Eric Siu: In this video, I'm gonna talk about how to ask the right questions in a job interview. So I think the problem with job interview is, oftentimes, especially if you're a startup, it starts to become very unorganized. People start to ask the same questions over time, so you have to have a process in the very beginning.
What I like to do, these are kind of the must-haves for us at least in our process. They have to fit your core values first. So if you haven't defined that, you've gotta define what your core values are. Talk with your executive team, or maybe the people that are senior. Define those first, and then have a set of opening questions around core values. That way you know if people are a fit.
I don't care how well you can execute, if you're an asshole, if you don't fit our core values, it doesn't work for us at the end of the day. So you've gotta have that fit first, and then you can move them on to the more technical things. Which is why it's good if you have an HR person or a recruiter person focus on the core values first, and that way your management team is not focusing on that. Because here's the problem, whoever is doing the hiring, they're incentivized to make their own life easier. They're incentivized to just take things off their plates. They're not aligning exactly with the core values, so you've got to have someone that's kind of the buffer first, and then you can move them to the next step.
Second thing is, think about the problems you have, and then map out what the tasks are, what the responsibilities are, and then create a job description around that. Some of you might wanna Google job descriptions out there. I think that's good, but you've gotta map out something that's the right fit for your company, 'cause every companies different, so you've got to map out those problems.
What's also really important to me, would I admire this person in five years? Let's say someone's really young, we're hiring for an intern. Do I think I would admire this person in five years or so? Would I want to work for this person in five years or so? 'Cause you want to work with nice people, right? And then if it's a more senior role, and this is something I got from my mentor who was the president of JBL, the speaker company, if you're hiring a VP, you're hiring a director, you're hiring someone that's very senior, it's gonna take more than one interview. It's gonna take more than two interview. It's more of you're building a relation. I almost got hired for a role, and they put me through the ringer. Man, I probably spent 12 hours in one day, and I spent another eight hours the next day interviewing, and this was a ton of phone calls, too. I met at the guy's place. I met him for another meal, and then I met with his entire executive team, just everyone. They had a consulting group also come in and grill me on very specific questions. That was their entire process. If you're hiring for someone senior, you've gotta think about building that relationship with them, because this is somebody that's gonna be in the trenches with you battling it out for really big problems that you're gonna face down the road.
So there's just a couple of things that you can ask when you're looking to hire the right people. And if you like videos like this, you want to grow your business, just hit "subscribe," and we'll see you in the next one.