Agents: Do you want to build a team–0r expand your team? If so, you need to become a MASTER interviewer! Otherwise, your team will be that ‘revolving door’–you know, that same syndrome you’ve accused your company of perpetuating!
Do you know the best question you can ask a candidate? I know. You have your favorite questions. But, are they effective? Are they telling you what you want revealed about that candidate?
What’s your favorite interview question?
The Category of Question You Should Always Include
Are your favorite questions present or future-based? If so, beware. You’re being misled. I’ll explain more in a future blog. But, for now, I just want to focus on the category of question that assures you get the truth about the candidate: the past-based question. That question begins with “In the past, was there a time when you…………………” Why is that type of question so powerful? Because candidates seldom lie about their past when they are posed a question like that. Also, even though this is the best type of question you can ask, few real estate interviewers are trained to ask a majority of this type of question. In a later blog, I’ll show you more about creating this type of question to find out the quality you’re looking for.
The Question You Want to Ask
Here it is:
“When did you get your first job?”
Why is that so powerful? Because it demonstrates the qualities you’re looking for. According to my surveys of thousands of real estate pros, the vast majority of successful real estate pros started working as kids! This shows their ingenuity, belief in themselves, and determination that they alone are in charge of their destinies. Imagine some of the answers you’ll get, and what those answers will tell you:
“I got my first job at age thirteen.”
or
“I just started looking for a job. I’ve been living with my parents. They support me, and I really want to find the right job for me (I’m 27 years old).
What do these answers tell me about the candidate’s likely success in a business that requires self-confidence, ingenuity, tenacity, and ability to do it themselves?
Keep Probing about that Answer
One of the big mistakes we interviewers make is that we jump from question to question before we find out what’s really going on. So, don’t do that! Stay on that same question/answer and probe. Imagine some of the probing questions you can ask about that first answer: “How did you happen to get the job?” “Why did you want a job?” How long did you keep the job?” What did having a job at age 13 teach you?” What will the answers tell you?
Sometimes Our First Job Tells us what We DON”T Want to Do the Rest of our Lives
The reason that I wrote this blog is that I just read an article about Fred Hassan, CEO of Warbug Pincus, a private-equity firm. He said his first job was a produce picker and cannery worker. He said he learned about getting up early and working hard. And, he said it convinced him that he was very lucky to get to go to college and escape manual labor. I had a similar experience. As a 6th grader, I started picking strawberries and beans in our little town of Lebanon, Oregon. It was back-breaking, hard, sweaty work, and I vowed I’d use my brains and my talent to make a living–instead of doing manual labor!
Let me know the answers and insights you get from asking the question, “When did you get your first job?” (Remember to stay on that question and probe, probe, probe!)
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