Why Phone Interviews are Key, Cholesterol – The Ratios Matter, 6 Ways to Develop Mental Toughness
Business
The Beauty of a Phone Interview
Last week we set up our Job Scorecard and scored the resumes of our applicants as we continue to search for the next A+ player for your team. This week, lets continue to push forward with our last filter before deciding who we invite to an in-person interview. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but understand that the cost of bad hire can be up to 15x their salary. Also, the in-person interview is the most costly and time consuming portion of your recruitment process, so we don’t want to waste those precious interviews on anyone who is not an excellent candidate to be an A+, long term member of your team.
Phone interviews are a great tool to accomplish these goals.. Here is the why and how of phone interviews.
A Filter
Hiring mistakes are incredibly costly. Bringing candidates in house for interviews is also very costly. Just like managing a sales funnel, your people funnel must filter out poor candidates at the earliest possible moment to save time and money. Filtering also allows those involved in the interviews to stay fully involved in the process and not get burned out by interviewing applicants that should have never made it to the interview stage. For these reasons, a 30 minute phone interview is a great investment.
Avoid Blind Spots
We are immediately swayed by an in-person interaction with another individual. How they are dressed, their smile, their greeting all tells us what we think about a person in 30 seconds or less. Once that interaction has occurred our frame has been set. Every question we ask and every story told by the person will be interpreted by us through the opinion we established within the first 30 seconds of meeting them. Phone interviews help reduce this problem. When you only have a voice to respond to, you can listen more intently for the right answers and avoid much of the bias we encounter when conducting face to face interviews.
What to Ask
In the book “Who – Solving Your #1 Problem”, the authors suggest a four question phone interview that should last no longer than 30 minutes. Those questions are: 1 – What are your career goals?; 2 – What are you really good at professionally?; 3 – What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally? and 4 – Who were your last five bosses and how will they each rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them?
I think those four questions are a great start. Compare them to the Job Scorecard you created for the position and see what questions work best for your organization. But, create a script and stick to it. Use the same questions for all applicants to a position and work to keep the questions the same or close to the same for all positions. This will help everyone in your organization become more efficient and effective with your hiring system.
Who Should Make the Call
If the hiring manager was heavily involved in creating the Job Scorecard (which they should have been), they can assign team members to do the phone interviews or let HR do them. As long as interviewers are asking the same questions and score the applicant using the job scorecard afterwards, the phone interview is a great opportunity to create some leverage in the hiring process.
After each call the interviewer should review the Job Scorecard and rate the candidate. The interview should capture the stories that drove their decision. Only invite candidates that you are excited to interview. If the interviewer has any reservations at this stage, you should eliminate the candidate.
Health
Cholesterol Ratios
Last week we talked about 5 Ways to Improve Your Cholesterol numbers. But, as we mentioned the total number is not the entire story. My total cholesterol is now up to 210, which is above the recommended level of 200. But, my ratios tell me I am in pretty good shape. Here is what you need to know about your cholesterol ratios.
You blood work generally provides you with levels of four primary measures. They are:
HDL – High-density lipoprotein – This is the good stuff. It moves cholesterol from your arteries to your liver.
LDL – Low-density lipoprotein – Main form of bad cholesterol. It causes the build-up of plaque inside arteries.
VLDL – Very-low-density lipoprotein – It is a precursor of LDL.
Triglycerides – are another type of fat found in your blood. Your body stores any un-needed calories as triglycerides. As we’ll see in a minute, they are another important factor in your overall heart health.
The ratio most referred to in heart science is the Total Cholesterol to HDL ratio. You can quickly figure this out by dividing your Total Cholesterol by your HDL. In my case, my total cholesterol is 211 and my HDL is 73. Take 211/73 and you get 2.9. According to the Framingham Heart Study a ratio of less than 3.4 is optimal for men. Below is a table showing risk for men and women based on that study. This one was posted at the bottom of my cholesterol results.
Another ratio that is getting a lot of attention is the Triglycerides / HDL ratio. One study found that a TG/HDL ratio above 4 was the most powerful independent predictor of developing coronary artery disease. A TG/HDL ratio of less than 2 is ideal. It is suggested that a low carbohydrate diet is one of the most effective ways to reduce your TG.
Life, Fun, Whatever
Develop Grit like a Navy Seal
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill
Grit, perseverance, toughness are all required to achieve great and scary things. I feel like I need an extra dose on most Mondays. Don’t get me wrong, I completely, 110%, LOVE what I do, but being a self-employed father and provider to a family of 6 can get a bit scary! I can find myself longing for a regular paycheck with health insurance when I get forced to do things that are so not in my comfort zone (sales…).
Here are 6 tips to develop the mental toughness you need to persevere when times get tough. From a great article at Marketplace Meditations on how the Navy Seals become some of the most mentally tough people on the planet.
- Eat the Elephant or chunking – My list of to do’s (and I’m sure yours as well) could overwhelm me at almost any moment. Focus on the end goal and the next most important step. This is a key to strategy execution and any success in life.
- Visualize Success – Make it real, detailed and glorious. The better the outcome you imagine, the more likely you are to achieve it.
- Breathe – Seals are taught to use the “4 by 4 by 4” to control their emotions. Breathe in for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, repeat for 4 minutes.
- Reframe – Take any situation that you interpret as negative and reframe it as positive. Look for the good in every situation. Remember that “all things” work for the good of those who love God (Romans 8:28) and a great song by Travis Greene! We automatically rush to a negative conclusion so often in personal relationships. “They must not like me” or “how did I offend them?” pops into our head, when the other person is probably just in a hurry or having a bad day. Give them some grace, assume the best and don’t give up on the sale, the relationship or whatever it is that you value.
- Small Victories / Gratitude – Gratitude and meditation keep coming up everywhere I look for the habits of the incredibly successful. Searching for the smallest victories are part of being grateful. A big victory for me was when I quit getting upset about a “bad” workout. For instance when I was training for the Ironman I’d have runs where I couldn’t make it past 4 miles and I was training to run 26 after a rather long bike and swim. I could have gotten totally defeated, but I learned to brush it off and just keep doing the work. Same goes for sales. Every no gets you that much closer to the Yeses!
- Find Your Tribe – Know where you are accepted, loved and supported and go there often. Return the favor to everyone in your tribe.
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