Why Questions Matter In Hiring

Amy Dardis 0:12

Podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Dardis. And in this episode, we are walking through the framework on how to ask questions that reveal a person's natural wiring. I love asking questions. Asking questions is my favorite thing to do, and it's something that has served me well throughout my life and in various different contexts of business, which I'm actually going to share with you about. But the specific application that we're actually going to dive into is asking questions in an interview because hiring the right people for your brand is super important. Like hiring people, I think is the most important thing that you do, not only to benefit you as the business, you as the leader, but specifically to benefit the employee, the actual individual. Because when people are working in their natural wiring, that is actually what has the most impact that delivers the most value and the most contribution, not only to the business, but to the individual themselves. And a lot of times what happens in interviewing is we don't always know exactly what questions to ask. And so we'll ask a lot of popular questions in an interview. And candidates will give us a lot of really good answers, but then we'll hire them and we'll find out that what they said isn't an accurate reflection of how they actually operate and their natural wiring. And so we see the disconnect, and then there's friction and there's frustration and there's tension. And what we want to do is we want to get around that. Now, how I learned to get around that was something that I stumbled into, but I did it through my own natural wiring.

When Curiosity Becomes A Superpower

Amy Dardis 2:12

And if you've been following the podcast for any length of time, we talk a lot about natural wiring. And then specifically in this episode, we're going to talk about my second favorite topic, which is asking questions. So I love asking questions, and I love asking questions to an extreme. For example, I was talking to my friend the other day, and she was telling me about her day, and she just was said something super casual like, Yeah, I've been eating a lot of sugar lately. And for anyone else, they would just be like, Okay, cool, and just like glide right over that. But my mind pauses on that and thinks, well, what kind of sugar have you been eating? Is this candy? Is this chocolate? And what amounts? And what's leading you to do this? And how do you feel afterward? Are you feeling guilt? Are there any symptoms? Is your face breaking out? Do you feel good afterwards? Is there something going on in your life that's leading you to want to eat this sugar? And what time of the day are you eating this sugar? I mean, there's within an instant, there are 20 questions that just immediately come to mind that I'm just like, I can't even help myself. And this actually came up when I was a kid. I noticed I was asking way more questions than everybody else was, and people would get annoyed by it. And I didn't think anything of it. In my head, it was just something where, well, doesn't everybody have these questions? Doesn't everybody want to know all of this information? And it wasn't until I actually got married and met like was in relationship and living with my husband for a few years and really starting to understand somebody else at a very deep level to realize, like, how come your brain doesn't have 50 more questions that my brain has? But oftentimes what we think is normal or average or something that's maybe not even a gifting ends up being something that really is our natural wiring and becomes a superpower. And so for years of my life, I thought nothing of this question-asking thing. I assumed everybody asked as many questions as I did, that their brains worked the same way. And it wasn't until I got married that I realized that other people's brains don't work like this. And it wasn't until I started a business that I started to realize that this is actually a gifting. And it started to open so many more doors than I ever could have even imagined.

Using Questions To Win Clients

Amy Dardis 4:54

So in the early days of us starting our web design and marketing agency, we were brand new. We had no credibility, no proof, no testimonials, nothing to offer. We also had no budget, no marketing strategy, nothing. And our business suffered deeply because of that. Like in our business, in our marriage, in our finances, in our life, things were completely falling apart. And as a Hail Mary, as a last ditch, I have nothing left to offer attempt. I started to join some networking groups and I started to make connections within just the local community and the local chamber. And in my head, I was like, okay, I have nothing to offer. I feel just completely broken inside. I have zero self-confidence, but I can go and I can build relationships and I can ask questions and I can learn about other people. I can learn about other people's businesses. I can be genuinely curious and genuinely interested. That's all I have to do. I just I'm gonna start with just trying to network and get to know people. And my way of getting to know people was by asking questions. And through that process, I actually ended up getting business. Like people started hiring us to build their website without me even selling them. I would just meet someone and be like, hey, I'm building a business and uh you have this business, and I would just love to learn about your story and what you do. Would you want to have coffee sometime? And people would be like, Yeah, sure. And we would go and have coffee and I would just ask them, like, how'd you get started? And what led you to that? And, you know, how's it going? And we would just build a relationship. And because of that, oftentimes people would end up being like, Hey, what do you do? And be like, Oh, we build websites. I'm like, Can you build mine? Like, sure. And that ended up opening the door not only to new business and new relationships, but also to a really important part of our process, which was understanding the business. It was understanding the story, it was understanding what made them unique. And I was so genuinely interested in that. And so what started as just pure fascination, I ended up being able to pull out what made them unique and what their target market was and what their core offerings were, and how to message that and how to articulate that. And through that process, I actually ended up realizing too that most businesses actually struggled to articulate that. And when they would hire us to build their website, whether it was a new website or oftentimes a redesign of a website that wasn't working, that wasn't converting, when I asked them questions, they could tell me their story. But if I was like, hey, can you write me some content that so I can put this on your website? That's where things would stall out because they just wouldn't be able to articulate it or put into words or even know specifically what it was that they needed to hone in on. And so I realized that one, this is a huge stalling point. And two, I'm hearing your story and I'm seeing it. It makes total sense to me because of all of the questions that I'm able to ask and I know what I'm looking for. And so I'm just pulling it up. And over time, I started to one realize that this was a super valuable process. It made the website better, it made their marketing better, it made our process way more streamlined, way more efficient. And so I started to analyze like, what am I doing when I'm sitting down with these business owners? What questions am I asking? And why am I asking those questions? And what specifically am I looking for? And when I find that information, how am I going to take that information and put it on their website? And what is really important and what's just extra? And I started to basically deconstruct what I just did organically without really even being aware of what I was doing so that I could hone in on this process even more. So I could make sure that every single time I went and sat down with a client, I got everything that I needed. I didn't want to have to go back and ask follow-up questions. I wanted to know that I had everything I needed and I wanted to get it as quickly and as efficiently as possible because small business owners are busy. They don't have time for multiple meetings. And a lot of my clients were owner operators, like they were busy running the business. And so I always felt this pressure on time. And so I was like, let me just make the most of it. Like, can I do this in an hour? Can I do this in 90 minutes? And how can I get everything that I need? And what parts of their story am I focusing on? And so I started to map out this process to a point where it was just completely smooth, completely streamlined. And within a 90-minute conversation, I could get everything that I needed to write their entire website content, to understand their target market, to understand what made them different from their competitors, to be able to identify their process and their core offering, where it really made sense within my brain. Like I felt like I knew this brand because I knew what questions to ask and how I was actually approaching the questions themselves. So I had that process fully refined.

Turning Hiring Pain Into A System

Amy Dardis 10:54

And eventually I ended up going to work for a gas and welding distributor. And I was on their leadership team and I worked as an employee inside the business for about five years. And through that time, I got more and more involved in the hiring and interviewing side of the business because we first started doing all the brand clarity stuff and figuring out our story and our values and what made us different. And then I realized that we were having issues with who we were hiring. Some hires were working out great and some weren't. And it was very painful and it was very expensive. And so I was like, what are we doing in our hiring process? Like, who, what questions are we asking? Why are we asking those questions? What are we looking for? What's our criteria? And the short answer to that is there was really no strategy there. And so I was like, I want to sit in on these interviews. Like I love to ask questions. You know I love asking questions. I think I can help. I think I can be super helpful and valuable in the interview process. And so I started sitting in on all these interviews, which I love, I love to interviewing because again, it's really just starting to understand somebody else's story, somebody else's wiring, what makes them unique? What are they good at? How do they operate? What motivates them? What drives them? Are they going to be a good fit in this organization or not? And what do we need to pull to the surface in order to be able to make a confident decision? And so, interview after interview, over years really of sitting in, I started to do the same thing I'd done before. I was just like, okay, what questions am I asking? Why am I asking these questions? What am I looking for? How can I streamline this? How can I not waste time in an interview? Because once again, you only have so much time. The R team was busy, the candidates are busy. And so you have to make the most of what you can do within an hour or within two one-hour interviews or 30 minutes. You know, there wasn't a lot of time. So we really had to maximize the time. And so I was like, okay, what questions do we need to ask? What can we throw out the window? What aren't gonna really give us the information that we need? And I started to deconstruct that process and come up with like a process and a framework and to get it really dialed in to the point where it's like I felt like I could walk into an interview and knew exactly what I needed to ask and knew exactly why I knew what I was looking for, and I could go faster and faster and faster and make confident, consistent decisions each time, knowing like, okay, yes, this person is gonna be a good hire. And they have the natural wiring. They're going to be a fit for this organization because I knew our brand. I knew that clarity. I knew what we valued, I knew our work style, I knew the type of environment that we had, I knew the skill sets required for the role. Then in the interview, I just figured had to figure out okay, does this person fit with that? Does this person align with that? So I figured out how to do that organically and streamline that whole process. And then as I launched Clear Authentic Brands, I had to realize, okay, I can't always be in the interview. Like what I want to do is I want to teach other business owners how to ask these questions and why to ask these questions and what it is that we're looking for. And what I realized just through my own journey is the way that I asked questions, not only to tell a brand story, but also to identify a candidate's natural wiring and fit, it basically followed the same framework. It was built off of the same premise. And then even taking a step further back than that, I started to realize that even in my day-to-day conversations, even when I was building relationships with people, just with friends or at church, I was doing this same thing. And it always started with a story and it always started with understanding how is this person wired? What motivates this person? What are they good at? What do they care about? And how would we align them in a role or in an area where they're really honing in on that and they're able to grow and develop and bring meaningful impact and contribution to what it is they're doing, which is the same premise for a business. When a business knows what it is that they care about, what it is they value, the things that make them unique, the things that they are the best at, how can they hone in on those things to really set themselves apart in the marketplace and not even compete with competitors anymore because they're uniquely and distinctly different and excellent because they know what they bring bring to the table. And so it all comes back to this identity piece, right? Identity and people and identity and branding and figuring out what that is through the way that we ask questions because it's all found in things that already exist.

Brand Clarity Sets Your Criteria

Amy Dardis 16:36

So that is what I want to walk through is the actual framework. So whether you are trying to identify your own brand or your hiring, this is the more like very relevant and applicable version of this, is if you're hiring. And I do have this framework for you. If you go to ClearAuthentic Brands.com slash resources, there is the download there, and it's just called interviewing for natural wiring. So I did position this as like use this in an interview because for a business owner, this is going to come in handy more often than not. But the the framework is the same. And so we want to understand does this person's natural wiring fit in with what it is that we're looking for? And really, it's important to know what questions to ask, and that is going to map back to your specific criteria. And you're not going to have your specific criteria unless you are clear on your own brand identity. So knowing what you value, knowing what your work style is, knowing what your non-negotiables are, knowing what personality traits you're looking for, that is key because that is going to give you the criteria. And then what questions you ask are actually going to map back to that criteria. So if you want to know what it is you need to clarify for your brand, I also have that available on the resources page as well. But if we know what questions that we need to ask, then how we ask them is equally as important. And this is like the piece that I've just discovered I was doing organically without ever realizing that, oh, this is this is a framework. This is something that can be repeated and implemented by anyone who wants to learn how to ask better questions so that they can pull more information to the surface.

The Five Layers Of Questions

Amy Dardis 18:48

And it's really based on five layers. So it's about going deeper within a specific question vein. So it's like, okay, what is the specific criteria that we're looking for? Well, if we're interviewing, and let's say we're interviewing for a sales position, one of the criteria we would be looking for is someone who has the natural wiring to build relationships. So we want to know that this is a person who naturally builds relationships. This isn't something that we want to have to coach or train or force. It's something where it's like if someone is good at building relationships, what do we need to ask and how do we need to ask it in order to know if this is part of their natural wiring? So, with that specific example in mind, we're gonna walk through the five levels of what we would ask and how we would ask it in order to determine that. And so the first thing we always start is we start with just an open anchoring question. So this is just how we start the conversation. And it really just establishes the baseline for this vein. And we're gonna basically ask them how they would approach building relationships. So how would they approach that specific ability or skill? So I would just say something like, tell me about how you've built relationships from the ground up, or tell me about how you approach building relationships. Like I would just start the conversation and I would leave it very open, very broad, because I don't want to lead them in this conversation. I want to see what it is that they bring to the surface without me digging and without me prompting. So whether they go off on a tangent or they give me a lot of specific examples, or maybe they just say something that sounds good and then they kind of leave it at that. I just want to see where are we at. That's my baseline. So level two with that is we are going to specifically ask for details. So we want to know that there are specific examples of how they have built relationships. Now, if you're looking at how you've built sales relationships, you don't even have to be specific to sales because you just need someone who's naturally wired to build relationships. And so they're gonna do this throughout all different contexts of their life. But if they naturally build relationships, they will have stories of how they've built relationships, and that's what we're looking for. We're looking for real life stories, like what have we actually lived through? Who were the people? When did this happen? What was the context? What was the resistance that you faced? How did you overcome that? I want to know give me examples in your life of how you've built relationships. And so I would ask for more than one. I would just say, give me some specific examples of how you've done that. And then I actually am listening for specific context. So I Do you want to know when did this happen? How did it happen? What were the names of the people involved? How long did it take? How did the relationship grow over time? And I don't just want one story. I would like a couple of different stories. So if someone isn't naturally relationship-driven or wired to build relationships, they are going to struggle to give you real hard specifics. So they're just kind of going to talk around it instead of actually being like, yes, here are 10 different stories of how I've done that. And we're going to take that even further with the next level, which is we're checking for patterns within different contexts. Because if you have someone who has the natural wiring to build relationships, then you need to know that this behavior exists outside of work. So this is the person who starts conversations with the stranger next to them in the grocery store. This is the person who creates a new friendship from chit-chatting it up with someone at the gym. This is the person who is not afraid to walk up to somebody who they see as a new kid on the first day of school and befriend them. So we're looking for it could be stories of how you built relationships with your neighbors, your friends at school, teammates, people at church, work context. Like what we want are multiple different contexts and even better in different seasons of life. So this is what it would look like in high school, this is what it looked like in college, this is what it looked like in my new jobs. That's how you know if someone is naturally outgoing and has the ability to build relationships. And then we're going to take that even further. And so we're going to take that to the next level, which is now at level four. And we're going to look for validation from other people. So what we want to do is we want to confirm that for the people who know them really well, they would also speak to this ability, being like, yes, this person naturally builds relationships and they've seen it happen over and over again. So we're validating from other people that this behavior, this wiring, is a recognized part of their reputation because we can think what we want about ourselves, but having other people in our life also recognize that in us, that validates that this really is apparent to other people. And so how I would ask that is I would say, who else in your life would say that you're great at building relationships? And what would they say? What have they said? And I'm always looking for specifics on things that have happened. So I don't even like to say what would they say. I would rather say what have they said? Like tell me about things that your wife has said or your kids have said or your bosses have said about your ability. Because if other people aren't speaking into their life to say, man, I see this in you. I see how tenacious you are, I see how hardworking you are, I see how creative you are, I see how meticulous you are. If other people don't recognize it in you, then that is a red flag. So we are looking for consistency in multiple contexts, in multiple examples, as well as from multiple different perspectives. And then the final level of depth, which is now at level five, is understanding the driver behind that behavior. And so we're looking at what is the belief, what is the intrinsic motivation that drives this behavior of why building relationships is important to you, how you feel when you're building relationships and understanding like this is something that they're gonna do because they can't even help themselves. Like it's something that it matters to them. Maybe they see someone who is standing there all alone and they just there's a pull, there's a guilt, there's drive. Like they they're just like, I have to go and talk to this stranger. I mean, what is it that drives the person to start chit-chatting it up with the person next to them when they're standing in line at the post office? Like, there's plenty of people who are happy to stand there and just be quiet or be on their phone or just don't even want to be bugged, like, don't talk to me, don't buck me. And then there's that person who's like, so, and they're making jokes and they're talking, or the person who creates a connection with someone at the airport. So I actually did that one time. I I was stuck in Denver and I had a nine-hour delay. I was traveling at Christmas, there were winter storms. I had made it to the Denver airport and I'd flown out of Montana, and I happened to be wearing a MSU Bobcat t-shirt that day, and I was standing in line waiting to find out, you know, when when my flight was gonna be rescheduled. And there was a guy who was like, Hey, Montana. And I was like, Yeah, you know, and over the next nine hours, I hung out with that guy and got to know him. And we had dinner and we just hung out at the airport together because we were happened to have both flown from Bozeman connecting in Denver, and we were both headed to the East Coast for Christmas. But you just, you he just he was actually the one who like naturally struck up the conversation, not even me, but I mean, that's those are the types of stories that we're looking for. It's like, oh yeah, like that, this has happened in multiple different scenarios. So we know that this person is naturally relationship driven or has the ability to build relationships. And so I would basically take this framework and for every specific criteria that I'm looking for. Like if I'm looking for someone who's organized and systems driven, or someone who's incredibly tenacious, or someone who has the ability to think critically, or someone who has the ability to prioritize and triage in a high-stakes environment, I would take that criteria, that behavior, and then I would break it down into these five levels of questions in order to feel like, is this part of this person's wiring? Is this part of this person's story? Because it's people who are naturally wired to thrive in those specific situations that are going to do well. And I even start this with my own like, I love to ask questions, and here's all these stories of how I ask questions. And here's why I love interviewing or why I am good at finding people's stories, is because my natural wiring in my brain and my mind that I've been doing since I was a kid, is I just I can't even help it. I mean, I was I was listening to my husband's conversation with his mom on the phone. We were in the car, and so the the phone calls on speaker, and they're it was like Mother's Day, and so I was calling her and just like asking, you know, a few questions, like and I just sat there and listened because you know, he would ask her something and she would respond. And then he would just like let that response slide and ask something different, and then my mind immediately I'm just like, what about this? And what about this? And and just like 10 more questions, and it's so hard because internally I'm like stressing inside, like I feel this pressure and this welling up because there's all these questions that you could be asking that you're missing these opportunities to ask, and he doesn't have that, he doesn't feel that, he doesn't have that stress. And when he listens to me on have conversations, he's he's just like sometimes is like mesmerized by the fact that it's like Amy, you asked so many questions. But he also knows that one that is like my superpower, that is my unique gifting, and it's it's come into play in our in our business, in our relationship, in our my relationship with our kids, in how we've connected and engaged with people in so many different areas. And in the same way that while I am obsessive and crazy about asking questions, he's like that with his tenacity and with his work ethic. And I could never ever live up to that level that he does, no matter how hard I tried. And so that's what

Purpose, Fit, And The Resource

Amy Dardis 31:25

we're looking for. We're looking for people who have the natural wiring so that they can one, be authentic to who they are. They can thrive with how God created them, with how he naturally wired them. So they can bring the highest impact and the highest value to their job, to their role, to the people around them, but they're gonna feel that sense of purpose. They're gonna feel that sense of meaning. Like when I'm asking questions, it is my favorite thing to do in the world. And I feel purpose and I feel meaning in being able to do that. Whereas, you know, if I'm spending my time in other things, that's not, it doesn't give me that same level of purpose or meaning. So this allows us to be embrace our own unique identity, to embrace our own unique wiring, to see that there's purpose and meaning in it. We get to feel that. And then we get to spend our time in roles where it makes us come alive, but then it also just delivers incredible contribution and incredible impact to the role itself, which means it affects the business positively. It affects our work and the people around us positively. And it there we avoid disengaged employees, we avoid people who are struggling to do a good job because they're just not naturally wired to do it that way. And then for you as a business, knowing that this is your unique identity, these are your values, this is the traits of the people that you're looking for, this is the natural wiring. Clarity on your brand identity is what is going to help you interview better. It's gonna help you hire better. So if this was valuable, you can grab this framework at ClearAuthentic Brands.com slash resources. I also have the brand clarity elements on there as well. But that is all for this episode. I will see you next time.