November 14, 2023 • 31 mins
Resources shared in today's episode:
Check out theunicornbook.com to get your copy of Be The Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders From the Rest
Find hundreds of free job search resources at Vanderbloemen.com
Ready to uncover the habits of the best job candidates? We sat down with industry veteran William Vanderbloemen to dig into the insights he’s gathered from his diverse career path and extensive interviewing experiences. From his start as a pastor to working with a Fortune 200 firm and launching his own company, Vanderbloemen has conducted over 30,000 face-to-face interviews! His fascinating journey has allowed him to keenly observe the common habits of standout candidates—which he's ready to share.
Astonishingly, the most successful candidates all share a common trait: high responsiveness. Vanderbloemen sheds light on how such a seemingly simple habit can make you stand out in a crowded job market. We'll also tackle the often-dreaded interview question: "Tell me about yourself." You might be surprised how a dash of self-awareness and a little prep work can transform your answer from mundane to memorable.
As we wrap up, Vanderbloemen shares his unique method for kickstarting conversations at the end of an interview, and introduces us to his data-driven book. But that's not all! He devised a self-assessment tool that can help you identify your three best habits from a list of twelve. This innovative tool might just be the game-changer you need to uncover your blind spots and understand how you're perceived by others. Tune in and let's crack the code of successful interviews together!
Don’t spend any more time searching through articles, lists, or websites.
Check out Equipped Essentials for your all-in-one, 35-page digital book that offers examples, tips, memory hooks, and easy to follow advice.
Don’t spend any more time searching through articles, lists, or websites.
Check out Equipped Essentials for your all-in-one, 35-page digital book that offers examples, tips, memory hooks, and easy to follow advice.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Vanderbloemen (00:00):
in this last year and a half really,
when the pandemic shut the worlddown, we had some time to work
on some research.
It was growing every year andwe were able to say you know,
we've now conducted 30,000face-to-face interviews.
I wonder if we could figure outwho the best candidates we've
ever interviewed are.
And we were able to do thatLike did they get the job?
(00:20):
Did they stay in it?
Joshua Tinkey (00:37):
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Equipped
Interview Podcast.
With a combined 30 plus yearsof being interviewed and
interviewing thousands of others, we're here to build your
confidence, help you stand outand get your dream job.
Your hosts are Joshua Tinkeyand Linda Commale.
Let's get you equipped Allright.
Well, for today we have anotherguest and I'm excited to
introduce you to WilliamVanderbloemen, and I could share
(01:01):
a little bit about him, but youknow, I think it's always best
to have everyone introduce himor herself.
So today we have an expert inthe industry in a few different
ways, but William, first of all,welcome.
William Vanderbloemen (01:13):
Thanks so much, man.
I appreciate you the chance tobe on here.
Joshua Tinkey (01:16):
Absolutely, and our listeners will learn a lot
from you today and some of yourexperience.
But let's just start right atthe beginning.
Love to hear from yourperspective what's your
background and a little bitabout your experience and
interviewing others.
Anything else you think weshould know from the get-go.
William Vanderbloemen (01:29):
I've got kind of a weird career path and
I'll try and keep it short.
I tell people I'm a recoveringpreacher, so I ramble on and on,
but I spent about 15 yearsserving churches as a pastor,
mainly as a senior pastor, andended up serving a fairly
(01:50):
good-sized church in Houston,first secretary in Houston, then
went through a divorce and thenfound myself as a single dad
with four kids and you know,just not in any kind of shape to
be giving out spiritual advice.
So I went into the corporateworld and went to work for a
(02:11):
Fortune 200 company.
They kind of had me on like amanagement rotation thing where
you learn this department thisyear and then we'll move you to
this one and then kind of teachme the industry.
And my first year was in the HRdepartment, because they're
like oh, you know people, sowe'll start there.
Okay, the CEO, who had been CEOfor nine, nine and a half years
(02:31):
, which is a long time for aFortune 200 company, said, you
know, I think it's probably timeto find my successor, and they
hired this thing that I've neverseen before called a search
firm.
And because I was on the HRteam, I was kind of like water
boy for the process right,didn't really have a key part to
play, but I got to seeeverything going on.
(02:52):
So within 90 days they hadtheir new CEO.
So back up just a little bit.
I'm serving at FirstPresbyterian Church.
It's within the small world ofPresbyterianism.
It's a pretty big deal likekind of like being mayor of a
big town in Scotland, like whatdifference does that make?
(03:13):
But it should not be a placethat's hard to recruit to.
It took them almost three yearsto find me.
I was there six.
It took almost three years tofind my successor.
So they spent 12 years, halfthe time with a pastor, half the
time looking.
And then this oil and gascompany that I'm sitting here
(03:35):
working for gets done in 90 days.
And I just kind of was like, wow, there's, there's got to be a
better solution.
And I thought maybe we couldbuild something like this for
churches.
And I came home and told mywife we just got married earlier
, that you're blended.
Our family with six kids, youknow, just bought a house.
(03:56):
And I said you know, I thinkI'm supposed to quit my job and
start something new for churches.
And she looked at me and shesaid, oh, that's because
churches love new ideas, right,and if you've been around
churches at all, you know that'syeah and oh, josh.
(04:17):
The best part, it was the fallof 2008, which was just a
brilliant time to quit your joband go try something new.
Joshua Tinkey (04:24):
Slight recession during that time.
William Vanderbloemen (04:25):
Oh my, gosh, I was so dumb and, and you
know, my wife should have saidI love you, love your vision, we
got children to feed, go backto work.
And instead she said let's givethis a try.
So she really should get creditfor starting the company.
And now you fast forward.
And what started with?
Could we help churches find apastor?
Turned into?
(04:46):
What about schools that need aheadmaster?
What about relief organizationsthat need a CEO or a CFO?
What about value spacebusinesses that are?
They're?
They're hiring for people withaligned values and not just
competencies, right?
So 15 years from when westarted our little idea, it's
blossomed into this multipleverticals of people who have a
(05:10):
set of values, who are lookingfor really top talent and trust
us to find the cultural andchemistry sort of tissue match
for them as they try andtransplant a new leader in.
So yeah, that's a that's a longway of saying.
I've done a whole lot ofinterviews in the last 15 years
and in this, in this last yearand a half really, when the
(05:31):
pandemic shut the world down, wehad some time to work on some
research that we've grown everyyear and and we were able to say
you know, we've now conducted30,000 face to face interviews,
I wonder if we could figure outwho the best candidates we've
ever interviewed are.
And and we were able to do thatLike, did they get the job, did
they stay in it?
And then we said I wonder, Iwonder of these best of the best
(05:56):
, I wonder if they have anythingin common.
And so we start studying andturns out they have quite a bit
in common and the coolest partis the things they have in
common are easily teachablehabits that are really common
among the very best candidatesI've seen and really uncommon
(06:17):
among everyone else, and they'rejust not that hard.
So, you know, our researchproject has now turned into a
book where we've been able toidentify these 12 habits that
the best seem to show and therest don't, and a guidebook for,
like, how you can adopt thosehabits.
And you know, josh, with a goodjob market, it's kind of
(06:39):
looking a little wobbly the lastsix months.
It's also really crowded, withmore generations in the
workforce than ever and and, bythe way, we're also competing
with machines now, right.
So I'm really hopeful that theresult of this research will
help a lot of people out thereadopt some habits that will
(07:00):
cause them to stand out of thecrowd, kind of just get that
little, that little half stepahead of the rest of everybody
else so that you can get seenand noticed and hired or
promoted or whatever thesituation is.
You can stand out.
Joshua Tinkey (07:16):
Well, those are the words that we use a lot on
this podcast.
Here we talk a lot about how doyou set yourself apart, how do
you do that exactly and that'show you stand out, so that you
can also build your confidenceand do both of those things,
because they tend to go hand inhand, and so I'm really
intrigued about this research,and I know you have a new book
coming out.
I want to get to thatspecifically as well.
(07:37):
You also made me super curiousabout some of these things you
learned, about those that do, infact, stand out, because we
have a process here that we talka lot about over and over again
.
We have something called ourseven prep steps, and we talk a
lot about making sure you'reincredibly proactive and don't
make any assumptions that theperson that interviewing you can
connect the dots that you wantthem to.
You have to be very clear inyour communication and know what
(08:01):
you bring to the table, whyyou're there and say it out loud
.
Don't make any assumptions, inother words.
And so, if you've done allthese interviews over 15 years
and all this data diving thatyou've done, can you go into a
couple of them?
What are some of the thingsthat do help people stand out,
that you found.
William Vanderbloemen (08:17):
Yeah, you know, here's the really cool
thing the 12 commonalities thatwe identified among these best
of the best.
It was not oh, they're all sixfeet tall, or oh, they have
great hair and great teeth.
You know, it's not even theyall went to an Ivy League school
(08:37):
or they all speak well inpublic.
It's simple things Like maybethe most uncommon habit among
the general population that wasvery common among the best of
the best was a very highresponsiveness.
They got back to people really,really quickly and like uncanny
(09:01):
quickly and you think, well,let's see, I get back to people
quickly.
Everybody thinks they get backto people quickly.
We surveyed a quarter millionpeople around these 12 habits.
This is hilarious, and I thinkit was like 71% of everyone
surveyed said that they arebetter than average at getting
back to people.
So, first of all, the mathdoesn't work right.
Joshua Tinkey (09:24):
Yeah right.
William Vanderbloemen (09:25):
No, but secondly, you know we used
SurveyMonkey and so we talked tothe people at SurveyMonkey and
we said so we're asking people,if they're fast, what is a fast
response time for SurveyMonkey?
And they gave me the stats onall of their surveys.
They're like you can expectmost people are going to reply
within three days.
The outliers will be later thanthat.
(09:47):
Okay, fine.
So we went and looked at whatwas the average response time of
the quarter million people wesurveyed.
It was five days.
So the average of our quartermillion people is slower than
normal at SurveyMonkey.
Joshua Tinkey (10:03):
And they identify themselves as fast.
William Vanderbloemen (10:04):
And they identify themselves as fast.
Everybody thinks they're faster, but it's uncanny.
I don't know if you've everdone this.
If you just like sent somebodyan email and you hear back from
them within a minute, I meanit's like weird, like wow,
absolutely.
If you can train yourself toget back to people with
ridiculous responsiveness, youwill stand out of the crowd.
(10:26):
Now that can become tyrannicalif you're not careful when
you're.
You know, like at our office wehave different inquiries
require different rate ofresponse, and if we're just
emailing each other at work,like if I send an email out now
it's after hours, the office isclosed.
People know to look at it inthe morning, right?
Joshua Tinkey (10:47):
And if I send a?
William Vanderbloemen (10:48):
yeah, if I send a slack out now after
hours, whoever has slack willget back to me and if I text
them, they will call me rightaway.
That's kind of our like DEF CON321, you know.
Joshua Tinkey (11:01):
So there's just pressure to be on email all day.
That's right.
William Vanderbloemen (11:05):
That's right, but but it's not just
email, it's get an answer, it'sget back to people quickly, it's
responsiveness.
I mean like even on datingsites where you've got two
people who are paying someonemoney to try and help them
figure out who they can match upwith, the response time is slow
(11:27):
.
When there's an inquiry, peoplejust don't get back to.
You know our interviews, hiringagencies hire us, whether it's
a school or a church or a causeor a company, and they're like
go find our next unicorn Right.
And we've been very fortunateto work with some of the very
(11:49):
best organizations that are high, high reputation, and so you
would think when we reach out topeople about the possibility of
interviewing for one of thesejobs, they would get back to us
right away.
They don't?
It still totally turns my headif I get a text back right away
from somebody.
So that's just one and it'ssimple.
It sounds like, oh, I'll startdoing that.
(12:11):
And then, before you know it,you started procrastinating,
which I, I, I had forgottenuntil we were writing the book.
I took a bunch of Latin inschool.
The word in Latin, that'stomorrow, is the word crastina.
So you procrastinate Literally,I'll just get to it tomorrow,
and that's what most everybodydoes.
(12:31):
You want to stand out, get backto people right away.
Joshua Tinkey (12:36):
So that's the process, that's one of the
things that you can do and thenfind a way to just stand out
from the crowd there.
What about during an interviewitself?
One of the things that we talka lot about here and I I have
very strong feelings aroundwhat's to do and what not to do
during the kind of your openingpitch during an interview,
around the tell me aboutyourself question, what's your
background, that type of thing.
William Vanderbloemen (12:56):
Yeah.
Joshua Tinkey (12:57):
Have you found any any ways that candidates
stand out in that area?
William Vanderbloemen (13:02):
Yeah, to come to mind immediately.
Okay, so the first one is thewhole tell me about yourself
question.
I mean, that's like the numberone question in interviews,
right?
So what do you say?
Well, if I see that you areself aware right and have done
your homework with the job thatyou're interviewing for, you
(13:24):
immediately stand out.
What does that look like?
Hey, Joshua, you're interviewingme for this job in marketing
and I love your company.
I love that it's new, I lovethat it's growing fast, I love
that.
You know you guys are kind offiguring it out as you go and
you know what I'm learning aboutmyself.
I'm like a seven on theenneagram, Like I love the next
(13:48):
new thing.
And if you come to me and sayyou know, I know we hired you
for this, but the job shift andchange.
We've got other duties asneeded.
I'm going to thrive in that.
If you need somebody to do thesame action over and over and
over, all day long, on a verypredictable schedule, I'm not
going to be happy in that.
You're not going to be happywith my work.
(14:09):
I know me well enough to know Ilike the next new adventure and
the job you're hiring me for.
That we're talking about rightnow is exactly that, and let me
show you three different placesin my career where I had the
same sort of environment.
I really thrived.
So you see what's happenedthere.
You've told me you're selfaware, right?
You've also preempted the worstquestion in interviewing, which
(14:32):
is tell me your greatestweakness, you know like.
I never asked for a raise.
I worked too many hours, yeah,exactly.
But if you can show selfawareness, I know I like the
next new thing.
I can do detail work.
I've done it before and I canshow you five places where I had
to do all the details myself.
But I do better with big ideasand if that's what you're hiring
(14:56):
for, this could be a match tobe a lot of fun.
That has just showed me anunusual self awareness.
You can even take it a stepfurther.
If you were hiring me to beyour chief compliance officer, I
would be terrible.
You don't want me doing that.
That is measure eight times,cut once.
That's compliance, or orientedthings, that's.
(15:18):
I'm more of a creative.
I'm not going to do well atjust sort of the brushing and
flossing, which is a great job,but not a job I would.
I would flourish in.
Joshua Tinkey (15:27):
Right.
I love that specific example.
Not only does it show selfawareness, it shows something
that we talk a lot about here ina couple of different ways.
One is hearing your kind ofsample response.
There you focused on yourskills.
You showed an awareness of whatthe role might entail and how
your skills match up with thator don't match up with it.
Two, what I really liked aboutit we talk a lot about here is
(15:48):
adding some credibility to yourown opinion of yourself by
bringing in an outside objectivesource like the anagram test or
the strengths finder test orother assessments that basically
give a somewhat third partyperspective or an objective view
on what you're saying.
Kind of add some credibility tosome of the commentary that
you're providing.
So I really like that.
(16:08):
And one thing that I'm justpointing out to just drive home
for some of my regular listenersis that one thing you didn't do
, which is exactly exactly how Icoach people, and that's you
didn't just walk through yourchronological background of your
history.
Well, first I was here and didthis, first I had this job, and
then I had this job and then Idid that job.
I know it's just a shortexample you gave, but the way
(16:29):
you approached it I just want tocall that out it was very
skills focused and focusing onwhat your strengths are and your
awareness of the job and howthey match together, more so
than just saying, okay, here'swho I am, and walking through
your history, because it getsboring pretty quick for the
interviewer if you just walkthrough your resume.
William Vanderbloemen (16:47):
Oh, it's like watching paint dry.
Let me tell you, I've beenthrough it thousands of times to
get somebody who is on ajourney of self discovery.
You know there's very little wehave that is directly quoted
from Socrates.
It's all just sort of verbaltradition.
One of the few things we havethat was written down is the one
(17:09):
sentence that he's most famousfor, where he says know yourself
, we're the smartest guys toever live.
What's the beginning with knowyour?
You know, like you think aboutJesus saying if you see somebody
doing wrong, don't worry aboutthe splinter in your eye.
In there, I get the big oldstick out of your own I.
I don't think he was fussing atpeople.
I think he was saying, hey, youneed to know yourself first and
(17:31):
, if you can, to me and I'mprobably just telling you guys
things that you're alreadydiscussing, but to me the
clearest predictor of future jobperformance is previous job
performance.
So if you can show me someself-awareness and I'm really
good at other duties asnecessary, it's like when I
(17:53):
worked in a startup where we hadto figure it out as we went.
We had hockey stick growth, myjob Title change 15 times, but I
grew the email list 350% innine months and I had a lot of
help there and a lot ofteammates.
But, like I love working inthat kind of crazy environment,
that would make a lot of otherpeople uncomfortable.
Joshua Tinkey (18:14):
It's a very practical data-driven type of
response and something like thatit's, and it really paints a
picture for the interviewer.
Speaking of dad, I know wetouched on it earlier but love
to hear a little bit more aboutI know you have a new book
coming out and that isdata-driven.
Tell us a little bit about, alittle bit more about that book
and you know who did you decideto write that for?
William Vanderbloemen (18:34):
Yeah, well, you know, during the
pandemic and the shutdown, oursectors of work mainly services
industries Really didn't haveany service going on, right.
We just you know, it wasn'tlike zoom that was hiring people
left and right.
So we get to drop back and dosome research and say, you know,
we've been doing this a longtime.
(18:55):
Anytime we do any search, we'llhave Maybe a thousand people
that we take a look at for thisone position and then that
quickly turns into a hundred.
And then you know, you do somephone screens and some zooms and
then you're getting down tolike the best of the best and
and when you get down to thatfinal Call it, six to ten
(19:16):
candidates, they all get a longformat, face-to-face in person
interview with us.
Okay, and we have done those30,000 of those long format
interviews now.
Wow, so, so that's 30,000 withreally talented people, and
we're Kind of maniacal aboutkeeping our records.
(19:37):
I would say that my team is OCD,but they get mad because that's
not alphabetical, they'd ratherbe called CDO, and We've just
been able to say, okay, let's golook at all these interviews,
let's look for commonalities,and that's that's when we were
able to see there are somemarkers and we whittled it down
to 12 that are clearlyachievable habits, that these
(20:04):
best of the best exemplified andthey're normal, for the best of
the best, and very abnormal anduncommon among the rest of
everybody else.
And I, you know, I just theother thing in an interview, you
want to really stand out in thecrowd.
I talked about the.
Tell me about yourself.
You know where I've been doingthis long enough now where many
(20:27):
times in an interview, by thetime they get to me, they've
already been interviewed manytimes over by our staff, right?
So I'm like you know, uh,joshua, you don't need to tell
me your life story and all that.
I team's done a great job.
How about we do this?
I think the best way to spendour time together is for me to
answer questions you have aboutthis job.
You know how much I learn basedon how intelligent the
(20:48):
questions are that people ask.
It's, it's amazing and and thatcomes down to one of the 12
habits was kind of an insatiablecuriosity, like why are we
doing that?
How are you doing this?
And and if you, if you havedone active research on the job
you're interviewing for, hey, Isee your company has a big, bold
(21:08):
expansion initiative that'srolling out over the next 12
months.
Tell me more about that.
What drove the decision for theexpansion?
How are you funding it Like?
Teach me that kind of curiosity.
I learned way more about acandidate based on the questions
they ask me than the answersthat they give me.
Joshua Tinkey (21:27):
And the type of question that you just gave us
an example is more of aconversation starter than it is
just Q&A.
We're, there's, they're throwingthey're not throw away
questions, um, and that that's areally important part of the
interview process.
I won't go into the whole thewhole process now, but we we
teach something very similar towhat you just said called the
show method SHOW to to try tokickstart, to yourself up for a
(21:53):
conversation at the end of theinterview, cause you might, you
might be given like the way youjust set it up there, you might
be giving someone half an hourof time to just ask you
questions and if you're notprepared for that, it's going to
be a long, long 30 minutes, orit's going to be really, really
quick and you're going to, notthe candidate selected, and so
the way the show that we talkabout is S stands for.
(22:14):
Just share something that youhopefully have researched about
the company or that you've reador you've watched, whether it's
a Ted talk, book, an article.
Share something that you knowabout that's relevant to the
role, the organization, theindustry have an opinion about
it, to demonstrate that you'vethought it.
That's the agent show.
Have an opinion about it, um,and then, and for the next
opinion, get their opinion onyour opinion you might have a
(22:36):
differing opinion in.
There is great that.
That is especially a set up aconversation.
And then the W is to to wonder.
It's kind of a you mentionedthe word be curious, the phrase
we talk a lot about that hereand be wonder or be curious
about their opinion, to keep theconversation going and don't
let just don't just get theirresponse and say that's great.
Here's my next question.
It's have an actualconversation so you can show
(22:59):
that you've done your research,that you understand the role,
talk more about your skills ifyou need to, but just give
yourself a chance to, to sharewhat you've learned and
hopefully a lot of the researchthat you've done ahead of time,
and more so than just what's thejob like.
What are you looking for?
That's right, we all have ourpet pee questions and some of.
William Vanderbloemen (23:18):
That's right, so that's all so good.
That is really good.
And you know what I've found?
Um, I had one stop in my careerwhere I was regularly
interfacing with, frankly, justworld beaters.
I mean, there were captains oftheir industry, you name it.
They were either the first goodor the best at doing it, or
(23:38):
what.
And I noticed over time thatthe more successful a person was
, the less they talked aboutthemselves and the more they
asked me about me.
I just think it's uncanny, andso I've thought about that
through an interviewingperspective.
How does that translate?
How do you?
How do you?
Well, it's like hey, Joshua,you know everything looks great.
(24:02):
I'm so excited about thisopportunity and really
appreciate you making time.
Tell me this Why'd you comework at this company and why
have you stayed this long?
I mean, what tell me about youand your journey with the
company?
Well, nobody's going to turndown that question.
And then you can hear you know,well, they have an amazing PTO
schedule, or you know we'rebuilding literacy centers with a
(24:26):
small part of our profits, orwhatever the great things about
the company are.
And you've shown curiosity.
Joshua Tinkey (24:32):
Really really good.
Interesting to learn thatthat's part of the data that you
have, all those surveys.
You had the research you didfor a long time.
William Vanderbloemen (24:41):
And I will say on that curiosity piece
, I can't tell you how manytimes who got the job boiled
down to who asked the bestquestions.
Not had the best answers, butasked the best questions.
Joshua Tinkey (24:53):
I hope you're listening.
That's a really, reallyvaluable statement.
So if you were multitaskingwhile you're listening, come
back and you repeat that onemore time, William, because I
think that's really important.
William Vanderbloemen (25:03):
Yeah, I'm just.
I don't know if I'll get itverbatim, but I'm amazed how
many times who got the job in asearch boiled down to who asked
the best questions not who gavethe best answers.
Love it.
Joshua Tinkey (25:18):
That can be.
it's a can be make or break, soit really really is important to
to focus ahead of time and doyour research and know what
you're going to ask and startset yourself up for conversation
, more so than just hope thatyou run out of time before they
get to their questions, becausethat's not a that's not a
winning strategy.
So I'm glad that came out ofresearch.
Well, this the time's goingfaster than I expected, so let's
(25:40):
do this.
I have a few more questions Iwas going to ask, but let's just
end it with this and we canwrap things up here.
But I'd love to hear if youthink, think about your
thousands of, tens of thousandsof interviews.
Love to hear what you think isone of your favorite moments and
interview, whether it was agood moment, funny moment,
learning moment, moment.
Love to hear what was one ofyour favorite moments
(26:01):
interviewing others.
William Vanderbloemen (26:02):
Well, I probably shouldn't tell this.
It's a little just.
You will probably not have meback on the pile.
You can cut this out if it'snot good.
Oh we were.
You know we started in the 08,which is when social media took
off, so that's a big part of ourgrowth.
So we're trying to figure outhow to drive engagement in very
early days, and so one of ournewer team members put a poll
(26:25):
out there on I think it was onFacebook that said this is
before Instagram and the pollsaid what's the most awkward
interview question you've beenasked and that sounds like a fun
thing to put out there.
Well, like the third answer issomebody wrote boxers or briefs
(26:46):
and I'm like, oh my gosh, forgetto pull, this is gonna go bad
and before we can pull it down.
Somebody replied to thatresponse and said depends
depends.
Joshua Tinkey (26:55):
Oh, I love it so bad.
William Vanderbloemen (27:00):
No I you know, I think I really
appreciate when I hearinterviews, I mean you are
showcasing yourself, yourmarketing yourself, right, so
it's okay to talk about yourself.
But, man, when you can, youwatch a great NFL quarterback
after a game.
He's taken all the blame andgiven away all the credit.
And when you start hearing that, you start hearing a leader.
(27:24):
And that didn't mean you haveto belittle yourself or speak
poorly of yourself, but I someof the strongest moments In
interviewing that I've had iswhen people said you know, I'm
pretty good at my job, but Iwouldn't get at this part if it
weren't for the team and the waythey pitched in.
We all work together.
You know you've shown somevulnerability there and you're
(27:46):
not just trying to be, you know,super plastic with every answer
.
So if vulnerability and givingaway credit and taking on blame,
those are, those are powerfullessons.
So and I'm guessing that if aguy who gets beaten up by three
hundred pound defensive playersall week can come up with those
words, every one of yourlisteners can come up with
(28:08):
something along that line.
Joshua Tinkey (28:10):
I would.
I would tend to agree.
I can't imagine not all right.
Well, william, there's a lot ofinsight.
They're really appreciated.
I know there's a lot more wecould talk about, but for the
interest of time, will what ismove on from there and love to
hear where can our listeners goto learn about you, your firm?
Where should they check it out.
William Vanderbloemen (28:29):
Well, so two easy ways.
First of all, the unicorn bookdot com.
The unicorn book dot com.
That'll take you to the hubwith all resources and
everything that you can imagine.
The other thing you can do isjust try spelling Vanderbluen
any way you want into Google andit will lead to us.
And there are thirty fivehundred free resources on our
(28:52):
website that you know blog post,podcasting, photographs about
either interviewing or beinginterviewed.
You'll find a lot of free helphere.
You'll also find your way to thebook, and this is the first
interview I've done where I'vementioned this.
So this is kind of you get in asneak peek.
But we've actually taken thosetwelve habits that we identified
in B the unicorn and we built,we hired some counselors and
(29:19):
some data driven people to sayhow can we build a self
assessment tool like the stringfinders, to find out of those
twelve, where my three best andwhat am I?
And it's going to be a supercool personal inventory to
figure out what am I alreadygood at and what what's a blind
spot.
We're also turning it into.
You can take it individually,but it's also going to be a
three sixty tool for teams atwork and then you can use it as
(29:40):
a tool to help you get into thebook, and then you as a team can
see where you go and where yourblind spots, and how the
individual perceptions differfrom what's the previous, or
subordinates might say.
It's gonna be really cool allthat is great at Vanderbluen dot
com.
Yeah, we've already gotten tenthousand people that have gone
through it.
So it's it.
There's a lot of good datapoints.
(30:01):
You'll be able to measureyourself against.
Joshua Tinkey (30:03):
Excellent, yeah, I'm excited for that to come out
and I'll don't worry, we'llmake sure to leave some links in
our show notes For right toyour website, so if someone gets
the name wrong, they'll be ableto find you know they won't get
it wrong.
William Vanderbloemen (30:15):
It's the only reason we named the company
.
What we did, searching thesearch engine guys were like
dude.
Your last name is so messed upwe need to use.
Joshua Tinkey (30:22):
It has to be what they're looking for.
Yeah, exactly thanks so much,william, for joining us and
sharing some of your Years ofwisdom with our audience and
making sure that they can standout a little bit more, hopefully
next time they go to theinterview.
Really appreciate it.
William Vanderbloemen (30:38):
Thanks, joshua, appreciate you having me
on.
Very much got it.
in this last year and a half really,
when the pandemic shut the worlddown, we had some time to work
on some research.
It was growing every year andwe were able to say you know,
we've now conducted 30,000face-to-face interviews.
I wonder if we could figure outwho the best candidates we've
ever interviewed are.
And we were able to do thatLike did they get the job?
(00:20):
Did they stay in it?
Joshua Tinkey (00:37):
Hey everyone, and welcome to the Equipped
Interview Podcast.
With a combined 30 plus yearsof being interviewed and
interviewing thousands of others, we're here to build your
confidence, help you stand outand get your dream job.
Your hosts are Joshua Tinkeyand Linda Commale.
Let's get you equipped Allright.
Well, for today we have anotherguest and I'm excited to
introduce you to WilliamVanderbloemen, and I could share
(01:01):
a little bit about him, but youknow, I think it's always best
to have everyone introduce himor herself.
So today we have an expert inthe industry in a few different
ways, but William, first of all,welcome.
William Vanderbloemen (01:13):
Thanks so much, man.
I appreciate you the chance tobe on here.
Joshua Tinkey (01:16):
Absolutely, and our listeners will learn a lot
from you today and some of yourexperience.
But let's just start right atthe beginning.
Love to hear from yourperspective what's your
background and a little bitabout your experience and
interviewing others.
Anything else you think weshould know from the get-go.
William Vanderbloemen (01:29):
I've got kind of a weird career path and
I'll try and keep it short.
I tell people I'm a recoveringpreacher, so I ramble on and on,
but I spent about 15 yearsserving churches as a pastor,
mainly as a senior pastor, andended up serving a fairly
(01:50):
good-sized church in Houston,first secretary in Houston, then
went through a divorce and thenfound myself as a single dad
with four kids and you know,just not in any kind of shape to
be giving out spiritual advice.
So I went into the corporateworld and went to work for a
(02:11):
Fortune 200 company.
They kind of had me on like amanagement rotation thing where
you learn this department thisyear and then we'll move you to
this one and then kind of teachme the industry.
And my first year was in the HRdepartment, because they're
like oh, you know people, sowe'll start there.
Okay, the CEO, who had been CEOfor nine, nine and a half years
(02:31):
, which is a long time for aFortune 200 company, said, you
know, I think it's probably timeto find my successor, and they
hired this thing that I've neverseen before called a search
firm.
And because I was on the HRteam, I was kind of like water
boy for the process right,didn't really have a key part to
play, but I got to seeeverything going on.
(02:52):
So within 90 days they hadtheir new CEO.
So back up just a little bit.
I'm serving at FirstPresbyterian Church.
It's within the small world ofPresbyterianism.
It's a pretty big deal likekind of like being mayor of a
big town in Scotland, like whatdifference does that make?
(03:13):
But it should not be a placethat's hard to recruit to.
It took them almost three yearsto find me.
I was there six.
It took almost three years tofind my successor.
So they spent 12 years, halfthe time with a pastor, half the
time looking.
And then this oil and gascompany that I'm sitting here
(03:35):
working for gets done in 90 days.
And I just kind of was like, wow, there's, there's got to be a
better solution.
And I thought maybe we couldbuild something like this for
churches.
And I came home and told mywife we just got married earlier
, that you're blended.
Our family with six kids, youknow, just bought a house.
(03:56):
And I said you know, I thinkI'm supposed to quit my job and
start something new for churches.
And she looked at me and shesaid, oh, that's because
churches love new ideas, right,and if you've been around
churches at all, you know that'syeah and oh, josh.
(04:17):
The best part, it was the fallof 2008, which was just a
brilliant time to quit your joband go try something new.
Joshua Tinkey (04:24):
Slight recession during that time.
William Vanderbloemen (04:25):
Oh my, gosh, I was so dumb and, and you
know, my wife should have saidI love you, love your vision, we
got children to feed, go backto work.
And instead she said let's givethis a try.
So she really should get creditfor starting the company.
And now you fast forward.
And what started with?
Could we help churches find apastor?
Turned into?
(04:46):
What about schools that need aheadmaster?
What about relief organizationsthat need a CEO or a CFO?
What about value spacebusinesses that are?
They're?
They're hiring for people withaligned values and not just
competencies, right?
So 15 years from when westarted our little idea, it's
blossomed into this multipleverticals of people who have a
(05:10):
set of values, who are lookingfor really top talent and trust
us to find the cultural andchemistry sort of tissue match
for them as they try andtransplant a new leader in.
So yeah, that's a that's a longway of saying.
I've done a whole lot ofinterviews in the last 15 years
and in this, in this last yearand a half really, when the
(05:31):
pandemic shut the world down, wehad some time to work on some
research that we've grown everyyear and and we were able to say
you know, we've now conducted30,000 face to face interviews,
I wonder if we could figure outwho the best candidates we've
ever interviewed are.
And and we were able to do thatLike, did they get the job, did
they stay in it?
And then we said I wonder, Iwonder of these best of the best
(05:56):
, I wonder if they have anythingin common.
And so we start studying andturns out they have quite a bit
in common and the coolest partis the things they have in
common are easily teachablehabits that are really common
among the very best candidatesI've seen and really uncommon
(06:17):
among everyone else, and they'rejust not that hard.
So, you know, our researchproject has now turned into a
book where we've been able toidentify these 12 habits that
the best seem to show and therest don't, and a guidebook for,
like, how you can adopt thosehabits.
And you know, josh, with a goodjob market, it's kind of
(06:39):
looking a little wobbly the lastsix months.
It's also really crowded, withmore generations in the
workforce than ever and and, bythe way, we're also competing
with machines now, right.
So I'm really hopeful that theresult of this research will
help a lot of people out thereadopt some habits that will
(07:00):
cause them to stand out of thecrowd, kind of just get that
little, that little half stepahead of the rest of everybody
else so that you can get seenand noticed and hired or
promoted or whatever thesituation is.
You can stand out.
Joshua Tinkey (07:16):
Well, those are the words that we use a lot on
this podcast.
Here we talk a lot about how doyou set yourself apart, how do
you do that exactly and that'show you stand out, so that you
can also build your confidenceand do both of those things,
because they tend to go hand inhand, and so I'm really
intrigued about this research,and I know you have a new book
coming out.
I want to get to thatspecifically as well.
(07:37):
You also made me super curiousabout some of these things you
learned, about those that do, infact, stand out, because we
have a process here that we talka lot about over and over again
.
We have something called ourseven prep steps, and we talk a
lot about making sure you'reincredibly proactive and don't
make any assumptions that theperson that interviewing you can
connect the dots that you wantthem to.
You have to be very clear inyour communication and know what
(08:01):
you bring to the table, whyyou're there and say it out loud
.
Don't make any assumptions, inother words.
And so, if you've done allthese interviews over 15 years
and all this data diving thatyou've done, can you go into a
couple of them?
What are some of the thingsthat do help people stand out,
that you found.
William Vanderbloemen (08:17):
Yeah, you know, here's the really cool
thing the 12 commonalities thatwe identified among these best
of the best.
It was not oh, they're all sixfeet tall, or oh, they have
great hair and great teeth.
You know, it's not even theyall went to an Ivy League school
(08:37):
or they all speak well inpublic.
It's simple things Like maybethe most uncommon habit among
the general population that wasvery common among the best of
the best was a very highresponsiveness.
They got back to people really,really quickly and like uncanny
(09:01):
quickly and you think, well,let's see, I get back to people
quickly.
Everybody thinks they get backto people quickly.
We surveyed a quarter millionpeople around these 12 habits.
This is hilarious, and I thinkit was like 71% of everyone
surveyed said that they arebetter than average at getting
back to people.
So, first of all, the mathdoesn't work right.
Joshua Tinkey (09:24):
Yeah right.
William Vanderbloemen (09:25):
No, but secondly, you know we used
SurveyMonkey and so we talked tothe people at SurveyMonkey and
we said so we're asking people,if they're fast, what is a fast
response time for SurveyMonkey?
And they gave me the stats onall of their surveys.
They're like you can expectmost people are going to reply
within three days.
The outliers will be later thanthat.
(09:47):
Okay, fine.
So we went and looked at whatwas the average response time of
the quarter million people wesurveyed.
It was five days.
So the average of our quartermillion people is slower than
normal at SurveyMonkey.
Joshua Tinkey (10:03):
And they identify themselves as fast.
William Vanderbloemen (10:04):
And they identify themselves as fast.
Everybody thinks they're faster, but it's uncanny.
I don't know if you've everdone this.
If you just like sent somebodyan email and you hear back from
them within a minute, I meanit's like weird, like wow,
absolutely.
If you can train yourself toget back to people with
ridiculous responsiveness, youwill stand out of the crowd.
(10:26):
Now that can become tyrannicalif you're not careful when
you're.
You know, like at our office wehave different inquiries
require different rate ofresponse, and if we're just
emailing each other at work,like if I send an email out now
it's after hours, the office isclosed.
People know to look at it inthe morning, right?
Joshua Tinkey (10:47):
And if I send a?
William Vanderbloemen (10:48):
yeah, if I send a slack out now after
hours, whoever has slack willget back to me and if I text
them, they will call me rightaway.
That's kind of our like DEF CON321, you know.
Joshua Tinkey (11:01):
So there's just pressure to be on email all day.
That's right.
William Vanderbloemen (11:05):
That's right, but but it's not just
email, it's get an answer, it'sget back to people quickly, it's
responsiveness.
I mean like even on datingsites where you've got two
people who are paying someonemoney to try and help them
figure out who they can match upwith, the response time is slow
(11:27):
.
When there's an inquiry, peoplejust don't get back to.
You know our interviews, hiringagencies hire us, whether it's
a school or a church or a causeor a company, and they're like
go find our next unicorn Right.
And we've been very fortunateto work with some of the very
(11:49):
best organizations that are high, high reputation, and so you
would think when we reach out topeople about the possibility of
interviewing for one of thesejobs, they would get back to us
right away.
They don't?
It still totally turns my headif I get a text back right away
from somebody.
So that's just one and it'ssimple.
It sounds like, oh, I'll startdoing that.
(12:11):
And then, before you know it,you started procrastinating,
which I, I, I had forgottenuntil we were writing the book.
I took a bunch of Latin inschool.
The word in Latin, that'stomorrow, is the word crastina.
So you procrastinate Literally,I'll just get to it tomorrow,
and that's what most everybodydoes.
(12:31):
You want to stand out, get backto people right away.
Joshua Tinkey (12:36):
So that's the process, that's one of the
things that you can do and thenfind a way to just stand out
from the crowd there.
What about during an interviewitself?
One of the things that we talka lot about here and I I have
very strong feelings aroundwhat's to do and what not to do
during the kind of your openingpitch during an interview,
around the tell me aboutyourself question, what's your
background, that type of thing.
William Vanderbloemen (12:56):
Yeah.
Joshua Tinkey (12:57):
Have you found any any ways that candidates
stand out in that area?
William Vanderbloemen (13:02):
Yeah, to come to mind immediately.
Okay, so the first one is thewhole tell me about yourself
question.
I mean, that's like the numberone question in interviews,
right?
So what do you say?
Well, if I see that you areself aware right and have done
your homework with the job thatyou're interviewing for, you
(13:24):
immediately stand out.
What does that look like?
Hey, Joshua, you're interviewingme for this job in marketing
and I love your company.
I love that it's new, I lovethat it's growing fast, I love
that.
You know you guys are kind offiguring it out as you go and
you know what I'm learning aboutmyself.
I'm like a seven on theenneagram, Like I love the next
(13:48):
new thing.
And if you come to me and sayyou know, I know we hired you
for this, but the job shift andchange.
We've got other duties asneeded.
I'm going to thrive in that.
If you need somebody to do thesame action over and over and
over, all day long, on a verypredictable schedule, I'm not
going to be happy in that.
You're not going to be happywith my work.
(14:09):
I know me well enough to know Ilike the next new adventure and
the job you're hiring me for.
That we're talking about rightnow is exactly that, and let me
show you three different placesin my career where I had the
same sort of environment.
I really thrived.
So you see what's happenedthere.
You've told me you're selfaware, right?
You've also preempted the worstquestion in interviewing, which
(14:32):
is tell me your greatestweakness, you know like.
I never asked for a raise.
I worked too many hours, yeah,exactly.
But if you can show selfawareness, I know I like the
next new thing.
I can do detail work.
I've done it before and I canshow you five places where I had
to do all the details myself.
But I do better with big ideasand if that's what you're hiring
(14:56):
for, this could be a match tobe a lot of fun.
That has just showed me anunusual self awareness.
You can even take it a stepfurther.
If you were hiring me to beyour chief compliance officer, I
would be terrible.
You don't want me doing that.
That is measure eight times,cut once.
That's compliance, or orientedthings, that's.
(15:18):
I'm more of a creative.
I'm not going to do well atjust sort of the brushing and
flossing, which is a great job,but not a job I would.
I would flourish in.
Joshua Tinkey (15:27):
Right.
I love that specific example.
Not only does it show selfawareness, it shows something
that we talk a lot about here ina couple of different ways.
One is hearing your kind ofsample response.
There you focused on yourskills.
You showed an awareness of whatthe role might entail and how
your skills match up with thator don't match up with it.
Two, what I really liked aboutit we talk a lot about here is
(15:48):
adding some credibility to yourown opinion of yourself by
bringing in an outside objectivesource like the anagram test or
the strengths finder test orother assessments that basically
give a somewhat third partyperspective or an objective view
on what you're saying.
Kind of add some credibility tosome of the commentary that
you're providing.
So I really like that.
(16:08):
And one thing that I'm justpointing out to just drive home
for some of my regular listenersis that one thing you didn't do
, which is exactly exactly how Icoach people, and that's you
didn't just walk through yourchronological background of your
history.
Well, first I was here and didthis, first I had this job, and
then I had this job and then Idid that job.
I know it's just a shortexample you gave, but the way
(16:29):
you approached it I just want tocall that out it was very
skills focused and focusing onwhat your strengths are and your
awareness of the job and howthey match together, more so
than just saying, okay, here'swho I am, and walking through
your history, because it getsboring pretty quick for the
interviewer if you just walkthrough your resume.
William Vanderbloemen (16:47):
Oh, it's like watching paint dry.
Let me tell you, I've beenthrough it thousands of times to
get somebody who is on ajourney of self discovery.
You know there's very little wehave that is directly quoted
from Socrates.
It's all just sort of verbaltradition.
One of the few things we havethat was written down is the one
(17:09):
sentence that he's most famousfor, where he says know yourself
, we're the smartest guys toever live.
What's the beginning with knowyour?
You know, like you think aboutJesus saying if you see somebody
doing wrong, don't worry aboutthe splinter in your eye.
In there, I get the big oldstick out of your own I.
I don't think he was fussing atpeople.
I think he was saying, hey, youneed to know yourself first and
(17:31):
, if you can, to me and I'mprobably just telling you guys
things that you're alreadydiscussing, but to me the
clearest predictor of future jobperformance is previous job
performance.
So if you can show me someself-awareness and I'm really
good at other duties asnecessary, it's like when I
(17:53):
worked in a startup where we hadto figure it out as we went.
We had hockey stick growth, myjob Title change 15 times, but I
grew the email list 350% innine months and I had a lot of
help there and a lot ofteammates.
But, like I love working inthat kind of crazy environment,
that would make a lot of otherpeople uncomfortable.
Joshua Tinkey (18:14):
It's a very practical data-driven type of
response and something like thatit's, and it really paints a
picture for the interviewer.
Speaking of dad, I know wetouched on it earlier but love
to hear a little bit more aboutI know you have a new book
coming out and that isdata-driven.
Tell us a little bit about, alittle bit more about that book
and you know who did you decideto write that for?
William Vanderbloemen (18:34):
Yeah, well, you know, during the
pandemic and the shutdown, oursectors of work mainly services
industries Really didn't haveany service going on, right.
We just you know, it wasn'tlike zoom that was hiring people
left and right.
So we get to drop back and dosome research and say, you know,
we've been doing this a longtime.
(18:55):
Anytime we do any search, we'llhave Maybe a thousand people
that we take a look at for thisone position and then that
quickly turns into a hundred.
And then you know, you do somephone screens and some zooms and
then you're getting down tolike the best of the best and
and when you get down to thatfinal Call it, six to ten
(19:16):
candidates, they all get a longformat, face-to-face in person
interview with us.
Okay, and we have done those30,000 of those long format
interviews now.
Wow, so, so that's 30,000 withreally talented people, and
we're Kind of maniacal aboutkeeping our records.
(19:37):
I would say that my team is OCD,but they get mad because that's
not alphabetical, they'd ratherbe called CDO, and We've just
been able to say, okay, let's golook at all these interviews,
let's look for commonalities,and that's that's when we were
able to see there are somemarkers and we whittled it down
to 12 that are clearlyachievable habits, that these
(20:04):
best of the best exemplified andthey're normal, for the best of
the best, and very abnormal anduncommon among the rest of
everybody else.
And I, you know, I just theother thing in an interview, you
want to really stand out in thecrowd.
I talked about the.
Tell me about yourself.
You know where I've been doingthis long enough now where many
(20:27):
times in an interview, by thetime they get to me, they've
already been interviewed manytimes over by our staff, right?
So I'm like you know, uh,joshua, you don't need to tell
me your life story and all that.
I team's done a great job.
How about we do this?
I think the best way to spendour time together is for me to
answer questions you have aboutthis job.
You know how much I learn basedon how intelligent the
(20:48):
questions are that people ask.
It's, it's amazing and and thatcomes down to one of the 12
habits was kind of an insatiablecuriosity, like why are we
doing that?
How are you doing this?
And and if you, if you havedone active research on the job
you're interviewing for, hey, Isee your company has a big, bold
(21:08):
expansion initiative that'srolling out over the next 12
months.
Tell me more about that.
What drove the decision for theexpansion?
How are you funding it Like?
Teach me that kind of curiosity.
I learned way more about acandidate based on the questions
they ask me than the answersthat they give me.
Joshua Tinkey (21:27):
And the type of question that you just gave us
an example is more of aconversation starter than it is
just Q&A.
We're, there's, they're throwingthey're not throw away
questions, um, and that that's areally important part of the
interview process.
I won't go into the whole thewhole process now, but we we
teach something very similar towhat you just said called the
show method SHOW to to try tokickstart, to yourself up for a
(21:53):
conversation at the end of theinterview, cause you might, you
might be given like the way youjust set it up there, you might
be giving someone half an hourof time to just ask you
questions and if you're notprepared for that, it's going to
be a long, long 30 minutes, orit's going to be really, really
quick and you're going to, notthe candidate selected, and so
the way the show that we talkabout is S stands for.
(22:14):
Just share something that youhopefully have researched about
the company or that you've reador you've watched, whether it's
a Ted talk, book, an article.
Share something that you knowabout that's relevant to the
role, the organization, theindustry have an opinion about
it, to demonstrate that you'vethought it.
That's the agent show.
Have an opinion about it, um,and then, and for the next
opinion, get their opinion onyour opinion you might have a
(22:36):
differing opinion in.
There is great that.
That is especially a set up aconversation.
And then the W is to to wonder.
It's kind of a you mentionedthe word be curious, the phrase
we talk a lot about that hereand be wonder or be curious
about their opinion, to keep theconversation going and don't
let just don't just get theirresponse and say that's great.
Here's my next question.
It's have an actualconversation so you can show
(22:59):
that you've done your research,that you understand the role,
talk more about your skills ifyou need to, but just give
yourself a chance to, to sharewhat you've learned and
hopefully a lot of the researchthat you've done ahead of time,
and more so than just what's thejob like.
What are you looking for?
That's right, we all have ourpet pee questions and some of.
William Vanderbloemen (23:18):
That's right, so that's all so good.
That is really good.
And you know what I've found?
Um, I had one stop in my careerwhere I was regularly
interfacing with, frankly, justworld beaters.
I mean, there were captains oftheir industry, you name it.
They were either the first goodor the best at doing it, or
(23:38):
what.
And I noticed over time thatthe more successful a person was
, the less they talked aboutthemselves and the more they
asked me about me.
I just think it's uncanny, andso I've thought about that
through an interviewingperspective.
How does that translate?
How do you?
How do you?
Well, it's like hey, Joshua,you know everything looks great.
(24:02):
I'm so excited about thisopportunity and really
appreciate you making time.
Tell me this Why'd you comework at this company and why
have you stayed this long?
I mean, what tell me about youand your journey with the
company?
Well, nobody's going to turndown that question.
And then you can hear you know,well, they have an amazing PTO
schedule, or you know we'rebuilding literacy centers with a
(24:26):
small part of our profits, orwhatever the great things about
the company are.
And you've shown curiosity.
Joshua Tinkey (24:32):
Really really good.
Interesting to learn thatthat's part of the data that you
have, all those surveys.
You had the research you didfor a long time.
William Vanderbloemen (24:41):
And I will say on that curiosity piece
, I can't tell you how manytimes who got the job boiled
down to who asked the bestquestions.
Not had the best answers, butasked the best questions.
Joshua Tinkey (24:53):
I hope you're listening.
That's a really, reallyvaluable statement.
So if you were multitaskingwhile you're listening, come
back and you repeat that onemore time, William, because I
think that's really important.
William Vanderbloemen (25:03):
Yeah, I'm just.
I don't know if I'll get itverbatim, but I'm amazed how
many times who got the job in asearch boiled down to who asked
the best questions not who gavethe best answers.
Love it.
Joshua Tinkey (25:18):
That can be.
it's a can be make or break, soit really really is important to
to focus ahead of time and doyour research and know what
you're going to ask and startset yourself up for conversation
, more so than just hope thatyou run out of time before they
get to their questions, becausethat's not a that's not a
winning strategy.
So I'm glad that came out ofresearch.
Well, this the time's goingfaster than I expected, so let's
(25:40):
do this.
I have a few more questions Iwas going to ask, but let's just
end it with this and we canwrap things up here.
But I'd love to hear if youthink, think about your
thousands of, tens of thousandsof interviews.
Love to hear what you think isone of your favorite moments and
interview, whether it was agood moment, funny moment,
learning moment, moment.
Love to hear what was one ofyour favorite moments
(26:01):
interviewing others.
William Vanderbloemen (26:02):
Well, I probably shouldn't tell this.
It's a little just.
You will probably not have meback on the pile.
You can cut this out if it'snot good.
Oh we were.
You know we started in the 08,which is when social media took
off, so that's a big part of ourgrowth.
So we're trying to figure outhow to drive engagement in very
early days, and so one of ournewer team members put a poll
(26:25):
out there on I think it was onFacebook that said this is
before Instagram and the pollsaid what's the most awkward
interview question you've beenasked and that sounds like a fun
thing to put out there.
Well, like the third answer issomebody wrote boxers or briefs
(26:46):
and I'm like, oh my gosh, forgetto pull, this is gonna go bad
and before we can pull it down.
Somebody replied to thatresponse and said depends
depends.
Joshua Tinkey (26:55):
Oh, I love it so bad.
William Vanderbloemen (27:00):
No I you know, I think I really
appreciate when I hearinterviews, I mean you are
showcasing yourself, yourmarketing yourself, right, so
it's okay to talk about yourself.
But, man, when you can, youwatch a great NFL quarterback
after a game.
He's taken all the blame andgiven away all the credit.
And when you start hearing that, you start hearing a leader.
(27:24):
And that didn't mean you haveto belittle yourself or speak
poorly of yourself, but I someof the strongest moments In
interviewing that I've had iswhen people said you know, I'm
pretty good at my job, but Iwouldn't get at this part if it
weren't for the team and the waythey pitched in.
We all work together.
You know you've shown somevulnerability there and you're
(27:46):
not just trying to be, you know,super plastic with every answer
.
So if vulnerability and givingaway credit and taking on blame,
those are, those are powerfullessons.
So and I'm guessing that if aguy who gets beaten up by three
hundred pound defensive playersall week can come up with those
words, every one of yourlisteners can come up with
(28:08):
something along that line.
Joshua Tinkey (28:10):
I would.
I would tend to agree.
I can't imagine not all right.
Well, william, there's a lot ofinsight.
They're really appreciated.
I know there's a lot more wecould talk about, but for the
interest of time, will what ismove on from there and love to
hear where can our listeners goto learn about you, your firm?
Where should they check it out.
William Vanderbloemen (28:29):
Well, so two easy ways.
First of all, the unicorn bookdot com.
The unicorn book dot com.
That'll take you to the hubwith all resources and
everything that you can imagine.
The other thing you can do isjust try spelling Vanderbluen
any way you want into Google andit will lead to us.
And there are thirty fivehundred free resources on our
(28:52):
website that you know blog post,podcasting, photographs about
either interviewing or beinginterviewed.
You'll find a lot of free helphere.
You'll also find your way to thebook, and this is the first
interview I've done where I'vementioned this.
So this is kind of you get in asneak peek.
But we've actually taken thosetwelve habits that we identified
in B the unicorn and we built,we hired some counselors and
(29:19):
some data driven people to sayhow can we build a self
assessment tool like the stringfinders, to find out of those
twelve, where my three best andwhat am I?
And it's going to be a supercool personal inventory to
figure out what am I alreadygood at and what what's a blind
spot.
We're also turning it into.
You can take it individually,but it's also going to be a
three sixty tool for teams atwork and then you can use it as
(29:40):
a tool to help you get into thebook, and then you as a team can
see where you go and where yourblind spots, and how the
individual perceptions differfrom what's the previous, or
subordinates might say.
It's gonna be really cool allthat is great at Vanderbluen dot
com.
Yeah, we've already gotten tenthousand people that have gone
through it.
So it's it.
There's a lot of good datapoints.
(30:01):
You'll be able to measureyourself against.
Joshua Tinkey (30:03):
Excellent, yeah, I'm excited for that to come out
and I'll don't worry, we'llmake sure to leave some links in
our show notes For right toyour website, so if someone gets
the name wrong, they'll be ableto find you know they won't get
it wrong.
William Vanderbloemen (30:15):
It's the only reason we named the company
.
What we did, searching thesearch engine guys were like
dude.
Your last name is so messed upwe need to use.
Joshua Tinkey (30:22):
It has to be what they're looking for.
Yeah, exactly thanks so much,william, for joining us and
sharing some of your Years ofwisdom with our audience and
making sure that they can standout a little bit more, hopefully
next time they go to theinterview.
Really appreciate it.
William Vanderbloemen (30:38):
Thanks, joshua, appreciate you having me
on.
Very much got it.
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