing, where I outlined all 4 interview styles.
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  So if you get your own personal profile, you figure out who you are, And then from there,
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  you can start to understand how to do some people reading.
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  Right?
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  If you understand that, hey.
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  I'm a charmer in interviews, and I wanna be liked.
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  I wanna make connection, and I wanna tell stories.
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  And you get into an interview with someone who's really tough, and they're asking you a
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  bunch of questions.
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  You feel like you're in a firing squad, He'll be like, wait a minute, this person must be a
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  challenger in interviews, and they interview in a totally different way than me.
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  Doesn't mean that they don't like Melinda it doesn't mean that I'm pro unprepared.
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  It just means that our wires are getting crossed.
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  So those are some of the ways that I would prepare someone for the interview process.
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  Well, let's talk about interview tactics.
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  What are some good interview tactics to keep people from gaming the us.
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  I've certainly been got before where I interviewed somebody, and then they started
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  work for me.
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  And I'm like, this is not the person that I interviewed with.
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  Right?
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  So, How what kind of tactics can you use?
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  I've heard of people saying that you should interview them three different ways, like
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  written exam of phone interview and then an actual in person interview.
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  Do you agree with all
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  of that?
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  I think it's not about I think it's more about having rounds or phases where there are other
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  people involved.
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  I think so.
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  You can't just and this is hard for small business owners, maybe you're the only decision
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  maker, but recruit a mentor or someone else that can interview them, not with you, but it
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  by themselves.
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  Right?
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  So you can debrief afterwards because some of the hardest hiring decisions to make is when
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  you're doing it in a vacuum because making complex decisions about people, like who to
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  hire when you have an impression about them can be very difficult when you're alone.
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  You interviewed them.
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  You really liked them.
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  You have this job.
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  You need filled.
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  Like, you don't see the harm.
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  Right?
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  But if you had 2 other people that also interviewed them, and you could call them up
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  and say, well, what did you think?
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  What was your impression?
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  And before you recruit these people to interview with you and hopefully those people
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  work at your company and they're also managers, you would set out, you know, you would write
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  out what you want in this person these people would be your accountability partners.
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  It's really difficult to hire in a vacuum by yourself.
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  So this is my biggest piece of advice.
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  To make sure that you are getting different perspectives so you're not having to make this
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  decision alone.
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  So you're not a fan of panel interviews.
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  I take it.
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  No.
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  No.
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  Panel interviews are wonderful.
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  Yeah.
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  Absolutely.
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  If you have three or four people that are different.
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  Right?
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  I'm not a fan of an interview where it's 3 middle aged white guys.
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  No.
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  I'm not.
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  Like, we need diversity in the interview process us because we need a diversity of
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  perspectives.
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  So I want someone from HR.
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  I want someone from IT.
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  I want someone from marketing.
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  I want some from different perspectives throughout the organization, and everyone in
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  that panel interview has a role, has a responsibility, There's a note taker, there's a
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  timekeeper, and everyone's asking the same questions.
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  No panel interviews are great, or you can do them individually.
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  Panel interviews often save time, though.
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  Those four people are all available in that, you know, hour a half time frame.
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  Found it.
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  Now how do you feel about testing, like, disc profiles and Myers Briggs and that kind of
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  stuff?
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  Are you a fan of that?
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  Well, first of all, I don't
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  know if many people know this, but Myers Briggs is not scientifically accurate.
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  It's actually based on drunk science.
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  It's sort of a fun Cosmo quiz.
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  Disk.
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  I'm a huge fan of it's an excellent assessment, but you can't use these as pre employment
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  assessments.
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  It it, you know, you can use other pre employment assessments, especially if it's
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  geared toward the technical aptitude of the position.
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  Let's say you have your hiring for a coder or a software engineer or, you know, someone that
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  has a very specialized technical skill, you can give them a test on that technical skill.
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  That's absolutely legal and you should do that.
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  But we don't wanna test out using assessments, especially in a preemployment process because
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  some of them are rife with bias.
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  And I think disk is wonderful, but I think it's a great communication tool post hire and great
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  for organizations culturally, but not in a pre hire assessment.
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  Okay.
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  Alright.
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  What is the best business advice you've ever been given?
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  Well, I think it comes from my favorite business book ever, which is good to great,
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  which is In order to have a successful business, you don't have to do something wildly
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  unique.
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  You don't have to kill yourself and bend over backwards to think of something that, like, you
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  know, is so special or something.
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  All you have to figure out is what can you do better than anyone else?
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  What's your hedgehog concept?
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  What are you uniquely gifted to do?
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  And then show up every single day and do that.
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  You know, consistent discipline applied every single day creates remarkable results.
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  And I think a lot of people think that, like, luck just happens to some people or you know,
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  how amazing is it that they were so disciplined to stick with it?
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  I think the discipline actually grows the more that you do it, and some of the best advice I
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  ever got was it really actually doesn't matter how I feel.
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  I'm gonna do the things on my Melinda.
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  Right?
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  I live and die by my goals and my calendar.
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  So if I have to create 4 TikTok videos today, I'm creating that.
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  It doesn't matter how I feel.
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  It doesn't matter what's going on.
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  Consistent discipline applied every single day will create amazing results.
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  I love it.
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  I believe that as well.
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  Thank you so much, Anna, for being here and all of your great interview tips.
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  And with that, I wanna leave you with this.
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  You never lose in business Either you win or you learn.
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  God bless everybody.
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  Hey there, side hustlers and future business moguls Are you ready to up level your game?
• 17:16
  Get ready for the small bus lady university 1 day virtual startup boot camp on January 16th
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  starting at 1 PM Eastern.
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  It's where dreams take flight, ideas become reality, and coffee is gonna become your best
• 17:30
  friend.
• 17:31
  Join us for just $97@smallbizladyuniversity.comforward/ startup
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  boot camp.
• 17:38
  Get in the fun.
• 17:39
  Let's hustle.
• 17:46
  Thanks for listening podcast with Melinda Emerson.
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  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday for more
• 17:56
  fantastic information and interviews.
• 17:59
  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
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  website succeed as your own boss dotcom.
• 18:07
  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.