035 - 15 questions to ask veterinary professionals at job interviews to determine whether they'll MESS or MESH with your clinic

Asking good quality questions gets you good quality answers

In this episode you'll discover 15 questions veterinary clinics can ask job applicants to help them determine whether the new-hire will mess or mesh with your veterinary clinic team.

Determining and hopefully, matching clinic values, is imperative if you want your next new hire to mesh with your existing team.

The alternative is to hire someone who messes with your team - usually because of a total mis-match in values and integrity.

VetStaff
leading veterinary sector recruitment in New Zealand | veterinarians | locums | nurses

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

About DISC-Flow®
DISC is a research-backed and science-based personality profiling tool used to understand our behaviours, communication styles, and work preferences. It’s about understanding what makes you – and the people you work with – tick.

Julie South is a DISC Flow® Certified Trainer, who describes DISC-Flow® profiling as being like having a cheat sheet to better understand yourself and other people. When you know this, it helps you play to your personality strengths, work better in teams, and communicate better.

If you’re keen to find out what your personal DISC type is, what type of leader you are, or what your clinic’s team composition looks like, then get in touch with Julie to find out what's involved.

How to get more bang for your recruitment advertising buck
This is what VetStaff is really good at so if you'd like to stretch your recruitment dollar, please get in touch with Julie because this is something VetStaff can help you with.

How to shine online as a good employer
If you’d like to shine online as a good employer to attract the types of veterinary professionals who're a perfect cultural fit for your clinic please get in touch with Julie because thi...

Transcript

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episode 35 of Paws, claws, and wet noses, the veterinary sector podcast, celebrating all creatures great and small, and the fantabulous professionals who look after them all. I'm your show. Host, Julie South.. Good questions. Give you good answers interviewing as an art. And I'm currently unconvinced that artificial intelligence or AI can replace a real live human being at job interviews. Maybe it will happen in a few years time, but for now in 2021, I think life, according to Julie, I think the human factor is critical. Will your next new hire mess or mesh with your existing team. Today's show has 15 candidate interview questions to ask when you're interviewing your next new hire today, we're going to look at what types of interview questions to ask why to ask those questions specifically, and what red flags to look out for. If you want an insight into your next new hires, personality, motivations, and values, then these are some of the questions to ask to help you determine whether they'll mess or mesh with your team. An old vet or my father when he was a student in Glasgow, he said, if you want to be a success in veterinary practice, Just keep the bubbles open and just arrested. Good Nutrition is not an opinion. It's a science. They called me that weird herbal needle that, and I just remember thinking, well, I'm still going to do it cause I know it works. And I've got the research to back it from reminiscences of the real James Harriet son to P nutrition, to acupuncture the big podcast, discusses current animal health issues from around the world. I'm veterinarian Bryan Gregor from New Zealand, just search for the vet podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts from claws and wet noses is sponsored by vet staff. If you've never heard of vet staff, it's new, Zealand's only full service recruitment agency. 100% dedicated to the veterinary sector fit staff has been around since 2015 and works nationwide from Kate re-enter to the bluff. And everywhere in between as well as helping Kiwis fit staff. Also hubs overseas, qualified veterinarians find work and art hero and New Zealand fit. staff.co dot indeed it's face it. Kiwis are a nation of do it yourself as, and on the surface interviewing a candidate for your vacancy. Sounds easy. I mean anyone can do it, or so they tell me what skill does it take to ask a bunch of questions and record the answers after all don't you just need to have the job description, right. And the candidate's CV handy. So you've got something to refer back to about hot, specific skillset and experience you're looking for and whether the case candidate measures up or not. Isn't that all you need. If only interviewing was that simple. And if it was that simple and easy, Isabel, and I wouldn't hear all of the recruitment horror story or is that we do, hopefully everyone on your team now works together. And the true meaning of the word team, T E a M we're together, everyone achieves more. There might be differences, but all those differences are eared and worked through with respect and everyone is involved. One of the things that I really noticed as we were venturing out of alert, level four lockdown, and then to level three last year back when New Zealand was starting its transition back to a more normal, was that in clinics where the teams truly rocked. Prior to COVID. Well, they, those ones just got stronger. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and helped each other out. But in those clinics where differing personal and clinic values were pulling everyone in opposite directions where all those teams started unraveling at different speeds, some slow three feet by three feet, and others just employ. Big time and nothing appears to have changed. Now that we're back into a more normal cycle and rhythm of life. I'm still hearing about almost mess resignations because employees have just had enough of the bullying, the backstabbing, the inequities, and other values differences that are being allowed to fester when everyone's backs up against the wall. That is when aligned values are absolutely correct. But when you've only got such a short space of time as in an interview really an hour isn't long when you're interviewing someone because you've got so much to get through. So what questions can you ask that help reveal someone's personality, motivations, and values? The nuances of interviewing candidates extend well beyond their skills and abilities and into areas of their maturity. Culture fit and self-awareness to assess their overall candidate quality. You can mitigate some of these questions for fit. If you're attracting informed candidates who know and endorse your clinic's brand, what am I talking about? Episode 19 was dedicated to helping you improve the ROI on your job. Vacancy adversity. I'll put links to that on the page of this episode, which is 35 at paws claws, wet noses dot F M. If you haven't listened to it yet, I really do recommend you do. It's actually one of the most popular episodes. What we're going to look at today as job interview questions that help you get insights into someone's personality and their values questions that will help reveal how the candidate will interact with others on your team. So presuming that you've got your clinic's employer brand sorted as per episode 19, and you're confidently assured that your applicant has a reasonable understanding of what your clinic stands for. These asking questions. What you want to know is whether the applicant you're interviewing stands for the same values as your clinic or not. The questions here. Aren't the only questions to ask, but they're part of a library of questions, Isabella and I are. You want to know whether a candidate will mesh or mess with your existing team here at fit staff, Isabella and I have chats with candidates. We want to put the candidate at ease as much as possible as we know that nobody likes being interviewed job hunting. is already stressful enough. So we do a best to take away any hint of our questions being like the Spanish inquisition. So let's get down. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty of these questions here. They are. Number one, tell me something about yourself that others may be surprised to know about. This question gets someone to think. You're not asking them to tell you something that no one knows. Just something that others will be surprised to know a question that gives an insight into how someone understands their own life lessons and how they may work or manage other team members. Is if there was something in your past, you are able to go back and do differently. What would that be? And why? What about how do they handle conflict? Ask them to tell you about a time they had a difficult working relationship with a colleague, ask them about the challenge and the ultimate outcome. Maybe they're leaving because the issue was unresolved or they're the type of person who avoids conflict at any cost, including quitting their job. Every time it happens. Another way to find out how they handle adversity type situations is to ask them about a skill they'll need to have perhaps in debating or finding a vein and ask them what war stories do they have about that skill or what failures have they had around this skill. You want to know how they handle life and situations when things don't go according to plan. Their own shortcomings and stress. You also want to know whether they give up or are always aiming for constant improvement, especially listen out for where blame is cast. Do they own it or others always at fault and it's not them. Do they have the wherewithal to make sure the era isn't repeated? Take another skillset specific to this, their position and ask them to tell you about their biggest success story relating to this skill. What you're looking for here is whether their success is solely about them win a war story was because of someone else, are they all about the glory for them? And then lay blame on others. You always need to ask both sides of the Queens. And talking of skillsets, you want to give the candidate an opportunity to share their best technical skills. That is you want to hire someone whose strengths match what you're ideally looking for while finding out what their soft skills are. For example, you could ask them what is their ideal position and why, what if their ideal position isn't anything like the vacancy? They won't last long. And then you'll be back trying to fill that exact same vacancy again, believe me, someone is not better than no one. The wrong foot can be absolutely disastrous at Christian additional to the, what is your ideal position and why Christian is here's another one for you? What are two of the most satisfying accomplishments in your career? Tell me about each of them. Why ask this question? When people are invited to tell a story about what's been important to them in the act of their careers, you get a window into the values. What did they value most? What emphasis was placed and where did they value the impact that they had? Or was it just the value that they, that came with the award or the official rec recognition? Neither answer as better or worse than the other. But when you hire this person, it gives you an opportunity to see their motivators and their success markers. It gives you a way to reward this person, according to what's important to them. Of course you want to know what shortcomings, what weaknesses someone has, but surely there's got to be a better way of asking. Tell me about your weaknesses, the standard quizzes. There is a new place you're listening to this podcast you want. Here's what you want to do. You want to ask your candidates? What is a development area you've had to overcome or are currently working on improving in your career, asking the question this way, it gives you the chance to learn how someone deals with self realization, self actualization, and potentially how they overcome obstacles or. When it comes to candidates attitudes, ask, tell me about your favorite and least favorite manager or supervisor. What was it about their management style that you liked or didn't like asking that question gives you some fast insight into how the candidate likes to be communicated with and managed as well as some revelations and to overall attitude. Immature. Tell me about yourself. Question as another one of those predictable shorter get asked, job interview questions. People can rehearse for those. They can practice for those and give you pet answers. And instead you could ask, how did you end up in your current? This gives you beat a scenes of a candidate's career trajectory, as well as what motivates them. How prepared as a candidate for meeting. What homework have they done in my humble opinion, you want someone on your team who's made motivated enough to go out of their way to find out a bit about your clinic. If they haven't done that, what else? Wouldn't they be bothered? Doing Harris interview preparedness questions for you to ask. And this is number 12 on my list. These are the last four. What challenges do you see impacting the industry and how do you think these can be overcome? What do you know about this clinic? What interests you most about this position? And finally, what questions do you have for me? As you can see, that's quite a list of at a job interview. There are a whole bunch more that cover competency. When you think about how much is at stake with each new hire the mission or the missing of your current team, your clinic's reputation, which you've worked really hard to build and the actual dollars you're paying it makes sense to treat a job interview as an investment of your time. Please don't short change or skimp on time. When you interview someone, allow enough time to ask the tough questions. And if you don't have the time available, then consider outsourcing this part of the recruitment process. A reputable recruitment agency should give you the opportunity to work as a partner with them on different modules of the recruitment process. I know here at vet staff, even if you don't want us to work on the full campaign, we're more than happy to support you, where you need us. If all you want help with, as the interviews we can do that, we don't have to be involved in the whole recruitment campaign. If you've ever hired the wrong person for your team, then it's definitely worth considering hiring an agency to do the interviewing for you recruiting this way means you can start off objectively when it comes time to write up your shortlist of candidates. As a deceit here at VIT staff, we're more than happy to work with you on these areas of recruitment, where you don't have the necessary time to commit to get it right. Or, you know, something's not your strong suit. We can compliment you making sure your next new hire is the best new hire for your. Thanks for listening. Remember to click the follow wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, so you never miss out and it will always end up in your feed. Also, if you have any topics you'd especially like to hear about, please let me know. To give you an idea of what that might look like. Just today's show. And last week's were special requests. One by a clinic owner in the south island of gods zone RTO, RA New Zealand, and who wanted to know what he could do to retain the generation Z leads. He roots her hard to recruit at his clinic. Today's special request was from a north island mixed clinic practice manager. paws, claws and wet noses is sponsored by vet staff. If you've never heard of it, staff it's new, Zealand's only full service recruitment agency. 100% dedicated to the veterinary sector and fit staff has been around since 2015 and works nationwide from Kate ringer to the bluff and everywhere in between as well as helping Kiwis fits. Also hubs overseas, qualified veterinarians find work and art hero and New Zealand fit. staff.co dot. Indeed.