The 4 Most Important Questions To Ask When Hiring

In this episode we talk about the 4 most important questions to ask when hiring, they are:

• Have you played any team sports before?
• Which book are you currently reading?
• Ask them a question relating to your core values
• What do you know about our company?

Christian: [00:00:00] Thefirst question that you should ask when hiring is have you played any teamsports before?

Aaron: [00:00:08] Youknow the irony is that I was on a run this morning with one of my friends, andwe were running down this trail. And I was talking to him and said that, yeah,I didn't have a bunch of experience getting out of school. However, I playedsports all through high school and was captain and whatever else, and they said,"Yeah, we want to hire you." And I was like why? They're like,"Well, you played sports." And I was like, "And what does thathave to do with this job?"

Aaron: [00:00:49] Howdy,y'all. Welcome to another episode of The Marketing Natives. Thank you fortuning in wherever you may be. If you are listening to this and you are wantingsome tips on marketing and advertising, this is the right podcast for you.Today's episode is the four most important questions to ask when hiring. Wejust- We've been hiring a little bit lately, and we've just been doing a bunchof research, and that is why we created this episode. We know that other peopleprobably have these questions, and it will hopefully simplify and streamlineyour process to bring people in the door, the right people in the door.

Christian: [00:01:25] Word.I think after- I wasn't really paying much attention to the title. So I mean, Idon't think these are the most important questions.

Aaron: [00:01:36] Ohyeah, they are.

Christian: [00:01:37] Theyare?

Aaron: [00:01:38] Soyou're thinking- Like these are the most important questions once they get tothe final stage, not like the entry level. Like here's your resume and dointerview one. This is like-

Christian: [00:01:51] Soagain I wouldn't say that they are the most important, but I think they may bethe most important after you've asked the regular old questions like-

Aaron: [00:02:02] Areyou qualified to work here?

Christian: [00:02:03] Yeah.What are your strengths and weaknesses and all that stuff?

Aaron: [00:02:06] Yeah.

Christian: [00:02:08] Okay.I can live with that. All right. So the first question that you should ask whenhiring is have you played any team sports before?

Aaron: [00:02:17] Youknow the irony is that I was on a run this morning with one of my friends, andwe were running down this trail. And I was talking to him and said that, yeah,I didn't have a bunch of experience getting out of school. However, I playedsports all through high school and was captain and whatever else. And theysaid, "Yeah, we want to hire you." And I was like why? They're like,"Well, you played sports." And I was like, "And what does thathave to do with this job?" And they're like, "Well, we know thatyou're going to show up on time. We know that you're going to be working hard.You're disciplined, et cetera, et cetera." So people who are team playersor have worked on a team are usually driven and, as you have here, focused ongoals, usually more fit, and what was the last thing you put there? Keep theirmind in peak condition.

Christian: [00:03:03] Well,the way I wrote it is that they're physically fit which helps keep their mindin peak condition.

Aaron: [00:03:10] Gotit.

Christian: [00:03:12] Butyeah. Everything like Aaron said. Being on team sports usually, you know,people usually have really good qualities and are usually - like it says here -really great team players that have all those great qualities. So yeah, itmight be- At first whenever I was researching for this, yeah, it might havebeen an odd question or it might be, you know, still an odd question to ask,but yeah, usually people who have played in team sports have those qualities.And I think another good one is they're actually really good communicators too.Usually when you're playing team sports, you have to have really goodcommunication skills to be able to play as a team.

Aaron: [00:03:54] Right.Hey, you're about to get hit by this football player who's running straight atyou. All right. So number two, which book are you currently reading? People whowant to better themselves are usually reading books or listening to podcasts toimprove their skills, and we see this a lot with business owners or people whoare leaders in the community, part of their local council. They're reading.They're interacting. They're speaking a lot more. So rock stars, as Christianput here, are always learning and absorbing new info. So if they're reading,that can tell you a little bit about the person.

Christian: [00:04:30] Yep,exactly. And I think when I was researching whoever, you know, the idea of thiscame from, I think they said something like, you know, if they're reading afiction book, he said that's usually like a red flag for them. And I think thisis something that also goes to the third question that we'll get to here in aminute, which goes back to core values as a company and the type of person thatyou want in your business. So yeah. Reading books usually means that they're ontop of their game, that they're always trying to learn new things, and theydon't do well by just, you know, graduating college. And oh, I graduatedcollege. So that's all I need to know, and you know, they pretend to want toget a job doing that without any extra additional work. So.

Aaron: [00:05:28] Yeah,that was really good, and I think there's a caveat there for the fiction. Ithink that the imagination part, depending on the job, for somebody like us forthem to be more creative. Maybe they're reading more fiction to come up with adeeper imagination that will help them be, you know, better designers, but ifyou need an accountant, if they're reading the Twilight Saga versus, you know,something by - let's just say - Jeff Bezos, that may not be a good fit.

Christian: [00:05:53] Right.Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt your regular broadcast to talk about thecreators of this podcast, BitBranding. Christian Pinon and Aaron Pearson. Theyare rock stars. If you would like to know more about BitBranding and theirservices, please go to www.bitbranding.co and check out their awesome website.Okay, that's it. That's all I have.

Aaron: [00:06:37] Allright. Cool. And I'm going to close it out, but I just wanted to add onto thatright there and say that we haven't told anybody yet, but you are in theprocess of making a wireframe, and we eventually sometime this year will have ahuge update for our website.

Christian: [00:06:49] Yeah.Which I- Yeah. I'm not going to say much because this is actually the firsttime we've publicly said something about our new website, but all I've got tosay is it's going to be pretty awesome. A lot of cool things in there.

Aaron: [00:07:06] Allright. So we are back. Thank you for our voiceover. We can't give out the nameof that person, but we will use them again.

Christian: [00:07:14] Forsure.

Aaron: [00:07:14] Andwe just don't want you guys to have them. So.

Christian: [00:07:16] Yeah.Number three here. Some of the most important questions to ask when hiring, andI think the previous two questions that we had kind of relate to this too, butI don't think I have- I do have a question here. So the question is describethree to five things about the communication within an organization that mustbe present for you to work most effectively. It's kind of a loaded question,but we actually use this question for our own personal questionnaire when we'reinterviewing people. So if you are a potential candidate and you're viewingsome of the stuff that we're doing, you definitely need to be listening to thisepisode because it will give you a lot of insight into the questions that we ask,especially this one here. But we usually ask questions relating to our corevalues as a company. For example, this is like a big duh for us, but, forexample, one of the core values that we have is open communication. And so welooked at all of our core values, and from those core values we developquestions in our interview so that we can better assess if they're fit for ourcompany or not. If someone doesn't align with your core values as a company,then that person is probably not going to be a good fit for your company. Now Ithink we have five or six core values, and we don't have- You don't have toalign- That person doesn't not have to align with all the core values, but Iwould say, you know, if you have six, they have to line up with about five of themin order to be a good hire.

Aaron: [00:08:55] Right.Yes. It would just be a waste of time for both people on both end. I guess thewhole point for these questions is that by answering these- If they've gottenthis far, they've probably interviewed pretty well, but these are questions tokind of like trip people up a little bit hopefully. And depending on how theyanswer them, hopefully you don't make a decision where you're wondering if sixmonths down the road did I make a hiring decision that was probably not thebest fit? So the questions are meant to kind of, you know, bring out somedifferent things and make people kind of stumble a little bit if they don'talign, which is, you know. They don't really study for these kind of questions.

Christian: [00:09:32] Exactly.And I think I think we have a- I mean, I'm not going to say this, but we have aquestion- I'm not going to say the actual question, but we have a question thatit's a completely bogus question at the very end of our questionnaireinterview, and I'm not going to say what it is. So it's just still a surprisefor people who are potentially applying BitBranding, but yeah, it just has todo with, you know, with our personalities and going back to our core values andjust trying to mix in a little bit of fun and see exactly what that person saysafter, you know, we ask that question.

Aaron: [00:10:05] Absolutely.All right. Moving onto our last one here. Number four is what do you know aboutour company? So I feel like it takes a little bit of effort, and I thought thatit was kind of obvious at first for people to research the company or researchwhat they were applying for. But it's so easy now with LinkedIn and Indeed andstuff. You create one resume, you kind of aligned for it, and then you justautomatically submit.

Christian: [00:10:30] Pusha button and then it goes out to the masses.

Aaron: [00:10:33] Exactly.And it's like do you really want this job or are you just looking for a job?Because if you're just looking for a job and we just happen to give you one andyou find something better, are you going to leave in three months? We want youto actually want to work here. So we were interviewing a girl last week,actually there was three of them. Two of them knew about the company. One girlwas like, "Oh, well, I haven't gotten the name of the company oranything." I was like well, okay. No. And then the other two were like,"Yeah, we know you guys have a podcast. We know that you do this videoshow on Facebook called Tip for Tip. I know that you and Christian started thecompany. I know that, you know, you guys like pizza and Ninja Turtles andstuff." And I was like, you know, that's cool. You actually did yourresearch. You watched our videos. You know about us, and that really says likeokay, I'm going invest some time because you can't find all that out withoutspending just a little bit of time, a little bit of effort.

Christian: [00:11:26] Imean, the pizza and Ninja Turtles is pretty obvious, you know? You have to justgo to BitBranding on Instagram and you'll find out all that.

Aaron: [00:11:35] Thisis true, but it still takes a little bit of effort.

Christian: [00:11:38] Yeah.

Aaron: [00:11:39] Youactually have to go and look for that stuff versus the one girl who said,"Oh, I haven't had the information yet."

Christian: [00:11:44] Yeah,true. True that.

Aaron: [00:11:48] Allright. That wraps it up for this episode of The Marketing Natives. We arealways going to encourage you to subscribe. Make sure that you do not miss anyepisodes, and if you are in the process of hiring somebody or you have a friendwho has a business about to do that, please share this episode with them sothat they can get the most value and hopefully save them a bunch of time.

Christian: [00:12:11] Word.Yeah. We will ssss- You will hear us next week.

Aaron: [00:12:17] Actually,I want to know how the person who's doing the transcriptions is going to usethat sss part there.

Christian: [00:12:23] Hopefullya bunch of Ss.

Aaron: [00:12:25] Yes.All right. There you go. All right. We'll talk to you guys next week.