Team Building Begins at the Interview

What if every single one of your employees had a stake in seeing his or her co-workers perform well? How would that level of teamwork help build your business? Savvy small business owners know that their two most valuable resources are their staff and their customers. Without one, you can’t have the other. But there’s more to building a staff than just hiring talented, hardworking employees. Those employees need to effectively work together as a team, so that a business owner can delegate with confidence.

“Team building” has been a buzzword in corporate America for quite some time. A lot of money is spent on elaborate training and team-building exercises. If you’re a small to medium-size company, you may know the value of team building and even have the need and desire to do it, but are these training exercises in your budget? What other options do you have?

I have structured our hiring and management practices to achieve team building from the very start and integrate it as part of our daily operations. This is far more cost-effective than waiting until your staffers aren’t effectively working together and trying to fix that problem. That leads to lost business and profitability, problems with holding on to valuable employees and increased costs in training and retraining.

One big decision I made was to let my eight-person staff take the lead in making hiring decisions. I realize that while I’m a good judge of character, the staff is usually the first to know when we need to hire. After all, these are the frontline troops. They are in contact with the customers and the operation every day in ways we owners may not be. They are also the first to know whether or not they want to work with an individual.

To start off the hiring process at our company, my staff and I put our heads together and come up with a fun job description. We’d like people’s desire to come to work to be at least as great as their need for the job. Once the résumés start coming in, the staff reviews and sorts them into three piles, “yes,” “no” and “maybe.” As the manager/owner I get involved at this point only briefly. I quickly review all three piles and sometimes ask questions such as “What did you see in this candidate that I am not seeing?” or “This candidate looks like she fits all the criteria, why is she in the ‘no’ pile?” I’ve been amazed at the useful insights my staff has, what they pick up on, and how they interpret things.

Next is the round of interviews. The manager starts scheduling the sessions around staff availability. We take the “yes” and “maybe” piles and a couple of the “nos” that we hope will prove us wrong and we begin inviting candidates to select interview times.

Our interviews are done in groups. Two to four of my staff meet with five or ten candidates at a time. We do a group interview as I find it is helpful to observe the dynamics among the candidates and seeing how they handle challenges and competition. The staff does the interviewing and asks the questions. I stand back and observe. Often the interviewees, not knowing I am the owner, treat me indifferently. How they behave toward me is a fairly good indicator of how they are going to treat my customers. How they behave in the group tells my staff how they are going to fit in and how they handle chaos, of which every work environment has its share.

Our interview questions aren’t the standard ones. We ask questions to learn about the candidates as people: what motivates them, what their interests are and how they think and respond to pressure. We really don’t care where they want to be in five years as much as we want to know the reasons why they might leave this job. We care more about questions like “What do you do when you have absolutely nothing to do?” The answer to that speaks volumes about how they manage their time, what they are capable of contributing to your organization and whether they are self-starters or will require a lot of direction and hand-holding. We ask questions that we know no one will know the answer to and are seemingly irrelevant to the job they are interviewing for, such as “What are the characteristics that separate quantum phys-ics from classical physics?” or “Why are manhole covers round?” Candidates’ answers tell us how they solve problems, react to being challenged and handle not having an answer. We find this more valuable than anything they are going to tell us that is already on their résumé.

After the interviews are over, staff members quickly discuss their impressions and come to a consensus on who will move on to the second interview. This is important because once the staff agrees on a candidate, they have just committed themselves to making that candidate successful as an employee. Cross training becomes a breeze, assisting the new hire becomes automatic, and there is not the sense of friction that new hires often generate as they walk into a room for the first time and surprise the existing staff.

The last interview is with me, the owner. I have the final say on new hires and compensation. After all, it is my check book. I make certain that every new employee understands a basic agreement I have with all employees: I need to understand what their goals and dreams are because — here is the deal — this business is my dream. I need them to respect and honour that and take care of this dream as though it were their own. In return, I will work with them to help them achieve their dreams and goals. It is a win-win arrangement. We agree up front on what we can do for them, and what we expect in return.