So What? Mastering your job interviews

Well, hey, howdy everyone. Happy Thursday. Welcome to So What, the Marketing Analytics and Insights live show. I'm Katie, joined by Chris and John this week, as usual. Um, this week we are talking about mastering your job interviews, but we're talking about it from both perspectives from the hiring manager, but also from the candidate.

And we've been focusing on this topic for a couple of weeks because there's a crap ton of jobs open, and people are struggling to hire for those positions. And so we wanted to take a minute to give a little bit of practical advice for both candidates and hiring managers, because you can get very caught up in this whole process trying to have you know the most unique interview experience ever. Um, you know, all that good stuff. I mean, you hear about the interviews at Google, for example, that are it's like a whole journey. And quite honestly, nobody has time for that.

I'm gonna be honest, we're all tired. Ain't nobody got time for that kind of an interview. So uh as we dive in, Chris, John, uh, I want to hear a little bit. So we were talking before the show. When was the last time, you know, John, you were on a job interview, and what was that like?

Yeah, it's been a long time. You know, so many jobs recently have been through network of people I already know. So I as I dug back, it's been 10 years since my last real job interview. And it was still, I got a job at a company where a bunch of previous employees, you know, from the place before jumped to the new place, but I didn't know the manager, so I had to go through the the interview process. And that's the best way to go, too, if you're kind of going in there, but there's four or five people saying, Oh my God, you gotta hire this guy.

Like those tend to be the easiest ones you can get. And and yeah, those were fine. I think it's been, you know, even longer. I think maybe three or four jobs back was the last one where I had an interview with a guy who was at Microsoft, so he gave me the full Microsoft set of questions. And so that was, you know, wire man holes around and all that kind of stuff.

That was the last real fruit loop interview that I went on. My last interview of any kind was 2012 when I joined Shift Communications. But that was at that point, I was already pretty well known to the stakeholders and stuff. And it was so, and you know, I'd known Todd Deffrin for like six points, six years at that point. So it was not a cold interview.

Um the last cold interview I had where I had submitted a job application and and and showed up and interviewed was 2003, which would have been at the student loan network. It's it's been that long because one of the big um useful strategies is to the extent you can if you network and and you grow your reputation, your personal brand, which is what we all call it nowadays, um, you have fewer and fewer cold interviews until you got a point where you're not really interviewing, you're just doing like a culture check. Um when I before I landed sort of two jobs ago at a company called Inflection, which has now been bought out a few times. I think I went on at least 25 job interviews trying to find a job. Um, and it was just it was a frustrating, exhausting experience.

And this was 2004, 2005. Um, you know, and I had job experience, I had work experience, I had my college degree, and it was just, you know, hitting dead end after dead end. And then, you know, I landed the job at inflection and was there for uh over a decade. And then I got a call uh from a good friend, a mutual friend of ours, Chris, about the job at Shift with you. And so my so I was brought in again, not cold, because she knew my work from working with me at a previous job.

And so that was my last job interview, uh, was my interview with Chris for his team at Shift Communications. And you know, we've talked about it on different shows. It was kind of a it was a bit of a wild experience. Um, you know, it's sort of up there with what I would imagine people go through the hoops they jump through at Google. Although not five rounds and you know, and in 20, it was it was it was one round, and that was that.

That was pretty much it. Well, you know, fast forward to today, looking back, like you and I knew pretty quickly that we could work well together. And to your point, it's more of a culture fit. Like, can you get along with this person? Can you get things done versus can they do the job?

Like my previous experience stated, I could do the job. That wasn't the concern. The what you were looking for was somebody that you could work alongside with and partner with. Yep. The what was interesting, one of the pieces of advice that we were all given as hiring managers back then was, and I think this is terrible advice, um, because it it it it has a whole other set of implications that are that are challenging.

But one of the questions we were taught in our HR training was as you're interviewing a person, could you see yourself you know spending a night in an airport with this person? Like, you know, like could you tolerate being around them that long? And like I mean, it depends on the airport. Or why you're at the airport. Well, and I underst I can understand why that kind of a question would be asked because you want to see, you know, can you travel with this person?

Can you get along with this person? What kind of communication do you have with this person? But, you know, uh I'll use the example. My mother-in-law likes to say that me and my husband are some of her favorite of her children. She has six sons to travel with because um, and I'm putting them all on blast, I know, uh, because my husband and I don't feel the need to fill you know the empty space with like nonsense, you know, uh conversation.

We're not just constantly talking. And, you know, is that what you're looking for? Like everybody's different. And so I agree, it is a terrible culture fit question. And so with that, uh, we can get into a little bit better advice about how to approach a job interview.

Um, and so a lot of this advice is for the hiring manager. And so one of the things that I'm seeing uh, you know, across the board, any industry is that there's so many open positions that people are just sort of being asked to step in as a hiring manager, and it can be overwhelming, you can be confused about if you're gonna make a good decision or not. And so I really tried to think about it in a way that was repeatable, in a way that you can approach it, break it down, make it less overwhelming. And at the end of the day, an interview is just data collection. And so, with any other task, you know, especially in marketing, you're probably being asked to collect data in order to make a decision.

This is no different. And so if you approach it that way, it becomes a lot less daunting and overwhelming. And so the basic project lifecycle is planning, data, approach, and analysis. And okay, pop quiz. Where do we start with any plan?

What's the purpose? And the best way to find out the purpose is a user story. A user story is applicable in this situation, believe it or not, because you, as the hiring manager, the person who is responsible for making the decision of are we bringing on a new marketing analyst? Is it this one? You have a specific agenda.

But John, as the sales lead, might have a different agenda for wanting a marketing analyst. Chris, as the data scientist, probably has a third agenda for wanting a marketing analyst. And so just like any other project, it's good to at least do that gut check with all of your stakeholders, the people who would be interacting with this person of what do you need this person to do? And so I put together some samples as a marketing manager. I want to hire an analyst to take over client reports.

As a CMO, I want to hire an analyst so that we can bring on more clients. As an analyst up here, I want to hire an analyst so that I can transfer into institutional knowledge. And then as a marketing manager, I want to hire an analyst so that they stick around longer than six months. And so all thinking about the same person, marketing analyst, those are four different objectives and agendas of why you want the marketing analyst. What are some other user stories that you guys would add into that?

As a VP in marketing, I want to hire a marketing manager so that I don't have to manage the team of people who are like hurting cats. Mm-hmm. That's a legit user story. You know, I want to hire someone. Yeah.

I want to delegate everything to it. I want someone who's going to bring me qualified leads. Um being super clear and specific about what you need this person to do, understandably, is going to help you get to that result faster. When you're interviewing, understandably, there are two main objectives. Can they do the job?

And are they a culture fit? And I think that the culture fit, Chris, you know, we were talking about this earlier, is the harder piece. And that's we go back to that question of, you know, can I be in an airport with them? Uh if they had two cakes and three people, how many, how much cake would each person get? Like you're asking these goofy questions to get to the culture piece.

Um quite honestly, and I know I'm I've sort of structured this too much like a webinar because this is how I keep myself organized, but this is what I think of every time people talk about the office culture. And that would have been a good office. I mean, at our last job, they got rid of all the walls, like this will increase collaboration. No, it just makes things louder. But yeah, every every company is like, yeah, we need people to collaborate.

You just can't manage people you can't see, is what it boils down to. If you if you have positions that can work from home, like not like factory floor, but like if you have positions can't work from home and you don't let people work from home, it's because you're a crap manager. Or you sell cars, that would be the only well, and you know, John, it's funny you say that because there's so many quote-unquote disruptors in the car selling industry now. Currently, Chris doesn't want to do the live stream anymore. Uh there's so many disruptors that like you can buy a car online, you don't even need a salesperson anymore.

So that's sort of shifting to that online customer service instead of the straight salesperson. And we're back, and we're back, you know. I just had to I just had to get something about a bit of commentary about culture because it's one of the things that from as a data person, as a data collection person, and as someone who looks at bias and data sets, one of the biggest challenges with culture is you're actually code for homogenous. Take here's a here's a real fun challenge. Look at any company's website, right?

That has and you know, look for their things like we have a diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge, and then go look at the leadership page of that website and do a quick tally. I looked at our old agencies page. I'm like, look, it's the exact same culture, right? Just looks like this the entire page. Culture is shorthand for people like us, and unfortunately, that has a tendency to reinforce biases that are already there.

Right. So part of the hiring process that you have to be very careful of is and be on the conscious lookout for is have we introduced bias? Have we done enough to prevent bias, especially in the interviewing process, right? Where you're sitting across from this person. It is natural, it is natural for you to be have more of an affinity for people who are like you.

Right. And it is something that you have to be aware of and to be conscious that, oh, this person is not like me. Do I need to check myself as a hiring manager? Um that any feelings I have that are steering me away from this person are not because I'm uncomfortable with the person uh based on traits that are irrelevant to the job. And having those user stories is a big help because you can say, okay, maybe I don't like the way this person's perfume smells, maybe I don't like the way they have their hair done, or maybe you know, I don't like their clothing or something, but none of that has to do with I need someone to manage this team.

Well, and we were talking pre-show, a really great example of that is you know, at the previous agency we worked at, Chris. Technically, I check all the boxes for a culture fit. You know, I'm white, I'm local, I'm female, you know, I'm educated, I have certain background. So I fit that box, but I never fit into the culture. I never really felt comfortable with the other employees.

I, you know, loved our team, I thought we got along great, but in terms of the culture, the culture that they tried to build was everybody is besties with each other, everybody hangs out outside of work with each other. We're gonna have these lifelong friendships. I didn't fit into that because I was a newer employee, I was a little bit older, and I just didn't have the history with a lot of the other employees. And so I never really fit into the culture in reality, but on paper, I was a perfect fit. Exactly.

What about you, John? Do you feel like you fit into the culture of trust insights? No, see, everybody, every additional person adds to the culture. A big thing is there's such a mismatch between the you know characteristics that people hire for, which are mostly demographic and personality profile. When the reality is it's all about the um success of the company and its ability to, you know, deliver positive results and be successful.

I mean, that's what because ultimately people want a culture of success. And it's amazing, you know, if your company's doing really well, hey, everybody gets along and they're all buddies and we're having parties and quarterly, you know, getaways and all this stuff. And then suddenly when things are going bad, now you know, people are stabbing their coworker in the back so that they don't get laid off. I mean, it you know, it just gets ugly rapidly. So yeah, I don't know.

I've kind of never bought into any of that that you know you can make the culture by making the right hires. It's just, you know, you really need to be making your business successful. Um, for anybody that's interested in that kind of stuff, Simon Sinek is just the master. You know, he does all this start with why stuff, but he began at Ogilvie and he noticed that certain teams it didn't matter. A team could be famously successful on a client and have award-winning work, or they could be terrible and crash and burn and be a complete failure.

And it all came down to how well the client had its position stated. You know, if everything was clear, the team could go in there and crush it and they were champions. But if everything was kind of murky and they were rebranding and doing new logos, you know, it could be a complete failure. And in other firms, you know, you could get fired for that kind of stuff. And the reality is it's not about the people, it's about the vision and the business.

I think that, and this, I don't want to get too far down a rat hole, but we could we need to redefine what corporate culture actually means. Because I think when you know we say corporate culture, we assume, oh, it must be like, you know, the drinks with lunch and the pool table and the free snacks and you know, those kinds of you know, fun things that go along with working in an office. Like that's the culture. Um, that's not really it, that's not a culture. That's just bribing people to stay at the office longer.

One of the things that because we did a lot of reading on this when we first started Trust Insights, was one of the things that that tends to happen is that the DNA of a company is usually set by its first five employees, and it's very difficult to change that absent, completely wiping out management. Um you know, you look at a company like a PayPal or a Tesla or Google, even it's very difficult to change its culture. You know, one of the few companies that's done a decent job is Microsoft. Microsoft had a very, very uh toxic culture for a number of years, and it's only been uh really recently under under Sacha and Adela that it has changed and has become a very different company, but there's still a lot of the old guard that is essentially retiring out. Um with culture, is you're really talking about that people and process part.

Like, you know, the if you think about that, like the foosball table and the free snacks, that's like platform, right? You see, we have people, process, and platform. Platform, yeah, you need that part, but it's the processes too. Like, how do you do pay? Is there a commitment to equity in pay?

You know, so that two people who have the same role and the same results get paid the same, regardless of protected classes. Do you have a system in place to check for biases? Um, do you have procedures, processes to handle disputes internally? Like, what happens if uh one employee lodges a complaint against another? At some companies, it gets swept under the rug.

Um, you know, like okay, that you know, those things never happen, you have to deal with it. Uh, think about the madmen atmosphere from the the seven, you know, the 1970s. Or do you have a a set of processes in place where yeah, this if this happens, these are the things that will happen. And it's told to everybody up front. If you file a sexual harassment complaint, here's what's going to happen.

This is the process that we've outlined. You know, here's the ombudsman, here's the third party, here's the review, etc. So that no one is unclear. So if we think about just like we think about hiring and interviews as a data collection process, culture itself is people, process, and platform, and you can deconstruct it uh the in in on those three axes. Oh, completely.

I mean, it makes me think of the example working at the agency where you know our culture is fun and open and collaborative and communicative, but yet getting yelled at by a VP when I sent, you know, an entry-level person to go ask the question, and them telling me they don't talk to people at that level. So, how is that collaborative? How is that fun? How is that open? You know, we're open culture, but you can't talk about your pay with somebody else.

And it just completely contradicts. Like, you know, no amount of, you know, forced company parties and potlucks is gonna fix that. And I hated those, by the way. And again, why I didn't fit in with culture. I hate those.

I hate those forced company parties and pot I hate potlocks. Mandatory fun. Come on. I hated it. Even comes with a shirt.

Yeah, right, right. Shwag. Burning cash. So now that we know all the downsides, how do we fix this? How do we start to fix the problem of bad data collection?

Because like everything that we do, Chris and John, we're always striving to do better data collection. And a job interview is no different. Um, so if we start with the easy one of, you know, your objective is can they do the job? Here's some examples of bad questions. And these were featured in the newsletter uh this past week, and these were questions that we collected from our free Slack community, Analytics for Marketers, um, which you know, we encourage you to join, we ask questions, we gather your information to use, you know, for our content creation for our education.

Um, and so these are some of the bad questions. The point of these questions is to understand how someone does their critical thinking process. Chris, you look at it. I I will say the to the first one the reason manholes are round is so that the cover can't fall through the hole. If it was square, the sides of a square are shorter than the diagonal of a square and the manhole cover can fall in on you.

If it's round, it can't go it fall in. That's that's the answer to that question, which is fine and all well and good, but how is that gonna do with the job? Exactly. How does that tell you that somebody can do the job? So if we're if we go with this example of a marketing analyst, okay, so you know a fun fact, so you know something that would impress people at a party for five minutes.

So what? Uh, you know, John, I think some of these might have been your questions as well. Or I think, like, how many baseball diamonds can you fit in a football stadium? Yeah, yeah. It's always, you know, people are like, well, we just want to see the way you think, you know.

Well, unless the job is like sitting around answering random questions. I I don't see how any of this stuff is going to have any impact. And plus, what job are people in where you have like 30 seconds to answer to? Like, you know, all you're basically if you're like working the desk at a bus stop, like, yeah, then these are great questions because you're gonna see how people can handle weird. What's the fastest land animal?

The cheetah. Next. Well, and you know, I think you bring up a really good point, John, in terms of the how do people think in 30 seconds. You as a hiring manager typically only have you know 30 to 45 minutes to understand if this candidate can do the job. Why are you wasting your time with these terrible questions that don't collect the data that you need to make your decision?

That's all you're doing is you're just wasting time. How do you move Mount Fuji? How is that going to tell you that the person can put together a data studio report for your executive team that they can make decisions on? It doesn't. So here's a better way to approach it.

Here's the other side of it. Show them actual, you know, again, going along the lines of this marketing analyst, show them an actual data studio report that your team has been using and ask them, what does this tell you? How would you improve upon this? How would you put this together? Start to really dig into the fundamentals of the job, show them those examples, and know that it's okay for them to say, I would want to take some time and do some research.

Because anyone who has those instantaneous answers, they might be nervous and or they might be bullshitting you. And so again, sort of the just show them what the job entails and ask them, what would you do with this information? What decisions? How would you update this you know report to get to the point faster? Uh our executives care most about you know conversion numbers.

Does this report tell them that story? What's a different story that you would try to tell them? Um, you know, our executives care about our SEO numbers, our brand, you know, presence on the internet. Does this report tell them what they need to know? Can they make decisions?

Those are questions that will tell you if the person can do the job. What would you guys add to that? It depends on the role. Um sure, of course. For example, if you look at this line chart, yeah, uh, a data analyst, this would be a perfectly fine thing to ask as is, you know, what can you glean from this?

Um for a data scientist, I might start to ask, okay, how would you model or forecast it? What techniques would you use to forecast this? Um if you were a um a salesperson, you know, I would be asking, okay, well, you know, how would you would you incorporate this data into your work? Right? So, like John, if you were interviewing as as for uh a VPS sales job, how would you integrate this data into your work?

Right. And so, you know, again, in this example, uh uh, we're hiring a marketing analyst. And so theoretically, in marketing analyst should be able to put reports together that help us make decisions with our data. And how would you improve this report? Is a great question.

How, yeah, because that will help actually help you understand how the person thinks, how they approach data storytelling, how they approach analysis. That's a much better question than what's the fastest land animal. Like asking them random trivia questions, not going to give you a whole lot of information that you can use to make a decision. It'll be entertaining, and there may be jobs out there that call for that. You know, a uh, you know, think about the duct doors.

If you want to know if somebody has a lot of really good random trivia up their sleeve and how quickly they can recite it to keep people entertained, that's an excellent approach. If you're hiring a marketing analyst or a data scientist or a salesperson, probably not the best approach. So now we get into the uh more difficult side of it is the culture fit. So we've been talking about culture and this misunderstanding that culture is ping-pong tables and you know, a free leader fridge and you know, bagels and snacks and pups and whatnot. And so you can see, and again, these are questions that we collected from our community.

These are the questions that companies ask to see, are you cool with ping pong every Friday at four? How is that? That's not a culture. So, what other culture questions have you guys run into that are just terrible? Oh, I mean, there's the entire list of all the ones that are illegal to ask.

Like, so do you plan on having a family in the next couple of years? Well, sure. And this this episode is not about the illegal questions. We're trying to keep it a little bit. Yet they have surprisingly frequency.

I know. It's and I've been asked those questions before uh in job interviews, and it's very uncomfortable. And you, as the candidate have it's your responsibility to say that's not an appropriate question and should have no bearing on this job. Yeah, you know, and it's all foolish too, because any culture questions, you know, this is like a first date situation. Like nobody's gonna admit that, yeah.

You know, I start yelling usually at the end of the week when I get angry about things. Like, you know, nobody's gonna divulge that kind of stuff. So it's yeah, it's all kind of foolish to to talk about that. Well, and that goes along with the, you know, what's your greatest weakness question? You know, the the whole point is that you're trying to make a really good first impression.

So my greatest weakness is that I care too much. My greatest weakness is that I work too hard. Uh, my greatest weakness is that you know, I'm I stay too late at the office to try to get things done. Like, first of all, those are bullshit answers. But second, you as the candidate, you're trying to make a really good first impression.

So obviously, John, to your point, you're not gonna be like, my greatest weakness is that I have a really short temper with people who you know don't answer my questions. Nobody's gonna answer, like, but that may be the truth. That's you know, one of my weaknesses, but nobody's gonna present that information because they fear that they're not gonna get the job. Like, oh, we don't need a hot head on our team. But guess what?

You may end up with one if you don't ask about it. So, some better culture questions, you can literally ask people what kind of a culture are you expecting? What kind of culture does not work for you? And you don't even have to use the word culture. Work environment is a much better question, is a much better phrasing.

So how do you structure your day? So for me, it's you know, I work out every morning and then I check my email. And so sort of understanding their approach to their quote unquote work style without saying, what's your work style? Well, I work really hard and I collaborate with everybody, and you know, rah-rah, rah. You're not gonna get really honest answers.

What are some other better questions that you guys would add to this list? A lot of the ones that I thought were very useful in interviewing back in the day, um, were behavioral situation questions. So a client asks you to manipulate numbers in the latest report uh to be something untrue. Uh there's no manager around uh for you to ask. What do you do?

How do you handle that situation? That's I think that's a very good realistic um question. And there's you know, there's generally speaking, there's it's like three three answers to that question. Like the bad answer is you just do whatever the client tells you to do. I mean, that's that that's not really a great answer.

Um for it for a data analysis person, right? That's not that's not a very good answer. Um, the mediocre answer is typically is uh you just tell a client no, I'm you know, ethically uh prohibited from doing that, and you can't ask me that again. Um because you haven't thought through the problem. The answer that we typically look for in an interview is I'd say the client can't do that, but how about we come up with some options that are still true that could help make you make the point you're trying to make, but using true data?

Um, that that so that kind of question. Um questions on how, you know, for example, how do you handle um specific kinds of conflict within within the office? I think are are useful questions to understand. Like Katie, how do you handle a situation when you have two subordinates who are at each other's throats all the time? Like, how do you handle that situation in a productive way?

Ah, see, you you went in the end and you added the productive part. Uh, because otherwise I would say I would take one head, take the other head, and just go coconuts. Um, no, but and I've been in that situation before. I know, which is I'm guessing why you're bringing that up. And so, you know, the the short answer to that is, you know, it's not the blame game.

You really need to hear both sides out, but hear them out together. Continuing to talk to them one-on-one is going to continue to pit them against each other. And as the manager, as the person who's trying to resolve the conflict, really understanding the underlying reason. So, in the situation that I know that you're describing, Chris, it had nothing to do with the work itself. It was truly just a personality conflict.

And so the the resolution there is to do our best to not put them on the same projects, but at the end of the day, they needed to put their differences aside to learn how to work together. And that's part of, you know, as you're hiring people, you companies try to have candidates meet every single person on a team, but you're only meeting them for 30 seconds. And so, you know, John, to your sort of speed dating analogy, you're only getting a small snippet of who this person is. You don't really know if the chemistry is going to work. One of the things I've seen be very successful in some organizations is sort of a try before you buy, like extending somebody a 30-day contract to see, like, okay, let's see.

You know, we'll we're gonna pay you, we're gonna pay you what you get paid. Let's see if you work out or not. Because they've acknowledged that yeah, there's nothing in the interview process that shows you once that person sits down at their keyboard whether they can actually do the thing or not. You know, no matter how many certifications they have and stuff like that, it may actually be BS. And the other thing that allows you to do is see how quickly someone learns over time.

Because one of the things that I I know I look for as a hiring manager is someone who can learn very, very quickly. What that enables you to do is hire in non-traditional pools, right? You can look at somebody and say, okay, you don't have the qualifications for this position, but you seem to have the uh a general aptitude and you have a strong positive attitude. Let's give it a try for 30 days, see what you learn. Um, and at the end of 30 days, if you're if you're just crushing it with everything we throw your way, then yeah, we'll ignore the fact that you know you have literally nothing on your resume that that will qualify you for this job.

I think that that's a solid approach, provided that the company is fully transparent that that's what's happening. What about you, John? What are some of the culture questions that you found to be more productive than you know, if you could be any color of the rainbow, which one would you be? Yeah, one uh move that works well is to always stick with um past experience and projects that they've worked on. You know, ask them about okay, when you were at this job, you said you did this, tell me about this project.

Like, how did that go? And you know, what happened when you hit these problems? And if you're really on top of your game, a thing you can do with that is tie that into the references. So then when you're checking references later on if you're talking to those managers you can ask them questions without tipping your hand that you they've told you these stories but you can see if those things corroborate you know so did this person really do XY and Z you know were they involved on that project and if you find out they weren't involved on the project you know that they've been making stuff up and it's not real but but having them tell you actual stories of what they actually did because the other one too you'll find in marketing a lot is that you know upper level or mid-level managers when you scratch beneath the surface they may or may not actually even be able to run the campaigns at all themselves like you may find that they had four or five you know if they had 20 employees then yeah you don't expect them to know how to do all the stuff but if they had three like you you know they should at least know how to get into the CRM system and how to manage the email system. So getting real stories of their accomplishments and how things actually went down and came together is really the uh yeah far better than just making up weird arbitrary questions so you actually bring me to a really good point uh that I was hoping that we would be able to cover and a lot of times especially now with all the open positions people being asked to step into the hiring manager role they're being asked to hire for jobs that they themselves don't necessarily know how to do and you know so great example is you know I would be the hiring manager for a new data scientist for our team for Trust Insights am I a data scientist?

Absolutely not do I understand enough of it? Yes. And so the question is, well, how do I help? How do I hire for a job that I don't know how it works. And so part of it, John, is asking them about those experiences.

The challenge I run into with that, and I ran into this with a client that we were helping to hire, was there's no they can say all the right words. And that's you know why we were there to help the client. But they could say, I've used Tag Manager, I've used Google Analytics, I managed $10,000 a day in Facebook campaigns. The way that I've found success with that kind of a situation is okay. Help me understand and communicate on your behalf why Facebook campaigns would be the right approach, why your approach to Facebook campaigns is the best one, for example.

And so really asking the person to explain it to you in a way that you can then advocate on their behalf to someone else. I will say, and I said this in the newsletter, do not approach it if pretend I'm dumb, pretend I know nothing, because then they're gonna basically say whatever they feel is the right answer versus actually helping build a business case for why this particular thing needs to happen. So Chris, I know that obviously like the technical pieces of a data scientist would be important, but you know, one of the you know interviews I ran into, the candidate kept saying over and over and over again, regression analysis. It didn't matter, it didn't matter the question, the answer was always regression analysis. So in that example, I said to him, help me understand why a regression analysis is the most accurate type of analysis if all I care about is you know conversions, for example.

And what were the answers you got? I didn't get any good qualified answers. What happened was the candidate started to get tripped up a little bit because it was the only type of analysis that they were really familiar with, but they didn't really understand the different applications. And to be fair, I couldn't list off the different applications, but I know that there's more than just regression analysis in the world. So if I say to you, all I care about is, you know, conversions from my email newsletter.

Explain to me why regression analysis is the right kind of analysis so that I can justify it to my board. And that phrasing started to, for lack of a better term, peel back the onion of did this person actually understand what was happening and what they would need to do. Right. I mean, you know, the answer you're looking for there is there's a lot of factors that can go into whether an email works. There's how long it is, there's the copy, there's how long the subject line is who what's used in the subject line, there's the topic, what font you use, um, whether it's a a work email or a personal email.

And you can't by eyeball just look at those things and say, okay, it's this. In order to understand of all the possible things that could make an email work, what actually does, you need a computer's help to take any one thing matched up against your result and see is that thing. And then combinations. Maybe it's this and this. Maybe it's you know a green font and comic sans, you know, who knows?

Uh, whatever the case is, you're gonna line all those things up and say this is the combination of things that seems to have the strongest relationship to the outcome you care about. And that means that you can build a testing plan once you find that out and say, okay, these are the three things that work. And if you understand that, you can get more conversions. Once you understand that through this technique is called multiple regression analysis, you can get more conversions. And so the so what explanation you're looking for is understanding that will help you get build a work plan to get more conversions because it may turn out that that's just a correlation, it's not a causative, but you won't know that until you do the work plan.

So that's the kind of answer that you would be looking for, not just somebody repeating buzzwords over and over again, because right something I learned from my martial arts teachers is you only know it when you can teach it. You only know it once you can teach it to anybody. And so the point there is that's absolutely it. So if you're the hiring manager and you're hiring for a role that you're not super familiar with, the candid should be able to teach you enough that you can then take what they have said and repeat it back to somebody else who is unfamiliar. So what I'm hearing you say, Chris, is in order to understand how we get more conversions from our email, we have to look at all of the different variables that go into it, and that includes font type, it includes, you know, time of day that we deliver it, it.

It includes is it to a personal email, is it to a corporate email, it's the subject line, it's the text, it's the how long it is, and all of those things are data points that we have to look into to start to narrow down which are the data points that are the most important that would help us understand more conversions. And so as and so as you're nodding, if you were the candidate, you'd be like, yes, that is exactly what I'm describing to you. So I, as the hiring manager, would be able to say with confidence, great, that's the information that I'll be bringing back to my board, and so they can understand how we're going to start analyzing for email conversions. And so that's a very productive conversation to have with a candidate where you're not super familiar with the type of work that they would be doing. Yep.

Now, one of the questions that I always used to uh find mildly uh irritating, uh, that we felt like we had to ask at the end of an interview was what questions do you have for me? And because on the one hand, yes, a candidate probably should have some questions, something that was not discussed, but on the other hand, it's kind of open-ended. Um what's what's a better way to dig at stuff than just that very blanket question? Because I they they can and have asked just about anything. Um, it really depends on what you care about.

So if you know, you could say, do you have any questions about the responsibilities uh of this particular position? Do you have any questions about what you would be accountable for in this role? Uh, do you have any questions about what the company does every Friday at four o'clock? Um, or it could even be, do you have any concerns about the conversation that we've just had? I think that's a good one.

Because I you have do you have any concerns about the position? Do you have any concerns about the company? Because I think those are valid questions. And they can highlight what's important to the candidate too. Um, I had one candidate once.

God bless him. He has so what's your policy on illegal drug use outside the workplace? I'm like, well, that's that's your business. But you did as long as you're here in the operational between eight and five, we don't really care what you do outside of work. Um company culture.

Exactly. But that could open up some very interesting questions. So, for example, as a candidate, I might say, Hey, I was looking at your leadership page, and I noticed that literally the entire leadership page looks like this. Um, I'm concerned about your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And then, you know, we might give you some sort of BS answer, like, well, it's a work in progress, and you know, we can't exactly fire all of leadership, but we're looking at creating new and inconsequential roles so that we can hire a person of color so we can check the box.

We have binders full of women. It was a 2012 throwback. Um, so I mean, uh yeah, I think that asking candidate, you know, do you have any concerns about the role? Do you have any concerns about the information I've shared with you? Is there anything that has been unclear or anything that I haven't answered specifically about what you as the marketing analyst would be accountable for in this job?

Now, here's uh a really tough one, which is a situation a lot of people find ourselves in right now. Oh boy, you know that you can't pay top dollar on the market for a candidate. You know, you're maybe on like the lower half of the median in terms of competitive pay. How do you persuade somebody to come to work for less than they're going to make somewhere else? So we actually had this challenge on our old team, Chris, if you recall.

And the reason that our team had some of the lowest turnover numbers, we had almost no turnover when you and I were managing the team. Um quit the moment we did. Well, yeah, but that's a whole different thing. Um, the reason why our team was able to stay intact for so long was because of the constant learning and the constant challenge and the feeling like they were being valued as employees, and that their clients were getting really good quality cutting edge work. And so that's a situation that a lot of companies are gonna find themselves in because it's a very competitive market right now.

It's basically what do they call it the employee the employees' market versus the employer's market. Um, if you cannot financially compete, then you need to figure out what else does this person get out of the job besides just a paycheck, you know, and it can't be ping pong at four o'clock on Friday. It can't be free beer. I mean, maybe that's the thing, but maybe you should stop giving away free beer and pay your employees more. Just a suggestion.

You could absolutely um I think the aspects those are things which are actual cultural things, like you know, professional development training, how much a company invests in its employees, the processes you have for investment are part of total compensation. Um, one of the things that we used to half jokingly say is that working on our team was like going to graduate school, except we pay you instead of you paying to go to graduate school. You come out with this certification guaranteed because we're gonna make it as part of your annual review. You're going to come out with, you know, knowing this, you will come out of the role you're in with way more skills than anyone else at that same level is going to have anywhere else in the marketplace, period. And so when you do leave, and you will leave eventually, we know that, you will immediately be able to command an extra $20,000 on the market, right?

So if you stick around, you'll get you won't get paid now, but you'll get the skills you need to get paid much more wherever wherever next is. And I think if you're a hiring manager who's in that position, uh where you can't pay top dollar, maybe you're a nonprofit, maybe you're an agency or whatever, and you're willing to make time and effort investments in your employees, you can create a compensation that is better than in aggregate, you know, what other companies are paying more at physical dollars are. Now, obviously, you can't pay somebody so dramatically under that, you know, it would be stupid to work for you. But to your point, Katie, the paycheck is not the only thing that matters in a job. You know, like you might have in a workplace be able to say, like, yeah, we have a no assholes policy.

You know, we we if if someone behaves in a way that's racist or sexist or whatever, they're gone. It's you know, it's one strike and they're gone. So we we have a no assholes policy. So you may not get paid the most, but you will not leave work every day crying. Right.

Which is hugely important. I think the other thing is, you know, we work really hard to make sure that you feel like you're doing valuable work. And so a lot of jobs, you know, and this is not picking on any one job, a lot of jobs are really just lather, rinse, repeat. You do the same thing over and over again. And because of whatever level you're at, you're not asked to contribute ideas.

You're not asked to contribute to the conversation. And so changing that part of your culture by making it truly more collaborative and open makes people feel like their voice is heard. And that goes a long way to keeping people on board versus just paying them more. Yep. And if that's something that will help you, it doesn't cost anything to change your title from you know director to senior director.

Um but it might help a person in their next role. So if you view your shop as maybe a stepping stone for somebody in their career, then you might be able to attract ambitious, hungry talent that are willing to take a chance with you, knowing that they're getting invested in and that they can uh it will overall help them in the long term. It also comes down to that work-life balance, and that is a big part of culture is you know, how flexible are you? Are you scrutinizing every minute that you're online versus hey, I have to take these two days off, but the other three days of this week, I'm gonna get all of my work done. Is that cool?

That goes a big way for a lot of people, especially if you can't pay as much competitively. How much time do they get to themselves versus what's the demand of them being online? Um, you know, the whole Elon Musk debacle a few weeks ago where he said you have to be committed to 40 hours a week in the office, no exceptions, you will be fired otherwise. Like, I can't think of a single person who wants that kind of a corporate culture where you're being scrutinized by the minute to make sure that you are on the clock and productive. Right.

And that's the thing is okay, I'll show up for 40 40 hours and you know, play Tetris. Um you're not getting you're not getting what you're after, what you're after is the result. Right. So a results focused workplace. One of the keys to when when because everyone will say, you know, we're a results focused workplace.

Great. How's you know, how what's your time off policy? Oh, oh, you must be at your desk 40 hours, so then you're not a work results focused workplace. You are a an activity focused workplace, and you have chances are you have bad management. If your policy is if you get your work done, we don't really care when you work, that's a results-focused workplace.

John, what other culture things do you look for? You know, one thing you'd mentioned, because that's actually a good interview strategy that people will do is you know, what questions do you have for me, and leaving that very opened-ended. And you can easily judo that right back and say, You can pitch that right back and say, what questions do most people not ask that I should know about this company? And you know, or what questions, you know, should an uh applicant be asking. So you can you know, throw that same hook back at them and make them uh let them walk the tight rope a little bit.

Um but yeah, it's you know, uh again, we it was mentioned a little bit earlier, Chris. You had thrown out there, there's just no substitute for setting up something where look, let's put you on contract for 30 days and come in and do your thing. Like that that's just that defeats all interview process completely. Like after a month of somebody working with somebody, you'll know, like, yeah, they can get it done, they can't, or you know, yeah, they get along with everybody, or no, they're busy beating Jerry the cleaning person, you know, and they gotta go. Um, so it's sounds like a huge oversight from the hiring manager that that's the situation you find yourself in.

Right. You don't know these things, right? You hire somebody like, oh yeah, I'm sure they're fine, and then next thing you know, Jerry's like, yeah, they're always leaving their lunch at their desk. It's a mess. I hate this guy.

And it's always microwave fish. Yeah, right, right, right. Time to go. Time to go, time to get out. Well, I feel like we've covered quite a lot of ground in terms of the do's and don'ts.

Um, you know, it's always going to be situational. The biggest variable is the person. You have zero control over the candidate coming in to interview. They could be one thing on paper and another thing in person. They could just be having a really bad day, and it's a really crappy interview.

And so those are all the things that you have to take into consideration. Um, you know, as we're wrapping up, any tips for people who are looking for jobs, ways to network, you know, how to get themselves out there. I mean, that's a whole other show. That's on personal brand building. We could spend hours on building a personal brand, but personal brand uh is really just a uh complicated way of saying reputation.

Like what is your reputation within your in within your industry? Our friend Mitch Joel says it best. It's not who you know, it's who knows you that matters, right? So if nobody knows who you are, then that's where you gotta start. Figuring out what it takes to get known, and you don't have to be like internet famous, right?

It you just have to be known to the hiring the people that you want to have hire you. That's that's what it boils down to. And I think that was the situation I found myself in. I am not I don't have a huge internet personal brand at all but I was known by the hiring manager who was looking to hire someone like me for your team Chris at that time and that was you know she found me not the other way around John what's what any final takeaways for that well the most important thing is Chris that jar of mayo is discontinued pre-soybean so I'd like to bid $15 on that if uh you still have that because that stuff is very important in my house um and then yeah no I got nothing else on the job thing all right um well with that you know um believe it or not we actually can help companies we can step in as the hiring manager so if you're interested in learning more about that you can find us trust insights.ai slash contact happy to talk with you about what kind of hiring you're looking to do what kind of support uh you're looking to get but otherwise you know until next week guys any final final thoughts final final we'll see you next week thanks for tuning in everyone bye thanks for watching today be sure to subscribe to our show wherever you're watching it for more resources and to learn more check out the trust insights podcast at trustinsights.ai slash TI podcast and a weekly email newsletter at trustinsights.ai slash newsletter got questions about what you saw in today's episode join our free analytics for marketers slack group at trust insights.ai slash analytics for marketers see you next time.