w/justin hoover + how to build out hiring processes

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to, to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email, social media at tdesntesnyn. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Justin, give the people. what they want. Who are you? Your background and we'll go from there. Sounds great. I think most of the people are here for you, Taylor. But with that said, I'll play second fiddle for sure. Yeah, good morning, everyone.

Hi, my name is Justin Hoover. I work for Alliance Bernstein. I'm not here to represent Alliance Bernstein, of course, to give the big caveat. This is informal in my part. With that being said, Alliance Bernstein is certainly hiring, and it's a great place to check out great culture. As far as me, I've been in the IT game since December 21, 2000. So here on 12, 21, 2021 will be my 21st year. That's a lot of 12s and 21s. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so most of my career has been around either in-user supports or databases, database engineering, data warehousing, all the data things, I'm very much a data enthusiast looking to grow into data scientists along the way as well.

It's a lot of software engineering, network engineering just for the APIs and the infrastructure. Sort of in a one-stop shop for a lot of companies and their tech needs. I am also one of those individuals with the mentality that you put me into a small box and I sort of outgrow it. And with that said, also I've never been qualified for a job that I was hired for, but quickly overcame those odds. So it's kind of me in the spirit behind what I do. And I think confidence aside, people sort of turn to me for informal leadership as well. I tend to be the voice of reason, which I think is why we get along so well.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Justin. Justin's career is very similar to mine. We like to get in there and kind of just mesh it up, I guess. And so we're going to talk about that. So we're going to dive into that now. And the biggest thing. So we're at the end of the year. Everyone's talking about New Year, New Me, we're setting up. My team, we're doing half day, Thursday, and all day, Friday. I mean, like we're in it. We're setting goals. But I think the big thing that companies need to be aware of right now is retention. Retention strategy for 2022. And one of the big things for retention is going to be interviewing.

And it's going to be how you can attract candidates and get them in your organization. And so Justin and I have been emailing over last week or so. And he really wants to talk and we chat about, but he wants to dive into interviewing. And I'm glad that he wants to dive into this because I think this is obviously the thing that is broken. I think not only in the tech industry, but I think in industries across the board. And so I want to go ahead and dive in that. So Justin, first off, let's just, let's talk about just basic interview stuff, some issues that you've seen just in your career and where companies really mess up and then we'll dive into kind of how to fix it.

Yeah, totally. Probably like how long do we have? But yeah, we've got an hour, right? Yeah, the parts that I find broken, this is both for me as someone who's set up interviewing pipelines as well as been in a hiring role before as well as being a candidate. The idea that we still stick to these sort of whiteboarding co-challenges just baffles me. I've known a lot of people that have come through really solid boot camps over the years. I myself, I only have my associates and dropped out I'm sure before a lot of the more high-end algorithms sort of came into play. I don't find these computer science challenges to actually be beneficial or representative of what people do in their day to day job.

In my career, I've used computer science arguably, at least in its pure form, maybe on two occasions, one of which was completely arbitrary and arguably more math-focused than it was computer science-focused. don't adventure on cription. We'll kind of be the takeaway. But I think the computer science challenges sort of create undue stress for the candidates. Is a bit of gatekeeping. I think it can certainly lead to a situation where someone who's come from a computer science background is effectively just looking for more of themselves, which can certainly be a bit of survivorship bias, which ends up leading to monoculture in regards to the people that you have, cuts down on diversity of thought, which creates a more strong team overall, in my opinion.

And I think the science is there to support that too. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to go and throw this comment on because I think this applies and we can address this now. I'm in a holding pattern right now. Several companies are going through 16 interviews each. So let's break that down, Justin. What are you doing? So what I think about that is as someone who's in a hiring position before, I specifically take note when people say things like that and I find out the companies. And I have successfully recruited people out of such pipelines because it is so stressful. Yeah. My sincerest of apologies to Eventbrite here in Nashville.

I love you all, but I've done this to you three times. But yeah, it is exhausting. I've been through it myself. It's very stressful. A lot of it can feel repetitive, especially if you're not getting feedback as to, is this the end or is there more to come? So I can definitely empathize with what you may be feeling now. But that said, I don't think an interview process actually requires that much. I think a lot of the reason that you have that many steps is people are trying really hard to avoid failure. They don't, in this sense of they don't want to hire the wrong individual.

But it's also kind of an indication that they aren't well orchestrated internally, and haven't prioritized how quickly can we communicate what we're finding about the individual, how lined are we on our expectations in regards to what this individual should be doing in the role. So I think it's hurtful for all parties involved. 100%. So you know what I say, and listen, this may be a little extreme. So I understand that some of the things I say is a little extreme. I like to say it to get a little prize out of people. I think it's egos too, because I think I've seen within IT organizations, there's a lot of people, a lot of nerds, listen, I love nerds, but right, a lot of nerds who like are in a position of hiring, they're in a position of power and I feel like they like to put in their two cents and they want to be a part of it.

And I think it starts slowing down. So I don't know. I mean, do you think I'm wrong on that? Do you think I'm kind of right? Like what are your thoughts on that? Um, so I've definitely been that person in the past and I will say that I'm recovered. Hopefully there was an intervention by a really great employee. So I sort of adjust on the fly. Yeah, I mean, the reality is the more educated people are, the more they expect their voice to be heard. That's like old school organizational designs sort of stuff. And that's the reality of our market. Also a reason that people may not feel valued at their jobs long term.

And I think people do want to meet the potential co-worker to have their two censors, but there's a way to do that that can optimize the experience, right? You don't have to have everyone individually. So let's talk about that then, right? So let's get tactical. And again, I love getting tactical with individuals like yourself because I feel like there's a lot of this like over-engrossed generality on LinkedIn and Twitter and it's just no one gives actual practical advice. So if a hiring major would come to you right now and DM you after the show, I'm going to adjust. All right, what you said was great.

How would you hire? Like, what have you done in the past that has worked and how many steps do you have? So shed some eye on that. That's a great question. So I can talk about a previous job. I'm gonna not name companies. But essentially I realized that we were doing much of what the LinkedIn user referred to, we had too many steps. There wasn't enough organization. Quite honestly, there was a few occasions where people would come in and they're here for an interview and no one knew. Right, so that sort of stuff bothers me because it's bad for your reputation and it's also hard on people interviewing.

Reputation, and we'll get in that here in a second to keep going. Yeah, yeah, totally. So essentially, I took it upon myself to force a dialogue. And honestly, it took ownership of the recruiting process, although it wasn't my job. And sort of refactored it, where we had really good partnerships with recruiting organizations to bring candidates in at the top of the funnel, then move that into a very scripted phone screen. Scripted in the sense of, here's the check boxes that we're looking for. which is good, which is good because that's intentional. It is intentional, yes. I was doing a lot of those phone screens, so I had my internal sort of three pillars that I'm looking for.

Okay. And if you hold on, hold on. I like that. I've never heard that. Break that down. Yeah. So as part of yet a previous job, when I was interviewing a lot of candidates that I did not have the skillset to actually qualify them professionally. I boiled my interview process down into, was to sort of answer three questions or look for three tells. The first being, is this individual going to relieve a stress for me or is this individual going to contribute to some additional stress? Do I have to watch them? Fundamentally, do I believe they can do what they say they can do is really what it came down to.

From there, a lot of what we do is software engineers and in IT in general, we've not done before. So there's an element of perseverance that has to be there and to be successful. And what I look for with the individual is I try to get out of them, how do they face challenges? Is this someone who when they encounter a challenge creatively like re-think the situation and goes through it do they work around it or do they come to a halt throw their hands up if I get inclination that someone's gonna throw their hands up it's very likely a pass for me and the individual wouldn't go any further so perseverance is a lot of what I look for just because it's so fun.

Do they take away my stress per se. Right, right. Who are they? Do they have kind of the edge, the perseverance? Yeah, the tenacity. Right. Free. What I look for is to see what I've referred to as the spark of brilliance. This isn't like an IQ thing. I want to see how they decompose problems that they've never encountered before. Right. And again, that gets to kind of the perseverance, but specifically, it's the tactical, I present you a problem, maybe you don't understand how do you reason about this in smaller terms to come up with the things that you can solve and then build upon it.

A lot of what we do in solutioning is composing together ideas that we've encountered in salt before to come up with unique novel solutions, right? So I'm looking for that to be demonstrated sort of on the fly. If I get those three, it's very much a, yeah, I want you to join. Yeah. So, yeah, so first round call, and then by the way, LinkedIn user, I'm gonna get your question here in a second. So first round, you do the pillars, you do the call, then what? Correct. So for the next step, while I'm opposed to whiteboarding, what I think is super important because it does apply to what we were doing at that company, and I think a lot, I want to pair a program with you.

Right, so if you're junior, you're mid, you're a senior principal, it doesn't really matter to me. I want to sit down and work on a business realistic problem with you to see how you and I interact together. And we had other people involved in that process too, wasn't just me. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I wasn't trying to Bogard and everything. Sure. And in that, I get a sense for how you would collaborate with people. Can you solve the problem, of course, as part of it? These being business realistic problems, it wasn't some arbitrary crotch of a computer science problem that we're using. And do you take feedback, right?

I mean, that is literally, I'm here as your navigator. If something doesn't make sense, you have questions, let me help you just like we would if we're working together on the problem. So good. So, all right, what's the first step? Yeah, so after that, the next step was actually to meet with a cross-section of the team. Okay. All right, and there's two reasons for this. One, the team usually is about three people, so like someone on the software engineering side, Scrum Master and maybe like Product Hunter. Right, so you got a sense for who you're going to work with. Use the candidate, know the culture and how people interact and how they treat each other from this cross section.

And it's not so many people that it should be overwhelmingly stressful. I realized it's more than one, so it's gonna be a little stressful. But the other thing is the interviewers, because they know each other usually, they're able to build off of each other's questions and get a very solid understanding of how this candidate would work in their team, as well as being able to dig in questions that their colleagues may be asking a bit differently than they should, or maybe there's questions that are not asking, and via empathy, they're able to ascertain and then ask on their behalf. So I found that worked really well.

So just to be right. Well, recruiter, phone screen pairing, team cross section, then they'd actually meet with the final. So it goes up all. So it was five rounds. But usually by the final conversation, is just, hey, come meet our CTO. You're going to get an offer at this point. And here's the deal. I don't mind five. How fast, like, did you have an SLA for the amount of time you would try to get that person through? Because I always say two weeks, 10 business days. We could get people through fast. Dean, we didn't send an SLA. I don't even know. Service line, yeah, SLI doesn't make any sense in this conversation.

I just think it does, but that wasn't our goal, right? Yeah, if we like someone our goal is to get them in the door, period. Well, and I think that's where companies miss out, right? Because I think, you know, like this LinkedIn user, I really wish I could see your name, right? Six day interviews. I'm like, how long did that take? Right? Cause here's another thing. If it's six rounds and then get you through and like seven business days, like. I mean, I'm okay with that. Right? I mean, sometimes you're going to have to, but the thing is, it's the eight rounds through like six months or you mean, that's not even feasible these days anymore.

Yeah, the candidate will be off the market by then. Yeah, you sneeze and the candidate's gone. So I want to go to this question, Justin, as a hiring and Justin, thank you for breaking that down. That's. Yeah, absolutely. Justin, as a hiring manager, have you ever found a good enough candidate and stopped interviewing other people? Um, good enough. So, it depends on what good enough would mean. In this case, I'm not going to settle. So, if I feel like the candidates can do the job and do the job well, I would still want them to meet with the team, right? The goal being is to get beyond my hubris and my own sort of expectations, right?

Because it's not about me. I'm not gonna work with this person day to day. It's more important for the team to actually meet with them. But yeah, there have been cases where people have short-circuited parts of the interview in the past, either because I knew them from the community, they came with good word from other teammates. So we would leapfrog through some of that stuff, but we would already have the information that we were looking for from those previous steps. So we weren't skipping our due diligence, right? We had the adequate research. So yeah, in that regard, certainly, we've, if we know that they're going to join or at least the likelihood is high, we would stop actively interviewing other people, but it wouldn't stop us from actively collecting information to reach out with folks.

Because the worst thing is I now have to call around and say, I'm sorry, we build up your hopes throughout this process by design and we found the candidate. Sorry, this is just some good workout. I don't make that. How do you balance that? Because I feel like that's another thing. So I want to talk, God, there's so much to talk about. We got eight minutes. By the way, I did get a DM as we're talking. So this link to you is Ian Douglas. So Ian, thank you. Thank you for obviously the questions. So let's go to this vein. One, how do you, I guess, you grow expectations during the interview process.

Like, have you found a way to do that? And then also too, I want to go back to brand and how much the interview process plays into that. So, have you figured out a way to tamper expectations during the interview process with candidates at all? As far as what they expect? Or, no, I guess like as individuals moving through the process, trying to make sure that like you're not saying like, you're in, we want you, right? Trying to maintain like a level head so they don't get their hopes up. Like do you have a set of thoughts there at all? Or is that just a question?

Yeah, so I mean, there's a certain bit of salesmanship, right? You want people to be excited. But the way I usually position it is, I hope we get a talk more, right? Or I hope to talk to you again in the future, right? Which is true regardless. But honestly, with the company that was at, the goal was that if people didn't make it, we wanted them to feel a little bit of disappointment so they'd come back, not like burn them out. But we wanted them to think, oh, wow, I didn't get it this time, but I'm going to try harder and come back. As far as managing expectations, I wasn't doing a whole lot besides being transparent and then answering questions and concerns.

Right? Because I'm not. Yeah, transparency though is where people miss out. And I think that's why I was kind of a dumb question because you and I think the same, like just be on it, just be open. Like you don't have quite a dagger. But I think that's where organizations miss out a lot. I don't think there's a lot of transparency. Well, it's hard to be transparent if you don't know your process. Yep. See you all. Yeah, that was great. Well, and on that note, so Dr. T coming in. How do you not settle for less when timing is the utmost importance? Well if I don't have time to interview and find the right candidate, I certainly don't have time to build the candidate up in a way.

Trying to think how to put this gently. You don't have to put it just. Well yeah. So my goal is to find the right people to join our team. If I hire someone that is an ill fit for a purpose as a filling a seat, that has detrimental effects on the team itself. I'm sure a lot of us have worked with someone who has maybe not pulled their weight as much for a variety of reasons. It could be training. My team is probably watching this and they're going to be like, yeah, that's Taylor. Congrats, it's going into your end. I think we'll be gentle. I love it.

Yeah, so really it comes down to if this person is the right fit and we believe that they can learn, certainly we're going to hire them. I'm not going to stop just because someone doesn't have the immediate skills that we need. As long as they have the learning mindset and they meet those three pillars and I know that they're going to try, I'm still going to move forward with the candidate. I'm not going to look for someone that, you know, if I say they have to have three years react experience and they have a year or they're coming from something else that is a a reactive type front end solution, I'm not gonna rule them out.

Right. That's just silly. So I'm still looking for someone that's moldable in that case. And I also think too, and Justin, correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like there needs to be in leadership. I think when you say for less, how do you guys win timing? Yeah. I mean, it's about communication. And if you're already reactive in the seat trying to hire, that's an issue with upper management. What? Yes, and it's an issue with forecast too. Too long to do correct. So, now pressing. It's like, that's not my problem. Right. I had a coworker who'd often say on my behalf, his lack of planning was not my urgency.

Because he's sort of, we worked together for eight years, so he knew how I operated. But the reality is, yeah, if you have a compressed timeline on which you can actually interview and hire candidates, you're probably going to make some poor decisions for the company. And my goal is to make sure that the company grows, that the team members grow, that the candidates coming on board can grow, right? Otherwise, you know with an environment that's just unhealthy and that's very expensive to try to fix And the actual environment itself that the people that are part of it grow to try to support things, right? everyone is looking for that sort of consistency of workplace Whether it's good or not people do things to keep that group dynamic in that status quo That's very difficult to change after the fact.

So I prefer to avoid that No, absolutely. So let's wrap up here. So last question. Yes. We brought you, you mentioned it earlier. I want to talk about interviewing in brands. How important, like what would you say to companies right now who may think that they can like cheap their way through the interview process and it not come back to hurt them? What would you tell those individuals right now? So the brutal reality is if you believe that you can get through interviewing based on who you are in your reputation that more candidates will come, the people who don't make it through the people that you never talk to are talking about the way that you interview people and the way that you reason about those candidates and it's not going to be in your favor.

Don't take this very idly. I would consider this more of kind of akin to if you're dating or seeing someone, you want to have quality interactions at every step of the way. Because that individual is going to see it as cheap and in reality is they're going to find something better. So if you want candidates, good candidates, you have to treat people with respect. If you want your reputation to stay well enough to pull in those good candidates from a local community, you need to have that be sort of top of mind at all times. Yeah, I mean, there's this kind of this notion going around and listen, I'm going to tell this job seekers, candidates, this applies to y'all too.

Y'all just can't be like jerks through the interview process and not thinking about it because I think what's happening because while I want to hold companies accountable and while I want to hold the interview processes accountable of companies and hiring managers, I also want to hold job seekers accountable. And the job seekers, what they do is they think right now, because everything's remote, they can go burn bridges in like every city and they're going to be fine. You can't. You can't. Yeah, I would practice the fine art of saying no. All right, without burning that bridge. Yes, you have options. Is it appropriate to ghost on either end of this?

No, just be transparent. This isn't working out. I think I could do better. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I tweet this all the time and I'm trying to give permission to job seekers But I want to give permission to hiring managers like it's okay to like just stop just stop the process Right like hiring managers if you're not vibing with the candidate. It's okay, but hey listen I appreciate your time. It's just not working. That's the look. Hey candidates If you're not vibing with Justin just tell Justin. Hey, listen, I appreciate your time But she's not it's just not working Justin be like, okay, great.

I I agree with you I mean, typically if you're feeling one way, the other person's feeling that way. Going back to dating, right? I need to do just like, I swear, I need to spin up another show that's like basically just inter like dating and interviewing. But basically just like dating or just like being in a relationship, typically if you're feeling that way, the other person is feeling that way as well. Right. It may not be comfortable to say it. So you're actually doing them a kindness by saying it. 100%. Alright, man. Last last thing turned out in music. It's not too loud in your ear.

As I always like to give one final nug, allow these individual one final like nugget to give. What would that be to hiring managers in the interview process or just job seekers in general? Just your last little bit of wisdom as you wrap up here. Yeah, so this will be to the job seekers. My one bit of advice is to think about your brand and specifically the question that you'd want to ask yourself in my opinion is to Ask what is it that you want people to say about you when you're not around? Yeah, and then build all of your your Your LinkedIn profile your resume all here your social media presence build it to match the answer.

And that'll help you get hired very quickly. I love that. I love that real quick because I never want to miss a question. Elliot, does someone who is looking for a new role in the first three months of another new role concern you what would put you at ease in that situation? I know the answer to this but I want Justin to answer. Yeah, so let's go back to transparency, right? The reality is we don't always do well interviewing us candidates with companies to find out it's not the right fit. Just be honest, say I took this role, it didn't turn out to be what I wanted to be, or perhaps there was something during the interview where they weren't forthcoming, the role changed.

It wasn't working out. I wasn't right. Can't just just be honest. These things happen. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I got into a Twitter conversation the other day. I think it was with Ian Douglas who's tuned in right now. What if, because I was talking about guarantees and like, what if like, companies are wanting these intense guarantees because they know they can't keep candidates and it's not our responsibility. All the recruiting side, he goes, well, what if it's a bait and switch? I got bait and switch. Yeah. Listen, if, if, if you start, and, and there are, there are some, there are some companies in Nashville.

I'm sure Justin, I can talk about them off air. We're not going to do it on air about the switch situation. Listen, if you, if you, if you're in a position in three months, you're interviewing with Justin and Justin goes, why are you leaving after three months, just be honest. Like, listen, they promised me I'm going to do.net, core in Azure, and I'm doing VB six in Excel. So I would have other concerns at that point. But yeah. So all right, y'all listen, Justin, I got to do things. We appreciate y'all time. Thanks for hanging out. This morning, I appreciate it. Tomorrow is going to be great.

I actually have my boss's boss on the show, Kyle Allen, who runs our entire Vaco Nashville office. He's an accounting guy. We're going to talk about the market, state of the market, what we're thinking 2022 is going to look like, just as a whole, because I'm going to talk about tech, he's going to talk about accounting, so we're going to kind of purchase from that perspective. And then we're going to talk about what Justin and I talked about, how to interview better just on the recruiting side and kind of what we see. So you don't want to miss tomorrow. Kyle's fantastic. Justin, thanks again for hanging.

Don't log off yet. Let's catch up real quick. Thanks, Dan. Do not go when we're not live. But y'all, thank you again. Go connect with Justin on LinkedIn. and obviously reference the show. And y'all have a great one. I'll see you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks everyone. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode, and I am very grateful, because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes, and I myself rarely finish an entire episode, so I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others, and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it.

Please, like, right now. Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So, thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, tailor at vaco.com or at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.