Why Good-Sounding Claims Fail

Amy Dardis 0:10

Welcome back to the Building a Clear Authentic Brand Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Dardis, and in today's episode, we are talking about how to get past rehearsed and vague answers in an interview. Have you ever hired someone who said all the right things in an interview, but then how they showed up on the job later did not align with what they said. This is because we're having questions in the interview that have answers that sound good, but we don't have the evidence that supports what they're claiming. And that's what this all comes back to is I want you to keep this core question in the back of your mind. What evidence did this candidate provide to reveal what I need to know about their capacity or character? Because those are the two things we're always looking for. We're looking for capacity. Do they have the ability, potential, bandwidth to do the job? And do they have the character, which means do they share our values, work style, personality traits, and non-negotiables to thrive within this organization? We're gonna ask our questions, and then we're gonna be changing the way that we listen to answers. So interviews are often full of claims that sound good. People will say things like, I'm a hard worker, I'm a great communicator, I take ownership, I'm coachable, I'm detail-oriented, I'm a fast learner. Yes, great, love it. Like those are good. They sound good, right? But at their core, those are just claims because you don't know this person, you don't know what their life has looked like. And so the interview process is about finding proof that supports that claim. So you understand who is the real person, and is the real person someone who is going to thrive within this role and within our company? So this evidence is going to turn a claim into something that we can believe. And so we're going to do that with mainly starting with one, how we ask our questions. So this does not work with hypothetical questions. So my big recommendation is don't ever ask a hypothetical question. We will be diving into that in a future episode because everything we need to know about someone can be found in what has actually happened. Like, what have they actually lived? How have they actually operated? What have they actually learned? We don't work with what if and what could be, like, doesn't matter. We only focus on what has happened because what has happened is what has shaped the person that you are hiring. It shapes how they think, how they operate, how they behave, how they decide, what they value. It has all come from what they have lived through. So we're going to change the way that we frame our questions from what would you do if, or how would you handle it if, to tell me about a time when that is a big shift. And then we are going to start out with like one question, and we're gonna go way deeper with follow-ups in one question vein, then we are going to stay surface level with multiple questions. So we still ask multiple questions, but we ask less of them because we spend more time going deeper. And there's a few ways that we get evidence in an interview. So first and foremost, we are looking for real life examples. So number one, real life examples. Evidence starts with specifics that have actually happened. So tell me about a time when. So that's kind of like this opening question where it's broad and it's general, and we're gonna let them kind of steer this ship and we can see how much they are going to tell us without us prompting, right? So we're gonna say, tell me about a time you were under a pressure, and then we're gonna listen for, you know, or what story are they telling me? What is happening in this example? Are they giving me names? And granted, you they always have to give names, but it would be like my boss and my coworker, and we had this client. We were up on a project deadline. This was happening. It was stressful. We were trying to get it done within two weeks. These were the emotions in the room, these were the criteria of the project. Here was the obstacle, here's the the trade-offs I went through my head. I was like, well, I could do this, but if I do that, that's gonna happen, or I could do this. So I went with option B. And then this happened, and here's what I learned, and here's the result that came out of that. Like, it's it's not gonna be perfect. So we're not looking for like a right answer. We're looking for just like tell me about what happened. Like, if I were telling you about my move to Alaska, it would not be this beautiful picture. I mean, there would be there would be emotion and there would be crying and there would be stress and there would be blessing and there would be thankfulness and there would be just a wave of emotion, and I could just tell you about all of these different pieces that came into play and you know what I thought then versus what I've learned now. That's that's all we're looking for is just something real. So they're gonna give you this example, and then obviously, if they don't, we're not just gonna let that slide. We're gonna we're gonna probe a little bit more, but we'll we'll get to that in a minute. And then the next thing we're going to do is we're gonna look for the patterns. So they have just told you one example about how they are good under pressure. Well, now what we're doing is we're saying, okay, that is one story in one environment. Now I want to know how that shows up in a different environment in your life. So this is pointing to different contexts, and I like to just go into your personal life. So tell me about a time you were under pressure in a different setting outside of work. Or you could say something like, Well, how are you good under pressure outside of work? And so now we're getting into like a completely different environment, different context. But what we should see is the same trait showing up because someone can't be like, oh, well, it's only ever happened at work. It's like, no, if you're good under pressure, you're telling me that there's never been a time in your life where you've been under pressure. Like, what about when you're trying to get your family out the door and you have three kids and you're trying to make it to church on time, and your wife is getting ready, and church starts in 10 minutes, and it takes you 15 minutes to get there. What do you do? Like, that is a person under pressure. Or you are traveling and your flight gets canceled, and you are going to a conference, and you need to be at that conference, and your original mode of transportation has now gone out the window. What did you do? How did you react? How did you stay calm? What were your options? Is this a trains, plans, and automobiles type of situation, or I'll be home for Christmas type of situation? Like, what happened here? Like, that is an example of like, okay, here's how I did this in a work situation. Here's how I did this in a home situation, or an outside of work situation. Because who we are, like how our brain is wired, our skills, our character, our values, what we think, what we believe, our behaviors, what we're motivated by, guess what? Those are the same outside of work and inside of work, which is why we look for both. And then not only do we ask for those two examples in two different settings, but then the third thing we want to do is we want to confirm consistency. So, okay, we have a work story, we have a life story, which is really good. This is probably maybe a lot farther than you normally get. So we're seeing that, okay, this is shown up here, this is shown up here. Those stories should match. So, first of all, we are looking at these stories and we're saying, do these both do both of these stories point to them working well under pressure? And then we're gonna go for a third, and we're gonna say, tell me about another time that required that same trait, or what's another area that showed up in? So, and this one they can do personal, they can do work, but we're just we're going for a third. We're going for another example. So, this is this is what is telling us is this person good under pressure? And one, do we need that? Like, do we need that quality for this role? Because if we don't, we're wasting our time asking this question. But if this is something that we know we need, we need to verify that this is actually how this person operates. This is how this person is wired. And we need to see that in multiple areas, in multiple contexts. And that is only revealed through real life, through real examples. So we're gonna get that consistency. And by this point, you should have learned a lot more about this person, like just through the story that they told, the way that they sort their story. Maybe it was expressive, maybe it was just like very bullet point and detail-oriented, maybe they made some jokes. Like you're you're just you're actually getting a lot more information through these stories than just are they good under pressure. You're learning about their family, you're learning about their work history, you're learning about their relationships. Like, there's a lot of context that is going into these stories that are very, very helpful. And the fourth thing this ends up doing is this it this process is what ends up exposing manufactured answers. This process is what like ends up being like, oh, I actually can't, I can't think of any examples right now. Like someone who says the right thing is going to struggle to produce real life proof. And they're going to struggle to produce multiple real life proof. So then as you're following up and you're digging into it, like, hey, tell me more about that, or what happened here again? What did you learn from this? Why was this important to you? All in the same vein of this question, and they're not gonna be able to answer those questions. It's gonna be a lot of like big words talking around something, it's gonna be vague. They're not, they're gonna say a lot of words, but they're not actually going to say anything. And their claim is gonna collapse under the follow-up. And that's where you know, okay, this person can't support what they're claiming. And if they can't provide examples, be if they're flustered or nervous or, you know, regardless, whatever the reason that they can't provide the example, if we don't have examples, we don't have evidence, and we can't trust it. We can't, we can't use that information. It's like in the courtroom, we gotta, we gotta throw that out. We can't cut, we can't use that as part of our decision making. Like we really do need solid proof based off what has actually happened in this person's life, because what has happened in this person's life is what has shaped who this person is today. How this person thinks has determined how they make decisions, how this person makes decisions has determined like what they have learned, how they have grown, the skills that they have developed. So we have everything that we need to work with, with one human being's life story up until this point. And all we need are examples to support the specific criteria that we are looking for. So if we're looking for someone who's organized, if we're looking for someone who's empathetic, if we're looking for someone who is a critical thinker and a problem solver, if we're looking for someone who's a researcher, like all of these criteria are going to point to different question veins and different examples. So that's why it's so important that we know what specifically are we looking for? Like what ability does this person need to have in order to be good at this role? What values does this person need to have in order to thrive in our team and with our company? And then we're gonna ask specific questions within this vein where we're gonna find that evidence that actually supports is this person who they say that they are. And so that's all it wrap ends up being. Like it's it's not complicated, it's just a matter of going deeper, not broader. So, just a quick recap: we're looking for real life examples, details, timelines, specifics, what actually happened, not a perfect story. We're looking for patterns. Did it show up in multiple areas or was it just a one-off story? We're looking for consistency. Do the work stories and the life stories reinforce the same trait? And then number four, manufactured answers. Did the scripted did the candidate struggle to give you good concrete evidence when you asked those follow-up questions looking for that proof? And always that goes back to this core question of what evidence did this candidate provide to reveal what I need to know about their capacity or their character. So hopefully this helps you make much better, much more consistent, much more confident hiring decisions based on what has actually happened in a person's life, not based on hypotheticals, not based on what sounds good. If you need help asking better questions, you can go to Clearauthentic Brands.com slash resources and download our high signal interview questions. That is all for this episode. See you next time.