Welcome to this week’s Toolbox Tip and it’s called, ‘An Interview Trick To Get Tidy Tradespeople Or A Silly Gimmick?’ Or, ‘Hiring Well: Process Vs Gimmicks’.

A trade business relies on its people. Your business is one where skilled tradesmen and women do skilled work for your customers and your business profits from that work.

You grow by hiring more people, putting more people on and making a cut on the work that they do.

4 Components Of Hiring Good People

I know a few components to the work of hiring good people, and keeping good people and building a good team, and these are:

1. Hiring them well – (Hiring the right people in the first place)
2. Managing them well
3. Leading them well
4. Having a good culture 

I want to talk about those four things in the next few videos.

Today, I’m talking about hiring well.

Those four things require active work and effort from you. And if you neglect that, you’ll peril.

Now,  I’m a business coach, my job is to help people do the active work and use structure and systems to make their active work and that responsibility easier.

I’ll give you the education so you know what to do and can do it properly. If you don’t do it properly, you’ll be disappointed.

I find myself coaching people who care about doing a good job in their business but also who care about the people who work for them. We were obviously attracted to each other because that’s the kind of business coach I am as well, which is a good thing.

That’s why I found myself at odds when I saw this article about the head of Xero and this little gimmick that he uses in his interviews. And the gist of it was everybody he interviews gets taken for a coffee, or tea, or whatever.

At the end of the interview, if they don’t try and take their cup away and tidy up, they don’t get a job. They’re blacklisted from Xero which I think is a bit glib, and odd and it felt a bit mean and a bit like trying to catch people out.

It’s a highly loaded situation (an interview) and if you forget your coffee cup because you’re too busy worrying about giving the right impression, you’re gonna miss out because of this little trick.

I kind of get it. He’s testing for attitude.

“Do they clean up after themselves?” 

“Are they tidy?”

“Do they take responsibility for their own sh*t?”

I get it and it makes sense on one level. And on the other level, it feels a bit tricky and a bit sh*t. And I didn’t like it.

We know this guy says their kitchens are tidy, which is a good thing. I’m not sure that one ‘sneaky little gotcha’ is the answer.

It was only a silly article from somewhere in Ladbible or news.com.au, so we have to take it with a grain of salt.

The Hiring Process

Most are certain that the boss of Xero doesn’t only use his little glib thing in interviews. That’s one little tool in his toolbox. I’m sure he’s very thorough, and process-driven, and disciplined and methodical in his hiring process, which of course, is what I’m going to tell that you need to be.

You need to be disciplined, methodical and process-driven in your hiring process. And what I want you not to do is get too caught up in this idea that one little gimmick is going to help you hire good people because it won’t. You’ll be disappointed. You’ll end up with idiots.

Recommended Reading: The Basics Of Hiring People For Your Trades Business

One of the common mistakes I see people making when they don’t hire with a bit of discipline and process is they get introduced to somebody, or they meet somebody, or they interview someone they have advertised for a job and they go, “Yeah, you seem great”. And they shake hands and don’t do the checking and then later, they’re disappointed.

It’s a really common thing to not put the hard work in when you’re interviewing and selecting people for your business, and be disappointed later when they don’t work out. And you blame it on them and you say things like, “You can’t get good people these days. They’ve all got jobs in the city building apartments, making loads of money”, stuff like that.

That’s not true. You did a sh*t job with your interview.

If you hire good people, you’re off to a good start. But headlines and articles like this can leave you tempted to think the tricks are the answer – they’re not. Be disciplined, be methodical, use processes. It goes like this:

1. Write the job description first. Decide what you want this person to do. Don’t focus on a person, focus on the role:
   1. What you want him to do?
   2. What you want him to be responsible for?
2. Write down what you want them to be like. What attributes do you want them to have?
   1. “I want them to be tidy.” 
   2. “I want them to take ownership.” 
   3. “I want them to be punctual.”
   4. “I want them to be neat.”There are many things you might want your tradespeople to be. So choose your priorities.  In order to be good at doing that job what do they have to be like? You see it’s changing it from “Is this person good for me?” You’re thinking ”What do I want them to do?” “What I want them to be like?” “Is that person like that?”
3. Write interview questions that will help you test whether the person is like that and use more tricks a bit. Don’t say, “Are you punctual?” Or is somebody punctual? Say, “If I asked your old boss whether you were punctual, what do you think he’d say?” It makes them think differently so you get a more truthful answer.
4. Ask for references from previous employers (his best mate and his mum aren’t gonna cut it), ask previous employees who you can verify.
5. Call them and ask them if they’d hire them again – Why did he leave? Would you hire him again? Would you recommend I hire this person?

Process and discipline creates a bit of extra work, but you’ll be glad you did it. You don’t have to do it every time because once you’ve done it once, much of the work is pre-done for you and you can use it again and again.

My clients get help from me with this. I help write job descriptions, choose attributes and select those questions.