When discussing best practices for interviewing, we often refer to the importance of asking open-ended questions.

For example, it’s good to start an interview with a question such as:

Can you tell me a little bit about your work history?

These types of questions help ensure the candidate is doing most of the talking during the interview.

Authentic connections emerge when a person feels listened to and understood.

But what happens if the conversation hits a lull or starts to feel awkward?

According to bestselling author Michael Bungay Stanier, there’s a simple “add on” question that can be appended to any answer that will supercharge the conversation.

The question is: And, what else?

Sounds simple but adding this phrase at the end of a candidate’s answer is a powerful technique for getting the candidate to share more openly.

According to Stanier, these three little words have magical properties.

With seemingly no effort, it creates more wisdom, more insights, more self-awareness, and more possibilities out of thin air.

Give it a try during your next interview, and see how the conversation progresses differently.

Since you’re taking the time to interview, don’t waste the opportunity to build a connection.

Recruiting has always been an exercise in trade-offs.

Setting priorities ahead of time equips you to make sense of your recruiting and hiring decisions.

What are the priorities in your hiring process?

This was the question posed to hundreds of hiring managers across various industries in a recent talent acquisition survey.

Here were the top four responses and the percentages of respondents listing the issue as their most important concern:

Improving quality of hire (41%)
Reducing time to hire (28%)
Improving the candidate experience (15%)
Increasing volume/reducing cost per hire (14%)

How would you prioritize this list?

Take a minute to rank these objectives for your organization.

Once you’ve ranked them, recognize there’s a natural cause and effect to your priorities.

If you want high quality hires, it takes more time and expense to acquire enough prospects to be selective.

If you care little about what candidates experience during your hiring process, it affects what consumers think of your company.

If you reduce costs and focus on speed, the quality of your hires is going to suffer.

Successful hiring managers set priorities and recognize that trade-offs exist.

The amateurs assume they can have it all and bounce along the bottom.

Author James Clear once said,

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Most of you have recruiting goals:

I want to add five high-potential, experienced agents to my office this year.

Most of you have also identified lead measures to bring those recruiting goals to life:

If I complete 20 face-to-face appointments with viable recruiting prospects, I will reach my hiring goal.

But only a portion of you have created the systems needed to hold yourself accountable to your recruiting tasks.

If James is right, these are the individuals who will be successful at recruiting.

It’s not what you aspire to that matters, but what you require yourself to accomplish.

There is a difference between being familiar with a brand and loving a brand.

If you love the brand of your car, you’re probably interacting with it every day.

If you love the brand of an airline, you probably fly frequently with this carrier.

The companies who have built popular brands have done so over many years by identifying and sticking to a set of values connecting them to their followers.

For the real estate industry, it’s difficult to build a consumer brand that people truly love.

Why? Because the interactions between the company and the consumer are so infrequent.

Consumers may know your brand and respect your brand, but they’re probably not going to wear a t-shirt with your logo on it.

Employment branding is a subset of consumer branding.

Your recruiting prospects may respect your company’s brand, but they’re not going to love your brand.

To be successful at attracting the best talent, spend most of your time developing and communicating a compelling employment offering.

Work here because it will significantly benefit your career.

This is the recruiting message that best resonates with recruiting prospects.

Oh, by the way, you’re going to love being connected with such a great company! 

This is a great secondary message.

As we discussed yesterday, many agents are fearful right now.

How do you turn this anxiety into recruiting and retention opportunities?

According to author Morton Hansen, there is a predictable pattern of communication that will position you to recruit more during difficult times.

To inspire people and gain their support, line up high-arousal emotions on your side.

More specifically, you must make a person mad or fearful about the present, and then joyful and excited about your proposed future goal.

Notice the order.

Unless a person first feels some negative emotions (ex. fear, anger, frustration, anxiety), you’ll have a difficult time later evoking the positive emotions (ex. excitement, joy, passion, delight) necessary to adopt your plan.

Here is a simple process to follow:

1. Ask some emotionally charged questions. Are you worried that high interest rates and low inventory may last for a couple of years?

2. Validate their feelings with your own experience. We’re worried about it too. Some of our best agents are concerned their incomes will drop significantly unless something changes.

3. Show positive emotion about your solution. This is why we’re so excited about the listing program we created late last year that increased our listings by 50% in the first quarter.

Many believe that tough economic times make recruiting more difficult.

The opposite is true. 

It provides a shortcut to negative emotions an individual must feel before making a change.

I was recently on the phone with the CEO of a large real estate company, and he relayed the following story.

The top agent in my company (personal income more than $1 million per year) recently called me and said,

‘I’m really scared by what is going on in the industry right now, and I’m having doubts on how to move my business forward.

Things are harder than they’ve ever been, and I know I need to make adjustments to stay competitive.

But I liked the way things were, and I’m not clear on my next steps.’

If someone at this level is experiencing this type of fear and uncertainty, you can bet it’s even worse with lower-producing agents.

This CEO went on to say:

My B and C performers sense things are changing as well, and they don’t know what to do.

Two lessons to take away from this dialog.

1. Your agents are scared. This fear needs to be addressed, and you must be the one helping them find solutions. If you don’t help them, someone else will.

2. Your competitors’ agents are scared. Many of your competitors are not addressing this fear, are not offering solutions, and are hoping no one notices. It’s your opportunity to step in and be a resource to someone who needs help.

The best recruiters find a way to get past the surface level resistance and address the real fears most agents are experiencing.

In a post from the archive, Dave Mashburn reminds us that negative emotion always has the tendency to overwhelm positive emotion.

Keeping negative emotion in check and amplifying positive feelings is something every human must proactively do to live a healthy life.

How do you do that?

By occupying your minds with directed thoughts, defined goals, and meaningful work.

Without this proactive focus, the brain defaults into psychic entropy.

With nothing to do, the mind is unable to prevent negative thoughts from elbowing their way to center stage.

Worries about one’s love life, health, investments, family, and job are always hovering at the periphery of attention, waiting until there is nothing pressing that demands concentration.

As soon as the mind is ready to relax, zap! The potential problems that were waiting in the wings take over.

This evidence is consistent with every study done on resilience and survival.

The only way to stave off worry and depression is to build meaning and purpose into your life.

This means setting goals and building an action plan to reach those goals.

Not only does this make you less worrisome, but it also will make you happier while pursuing worthwhile ends.

Many years ago, Steve Heiman, the co-founder of the sales training company Miller-Heiman, developed a model for thinking about change.

The model was built to help salespeople understand how decision-makers would potentially react to sales proposals.

Heiman observed that people generally fall into one of four change modes:

Growth Mode: The perception that there is a hopeful difference between today’s reality and the potential for short-term gains. Something needs to be done to reach the potential.

Trouble Mode: The perception that today’s reality will soon deteriorate. A person in this mode has anxiety about the difficulty looming on the horizon. Something needs to be done to avoid the trouble ahead.

Even Keel Mode: The perception that there is no difference between today’s reality and what will be accomplished in the months ahead. “Rocking the boat” is risky and unnecessary.

Overconfident Mode: The perception that growth and prosperity are inevitable.

If you think about these concepts from a recruiting perspective, the definitions apply.

Prospects who are in a Growth Mode or Trouble Mode have a higher likelihood of making changes.

Prospects who are in an Even Keel Mode have a much lower chance of making a change.

And candidates who are Overconfident have very little chance of making a change.

It only makes sense to focus your recruiting efforts on those who have the highest chance of making a change.

Here’s the good news—the ranks of those in Trouble Mode have greatly increased in the last 8 months.

Recruiting opportunities abound.

Since nearly 90% of companies are actively hiring or pipelining candidates, it’s difficult to separate yourself from your competitors.
 
Of course, your first priority is offering recruiting prospects a compelling opportunity.
 
If your offering is equal to or slightly better than your competitors, the company that executes the recruiting process the best usually wins.
 
How do you win the recruiting execution game?
 
Speed and clarity.
 
According to researchers, the number one complaint from job seekers is lack of responsiveness from employers.
 
I don’t hear back from employers in a timely manner after applying and/or interviewing.
 
This applies to new agent recruiting.
 
The second highest complaint from job seekers is lack of clarity around what’s being offered, compensation, and how the opportunity is better than what they have now.
 
Am I going to be more effective in this role and make enough money to meet my expectations?
 
Focusing on speed and clarity in your recruiting process is the quickest way to make yourself standout in a sea of employment opportunities.

Wow. That was a waste of time.

Is this something you’ve said to yourself after interviewing a candidate who seems to have low potential?

We’ve all been there. After experiencing such an interview, most of us have the urge to tighten the screening requirements and only interview candidates with better credentials.

According to researchers, taking this course of action will produce the exact opposite results you’re looking to achieve.

Why? Because avoiding failure has become your objective.

Organizations who focus on avoiding failure tend to perform at a lower level compared to those who encourage it.

You’ve probably heard the story of how Babe Ruth entered the history books after hitting his 714th home run in 1935.

Remarkably, less than 24 hours after setting the home run record, he also set the record for the most strikeouts.

Ruth’s record for strikeouts stood for almost 30 years.

Who outdid his illustrious accomplishment? It was Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle.

But, Mantle doesn’t currently hold this record. He was eventually surpassed by Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson.

It’s obvious these world-class sluggers were comfortable with striking out.

If you’re aspiring to hire the most talented individuals, you should be too.

Seth Godin once published this thought-provoking lesson on how to manage your effort.
 
It’s true, at least for now, that there are plenty of fish in the sea.
 
And it’s also true that shooting fish in a barrel is pretty easy if there are enough fish and the barrel is small enough.
 
You can’t have both.
 
Either you approach the world as a widely dispersed bunch of opportunities where you’re never specific…

OR you realize that finding a very focused place to do your work rewards you many times over.
 
The best recruiters find a focused place to recruit, then lure fish into their barrel.
 
Everyone else uses the shotgun approach.

Author Peter Weddle reminds us that true networking is incredibly valuable, but it’s also a lot of work.
 
If you’ve ever been in a relationship, you know two things about them.
 
First, you quickly learn that they are hard work. That’s why the word is spelled the way it is: It’s netWORK, not net-get-around-to-it-whenever-you-feel-like-it.
 
Second, you come to appreciate that relationships take time to develop.
 
They don’t happen with the click of a mouse, whether you’re on LinkedIn or any other social or professional “networking” site.

The Golden Rule of Networking is that you must give as good as you get.
 
It’s fundamentally an exchange of information, ideas, and/or assistance from which both parties derive value.
 
That mutual allocation of benefit establishes familiarity and trust, and those two factors are the twin pillars of a relationship. When networking is working, it creates a relationship.
 
The best hiring managers truly are the best networkers because they are frequently and proactively helping a group of professional peers who are ready to return the favor when the time is right.

Authors Dan and Chip Heath make the point that people often use restraints to keep them from doing unproductive or foolish things.

The classic example is the purchase of a piggy bank for a child.

Let’s suppose that a piggy bank can hold $25 in spare change. The purpose of the piggy bank is to prevent the child from spending the loose change until the $25 goal has been reached.

The piggy bank is really a restraint system that restricts the child from giving in to short-term impulses.

The same principle applies to adults who are having a hard time staying on track.

In one study, college students were told they had to turn in three papers by the end of the semester and were given the option to assign earlier binding due dates for the work.

Almost three-quarters of them jumped at the chance, thus saving themselves from a frantic Red Bull — and — Wikipedia bender in the last week.

Do new agents get off track, waste time on useless activities, and let distractions steal away their success?

Of course, they do.

If you offer innovative and proven ways to restrain agents from poor behavior (ex. good coaching and accountability systems), highlight it during your recruiting presentation and don’t be apologetic about charging for it (directly or via your split).

You should be making the case that a bunch of low-cost freedom sounds good on the front-end, but it turns most agents into failures.

Want to improve your recruiting performance?
 
Try taking a brisk 10-minute walk before starting your recruiting time block.
 
According to researchers, even a little exercise will increase your performance on tasks requiring creativity and cognitive engagement.
 
In one study, the researchers recruited volunteers to pass ten minutes in one of two ways: half-lazed about reading while the other half pedaled away on an exercise bike.
 
Then all the volunteers were given a task designed to test executive function–a fancy term for skills like selecting tasks and staying focused.
 
Those who had exercised showed immediate cognitive improvement. Their responses were more accurate, and their reaction times were faster than their pre-exercise values.
 
They demonstrated a 14% gain in cognitive performance in some instances.
 
If you’re having trouble staying on track with your recruiting time blocks, take a walk as the trigger event to start your session.
 
You’ll not only get more recruiting time-blocks started, but you’ll also be sharper when doing the work.