Don’t hire the magician – you know, the job applicant who is so charming they make you forget your interview questions. Can’t answer a straight answer and have excuses for everything.
The magician will trick you into thinking they are the right candidate for your cleaning company. It might be your biggest mistake.
Listen: Don’t Hire the Magician
Watch: Don’t Hire the Magician
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
Hiring a Magician for Your Company
My company Savvy Cleaner is growing really fast and I needed to hire somebody. So I held a series of job interviews, and I realized in the middle of one of the interviews I was sitting through a magic trick. I know, it’s pretty interesting, right?
Right now the Savvy Cleaner network has a lot of house cleaners that are growing and expanding their business, and we’re all going through the hiring process where we are hiring people. And my encouragement to you is this. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is you’re so desperate and you need to hire someone already.
My encouragement to you is don’t hire someone when your company is at a number 10 and you are feeling desperate.
Hire Someone at Level Six, Seven, or Eight
It’s hired at the six, seven, and eight-level, when you know you can’t go any further without hiring somebody, but you’re not in desperation mode yet. Here’s what happens. And it happened to me. I know. I was sitting in the middle of an interview and my business is growing, so we have several different job openings.
And as I was having people come in for interviews, I realized there was the most spectacular, most interesting, most fascinating person I’ve ever met.
We were engaged in this highly active conversation, and my gut was saying, “You should hire this person. This is the most amazing person that you will ever have for your company.” But I took one step back and I realized I’m watching a magic show.
You Go to Magic Shows to Be Tricked
Now, if you’ve ever been to a magic show, what’s fascinating about a magic show is you go there to be tricked. You pay money for someone to entertain you and you pay to be tricked. So whatever happens, you kind of go along with it. And there are avenues of distraction.
Like the assistant might be beautiful and have flashy clothes, or there might be an exotic animal that’s brought out on stage, and you are vowed and amazed and in awe at everything you see, and then you miss the sleight of hand. The sleight of hand is actually where the magic trick happens.
And if you pay very close attention, magic tricks are not actually mysterious at all. It’s a series of behaviors that are repeated that equal the mystery and the magic.
I Had to Take a Step Back and Notice the Magic Trick
So there I was, and I was caught up in the moment when I realized what I’m watching is a magic trick, and everything I had asked had been misdirected. And I took one step back while I was listening to this fascinating story, and I kind of checked out for a second, and I realized I have a series of behaviors for hiring people.
This is based on 30 years of hiring people for my companies and for other companies that I’ve trained around the globe. I’ve been in 31 countries, training house cleaning companies on my processes. So I’ve hired a lot of people and I’ve sat through a lot of job interviews. During this particular interview, I have a series of pre-qualifying questions, pre-qualifying asks.
And the task is I need you to do something for me such as fill out a form or bring this with you or park in a certain place or whatever. It’s not based on I’m trying to be a control freak. I want to see how well you follow directions.
Magicians Always Have Excuses
So when I brought it to the attention of this magnificent, wonderful, charismatic person, they had excuses that were fantabulous. They explained away every reason why they didn’t follow any of the rules that I had set up in advance.
Then I asked some questions that would help me understand behind the veil. What is the thinking behind this? Why do you do these types of things? Are you above the rules? Are you above direction? Above authority? Those are those kinds of questions I like to ask because if you’re going to hire somebody, they’re coming into your environment and they need to be adaptable.
So if they are not adaptable, that’s a huge red flag. But there I was so caught up in the moment of it all, I missed all the red flags. And I sat there saying, “Well how about this? And how about that?”
Magicians Will Try to Distract You
And they managed to distract all of it as if it didn’t matter. Well, it doesn’t matter because it’s me. And they had these amazing stories and amazing energy. And I sat there so entertained.
But this little nagging voice in the back of my head said, “This is a distraction. This is entertainment. And you’re getting it for free because you’re not paying for this interview. But here’s the catch. This person hasn’t followed any of the rules. They haven’t done anything that you’ve asked. They won’t answer any of your questions. This is not the right person for your company.”
And I sat in there sad because I realized that as much as my gut wanted me to hire this person, they were not a good fit for my business. And the woman that I hired for the job was actually quite average, and she had very normal answers, and she seemed very even keel, and she wasn’t particularly charismatic. She was somewhat interesting, and I’m sure as I get to know her over time she’ll be a good fit for the business.
Go With the System and Not the Flair
But what I had to do is I had to go with, check this out, I had to go with the system and not the flair. I got so caught up in the flair, I wanted to go with the flair. That was going to be my first choice.
The reason I bring this up, when we are desperate, when we are at a number 10, we want to hire whatever it is that seems like it’s going to be the quickest, best, fastest way to get our business off the ground. It’s exciting. And those are usually the people that have authority issues.
Those are usually the people that drain our energy because they can’t follow rules or because they misdirect us and they get good at it. Like they’re experts at misdirection, so that every time we think we’re seeing something else, there’s always a sleight of hand that we don’t see until after the fact, and then we scratch our heads and we go, “Wow, how did that just happen?”
Try to Not Hire Out of Desperation
So to you, if you’re hiring, if you’re part of our group, or if you’re growing your business right now at the end of the year, as we go through a new year and it’s a new and exciting time and there are lots of new people to hire, please stay aware and attentive to the fact are you hiring out of desperation, and are you missing all the clues of misdirection?
Are you hiring a magician or are you hiring a technician? Because one will absolutely blow your business apart with fun and excitement and thrills and whatever, and it will exhaust your resources and energy, and the other one will actually plug along day by day and do the job they were hired to do, which is actually best for your company.
Resources
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Interview BetterView: A Job Seeker’s Essential Guide to Interviewing Skills – https://amzn.to/3nKZ16l
How to Answer Interview Questions: 101 Tough Interview Questions – https://amzn.to/3hd8MId
300 Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It’s Too Late – https://amzn.to/2WGoaU2
Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro – https://amzn.to/3rmVH3N
201 Best Questions To Ask On Your Interview – https://amzn.to/3mMbpSk
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