Searching For Signs of Your Next GREAT Hire

When interviewing we often get so focused on the interview questions and answers that we miss key signs that help us to determine who we should hire. And we don't want to hire just anyone. We want someone who will be a GREAT hire.

Here are five attributes I look for when interviewing a potential employee to be my next GREAT hire:

1. He smiles. If a person can't pull off a smile in an interview he either doesn't really want the job or smiling just doesn't come naturally to him.  If I'm hiring someone to work in a store I either want someone who is by nature a smiler or else is darn good at faking it.  While I'd love to have the genuine smiler, I'll take the faker.  You can always teach someone product knowledge and how to work the floor but you sure as heck can't teach him to smile.  Okay, maybe in theory you can teach someone to smile but I'm not sure how successful the lessons would be. I'd think twice before hiring anyone who didn't smile in an interview.

2. She makes eye contact. This may sound like a no-brainer but I've seen plenty of people get hired who couldn't maintain eye contact.  It is important to distinguish between making eye contact and maintaining it.  I'll never forget the time I interviewed this poor woman who, every time we made eye contact, quickly turned her eyes to the same spot behind me.  I wasn't sure if I was about to be attacked and she was trying to warn me or if she found me incredibly repulsive.  I'd like to think the first one is more likely than the second one but I know that neither was the case.  This poor woman just couldn't maintain eye contact.  In most retail stores that's a pretty important key to success.  I'm not sure this woman had picked the right career path.

3. He's done his homework. The people you interview are looking for a job but the person you want to hire is the person who wants to work for your company.  You can easily differentiate between the two by asking your interviewee what he knows about the company.  Whenever we opened new stores at Bose we inevitably got someone who thought we sold office machines.  Obviously they had mistaken us for Pitney Bowes.  With all of the information available on the web there's no excuse for an applicant to not know something about your company beyond just what you sell. 

4. She asks for the job. The employees who turned out to be the best salespeople made their first sale in the interview.  Even if they had no sales experience they naturally interviewed me with questions about the company, the position, the team, etc. and then used that information to ask for the job.  I've also had some slick applicants who have had a ton of sales training and asked for the job in a way that made you feel like you were buying a car from them.  Needless to say I passed on them.

5. He doesn't say, "I'm a people person."  I'd be a rich man if I had a dollar every time I have heard that line in an interview.  You get points in my book for not using that stupid and tired line but if the applicant does use it he has to at least back it up.  Unfortunately when you press people on it they all too often respond with "I like being around people." 

What I want to hear instead are comments like "I like working on a team" or "I like to build long-term relationships with customers".  I want substance, not fluff! If you can back up being a people person, then you might pass go and collect $200.  If you can't deliver that substance I push the reject button and you end up on the pile of other "people persons." Just once I wish someone would say, "I'm not a people person. As a matter of fact I'm an anti-social loner who loves watching television and playing videos games alone but I have learned how to handle being around other people for eight hours with a smile on my face and the desire to sell them in my heart."  Now that person I would hire!

So let me ask, are you looking for and finding these attributes in the people you're interviewing?

Comments

You make a great point Doug. More than once I've hired someone and a month later I wondered what I saw in them. I'm thinking I didn't see anything because I wasn't looking. Thanks for the tip.