Hi there and welcome to the Biz Communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the Biz Communication Guy, bringing you tips and strategies that will boost your business. And those tips and strategies are not from me alone. They are instead from a lively and highly informative conversation I have with a business communication expert.

And today coming to us from Gainesville, Georgia, my home base, my office base, Stacey Reece. He’s a former franchise owner of Sphereon Staffing and Recruiting located in Gainesville, Georgia. Sphereon has served Northeast Georgia since 1997. Reece said he strived during his 28 year tenure as market owner to provide the job seeker with the best interview experience possible through providing individual resume design, pre-interview coaching and post-interview follow up.

Prior to opening Sphereon, Stacey Reece was a vice president with First National Bank of Gainesville for over 13 years. During his banking tenure, Reece held several positions, including branch manager as well as consumer division project manager. As division project manager, Reece was charged with creating cost cutting initiatives while improving the customer experience.

Stacey Reece received his BBA in 1987 from the University of North Georgia. And in 1992, he graduated from the UGA Georgia Banking School. Reece has served on numerous community boards and civic organizations during the past three decades. Most notably, Stacey Reece is a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, having served from 2002 to 2007. He had a leadership role that allowed him the privilege to cast votes in 32 standing committees.

Stacey Reece continues to remain active in Georgia politics, doing grassroots advocacy for community organizations. Reece and his wife, Dr. Mandy Reece, reside in Gainesville, Georgia. They have two adult children and two grandchildren.

So I know that you’ll join me in welcoming Stacey Reece.

Hello, Stacey.

Hello, Bill. How are you today?

I’m absolutely delighted to have another conversation with you. I’ve followed your career, as you know, for three decades. And in addition to that, I’m fortunate to have a friendship with you and your wife, Mandy. So it’s could we call it old home week?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And thank you for asking me to come back. I was looking at my notes and realized we were together in 2018. And I’m like, wow, how does time fly?

Yes, time does fly for sure.

One thing that all of us know is that when we’re talking about job interviewing, there’s been a lot of attention given to the job candidate, what the job candidate should do, how they should dress, how they should sit, how they should walk, how should they talk. And yet you’re in a position to give us some information about the job interviewer. And I see a vast gap there. I know that we need that information.

Why, for example, would you say to start with is the job interviewer overlooked or neglected or not talked about?

I think, Bill, it goes back many, many decades. It goes back to where when someone was applying for a job, it was viewed that they had a need. That need was they needed a job. So the interviewer didn’t really have to sell themselves to the person that they wereinterviewing. So they could just, in most any case, just do whatever they wanted to do during the interview. But about 10 years ago, that started to change. People started to have options, and if you were fortunate enough as an interviewer to have someone apply for a role that you had open, you needed to be able to impress them as well.

Okay. These interviews, unless they are online, which many are, but let’s talk about the interviews that are live and in person, and that has become more the norm since COVID is no longer putting us in isolation. One of the first keys that an interviewer needs to think about and have good tips and strategies about is the setting itself, because we all know that places talk, places give messages just as well as people do.

What advice will you give interviewers about the setting so that it will be, let’s say, for example, welcoming and not threatening? What advice do you give along those lines?

So we always attempted to create what I call a very comfortable, neutral environment to conduct interviews in. Usually it was done in a conference room. The conference room was well lit. The furniture was modern, and we would always have at least water sitting around that we could offer the candidate that we were interviewing. I like that because then you’re not interviewing from your personal office.

And I was taught many years ago in sales classes that when you got the privilege to enter someone’s office to maybe present your services, that you should start reading the room immediately and learning as much as you can about that person. So I always preferred to be in a neutral environment, and that’s why I refer to it, Bill, as a neutral environment. Before that candidate learns about me, I want them to see me and hear me and have a conversation with me that’s very neutral.

And my office was my home away from home. I spent more time in my office than I really did here in this study or in my own living room. So I wanted my office to be decorated in a way that represented me. And I don’t always want people to know who I am right out of the gate because I have opinions of things. And often I have to first let people meet me and learn that even though our opinions may be different, I’m very open minded about their opinions, which is a great segue into what you and I have talked off a lot about some, and that is what about when interviewers and interviewees have difference of opinions that really aren’t job related?

And that’s something I have seen a lot of over the years. I would have people tell me when they interviewed one of our candidates, well, I don’t think they’re a good fit. And I’d be like, well, why? Why are they not a good fit? Well, they’re just not. And I’m like, well, I need more feedback because if you want me to recruit for your opening, I’ve got to understand where I’m missing the target on this individual. Because if they were not qualified, I wouldn’t have recommended you set up an interview. We just have difference of opinions.

And I said, well, share more about that with me. And as they began to share those differences of opinions, I’m like, okay, how does that prohibit the individual you interviewed from conducting the job that you’re wanting to hire them to do? And they’d look at me and they’d think a minute and they’d be like, well, it really doesn’t. And I said, well, then why would you not want to continue forward with this? Because it doesn’t sound like that your differences have anything to do with their capability of doing you a fabulous job. It sounds like it’s just that maybe you don’t agree with their philosophy or maybe their outlook on life.

I think that what you have just said is even more prevalent now than when you first instituted that practice, which is a very good one. Becauseif anything among the people you know and I know, there’s a lot of polarization. But does that polarization mean that somebody couldn’t do work for and with a person that they differ so much with?

And then I’d like to really commend you on that, what to me is novel and new, and that is having the interview in a neutral site. Because as you said very clearly, when the candidate comes in, the candidate, if they have any alertness at all, if they’re in your regular office, they’re going to get, as you said, a lot of clues about you.

And in my professional life, for many years, if I would get to someone’s office that I was going to have a business appointment with, and the receptionist said, well, he or she is not here yet. Would you like to stay here in the reception room? Or do you want to go into the office? I always took the choice of going into the office. Why? Because here on display would be that person’s hobbies, their families, their awards, their memberships. And so you had starting points to talk with.

But I think your approach is that you want to know more about the candidate than the candidate knows about you. Is that the way I’m seeing it?

It is, yes. Yes. I want to know what that candidate is thinking. I want to know what their qualifications are, not just what they turned in on paper. Because people can embellish on paper, but once you start having a dialogue with them, and I like to use the word as an interviewer, I’m having a dialogue. I’m not saying I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I’m going to have a discussion with you. I want to see how well you can communicate with me so that I’ll know how well you’re going to communicate with my managers or my clients or my other employees.

And I’ve always been in a role where communication is extremely important. In fact, the roles I’ve had in life, if you could not communicate well, you would not have succeeded in the roles that I’ve enjoyed over 30-plus years.

Well, you know that I say amen to that because communication has been not only my focus professionally, but to me, the interpersonal relationships we have. And when you go to networking events, don’t be there just because of what somebody might can do for you, but go there to establish relationships.

Something that you mentioned a while back to me was that the interviewer has certain legal restrictions on what can be asked of the candidate, what they can ask the candidate. And so what happens if a candidate is well-informed and knows those, what happens if a candidate finds the interviewer getting a little shady on them, maybe not asking the question that they can’t ask directly, but doing it rather subtly? How can graciously an interviewer work through that or around it?

Yeah, well, and you can come at different angles on this. You can come at the angle that if you’re a great communicator, you can sit there and have a dialogue with a candidate, and you can ask little questions, and once they answer that one little question, you can do a follow-up, and you just keep asking, and you just keep asking, and they’re giving you all this information.

And a candidate can share anything they want to with you, and once they’ve shared it, then you have that as knowledge. And although they may reveal things that would not be reasons that you would not legally be able to not hire them, but in any industry, anyone interviewing, when you follow up as a candidate and say, hey, have you made a decision? Well, we had more qualified candidates, and we’vegone with another individual. That’s all that an employer has to share back with someone that has applied for a role. They do not have to give them any detailed feedback at all. So that’s one avenue.

The other avenue is that interviewer that just blatantly asked inappropriate questions. And that inappropriate question could be, you know, let’s assume someone has some form of hand injury and they said, well, what happened to your hands? You know? Well, you know, I injured it. Well, gosh, how did you injure it? I hope you didn’t do it at work. And that’s what you have to be careful of because then you’re branching into medical history, which technically is not part of the initial interview process. However, it is valid to the interview, but the way it’s set up today through EEOC regs and rules is, you know, you go through the whole interview process and then you get to the point of making a job offer and you ask, is there any reason you would have any physical limitations in being able to perform these job duties? Well, if you have a hand injury and it’s maybe a permanent hand injury and you’re going to be on an assembly line, how am I as an employer going to be able to accommodate your disability on an assembly line? Yes. So it is a valid question. It’s just not questions that you ask on the front end.

And a lot of people don’t realize this, but an employer cannot do any form of background research on you. When I say background, I’m talking about criminal, credit, medical, until they extend the job offer to you and you accept it. And then they’re extending that job offer to you conditional of drug screens, maybe a medical exam, maybe even a credit check. And that’s why it’s important that you tell people you’re interviewing that when you establish the interview with them, that if you proceed forward before you’re actually able to begin in the position, you would have those background screens done. That way, if there’s a legitimate reason they need to give you information on the front end, it might save you and them both time.

But it is a bit frustrating for interviewers to go all the way through this process and get to, and sometimes it’s two and three interviews to get through the process, make the job offer, only to find out there’s activities on the criminal background check or they don’t pass a drug screen. We’ve even had clients tell us, please just quit giving drug screens. We’ll deal with it down the road. And we don’t like doing that because that was our reputation at Sirion is that the candidates we sent you to go to work for you were fully background checked and passed everything that needed to be passed in order to provide you with the highest quality candidate.

Well, thank you for that sequence because I would have assumed, as many of our viewers and listeners would have assumed, I think that background checks could be done before the initial interview. No, no. Now, I have had interviewers say, hey, we do background checks. Is there anything you would want to share with us at this point before we go any further? I don’t feel that that’s inappropriate to ask. I think it’s all how you ask it, though. It needs to be asked in a very positive, professional manner. And if I did ask that question, I often did it to where I was saying I’m protecting your time as a job candidate to make sure that we don’t waste your time when we could redirect you and send you another direction.

Stacey, you said something a few minutes ago that I applaud and endorse, and that is where you talked about the job interview. You don’t like to refer to it as an interview, but as a dialogue. And in fact, that’s what I call this biz communication show. I don’t call it an interview. I call it a conversation with a highly qualified guest.

In just a few seconds, we’re going to come back and we’re going to have you give us a tip on who has the percentage of talking in an interview. What percentageis the interviewer talking and what percentage is the interviewee? As a interviewee. We’ll get to that in just a few seconds. Do you wish you felt confident about giving speeches? Do you want to deal with difficult people constructively? And what about becoming more persuasive in sales? Then keep listening now to Dr. Bill Lampton. He spent 20 years in management, so he knows the communication skills you need for success. I urge you to call the Biz Communication guy today for a no-cost but very valuable 30-minute discussion about your communication challenges. Call now, 678-316-4300. Again, that’s 678-316-4300.

Stacey, when we were talking about topics we wanted to cover today, this was one that you mentioned, and that is the percentage of time that the interviewer talks, the percentage of time that the interviewee talks, and I don’t know if you can give us exact percentages, but what are your recommendations along that line?

Well, before we address that, I would like to bring to the audience’s attention that there are multiple stages of an interview, and back when I was beginning my career as a branch manager, if I had openings, you know, I called the personnel director, they put out a posting, they may have put an ad in the classified local newspaper section, and those people would be brought in not to HR, but sent directly to me, and then I would decide whether to hire them or not. But that’s changed over the years. You now have your human resource director or even a chief human resource officer in an organization, and they have large staffs, they have recruiters, and when you have an opening now, you send in a request to refill the position, and they actually do a lot of the interviewing for you. And by doing all that interviewing, by the time the person gets to you, that recruiter is assuming, well, you’re just going to hire this individual. So now there may be people doing that final interview that really aren’t trained and skilled on interviewing. So they’re just kind of, I hate to use the word shooting from the hip, but that’s kind of what they’re doing.

And now to answer your question about the percentage of talk time, I think those highly skilled recruiters are great at listening, they’re great at engaging the candidate into conversation, they’re taking bullets that they have about the position and letting that individual talk about how they can accomplish that. But then often when it gets out to that line leader or that office manager for a final interview, they do all the talking. They may tell you everything that was wrong with the person that had the position before you. They may tell you everything they want to do differently with the position going forward. They may ask you, where have you done similar work? But once they ask you that question, before you can answer them, they start asking you another question. So I think large and small business both struggle in those final interviews because those people often are not trained at all to do interviews. They’re just told, you need to meet this individual, see if you think they’re a good fit for your department or not.

That reminds me of another question. This will be our final question that we have time to discuss. And you alluded to it a little bit there. What would you say are some of the most offensive habits that interviewers might have?

Not paying attention to when the candidate is answering their questions.

Or maybe they’ve been asked to elaborate on something and the interviewer all of a sudden turns and looks away and looks at an email and then turns and looks back and is engaged and then hears something outside the door and they’ll turn and look outside the door.

But I remember having a candidate share with me that they really liked the place we had sent them to do an interview. They were very interested in working for that company, but they said it was a bit uncomfortable that the interviewer sat there the whole time behind their desk shakingtheir knee and the interviewer’s knee was hitting the drawer that had pens and pencils in it. You could hear them clanking. And because we, as a recruiting company, we would always ask the candidate, tell us about your experience. Because if they shared with us great experiences, we shared that with our client. If they shared with us some concerns, then we went to our client and said, these are some concerns that were brought to our attention. And it may impact the ability for you to fill your positions if these things aren’t corrected in the interview process.

It brings to mind something that I probably have tried to forget. Right during my days in higher education, I went to a university to be interviewed. And when I was brought into the interviewer’s office, the one who was entitled to hire me, he spent the first one minute, I guess, reading over some material on his desk. And he looked at me and said, I’ll be with you as soon as I finish this. Well, I had, unfortunately, two days of interviews lined up there. I couldn’t afford a flight back on my own. But instantly I knew if this interviewer, this college administrator wouldn’t give me that much attention and courtesy during the opening meeting with them, what in the heck would it be like later on? And it’s a good thing I did some acting in college because I had to act for the next two days as though I were interested in everybody that I talked to. And that flight home certainly looked good.

I understand. Yes. Wow. You know, it’s such an important role to be an interviewer. And some individuals will utilize professional recruiters because they realize that’s not what they’re talented at. And a lot of business owners like to cut costs and not have to pay recruiters to do work that they feel like their managers should be able to do. But their managers are in charge of managing people, producing a product, getting a service out and completed. Interviewing takes a lot of time if you do it effectively. And, you know, even internally when we had to hire new recruiters, you know, I had staff that would take and meet with maybe seven or eight people and boil it down to the best two and have me meet with the very best two. But that still took two or three hours of my time during the day, which took me off the road selling during that time. But it was time well invested, wasn’t it? It is.

I will say one thing I don’t like in an interview process unless it’s really at the final stage and basically both parties have agreed that if a job’s offered, they will accept it. I don’t like lunch interviews or dinner interviews.

Why is that?

Well, one, they’re expensive. Two, too much can go wrong on either party’s part. And if you’re doing a lunch or a dinner interview, I strongly suggest nobody gets alcohol, even the interviewer. The interviewer may think it’s perfectly fine to order that glass of wine or it may be let’s see how everybody is in a casual setting. A casual setting will have very little to do with your job performance long term, but something could go wrong in that setting that could keep you from getting the job or it could even something happen from an interviewer standpoint that keeps the person from accepting the job. I think that’s a very important addition because what’s the saying during World War II, loose lips sink ships? And we might think we’re in full control of what we’re saying, but then again, what if we get a little bit giddy?

Yes. Stacey, this has been just as I anticipated, a highly informative, enjoyable, and helpful conversation, not an interview. I know that there are people who would like to get in touch with you to tap more of your expertise. What’s your contact information, please?

Well, now that I have sold my business, I’m working out of my home office, as you can see here, but I canbe reached by my mobile phone. I’m still old fashioned. I will answer my phone if you give me a call or you can text me 770-540-0388, or you can shoot me an email at stacyReece at charter.net. Thank you for those.

And now that you’re given your contact information, I’m happy to give mine:

My YouTube channel: Bill Lampton, PhD. This is the eighth year, Stacey, of the Biz Communication Show. So there are eight years of conversations that if you tune in and hear those experts that I’ve hosted, you will undoubtedly strengthen your business skills. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel.

My website: Since my moniker is the Biz Communication Guy, my website logically is bizcommunicationguy.com. While you’re there, there’s an opportunity to sign up for the podcast.

Phone calls: Like Stacey, I will welcome phone calls, no obligation, no initial fee, just exploring what your communication challenges and problems are. My number is 678-316-4300.

Before I close, I want to give great credit to the co-producer of this show, Mike Stewart. Mike is based in Nashville. Mike Stewart and I met in 1997, and ever since then, he’s been my marketing and technology expert and a very valuable one. His website is localinternetpresence.com. I encourage you to get in touch with Mike.

Stacey, what a fascinating time we’ve had. If you could leave us in 30 seconds or a minute with what kind of gems should we take away from the conversation you and I have had?

Well, I would like to speak to the interviewers for just a moment and make sure and I share this with all emphasis on making interviewers aware that the candidate is also interviewing them. That candidate is trying to make a decision. Not only do I want to work in this industry, do I want to associate my name with this company, but will I be able to work with this individual that’s sitting across this table or desk from me?

So as an interviewer, I encourage you to be willing to answer questions about yourself and your organization that a candidate may ask you. There’s no reason in hiring someone that’s not going to do you a great job, but at the same time, you will save that candidate a great amount of stress and anguish if you’re able to answer their questions so that they can make a fair choice just as much as you want to make a fair choice.

Well said. Thank you again, Stacey Reece, for being our guest today. Thanks to those of you who joined us on the video portion and to those who were with us on the podcast. Be with us every week for the Biz Communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, welcoming you the next time as well.