Employees are Everything: Interviewing (Part 2)
Interviews are a big topic. That’s why we continued to talk about them in this episode. Rob and Traci continue digging into interviewing candidates for your company and discussing topics like calling references, salary transparency during the process, and the term ‘cultural fit.’ Also, get a glimpse behind the sense into Sparkbox’s interview process.
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Rob:
So as we work through this series talking about all the different things that happened before and after employment, we were talking last episode about interviewing. And I know that we said that this episode would be all about onboarding but, after we listened to that episode and looked at our notes, we realized there's a couple key things we missed in talking about interviewing. So instead of moving on to onboarding, we're going to spend a little bit of time today talking about what a couple of those things are and some of our thoughts about them.
So we'll get to where we're going, I promise, but we wanted to make sure we completed this episode and our thoughts on interviewing before we went any further,
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Rob:
Hey, Traci. How are you?
Traci:
I'm good. How are you doing?
Rob:
Just living the dream.
Traci:
Yeah, interviewing is a big, big topic. And I think that we realized even the second that we finished recording like, “Gosh, there's just more.” There's even more we can talk about. And we thought about questions I get asked a lot when we're talking to candidates and trying to help with assessments and all of that.
One of the first things I said was, "I get so many questions about checking references." So many companies that we work with have just abandoned altogether checking references. And I've always found that to be a missed opportunity.
I know why it's kind of gone by the wayside because, especially very large companies, corporate companies, there is a lot of no reference check policy or no reference giving policy, I should say. Everybody's free to call and check on people's employment and make sure they really worked there, but oftentimes they won't give a lot of details beyond that because they're trying to avoid liability when it comes to discrimination or defamation cases. So you will give verification of employment and dates of employment and all of that, but sometimes the person will not be big on giving you more information than that. But I still feel it's worth making the call. It's worth hearing what the past employer has to say and the tone that they have to say it.
So how about you guys? Do you check references? What's sort of your angle when it comes to the interviewing process and references?
Rob:
Yeah, we have in the past. Right now, we're not doing it as much as we've kind of refined our process. It's one of those things, juice worth the squeeze kind of things. I think that if we could get real references, that would be valuable. But my experience with them is usually not getting much or giving much on those kind of things.
I remember back to an early job in my career when I was first doing hiring and working with people, and the training we received at that point was is if you get called for a reference check, one, if you've got something good to say, you're allowed to say it. But if you have nothing good to say, then your job is to only confirm that they worked there and what the start and end date were. It felt like that kind of became code for a bad reference, and that felt pretty broken to me.
Traci:
Yeah, it's broken, but it's something. And I just always encourage people to make the call. I think that hiring the wrong person is an extremely expensive mistake to make and you should use all your tools in the toolkit.
And people are not allowed...I mean defamation is saying something false. It's not saying something true. If they say something that they feel like could be backed up by evidence, they're going to say it. But I've even had clients—and even had this in my own career—where we've checked references and have found that people have not put the correct dates on how long they worked there, did not put the correct title of what their title was while they worked there. They plus-ed things up a little bit. That, of course, is going to give you a little bit of a hint into your candidate's integrity which I think is huge. Also, just hearing what that former employer has to say I think is super helpful.
In industries where the communities are pretty tight—and I know in my industry, in the TV industry or the advertising industry, it is a pretty tight community and a lot of people know each other and a lot of people trust each other and they'll give you the heads up on if somebody's great more often than if somebody's not—that's great information for me. This is a person you want to hire. I mean they're going to work their butt off for you. They're a great person. They're honest. And sometimes that just gives me the peace of mind to take the chance on that person. I don't want to pass up that opportunity to hear those words.
What's the worst that's going to happen? You call a reference and you get a very bland HR representative that says, Yes, they worked here from here to here. This was their title and have a nice day." That's okay. I'll spend that two minutes making that phone call just to hear that.
But sometimes you get people who don't have that policy and they are very willing to talk to you about the strengths and weaknesses of that candidate and areas that they might need improvement but some places where they shine. I've had some wonderful conversations with people about candidates that have given me great insight into where they might fit in the company, what team they might work best on. And I say, in an expensive endeavor as hiring, just take the two minutes and make the call.
Rob:
Have you ever been in a situation where you've called the reference and the person on the other side has said something that made you cringe a little bit on the inside? Like, "Ooh, you shouldn't have said that."
Traci:
Give me a for instance.
Rob:
Oh, I don't know. You called and checked on a reference with somebody that you were interviewing and they were like, "Well, this person, they take a lot of times off for their kids and their kids have been sick recently." I don't know. Something cringey that you're like, "I'm not sure you can say that legally or as another human."
Traci:
I actually haven't had too many experiences like that. I think that, especially more recently, people are a bit more careful in the words that they choose. And to me, that's always a signal. If people are like, "Yeah, they worked here," you can kind of hear in the tone of their voice, "and I'm scared to say anything else." And that's just enough.
But like I said before, it's usually the positive references that make me feel like it was worth making the call, when people are like, "Oh, you're lucky. If you can get that person, go for it because I really enjoyed my time working with them. I think they're super creative." It's those phone calls where you're like, "Oh, okay." Nobody's a perfect candidate or a perfect worker, but it is really nice to hear somebody just say something super nice and encouraging and it makes you feel good about that choice going in and taking that risk because every hire is a risk. So what you're trying to do is mitigate that risk basically in your interviewing process.
Rob:
Yeah. One more question then, what part of the process are you doing in checking references? Very end-
Traci:
Yes.
Rob:
... somewhere in between? Okay.
Traci:
When I've narrowed down, so say I'm down to two people and I'm trying to decide between two or three candidates, I'm calling their references and I'm checking to see.
Rob:
All right.
Traci:
Now, remember too, that these people they're giving their references. They're giving you and so you can ask for a past employer, past boss. You don't really want their little league coach. You want somebody that they've worked with that can speak to that experience or somebody that can verify their employment and what they've put on their resume is valid and true.
Rob:
I think I'd be more likely to call people's reference if I could get their little league coach. That might be a-
Traci:
“Well, when he was eight, he showed a lot of tenacity.”
Rob:
“A lot of tenacity, a lot of hustle.” If I heard the word hustle, that would be great.
Traci:
Yeah, “he can run those bases.”
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Rob:
Okay. So the next thing we want to talk a little bit about is salary bands or disclosing salary on maybe the job posting or during the interview process or any of that. That's come up a lot especially recently in the news as some states such as, but not limited to, Colorado have said you can't post a job in the state without putting the pay inside the job description. So I think this is a relatively new one that's been talked about for years, but now we're starting to see the legislation move that way.
What kind of thoughts do you have on where to put salary bands or salaries as far as job posting goes?
Traci:
I mean I think salary bands have always existed. We know what a typical role, what that range is for that role, and you kind of go up and down that range depending on your experience level and qualifications and whatnot.
That's the simple definition of salary band. How it played out over time, especially between genders, isn't exactly how it was supposed to play out. So we are still fighting, and I'll just speak to gender inequity in pay. I have been a victim of that, and I know several other women have. When you find out about it, it's stinging and painful and confusing and it still happens today, even though we've made incredible strides in evening out and making it fair and equitable and based on the right things.
So that's the reason that those laws have kind of come into place and they've said you have to post salary bands is so that candidates can understand where they're supposed to fit in and make sure that they're not getting discriminated against for any of the reasons, whether they're a person of color or female or whatever it might be, where you might not be getting pay equity.
So that's why they exist, and I think maybe it's a good reminder—internally too—to make sure everything in your company is fair and equitable. I think it's just a really good conversation to have internally.
I don't know how you guys work and how you kind of look at bands and how you determine where people are in that band. You always want to give them room to grow, but you want to make sure you're paying them where they are in the experience and qualification level. So how do you guys manage and navigate that?
Rob:
For each one of our roles...Well, let's talk about billable roles first. This is a little bit easier of a case. We do have them for non-billable roles, but that's a little bit different building out the career frameworks there is we have career frameworks where we have a 1 through 4 system based on skill level. So we've got Dev 1s, Dev 2s, Dev 3s and consulting level devs. Same thing for designers, same thing for UX people, and our PMs. So we have those basic four billable roles at Sparkbox and each one of those levels corresponds to a salary band.
Think about from beginning to end of that band and, as you move up, the bands get bigger. That's kind of the idea and those salary bands are attached to both the job description and during our interview process—once you make it to a certain point—those salary bands are then shared with you saying that here's based on where you were to be assessed at the level, this is what the pay range is. Attached to that is the expectations for that band because the criteria is we work through our interview process where we're trying to figure out where you fit into that career band so that we can make sure that you are in the correct pay band so that we can not have inequities in our salaries as we bring new people in because that's a big risk, especially as some of the things with inflation and some of the other economic factors we've seen over the last couple years is you can get out of whack pretty quick if people who are better at negotiating or getting hired coming in over somebody else. So that's one of the things we've done there.
But part of that for us has also been making sure that every current employee we have transparency with them what our salary bands are. This was one of those things where we actually started with that internal transparency for employees and as we were discussing, “Do we share these bands externally or what do we do with them,” the conversation quickly switch to, “Well, if these candidates make it through to be employees, they're going to see the band. So if we're not sharing them up front, are we doing a good job setting expectations? Why don't we equip them with everything they're going to see once they're employees as they work through that process and interviewing so that they feel good about that?”
It also has the good effect of us saying during the interview process, early in the interview process, "Hey, for Level 2s or Level 3s” or whatever, we give them all of them, there's a salary band. If those aren't in line with their expectations, they can opt-out. They're not waiting till the end to negotiate salary. They have some expectations about continuing into the process about how that's going to work out.
Traci:
And when salary bands kind of came in vogue, I think one of the things that was about making them public and publishing them and kind of the pressures on companies to make sure that what they were paying was market value and that it matched. And this is interesting when you're part of a startup and I can remember this in my own career when you're a startup company and you're kind of piecing everything together and you're not really thinking about salary bands. You're thinking about what you can afford and who you can afford and putting teams together. Then when you grow into a company, you become legitimate and you're turning profit and you've got a bigger staff, oftentimes you have to go through that painful exercise of do our salary bands match the market? Do we need to make an adjustment?
But one of the good things about salary bands, internally too, is that if everybody knows what the salary band is, they also know when they're nearing it. If you're fortunate enough to have longevity in your staff and people stay and they realize that they're starting to reach the top of that band, you can avoid these conversations that every single year you get an increase and this is your increase and this is what happens and everybody has those expectations. It can't always be like that for 10 years if you're in the same position and so you can kind of realize when you've gotten to the top of that band and that's up to the employee to decide if all else is worth it or if they want to try to jump somewhere else where they can make more money.
But I also think it's just a handy tool to show people that they're nearing the top and this is just sort of how it is, marketplace salary, and we really can't go beyond that which is a difficult conversation to have sometimes.
Rob:
Oh, it totally is. The other thing I think that that kind of system gives you, though, is possibly objective measures for what it takes to go up in level or to jump to the next band.
Traci:
Right.
Rob:
Because that's just important. When we can change the conversation to not just be you want more money or I need more money or I feel like I deserve more money to well this is the job requirements for the next level, you have these, you don't have these, here's what we're working on. Let's put together a plan for you to get to where you want to be. That's really what I want to have as a manager, as a leader, is not conversations about necessarily you need more money. It's like, well, where do you fit in this objective framework that you deserve it? What have you done? Oh, and are you mis-leveled? That's my favorite question to ask, “Oh, are you not appropriately leveled in our framework?” That's a conversation we can have. That makes sense, right?
So I think that there's some other benefits you get by having this kind of structural thing well outside just interviewing and hiring. It is possibly equity and better diversity and all those other things, the entire compensation framework for your company.
Traci:
Absolutely.
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Traci:
This is one of the things that when we hung up last time is talking about Sparkbox and process there and it's always interesting I think for our listeners to hear a business owner kind of unveil what's going on behind the scenes, what's worked, what hasn't worked and what's been your tried and true interviewing processes.
Rob:
Yeah. So we've got four rounds of interviews that we do at Sparkbox, and this has changed immensely over the years we've been doing it because there used to be one, maybe two, interviews at the very beginning. So this is where we are right now.
So round one is the first interview and that is made up of the hiring director and a member of the human team, someone from the humans team. There is a standard list of questions they go through and they talk about the different things, the standard list of questions, but they stay pretty close to the script for this first one. It's a pre-qualification, are you who you say you are, all those other fun things, and then they fill out a scorecard. The people who make it past that, then there is that salary expectation sharing of salary bands with them and then that conversation happens over email.
Then they move into round two, which is our exercise part. This is what we talked about last time which is the skill assessment piece of this. So they go through and they are given an assignment based on their role. It could be a little bit of code to write, a little bit of UX problem to solve, a little bit of design something to do. And we try to limit it to say this should take you no more than, I think, it's six to eight hours. Please don't spend longer than that but go ahead and submit it. And once that's submitted, and there is some drop-off there, there are people that just won't do that, but it shows us a lot about what they're willing to do and what their skill level actually is.
That assessment is then done as a blind review where people who haven't met the candidate, haven't seen the resume, actually assess whatever the deliverables are. So that's done and then we have that piece to add to it. And all along the way from the blind review in the first, as these conversations are happening, we are slotting people in or reviewing people based on our entry-level values, our core values, and our career framework so that we get the level right.
After that blind review is done, we bring them back and they do a pairing exercise where they actually walk through their skill assessment test with a director and talk about it and actually talk through, answer questions, maybe talk about the things they would've done if they had more time, explain their work that they turned in. And that's really, really great because we don't expect perfect in a take-home assessment. You're doing this on your own time, but we want to hear you talk about it. We want to hear the way you think about it.
So after that, the next round, round three now, is a group interview and that's a team of five or six Sparkboxers from different roles and career levels that are meeting the candidate. We try to make sure that nobody who has previously been in interview is in this round. This is all fresh people, all fresh take, that we can go ahead and do that interview. And they talk to that group, may assess on the same things, on our core values, our entry-level values and where they exist in the framework.
Traci:
And is that as a group or is that one-on-ones?
Rob:
No, that's a group. Yeah, that's a group. So that allows us to do some of the things we talked about last time which was pair people who maybe have a lot of interviewing experience and people that don't have any so they get that exposure. They get that visibility. They get to be comfortable.
We find that so much of our work is collaborative that it kind of demystifies the work a little bit when they're having to collaborate with a group of people and having to work and take questions from people and all of that. So that's our third round. And once again, they're turning in anonymous scorecards and rating people on the different things. So we have all of that now at the end of the third round.
Obviously, if any of the candidates, the skill's not there or they don't make it past the qualification call, we may choose not to continue in the interviewing process, but it's good news if you make it to the third round.
And so after that, what happens is our humans team with the hiring director gets together and looks at all of the pieces, looks at all the scorecards, looks at all the assessments and then they make a formal recommendation if they should move to the final round of the interview, which is just my business partner, Ben, and I meeting the candidate and we're always last. And as I tell everybody who makes it that far right at the beginning is this is good news you've made it this far and this is not a technical or skill-based interview. We just want to meet you and be able to answer any questions.
Those interviews are typically 15-20 minutes at longest and it's just a chance for us to talk to the candidate and get to know them a little bit. I ask questions like, "Hey, tell me your story. Start from wherever you want and catch me up to who you are and what do you do outside of work," and all those other fun things. And then at the end of that, Ben and I will make a final recommendation on either, yep, we're good because everybody else has already signed off on this person or we have reservations which would then stop the process.
Traci:
Do you usually leave it to you and Ben to talk about the mission/vision of the company, this is what we believe in, these are...I mean they've probably heard about your core values at this point, but just to sort of hear it from the owner and for the candidate to realize is this a mission I want to get behind? Is this a vision that makes sense to me? But it also kind of gets the candidate excited because they're like, "Oh wow, these people have vision. I want to be a part of this team." Is that something you and Ben try to at least touch on for a minute during those interviews?
Rob:
Yeah. We definitely touch on that. Usually by that point they've heard it from the humans team. They've heard it from the group interview. They've heard it from the director. And oftentimes when we get through the couple of questions we usually ask and we say, "Hey, is there any questions that we can answer for you," oftentimes it's, "Well, your team has done a really good job answering my questions. I don't think I have anything left" Or, it's a, "Hey, why did you all start this? Rewind this whole thing for me," and all of that.
So we definitely try to touch on it but, at this point in the history of Sparkbox, we find it's been pretty well covered. We're hearing those things come back to us during the interview and the answering of the questions they've been in. They've already heard those things over and over again.
Traci:
That's great. And then I know post, when you guys come together and talk about these candidates and the verbiage people will use when they talk about whether the person's a fit or not a fit, I know one of the things we talked about offline is the use of cultural fit, how people almost overuse it and it's gotten a little weird recently as a term.
So talk a little bit about how you handle that terminology, cultural fit. Is that something you guys use? Have you found a different spin on that?
Rob:
Yeah. This is a word that I heard a lot early in my career and over the last probably seven–eight years has become almost taboo. It's almost come to mean hiring people that look and think like you. So we have tried to eliminate that word and phrase from our process and the way we talk about it. I was listening to a recent episode we did, and I actually said these words and I was kind of like, "Oh, that came out of my mouth again. I've been working really hard to remove it."
We've been trying to talk about it as “cultural add.” As how is this person going to contribute to where we're going and who we want to be. If we have these goals of having inclusive and diverse workforces and teams and thought patterns and all of that, how do we have people that are good cultural adds to what we're doing?
Traci:
That makes sense because I do feel like we can talk to our teams about this in a few different ways. And sometimes core values get sort of lumped in or synonymous to culture. So people are saying, "Well, yes, we want somebody to fit our core values or who aligns with our core values." So we might want to say it's a cultural add and an alignment. They're aligned with our culture might be a better way of saying it or aligned with our core values and they're helping us. They're adding to our culture or rounding out our culture.
But yeah, I do think because as we talked about in the last episode, it is subconscious that we gravitate towards people who look, sound, have the same resume or went to the same school as us, have the same training. Whether that's design or development or communications or business background, we will gravitate towards those people consciously or subconsciously.
And I can see that sometimes with some of my clients, I'll be like, "Gosh, did you hire everybody from the same university you went to?" I get how that happens is because sometimes that's the easy place to recruit or you're an alumni there so you have an in, but we just have to check that stuff every once in a while. Like is everybody coming from the same part of the country? Does everybody have the same education? It's more than just—but it definitely needs to include—racial and ethnic diversity. But we just want to check that sort of unconscious draw where we are gravitating towards people that are exactly like us.
So I like that kind of cultural add, core value alignment. These are some really good checks when we're putting together that checklist at the end and making sure the team's on the same page about the candidate, we've really pushed ourselves the best we can.
And I say all of this, I know we're in a tight labor market and we've talked about this in the past episodes too. It's hard, it's really hard to find ... Even I've heard, I just talked to another owner who said it's hard enough just to find a warm body and I feel everybody's pain in that. Like we said before, we're just trying to simplify it. If we have this sort of checklist, we know how we're pushing ourselves, we're reminding ourselves to think of these things even in times that are hard, then we're going to be successful.
Rob:
Yeah. I think that's a great place to wrap it up, Traci.
Traci:
Perfect. All right. Till next time.
Rob:
Thanks, Traci. Bye.
Traci:
Bye.
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