Mastering the Art of Asking Questions

Your summer weekends fill up fast, but Crocs has your back. Road trips, beach days, last minute getaways, whatever's on the agenda, swing by your local store and find your new goat too Try it, style it, make it yours. becausecause the right pair doesn't just show up It shows off Wock out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today interterview is really like, isn't people that they like It's people who are alike the interview Really So I guarantee that the people that you have liked interviewing the most, I'm even willing to bet that you will admit in this conversation at some point We'll put that on a line big portion of your hiring is because you see elements of yourself in the people that you hide I mean, like I don't consciously know that, but I toottally believe it Because when you see someone who has who reflects elements of you. Yeah, you immediately go through the sense making process and you flip to like and trust. Interesting Be we need to clarify this because When you say elements of myself, there's parts of myself that I'm like, I wouldd never hire. Correct. But that's not the part of you that you like. Yeah It's the part of you that you don't like. You trust that part of you to not be good at the job Yeah But there's other parts of you that you trust to be good at the job, and that's what you shoot for. Yeah right. I'm also willing to bet that there's people that you hire because you know that they're good at areas that you know you're bad at So That's all interviewers. All interviewers everywhere, what they dream of is that they walk into an interview and across the table is someone almost exactly like them who they enjoy talking to. who they can relate to who they feel instant connection and chemistry with because then it becomes an enjoyable interview because what every interviewer hates is walking into an interview. that is draining and terrible and and hard and painful That's what they don't like And most of the time the people interviewing are not actually the people who will be the supervisor for the person that gets hired. Oftentimes they're just an intermediary interviewer So all they really want is to just get find somebody who meets the qualifications technically has some sort of common ground with the interviewer themselves So how do I make sure I'm that person You know, how do I what can I do to make sure that? Say that you were interviewing me? Or say that, let's do the other way around. I've got the job. that I'm looking for looking to fil, and you've come for an interview today So I'm going to do I'm going to go through the sense making process. Okay, right As soon as I get on this call with you, I'm new to you. So what does that mean I know? I know that you don't want to be on this call with me Avoidance, I can assume coming in. So what I have to do is I have to keep investing enough to get through the avoidance phase. Well what am I going to talk about? How am I going to invest in this conversation? I'm going to pull as much as I can from verbal and non verbal cues that you give me I'm going to look at the decorations on the wall behind you Whether it's in person or whether it's virtual, I'm going to try to pull for my environment. I see that you're using an iPad. I see that you actually like to write on your iPad. I see that you use different colors when you write on your iPad. I also see there's a journal under your iPad. I can assume that inside that journal are handwitten notes that are actually done in pen and ink There's certain things that I can start to observe. You have a very clear You put clear effort into the way that you shave your face. You have a very handsome look to your hair. Oh short. Youve got the job. Look on the job. No I don't need see him, it's yours But I'm going to pull from all of this for the competition phase of the sense making process Because all I need to do to get you to comply with my wishes, my wishes are to get the job What I need to get you to comply with the wishes, I need you to engage in a conversation with me that is competitive Meaning, you will invest in me and I will invest in you Think about how don't think of competition like a zero sum game Be when you're in a loser Iar competition, I hear arguing. That's what most people hear Most people think of competition as zero sum game. Somebody wins, somebody loses the competition Think of it more like a scrimmage in your in your favorite soccer team the The red shirts play the green shirts, but it's still the same football club And they have spring training for baseball in the United States It's all the Yankees playing the Yankees to practice with each other. What are they doing? They're competing, They're honing their craft through competition. They're investing in each other. pitching and batting and trying to strike each other out and trying to catch each other at the bases, but it's all for themselves. It's all to improve the whole of the team That's the competition that exists in the sense making process. I want to invest in you with my thoughts and my ideas and my questions. and I want you to invest in me with your thoughts and your ideas and your questions. And yes, sometimes they will be different. in the difference, we will find the similarity. And regardless of whether we find differences or similarities, we are filling the cup of investment to get towards compliance Okay, so give me a specific example of how you might get me to go into that ition with. So I'm going to start in an interview, most interviewees expect that the interviewer will ask most of the questions My I would challenge anybody going into a job interview, ask more questions than the interview Really? Ask more questions in the interviewer becausecause when you ask questions, especially open into questions, it makes the person you're talking to feeleel like they're interesting, feel like they're important, feel like they're special Guess what's not going to happen with any other interview that day noobody is going to ask them questions. So if you were interviewing me for a job And we met on the phone, I would say Stehven, thank you very much for making time to talk to me how's your today It's been great, thank you I'm really excited for the job, but one of the things I have a question about right away is When I look you up online, it looks like a lot of what you do is marketing, but I don't know if it's like social media marketing or if it's more like an internet marketing, like advertising. How would you characterize the core function of the business? It's kind of both. We do do all of the above, paid marketing, all kinds of marketing. Which one is your favorite? And my favorites probably social media marketing, I think Is it because social media is like so dynamic and always changing or do you like social media marketing for some other reason? Yeah. And also I just think I think it's very much the future in many respects. so I think it's the fastest growing medium That's kind of where we focus. I also think it's the future. And I spend so much time on social media and my family spends so much time on social media that I really feel like if you want to connect with somebody, You have to be in the social media world because it feels like a simulated relationship I completely agree So u And then I'd start asking the questions. And would you would ask a question and then I would answer a question, but I would still continue to show investment into you. by asking questions And what does that do? So I come away from that interaction And you've asked me a lot of questions. What do I come away feeling? You tell me, what does it feel like when people ask you questions F feels like you're building a relationship feels like you care feeles like you thought critically before you came here. Yeah. feeleels like you prepared. Fes like you're curious And the opp well there's two opposites. One opposite is I just pepper you with questions and then you leave. and the other opposite is that Someone that just talks the whole Like you pepper me with questions. I was in I' had a couple of interviews and I remember two last week. Part of my feedback was I basically didn't say anything. And it's funny, actually said to my youf stff. I said, oh God it. interview was an hour long and I gosh Um I didn't say anything. in the whole in the whole hour. And you know what I came away feeling, I came away feeling that if that's what The job Working with them is going to be like, I don't want to work with them becausecause for one hour I sat there, and this person just like me. And now you say it. Now I kind of understand why I felt that way because you do want people to ask you questions. and you It's it's I think it's that But also part of me was worried that every day this person is going to just like kill my eardrums Or is it just the ego part where I'm just like Be interested in me I don't know r was it both? Well, first of all, I am not advocating peppering with questions. Yeah. So I want to make sure that we don't G anybody the mistaken idea that Rapid fire questions are the way to go. Yeah, I was giving short answers. this is the problem. It's all good because what the core thing to understand here is you didn't like being spoken at they were talking all the time, which means they weren't asking you questions. They asked me were in hour interview. They asked me Zero questions. And when I said to them, if you've got any questions you'd like to ask me They asked me one, but I was actually just teing them up for another twenty min another twenty minutes. And I walked away and logically I rationalized it to my team. I was like, I think that person would be quite difficult to deal with because I think they'd be quite distracting. And this particular role is working with alongside me personally every single day. And I just thought, gosh, I'm not gonna to get anything done Maybe that was a prefrontal court. I think that your decision was one hundred percent correct But what I want to do is I want to juxtapose that process against the person who would have asked you questions, whichich I experience a lot So if people ask you questions How do you feel at the end of those calls I feel like the person I feel like they're more thoughtful And I feel like they're smarter because why the hell would you come into an interview and not ask the person questions? You're also making a commitment for your entire life to this company, this job, to this person. You want to make sure it's correct so a smart person would be interviewing me. as well because they value themselves. So if I wanted to win you as the interviewer. Yeah, and I wanted to win that by making you feel like you and I were' similar people. Yeah, were't yeah, exactly What you just said is, why the hell wouldn't you ask a bunch of questions? Which makes me think that what you believe is if you want to work for a company for the rest of your life, you want to go in there asking a bunch of questions. Yeah. So when somebody comes in asking questions to you, that checks the box of this person is thoughtful, this person is committed, this person is responsible. this person is doing what I would do Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that means on the sense making no like trust framework You're going to fall into trust for that person, much faster than you're going to fall into trust for the person who comes in word vomits on you And that's all we're doing We're not saying that Every employer is going to be the right employer for you But what we're saying is if you want to take your probability of winning an interview. from I don't know what my probability is to You have a solid, predictable thirty percent chance of winning this interview It really is a simple as going in there with the idea to win the interviewer Read their body language, listen to their verbal cues, hear the things they talk about, reflect and mirror their behavior and their terminology, their tone of voice, how fast the cadence of their speech Reflect that back to them And then use this process of asking questions, open ended questions that give you more information that you can turn into knowledge that you can ask questions about to create that flywheel. of information, knowledge and experience that we talked about