649 | If You’re Still Asking These Interview Questions, You’re Hiring Blind

If your interviews sound like tell me about yourself or what's your biggest weakness, folks, you are hiring blind.

Today I'll show you some questions that are phenomenal, that will help reveal truth, protect your culture and guide confident hiring decisions. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks.

I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are.

Today we are talking about what are great interview questions and which ones are really terrible. Right? So too many leaders walk into interviews hoping to get a gut feeling about someone.

But hope isn't a hiring strategy and neither is a gut feeling. I'm not saying that your gut feeling isn't correct. It's just not a great hiring strategy. It's not going to protect your team from the cost of bad hires, bad decisions.

So in today's episode, we'll show you exactly how to structure your interview to uncover character. To uncover what? Whether or not somebody's a fit and hopefully as much of their performance abilities as possible.

Not just charisma, but how do we get the right person and if they have great performance or make a great performance fit, not just charisma. So today we're going to fix that. So five interview shifts every leader needs to make.

Stop Using Generic Questions and Start Revealing Patterns (00:01:49)

Number one for the love. Stop using generic questions. You've got to start revealing patterns in the person you're interviewing.

So why does this matter? Because anybody can rehearse answers. The problem is you're not hiring a script. You're hiring patterns under pressure.

Right in that room when you were doing that interview or on the phone. Then you have to put them in a place where they can respond and you get to see how they will respond to the situations you put them under. Right.

So ask a follow up question to every answer that they give. So I've got some questions for you that I want you to try. Try things like this. Tell me about a time you failed and how you recovered. Right.

That's a great one to put out there. And interestingly enough, you will find some people try to skirt that pretty quickly. Oh, gosh, I haven't really had many failures.

Right. That's, everybody has failed. You can, you can get to something. Tell me how you recovered. Then whatever their answer is, ask them, well, where did you contribute to the failure?

That'll put them back on their heels a little bit, you know, ask them, what did you change permanently about this, you know, once you solved or recovered or whatever.

Those are things that will help you to see how they handle failure, how they deal with something in the moment, how they solve a problem, how they look at themselves.

Do they recognize their own contribution to the failure? Do they recognize that they need to change stuff? If what you get is, oh, well, I, I, I didn't contribute to the failure, that had nothing to do with me or what?

There wasn't anything I needed to change because that wasn't me, then what you're going to find is you may have a victim, you might have somebody who has victim mentality right there.

Right? So I'm looking for any level of pattern that I can see by putting them under the pressure of asking questions like that.

Another question to ask. Describe a conflict with a teammate. How did you address it and what was the outcome? You know, asked three different questions right there.

Describe a conflict with a teammate. Then they'll describe, how did you address it? What was the outcome? Right.

We're looking to see how well they do, how, how do they play on the playground? Right. How are they with the other kids? Do they share the monkey bars?

You know, do they, what, what is it like to see? Are they throwing stuff at other kids or how are they handling situations with team members?

Well, what do they do about it? Put them under pressure, see how they respond.

Another question or series of questions is, what hard feedback have you received and what did you do with it? Right, so you're looking to see, have they had constructive feedback?

Have they been able to receive it? Do they just come up with something super weak or do they come up with, you know, I didn't realize this about myself, but, you know, this, this, this.

You know, you've probably heard me talk about my early days of talking with my sales team leader that worked for me.

And I asked her, I said, I brought her into the first time I started doing this meeting, which became a such a powerful meeting that I've done for decades.

You know, I brought her and I'm like, hey, this isn't about you, it's about me. What do you see in me? Tell me about my leadership. How am I failing? What could I do better? And she said, your communication stinks.

And I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, you know, this thing over here. And I was like, yeah. She goes, we know nothing about it. I was like, are you kidding?

And she goes, no, you haven't shared anything. I was like, well, I thought you knew. And she said, Chris, that's your problem. You always think, we know what's in your head, how could we?

And that was a huge thing for me to go, oh my gosh, I need to shift immediately.

I'm not communicating well and I think that I am. I think that people know what I know and I've got to get this communication out of me.

So take a look and see when have they received feedback and what have they done with it if they can't come up with something, if they don't have answers.

And by the way, that was nothing compared to some of the feedback I've received in life that has helped me to become a better version of myself.

Another thing that you can ask is walk me through a goal you missed. You know, you're probably going to talk about some successes that they've had, but I want to see walk me through a goal that you missed.

What did you learn and implement so it didn't happen again? How did they solve the problem afterwards?

Another question is give me an example of solving problem without authority. You know, how'd you do this on your own?

So what am I listening for? I'm listening for, you know, green flags, ownership, language, you know, clear cause and effect, measurable outcomes that I can see, lessons that they've applied to making them a better team member.

I am also absolutely listening for red flags. I'm listening for blame. I'm listening for victim mentality. I'm listening for we without the eye. I'm listening for, you know, when it is, well, it's there, they did this.

I'm listening for vague timelines. I'm listening for no reflection whatsoever. These are all things that are helping me to assess the person that's sitting in front of me or is on a call.

Now keep in mind, some people don't interview incredibly well. That's why you keep asking more questions on situations and you might even bring them back in for a second, you know, or even call them. Sometimes I've done that.

I've called them on the phone a couple hours later, hey, I just had a couple of follow up questions, this, this and this. And it's easier because they're not sitting right in front of you.

And, and then sometimes I've had people interview incredibly well at that point because they weren't as nervous. A lot of times I've had them just give me the same type of information and it really, you know, confirmed what I was already thinking.

So pitfalls to avoid. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please do not, do not rescue them with leading hints.

Silence is fantastic. Silence is amazing. It causes them to have to think and react. It helps you to diagnose what's going on when you jump in.

And I am somebody. I'm a 67 I. I'm an 88 S. I'm somebody who wants to. Who hates the silence. I want to help somebody out in that moment.

Oh, my gosh. I have become phenomenal over the decades at just sitting there and waiting and letting them, you know, allowing the silence to create awkwardness, to create struggle, so that I could see how they deal with the situation.

If they can't handle that interview, if they can't handle silence for a moment, how are they going to handle bigger things that I'm going to put in their lap?

Right? So charisma. You might have somebody who's very charismatic, but being charismatic can't carry someone through conflict. It can't carry them through pressure, can't carry them into growth.

But great questions can show you who they really are.

Structure the Interview in 3 Distinct Segments (00:09:11)

Number two, make sure that you're structuring your interview in three distinct segments.

Now, why does this matter? Because if every interview is improv, you know, you're just coming up with it as you go, then your hiring results are going to be the same.

They're going to be improv as well. Structure creates fairness to the person you're interviewing as well as to yourself, and it creates clarity.

These are things that are musts. Now, I don't know how much time you're gonna put. We have a great hiring lesson in our program, but let me just give you three different segments that I think you should focus on.

The first one, culture and mission. So the goal is getting, you know, values aligned and getting, you know, motivation. So you can ask things like, why us?

You know, you want to prompt the why us? Why do you want to come work for us and see what their responses are? You want to see if they align with your values.

You want to see if they align with your culture. And then ask a question like, tell me about a boundary you set to protect integrity, man.

That is. That'll again put them on their heels. That's something that you want to see. How are they going to respond to this?

So as you go through your culture and mission questions, if you will, the cultural aspect of the interview, and they are just, you know, doing terribly. Like, let's say you've asked five questions and they've kind of bombed on four out of five. Why are you continuing?

You know, for us, we do an early on. The very first interview is a very. Is a cultural interview. If you don't fit the culture in the very first interview, we're done.

You don't get a second interview, we don't pass you on. The goal is to find out, do you align? So first thing I would do is focus on culture and mission. Second segment, I would focus on skills and experience.

Oh, for the love. People, you are looking for evidence of competency. If they are not competent, do not hire.

If you do not interview to a level that you are certain that they're competent because of their skills or their experience, not your gut feeling, not their charisma, but that you actually know how they did it or they can do it, why hire?

Why continue? Right? So things you can ask is like, show me the most complex project that you've owned.

That's a big one. Show me the big, you know, what's the most complex project that you've ever worked on? And then ask things like, what was the timeline? How did you measure that?

You know, what were the outcomes? What were the trade offs? You're looking for proof. You're looking for experience through how they did exactly what you're asking for. You know, show me something complex. How did you do it?

Does it align with the complexity of what you're looking for? Can they think, can they solve? Can they share this information with you on the fly or are their answers super basic?

If they're super basic, then, you know, that may be another red flag. Segment number three, I would say, you know, this is more of a live scenario where you're, you're wanting them to solve something on the fly.

You want to, you want to see how the goal is that you want to see how they think, how do they process? So do an exercise with them. Say, here's a realistic process.

Think out loud for 10 minutes, then propose a plan for the first 30, 60, 90 days. That is a tough one. If you're looking for somebody to see if they can solve problems and come up with a process, you're only giving them 10 minutes.

It's not like you're giving them two hours. So obviously grade accordingly. But, but you're looking for processing, not theatrics. You're not looking for charisma.

You're not looking for, oh, oh, oh, here's something fun we could do. You're looking for them to process on how they would solve the problem.

You've got 10 minutes to talk out loud. You know, share, go, ready, go. If they're done in 30 seconds, well, then you actually know that they don't think very well.

And solve problems very well. So probably not a good candidate for you, Right?

But if you have somebody who says, okay, well let me think through this and talk through this, and yes, this is difficult, this isn't easy, but do you want somebody who can't handle this or do you want somebody who does a great job?

So look at how they think, look at how they process. Can they put up a, you know, a proposal for. It doesn't have to be a phenomenally perfect program.

It just needs to be something that you're like, okay, I see how they think, I see how they process, I see how they solve problems, I see how they put things in motion, I see how they put measurables together, their timelines, all of that.

If you do those things, you'll be blown away with the type of champion you've got sitting in the seat or the person that you're probably going to let go.

So if every interview feels like it's an improv, then again your hiring results are going to be the same and exact way.

Match Questions to the Role Using DISC (00:14:34)

Number three, match questions to the role that you're hiring for by using the DISC. The DISC. So why does this matter? You're not just hiring skill, you're also hiring their internal wiring.

You know, how they give information, receive information, how they act, how they react. And DISC gives me language for all of this.

It really helps me to see how they're going to respond in situations. So how do I apply?

Well, if I was talking to a high D, I would say something like, tell me, you know, about a high stakes decision with incomplete data. How did you choose and what did you risk?

You know, tell me something that you didn't have enough information on. How did you solve it, how did you fix it and what did you risk in solving this?

I'm looking for decisiveness. How did they make decisions? But I'm also looking for a difference between accountability or bulldozing over people. Are they bull in the China shop or they mature and they know how to have accountability?

If I was asking a high I, something that you can ask is give me an example of where enthusiasm met execution.

This is a really good thing you want to see because some high Is, if they are immature and they're just people people, then they probably don't have a lot of great information on executing something.

This will show you how mature this person is. You know, how did you ensure that the handoff on this process, this thing, how did you make sure that it stuck, that somebody continued forward with that? Because high ise can struggle with Details. So, like, you're looking at the high D to find out, are they a bull in the china shop? You're looking at the high I to find out, do they follow through with stuff?

Do they stick with it? Do they have a good energy balanced with commitment to making sure the thing gets done? If I am asking a high S, I would ask, describe a season of change.

What do we know about high Ss? They hate change. S's and C's both hate change, but S's are very resistant to change. So describe a season of change. How did you support the the team and still hit the goal?

This will be again, somebody who struggles heavily is probably going to complain about the season of change you're looking to see. Are they calm, are they able to talk through it, or are they getting frustrated?

Are they struggling thinking through how difficult it was? Were they good? Were they with the pressure or did they avoid the process? And again, if they can't come up with answers, then, you know, this probably is not the right person.

If I'm asking a high C, I would ask something like, when has, you know, name a time where accuracy and speed just mashed up. They just collided together. How did you protect the quality of the situation?

You know, can you show me how you did that? Tell. Walk me through this. I'm looking for their systems. I'm looking for, you know, did they struggle and didn't, you know, they put it on the back burner, they didn't solve.

They waited for somebody to come fix it or they dive in and get it done. Did they help to make sure there were solutions instead of problems?

You know, look to see, are they, are they good at jumping in when problems happen, things change, or do they put things on the back burner and that's what they're going to do every single time with you? So those are just some examples.

You know, you could do the same thing. If you're looking at sales questions or ops questions or leadership questions, depending upon any of the personality styles, keep in mind you're not just hiring skill, you're hiring their internal wiring.

So DISC is going to give you language for both of those, right? You're going to be able to see how they did something, experience all that.

But you're also going to get to see how they think, process solved, fix problems, all that, deal with other team members, all that kind of fun stuff.

Use a Scoring Rubric, Not Your Gut (00:19:01)

Number four, use a scorecard, not your gut. Now why does this matter now? I've had many a times where my gut was pretty solid.

However, my memory is biased. Sometimes it can be very biased. And having a scorecard not only protects the memory of the interview itself. Right.

It also protects the team, it protects the mission. You know, if I can go and not just like, maybe I had a great conversation with somebody and, you know, I feel really good about this person.

But if I've got a solid scorecard, and you've probably experienced this when you've interviewed a large number of people for a role and you just can't truly remember.

You just remember, I like that person, but I couldn't tell you everything about them because I didn't do a good job writing it down. We have a process where we take notes specifically so that we don't have to remember.

We can just go back and see what we wrote down. We're consistently writing stuff down.

So I will tell you, a scorecard helps me. And especially doing it either during the interview process or immediately after the interview.

And so there's certain things that you want to rate them on, like maybe a 1 to 5 or a 1 to 10, like cultural alignment. If we say 1 to 5, 1 is, we have misaligned values. Three is we're decently aligned.

You know, here's some light examples. And five is, oh, my gosh, this. This person lives under the same type of values that we do. We can see that.

Here's great examples, yada, yada, yada, they get a five. Great. What about the competency of the role, the skills? You should have interviewed this so well out.

So one would be, you know, there's really only theories of how they can do this. I didn't really see solid answers of how they do this.

A three might be. They shared that they were able to do this with some guidance. And a five might be. Man, they owned the outcomes. They repeated the success. They're very teachable. They teach others super solid 5.

What about communication and collaboration? One could be. And you could do twos and fours in here. You know, one through five.

I'm just giving you three. One could be that they seemed very defensive. They were very confusing in some of their answers.

Three might be. Yeah, they're clear but very linear in their responses. Five might be. They're concise. They listened really well as I talked.

They adapted as I asked questions, or if I had another leader in there asking questions, they responded really well and adapted to that person.

So they get a five. You know, they. They did really well in communication. Another one would be a DISC fit for the role. One would be that their wiring technically fights the role.

You know, if I was trying to put a high I in an accounting position, I'm going to see that there's going to be a problem here. Right. They're the way that they're wired up, fights the role.

It doesn't fit the role. It doesn't work in it. A three might be, yeah, it's workable, but it could, it's definitely going to take some coaching. A five would be, wow, this is a natural fit. They match.

They're going to be able to do the critical demands that are going to be on them. This is a great fit. So if you have, you know, any ones or twos in culture, it should be a no hire.

It should be a no brainer. We don't move forward. If they do not fit your culture, don't hire them. Oh, but Chris, they fit. They had a five in the skill. I don't care, guys. I've been doing this too long.

If people don't fit my culture, I don't want them here because I don't want to spend all the time that I have in the past dealing with people who didn't fit my culture.

I need people that fit so that I don't have to spend or my leaders don't have to spend a lot of time dealing with their cultural misfits. Right.

I'm obviously going to prefer somebody who has fours and fives. I probably don't want somebody who's consistent with threes. You know, I mean, I would have to have a really good reason why just solid threes across the board would be somebody that I hire.

I'm really looking for some fours and fives in there. So this really helps you to see what type of person this is. Do they fit culturally? Do they fit DISC wise? Do they have the skills and are they a team player?

If they are an island, do not hire them. Do not hire islands. I made that mistake and 20 years later still regret it. So I don't live in it.

I'm just saying it's, it's something that I won't make that mistake again. So more things that you can have for the interviewer, whether that's you.

For us, we have, you know, a five interview process, sometimes more. So sometimes there's different interviewers that are in the process. So here's some debriefs that anybody who interviews needs to answer this.

So let's say like, you know, we've got our cultural phone call that happens on the front side.

Whoever's making that phone call, depending upon which area they're going to go into. That person who may, and usually that's probably Catherine who's going to make that phone call, but she needs to answer some things.

Would you hire them for this role? Yes or no? Now, obviously that's just based on the cultural thing, but as they step up in each interview, this is a strong list that I feel like every interview needs to answer.

One, would you hire them for this role? Yes or no? Two, what is your strongest evidence that they fit the role? Three, what is the greatest risk you see here by hiring this person?

And number four, what coaching would they need, you know, starting day one to make them successful at this role? So do yourself a favor, stop trying to feel out a candidate. Create a system that reveals the things that really matter to you.

Pause Before the Offer: The 24-Hour Clarity Rule (00:25:28)

Number five, pause before the offer. Use the 24 hour clarity rule. I highly suggest this. This takes pressure off. Pressure is never a good hiring partner, if you will. Peace is the thing.

That's a great signal for leadership. We always tell the person you go pray, you talk to your spouse you spend time with. Going to spend time praying about this, we're going to spend time talking about this.

But you let us know when you're ready to move forward with the answer, right? So we are people who don't want a here's an offer. You ready? Let's go. '

Instead, we want to sleep on it. If we wake up with more peace, great, fantastic. That, that's a good thing. If we don't, there's a problem.

We have had times where we do spousal interviews where we bring our spouses in to ask questions and dig in and see what they think of the person.

And I will tell you, I made the mistake once in my life of not having a great, you know, my spouse gave a response that was, I don't know if I can not hire them.

According to that, they're just like, something is off. I don't know what it is. Something is off. And I made the wrong decision. I, I said, well, I need some specifics. And she couldn't give me specifics.

So I was like, well, I don't know if I can not hire them because of that. I made the mistake. And she was right. So don't do that. Give yourself some time.

Give your spouse, if you do spousal interviews, give the spouses some time, right? Allow people to come in and just, you know, stew on this a little bit. You know, give this some time for you guys to ruminate.

What do you think process through. Do you have peace? Is there something wrong also in this 24 hour time frame? Reread your notes. Go over your scorecard without the resume.

Don't, don't even use the resume. Just go over your scorecard. Would I hire this person for this mission based on the scorecard that I have? Again, go through your, your questions. You know, describe a time they handled conflict well and what changed because of them.

If you, if you're not able to get to that, do you hire this person? Right? Are you hiring somebody just so that you can fill the role? Or you know, is, do you, are you telling yourself the pain of an empty seat is just too much?

Well, what is the pain of hiring the wrong person? Sit down and write a first month success criteria. Do they fit it?

You know, if I can't define success based on this person, then I'm not going to offer them a job, Right? So don't make the offer yet. Give yourself some time.

Make sure that they fit the culture, they have the competency. There's no major red flags. Make sure you've called on references.

Yes, call on all references. Do all this stuff. And then spend some time before you proceed. Anything that is nagging or any lack of peace.

That is a time for you to pause. That is a time for you to clarify what it is and you may find that you actually pass on it.

So if you're talking to the person or other leaders, hey guys, I'm taking 24 hours to ensure that I'm, you know, I've got clarity here that I feel really good that I don't have any concerns.

So give me till tomorrow at noon and then I will let you know what I'm thinking.

The truth is, is that peace is a great leadership signal. If you don't have it, do not move forward.

Action Steps (00:29:11)

So action steps. Replace your standard interview questions with five behavior based questions. Look to see how they respond. Build a three part interview structure focused on culture, competency and outcomes.

You know, get yourself to this place where you know exactly who is sitting in the chair. Do they fit?

Make sure that you're using disc filters on every interview. You know, put together those questions to find out will they fit the role, Are they mature or immature in their responses?

You know, it has nothing to do with age. It has to do with how well they know themselves and how they know how they respond. Use the post interview scoring card.

You know, spend 30 minutes just going through the information that you have and use that scoring card as well to ask yourself, is this the right person and then use the 24 hour decision delay so that you protect not only you that person, but also your team and the team health.

Smart Hiring Framework (00:30:15)

Now, this October, we're handing you the full Smart Hiring Framework. One powerful resource at a time. You'll listen, apply, and by the end of the month you'll have a complete system to hire better, lead smarter and protect your culture.

You have to sign up by filling out the form at chrislocurto.com/hiringframework one word hiringframework. Once you're in, you'll automatically receive all the resources throughout the month.

Remember chrislocurto.com/hiringframework you won't want to miss what's coming.

This framework could save you months of stress and thousands in costly miss-hires.

Now, if you followed this series, you now have the entire Smart Hiring Framework. From knowing when you're ready to building the right job post to interviewing with clarity.

Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event 2026 (00:31:09)

And it doesn't stop here. At our Next-Level Leadership LIVE Event you'll learn even more tools like these direct from leaders who've walked the hiring mistakes and now lead thriving culture aligned teams.

We want you to join us in person for this event. Go to chrislocurto.com/liveevents and get more information. That's chrislocurto.com/liveevents and get more information.

Well folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I hope this series has helped you and is helping you to get the right people in the right seats so that you can thrive in your business. As always, take this information.

Change your leadership, change your business, change your life and join us on the next episode.