March 31, 2026 • 58 mins
Most hiring processes don't filter for performance. They filter for interview skill. In this episode, Josh Matthews breaks down the five silent killers that cause companies to reject their best candidates before an offer is ever made, joined by co-host Scott Stafford.
What you'll learn:
• Why unstructured interviews predict job performance only 20% of the time
• How interviewers form snap judgments in 10 seconds and spend the rest confirming them
• The real cost of giving veto power to untrained interviewers
• Why long-tenured candidates get hurt by interview anxiety while job-hoppers sail through
• How vague winner criteria and moving goalposts eliminate great people
• A specific script candidates can use to disarm interviewer bias mid-conversation
• What conscientiousness actually looks like before the interview even starts
Drawing on Google hiring research, University of Toledo studies, and years of frontline recruiting experience, this episode makes the case that most companies aren't just making bad hires. They're systematically rejecting their best ones.
The Hiring Edge is for hiring managers, talent leaders, and professionals who want to build better teams and advance their careers.
Hosted by Josh Matthews, President of Salesforce Staffing, LLC and ranked the #1 Salesforce Recruiter, globally.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Josh Matthews (00:00):
Found that interviewers form judgments
about candidates in the first 10seconds of an interview.
10 seconds.
Then they spend the remaining99.4% of the conversation in
confirmation bias mode, lookingfor evidence to support the snap
judgment they already made.
Welcome to the Hiring Edge, thepodcast helping leaders
(00:22):
navigate the age of AI, createteams that thrive, and build a
workplace people never want toleave.
That's welcome everybody to thehiring edge.
My name is Josh Matthews.
I'm here with my friend ScottStafford.
Most companies don't lose theirbest talent over money.
They lose them in the interviewbefore the offer even goes out.
They've already filtered outthe very people they're trying
(00:43):
to hire.
This episode, we break downfive silent killers in the
hiring process.
Untrained interviewers, uncleardefinitions of what great
actually looks like.
Valuing interview performance.
This is a big one.
Giving veto power to the wrongpeople.
This is like my least favoritething veto power to the wrong
(01:04):
people.
And filtering way too hard fortechnical skills that can be
learned fast.
But here's where it getsuncomfortable.
Most hiring processes aren'tjust inconsistent, they're
biased.
In fact, I recall a stat whereeven recruiters said about 59%
of recruiters admitted, yeah,they're they're kind of biased.
And I'm sure that I am too.
But the level of bias in actualorganizations with hiring
(01:28):
managers is so far off thechart, it's insane.
So gut feel, culture fit,unstructured conversations,
guys, these don't just loweryour chances of finding great
talent.
They systematically push thosechances away.
And the data backs this up.
Research from Google anddecades of hiring science show
(01:50):
that structured, evidence-basedinterviews are far better
predictors of performance thanad hoc conversations.
Even more, general mentalability or GMA, that's
intellect, intelligence, EQ, allthose things kind of combined,
consistently shows up as one ofthe strongest predictors of
long-term success, faroutweighing how polished someone
(02:11):
seems in a 45-minute interview.
So if your hiring process isdriven by instinct instead of
signal, you're not just makingslower decisions, you're making
terrible, terrible, terribledecisions, worse ones.
And you're losing people whowould have actually built your
business.
I've been excited, Scott, totalk about this topic.
(02:32):
We've kind of touched onaspects of this over the last
handful of conversations, butwe've never really boiled down
like what are the actualmetrics?
Like, what are the actualmetrics?
And I'm going to hit everybodywith something pretty hard right
out of the gate.
And that is that your ad hoc adhoc vibe conversations, right?
(02:55):
Like, oh, yeah, it's now timefor the hiring manager to talk
to you.
It's now time for the, youknow, talent acquisition person
to kind of give you a little bitof screen.
Unstructured, not scoring,asking different questions to
different candidates, notverifying their past success,
but trying to see how theyperform under pressure, this
(03:17):
kind of thing.
It doesn't work.
Okay.
It doesn't work.
In fact, you have roughly 20%chance of being able to
effectively predict someone'ssuccess in a job from your
typical average vibe chatinterview, unstructured
interview.
20% chance.
(03:38):
Dude, that's not even a flip ofa coin.
It's so bad.
So bad.
So let's kind of dive in.
Um there's five main thingsthat I want to talk about today,
Scott.
And the reality is some ofthese kind of cross over, but a
really big one is overvaluinginterview performance over
(03:59):
historical success.
So this is like you're notalways selecting the best
performer.
You may be just be selectingthe best stage actor.
That makes sense.
So you know who gets hurt inthese is introverts.
Like, do you think I do well inan interview?
Probably do pretty good.
Pretty confident, can talk, canthink on my feet, right?
(04:21):
My brain fires up when I'mtalking versus an introvert,
right?
But an introvert might actuallybe able to do my job better.
It's possible.
It's very possible.
No, it's not.
I'm kidding.
But no, it's possible.
And how would you ever know?
One of the key things is thiswhole idea of like anxiety.
Right.
This is not a small thing tohave an interview with the CEO
(04:43):
or the hiring manager orwhomever it is.
So your anxiety is going to beup.
Now, for you to get the job,this company wants you to learn
how to manage your anxiety andkeep it down.
Right.
And why?
Well, I work with a lot of SIs.
Right.
And we all know that a lot ofthe people that work at SIs are
(05:05):
client-facing.
Right.
So they're judging aninterview.
They're looking at an interviewand going, okay, well, if this
is an interview, this is goingto be just like, it's going to
be just like if they're talkingto a client.
Bullshit.
No, it's not.
That's dumb.
That is the dumbest thing.
One of the dumber things I'veever heard.
Now, I kind of can see thepath, the mental pathway of like
(05:26):
A plus A to B to C to D,talking to someone that they
don't know and answeringquestions and blah, blah, blah.
And by the way, they're askingyou questions about yourself.
So shouldn't you have reallygood answers?
And the reality is, I don'tknow, maybe, maybe not.
But the fact is, is that somepeople are incredible with
(05:46):
clients because you know whatthey do?
They ask questions and they sitthere and they listen.
Isn't that a good consultant,anyway?
Right.
I mean, that's a consult.
Do you sit around and just getdrilled questions by your
clients?
Scott Stafford (06:02):
No, listening is far more important, right?
Actually, that's communication,right?
It's communications.
It's communication.
Josh Matthews (06:10):
You know, the other thing is too, this whole
idea of like interviewperformance.
I'm always a little bit warywhen someone can interview
really well, but then I look attheir job history and they've
been a kangaroo.
They've been hopping, hopping,hopping from job to job to job,
or contract to contract tocontract.
Now, do you think they've hadsome practice?
Yep, they've had a lot ofpractice.
(06:32):
Yeah, man.
What about the person who'sbeen somewhere for five years
and somewhere for seven years?
You think they've had a lot ofpractice interviewing?
Scott Stafford (06:41):
And they're probably really nervous, right?
Because they haven't done it somuch, they're not they're gonna
have that performance anxietyand you're gonna make a poor
hiring decision on that.
Josh Matthews (06:51):
That's well, yeah, and they're they're
they're loyal people too.
They're loyal, like they'reletting go of five years, six
years, seven years ofrelationship.
So it's not a small thing,this, right?
And so, you know, if ifsomeone's delivered for five
years, why would you sort ofkick that to the side and
(07:13):
instead put more weight on ashaky 45-minute conversation
more than their body of work?
Scott Stafford (07:19):
That makes sense.
I mean, I think what you'reactually saying is, you know,
make sure that you look at thewhole history of what they're
doing.
Try to remove your bias andthen really try to understand,
right, how you're looking atthem in just 45 minutes, right?
You can't judge everything whensomebody's nervous.
Perfect.
Josh Matthews (07:38):
Yeah, and bias is a huge topic, and we'll get
into that in a little bit,right?
In fact, we might just get intothat here in about one minute.
We're talking about a reallyinteresting topic, and that is
the five main things thatcompanies and organizations and
hiring managers are doing thatis foolish, that's keeping them
from their top candidates.
You've got the pipeline, you'vegot the best dad ever, you've
got the best recruiter ever.
(07:59):
All these top people have beenfiltered down to you, and then
you're getting through them, andthen you're saying no, and
you're saying no to people thatactually would do really well,
and you're doing that.
You're doing that becausethat's how you've been trained.
Now, when I say that's howyou've been trained, what do I
mean by that?
The reality is something like67% of people, hiring managers
(08:20):
who conduct interviews, 67% havehad.
Do you want to guess how muchtraining they've had?
67%, Scott.
I don't know.
Zero.
Okay.
Zero training.
Zero training.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Two-thirds of people whoconduct interviews as hiring
managers have a total goose eggon training.
(08:43):
And then the ones that do havetraining, it might be some
45-minute, 60-minute lunch andlearn on the star method that
they did four years ago.
Right?
It's like, here you go, goodluck, bye-bye, have fun, try to
remember everything.
Good luck.
Okay, bye, grow the team,bye-bye.
Like it's bullshit.
(09:04):
You know, these people are nottrained.
And why would they be?
Companies don't train them.
And why would they not trainthem?
Because they're too busy.
They think that they know itall.
There's a massive, this is theintersection of ignorance and
arrogance.
And it's not that their fault.
That's this doesn't mean peopleare arrogant.
Okay, doesn't.
(09:24):
And it doesn't mean thatthey're completely ignorant.
Most people know I'm not thatgreat at interviewing, or hey,
I've only done 20 of these, orI've only done 40 of these.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Right.
Josh Matthews (09:34):
But we all know that practice doesn't make
perfect.
It's perfect practice makesperfect.
And so in my career, when I'vehired someone, how many
interviews do you think I'mlistening in on?
Right?
Sitting next to, sitting inwith a candidate, or excuse me,
with a with a new recruiter.
(09:55):
I mean, dozens, man.
Dozens.
Right.
And then spot checkingregularly.
So there's a quick thing thatpeople can do.
Start recording yourinterviews.
Just do that.
You can literally just recordyour interview, upload the
transcript, and then have Claudeanalyze with a very good
prompt, analyze your ability toone, ask good questions, but
(10:16):
even more importantly, interpretthe responses.
Where could you have presseddeeper?
Where have you exhibited bias?
You could just do that.
That would take literally youclick one button and then you
upload it.
That's five minutes.
And now you understand whetheryou're good at it not and what
you need to work on.
It's not that hard.
It's hard to get good at it.
It's hard to remember it.
So let's talk about this.
So running untrained hiringmanagers as lead interviewers.
(10:40):
Google's work guidance actuallysays structured interviewing
with consistent questions andscoring is one of the strongest
ways to improve hiring qualityand predict on-the-job success.
And broader research also showsstructured interviews are more
productive and less biased thanunstructured ones, while
rubric-based interviewertraining improves agreement and
(11:03):
reduces bias in evaluation.
So when teams let untrainedhiring managers just have a
chat, they create inconsistentinterviewer interviews and low
quality signals.
So you would never send, Scott,you'd never send an untrained
rep into your biggest clientpitch, right?
Scott Stafford (11:20):
Right.
Josh Matthews (11:21):
Yeah.
But many companies senduntrained managers into the most
important conversation in thefunnel.
Scott Stafford (11:27):
Hmm.
You know what you're bringingout a lot that's interesting is
there's a system behind this.
You know, you don't just throwsomeone in to say, hire
somebody, right?
There's training, there's asystem.
You got to make sure that yourquestions are uniform across the
different candidates.
This is a really importanttopic, I think, that a lot of
people that are doing hiringdecisions need to pay attention
(11:50):
to.
Well, yeah, that's why we'retalking about it.
I mean, I actually didn't, Iwasn't aware of how how much
bias I would actually have, youknow, without me actually going
through something, I might, youknow, just inadvertently say,
hey, I like this person or Idon't like this person.
Yeah.
And if they're they're nothiring to be my friend, they're
hiring to do a job, right?
Josh Matthews (12:10):
Yeah, that's right.
And and here's the thing.
So most people who go intointerviews as the interviewer
have really good questions.
They've looked them up, they'velearned from other managers.
They thought, oh, that's areally good question.
Or, oh, I I heard this on ashow from Josh.
I'm gonna ask the question Joshsaid is his favorite question,
(12:32):
right?
And and I'll ask it.
But now comes the problem ofinterpretation.
So we all have, as humans, weall have filters.
Yep.
You know what I mean by that?
Like you say one thing, itmeans something different to me,
a very different personalitytype than you than you are.
Of course it is.
I've had a very different lifeexperience than you have, and
(12:53):
vice versa.
So you could say something tome, and I could think, like, oh,
he's shaming me.
And you you're you might bethinking, I'm helping him.
Right?
So that's just a silly example,but this happens constantly in
communication, constantly,constantly, constantly.
So you have to be trained tounderstand like, what is someone
(13:15):
really saying?
Because there's what they'resaying, and then here's here's
one of the problems.
The the interviewer, theinterviewers who aren't that
skilled but are smart start tothink that they can start
reading between the lines.
Oh, I know what that reallymeans.
Right?
These sort of armchairpsychologists, oh, I know what
that really means.
I know what that means.
Oh, he's hiding this.
Oh, he's really this.
(13:36):
Oh, he's actually lazy, or he'sactually, you know, she's she's
actually not reliable.
Oh, she's not really willing tolearn.
Oh, that one thing she said,that means that she's not gonna
do a good job.
She said she'd rather do this.
Therefore, I'm got I've got twojobs available.
This one's no longer available.
She'd rather have that one, butthat means she's gonna quit in
two months if I put her in thisone.
It doesn't mean that, right,guys.
(13:58):
It doesn't mean that at all,you silly goose.
Just calm down.
Yeah, you have to do is probe alittle further.
And I'm not gonna traineveryone how to interview today.
I just want people to be aware,Scott, of these very, very ugly
and massive gaps.
They're not, they're not,they're not good gaps.
(14:18):
I think that there can be someconfusion with people, Scott,
where people think that they'rerunning a structured interview.
Here's a structured interview.
Everyone either has the sameexact questions, right, and
they're all going to score themon a rubric that's defined.
When we say uh on a scale offive, a three is average.
(14:40):
This is what three means.
It means some capabilities inthis area, or a five means this
is a, you know, only one in tenpeople would score this high.
Like you've got to give it somesort of context so that people
aren't showing up at the end ofthe scoring session and then
having completely differentideas of what getting an A is or
(15:00):
getting a C is.
I mean, you've had teachers,you went to school, you went to
college, you know, this teacher,you learned a lot.
They're really good, they'rereally tough.
You got a C and you weregrateful for it because, oh my
God, are they hard?
And then you go into the otherthing, you barely did anything,
you got an A.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Right.
Josh Matthews (15:17):
Right.
That's different rubrics thatthey're using.
And this happens inside oforganizations and companies,
right?
The other thing that happens iseven if they have structured
interviews, even if they'redoing this sort of correctly,
right?
When they show up for the teammeeting, after they get off the
call, they call up the personwho's gonna interview them next
and they tell them what theythink about them.
(15:38):
That's called anchoring bias.
Right.
So if you and I are about towalk into a party, and right
before we, right before we walkin the door, I say, Scott, this
is gonna suck.
I don't like these people.
This is gonna suck.
I promise you, you will nothave nearly as good a time as if
I said right beforehand, Scott,this might be the most
(15:59):
incredible party ever.
It might not, but no matterwhat, we're gonna have an
amazing time.
Okay, so that's calledanchoring.
And managers and peopleinvolved in the hiring process
sewer each other.
Yeah, I don't know about him.
I didn't get a I didn't get avibe.
It's like, why?
They didn't play, they don'tplay golf, right?
They don't look like you, theydon't sound like you, they don't
(16:20):
talk like you, they talkslower.
They're from Alabama, you'refrom New York City.
So you don't think that yourclients are gonna like engage
with this person, right?
Meanwhile, they've got fiveyears of successful experience.
All you got to do is areference check to validate,
yeah, this person's a badass.
Talk to one of their clients,validate, validate, validate.
(16:41):
An interview should bevalidating their experience, not
trying to trip them up, nottrying to trick them, right?
Like this isn't an interviewfor a law firm, a litigation
attorney, is it?
No.
And even then, validate theirresults.
I'm not a fan of the.
Scott Stafford (17:09):
They might veto somebody that's not good just
because they were like in a badmood or that it didn't work for
them.
So you have to have a reallygood system to make sure that
you're being fair and thateverybody has to have a really
good reason why they're actuallytelling somebody, hey, this
isn't a perfect fit.
Josh Matthews (17:26):
Yeah.
And let let me let me helpeveryone out real quick.
Okay.
I'm gonna give everybody in theaudience, the listening
audience on a live show on ourYouTube channel or on the
podcast.
This is something that you cando.
Okay.
Okay.
I learned this, I think Ilearned this in Jeff Hyman's
book.
Um, here's what I want you todo.
When you find that you reallylike someone, yeah, your job
(17:47):
now, because you you have what'scalled confirmation bias.
That means in the and studieshave shown, I forget who said
it, might be able to find it.
I've got it here somewhere.
Studies have shown, oh yeah,research from the University of
Toledo, led by Dr.
Frank Bernieri, and cited byLaszlo Bach, found that
interviewers form judgmentsabout candidates in the first 10
(18:08):
seconds of an interview.
10 seconds.
Then they spend the remaining99.4% of the conversation in
confirmation bias mode lookingfor evidence to support the snap
judgment they already made.
unknown (18:25):
Oh my F.
Josh Matthews (18:27):
What the Wow.
Can you imagine?
Can you you don't have to?
We look at the world and welook at companies and we wonder
why they're having challenges.
Why is there even a job for me?
Like if it weren't for bias andall this other stuff, like I
wouldn't have I wouldn't have ajob.
You know what I mean?
And by the way, I'm susceptibleto it.
(18:48):
Of course.
But I combat it, and here's howI combat it.
And this is what everybody elsecan do.
When you really, really likesomeone, you now must spend the
rest of your interview tryingand probing to find reasons why
you don't like them.
Scott Stafford (19:05):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (19:06):
This will save your ass.
Okay, because we do two thingswrong.
One, we hire the wrong person.
Right?
Usually it's because we've hadsome sort of bias going in.
I've told an example of mehiring someone.
She was nice, she was smart,she had the work history, blah,
(19:26):
blah, blah, blah, blah.
I missed all the signs and sheshowed up for work, and within
an hour I knew it was a failure.
By lunch, my team was coming tome and saying, Josh, what did
you do?
Why did you bring this personon?
I'm like, Yeah, but you guysall agreed too.
And they're like, Yeah, weknow.
We didn't know what we weredoing.
We knew how to hire contracttech people.
We did not know how to hireinternally, right?
And and those teams that I sawat that Fortune 500 company was
(19:50):
churning a new employee everysix weeks.
Every six weeks, someonefailed, failed because the
hiring process was terrible.
I should not, at that age, atthat time, as a division
director, which is basicallylike a team lead, should not
have had final say.
Not until I'd proven my abilityto actually bring good people
(20:11):
on and get rid of all thatconfirmation bias.
Okay.
I shouldn't have done that.
They shouldn't have let me.
They did.
Scott Stafford (20:17):
Does that ever work the other way, Josh?
You said, hey, you look atsomebody that you like and then
you say, hey, prove, you know,show me some areas in this
interview where they might messup.
What about if there's someonethat you don't like?
Should you maybe do it theother way?
You know, absolutely, a hundredpercent.
Josh Matthews (20:33):
So, and here's the funny thing
inclined to say no in general,right?
Especially at lower levels,right?
When they're not the boss'sboss's boss, they're more likely
to say no and poo-poo the ideaof hiring someone, unless they
really just like like the personright away.
Like kids on the school playyard, you know, playground when
(20:55):
they're five years old.
We're best friends, mom, mom,look, we're best friends.
This is Johnny, we're bestfriends.
It's like they just met twominutes ago.
It's like, okay, let's stompwith with the elementary school
stuff.
So they're more likely to sayno.
Why?
Because if that person nevershows up, they can never be the
person that rubber stamped apotential failure.
Scott Stafford (21:17):
So no is actually the easier thing for
someone to say, hey, I justdon't like this person.
No's automatic.
Josh Matthews (21:22):
No's automatic.
When your kids were little, youcould say, hey, hey, girls, you
want to go to the you want togo to Disneyland?
They're five years old.
You want to go to Disneyland?
No.
Wait, yes, no is at the tip ofour tongue.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Always.
Josh Matthews (21:35):
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no.
Do you have time to talk?
No.
Right?
Is now a bad time to talk?
This is why we say when we coldcall someone, we say, Is now a
bad time to talk?
And they go, no.
Like, great.
So now I have your attention,we can talk.
You flip it because it'sautomatically going to be a no.
Okay, so let's keep movingforward because we're almost at
(21:55):
the bottom of the hour here andwe've got a lot to get through,
but I want you to put Push,okay.
I don't like this person.
Why?
Oh, they look like myex-stepdad.
Right.
Oh, they remind me of this onejerk who used to just like tap
his foot sitting next to me forlike a year and shaking the
whole desk and shaking the wholefloor, and that really annoyed
(22:16):
the heck out of me.
Or um, yeah, I don't like theirmusic, or I don't like that
they dyed their hair blue, or Idon't like whatever it is,
whatever your bias is, right?
From wherever it comes from,you need to really try and find
a way to get common ground.
If you're interviewing someone,by the way, and you don't
really like them, do you thinkthat they're gonna know?
(22:38):
I think, yeah, you can senseit.
I mean, you Hell yeah, man.
unknown (22:43):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (22:43):
Now, yeah.
And now and they're gonnaperform worse.
They're gonna perform exactlyas you expected.
Yeah.
That's that whole confirmationbias thing.
See, I was right.
They sucked at interviewing.
It's like, no, you sucked atbeing an interviewer.
You never gave these people achance.
You got to get people, one, tolike you so that they can relax,
(23:06):
right?
And once they're relaxed, thenyou can actually get them to
open up and you've got to bevulnerable, right?
David did a great show lastyear on uh Josh Force and the
hiring edge.
Definitely listen to that oneabout vulnerability in the
workplace.
Did a great episode.
Go listen to that.
All right, let's keep movingon, guys, because there's more
(23:26):
to get through.
I want to talk for a momentabout vague winner criteria and
creating moving goalposts.
Scott Stafford (23:36):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (23:36):
Okay, so I I go through this with clients.
Josh, this is what we want.
A B C D E F G.
Okay.
What about if it's can you livewithout G?
Can you live without C?
Yeah.
Okay.
So here's the hiring marketright now.
This is what the actual mysilly, silly AI camera.
There we go.
And signals.
(23:57):
So this is what we want.
I'm like, okay.
Then I come back and I say,here's the reality.
Like just yesterday, I did abig deep report using
perplexity.
And I did it for a client ofmine.
We're hiring an RCA architect.
They want an RCA architect for$180,000 plus 10%.
Good luck with that.
That's not going to happen.
There's maybe 200 people, 150people in the country.
(24:19):
It's only been around for twoyears.
The ones that are doing it arefull-blown architects and don't
also want to build flows.
And they're making 200 to 220plus 20% bonus.
So I put together this reportto share it, right?
It's like, let's get clear onwhat actual winning criteria
looks like because it's not,it's not these hopes and dreams.
Who you want when you want themfor the price you want, pick
(24:41):
to.
But if the money is not there,you've got to live within what
your budget is.
You just have to.
Like there's no way around it.
You got you got to, otherwise,you're just not going to hire
the person.
So having very clearly definedacceptance criteria for the
candidates is critical.
So I'll give you an example.
(25:02):
I brought a candidate to aclient.
Ideally, they wanted a lot ofNPC experience.
The person had some, but it wason what was actually the most
common module, fundraising, butit wasn't on grant making.
And it wasn't on projects,which are, I mean, first of all,
(25:22):
NPC's this much of a sliver.
Uh, it's a tiny amount ofSalesforce in general.
And then those modules thatthey really want are even way
smaller portion of NPC.
Right.
And then their budget is theirbudget.
And so finding people has beenhard.
They're happy to look at peopleat the outset of this search
(25:44):
who have NPC, but maybe don'thave these modules.
You can teach that, you cantrain it.
Maybe it takes two weeks or amonth.
Then we bring them someone,they don't have those modules.
And that is one of a couplereasons why they're saying no to
that person, right?
They've been looking for twomonths.
Two months.
And how long did you say itwould take for someone to
(26:05):
actually learn this?
Just a few months?
A couple, a couple months,someone could get really good at
it.
So in the meantime, you justput them on the fundraising
stuff and then have them rideshotgun on some other stuff, you
know?
I mean, they can, they can intwo weeks, they can get pretty
darn ramped up.
unknown (26:20):
Huh.
Josh Matthews (26:20):
It's not that hard anymore with AI to learn
something if you're smart.
And this is where we come backto that opening statement.
Yeah.
Right?
General mental ability.
Yep.
Are you smart?
Criteria number one, are yousmart?
That's number one.
(26:42):
Number two, have you done thisbefore and can you prove it?
Let's see.
Here's a work example.
Let's walk, walk Scott.
Walk me through uh intake for asolution architecture project
of $100,000 service cloudinstance.
Okay, walk me through that.
Right?
Oh, he did it.
Yeah, Scott can do that.
Scott Stafford (27:02):
Great.
So he can do it and he's smart.
Got it.
Just benchmark some other timewhere they actually learn
something, right?
And that way you're not sobiased about a little small
detail of the job.
That's brilliant to thinkabout.
Josh Matthews (27:14):
Yeah.
And that's actually it's it's ait's its own separate thing on
here.
And we'll kind of we'll kind oftalk about that.
It's the last one, which isessentially over-indexing on
exact tech skills instead ofcoachability, right?
So that's gonna be number five.
But this big winner criteria,if you're working with an
internal talent acquisition proor you are running the search
(27:34):
yourself, or you're engaging anoutside headhunter such as me or
anyone on my team, you can'tmove the goalposts.
Scott Stafford (27:45):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (27:46):
Right.
You just wasted everyone'stime.
Right.
And and how do you make surethat those goalposts don't move?
Well, whoever's doing theactual hunting and searching has
to have direct contact with theactual hiring manager, the
decision maker.
And in this case, the decisionmaker is the wrong person.
It's the wrong person.
The head of delivery should bemaking the final decision.
(28:06):
The person with the mostexperience, the person who
already built a good team,right?
Not the person who's done 50interviews in their life, right?
Because we don't know ifthey're having a bad day.
At least record it.
At least record it.
And then someone can go backand just kind of watch it at 2x
speed and be like, wait asecond.
I see, I see here your reasonfor rejection was this, that,
(28:29):
and the other thing.
But I'm watching the videohere, and it seems like you
could have probed a little bitmore deeply.
And I didn't pick up on that.
I didn't pick up on that atall.
And this happens all the time,where I will pick up for, for
example, here's a here's aperson.
I told him, this is at the riskof me getting canceled.
I told him, look, man, you'vegot DEI all over your LinkedIn
(28:54):
profile.
Okay.
I said, it's not, I'm notsaying it's dead, but it is not
like you're going to excludeyourself from a lot of places.
One, a lot of it's been ruledlike you can't do that anymore.
Okay.
Okay.
With certain organizations.
Like you're not allowed to.
There are limits to it.
Do you actually care?
And he's like, no, not really.
(29:16):
I was like, then take it offyour LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Right.
Josh Matthews (29:18):
And then I was told by the client that he's not
coachable.
When he showed up with aLinkedIn profile that removed
all the DEI stuff that I coachedhim on.
Yeah, he's coachable.
Are you a good coach?
Because I am.
How did you not pick up thathe's not that he's coach?
That how did you pick up thathe's not coachable?
How did you pick that up?
(29:39):
And someone like me or someonewho's a senior manager can look
at a lead or a hiring manager,you know, more junior hiring
manager's session and be like, Idon't know about that, Scott.
I get where you're coming from,but I think that that was maybe
maybe you put too much weightinto that question.
Do you see what I mean?
Scott Stafford (29:55):
Right.
Josh Matthews (29:56):
Okay.
So what we're talking aboutright now is giving the least
trained person too much vetopower.
And I'll give you an example.
I had a client, still have aclient.
They are a software company inuh in finance.
They work with private equitysoftware.
And they were hiring twohardcore developers.
(30:17):
These are like architectslashdevs, hands dirty, roll up the
sleeves, iterate, iterate on aproduct.
It's very cool, very coolcompany.
Really great manager.
Thought the guy's terrific.
And he puts them forward.
Now I liked them.
Okay.
My recruiter who found himliked him.
We both interviewed him, videointerviews.
(30:38):
Went and then he spent two,three hours with the CTO who
liked him.
And then he interviewed withfour other people.
And at least two of the fourpeople really liked him.
One, someone who doesn't reallyhave much weight, just was
like, oh, he just said this onething and I wasn't sure about
that.
Okay, so that's the hell.
All right, whatever.
(30:59):
And then one other person,someone he'd be working with,
someone who'd been there a longtime, and someone who's known to
have an ego, by the way,blackballed him.
I don't think he's right forus.
Why?
I just didn't feel it.
And then the CTO goes, okay,well, that's how we do it here.
That's how we do it here, youknow.
So it's a no.
(31:19):
It's like, wait a second.
We found you a unicorn.
You liked him.
He's done this for 20 years.
He can do the job.
You work for a company that'strying to accomplish things.
You're letting some guy who hasthe same job as him, who
possibly might be threatened byhim, possibly might be
(31:39):
threatened by him.
Right.
Right?
Oh, he didn't like his energy.
Oh, he didn't like having anintrovert on the team.
unknown (31:48):
Really?
Josh Matthews (31:48):
He liked the competition.
Well, maybe.
I don't know if he didn't likethe competition.
I don't think he liked hisstyle.
I thought he felt like he mightnot stand up for himself
enough.
You know, he might not, becausethese guys can bowl you over,
you know, the way I would bowlsomeone over.
And I would, potentially.
Potentially.
(32:08):
So I kind of understand that,but I also know the value of
like, wait a second.
What about that guy who speaks20% as much as I do?
And is just processing andthinking about everything that
he's seeing and hearing?
Because he sees and hearsbetter than I do.
What are they going to saynext?
How is that going to changethis product?
(32:29):
How is that going to save ustime, solve a problem, improve
the company, increase sales,deliver something that no one
else in the market can deliver.
I want that person on the team.
Right.
That's diversity.
That's actual real diversity,diversity of thinking, right?
Not skin color people.
So it's a real, it's a realtricky thing.
(32:52):
It's a real tricky thing, this.
So, you know, your team leadshould be a witness, basically
bringing evidence, not the judgeand jury.
Right?
If the least trainedinterviewer has the strongest
vote, then the process is builtto magnify bias.
I'm going to say that again.
If the least trainedinterviewer has the strongest
(33:13):
vote, the process is built tomagnify bias.
Right?
A player candidates often getrejected, and not because they
lack ability, but because oneperson didn't feel it.
And by the way, the way they'reconducting the interview is to
get them to have enough reasonsto say no to this person because
they feel it.
So all these other people, thehiring manager, the CEO, the
(33:36):
director of delivery, they'reall going like, no, but she had
all these valid reasons.
No, she didn't.
And she's not a bad person.
But she designed the flow ofquestions to catch this person
so she could say no.
Anyone could do that.
We could do it right now,couldn't we?
(33:59):
Like we could do it right now.
I could lead you down a road,Scott, right now, that would put
you on your heels, create mudin your brain, make you nervous.
And by the way, you don't haveanything at stake.
This guy had his next career atstake, supporting his family at
(34:21):
stake, right?
Now I'm gonna jumble yourbrain.
I'm gonna really throw you onyour heels.
And by the way, guys, I do dothat.
I do like to see how peoplerespond under pressure.
There's nothing wrong withthat.
It's just a problem if you'retrying to do it to lead them
down a road where you are uncon,again, it's unconscious bias.
It's unconscious.
You're not aware that you'redoing it.
(34:44):
Interesting.
So everyone can be like, no, Idon't do that.
It's like, no, you do it.
We all do it.
Scott Stafford (34:51):
Do you have any tips on that?
Like how you could actually,you know, counteract that.
If you know, right, everybody'sbiased, right?
I'm biased.
Is there anything I can do thatto keep that in check a little
bit?
Josh Matthews (35:02):
Yeah, have a professional behavioral
interviewer.
Okay.
And you you get to you get tovalidate their technical skill
set.
Can they perform the functions?
And that's it.
And then I'll determine if theycan take direction and if
they'll follow through.
I'll determine if they're smartand if they're conscientious.
These are the top predictors ofsuccess.
(35:23):
I'll determine if what they'vedone in the past will equal what
you need them to do now and inthe future.
I'll do that.
I'm trained.
You're not.
So don't bother doing it.
You can have a nice meet andgreet.
That's fine.
But ultimately, what you haveto say, I don't care.
You know why?
(35:43):
Because you're a team lead.
And you know what team leadsget to do?
Lead the teams that I build.
Yep.
Lead the teams that I buildbecause when it fails, it's not
your head on the line, it'smine.
I'm the one responsible for thebottom line of the business.
Okay.
Not some salaried person who'smaking a buck fifty a year.
Sorry.
You don't get to determine thegrowth of this company.
(36:06):
You get to manage the peoplethat we ultimately decide.
I'm interested in what you haveto say.
You might have something reallyinteresting.
You might be able to say theteam lead could have something
to say like, look, I know thatyou really like this person and
I know that you really want tobring them on.
But when I probed into this,which is one of our structured
(36:29):
questions, and they said thisand I pushed a little bit
deeper, I got kind of a funnyfeeling.
I think you should maybe talkto them one more time and probe
more deeply.
Or maybe Josh can, or maybeso-and-so can, right?
Because I just gotta, I'mlistening to my spidey sense.
And, you know, it's good tohave that, right?
And I can't really articulateit, but I think it warrants some
(36:53):
deeper investigation.
Can you look into that?
Because I and by the way, guys,like I don't know any
Salesforce practice leads orteam leads who are consultants
who are expert interviewers.
Do you?
Scott Stafford (37:11):
No.
Josh Matthews (37:13):
I talked to a guy once, I said, um, I said, How
would you rate yourself oninterviewing?
He's like, Me?
Probably nine out of ten.
Really, really good.
Like, okay.
How many people have youinterviewed in your life?
Man, at least like 50.
So, okay.
So that's four weeks of workfor a junior recruiter.
(37:37):
Four weeks of work, right?
50 is nothing, man.
50 is nothing.
And how much guidance did youget?
How much training did you get?
Were your interviews screened?
Like, did someone review them?
Did someone audit yourinterviews?
What was the success rate ofthe people that you brought on?
And the problem is, Scott, wedon't get to ever know, ever,
(38:00):
ever, ever know how many greatpeople this person passed up on.
Scott Stafford (38:05):
Right.
Josh Matthews (38:06):
Because you only know that if you hire them,
right?
Good point.
Let's talk about one more thingand then we're going to jump
into some fun stuff here.
So over-indexing on exact techskills instead of coachability.
We kind of touched on this alittle bit, right?
But the question is, is are yougoing to really wait another
six or eight weeks for maybe aunicorn who maybe knows that
(38:27):
exact little module, that exactlittle widget?
You know, a lot of must-havetech skills are really like can
learn fast skills.
I'm not saying, okay, theperson's never touched data
cloud.
It's a data cloud architectrole.
Yeah, it's a no.
Okay, fair enough.
Right.
Fair enough, right?
But okay, this is a Salesforceconsultant.
(38:49):
And I ask you, Scott, have youever done a Slack integration on
um Salesforce?
unknown (38:56):
No.
Josh Matthews (38:57):
Ever done that?
Scott Stafford (38:58):
No.
Josh Matthews (38:59):
Gosh, I'm really sorry.
We really need someone withexperience doing that.
I'm so sorry.
This job isn't for you, Scott.
Scott Stafford (39:07):
I think I can learn that pretty quick,
actually.
Josh Matthews (39:09):
Yeah, dude, I did it for myself in like an hour.
Huh.
It's not freaking hard.
None of this stuff's hard.
I mean, some of it's hard.
You need to be able to think.
Sorry, I'm not putting downevery Salesforce admin out
there.
I'm just saying it's not hardto do a Slack integration.
If you can follow directions,if you if you can read a recipe
and bake cookies, you can do aSlack integration.
(39:31):
I'm not saying a Slackintegration for some like
2,000-person company.
I did it for my little company,right?
So fair enough.
But it's like this isn't, thisshouldn't be stuff that's like,
now we can't hire you.
Sorry.
Scott Stafford (39:47):
So what should you be looking for to be able to
judge whether people can dothings rather than this hard
criteria?
What are you actually trying tofigure out during the interview
process?
Josh Matthews (39:58):
What am I trying to actually figure out?
Yeah.
Are you smart?
Can you take direction?
Are you coachable and are youconscientious?
And have you done this before?
That's all.
Like really, that like that'sthat's it.
Because think about this, okay?
Um when I'm doing an when I'mpeople think it's an interview
(40:23):
and that you're getting lookedout over your interview.
You're getting, we're lookingat, at least in my company,
we're looking at you from theminute we reach out, or you
reach out to us or we reach outto you, we are watching to see
what happens.
Right?
So do you respond to textmessages from us?
No?
Oh, you're a little bit slow?
(40:43):
Did you, were you late for thefollow-up conversation?
Did you answer your phone whenwe called?
How long did it take you toreturn my voicemail?
I don't care that you're atDisneyland.
I don't fucking care thatyou're at Disneyland.
Do you want the job or not?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Huh?
Josh Matthews (40:59):
Sorry, people.
It's real life.
You can have all your fancyrules for yourself and I don't
interfere.
Fine.
Okay.
But if you applied for a joband then you're not picking up
your phone, I'm gonna payattention to that.
I'm going to advise my client.
I don't know if this person'sreally that interested.
Scott Stafford (41:17):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (41:17):
Do you see what I mean?
So we're looking at the personthe whole way through.
The whole way through.
Right?
From start, do they did theyaccept their interview?
We sent you an invite.
Did you click accepted?
Or are we waiting there?
And is the hiring managerwaiting there until five after
whatever o'clock?
(41:38):
Are you gonna show up?
Because you never accepted it.
And then you show up and thenyou say, Oh yeah, sorry, I'm
late.
It's like, okay, is thatconscientious?
Huh?
It's not, right?
It's not.
So, and conscientiousness isabout a 40%, 40% value, 40%
predictability on someone'sability to perform a job really,
(42:00):
really well.
If you're not conscious, and uhJordan Peterson talks about
conscientiousness a lot.
Like it's the number onepredictor of whether or not you
can have successfulrelationships.
And all that means is are youthinking about other people?
Scott Stafford (42:15):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (42:15):
Now, in the the case I just described, yeah,
maybe someone's thinking abouttheir kids, but we all know that
those lines are two hours long.
And you can just fire a quicktext message and say, hey, I'm
in, I'm in line at Harry Potterand like it's gonna be a minute.
That's just conscientiousness.
The other thing isintelligence.
And I think that they kind ofgo hand in hand, not always, not
(42:37):
always, but they kind of gohand in hand, right?
So someone can be very, very,very, very, very, very book
smart and not be particularlygifted in thinking about how to
meet other people's needs.
I do want to um cover a couplelittle things here, my friend.
(43:01):
And that is again revisitingthe top ways to actually predict
someone's success.
General interviews are not avery good predictor.
Scott Stafford (43:13):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (43:14):
So if you're if you start a company, you start
interviewing people, you'regonna do what you know how to
do, which is connect withpeople, be nice, and try and
understand them.
And if you vibe with them,you'll think, I could probably
work with this person.
But let me ask you this, Scott.
How many people I think thatyou like more people than I do,
and I'm a particular person, andthat's why I'm good at my job.
(43:34):
I think that you like morepeople than I do.
I really believe that.
How many times have you reallyliked someone, started working
with them only to find out,gosh, this isn't actually a good
fit?
Scott Stafford (43:45):
A lot.
A lot.
Josh Matthews (43:47):
Okay.
And that's because you're wiredto be optimistic about people's
you equate likability withworkability.
Like you think if they're niceand if they're friendly.
I'm not making a big judgmentcall on you, by the way.
I think everyone knows this.
If you think someone's nice andfriendly and they're a good
person, that that will probablyequal good work output.
Scott Stafford (44:11):
Yeah.
unknown (44:12):
Yeah.
Scott Stafford (44:14):
I think a lot of times too, when someone comes
across to me and I don't jibewith them, you know, I made like
a judgment call.
But then as I got to know thembetter, they were actually
literally like a diamondrelationship.
I learned the most from them.
They performed amazingly.
And I'm like, huh.
You know, I read this wrong.
And I read a lot of thingswrong, you know, but I I tried
(44:36):
to keep that in in check more,trying to think of, okay, you
know, I was, or maybe it was me.
I could have actually just metsomebody, and you know, I have
bad moods, believe it or not,right?
I do get grumpy a few times.
I'm like, sure, you know, Isomeone hit my car, and then you
meet somebody and you're likethrows you off.
Josh Matthews (44:55):
So yeah, man.
I think of it like this.
Okay.
Clearly, I like music, right?
I've got a wall of guitars overhere, I've got keyboard, piano
in the other room.
That's a drum kit.
So ukulele, I love music.
I love plain music, especiallywith my kids.
It's a lot of fun.
And think of the songSemi-Charmed Life by Third Eye
(45:17):
Blind, which is a great song.
It's a great album.
And it's it's a song thatdoesn't really kind of wear out.
It takes a while for it to wearout, but it wears out.
Like it does wear out.
Do you know what I mean?
Anytime we hear a song andwe're like, we don't do it so
much nowadays with MP3s, noteven MP3s, with just like
(45:38):
Spotify and and the and AppleMusic and stuff.
So it's different.
It used to be we'd go out, we'dget an album, we'd have to
spend 20 bucks on a CD.
You know, or I mean, I rememberI had like cassette tapes of
Paul and Oates back in the day.
We're I'm we're both that old,by the way.
Yeah.
You know, the policesynchronicity on on cassette.
So we would list you you buythe album for the one song that
(46:02):
they play on the radio, and it'scatchy and you like it.
Yeah.
Right?
It's like you two, Josh Vitrie,you put it on because whatever,
where the streets have no name.
Like, okay, most playedairplayed song from that album.
It might be the worst album.
It might be the worst song onthe whole album, as far as I'm
concerned, right?
There's so many other like waybetter songs.
(46:24):
They're just not radio songs.
There's so many way bettersongs on that album.
You've got to start thinkingabout interviewing like that.
Are you just watching a hitsingle that's gonna wear out
three months into their workcareer with you?
Or is this the song that youneed to listen to a little bit
better?
Is this the candidate that youwere originally like, I don't
(46:44):
know.
I remember it was 1986, and Iwas standing in Tower Records in
London at Piccadilly Circus.
Yeah.
And a song came on, and it wasum it was just like heaven by
the cure.
And I was like, oh my God.
And I went up to the guy at thecounter and I said, What is
that song?
(47:04):
And he just kind of pointed tothe CD that was or the cassette
tape that was on the counter.
He said, Oh, it's the cure.
I was like, Oh, I want that.
So I bought the album.
I had a little bit of money andI bought the album.
And I'm I gave it a listen, andthere's this one song called
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
And it's like rough.
(47:24):
I'm 14.
I grew up on like disco andDuran Duran, right?
Like, so then this song comeson, and it's like, kiss me, kiss
me, kiss me, eh.
Your tongue's like poison.
It's like, I'm like, whoa, whatis this?
It kind of scared me.
It definitely made meuncomfortable.
Right.
And I would fast forward thatsong.
(47:46):
And then till like one day I'mjust like kind of zonked out
because I was traveling with myfamily a lot.
And oh, thank you, Larry.
Take care, buddy.
And I just let the whole albumplay.
And like I had like two tapes,two cassette tapes for like, you
know, two weeks or threecassette tapes or something.
Right.
I I started to realize, like,oh no, that's a really good
song.
I softened to it.
(48:07):
It's a lot more listenable tome now.
Right.
And not only that, it willprobably be more enduring than a
lot of the other popular songs.
If we can start thinking aboutcandidates like that, just start
there, people.
Just start there.
Understand that we all knowthat you're doing your best.
I know it sounded probably likeI'm picking on a lot of people
(48:28):
here.
I'm not.
I'm trying to wake people up.
Okay.
This is not a small thing.
It's a terrible, terrible thingto step over a quarter to pick
up a dime, to step over a goldpiece to pick up a nickel.
And it's happening every singleday in America.
And my clients even do itagainst my advice, and they
(48:50):
still do it.
Right.
So please be awake, be aware,understand what anchoring is,
what confirmation bias is, whatconformity bias is.
Just look those three things upand put them up on a little
post-it note on your littlemonitor there when you're
interviewing.
And so you can just kind ofcheck in with yourself.
(49:10):
Like, oh yeah, do I feel thisway about this person?
Oh, that's right.
Jenny said she wasn't sureabout this gal before I jumped
into the meeting.
Maybe that's why I'm thinking,yeah, Jenny's not sure.
So maybe I'm not sure.
Because I like Jenny.
Do you see what I mean?
That's that's conformity bias,anchoring bias.
So let's do that.
And then for all of you CEOs,founders, C-suite, VP level,
(49:36):
senior director level people,please pick up those reins.
It's your team.
It's fine that you've got otherpeople and you're trying to
empower them.
Congratulations.
I think that's a great move.
You want to empower your team,you're trying to delegate.
That's great.
But when you empower anddelegate without training,
(49:56):
you're doing something that Iwould call silly.
It's just silly to do that,right?
You can check out my recentblog.
I put up a meme on LinkedIn theother day too.
And it shows a, it shows uhlike a professional pizza guy in
a nice pizza uh parlor, andhe's on the phone, and then
there's a six-year-old standingon a stool pulling out a burnt
(50:18):
pizza, right?
That burnt pizza is your topcandidate.
You're on the phone, you're toobusy, you've delegated it to
your six-year-old who doesn'tknow how to cook yet.
So until you teach these peoplehow to cook, until you teach
them, just don't delegate.
You don't delegate and hopethat they learn on the job with
that most important decision.
(50:41):
Your delivery team.
Why would you do that?
Don't do that.
Okay.
Scott, do you have any lastquestions before we wrap up?
It's been a really interestingand fun hour.
Sorry, I feel like I've talkedmy head off.
Scott Stafford (50:54):
We've talked a lot about this from the
perspective of the hiringmanager or from the company,
right?
But let's just say that you'resomebody in an interview and you
sense that there's some biasgoing on.
How can you counteract that?
They ask you one question, andmaybe you were a little bit
nervous on that one.
What could you do midmid-interview to try and even
(51:15):
out the field, right?
A little bit to to break downsome of that bias?
Is there any other thing?
Josh Matthews (51:21):
Yeah, common ground.
Yes, common ground.
Right?
Common ground.
Right.
So if you're feeling like I'mlosing this, yeah.
I feel like I'm gettingcornered right now.
I feel like they're just tryingto pick on me and come up with
reasons why I'm not a fit, thenyou have to take the bullets out
(51:45):
of the gun.
Scott, can I just jump in for asecond, bud, real quick?
Sure.
Thanks.
First of all, if I haven'tconveyed this already, I really
want you to know that being herein this meeting with you has
actually been the only thingthat's been on my mind for the
(52:07):
last two weeks.
I've done all my research onyour company.
I've done backdoor references,I've done deep dives on AI, and
I've validated that what I'vebeen able to learn about your
you and your company and how Ioperate, I I'm confident we're a
(52:29):
really great match.
Scott Stafford (52:31):
Oh wow.
Josh Matthews (52:32):
But I also want to tell you that I haven't done
a lot of interviews.
And I may have put so muchpressure on myself about wanting
to do well in this one that Imight I get the feeling that you
know, Scott, how when you knowyou're like not being yourself,
(52:55):
when you know like you're notyourself, like maybe you're at a
party and you have to talk tosomeone that you didn't really
want to talk to or you didn'tknow, you know, you're nervous
about, or you know, whatever itis.
I I actually feel that way now.
And that's not your fault.
I've just built this up in myhead, and I want to just let you
know that.
And I also want to ask you totake that into consideration in
(53:18):
your evaluation of me becauseI've got five references that
will attest that I would dogreat here.
I just want to let you knowthat.
Scott Stafford (53:27):
Wow.
Josh, that just broke down,right?
My whole perspective ofanything negative that would
have been said before, right?
I you almost like want tofollow up some questions and
wow, that was powerful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So just say like, just saythat.
Yeah.
Okay.
You would have to practice tobe able to say it that well.
(53:49):
You really didn't.
I mean, you made me re-questionlike all the decisions.
You were like, okay, yeah,maybe he was just nervous on
that question.
Or this person, he just statedit.
He really wants the job, right?
And you know now that he'sdedicated right to doing his
best here.
So it just reframes everythingright away.
Yeah, that was powerful.
Josh Matthews (54:10):
You you know, a little bit more than a year ago,
we did a big giveaway with myfriend John Klein, People First
Method.
Right.
One of the gals who won uh wonthe free experience, coaching
experience, training experience.
I wound up placing her at aclient of mine.
They love her.
She's fantastic.
She already got a promotion.
Scott Stafford (54:29):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (54:30):
She hadn't worked in two years.
Military wife worked reallyhard, went and got like five or
six certifications during hertime off, stayed engaged, and we
chatted, just kind of likelightly chatted about stuff.
But then when it came time forthe actual interview with me, oh
my God, was she so nervous?
And I was like, where'd she go?
Whoa, this is not, this is notthe person I talked to.
(54:52):
You know?
This is not my beautiful house.
This is not my beautiful wife.
Like, where did she go?
And I just told her, I waslike, I know you're really
nervous.
She's like, Yeah, I'm like,just chill, man.
Like, it's okay.
We're just hanging out, we'rejust gonna hang out.
Okay.
Now I still had a structuredinterview with her, yeah,
(55:14):
because structured interviewsdoesn't mean behave rigidly.
That's not the same thing.
Structured means first we dothis and then we do that, and
then we score on this, and thenwe do this, and then we score on
that, and then we do this, wescore on that.
Now I do it a little bitdifferently because I've been
doing this for a really longtime.
But at the end of it, all shecalmed down, she settled down.
(55:36):
Her nerves were so high.
Oh my god, it's like stagefright.
You ever acted in a play,Scott?
Yep.
You ever performed music liveor anything like that?
No one can hear your nods.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Okay, so you know.
So you know, like it's hard ifyou haven't done it before.
(56:01):
It's really hard.
Oh my god, the first time Iever played drums live, just so
tight.
Want to be really bad at drums?
Be nervous while you play them.
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
Same for any instrument, right?
Or singing or anything oracting.
So, also, folks, you thecandidates out there who are
listening to this show, what canyou do?
(56:21):
Well, you could take the boltsout of the gun right away.
You could sit down and youcould say, Scott, thank you so
much for meeting with me today.
I'm going to be honest and tellyou, I am nervous because I've
really built up this role in myhead.
I'm sure that it's going toaffect your perception of me.
I just want it on record thatI'm telling you up front right
now that that's likely tohappen.
(56:41):
When you say that, youautomatically relax.
It's kind of for them.
It's mostly for you.
Right.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Scott Stafford (56:50):
So you could do that.
All right, guys.
That that also was interestingbecause you empowered yourself
too, right?
You just actually showedexactly.
You're an assertive person.
You want this role, right?
It takes guts to do that.
And I think people wouldappreciate it.
That's a really good point.
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (57:07):
So we will be back in two weeks.
I'm excited.
We're going to have a guest,Jason P.
Carroll, C-A-R-R-O-L-L.
He is the founder and principalbehavioral scientist at Active
Index.
It's job prediction performanceusing AI.
I'm really excited about thisbecause you guys know I love my
um testing stuff, my MBTI stuffand uh personality indexing and
(57:31):
performance indexing.
It's also probably right upthere with structured interviews
and intelligence, et cetera.
The best way to gauge yourcandidates' ability to perform
the job that you're hiring themto do really well, right?
Testing, predictive testing.
So Jason's gonna be on theshow.
We're really looking forward tohim.
(57:51):
I just met with an authoryesterday who wrote a book all
about like, do you really needcollege in the age of AI right
now?
So I'm excited about Herschelbe on in about a month.
Got a lot of wonderful guestslined up all the way up through
May, right now, May, June.
So please like, subscribe.
If you enjoy this program andyou're listening on Apple or on
Spotify, throw up some fivestars, drop in a comment.
(58:13):
Makes a big difference for us.
If you're watching this on JoshForce, please go ahead.
Give us a thumbs up, drop in acomment, ask a question.
What did you think made themost sense?
What about this conversationtoday?
Did you think was BS or annoyedyou?
We want to hear all of it.
And Scott Stafford, thank youso much for quarterbacking this
show today.
Really appreciate you, myfriend.
(58:34):
You've been listening to thehiring edge.
We'll be back in two weeks.
Bye for now.
Scott Stafford (58:39):
Bye, everybody.
Found that interviewers form judgments
about candidates in the first 10seconds of an interview.
10 seconds.
Then they spend the remaining99.4% of the conversation in
confirmation bias mode, lookingfor evidence to support the snap
judgment they already made.
Welcome to the Hiring Edge, thepodcast helping leaders
(00:22):
navigate the age of AI, createteams that thrive, and build a
workplace people never want toleave.
That's welcome everybody to thehiring edge.
My name is Josh Matthews.
I'm here with my friend ScottStafford.
Most companies don't lose theirbest talent over money.
They lose them in the interviewbefore the offer even goes out.
They've already filtered outthe very people they're trying
(00:43):
to hire.
This episode, we break downfive silent killers in the
hiring process.
Untrained interviewers, uncleardefinitions of what great
actually looks like.
Valuing interview performance.
This is a big one.
Giving veto power to the wrongpeople.
This is like my least favoritething veto power to the wrong
(01:04):
people.
And filtering way too hard fortechnical skills that can be
learned fast.
But here's where it getsuncomfortable.
Most hiring processes aren'tjust inconsistent, they're
biased.
In fact, I recall a stat whereeven recruiters said about 59%
of recruiters admitted, yeah,they're they're kind of biased.
And I'm sure that I am too.
But the level of bias in actualorganizations with hiring
(01:28):
managers is so far off thechart, it's insane.
So gut feel, culture fit,unstructured conversations,
guys, these don't just loweryour chances of finding great
talent.
They systematically push thosechances away.
And the data backs this up.
Research from Google anddecades of hiring science show
(01:50):
that structured, evidence-basedinterviews are far better
predictors of performance thanad hoc conversations.
Even more, general mentalability or GMA, that's
intellect, intelligence, EQ, allthose things kind of combined,
consistently shows up as one ofthe strongest predictors of
long-term success, faroutweighing how polished someone
(02:11):
seems in a 45-minute interview.
So if your hiring process isdriven by instinct instead of
signal, you're not just makingslower decisions, you're making
terrible, terrible, terribledecisions, worse ones.
And you're losing people whowould have actually built your
business.
I've been excited, Scott, totalk about this topic.
(02:32):
We've kind of touched onaspects of this over the last
handful of conversations, butwe've never really boiled down
like what are the actualmetrics?
Like, what are the actualmetrics?
And I'm going to hit everybodywith something pretty hard right
out of the gate.
And that is that your ad hoc adhoc vibe conversations, right?
(02:55):
Like, oh, yeah, it's now timefor the hiring manager to talk
to you.
It's now time for the, youknow, talent acquisition person
to kind of give you a little bitof screen.
Unstructured, not scoring,asking different questions to
different candidates, notverifying their past success,
but trying to see how theyperform under pressure, this
(03:17):
kind of thing.
It doesn't work.
Okay.
It doesn't work.
In fact, you have roughly 20%chance of being able to
effectively predict someone'ssuccess in a job from your
typical average vibe chatinterview, unstructured
interview.
20% chance.
(03:38):
Dude, that's not even a flip ofa coin.
It's so bad.
So bad.
So let's kind of dive in.
Um there's five main thingsthat I want to talk about today,
Scott.
And the reality is some ofthese kind of cross over, but a
really big one is overvaluinginterview performance over
(03:59):
historical success.
So this is like you're notalways selecting the best
performer.
You may be just be selectingthe best stage actor.
That makes sense.
So you know who gets hurt inthese is introverts.
Like, do you think I do well inan interview?
Probably do pretty good.
Pretty confident, can talk, canthink on my feet, right?
(04:21):
My brain fires up when I'mtalking versus an introvert,
right?
But an introvert might actuallybe able to do my job better.
It's possible.
It's very possible.
No, it's not.
I'm kidding.
But no, it's possible.
And how would you ever know?
One of the key things is thiswhole idea of like anxiety.
Right.
This is not a small thing tohave an interview with the CEO
(04:43):
or the hiring manager orwhomever it is.
So your anxiety is going to beup.
Now, for you to get the job,this company wants you to learn
how to manage your anxiety andkeep it down.
Right.
And why?
Well, I work with a lot of SIs.
Right.
And we all know that a lot ofthe people that work at SIs are
(05:05):
client-facing.
Right.
So they're judging aninterview.
They're looking at an interviewand going, okay, well, if this
is an interview, this is goingto be just like, it's going to
be just like if they're talkingto a client.
Bullshit.
No, it's not.
That's dumb.
That is the dumbest thing.
One of the dumber things I'veever heard.
Now, I kind of can see thepath, the mental pathway of like
(05:26):
A plus A to B to C to D,talking to someone that they
don't know and answeringquestions and blah, blah, blah.
And by the way, they're askingyou questions about yourself.
So shouldn't you have reallygood answers?
And the reality is, I don'tknow, maybe, maybe not.
But the fact is, is that somepeople are incredible with
(05:46):
clients because you know whatthey do?
They ask questions and they sitthere and they listen.
Isn't that a good consultant,anyway?
Right.
I mean, that's a consult.
Do you sit around and just getdrilled questions by your
clients?
Scott Stafford (06:02):
No, listening is far more important, right?
Actually, that's communication,right?
It's communications.
It's communication.
Josh Matthews (06:10):
You know, the other thing is too, this whole
idea of like interviewperformance.
I'm always a little bit warywhen someone can interview
really well, but then I look attheir job history and they've
been a kangaroo.
They've been hopping, hopping,hopping from job to job to job,
or contract to contract tocontract.
Now, do you think they've hadsome practice?
Yep, they've had a lot ofpractice.
(06:32):
Yeah, man.
What about the person who'sbeen somewhere for five years
and somewhere for seven years?
You think they've had a lot ofpractice interviewing?
Scott Stafford (06:41):
And they're probably really nervous, right?
Because they haven't done it somuch, they're not they're gonna
have that performance anxietyand you're gonna make a poor
hiring decision on that.
Josh Matthews (06:51):
That's well, yeah, and they're they're
they're loyal people too.
They're loyal, like they'reletting go of five years, six
years, seven years ofrelationship.
So it's not a small thing,this, right?
And so, you know, if ifsomeone's delivered for five
years, why would you sort ofkick that to the side and
(07:13):
instead put more weight on ashaky 45-minute conversation
more than their body of work?
Scott Stafford (07:19):
That makes sense.
I mean, I think what you'reactually saying is, you know,
make sure that you look at thewhole history of what they're
doing.
Try to remove your bias andthen really try to understand,
right, how you're looking atthem in just 45 minutes, right?
You can't judge everything whensomebody's nervous.
Perfect.
Josh Matthews (07:38):
Yeah, and bias is a huge topic, and we'll get
into that in a little bit,right?
In fact, we might just get intothat here in about one minute.
We're talking about a reallyinteresting topic, and that is
the five main things thatcompanies and organizations and
hiring managers are doing thatis foolish, that's keeping them
from their top candidates.
You've got the pipeline, you'vegot the best dad ever, you've
got the best recruiter ever.
(07:59):
All these top people have beenfiltered down to you, and then
you're getting through them, andthen you're saying no, and
you're saying no to people thatactually would do really well,
and you're doing that.
You're doing that becausethat's how you've been trained.
Now, when I say that's howyou've been trained, what do I
mean by that?
The reality is something like67% of people, hiring managers
(08:20):
who conduct interviews, 67% havehad.
Do you want to guess how muchtraining they've had?
67%, Scott.
I don't know.
Zero.
Okay.
Zero training.
Zero training.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Two-thirds of people whoconduct interviews as hiring
managers have a total goose eggon training.
(08:43):
And then the ones that do havetraining, it might be some
45-minute, 60-minute lunch andlearn on the star method that
they did four years ago.
Right?
It's like, here you go, goodluck, bye-bye, have fun, try to
remember everything.
Good luck.
Okay, bye, grow the team,bye-bye.
Like it's bullshit.
(09:04):
You know, these people are nottrained.
And why would they be?
Companies don't train them.
And why would they not trainthem?
Because they're too busy.
They think that they know itall.
There's a massive, this is theintersection of ignorance and
arrogance.
And it's not that their fault.
That's this doesn't mean peopleare arrogant.
Okay, doesn't.
(09:24):
And it doesn't mean thatthey're completely ignorant.
Most people know I'm not thatgreat at interviewing, or hey,
I've only done 20 of these, orI've only done 40 of these.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Right.
Josh Matthews (09:34):
But we all know that practice doesn't make
perfect.
It's perfect practice makesperfect.
And so in my career, when I'vehired someone, how many
interviews do you think I'mlistening in on?
Right?
Sitting next to, sitting inwith a candidate, or excuse me,
with a with a new recruiter.
(09:55):
I mean, dozens, man.
Dozens.
Right.
And then spot checkingregularly.
So there's a quick thing thatpeople can do.
Start recording yourinterviews.
Just do that.
You can literally just recordyour interview, upload the
transcript, and then have Claudeanalyze with a very good
prompt, analyze your ability toone, ask good questions, but
(10:16):
even more importantly, interpretthe responses.
Where could you have presseddeeper?
Where have you exhibited bias?
You could just do that.
That would take literally youclick one button and then you
upload it.
That's five minutes.
And now you understand whetheryou're good at it not and what
you need to work on.
It's not that hard.
It's hard to get good at it.
It's hard to remember it.
So let's talk about this.
So running untrained hiringmanagers as lead interviewers.
(10:40):
Google's work guidance actuallysays structured interviewing
with consistent questions andscoring is one of the strongest
ways to improve hiring qualityand predict on-the-job success.
And broader research also showsstructured interviews are more
productive and less biased thanunstructured ones, while
rubric-based interviewertraining improves agreement and
(11:03):
reduces bias in evaluation.
So when teams let untrainedhiring managers just have a
chat, they create inconsistentinterviewer interviews and low
quality signals.
So you would never send, Scott,you'd never send an untrained
rep into your biggest clientpitch, right?
Scott Stafford (11:20):
Right.
Josh Matthews (11:21):
Yeah.
But many companies senduntrained managers into the most
important conversation in thefunnel.
Scott Stafford (11:27):
Hmm.
You know what you're bringingout a lot that's interesting is
there's a system behind this.
You know, you don't just throwsomeone in to say, hire
somebody, right?
There's training, there's asystem.
You got to make sure that yourquestions are uniform across the
different candidates.
This is a really importanttopic, I think, that a lot of
people that are doing hiringdecisions need to pay attention
(11:50):
to.
Well, yeah, that's why we'retalking about it.
I mean, I actually didn't, Iwasn't aware of how how much
bias I would actually have, youknow, without me actually going
through something, I might, youknow, just inadvertently say,
hey, I like this person or Idon't like this person.
Yeah.
And if they're they're nothiring to be my friend, they're
hiring to do a job, right?
Josh Matthews (12:10):
Yeah, that's right.
And and here's the thing.
So most people who go intointerviews as the interviewer
have really good questions.
They've looked them up, they'velearned from other managers.
They thought, oh, that's areally good question.
Or, oh, I I heard this on ashow from Josh.
I'm gonna ask the question Joshsaid is his favorite question,
(12:32):
right?
And and I'll ask it.
But now comes the problem ofinterpretation.
So we all have, as humans, weall have filters.
Yep.
You know what I mean by that?
Like you say one thing, itmeans something different to me,
a very different personalitytype than you than you are.
Of course it is.
I've had a very different lifeexperience than you have, and
(12:53):
vice versa.
So you could say something tome, and I could think, like, oh,
he's shaming me.
And you you're you might bethinking, I'm helping him.
Right?
So that's just a silly example,but this happens constantly in
communication, constantly,constantly, constantly.
So you have to be trained tounderstand like, what is someone
(13:15):
really saying?
Because there's what they'resaying, and then here's here's
one of the problems.
The the interviewer, theinterviewers who aren't that
skilled but are smart start tothink that they can start
reading between the lines.
Oh, I know what that reallymeans.
Right?
These sort of armchairpsychologists, oh, I know what
that really means.
I know what that means.
Oh, he's hiding this.
Oh, he's really this.
(13:36):
Oh, he's actually lazy, or he'sactually, you know, she's she's
actually not reliable.
Oh, she's not really willing tolearn.
Oh, that one thing she said,that means that she's not gonna
do a good job.
She said she'd rather do this.
Therefore, I'm got I've got twojobs available.
This one's no longer available.
She'd rather have that one, butthat means she's gonna quit in
two months if I put her in thisone.
It doesn't mean that, right,guys.
(13:58):
It doesn't mean that at all,you silly goose.
Just calm down.
Yeah, you have to do is probe alittle further.
And I'm not gonna traineveryone how to interview today.
I just want people to be aware,Scott, of these very, very ugly
and massive gaps.
They're not, they're not,they're not good gaps.
(14:18):
I think that there can be someconfusion with people, Scott,
where people think that they'rerunning a structured interview.
Here's a structured interview.
Everyone either has the sameexact questions, right, and
they're all going to score themon a rubric that's defined.
When we say uh on a scale offive, a three is average.
(14:40):
This is what three means.
It means some capabilities inthis area, or a five means this
is a, you know, only one in tenpeople would score this high.
Like you've got to give it somesort of context so that people
aren't showing up at the end ofthe scoring session and then
having completely differentideas of what getting an A is or
(15:00):
getting a C is.
I mean, you've had teachers,you went to school, you went to
college, you know, this teacher,you learned a lot.
They're really good, they'rereally tough.
You got a C and you weregrateful for it because, oh my
God, are they hard?
And then you go into the otherthing, you barely did anything,
you got an A.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Right.
Josh Matthews (15:17):
Right.
That's different rubrics thatthey're using.
And this happens inside oforganizations and companies,
right?
The other thing that happens iseven if they have structured
interviews, even if they'redoing this sort of correctly,
right?
When they show up for the teammeeting, after they get off the
call, they call up the personwho's gonna interview them next
and they tell them what theythink about them.
(15:38):
That's called anchoring bias.
Right.
So if you and I are about towalk into a party, and right
before we, right before we walkin the door, I say, Scott, this
is gonna suck.
I don't like these people.
This is gonna suck.
I promise you, you will nothave nearly as good a time as if
I said right beforehand, Scott,this might be the most
(15:59):
incredible party ever.
It might not, but no matterwhat, we're gonna have an
amazing time.
Okay, so that's calledanchoring.
And managers and peopleinvolved in the hiring process
sewer each other.
Yeah, I don't know about him.
I didn't get a I didn't get avibe.
It's like, why?
They didn't play, they don'tplay golf, right?
They don't look like you, theydon't sound like you, they don't
(16:20):
talk like you, they talkslower.
They're from Alabama, you'refrom New York City.
So you don't think that yourclients are gonna like engage
with this person, right?
Meanwhile, they've got fiveyears of successful experience.
All you got to do is areference check to validate,
yeah, this person's a badass.
Talk to one of their clients,validate, validate, validate.
(16:41):
An interview should bevalidating their experience, not
trying to trip them up, nottrying to trick them, right?
Like this isn't an interviewfor a law firm, a litigation
attorney, is it?
No.
And even then, validate theirresults.
I'm not a fan of the.
Scott Stafford (17:09):
They might veto somebody that's not good just
because they were like in a badmood or that it didn't work for
them.
So you have to have a reallygood system to make sure that
you're being fair and thateverybody has to have a really
good reason why they're actuallytelling somebody, hey, this
isn't a perfect fit.
Josh Matthews (17:26):
Yeah.
And let let me let me helpeveryone out real quick.
Okay.
I'm gonna give everybody in theaudience, the listening
audience on a live show on ourYouTube channel or on the
podcast.
This is something that you cando.
Okay.
Okay.
I learned this, I think Ilearned this in Jeff Hyman's
book.
Um, here's what I want you todo.
When you find that you reallylike someone, yeah, your job
(17:47):
now, because you you have what'scalled confirmation bias.
That means in the and studieshave shown, I forget who said
it, might be able to find it.
I've got it here somewhere.
Studies have shown, oh yeah,research from the University of
Toledo, led by Dr.
Frank Bernieri, and cited byLaszlo Bach, found that
interviewers form judgmentsabout candidates in the first 10
(18:08):
seconds of an interview.
10 seconds.
Then they spend the remaining99.4% of the conversation in
confirmation bias mode lookingfor evidence to support the snap
judgment they already made.
unknown (18:25):
Oh my F.
Josh Matthews (18:27):
What the Wow.
Can you imagine?
Can you you don't have to?
We look at the world and welook at companies and we wonder
why they're having challenges.
Why is there even a job for me?
Like if it weren't for bias andall this other stuff, like I
wouldn't have I wouldn't have ajob.
You know what I mean?
And by the way, I'm susceptibleto it.
(18:48):
Of course.
But I combat it, and here's howI combat it.
And this is what everybody elsecan do.
When you really, really likesomeone, you now must spend the
rest of your interview tryingand probing to find reasons why
you don't like them.
Scott Stafford (19:05):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (19:06):
This will save your ass.
Okay, because we do two thingswrong.
One, we hire the wrong person.
Right?
Usually it's because we've hadsome sort of bias going in.
I've told an example of mehiring someone.
She was nice, she was smart,she had the work history, blah,
(19:26):
blah, blah, blah, blah.
I missed all the signs and sheshowed up for work, and within
an hour I knew it was a failure.
By lunch, my team was coming tome and saying, Josh, what did
you do?
Why did you bring this personon?
I'm like, Yeah, but you guysall agreed too.
And they're like, Yeah, weknow.
We didn't know what we weredoing.
We knew how to hire contracttech people.
We did not know how to hireinternally, right?
And and those teams that I sawat that Fortune 500 company was
(19:50):
churning a new employee everysix weeks.
Every six weeks, someonefailed, failed because the
hiring process was terrible.
I should not, at that age, atthat time, as a division
director, which is basicallylike a team lead, should not
have had final say.
Not until I'd proven my abilityto actually bring good people
(20:11):
on and get rid of all thatconfirmation bias.
Okay.
I shouldn't have done that.
They shouldn't have let me.
They did.
Scott Stafford (20:17):
Does that ever work the other way, Josh?
You said, hey, you look atsomebody that you like and then
you say, hey, prove, you know,show me some areas in this
interview where they might messup.
What about if there's someonethat you don't like?
Should you maybe do it theother way?
You know, absolutely, a hundredpercent.
Josh Matthews (20:33):
So, and here's the funny thing
inclined to say no in general,right?
Especially at lower levels,right?
When they're not the boss'sboss's boss, they're more likely
to say no and poo-poo the ideaof hiring someone, unless they
really just like like the personright away.
Like kids on the school playyard, you know, playground when
(20:55):
they're five years old.
We're best friends, mom, mom,look, we're best friends.
This is Johnny, we're bestfriends.
It's like they just met twominutes ago.
It's like, okay, let's stompwith with the elementary school
stuff.
So they're more likely to sayno.
Why?
Because if that person nevershows up, they can never be the
person that rubber stamped apotential failure.
Scott Stafford (21:17):
So no is actually the easier thing for
someone to say, hey, I justdon't like this person.
No's automatic.
Josh Matthews (21:22):
No's automatic.
When your kids were little, youcould say, hey, hey, girls, you
want to go to the you want togo to Disneyland?
They're five years old.
You want to go to Disneyland?
No.
Wait, yes, no is at the tip ofour tongue.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Always.
Josh Matthews (21:35):
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no.
Do you have time to talk?
No.
Right?
Is now a bad time to talk?
This is why we say when we coldcall someone, we say, Is now a
bad time to talk?
And they go, no.
Like, great.
So now I have your attention,we can talk.
You flip it because it'sautomatically going to be a no.
Okay, so let's keep movingforward because we're almost at
(21:55):
the bottom of the hour here andwe've got a lot to get through,
but I want you to put Push,okay.
I don't like this person.
Why?
Oh, they look like myex-stepdad.
Right.
Oh, they remind me of this onejerk who used to just like tap
his foot sitting next to me forlike a year and shaking the
whole desk and shaking the wholefloor, and that really annoyed
(22:16):
the heck out of me.
Or um, yeah, I don't like theirmusic, or I don't like that
they dyed their hair blue, or Idon't like whatever it is,
whatever your bias is, right?
From wherever it comes from,you need to really try and find
a way to get common ground.
If you're interviewing someone,by the way, and you don't
really like them, do you thinkthat they're gonna know?
(22:38):
I think, yeah, you can senseit.
I mean, you Hell yeah, man.
unknown (22:43):
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (22:43):
Now, yeah.
And now and they're gonnaperform worse.
They're gonna perform exactlyas you expected.
Yeah.
That's that whole confirmationbias thing.
See, I was right.
They sucked at interviewing.
It's like, no, you sucked atbeing an interviewer.
You never gave these people achance.
You got to get people, one, tolike you so that they can relax,
(23:06):
right?
And once they're relaxed, thenyou can actually get them to
open up and you've got to bevulnerable, right?
David did a great show lastyear on uh Josh Force and the
hiring edge.
Definitely listen to that oneabout vulnerability in the
workplace.
Did a great episode.
Go listen to that.
All right, let's keep movingon, guys, because there's more
(23:26):
to get through.
I want to talk for a momentabout vague winner criteria and
creating moving goalposts.
Scott Stafford (23:36):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (23:36):
Okay, so I I go through this with clients.
Josh, this is what we want.
A B C D E F G.
Okay.
What about if it's can you livewithout G?
Can you live without C?
Yeah.
Okay.
So here's the hiring marketright now.
This is what the actual mysilly, silly AI camera.
There we go.
And signals.
(23:57):
So this is what we want.
I'm like, okay.
Then I come back and I say,here's the reality.
Like just yesterday, I did abig deep report using
perplexity.
And I did it for a client ofmine.
We're hiring an RCA architect.
They want an RCA architect for$180,000 plus 10%.
Good luck with that.
That's not going to happen.
There's maybe 200 people, 150people in the country.
(24:19):
It's only been around for twoyears.
The ones that are doing it arefull-blown architects and don't
also want to build flows.
And they're making 200 to 220plus 20% bonus.
So I put together this reportto share it, right?
It's like, let's get clear onwhat actual winning criteria
looks like because it's not,it's not these hopes and dreams.
Who you want when you want themfor the price you want, pick
(24:41):
to.
But if the money is not there,you've got to live within what
your budget is.
You just have to.
Like there's no way around it.
You got you got to, otherwise,you're just not going to hire
the person.
So having very clearly definedacceptance criteria for the
candidates is critical.
So I'll give you an example.
(25:02):
I brought a candidate to aclient.
Ideally, they wanted a lot ofNPC experience.
The person had some, but it wason what was actually the most
common module, fundraising, butit wasn't on grant making.
And it wasn't on projects,which are, I mean, first of all,
(25:22):
NPC's this much of a sliver.
Uh, it's a tiny amount ofSalesforce in general.
And then those modules thatthey really want are even way
smaller portion of NPC.
Right.
And then their budget is theirbudget.
And so finding people has beenhard.
They're happy to look at peopleat the outset of this search
(25:44):
who have NPC, but maybe don'thave these modules.
You can teach that, you cantrain it.
Maybe it takes two weeks or amonth.
Then we bring them someone,they don't have those modules.
And that is one of a couplereasons why they're saying no to
that person, right?
They've been looking for twomonths.
Two months.
And how long did you say itwould take for someone to
(26:05):
actually learn this?
Just a few months?
A couple, a couple months,someone could get really good at
it.
So in the meantime, you justput them on the fundraising
stuff and then have them rideshotgun on some other stuff, you
know?
I mean, they can, they can intwo weeks, they can get pretty
darn ramped up.
unknown (26:20):
Huh.
Josh Matthews (26:20):
It's not that hard anymore with AI to learn
something if you're smart.
And this is where we come backto that opening statement.
Yeah.
Right?
General mental ability.
Yep.
Are you smart?
Criteria number one, are yousmart?
That's number one.
(26:42):
Number two, have you done thisbefore and can you prove it?
Let's see.
Here's a work example.
Let's walk, walk Scott.
Walk me through uh intake for asolution architecture project
of $100,000 service cloudinstance.
Okay, walk me through that.
Right?
Oh, he did it.
Yeah, Scott can do that.
Scott Stafford (27:02):
Great.
So he can do it and he's smart.
Got it.
Just benchmark some other timewhere they actually learn
something, right?
And that way you're not sobiased about a little small
detail of the job.
That's brilliant to thinkabout.
Josh Matthews (27:14):
Yeah.
And that's actually it's it's ait's its own separate thing on
here.
And we'll kind of we'll kind oftalk about that.
It's the last one, which isessentially over-indexing on
exact tech skills instead ofcoachability, right?
So that's gonna be number five.
But this big winner criteria,if you're working with an
internal talent acquisition proor you are running the search
(27:34):
yourself, or you're engaging anoutside headhunter such as me or
anyone on my team, you can'tmove the goalposts.
Scott Stafford (27:45):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (27:46):
Right.
You just wasted everyone'stime.
Right.
And and how do you make surethat those goalposts don't move?
Well, whoever's doing theactual hunting and searching has
to have direct contact with theactual hiring manager, the
decision maker.
And in this case, the decisionmaker is the wrong person.
It's the wrong person.
The head of delivery should bemaking the final decision.
(28:06):
The person with the mostexperience, the person who
already built a good team,right?
Not the person who's done 50interviews in their life, right?
Because we don't know ifthey're having a bad day.
At least record it.
At least record it.
And then someone can go backand just kind of watch it at 2x
speed and be like, wait asecond.
I see, I see here your reasonfor rejection was this, that,
(28:29):
and the other thing.
But I'm watching the videohere, and it seems like you
could have probed a little bitmore deeply.
And I didn't pick up on that.
I didn't pick up on that atall.
And this happens all the time,where I will pick up for, for
example, here's a here's aperson.
I told him, this is at the riskof me getting canceled.
I told him, look, man, you'vegot DEI all over your LinkedIn
(28:54):
profile.
Okay.
I said, it's not, I'm notsaying it's dead, but it is not
like you're going to excludeyourself from a lot of places.
One, a lot of it's been ruledlike you can't do that anymore.
Okay.
Okay.
With certain organizations.
Like you're not allowed to.
There are limits to it.
Do you actually care?
And he's like, no, not really.
(29:16):
I was like, then take it offyour LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Right.
Josh Matthews (29:18):
And then I was told by the client that he's not
coachable.
When he showed up with aLinkedIn profile that removed
all the DEI stuff that I coachedhim on.
Yeah, he's coachable.
Are you a good coach?
Because I am.
How did you not pick up thathe's not that he's coach?
That how did you pick up thathe's not coachable?
How did you pick that up?
(29:39):
And someone like me or someonewho's a senior manager can look
at a lead or a hiring manager,you know, more junior hiring
manager's session and be like, Idon't know about that, Scott.
I get where you're coming from,but I think that that was maybe
maybe you put too much weightinto that question.
Do you see what I mean?
Scott Stafford (29:55):
Right.
Josh Matthews (29:56):
Okay.
So what we're talking aboutright now is giving the least
trained person too much vetopower.
And I'll give you an example.
I had a client, still have aclient.
They are a software company inuh in finance.
They work with private equitysoftware.
And they were hiring twohardcore developers.
(30:17):
These are like architectslashdevs, hands dirty, roll up the
sleeves, iterate, iterate on aproduct.
It's very cool, very coolcompany.
Really great manager.
Thought the guy's terrific.
And he puts them forward.
Now I liked them.
Okay.
My recruiter who found himliked him.
We both interviewed him, videointerviews.
(30:38):
Went and then he spent two,three hours with the CTO who
liked him.
And then he interviewed withfour other people.
And at least two of the fourpeople really liked him.
One, someone who doesn't reallyhave much weight, just was
like, oh, he just said this onething and I wasn't sure about
that.
Okay, so that's the hell.
All right, whatever.
(30:59):
And then one other person,someone he'd be working with,
someone who'd been there a longtime, and someone who's known to
have an ego, by the way,blackballed him.
I don't think he's right forus.
Why?
I just didn't feel it.
And then the CTO goes, okay,well, that's how we do it here.
That's how we do it here, youknow.
So it's a no.
(31:19):
It's like, wait a second.
We found you a unicorn.
You liked him.
He's done this for 20 years.
He can do the job.
You work for a company that'strying to accomplish things.
You're letting some guy who hasthe same job as him, who
possibly might be threatened byhim, possibly might be
(31:39):
threatened by him.
Right.
Right?
Oh, he didn't like his energy.
Oh, he didn't like having anintrovert on the team.
unknown (31:48):
Really?
Josh Matthews (31:48):
He liked the competition.
Well, maybe.
I don't know if he didn't likethe competition.
I don't think he liked hisstyle.
I thought he felt like he mightnot stand up for himself
enough.
You know, he might not, becausethese guys can bowl you over,
you know, the way I would bowlsomeone over.
And I would, potentially.
Potentially.
(32:08):
So I kind of understand that,but I also know the value of
like, wait a second.
What about that guy who speaks20% as much as I do?
And is just processing andthinking about everything that
he's seeing and hearing?
Because he sees and hearsbetter than I do.
What are they going to saynext?
How is that going to changethis product?
(32:29):
How is that going to save ustime, solve a problem, improve
the company, increase sales,deliver something that no one
else in the market can deliver.
I want that person on the team.
Right.
That's diversity.
That's actual real diversity,diversity of thinking, right?
Not skin color people.
So it's a real, it's a realtricky thing.
(32:52):
It's a real tricky thing, this.
So, you know, your team leadshould be a witness, basically
bringing evidence, not the judgeand jury.
Right?
If the least trainedinterviewer has the strongest
vote, then the process is builtto magnify bias.
I'm going to say that again.
If the least trainedinterviewer has the strongest
(33:13):
vote, the process is built tomagnify bias.
Right?
A player candidates often getrejected, and not because they
lack ability, but because oneperson didn't feel it.
And by the way, the way they'reconducting the interview is to
get them to have enough reasonsto say no to this person because
they feel it.
So all these other people, thehiring manager, the CEO, the
(33:36):
director of delivery, they'reall going like, no, but she had
all these valid reasons.
No, she didn't.
And she's not a bad person.
But she designed the flow ofquestions to catch this person
so she could say no.
Anyone could do that.
We could do it right now,couldn't we?
(33:59):
Like we could do it right now.
I could lead you down a road,Scott, right now, that would put
you on your heels, create mudin your brain, make you nervous.
And by the way, you don't haveanything at stake.
This guy had his next career atstake, supporting his family at
(34:21):
stake, right?
Now I'm gonna jumble yourbrain.
I'm gonna really throw you onyour heels.
And by the way, guys, I do dothat.
I do like to see how peoplerespond under pressure.
There's nothing wrong withthat.
It's just a problem if you'retrying to do it to lead them
down a road where you are uncon,again, it's unconscious bias.
It's unconscious.
You're not aware that you'redoing it.
(34:44):
Interesting.
So everyone can be like, no, Idon't do that.
It's like, no, you do it.
We all do it.
Scott Stafford (34:51):
Do you have any tips on that?
Like how you could actually,you know, counteract that.
If you know, right, everybody'sbiased, right?
I'm biased.
Is there anything I can do thatto keep that in check a little
bit?
Josh Matthews (35:02):
Yeah, have a professional behavioral
interviewer.
Okay.
And you you get to you get tovalidate their technical skill
set.
Can they perform the functions?
And that's it.
And then I'll determine if theycan take direction and if
they'll follow through.
I'll determine if they're smartand if they're conscientious.
These are the top predictors ofsuccess.
(35:23):
I'll determine if what they'vedone in the past will equal what
you need them to do now and inthe future.
I'll do that.
I'm trained.
You're not.
So don't bother doing it.
You can have a nice meet andgreet.
That's fine.
But ultimately, what you haveto say, I don't care.
You know why?
(35:43):
Because you're a team lead.
And you know what team leadsget to do?
Lead the teams that I build.
Yep.
Lead the teams that I buildbecause when it fails, it's not
your head on the line, it'smine.
I'm the one responsible for thebottom line of the business.
Okay.
Not some salaried person who'smaking a buck fifty a year.
Sorry.
You don't get to determine thegrowth of this company.
(36:06):
You get to manage the peoplethat we ultimately decide.
I'm interested in what you haveto say.
You might have something reallyinteresting.
You might be able to say theteam lead could have something
to say like, look, I know thatyou really like this person and
I know that you really want tobring them on.
But when I probed into this,which is one of our structured
(36:29):
questions, and they said thisand I pushed a little bit
deeper, I got kind of a funnyfeeling.
I think you should maybe talkto them one more time and probe
more deeply.
Or maybe Josh can, or maybeso-and-so can, right?
Because I just gotta, I'mlistening to my spidey sense.
And, you know, it's good tohave that, right?
And I can't really articulateit, but I think it warrants some
(36:53):
deeper investigation.
Can you look into that?
Because I and by the way, guys,like I don't know any
Salesforce practice leads orteam leads who are consultants
who are expert interviewers.
Do you?
Scott Stafford (37:11):
No.
Josh Matthews (37:13):
I talked to a guy once, I said, um, I said, How
would you rate yourself oninterviewing?
He's like, Me?
Probably nine out of ten.
Really, really good.
Like, okay.
How many people have youinterviewed in your life?
Man, at least like 50.
So, okay.
So that's four weeks of workfor a junior recruiter.
(37:37):
Four weeks of work, right?
50 is nothing, man.
50 is nothing.
And how much guidance did youget?
How much training did you get?
Were your interviews screened?
Like, did someone review them?
Did someone audit yourinterviews?
What was the success rate ofthe people that you brought on?
And the problem is, Scott, wedon't get to ever know, ever,
(38:00):
ever, ever know how many greatpeople this person passed up on.
Scott Stafford (38:05):
Right.
Josh Matthews (38:06):
Because you only know that if you hire them,
right?
Good point.
Let's talk about one more thingand then we're going to jump
into some fun stuff here.
So over-indexing on exact techskills instead of coachability.
We kind of touched on this alittle bit, right?
But the question is, is are yougoing to really wait another
six or eight weeks for maybe aunicorn who maybe knows that
(38:27):
exact little module, that exactlittle widget?
You know, a lot of must-havetech skills are really like can
learn fast skills.
I'm not saying, okay, theperson's never touched data
cloud.
It's a data cloud architectrole.
Yeah, it's a no.
Okay, fair enough.
Right.
Fair enough, right?
But okay, this is a Salesforceconsultant.
(38:49):
And I ask you, Scott, have youever done a Slack integration on
um Salesforce?
unknown (38:56):
No.
Josh Matthews (38:57):
Ever done that?
Scott Stafford (38:58):
No.
Josh Matthews (38:59):
Gosh, I'm really sorry.
We really need someone withexperience doing that.
I'm so sorry.
This job isn't for you, Scott.
Scott Stafford (39:07):
I think I can learn that pretty quick,
actually.
Josh Matthews (39:09):
Yeah, dude, I did it for myself in like an hour.
Huh.
It's not freaking hard.
None of this stuff's hard.
I mean, some of it's hard.
You need to be able to think.
Sorry, I'm not putting downevery Salesforce admin out
there.
I'm just saying it's not hardto do a Slack integration.
If you can follow directions,if you if you can read a recipe
and bake cookies, you can do aSlack integration.
(39:31):
I'm not saying a Slackintegration for some like
2,000-person company.
I did it for my little company,right?
So fair enough.
But it's like this isn't, thisshouldn't be stuff that's like,
now we can't hire you.
Sorry.
Scott Stafford (39:47):
So what should you be looking for to be able to
judge whether people can dothings rather than this hard
criteria?
What are you actually trying tofigure out during the interview
process?
Josh Matthews (39:58):
What am I trying to actually figure out?
Yeah.
Are you smart?
Can you take direction?
Are you coachable and are youconscientious?
And have you done this before?
That's all.
Like really, that like that'sthat's it.
Because think about this, okay?
Um when I'm doing an when I'mpeople think it's an interview
(40:23):
and that you're getting lookedout over your interview.
You're getting, we're lookingat, at least in my company,
we're looking at you from theminute we reach out, or you
reach out to us or we reach outto you, we are watching to see
what happens.
Right?
So do you respond to textmessages from us?
No?
Oh, you're a little bit slow?
(40:43):
Did you, were you late for thefollow-up conversation?
Did you answer your phone whenwe called?
How long did it take you toreturn my voicemail?
I don't care that you're atDisneyland.
I don't fucking care thatyou're at Disneyland.
Do you want the job or not?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Huh?
Josh Matthews (40:59):
Sorry, people.
It's real life.
You can have all your fancyrules for yourself and I don't
interfere.
Fine.
Okay.
But if you applied for a joband then you're not picking up
your phone, I'm gonna payattention to that.
I'm going to advise my client.
I don't know if this person'sreally that interested.
Scott Stafford (41:17):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (41:17):
Do you see what I mean?
So we're looking at the personthe whole way through.
The whole way through.
Right?
From start, do they did theyaccept their interview?
We sent you an invite.
Did you click accepted?
Or are we waiting there?
And is the hiring managerwaiting there until five after
whatever o'clock?
(41:38):
Are you gonna show up?
Because you never accepted it.
And then you show up and thenyou say, Oh yeah, sorry, I'm
late.
It's like, okay, is thatconscientious?
Huh?
It's not, right?
It's not.
So, and conscientiousness isabout a 40%, 40% value, 40%
predictability on someone'sability to perform a job really,
(42:00):
really well.
If you're not conscious, and uhJordan Peterson talks about
conscientiousness a lot.
Like it's the number onepredictor of whether or not you
can have successfulrelationships.
And all that means is are youthinking about other people?
Scott Stafford (42:15):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (42:15):
Now, in the the case I just described, yeah,
maybe someone's thinking abouttheir kids, but we all know that
those lines are two hours long.
And you can just fire a quicktext message and say, hey, I'm
in, I'm in line at Harry Potterand like it's gonna be a minute.
That's just conscientiousness.
The other thing isintelligence.
And I think that they kind ofgo hand in hand, not always, not
(42:37):
always, but they kind of gohand in hand, right?
So someone can be very, very,very, very, very, very book
smart and not be particularlygifted in thinking about how to
meet other people's needs.
I do want to um cover a couplelittle things here, my friend.
(43:01):
And that is again revisitingthe top ways to actually predict
someone's success.
General interviews are not avery good predictor.
Scott Stafford (43:13):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (43:14):
So if you're if you start a company, you start
interviewing people, you'regonna do what you know how to
do, which is connect withpeople, be nice, and try and
understand them.
And if you vibe with them,you'll think, I could probably
work with this person.
But let me ask you this, Scott.
How many people I think thatyou like more people than I do,
and I'm a particular person, andthat's why I'm good at my job.
(43:34):
I think that you like morepeople than I do.
I really believe that.
How many times have you reallyliked someone, started working
with them only to find out,gosh, this isn't actually a good
fit?
Scott Stafford (43:45):
A lot.
A lot.
Josh Matthews (43:47):
Okay.
And that's because you're wiredto be optimistic about people's
you equate likability withworkability.
Like you think if they're niceand if they're friendly.
I'm not making a big judgmentcall on you, by the way.
I think everyone knows this.
If you think someone's nice andfriendly and they're a good
person, that that will probablyequal good work output.
Scott Stafford (44:11):
Yeah.
unknown (44:12):
Yeah.
Scott Stafford (44:14):
I think a lot of times too, when someone comes
across to me and I don't jibewith them, you know, I made like
a judgment call.
But then as I got to know thembetter, they were actually
literally like a diamondrelationship.
I learned the most from them.
They performed amazingly.
And I'm like, huh.
You know, I read this wrong.
And I read a lot of thingswrong, you know, but I I tried
(44:36):
to keep that in in check more,trying to think of, okay, you
know, I was, or maybe it was me.
I could have actually just metsomebody, and you know, I have
bad moods, believe it or not,right?
I do get grumpy a few times.
I'm like, sure, you know, Isomeone hit my car, and then you
meet somebody and you're likethrows you off.
Josh Matthews (44:55):
So yeah, man.
I think of it like this.
Okay.
Clearly, I like music, right?
I've got a wall of guitars overhere, I've got keyboard, piano
in the other room.
That's a drum kit.
So ukulele, I love music.
I love plain music, especiallywith my kids.
It's a lot of fun.
And think of the songSemi-Charmed Life by Third Eye
(45:17):
Blind, which is a great song.
It's a great album.
And it's it's a song thatdoesn't really kind of wear out.
It takes a while for it to wearout, but it wears out.
Like it does wear out.
Do you know what I mean?
Anytime we hear a song andwe're like, we don't do it so
much nowadays with MP3s, noteven MP3s, with just like
(45:38):
Spotify and and the and AppleMusic and stuff.
So it's different.
It used to be we'd go out, we'dget an album, we'd have to
spend 20 bucks on a CD.
You know, or I mean, I rememberI had like cassette tapes of
Paul and Oates back in the day.
We're I'm we're both that old,by the way.
Yeah.
You know, the policesynchronicity on on cassette.
So we would list you you buythe album for the one song that
(46:02):
they play on the radio, and it'scatchy and you like it.
Yeah.
Right?
It's like you two, Josh Vitrie,you put it on because whatever,
where the streets have no name.
Like, okay, most playedairplayed song from that album.
It might be the worst album.
It might be the worst song onthe whole album, as far as I'm
concerned, right?
There's so many other like waybetter songs.
(46:24):
They're just not radio songs.
There's so many way bettersongs on that album.
You've got to start thinkingabout interviewing like that.
Are you just watching a hitsingle that's gonna wear out
three months into their workcareer with you?
Or is this the song that youneed to listen to a little bit
better?
Is this the candidate that youwere originally like, I don't
(46:44):
know.
I remember it was 1986, and Iwas standing in Tower Records in
London at Piccadilly Circus.
Yeah.
And a song came on, and it wasum it was just like heaven by
the cure.
And I was like, oh my God.
And I went up to the guy at thecounter and I said, What is
that song?
(47:04):
And he just kind of pointed tothe CD that was or the cassette
tape that was on the counter.
He said, Oh, it's the cure.
I was like, Oh, I want that.
So I bought the album.
I had a little bit of money andI bought the album.
And I'm I gave it a listen, andthere's this one song called
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
And it's like rough.
(47:24):
I'm 14.
I grew up on like disco andDuran Duran, right?
Like, so then this song comeson, and it's like, kiss me, kiss
me, kiss me, eh.
Your tongue's like poison.
It's like, I'm like, whoa, whatis this?
It kind of scared me.
It definitely made meuncomfortable.
Right.
And I would fast forward thatsong.
(47:46):
And then till like one day I'mjust like kind of zonked out
because I was traveling with myfamily a lot.
And oh, thank you, Larry.
Take care, buddy.
And I just let the whole albumplay.
And like I had like two tapes,two cassette tapes for like, you
know, two weeks or threecassette tapes or something.
Right.
I I started to realize, like,oh no, that's a really good
song.
I softened to it.
(48:07):
It's a lot more listenable tome now.
Right.
And not only that, it willprobably be more enduring than a
lot of the other popular songs.
If we can start thinking aboutcandidates like that, just start
there, people.
Just start there.
Understand that we all knowthat you're doing your best.
I know it sounded probably likeI'm picking on a lot of people
(48:28):
here.
I'm not.
I'm trying to wake people up.
Okay.
This is not a small thing.
It's a terrible, terrible thingto step over a quarter to pick
up a dime, to step over a goldpiece to pick up a nickel.
And it's happening every singleday in America.
And my clients even do itagainst my advice, and they
(48:50):
still do it.
Right.
So please be awake, be aware,understand what anchoring is,
what confirmation bias is, whatconformity bias is.
Just look those three things upand put them up on a little
post-it note on your littlemonitor there when you're
interviewing.
And so you can just kind ofcheck in with yourself.
(49:10):
Like, oh yeah, do I feel thisway about this person?
Oh, that's right.
Jenny said she wasn't sureabout this gal before I jumped
into the meeting.
Maybe that's why I'm thinking,yeah, Jenny's not sure.
So maybe I'm not sure.
Because I like Jenny.
Do you see what I mean?
That's that's conformity bias,anchoring bias.
So let's do that.
And then for all of you CEOs,founders, C-suite, VP level,
(49:36):
senior director level people,please pick up those reins.
It's your team.
It's fine that you've got otherpeople and you're trying to
empower them.
Congratulations.
I think that's a great move.
You want to empower your team,you're trying to delegate.
That's great.
But when you empower anddelegate without training,
(49:56):
you're doing something that Iwould call silly.
It's just silly to do that,right?
You can check out my recentblog.
I put up a meme on LinkedIn theother day too.
And it shows a, it shows uhlike a professional pizza guy in
a nice pizza uh parlor, andhe's on the phone, and then
there's a six-year-old standingon a stool pulling out a burnt
(50:18):
pizza, right?
That burnt pizza is your topcandidate.
You're on the phone, you're toobusy, you've delegated it to
your six-year-old who doesn'tknow how to cook yet.
So until you teach these peoplehow to cook, until you teach
them, just don't delegate.
You don't delegate and hopethat they learn on the job with
that most important decision.
(50:41):
Your delivery team.
Why would you do that?
Don't do that.
Okay.
Scott, do you have any lastquestions before we wrap up?
It's been a really interestingand fun hour.
Sorry, I feel like I've talkedmy head off.
Scott Stafford (50:54):
We've talked a lot about this from the
perspective of the hiringmanager or from the company,
right?
But let's just say that you'resomebody in an interview and you
sense that there's some biasgoing on.
How can you counteract that?
They ask you one question, andmaybe you were a little bit
nervous on that one.
What could you do midmid-interview to try and even
(51:15):
out the field, right?
A little bit to to break downsome of that bias?
Is there any other thing?
Josh Matthews (51:21):
Yeah, common ground.
Yes, common ground.
Right?
Common ground.
Right.
So if you're feeling like I'mlosing this, yeah.
I feel like I'm gettingcornered right now.
I feel like they're just tryingto pick on me and come up with
reasons why I'm not a fit, thenyou have to take the bullets out
(51:45):
of the gun.
Scott, can I just jump in for asecond, bud, real quick?
Sure.
Thanks.
First of all, if I haven'tconveyed this already, I really
want you to know that being herein this meeting with you has
actually been the only thingthat's been on my mind for the
(52:07):
last two weeks.
I've done all my research onyour company.
I've done backdoor references,I've done deep dives on AI, and
I've validated that what I'vebeen able to learn about your
you and your company and how Ioperate, I I'm confident we're a
(52:29):
really great match.
Scott Stafford (52:31):
Oh wow.
Josh Matthews (52:32):
But I also want to tell you that I haven't done
a lot of interviews.
And I may have put so muchpressure on myself about wanting
to do well in this one that Imight I get the feeling that you
know, Scott, how when you knowyou're like not being yourself,
(52:55):
when you know like you're notyourself, like maybe you're at a
party and you have to talk tosomeone that you didn't really
want to talk to or you didn'tknow, you know, you're nervous
about, or you know, whatever itis.
I I actually feel that way now.
And that's not your fault.
I've just built this up in myhead, and I want to just let you
know that.
And I also want to ask you totake that into consideration in
(53:18):
your evaluation of me becauseI've got five references that
will attest that I would dogreat here.
I just want to let you knowthat.
Scott Stafford (53:27):
Wow.
Josh, that just broke down,right?
My whole perspective ofanything negative that would
have been said before, right?
I you almost like want tofollow up some questions and
wow, that was powerful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So just say like, just saythat.
Yeah.
Okay.
You would have to practice tobe able to say it that well.
(53:49):
You really didn't.
I mean, you made me re-questionlike all the decisions.
You were like, okay, yeah,maybe he was just nervous on
that question.
Or this person, he just statedit.
He really wants the job, right?
And you know now that he'sdedicated right to doing his
best here.
So it just reframes everythingright away.
Yeah, that was powerful.
Josh Matthews (54:10):
You you know, a little bit more than a year ago,
we did a big giveaway with myfriend John Klein, People First
Method.
Right.
One of the gals who won uh wonthe free experience, coaching
experience, training experience.
I wound up placing her at aclient of mine.
They love her.
She's fantastic.
She already got a promotion.
Scott Stafford (54:29):
Okay.
Josh Matthews (54:30):
She hadn't worked in two years.
Military wife worked reallyhard, went and got like five or
six certifications during hertime off, stayed engaged, and we
chatted, just kind of likelightly chatted about stuff.
But then when it came time forthe actual interview with me, oh
my God, was she so nervous?
And I was like, where'd she go?
Whoa, this is not, this is notthe person I talked to.
(54:52):
You know?
This is not my beautiful house.
This is not my beautiful wife.
Like, where did she go?
And I just told her, I waslike, I know you're really
nervous.
She's like, Yeah, I'm like,just chill, man.
Like, it's okay.
We're just hanging out, we'rejust gonna hang out.
Okay.
Now I still had a structuredinterview with her, yeah,
(55:14):
because structured interviewsdoesn't mean behave rigidly.
That's not the same thing.
Structured means first we dothis and then we do that, and
then we score on this, and thenwe do this, and then we score on
that, and then we do this, wescore on that.
Now I do it a little bitdifferently because I've been
doing this for a really longtime.
But at the end of it, all shecalmed down, she settled down.
(55:36):
Her nerves were so high.
Oh my god, it's like stagefright.
You ever acted in a play,Scott?
Yep.
You ever performed music liveor anything like that?
No one can hear your nods.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Okay, so you know.
So you know, like it's hard ifyou haven't done it before.
(56:01):
It's really hard.
Oh my god, the first time Iever played drums live, just so
tight.
Want to be really bad at drums?
Be nervous while you play them.
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
Same for any instrument, right?
Or singing or anything oracting.
So, also, folks, you thecandidates out there who are
listening to this show, what canyou do?
(56:21):
Well, you could take the boltsout of the gun right away.
You could sit down and youcould say, Scott, thank you so
much for meeting with me today.
I'm going to be honest and tellyou, I am nervous because I've
really built up this role in myhead.
I'm sure that it's going toaffect your perception of me.
I just want it on record thatI'm telling you up front right
now that that's likely tohappen.
(56:41):
When you say that, youautomatically relax.
It's kind of for them.
It's mostly for you.
Right.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
Scott Stafford (56:50):
So you could do that.
All right, guys.
That that also was interestingbecause you empowered yourself
too, right?
You just actually showedexactly.
You're an assertive person.
You want this role, right?
It takes guts to do that.
And I think people wouldappreciate it.
That's a really good point.
Yeah.
Josh Matthews (57:07):
So we will be back in two weeks.
I'm excited.
We're going to have a guest,Jason P.
Carroll, C-A-R-R-O-L-L.
He is the founder and principalbehavioral scientist at Active
Index.
It's job prediction performanceusing AI.
I'm really excited about thisbecause you guys know I love my
um testing stuff, my MBTI stuffand uh personality indexing and
(57:31):
performance indexing.
It's also probably right upthere with structured interviews
and intelligence, et cetera.
The best way to gauge yourcandidates' ability to perform
the job that you're hiring themto do really well, right?
Testing, predictive testing.
So Jason's gonna be on theshow.
We're really looking forward tohim.
(57:51):
I just met with an authoryesterday who wrote a book all
about like, do you really needcollege in the age of AI right
now?
So I'm excited about Herschelbe on in about a month.
Got a lot of wonderful guestslined up all the way up through
May, right now, May, June.
So please like, subscribe.
If you enjoy this program andyou're listening on Apple or on
Spotify, throw up some fivestars, drop in a comment.
(58:13):
Makes a big difference for us.
If you're watching this on JoshForce, please go ahead.
Give us a thumbs up, drop in acomment, ask a question.
What did you think made themost sense?
What about this conversationtoday?
Did you think was BS or annoyedyou?
We want to hear all of it.
And Scott Stafford, thank youso much for quarterbacking this
show today.
Really appreciate you, myfriend.
(58:34):
You've been listening to thehiring edge.
We'll be back in two weeks.
Bye for now.
Scott Stafford (58:39):
Bye, everybody.
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