Leveraging Leadership

Improving Executive Search: Essentials for Selecting, Vetting, and Onboarding C-Suite Leaders

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 173

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Jordan Burton talks about his work as an executive assessor and trainer, helping companies and investors improve their hiring process from defining roles to interviewing candidates. He explains why it's important to clarify what a business really needs in a new hire, how to run effective interviews, and why panels aren't always the best approach. Real examples include deciding if you need a CFO or just a controller, getting input from different stakeholders, and tips for reaching out to passive candidates through networking.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

02:31 Defining the Right Role
08:04 Networking for Top Talent
12:37 Communicating Technical Knowledge
16:57 Approaching Potential Candidates
20:32 Conducting Authentic Interviews
23:18 Effective Interview Conversations
27:23 Panel Interviews: Pros and Cons
32:41 Final Stages and Decision Making
36:19 Behavioral Assessments in Hiring
37:58 Talgo's Approach to Interview Training

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Our guest today is Jordan Burton. Jordan, welcome to the show.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Thank you so much for having me, Emily. Sure.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

So can you give folks just a quick intro of yourself and then maybe describe where you fit in the interviewing private equity ecosystem.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

I actually occupy a couple of spaces there. Um, I am an executive assessor. So one hat that I wear is that I'm a, I'm a professional interviewer. So. will hire me, hire my firm to, uh, evaluate senior execs that they're considering hiring into a CEO or CFO or other senior leadership role. So that's kind of me as the interviewer. The other half that I wear is trainer. So I, I teach a lot of investors as well as a lot of operating companies, a lot of high growth organizations. to interview better, how to hire better. Sort of a set of principles improve their success rate in hiring the people that are the right fit and have the right skills.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

So you're working with companies to try to make, a good candidate experience for the candidate themselves, but also just a good interview loop. So they get, Top talent into their org.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

That's right. There's those, there's sort of two goals. You want to make sure that you find the right person, that you get the data that you need to make sure that you're going to make a hire that's going to be great for them and great for you and your organization. You also want to deliver a great candidate experience and the two actually are not mutually exclusive. You can do both by the right sort of strategies and the right, the right techniques.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

So I've been at companies where we engage with like, uh, an executive search for firm

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Mm

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

go like, we need a SVP of sales and marketing. We need a new CTO, go find us those people. And they will interview the C suite team and say like, what are you looking for? What's important. And then they'll go source the candidates and kind of run points on that interview process. You kind of sit, would you say you sit kind of a layer above that or, uh, How would you, how would you differentiate between executive search and placement? Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

certainly Uh, work with and are close to a lot of exec search firms that do the sourcing part of it. Um, in an ideal process, we're involved very early on in helping shape what that profile is. So those conversations with the CEO or if it's if it's a CEO, hire the investor, um, or with other stakeholders in the hire, uh, is something that we get involved in as well. And we'll work with the search firm in helping scope that role. Um, but. Candidates get sourced. So when I'm actually doing the assessments myself, candidates get sourced and I'm typically Towards the end of the process, doing, um, a very deep interview, sort of multi hour interview to get to know, uh, the candidates who make it through towards the end of the process. So, it's, uh, a different role, the assessment role as opposed to the sourcing or recruiting role, but it's kind of all part of one big ecosystem.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

And as I understand it, you, you would work with, let's say a CEO, like soup to nuts on this entire process. So if like, if I'm a CEO of a, a hundred person company and I've had, My cousin doing the accounting and bookkeeping so far. And I'm thinking I need a CFO, but I'm not quite sure. And if so, what does that look like? And what do I need and all that? If I were to engage with you, where would you start?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah, so if I'm engaged as a, coach. That would mean I would, we would talk about the entire process stem to stern. So we would talk about how to better define the role. We would talk about who should get involved in the interviews, what roles they should play. get to the level of talking about what questions to ask, what's the information that we want to draw out from candidates? Um, and then certainly how do we collect, gather that data, make the right decision, uh, all the way through onboarding the candidates. So as a sort of Coach or trainer. I'm advising across that entire process. If I happen to be part of that process myself as the assessor, I would typically slot in towards the end, uh, to do that, that deeper interview.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay. So let's say in this example, I'm hiring you for everything.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Okay.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

the first conversation be like, uh, do I really need a CFO? Or would you say, maybe you just need a VP of finance or a controller, or like, would you have that type of conversation?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Your question is more forward thinking than a lot of companies are. Amazingly so. Truly. Um, there's so many times we've come into situations where they say, We need a CMO. We need a CFO. Or we, we need, insert name of role. Uh, the very first questions that we ask as part of this role definition, this critical step in the process, what's, what's the business need

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Hmm. Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

this hire? What's not happening in the company that needs to happen? So we have a dialogue from first principles around what really. What's the thing that this person is going to be filling? What's, what's the impact that we want this person to have? And you're right. Many times that conversation can lead us to say, you know what? It's not really a CFO. We may not be there yet. It's actually kind of more of a controller or it's a head of FP and a, or there's some other, um, narrower role. we can, this isn't the majority of time. Usually clients will know that there's, uh, a very specific set of things that they need that fits into a certain role. But yes, it does happen that we, when we really get down to what needs to happen in the business, it can actually shape what we call the role.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah. So it could be like a fractional CFO or all these different variations, but it sounds like you help them answer the question for themselves of like, what am I actually looking for? Like, you know, CFO might pop into my head, but here, here's like what I actually need to happen in my business. So you help them with that part. And once that's done, then it's like, okay, now we have something to work with. Let's build out this process.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

That's exactly right. And I would say typically the first time we do that, I'll be leading that conversation, my

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

to build the skill of knowing the questions to ask to where they don't need me to create that profile. So we want to have this sort of one pager crisp definition of what we're looking for. I think one of the most powerful things an organization can do is to build the muscle memory of how to do that on a consistent basis. And frankly, not only for hires. But for everyone in the company, everyone has a set of things that they need to get done in a set of quality skills, characteristics, competencies that they need to

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

So I think there's, there's just so much upside and so much value from this to articulate what a role is all about.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah. Is there, are there any other steps before you would publicly post a job description or perhaps engage with like the external search piece of it? Are there any other steps where you've got to get your ducks in a row before you kick that thing off?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

That's a great question. I would say in an exec search situation, um, there's typically a few rounds of refining that profile, kind of

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

clear on what we want and having the right stakeholders involved in that discussion. But once we've got that defined, we're typically ready to start the search. Um, I would say the very next step is typically who is the right search partner, given what we're looking for.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah. Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

to help us? And there are some who are just incredible specialists with certain industries, geographies, company sizes, et cetera. Um, so that's certainly a step in the process before you actually go source. for mid to junior level candidates where there isn't going to be an exec search firm involved, um, I actually would hit pause before saying our next step is to post it to the world. Um, that certainly should be part of your strategy. Let's, let's find candidates out there that we don't know. We would encourage, we do encourage. The CEOs that we work with, the leadership teams that we work with to really take a step and say, who might I know in my networks that can lead me to attractive candidates, not let's go hire my friend, but who are the people in our company's networks, the people that I know and trust, especially the people that represent the diversity that I want to create, because they probably also have connections to candidates like that do some networking before we just jump straight to job posting. You can be a bit more targeted. You can go actively seek diversity as opposed to just hoping that it comes to you through a job post.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

And that's inherently through a referral that you, Assuming we trust and respect.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah. I mean, I think that the criteria that I would place on that is, is the, is the person that I'm connecting with to try to. source ideas to try to come up with potential candidates. Are they somebody who I would trust their read on this kind of a role, this kind of a candidate? Are they sort of a high performer themselves? Are they somebody that is likely to know and discriminate well the high performers in their networks? And then secondly, of course, are they somebody who's likely to have access to diverse talent pools or is it going to be more of the same of what we already have in the company?

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

And then, so you mentioned kind of bringing some other stakeholders into that discussion. Is that to help define that profile? Is that, are you asking them and having, um, kind of debrief with them? Like, what would you be looking for when we're hiring for this role? Or what do you, what do you think is important? What, what conversations are you having there?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

It's interesting. It sort of depends on the role. It depends on the organization and its values and culture and norms. Um, in highly collaborative organizations, we tend to find that yes, the, the let's call it the hiring committee. It's a different group of people for different roles, but there's a set of stakeholders that are going to be the primary ones, vetting hires, thinking, scoping the role of vetting hires, um, weighing in on the decision. Um, in most situations, yes, they'll be heavily involved in sort of shaping what this profile is. It is helpful, though, that the hiring manager ultimately is the one who can curate and, um, sort of triage all the information that comes in and say, this is really what it is. But yes, gathering input and weighing in on the, the, the, uh, that, that role definition and then transitioning from, of the role into interviewer saying, what are the aspects that I, as a future peer of this person and the head of marketing or VP marketing or whatever it may be, what's the role that I can uniquely play looking at what's in here, there's certain elements that I'm uniquely positioned to be able to vet to where I play a specialized role as an interviewer. than trying to cover everything about the candidate comprehensively.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

That's interesting. So, um, yeah, it might be in that marketing example. It's like, Hey, you know, from a marketing perspective, I'm looking for this, this and this from our, from my colleague. And so I need to be able to cover these. So, you know, can you help me like, just, just brainstorm some questions about how I could get to that in the interview? That seems like what's happening at that stage of the process.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

That's right. So if we were to take a role such as let's say it, let's say it's a controller role. It's not CFO, but it's a controller. Um, and they're going to have influence in different parts of the organization. And we feel like we've got the right hiring committee, maybe six or seven people who are very close to this hire. Some might even be team members, future direct reports of this person. I would look at that role definition and that's a set of like, what are the results that we need this person to deliver? What are the competencies that we need them to exhibit? Really differentiated factors that are going to make this person successful and happy here and say, are the clusters of your, like, there's one of these things that's around technical accounting skills. We know the person needs to be deep there. There's probably some team members. There may be an advisor. There may be a CFO who might be the hiring manager. Who's very well equipped to go deep in those areas. Now, there may be some other stakeholder that may be sort of ahead of sales ops or something like that. that's also a key stakeholder in the controller hire, but that's more of like, Hey, there's a few of these items that are around ability to work cross functionally

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yes.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

to help build some process and structure around the financial aspects of how we run the sales organization. Maybe that's the areas that I can go deep. So giving people a specialized role that is, you know, that fits what their, what their expertise and knowledge is can be a great way to make sure we don't have redundant interviews. Okay. Thanks.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

No, I love that because when I was on the interview loop for, um, A CIO and our CFO, when I was leading a client management team, my job was to, to say, Emily, can they explain things to you in a way that you can understand? Because I was not like technically deep in those areas, but they needed that person to be able to explain to a quote unquote normal person what they were talking about. And then also for me to take inputs from. What was happening in client management and feed that to them and say, what, what would you ask me about that? Or what does that mean to you? And so like real life examples. So I love that where you don't have to be technically proficient in these areas or are a subject matter expert. Sometimes it's just as valuable to say, can this person communicate with others across the organization? Absolutely.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

is probably not going to go deep on gap accounting, but they can go deep on can a person who knows gap accounting help me understand what I need to know to run my domain effectively.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Absolutely.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

their deep technical knowledge? Someone else is going to vet the deep technical knowledge. I don't have to worry about that. Going into that, but can this person translate, can I, is this the kind of person who can package the, you know, their, the work that they do in a manner that's, you know, suits my level of depth or expertise in accounting myself.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yes. So my very first interview, like the very first interview I ever did for anyone was with an actual rocket scientist. She had worked for NASA and she had like two PhDs. And I was like, are you kidding me? And so I was like, I have nothing on this. So I asked a question around, can you explain what this very technical word was? And she couldn't do it. And so I asked again, I asked in a different way and she couldn't do it. And then when I outbrief with the team, I was like, No higher because I can't understand anything she's saying. So, I mean, you can have all the, all the technical smarts in the world, but if you can't communicate that to people, then that's, that's, uh, might not be what works.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

That's right.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

So,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

forget. Years ago, I did an executive assessment on a meteorologist

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Oh boy.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

fund.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Oh boy.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

there's a lot that they can learn about like weather patterns and where it's going to be cold and hot. So we had this, he did a very good job of taking this It's very esoteric knowledge and distilling

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Oh, cool.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

terms. And that's such a critical part of being effective in the role. Can you actually interact with people who don't understand everything about pressure systems and temperature gradients and whatnot? But yeah.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Very cool. So once we get to the, okay, now we're going to reach out to people at our network and, or post this job publicly. What happens then? What do you, you're kind of behind the scenes, maybe if you're supporting the team or you're actually in the. Assessor role if you're working in that function. So what happens, what happens next?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah. So the next step in that search is it's basically the top of funnel part, it's the sourcing part. Um, and so we've, we've referenced two channels. One is the proactive channel. Which we love because it again allows us to be proactive about finding high performing talent and diverse talent. if, if for that pathway, our first step is to engage people. We call it the hook. It's a conversation that we want to have where we learn about these people. Cause they may not be looking for a job. But we're going to have point person or point people. Sometimes it's the hiring manager who's going to be connecting with these high potentials, learning about them, learning about their passions and interests, drawing out from them, you know, what are the hooks that are going to get them interested in a role? And if it looks like there might be a fit, get them to consent to entering the process. That's one of the most critical parts with a candidate that you network to is making sure that you get their consent to be interviewed. Sure. We don't have an endless tire kicking. We're selling them all the time. Let's actually, um, have them transition from being a prospect into being a candidate. But for those, if we are doing this sort of, uh, job posting based, um, you know, uh, inbound active candidates coming to us, um, there's, there's typically some sort of a screen. It's often led by a recruiter. Sometimes it's straight to a hiring manager. For certain kinds of roles and candidates, but we're going to have some filtering process to where we take a large number of potentials into a short number of ones that are worth a deeper investment.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay, for that, sure, for that first scenario you described, how do you get someone who's like going about their business, I'm not looking for a job, yet tap, tap, tap, someone taps me on the shoulder and is now talking to me in that first conversation. How do you broach that without coming across as just, you know, wildly, you know, salesy and smarmy. I'm like, oh,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah, I've, I've done a lot of these conversations myself. Um, I think what's, there's an interesting paradox. When you ask about a person from a place of genuine curiosity, love sharing about themselves. mistake, the way not to have that conversation is to, let's say that I connected through you to some high potential, like high performer, you know, for a given role. If I connect with that person, um, and I just jump on there and I tell you about, and how great we are and how, how excited we are about this new role in this position. And are you interested? Are you interested? Are you interested? Especially high performing people get sales pitches like that all the time. And it sounds a little

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

all the time.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

and it's not in service to them. You haven't learned anything about them and here you are pushing an opportunity. counterintuitively, my suggestion on this one is them talking first. about their hopes and dreams and goals. What they love about their current role. What they're excited to do in their careers. Maybe what they don't like in their current role. Get a little bit in their heads. start sharing of themselves with a person who's curious and interested. It's respectful to them. But they're also kind of justifying to themselves. Why is it that I'm talking to this, this Jordan guy, it must be because there's something interesting here, right? In the course of this conversation, if there's enough nuggets to say that this person passions and interests that align with what I have to offer, then I can transition to a much more tailored pitch. I can present the opportunity. with a reference point of what they said they care about rather than why I think the role is interesting.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay. So in that first outreach, you're not, you're not even mentioning the role per se, you might maybe reference the person who connected you. Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

kick off for sure. If it's going to be

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

that you connected me to, we're going to both bond on how much we love you, how we know you and all that. Like the small talk and just the human connection.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

But I like to transition it to learning about the other person as opposed to

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

pitch about a role. When I haven't even put that in the context of what this person cares about.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Totally. And then, but in that initial outreach, are you just saying, you know, you know, uh, our mutual connection, Emily, you know, thought it would be good for us to connect or are you, are you more specific than that?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

It's, you know, it really depends on the conversation.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

It depends. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

go five or 10 minutes of just kind of building that connection. And I mean, it just, it would feel appropriate to spend more time talking about that mutual connection point, some situations less so, but I think for busy people, we don't want to let it be ambiguous and make it feel like it's a waste of their time. So I, I generally want to get to the part where I learned about them. Sometimes there's a segue in there when I say, you know, I'm just trying to get to know the best sales engineers out there to learn a little bit about, what might be a fit for our organization. Emily told me that you're one of the best that she knows. Um, I'd love to learn a little bit about what inspires, what motivates you. What is it about sales engineering that's so appealing to you? Right. Um, and have that be the entry point to learning about the person.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Gotcha. Okay. So let's say a candidate or two comes through this networking process. And so like, these are like top talent. These are referrals. We know these people were comfortable with them. How do you have an actual real interview conversation, not the, now I'm going to read you a list of 10 questions type of conversations. How do you have an authentic conversation with someone in an interview process where you are being evaluated and it's. And it's a two way street.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah. Here's counterintuitive truth. Number two. A lot of people, when they start networking and getting access to people that are like, wow, these are really high performers. And you know, we're a startup or we're a smaller company. I can't believe that we're having these conversations. It feels weird to be interviewing people. And there's this temptation to jump into a sales pitch. So if you remember from that hook conversation, we get their consent to enter the process high performers. That's critical because counterintuitive truth. Number two, High performers want to be vetted. They want somebody to dig deep. Why? They're judging the quality of your team based upon the rigorousness of your process.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Ooh,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

that again, they want selectivity. They like selective future employer because they want to work with other high performers. And if every conversation is a sales pitch and softball questions, going to be like, do you have any filter at all or is your team full of a bunch of people that weren't really vetted? So when you dig in now, there's a way you need to dig in. But if you really dig in, ask the hard questions, have the courage to learn about the incredible things about them and have the courage to learn about their mistakes, their weaknesses, their shortfalls, all from a place of curiosity and fascination that draws the high performer. Cause they're like, selective the other side of this process is a high performing team. I'm interested.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

that's a great one. No, I love that. And talk to me a little bit about, I always, as an interviewer, when I knew I had a candidate that I was like, Ooh, I like this candidate a lot. I would obviously ask them questions, but then I would kind of drop things into the conversation, like in our team is, you know, structured like this. And then our team has this great leader over here and you know, I'm not doing a sales pitch. I'm giving them the good, bad and ugly, but I'm giving them more information and kind of. Dropping things out that they can pull on and ask a question about. So it becomes more of a conversation. So I'm wondering how that interview conversation is for you.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Uh, I have, I would, I'll propose a different way to do it.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

instinct on making sure that they're selling content is awesome. Totally agree. We do not want this interview to be a one way street where we are just vetting them and we jump off the zoom or walk out of the room. It needs to be a two way street, but what I would say is we don't want to blend selling and vetting. If we're constantly going back and forth between I'm selling you the role and now I'm digging in, it can, for most people, it feels a little inappropriate. be really digging in when I just essentially promised you the opportunity when I'm selling you on how great a role is, I'm kind of saying it's there for you. And then I have to switch roles and say, wait, let's figure out if this is the right fit for you or not. So what we say is there's time for selling in every conversation. time is at the end.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah, no. Yeah,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

just ask your questions, learn, really dig in, impress them with your rigor and leave plenty of time for their questions at the end. Then go crazy. Absolutely. Sell, sell as much as you can in a way that's relevant to what you've, what you've learned about them. think if we look at the arc of the candidate's journey. In that first conversation, the hook, there's going to be a lot of information that I'm going to communicate with the candidate about the role in the course of essentially getting their consent to enter the process. So they're going to learn some facts about it. They're going to ask some questions about it. We're going to get some data there. when they say, yes, I'm interested in this, I'm ready to enter your process. I am going to go my next touch point, whether it's me or someone else, I'm of course, I'm going to, you know, have all the small talk and the human connection, but then I am going to jump into my questions.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

They're going deep.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

vetting part of it. And I don't want to have, want to slip in a whole lot of like, oh, well then let me tell you, oh, you just shared a story. Let me reflect a little bit back to you on how we do things. Okay. Reason being we're sharing that information, we're communicating things that the candidate is picking up on and it may shape their future responses. So I want to keep it an authentic, just learn about them and not broadcast a lot of elements that a candidate may latch onto and start spinning their story. So I want to have a pure bottoms up learn about them and then say, all right, as promised, We've got plenty of time here at the end. Let me know what's on your mind. you've learned a little bit about the company, about the role, what else is on your mind. And then want to track what their questions are. Cause that's really valuable information, but that's really where I want to have the space to share more information about the role, according to what interests them.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay. So you keep that a little closer to the chest for a little bit longer because you don't want them to be able to spin their answers.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

I've got a game plan. I have a set of questions and I want to get through those questions.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

I want to make sure that we have a period of time where I am from a place of total curiosity and fascination, asking questions and learning about them, and I

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

keep that. Do I share anything about the role? There may be, it may be inappropriate not to at certain points, but generally no. So when I'm

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

assessment, we are here to learn about you. I'm almost in this place of like, I'm writing your memoir and I'm engrossed in your story. And it, if you see what that looks like with a really well done interview, there's no need to talk about the role. It really is this, this mutual journey of walking through your life and your story where I'm getting an enormous amount of information and you're feeling, my interest, my attention, my curiosity about you. There really isn't a need to invite the flip side of it into it until the end.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay. Okay. So let's say, so someone moves past like these first couple rounds and they're like a finalist for a C suite role. So this is like, you know, we would bring people in for like all day. We would do like multiple day follow ups and everything like this. Um, how do you, how do you, Position those final stages. So for example, like, uh, we would bring them in for all day. We would have like a sequence of, of people they would meet with all throughout the day. And then they'd have a panel kind of towards the end when they were tired and blah, blah. And we would put people on this panel who were so. Different. So from different departments, different personalities, especially with salespeople, because salespeople can mirror and flex to who their audience is, and we would give them a panel where it's like, you, you cannot possibly flex to all these people at once and see what happens. So that's one example of how we did that kind of final,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

curious, I'm curious how you would, you would position this.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

I'll throw, I have another controversial

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

reply to this one. We're not big fans of panel interviews.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Oh, interesting.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah. So first of all, to your initial question, right? How do you structure the late stages of it? I'm actually, there's different ways to do it for different C suite roles or other roles. I wouldn't say that there's one right way and it must be a full day and it must be on site in person when it must be this many interviews. Um, I, I think there's some guiding principles, but I don't think there's only one right way to structure it. But I will say just to this topic of, of panel interviews, typically companies do panel interviews because they're not, Taking good notes, um, and capturing the information from their private conversations to where others can almost reproduce that interview. We find panel interviews happen when the mentality of the company is an interview is a performance. Let's bring this person in to perform for us and have us all in the audience together. So that we can be certain that we're seeing the same performance.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

What if it's important to, what if it's important that they're able to perform in their role though?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

there are situations where there are certain kinds of interviews, there's a category of interviewing that we call problem solving interviews, which includes things like present our product back to us Like you said, later stages that can be appropriate. This is a person who's going to be out on the road selling our product. We would like to see that in action. I think that's a fine way to do it. And if you want to invite more than one person, that's fine. And the panel interview that I'm, that I take issue with is. where we have six people in a room, each peppering a different question to where the candidate is breaking and rebuilding rapport with six different people, right? No

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Hmm.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

in that flow state with them, and they have their cards up, they have their guard up, they are carefully managing what they're saying. No one gets them into a relaxed flow state where we can really learn about them and their past.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

I I've been in. Interview loops where like this person is going to have to go into a room full of 12 people and deal with 12 personalities and be able to communicate effectively and tell a compelling story. And I want to know if they can do that. And so I'm going to absolutely put them in a panel interview.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

I think that's a great idea. If you are legitimately testing something that is a very representative example of what the job entails, that would be the equivalent of giving a business case interview to a

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Right,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

or investment banker or giving a coding skills interview to a software developer. We love those. I think that's a valid thing to do. Um, just to be clear that that's what we're here to do as opposed to mixing, learning about you and your past and what you've done in a group dynamic

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

right, right, right.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

in the hot seat, And you're carefully managing your words, and we're really just judging how well you perform for us and sharing your stories. fine. Just be clear that we're doing that and that we're not actually trying to learn about their past.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

yeah. I mean, I think it's role dependent for sure. I think we're both saying that. And I think it is being clear about what portion of the interview process this is. Um, you mentioned the software folks. So our, our technology team would, um, they would put this problem on the board, which was impossible To solve and they would have people stand up there and try to solve it. And basically they were like, how does this person work through a problem? That's unsolvable. And I was like, that's so mean, but they were like, it tells us a lot about how they go about it. So these poor, I would walk by the interview, like the conference room, which had a big window and these poor. People were just up at the board like sweating and like, you know, flummoxing, all flummoxed and stuff. So I, that was a,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

I hope they let people know it was unsolvable, did they?

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

I think they did at the very end, but they let them kind of work through it.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

yeah, I think for some people that would be a not great candidate experience if

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Turn off. Yeah. Yeah. But if they work under pressure, so, um, okay. So what happens after that? So maybe you have two finalists. Are you helping that executive team or that, um, kind of hiring team? Like decide, like just ask, asking good questions, like prompting, like, okay, what's most important here. Tell me a little bit more about what you saw with candidate a and candidate B. What does that kind of internal debrief look like?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah, again, there is no one perfect way to do it. There are definitely guiding principles and we have a perspective on some don'ts. I would say is, interview. Let's say that you were part of this interviewing team and I was as well. we both played specialist roles, right? I went deep in the areas that I'm most qualified to go deep and you did as well. Um, let's rate those areas and let's have some agreed upon rating rubric. Maybe it's 1 to 4 where a 3 is at the mark, 4 is above the mark, like they're gonna raise the bar in this area, a 2 is just below the mark, and a 1 is like, no go. let's rate it. Based upon the data that we gathered about this person and let's share that data. Let's actually talk about the anecdotes that came out, the stories, the numbers, the metrics, the results. Let's share what we learned about the candidate to a central aggregator. That could be software. It could be a recruiting coordinator, but someone gathers my input, your input, all the other people's input blindly.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Oh, no,

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

decision. The full data set. It's actually good. Once all that data is in, play it back to everyone. Everyone can see everyone's data, now we actually change our role when we go into that, into the decision making room. I'm no longer there casting a decision, casting a vote based upon my private experience. The reason we don't want to do that, if I was supposed to go deep on certain technical skills and not cross functional leadership or change management or interpersonal that I was supposed to go deep on, why are you asking me if I'd hire this person or not? I don't know. I can tell you they rate very strongly on the technical skills, but the moment you ask me, would you hire this person? My next interview, I'm going to feel compelled to cover everything. I'm going to like I need to cover it all because I have to provide a holistic opinion. now I'm no longer a specialist. And now we're all trying to cover everything. We're an inch deep in a mile wide. So there was a whole lot in there. I hope, I hope that made sense.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

I liked that approach because it's, you're taking all the pieces that you asked, like you specialize in this area or Emily, you cover like fit, like team fit. Can they communicate to people in different departments? And then you're showing that whole picture all together and discussing it holistically.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

There's a magic moment when everybody's data comes in and the data is different because we did different things in our interviews because we're coordinated and we're not asking redundant questions. And you look at this and go, wow, we have, we have learned seven hours of content. From this person, as opposed to the same hour, seven times,

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

we look at this data set and we go, there's a whole lot here. And now, even though I may have said I rated them very highly on, on technical skills, I'm looking at these other anecdotes that you drew out of your interviews. And I'm going, is not a great interpersonal fit for us.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Mm-Hmm.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

in a very different way than we, we do. And it would be disruptive here. So. Um, I I'm fully empowering team members is certainly in environments where consensus is important. I want every team member to be able to articulate their holistic. I want to be based on the candidate, but I want that to be based on the combined data set from everybody, not on their private experience.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Gotcha. Where do you come down on like behavioral assessments like Myers-Briggs or disc.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah, we get asked this a lot and it's funny that we have, we have some clients who really do get a lot of value from either psychometrics or aptitude type tests. generally speaking, I have not found them to be hugely needle moving on the yes or no decision.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

some color, they add some richness, um, they can help point out issues that we might want to dig deeper on in interviews. challenge that I have with them is that they're not very, they're by definition not tailored to the context and to the role. They are put against a generic framework. Myers Briggs is, you know, it is the E I S,

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

F, you know, uh, P J, all

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

E and jp. Yeah, whatever.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

everyone. There's no right or wrong one, right? It's different ways of being. I find that they add insight into the individual and the human. But rarely is that the thing that makes it a go or no go?

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah. Yeah. I've seen'em used for, you know, what would this skill set or kind of value or approach bring to the existing team, which can be kind of useful. And then I think certainly like I've. I've been familiar with disk and I've used disk profiles like once person, once someone is in seat, just so we can talk about like, this person likes communication this way and this one likes it this way. So we're all aware of that. Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

team building tools and they're so great for helping people understand each other. Oh, I'm different. I'm an S you're an N. That means that I'm, I'm focused down here and you're thinking about the world.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Yeah.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

What a, what a beautiful way to help people appreciate intellectual diversity.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

You mentioned you work at the investor level, but then also at the company level. So if someone's listening, like, where do you like, who do you typically work with?

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah. I would say our, our focus is on working with companies.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

of working with a lot of high growth technology companies, we have caught a lot of attention from their investors. So we do work with a lot of venture capital firms, a lot of private equity firms. but our core, our core product. We have a way for individual learners who say, you know, I want to get good at interviewing. I want to be better as a hiring manager. We have a program Talgo on demand. So it's talgo. io is our website. Very easy link there for Talgo on demand. That program is really tailored more towards operating companies as opposed to investors. That said, investors will get of value out of it and we'll learn the same skills. but we also, of course, do private training. So if the whole company wants to upskill, that's, that is certainly our sweet spot of like coming in and doing a training or doing a zoom based series, um, those sorts of things.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Okay. So if you go to talgo. io, will there be online modules that people can work through or those all? Okay. So you have that. And then you've got like the live trainings where you could come on site for a day, a couple of days, train a team. And then you have kind of, I don't know, the, the, the comprehensive or fully immersive where Jordan will come and work with you on this whole process, souped nuts. Those are kind of the different offerings you have.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Yeah, that's right. So there's, asynchronous model, the Talgo on demand model, which is great. Also, even if we do a private training, it's a great, it's a resource you can use when new team members come on board them to continue to learn. And that's also paired with live experiences. I don't think you can learn to interview without some live components. So you'll go through some very engaging short, um, you know, short videos of like watching actual interviews that we're conducting, learn all these skills, but then you'll have an experience with us to do live coaching. Um, then there's, like you said, there is a video version of our live training, which is your whole company goes through a series, call it 90 minute, 120 minute, three sessions every Friday at 9am or something. Um, and then there's a, we, Matt and I will show up in person, my, my business partner, Matt, um, we typically do the trainings together. We can show up at your company and the whole management team, other key hiring managers, recruiters, et cetera, have a shared experience in a room.

emily-sander_1_10-04-2024_110135:

Very cool. All right. We'll have all that information in the show notes, but Jordan thank you very much for being on. We've covered a lot of ground and it was great speaking with you.

jordan-_1_10-04-2024_110133:

Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.