LISTEN IN 001: An interview with my mentor Penny Fillhouer

On this episode of The Rebellious Recruiter with Daava Mills, I kick off my Listen In Interview Series with my mentor and friend, Penny Fillhouer.

Penny has over 4 decades of experience in recruiting, and even assembled the team that developed the debit card. Currently she is a Recruiting Consultant, and her company, Because Fit Matters, is helping business leaders understand their employees strengths and how to communicate effectively to those strengths through the company values. 

In this "short" discussion, we delve into how recruiting has changed and why the current state of recruiting is not working, for companies or candidates. Specifically, we talk about a Forbes article on Unconventional Interview Questions and get real about why most of these are not effective.  In the end, a recruiter's job is not to delve into the psyche of a candidate, but to assess whether or not a candidate can perform the functions of the job. 

Daava's Rebellious Recruiting Notes:

• A recruiter's job used to that of a middle man between the organization and the applicants, getting to know everyone so well that she could see where new hires would compliment the team; as a result, there were no interviews with hiring managers, it was more of an introduction; the recruiters knew, and the company trusted, it would be a good fit. 
• True recruiters are always talking to people, looking for the next star players, and keeping a full pipeline of potential applicants.  
• Building relationships with potential candidates slowly, over time, builds the right level of trust and allows candidates to have all the information they need to say yes.
• Companies need to stop pretending recruiters are therapists and that they can get into the psyche of a candidate; we are getting too personal based on the lie that we are creating a family; these are not children we need to raise and we not promising them forever attachment.
• With these off the wall questions we set up candidates to pass or fail based on one person's ideology and does not have any bearing on whether or not they can do the job.
• An interview is like a first date, nothing is real, the candidate is just trying to be liked; the recruiter needs to dig past that to determine if they have the skills to do the job.
• Companies need to stop looking at culture as something that fits into a box, every new employee a company bring on changes the culture and you can't treat everyone exactly the same way.
• Recruiters should be looking for candidates to demonstrate comfort in their career; do they talk about their specialty like they're romancing it or talking about their favorite food.
• Before you hire any candidate:
  1. Clearly communicate your basic mission and values.
  2. Make the applicant promise that before I hire you, are prepared to be accountable to uphold our mission and values.
  3. If you don't, are you giving me permission to hold you accountable and switch your behavior to to get you back on track.
  4. And will you agree that if you don't do that and continually refuse, you will resign from the job.
  5. If you get that from every person you hire, they are giving the recruiter permission to do their job.  

Episode Links:

The Mills Group

15 Unconventional Interview Questions

Video: Have a career at foodguys

Topgrading 

Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street 

Ring of Fire

The Visual Interview