June 25, 2025 • 16 mins
Ever wondered why that technically brilliant hire turned out to be your biggest management headache? In our fascinating conversation Scott and Tammy reveal the critical blind spot in most hiring processes that leads organizations to repeatedly bring on problematic employees.
The shocking truth? Skills and experience account for just 10-12% of what determines someone's success in your organization. Yet most companies stubbornly focus their entire hiring process on these technical qualifications while neglecting the behavioral aspects that truly determine workplace fit. This fundamental disconnect explains why organizations routinely find themselves terminating employees not for skill deficiencies but for being "jerks at work."
Through a practical exercise exploring the HR Director role, Scott and Tammy demonstrate how organizations readily address skill gaps through development or termination, but frequently tolerate destructive behaviors that damage team dynamics and organizational culture. They also debunk a pervasive HR urban legend – that legally compliant interviews must use identical questions for every candidate – which prevents interviewers from truly understanding potential hires.
The solution? A more dynamic, human-centered approach to interviewing that explores not just what candidates can do, but who they are, what they value, and how they'll behave in your unique environment. When you align behaviors and values with technical qualifications, retention and performance dramatically improve. Ready to transform your hiring success rate from 12% to 80%? Listen now to discover exactly how to interview for the whole human, not just their resume.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Karman (00:01):
Good morning Tammy and Scott.
Tammy (00:04):
Good morning Karman.
Scott (00:05):
Good afternoon Karman.
Karman (00:10):
He's so slow.
Scott's always on a differentwavelength.
Tammy (00:14):
Yeah, and he's so slow.
We move from morning toafternoon.
Scott (00:17):
Yeah, Time is but a construct.
Tammy (00:22):
Oh gosh.
Karman (00:25):
Well, you know, last week one of the things that you
touched on, tammy, was aboutsome thoughts about hiring, and
I thought that was kind ofironic because I'd had a topic
on our list about that verything, about hiring, and there's
(00:48):
something I saw on LinkedInthat I didn't really understand
and I thought, oh, I'll askTammy and Scott what do these
terms mean?
Scott (00:58):
And I hope we didn't post it no, it was.
Karman (01:12):
Um.
Somebody was talking about thedistinction between skill-based
hiring and experience-basedhiring, and implying that one of
those things was a morecontemporary point of view at a
particular company.
What do those terms mean to you, and does this make any sense?
Scott's shaking his head.
Scott (01:33):
I'm shaking my head because they're both stupid ways
to hire.
Tell me more, scott, and again,I don't know the post, so I
don't know exactly what theirdefinition is.
I can tell you my reaction whenI hear it.
When I think of skill-basedhiring, I think what is your
(01:54):
experience, what are yourknowledge, skills, abilities
which could be like resume couldbe education could be you've
got to code this, or you have aCPA, certifications or whatever.
You know you've got to codethis, or you know you have a CPA
, certifications or whatever.
What I think experience-basedhiring is what's your pedigree?
Where have you been?
What have you done?
And if those are the primarythings, oh wow, this is going to
(02:19):
sound really bad.
Then I would anticipate youprobably suck at hiring.
Tammy (02:23):
Then I would anticipate you probably suck at hiring,
okay, so here's here's, don'thold back, here's what's really
it's so.
Scott (02:33):
It's so narrow.
Now again, that's using mydefinition and my reaction to
those terms, okay, so.
Tammy (02:41):
So, if you throw this into AI or into Google, okay,
just so you know it comes up andit says experience-based hiring
and skill-based hiring is thesame thing.
Okay, so, let's just start hereand just kind of laugh about
that particular thing, right?
Really, what it is is it'sgoing back to this kind of thing
(03:03):
that's been around a long timein HR and it's like what are the
competencies that are necessaryfor this job?
Okay, so I have to be able tofill in the blank in order to be
successful, and what I willtell you is that there are
organizations that spend a lotof time talking about
(03:23):
competencies in terms of whatmakes someone successful in this
position.
So, just for a minute, let'sthe three of us play.
Okay, let's name somecompetencies that are typical,
right, the typical competenciesthat someone would come in and
put on someone.
(03:44):
Okay, and let's just see whatwe come up with.
All right.
So, scott, give me let's just ajob title.
Let's start there.
Scott (03:56):
Oh, let's just say HR director.
Tammy (03:58):
HR director?
Okay, love it.
All right.
So a competency, a skill setthat an HR director needs to
have in order to be successful.
Karman, give me one Ability torecruit.
Okay, so I need to have arecruiting skill.
What is the four steps ofrecruiting?
(04:20):
Okay, scott.
What's another competency?
Scott (04:23):
I need to be able to interview.
Tammy (04:25):
Okay, oh, I have to have really good interviewing
questions in that spot.
And I'm going to add a thirdone I have to understand the
laws around.
You know recruiting andinterviewing, right?
So what are the laws so that weare keeping our organization
safe and we don't get ourselvesinto legal trouble because there
(04:48):
are do's and don'ts?
Okay, now, that is reallytypical, right?
These are the skill sets.
Now question for you guys If Ihave an HR director and they
cannot effectively recruit, theycannot effectively interview
and they don't understand thelaws around HR, what are we
(05:12):
going to do to them?
It's a candidate, no, it's that.
We've hired them.
We've hired them.
Scott (05:18):
What do most organizations do, or what am I
going to do?
Tammy (05:22):
What would an organization you know more than
likely they would?
Scott (05:27):
They would develop them.
Yeah, they'd grow them.
They'd send them to classes.
They might fire them.
Tammy (05:32):
If I have someone who can't do these things, guys, we
fire them.
Okay, they are the basic quote,quote, unquote competencies
because can't do it.
Now, some people might put upwith it.
But, guys, if I have an HRdirector that can't recruit,
can't interview and they don'tunderstand the laws, pretty
quickly we're going to bedissatisfied and we're going to
get rid of them.
Okay, but we end up keepingpeople right, Even when they can
(05:57):
recruit, even when they caninterview, even when they, you
know, understand the laws.
We end up keeping people thatwe shouldn't.
What are the things that thisHR director might be doing, even
though they're competent atthose three particular skill
sets?
What are they doing?
That is like it's reallyharmful for the organization,
(06:19):
Scott, what might they be doing?
Scott (06:22):
They're a jerk face to others.
Tammy (06:23):
Yeah, they're a jerk at work.
Okay, all right.
So specifically, Karman, howare they being a jerk at work?
Karman (06:31):
They're not keeping confidential conversations
confidential.
Tammy (06:37):
All right.
So we have a human resourceperson that has loose lips Okay,
right, loose lips, okay.
And in fact, sometimes theythemselves are stirring the pot,
okay, or they sometimes aregossiping about others and not
giving them that spot.
Now I can tell you we've seenlots of HR directors,
(06:57):
unfortunately, who are jerks atwork, who sometimes have loose
lips, who sometimes are actuallynot helping people succeed, but
actually talking about whatthey're not doing in terms of
helping them not succeed in thatparticular case, or pitting
people against each otherbecause I like you and I don't
like you, right?
Really typical.
I like you and I don't like you, right?
(07:18):
Really typical.
We don't typically havecompetencies, skills or
experience-based things that getat that.
That's behavioral, okay, andyes, I know that that is an
(07:43):
old-fashioned word forinterviewing and hiring, but the
fact of the matter is we havepeople who are still working for
us that suck at behaviors andare really good at skills, and
those are the people that arecausing us problems inside of an
organization.
And if you're just hiring forskills and experience, you're
going to get stuck with behaviorproblems, and that's a much
(08:04):
more difficult thing inside ofan organization, much more
painful, and organizations areless apt to take action on
behaviors, even though theyshould, even though they can.
They are less apt to takeaction on behaviors than when
they don't have the skill sets,and so we end up with a whole
bunch of jerks at work, jerkfaces.
Scott (08:25):
And for me, what's fascinating about this is
anytime I have yet to have theexperience.
When I ask how, like when youlook at their turnover data why
do they fire people?
It is almost never about askill set or an experience thing
(08:49):
.
It is almost all behavioral.
They didn't show up or theywere.
You know, I was at anorganization this week.
They had an employee threatenanother employee and they fired
them, oh they did they firedthem.
Yeah, they fired them.
It was great.
Yeah, it was fantastic, youknow.
But when you look at it, youknow.
So you start to look at it.
You say, well, you're firingpeople for all these behavioral
(09:13):
things, but you're not selectingpeople based on these
behavioral things, right?
Maybe just like I don't knowweird thing.
Maybe you want to change that.
It was just random thought.
Tammy (09:25):
So I love that.
First of all, if they areterminating folks based upon
being jerk faces,congratulations.
If your organization is doingthat, you're ahead of the curve.
However, if you're continuingto have to fire people because
of behavioral issues, it meansthat you're not hiring well and
in the end, you're not gettingat the root of the issue.
(09:48):
You're not interviewing to findout who this person is.
You're probably interviewingfor skills and experiences, not
for who are you as a human being.
People think that they can't dothat in an interview.
You absolutely can.
Scott (10:07):
And there are tools to support you on that and there
are techniques.
So when I think about it, tammy, I think of okay, I would like
to be able to use an assessmentto understand a bit about them.
I also want to interview, youknow, behavioral-based
interviewing that are aligned toour values as an organization,
(10:31):
because those are the thingsthat really define are they a
jerk face or not?
Tammy (10:36):
And the piece that and this gets me.
So we worked with anorganization last year.
They ask the same questions inevery interview.
This is a big, hugeorganization.
They have asked the samequestions for 20 years because
(10:56):
human resources says these arethe questions that you ask and
they want every interview to bethe same.
So we ask those questions inthe same order and there's no
follow-up.
Okay, now, how soon before?
Everybody knows that there'sright answers to those questions
and wrong answers to thosequestions.
(11:18):
And so, hey, you get thatinformation.
The next thing know, you aresimply going okay, I, I've
prepped, here's the rightanswers, I know how to answer
them.
And then you wonder why yourturnover, in this particular
case, was sitting at in the 80percentile in an annual year.
Okay, because they would justhire people who had the right
(11:39):
answers to these four questionsthat they have asked for 20
years.
We have learned some.
First of all, don't use thesame questions.
Second of all, don't make themthe questions that you can get
answers to on Google or an AI.
Third, listen carefully.
What are the follow-upquestions?
Your follow-up questions arethe places where you can dig
(12:01):
deeper and have a much deeperunderstanding of this human
being and there is nothinglegally that says you have to
ask the same questions exactlyin the same way to the same
people.
That is a very grossoverstatement of what you can
and cannot do, are you?
Scott (12:21):
saying that is an HR urban legend.
Tammy (12:24):
That is a HR urban legend that, by the way, somebody who
was so ultra conservative putthese rules in place and in fact
, that rule is hurting you andyou are wondering why we can't
find the right people.
It's because your interviewingprocess is not helping you find
(12:45):
out who this human being is.
You want them to be successfuland you you don't want to bring
someone in to have them takeyour job, not take another job
and not be successful.
That sucks for them, but italso sucks for you as an
organization in terms of what itcosts to go through this whole
process again.
So, hey, let's get real in ourinterviews.
Let's not make it such thatthey can show you a false like
(13:10):
human being simply to get thework done.
And it means you have to bebetter at interviewing and your
process has to be better.
So it's not skills orexperience, guys, it's let's get
to know the human being.
So what do we want to call thatLike human interviewing, right?
Scott (13:29):
Well, I would love to just call it interviewing.
Tammy (13:34):
Effective interviewing right, so we know, skills,
experience, education.
What is it, scott Like 10%, 12%of the equation?
Scott (13:47):
Yeah, I think it's 10 or 12, something like that.
Tammy (13:52):
Right.
The rest of it is how does thishuman being and how they see
the world, what they value,what's important, match up with
how we as an organization thisis our culture, this is what the
situation is, this is how weare going to behave and interact
with one another.
And when those two things matchand you get the experience, the
(14:15):
education, the license, youhave a really good chance of
having.
And when we say really goodchance in the 80 percentile
chance of having that personcome, be effective, stay with
you for a long time.
But if all you're worried aboutis kind of that experience,
that education, that license,that set of skill sets, the fact
of the matter is you've gotabout 10, 12 percent chance that
(14:38):
they're going to be around andeffective for you in a long-term
relationship.
So yeah, Karman, I haven't readthis article.
I want to now and I'll go backand take a look at it.
I'm not sure how they definedexperience and skills, but I
will tell you.
I think that that is the leastof what we have to worry about.
I think it is this other stuffthat is so much more critical.
Good morning Tammy and Scott.
Tammy (00:04):
Good morning Karman.
Scott (00:05):
Good afternoon Karman.
Karman (00:10):
He's so slow.
Scott's always on a differentwavelength.
Tammy (00:14):
Yeah, and he's so slow.
We move from morning toafternoon.
Scott (00:17):
Yeah, Time is but a construct.
Tammy (00:22):
Oh gosh.
Karman (00:25):
Well, you know, last week one of the things that you
touched on, tammy, was aboutsome thoughts about hiring, and
I thought that was kind ofironic because I'd had a topic
on our list about that verything, about hiring, and there's
(00:48):
something I saw on LinkedInthat I didn't really understand
and I thought, oh, I'll askTammy and Scott what do these
terms mean?
Scott (00:58):
And I hope we didn't post it no, it was.
Karman (01:12):
Um.
Somebody was talking about thedistinction between skill-based
hiring and experience-basedhiring, and implying that one of
those things was a morecontemporary point of view at a
particular company.
What do those terms mean to you, and does this make any sense?
Scott's shaking his head.
Scott (01:33):
I'm shaking my head because they're both stupid ways
to hire.
Tell me more, scott, and again,I don't know the post, so I
don't know exactly what theirdefinition is.
I can tell you my reaction whenI hear it.
When I think of skill-basedhiring, I think what is your
(01:54):
experience, what are yourknowledge, skills, abilities
which could be like resume couldbe education could be you've
got to code this, or you have aCPA, certifications or whatever.
You know you've got to codethis, or you know you have a CPA
, certifications or whatever.
What I think experience-basedhiring is what's your pedigree?
Where have you been?
What have you done?
And if those are the primarythings, oh wow, this is going to
(02:19):
sound really bad.
Then I would anticipate youprobably suck at hiring.
Tammy (02:23):
Then I would anticipate you probably suck at hiring,
okay, so here's here's, don'thold back, here's what's really
it's so.
Scott (02:33):
It's so narrow.
Now again, that's using mydefinition and my reaction to
those terms, okay, so.
Tammy (02:41):
So, if you throw this into AI or into Google, okay,
just so you know it comes up andit says experience-based hiring
and skill-based hiring is thesame thing.
Okay, so, let's just start hereand just kind of laugh about
that particular thing, right?
Really, what it is is it'sgoing back to this kind of thing
(03:03):
that's been around a long timein HR and it's like what are the
competencies that are necessaryfor this job?
Okay, so I have to be able tofill in the blank in order to be
successful, and what I willtell you is that there are
organizations that spend a lotof time talking about
(03:23):
competencies in terms of whatmakes someone successful in this
position.
So, just for a minute, let'sthe three of us play.
Okay, let's name somecompetencies that are typical,
right, the typical competenciesthat someone would come in and
put on someone.
(03:44):
Okay, and let's just see whatwe come up with.
All right.
So, scott, give me let's just ajob title.
Let's start there.
Scott (03:56):
Oh, let's just say HR director.
Tammy (03:58):
HR director?
Okay, love it.
All right.
So a competency, a skill setthat an HR director needs to
have in order to be successful.
Karman, give me one Ability torecruit.
Okay, so I need to have arecruiting skill.
What is the four steps ofrecruiting?
(04:20):
Okay, scott.
What's another competency?
Scott (04:23):
I need to be able to interview.
Tammy (04:25):
Okay, oh, I have to have really good interviewing
questions in that spot.
And I'm going to add a thirdone I have to understand the
laws around.
You know recruiting andinterviewing, right?
So what are the laws so that weare keeping our organization
safe and we don't get ourselvesinto legal trouble because there
(04:48):
are do's and don'ts?
Okay, now, that is reallytypical, right?
These are the skill sets.
Now question for you guys If Ihave an HR director and they
cannot effectively recruit, theycannot effectively interview
and they don't understand thelaws around HR, what are we
(05:12):
going to do to them?
It's a candidate, no, it's that.
We've hired them.
We've hired them.
Scott (05:18):
What do most organizations do, or what am I
going to do?
Tammy (05:22):
What would an organization you know more than
likely they would?
Scott (05:27):
They would develop them.
Yeah, they'd grow them.
They'd send them to classes.
They might fire them.
Tammy (05:32):
If I have someone who can't do these things, guys, we
fire them.
Okay, they are the basic quote,quote, unquote competencies
because can't do it.
Now, some people might put upwith it.
But, guys, if I have an HRdirector that can't recruit,
can't interview and they don'tunderstand the laws, pretty
quickly we're going to bedissatisfied and we're going to
get rid of them.
Okay, but we end up keepingpeople right, Even when they can
(05:57):
recruit, even when they caninterview, even when they, you
know, understand the laws.
We end up keeping people thatwe shouldn't.
What are the things that thisHR director might be doing, even
though they're competent atthose three particular skill
sets?
What are they doing?
That is like it's reallyharmful for the organization,
(06:19):
Scott, what might they be doing?
Scott (06:22):
They're a jerk face to others.
Tammy (06:23):
Yeah, they're a jerk at work.
Okay, all right.
So specifically, Karman, howare they being a jerk at work?
Karman (06:31):
They're not keeping confidential conversations
confidential.
Tammy (06:37):
All right.
So we have a human resourceperson that has loose lips Okay,
right, loose lips, okay.
And in fact, sometimes theythemselves are stirring the pot,
okay, or they sometimes aregossiping about others and not
giving them that spot.
Now I can tell you we've seenlots of HR directors,
(06:57):
unfortunately, who are jerks atwork, who sometimes have loose
lips, who sometimes are actuallynot helping people succeed, but
actually talking about whatthey're not doing in terms of
helping them not succeed in thatparticular case, or pitting
people against each otherbecause I like you and I don't
like you, right?
Really typical.
I like you and I don't like you, right?
(07:18):
Really typical.
We don't typically havecompetencies, skills or
experience-based things that getat that.
That's behavioral, okay, andyes, I know that that is an
(07:43):
old-fashioned word forinterviewing and hiring, but the
fact of the matter is we havepeople who are still working for
us that suck at behaviors andare really good at skills, and
those are the people that arecausing us problems inside of an
organization.
And if you're just hiring forskills and experience, you're
going to get stuck with behaviorproblems, and that's a much
(08:04):
more difficult thing inside ofan organization, much more
painful, and organizations areless apt to take action on
behaviors, even though theyshould, even though they can.
They are less apt to takeaction on behaviors than when
they don't have the skill sets,and so we end up with a whole
bunch of jerks at work, jerkfaces.
Scott (08:25):
And for me, what's fascinating about this is
anytime I have yet to have theexperience.
When I ask how, like when youlook at their turnover data why
do they fire people?
It is almost never about askill set or an experience thing
(08:49):
.
It is almost all behavioral.
They didn't show up or theywere.
You know, I was at anorganization this week.
They had an employee threatenanother employee and they fired
them, oh they did they firedthem.
Yeah, they fired them.
It was great.
Yeah, it was fantastic, youknow.
But when you look at it, youknow.
So you start to look at it.
You say, well, you're firingpeople for all these behavioral
(09:13):
things, but you're not selectingpeople based on these
behavioral things, right?
Maybe just like I don't knowweird thing.
Maybe you want to change that.
It was just random thought.
Tammy (09:25):
So I love that.
First of all, if they areterminating folks based upon
being jerk faces,congratulations.
If your organization is doingthat, you're ahead of the curve.
However, if you're continuingto have to fire people because
of behavioral issues, it meansthat you're not hiring well and
in the end, you're not gettingat the root of the issue.
(09:48):
You're not interviewing to findout who this person is.
You're probably interviewingfor skills and experiences, not
for who are you as a human being.
People think that they can't dothat in an interview.
You absolutely can.
Scott (10:07):
And there are tools to support you on that and there
are techniques.
So when I think about it, tammy, I think of okay, I would like
to be able to use an assessmentto understand a bit about them.
I also want to interview, youknow, behavioral-based
interviewing that are aligned toour values as an organization,
(10:31):
because those are the thingsthat really define are they a
jerk face or not?
Tammy (10:36):
And the piece that and this gets me.
So we worked with anorganization last year.
They ask the same questions inevery interview.
This is a big, hugeorganization.
They have asked the samequestions for 20 years because
(10:56):
human resources says these arethe questions that you ask and
they want every interview to bethe same.
So we ask those questions inthe same order and there's no
follow-up.
Okay, now, how soon before?
Everybody knows that there'sright answers to those questions
and wrong answers to thosequestions.
(11:18):
And so, hey, you get thatinformation.
The next thing know, you aresimply going okay, I, I've
prepped, here's the rightanswers, I know how to answer
them.
And then you wonder why yourturnover, in this particular
case, was sitting at in the 80percentile in an annual year.
Okay, because they would justhire people who had the right
(11:39):
answers to these four questionsthat they have asked for 20
years.
We have learned some.
First of all, don't use thesame questions.
Second of all, don't make themthe questions that you can get
answers to on Google or an AI.
Third, listen carefully.
What are the follow-upquestions?
Your follow-up questions arethe places where you can dig
(12:01):
deeper and have a much deeperunderstanding of this human
being and there is nothinglegally that says you have to
ask the same questions exactlyin the same way to the same
people.
That is a very grossoverstatement of what you can
and cannot do, are you?
Scott (12:21):
saying that is an HR urban legend.
Tammy (12:24):
That is a HR urban legend that, by the way, somebody who
was so ultra conservative putthese rules in place and in fact
, that rule is hurting you andyou are wondering why we can't
find the right people.
It's because your interviewingprocess is not helping you find
(12:45):
out who this human being is.
You want them to be successfuland you you don't want to bring
someone in to have them takeyour job, not take another job
and not be successful.
That sucks for them, but italso sucks for you as an
organization in terms of what itcosts to go through this whole
process again.
So, hey, let's get real in ourinterviews.
Let's not make it such thatthey can show you a false like
(13:10):
human being simply to get thework done.
And it means you have to bebetter at interviewing and your
process has to be better.
So it's not skills orexperience, guys, it's let's get
to know the human being.
So what do we want to call thatLike human interviewing, right?
Scott (13:29):
Well, I would love to just call it interviewing.
Tammy (13:34):
Effective interviewing right, so we know, skills,
experience, education.
What is it, scott Like 10%, 12%of the equation?
Scott (13:47):
Yeah, I think it's 10 or 12, something like that.
Tammy (13:52):
Right.
The rest of it is how does thishuman being and how they see
the world, what they value,what's important, match up with
how we as an organization thisis our culture, this is what the
situation is, this is how weare going to behave and interact
with one another.
And when those two things matchand you get the experience, the
(14:15):
education, the license, youhave a really good chance of
having.
And when we say really goodchance in the 80 percentile
chance of having that personcome, be effective, stay with
you for a long time.
But if all you're worried aboutis kind of that experience,
that education, that license,that set of skill sets, the fact
of the matter is you've gotabout 10, 12 percent chance that
(14:38):
they're going to be around andeffective for you in a long-term
relationship.
So yeah, Karman, I haven't readthis article.
I want to now and I'll go backand take a look at it.
I'm not sure how they definedexperience and skills, but I
will tell you.
I think that that is the leastof what we have to worry about.
I think it is this other stuffthat is so much more critical.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.