Hello, everyone. Welcome to How to Hire the Right Employees. This is the first topic in the 2022 Xerox Leadership Certificate webinar series. I'm Greg Brannan from Xerox. Good to be with you today. The Deer Oaks Leadership Certificate webinar series is being offered again this year.

I believe this is the sixth time that we've offered this series. And to remind you folks that those of you that take part in all four topics, it's a quarterly series with four topics. Today's topic is the first one, how to hire the right employees. We'll be coming back in June and presenting creating a culture of improved employee engagement.

Part 3 will take place in September, how to motivate a multigenerational work team. And part 4 will take place in November, it's advanced coaching skills for leaders. And so any of you who participate in all four sessions this year, either live-- either the live session or by viewing the recording on-demand, each of these sessions will be recorded and made available for those that weren't available to take part in the live presentation.

But if you do participate either live or via on-demand recording and do all four of these sessions this year, at the end of 2022, you will receive the Deer Oaks Leadership Certificate. So I'm looking forward to many of you having that opportunity this year.

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Now keep in mind, please, that we do have several hundred people on the broadcast today. So I do anticipate we'll probably get a lot of questions. And so we may not get to everyone's questions, but I'll get to as many as I can today. All right, folks, let's go ahead and get started.

All right, let's start just at a high level with the general aspects of a great hire. I mean, obviously, getting the right people to come to work for our organization is a key to being successful. Right? Absolutely. I think we all know that.

Jim Collins wrote a book that's pretty famous called Good to Great. I thought that was one of the better business books I've ever read. And one of the key points he talked about in Good to Great is great organizations, high performing organizations really put a lot of focus on getting the right people on the bus. That was his term for hiring the right people.

He says make sure you've got the right people on the bus, because obviously, our greatest asset is organizations, our employees. And when we have a team of really good people, high character, very skilled, very motivated, very engaged, the right people for your organization, a good fit for your organization's culture, a good fit for the chemistry of the individual teams.

When that happens, we will have a much higher likelihood of having a really successful organization that will be highly productive and be able to provide a great level of service to your citizens or your customers or your constituents.

And so let's start talking about, what are the general aspects of a great hire? What should we be looking for in general? Way too often, folks, people rush through the hiring process. And there's different reasons for that. And I've been a hiring manager now personally for 28 years, and I've made the mistake of hiring too quickly multiple times in my career.

And I've done a better job probably the last 10 years or so. But early in my career, oftentimes, I would be tempted to rush through the process just to fill a position, because when you have an open position, it can put a lot of stress on productivity.

I mean, a lot of times, these positions are key to the productivity of our team. And if you have an open position, a lot of times we'll try to move as quickly as you can define someone that looks like they're a potentially good fit and just move forward with the hire.

But we can make hiring mistakes. And when we hire the wrong person, maybe we hire someone that had had a good resume, had the requisite experience, but maybe wasn't a good fit for the team. Or we rush through the process and don't interview enough people, because we just want to fill the position and move on and get back to the day-to-day focus.

And so we got to really be thoughtful coming into the hiring process to remember that getting the right person to join our organization or to become a part of our team really is the foundation of our success and our productivity.

And so we want to be looking for someone that doesn't just have the right resume and the right experience, but someone that's potentially a really good fit for your organization, where they share your organization's values, they've got the kind of character that you're looking for in a good employee. Their career goals are in sync with where your organization is going, and what opportunities might work out for them as part of that moving forward.

An individual, it's also going to get along well with the people on your team. And we talk a lot in hiring about soft skills. I know most of you know soft skills are referred to as interpersonal skills or people skills, emotional intelligence skills. Those may not show up on the resume. Most resumes are going to be very specific to the technical skills that are listed in your job description. People are going to want to put together a resume that fits those technical skills.

But so many of the intangibles that make someone a successful employee and really a positive contributor to your environment are going to be an addition to their technical skills, their ability to get along well with others, their ability to provide great customer service to your clients or the citizen that you're serving.

And so we need to be remembering to be balanced and comprehensive in what we're looking for, and not just looking for people to have the right job function skills or the right amount of education and experience in their background.

I love this school of thought about finding a SWAN, I thought that was really cool, is that you want someone that's smart. We want we want bright people, intelligent people. We want hardworking people. We want ambitious people. But we also want people who are really nice and easy to get along with.

And we also want to be on the lookout for red flags. Oftentimes, a kind of a common hiring mistake people make, and I've made it many times earlier in my career is pushing past a red flag. Like I might have someone in front of me that I'm interviewing-- I can remember a time, yeah actually, I can remember a time about 20 years ago, give or take, when I was hiring an employee that had a good resume and had good experience, but I saw some red flags.

And I overlooked those red flags and went ahead and hired him anyway. And then the employee in a short time didn't work out. And in retrospect, I realized that I saw those red flags in the interviewing process or during the screening process, and then the interview process. But I decided to overlook those and focus more on the employee's job skills because I wanted to fill that position quickly. And I learned from that mistake.

So we want to make sure we also identify, what do we not want in an employee? And make sure if some of those characteristics become apparent during the interview process that you've identified that you do not want for this position that we're willing to move on and look at other candidates that don't have those negative characteristics.

All right, folks the next thing I want to share is something that not a lot of people spend a whole lot of time in, but it is a best practice in hiring. It's establishing an ideal profile for a position. And I wish I'd have known to do this earlier in my career, probably the first 10 years, give or take, of my career as a hiring manager, maybe even a little longer than that.

I did not take the time to do a profile. I was starting like most hiring managers do. I'd start with the job description and what we were looking for in an employee, right? We knew what kind of college degree we were looking for if that was a requirement. We knew how many years experience ideally we were looking for. We knew what kind of job skills we were looking for.

But I didn't give a lot of thinking to the intangibles again. People skills, personality, their character. And so I'm going to talk about this. I want to talk about establishing an ideal profile for the position.

When we slow down a little bit and we establish a profile-- I'm going to give you six areas that can make up a really well-rounded profile to really get us ready before we go into the interview process as to what we should be looking for, and to help us go beyond just looking at the resume, just looking at their work experience or education.

And so the first two categories we're all going to naturally do as hiring managers. Ideal work experience, I mean, that's again following the job description, we're going to be reading the resume looking for that. Desired professional skills, a lot of that's going to come from the job description. It's going to come from, and you're going to be able to discern that through the resume.

So those first two categories are what most hiring managers are pretty good at. But now we get into the intangibles. And this is what I mean by digging deeper, taking a more comprehensive look at when we're screening and when we're interviewing for positions.

So we can truly increase the likelihood we're going to make a really good hire and get a really good fit for the organization and for the team. So next is we start getting into the soft skills, is the interpersonal skills. Folks, this to me, is huge.

Now it's interesting, Forbes Magazine had an article, was based on some research. And it was several years ago now. But they were talking about on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being excellent and one being lacking, what percentage of a candidate's success comes from their technical skills?

And now the world's way of looking at things typically puts very high focus on technical skills. And obviously, technical skills are important. People have to be competent, they've got to be able to perform the work at a high level. So they've got to come to the table with that. They have to have the right work experience, the right education to meet the needs of the job.

So, of course, that's important. But what this article and this research study talked about was that far too much focus is placed on that, and that more focus should be placed on people's emotional intelligence and social skills.

These are the intangibles I'm talking about here. So their interpersonal skills, are they someone that can get along well with others? Are they a good communicator? Are they respectful in how they interact with other people? Can they manage conflict? Because it's going to happen. In every workplace relationship, there's going to be conflict at time.

Are they a good listener? I mean, do they keep their emotions under control? Or are they kind of up and down emotionally? And you never what you're going to get. You feel like you have to walk on eggshells around them.

Do they have the right personality? I mean, are they positive? Do they have a good attitude? Are they easy to get along with? Are they agreeable? Are they going to be a good teammate? Are they coachable for you as a supervisor? Is this going to be someone that you can really work with, that you're going to enjoy working with?

I find coachability is a really important trait to look for in people. And then to go deeper into personal characteristics, are they going to be a hard worker. Folks that sometimes it's harder to discern from a resume if someone's going to work hard, you'll know on paper what their experience is. Where they work from this point to this point, what kind of degree they have.

But when they're on the job, are they someone that rolls their sleeves up and gives a good effort every day? Do they tend to get engaged and give you 100%? Are they people you can trust? Are they honest? And do they have integrity?

Are they persevering? Are they the kind of people that don't give up easily? That they can overcome adversity. So those are what I'm talking about. We got to drill down into not just the technical skills. To me, it should be a 50-50 proposition just in general terms is certainly the first half is important.

You need to make sure that they've got the prerequisite job experience, they've got the right degree, they've got the right skill sets. So absolutely, that's important. But the other half should just as important. Are they the right kind of person? Will they get along with everybody else on the team?

Are they someone that you'll enjoy working with and that's coachable? That'll respond well to your leadership. Are they people that are easy to get along with, where you'll enjoy spending time with them? Are they going to be a positive addition to your team culture? Or your workplace environment?

And are they the right kind of person that you'd be proud to work alongside? That's important folks. And I know I'm preaching to the choir about this. But again so many of us, myself included, I've made dozens of bad hires over the years. I've probably hired, I don't know, somewhere between maybe 250, 300 people, give or take over the years in 28 years.

And I've made dozens and dozens of poor hires because I wasn't, especially earlier in my career, I wasn't establishing a profile. I was going in very narrow. I was going back to the beginning of this. I was focused mostly on their work experience and their professional skills.

I was focused on the resume and if they interviewed well. I think most of us know that people will put their best foot forward during an interview. You will not necessarily be getting to know the real person during the interview. I'm going to talk about some ways we can discern more of what someone's really all about during the interviewing process.

But oftentimes, we can miss some things in an interview. People are going to tell you what they want you to hear. Again, they're going to put on their-- put their best foot forward and you may not get-- you may not be seeing the real person, or at least you may not be seeing all of that person. You may just be seeing the parts that they want you to see. We need to stay aware of that.

That's why having a really comprehensive profile, a wide and deep profile will just help you be more discerning as you're screening applicants, and then as you get down into the interviewing process. Last but not least, I think it's important to identify characteristics to avoid. And I did not do enough of this earlier in my career.

And this was also important for me as well because I tend to be kind of optimistic. And obviously, being optimistic is a positive trait. But sometimes it would blind me during interviews. Like, for example, if someone had a really good resume, was really experienced, look like a potentially good fit for the job, I would see some red flags, like I mentioned earlier, and I would overlook them.

Just thinking, well, you know, no one's perfect. And as a result, I made a couple of bad hires. So one of the adjustments I've made is I've started thinking more about, what do we want to avoid in a candidate? So if you're looking for a particular position, what do you want to avoid?

And I'll give you a good example. There was a team that I was working with a few years ago, and they had an accountant-- it was an accounting department. They had five people in that department, I believe. The director of accounting, and then they have four other staff accountants.

And they were very-- they were a quiet, serious roll your sleeves up work hard group. They were good people. But they were all introverted. And they like, they're quiet. Everyone keeps to themselves environment. They really did. And they were happy with the culture.

So one of the characteristics to avoid for that particular team, I remember talking about this example back then was we don't want someone who's outgoing. My personality, for example. You can probably tell just by being on the line with me here for 20 minutes, I'm outgoing, and I can be loud, and I can be boisterous.

And that doesn't work in every environment, right? And so you want to get the right people into the right places. And so for that particular environment, people would want to-- they'd want to not bring in someone who is kind of loud and kind of outgoing, that's not a good fit for that particular team.

And so let's be thinking about that. If there's things you want to avoid, if you don't want egotistical people-- a lot of people come into an interview very cocky. They're trying to sell themselves, right? So they're try tell you that they're really confident. But if you're in an environment where you feel like, if I hire someone who's a know it all that's not going to be a good fit here, you got to be careful of that.

Also, if you have a real team oriented environment where people collaborate regularly on projects and you don't want a lone wolf, you don't want someone who's going to go off on their own and do their own thing, you want to be on the lookout for that maverick or that lone wolf that may not be the right fit for that particular team or that particular position. So just be on the lookout for that.

All right, now I'm going to talk about questions. Now as we get into the interviewing process, I'm going to talk about questions that you can ask during the interviewing process that can help discern what you're looking for in your profile at a deeper level. And so I'm going to share two types of questions. And I know this is review for many of you, maybe most of you.

But I want to talk about revealing questions. These are just demographic questions. So this is just to gather information, OK? But then I also want to talk about behavioral interviewing. I know we're all probably by now familiar with that term.

Behavioral interviewing is probably the best skill I've ever learned as an interviewer, as a supervisor for the hiring process. I did not have these skills 20 years ago. And so I was asking a lot of revealing questions, a lot of general questions to people. And then I was really relying on my gut feel.

And at times I didn't read the individual's personality right. I didn't read their potential right. I was overlooking some red flags as I mentioned. But behavioral questions give you the opportunity to find or to more specifically learn how someone's going to behave when they come to work for you.

Psychologists say that the best predictors of future behavior is past behavior. So if you ask someone questions about-- in a certain situation in the past, how did you handle that? How they answer that question will at least give you a better indication of how they may handle that, a similar situation when they're working for you than just asking a direct question of them or asking a general question of them.

So, for example, I'm going to give you three categories here to ask interviewing questions about that can really help you find the right fit for your team and the right match for that profile that we talked about a few minutes ago. You want to ask questions to determine fit with your organization. You want the right person on the bus, right?

Like Jim Collins said, you want the right person joining your team. And then you also want to ask a series of questions around the best fit for the position. It's important also to get the right person in the right job, right?

And so there's one research study that said that someone doing what they enjoy doing is one of the things that drives loyalty more than anything else. What people do every day matters. I mean, we spent a lot of our waking hours at work, right? For full time employees, we're spending more of our waking hours on the job doing the work than we are even with our own families Monday through Friday, right?

And so you want to make sure you're hiring someone that's going to enjoy the work that you're hiring them to do. If they're just looking for a job, they need a job and you happen to have an organization that has a decent job that you're offering, I mean, you're going to-- at times, you're not going to get someone who's really committed to doing that work. They're just going to want-- they're just looking for a good job.

And I can't blame them for that. Of course, they need to take care of their families and all those kinds of things. But if you want the best fit for your organization, make sure that you're finding a great fit for that position. They're going to be much less-- much more likely to be engaged, give 100%, be productive, and stay longer if they enjoy their work.

And then last but not least, we're going to talk about questions to determine fit with the team. This is just important and just as important. This gets more into the intangibles of beyond the job skills-- is this person going to be someone that's going to get along with others, someone that's going to support their teammates, that's going to fit well into your culture, into your team environment?

All right, let me go back to the beginning and talk about questions to determine fit with your organization. And so revealing questions obviously there's a lot you could ask, right? And nowadays with the internet there's no excuse for someone to come into an interview unprepared.

Like if I say, why do you want to work here, and someone doesn't have a good answer, that, again, tells me that they're just looking for a job, right? And they didn't-- and maybe they're not as thorough as I might want an employee to be.

There's no reason why people wouldn't go online and really learn a lot more about your organization, like what do you know about us? Why do you want to work here? Why will you be a good fit here? I think those are really good questions. You want to see-- I want someone who wants to be here.

We've been very blessed at Xerox. We have a really, really good team that's been together for a long time. We have very little turnover. We've been very blessed. But we've got people who want to be here.

I mean, I've been here 10 years. I love Xerox. I mean, I love the way we-- I love our executive director. I love the way we do-- what we do here. I love that we can help people. That's what you want.

You want to be looking during the interview with-- you want to look for people that are really are interested in what you do and want to be a part of that. Because if they can't bring some of that during the interview when they should be selling themselves, they may not stay very long. And I know right now-- folks, we all we're in this period of time that they're calling the great resignation, right?

And that's been sort of a tag that's been given to what's happened in the last two years since the pandemic began where people have been changing positions across the United States a lot more frequently than before the pandemic. And there's a lot of reasons for that, right? People have been through a lot of stress during the pandemic.

And there's been a lot of changes in where and how we're doing our work. A lot more organizations have allowed remote work than ever before. So there's been a lot of things that have changed that have precipitated some of that.

But, folks, we want to keep our good people. If we're constantly hiring new people and having to train them-- and you all know as supervisors it takes a lot of effort to fill a position and to train and hopefully get the right person in and make sure there'll be a good fit. And it's much better to bloom where we've planted, to hire great people and have them stay for as long as possible.

So I think, again, that's why it's important to determine when-- during the interview if someone's a good fit for your organization. So I'll ask some behavioral questions. I want to know if there are people that want to work for the long term. I want to know what their career goals are.

I want to know if they'll adjust to our way of doing things because if they come in and they don't like the way we do things and are not a good fit, chances are they won't stay very long, and they probably won't be as productive as they could have been otherwise. So here's some sample behavioral questions to determine fit with your organization.

Give me an example of how you had to adjust your approach to the way things were done at a previous employer that you worked for. I want to know because every person coming into an organization has to adjust somewhat, right? I want to know if they're adjustable, if they're flexible, if they're willing to come to our organization and get with the program, right?

Certainly, we're open to people's new ideas, and that's always keeping things fresh and everything. But I want to know if they're going to be adaptable and adjustable. That's an important quality in an employee that-- especially one that's going to come into your organization and make a commitment to the long term and want to be here for a while.

And if you know there's some things that are difficult in your organization-- and every organization has its challenges, right? But if you know that one of the things that's caused people to leave in the past there's a lot of paperwork, you can ask a behavioral question to see if this person is going to get frustrated by that, like you can say, can you give me an example of how you've had to do a significant amount of paperwork in a past position and how you handled that, how you felt about that, and how you handled that?

If you know your organization depends on a lot of really well done paperwork and there's a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of hoops to jump through, you want to make sure that's not going to be a turnoff to a new employee and cause them to want to go look for another job in the short term. And so I want to be checking for that. And I want to know if someone's going to be a good fit in our culture.

And I'm going to ask things like, can you tell me about when you're-- during your current job search, what kind of a culture are you looking for? That would be a revealing question. Like, what kind of culture are you looking for?

And if they're describing something that is not your organization, maybe this isn't their best fit for this employee if they're looking for something different than what you're currently offering here. But remember to ask a good amount of revealing questions, which again are general informational questions and behavioral questions. I'll give you more examples here in a moment.

All right, next let's talk about questions to determine fit with the position. And so revealing questions would be, why do you want this position? What about your experience will make you successful in this position? How will your strengths enable you to be successful in this job?

And so those are the kinds of questions again you're looking for fit. Tell me why you enjoy this kind of work? So again those are, again, are revealing questions. But now behavioral questions again to drill down remember past behaviors, the best predictor of future behavior.

I want to know how someone's going to act on the job later. So if you know that there's certain situations that are challenging in that particular position, ask them for an example of, we do this kind of stuff here. Give me an example of how you've done this kind of thing in the past? And how did you handle that? How did you approach it?

Or here's an example of-- if you know that there are certain problems that employees in this position encounter and you want to see if this is something that the person won't get frustrated with and will hang in there with and can handle, OK, say something like, if you're-- give me an example of in the past you were confronted with a challenge like this and what you did to handle it, be an example? You want to know based on--

And you want them to give you a specific example. Don't let them be too general in their answers. Ask them for it. Say, can you give me a specific example of how you were faced with this kind of situation in the past and how you handled it? And again that again will be a predictor of when they get into those situations working for you in the future, that's how they'll probably handle that situation.

Another thing in terms of the specific job requirements, if there are certain parts of that job that you need people to perform at a high level, ask a couple of behavioral questions. Like, for example, let's say you're hiring a mechanic, is to say, give me an example how you've worked on this kind of engine in the past and what you found was the most important parts, the most important approaches to making that engine run in an optimal way?

Or if this job has a lot to do with customer service, to say, can you tell me-- can you-- give me an example of how you've dealt with a really difficult customer in the past and how you handled that, and how you were able to work effectively with that customer and meet their needs? Give me an example of-- because that again, if you-- I mean, if you're hiring someone that's going to be a customer-facing position, you want to make sure that person has good interpersonal skills, has a good customer service approach, a good attitude. And the best way to find that out is to ask them to give you examples of how they've handled different customer situations in the past.

All right, the last category I want to talk about is questions to determine fit with the team. Folks, don't forget this. A lot of times we might think that we're hiring just for a position. No, we're hiring-- we're bringing someone into the team.

Those of you that know sports-- and I promise not to overdo sports analogies-- but those of you that know sports recognize that you can have a lot of talented players on a team, but if they don't gel, if they don't have good chemistry together, if they can't get along together, they're not going to perform at their best. They're not going to win.

And so there's been lots of examples in the world of sports where professional teams have gone out and purchased the contracts of some very, very talented people, and they just never won a championship. And you would think, why? On paper they should have won because the individual players on the team were not meshing. They didn't have good chemistry together.

So you want to really make sure that you're bringing-- like in my example, I told you about that accounting team before. You're bringing the right person into a team. And so you can ask a lot of revealing questions, like, how do you typically get to know your coworkers? How do you build relationships with coworkers in general? How do you approach collaborating with colleagues when you're working on a task together? Would be some revealing questions you could ask.

But, again, make sure you're asking a good number of behavioral questions. I want to know how someone is going to interact with their colleagues. And I want to know how they're going to be-- how easy they're going to be to manage or how much of a challenge they might be for me to manage if I'm going to be their supervisor. Like, for example, can you tell me-- can you give me an example of a coworker that you didn't like very much and how you approached working with them on a task?

Because I want to see if there is someone that is going to make it work. I want to hear answers like, even though that wasn't my favorite person, they had some strengths as well, and I realized that it was important for us to kind of figure out a way to work together and collaborate. And so I approached it in a very collegial way and tried to be real respectful to them.

And that's the kind of stuff-- that particular individual will probably-- will likely be someone that's going to be a good teammate who's going to work well with others. And if you want to figure out if that person is going to be someone that you can manage really well and you know you have a certain style, you can say something like, give me an example of someone of a supervisor you worked for in the past that maybe sometimes was a little bit too hands-on. If you know that you tend to be a little hands-on-- and how you handled working for that person or with that person?

Again you want to see if it's going to be a good fit based on their past experience if they're going to be a good fit working with you moving forward. All right, a couple last things and I'll open it up for questions, folks.

Here's more tips for a great interview process. And so I learned this the hard way too. Again, part of my problem earlier on with some of the mistakes-- hiring mistakes I made was moving too quickly. I think a good rule of thumb is to try to interview at least three people for every position and consider even more interviews for more important positions, right? And resist the temptation to hire too quickly.

I mean, you might like the first person you meet and think, oh, great. Let me just go ahead and make an offer right here, and then I can get back to doing what I need to do operationally and move on. But that can be a mistake because there might have been-- if you'd have to just maybe talk to a few more people, you might have found someone that was a much better fit.

And so let's not be in too much of a hurry. Let's be as comprehensive in the interviewing process as we can. And I also think it's important to have at least three people interview each candidate. I think that's a best practice that we need to consider. Again, some hiring managers they do all the hiring or maybe they'll have their boss do the second intervals.

But if you can do more than that, if you can do three or more interviews, three or more people interviewing each candidate more input is better. You get more opinions. And make sure you also give candidates some exposure to other team members who may not be supervisors, so maybe not a formal interview. But have them spend a little time informally with one of the departments-- one of other staff members in the department.

I found that that's-- you get a lot of great insight from staff members in the department. A lot of times a candidate when they're interviewing formally they'll, again, tell you what they want you to hear and put their best foot forward, but they relax a little bit and let their hair down a little bit if they're just hanging out with an employee, not seeing this as a particular interview. And I've gotten some great heads up from a few folks that have sat with candidates that said, I don't think I'd go near this person and here's why. Because that person let their hair down and showed a side of them if they didn't show in the formal interview.

But make sure you have enough people interviewing every each candidate. We all have blind spots as interviewers, as supervisors. And so, again, I tend to be too optimistic when I'm assessing candidates. And I tend to overlook some things I probably shouldn't overlook.

So I make sure that I try to have two other people weigh in and have interviews also to make sure that I'm not-- my blind spots don't cause me to hire the wrong person. And again don't rush the process. I would rather take an extra month to hire someone now.

And this was, again, my-- a big mistake of mine 15, 20 years ago. Nowadays with the lessons I've learned, I would rather take an extra month now to be more thorough and more comprehensive in the hiring process rather than hiring someone too quickly and have them leave in six months or in a year or just be difficult to deal with and not a good fit for the team.

And then last but not least, folks, a few additional things to keep in mind. When you're getting ready to-- when you think you're about to make an offer to someone, we tend to put our sales hat on. We start selling the candidate on why they should come to work here, right? Because most people are interviewing with multiple organizations.

But you want to make sure you give a candidate a realistic idea of what it's going to be like to work for your organization, and work on your team, and work in that position. Because you don't want them to get in into your organization and be disappointed and not stick around very long. So make sure they know what they're getting into.

Again, I'd rather have someone not take the position than take it and leave in six months because I sold them on it, or they didn't have a complete idea of what it was going to be like to work here. Again, don't forget to look for red flags. Watch nonverbals. You want an employee that's got a reasonable amount of confidence.

And so if someone is really uncomfortable throughout the interview, doesn't make good eye contact, fidgety, you can tell by their answers that they may have-- they may look good on paper on the resume, but they don't look confident. That may not be the best fit. For competence, we do have to have some confidence.

And I'm not talking about cockiness. But I'm talking about people need to believe in themselves a little bit to do good work. So I look for that as well. And then, of course, it goes without saying do thorough reference checks. And I Know most organizations have policies and procedures around that.

All right, folks, I know we covered a lot in a very short period of time today. I want to open it up for questions. If you have any questions, please type your questions in the question box in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right hand corner of your screen. I'm starting to get a lot of questions.

I do want to remind all of you, folks, that Xerox is the employee assistance program. I believe for probably most of the folks that are on this call today have Xerox EAP-- Xerox as your employee assistance program provider. And I want to remind you that we are here for you all seven-- every day, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

And so if you don't know how to reach out to Deer Oaks to access your EAP benefits such as free counseling sessions and other resources, please reach out to human resources at your organization, and they'll give you the toll free number. We do answer our toll free numbers live 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And they're answered by staff ready to provide support in the moment. So again, if you need us, we're here for you around the clock. All right, folks, we've gotten a lot of great questions coming in.

One of our colleagues is asking right now if-- because they weren't able to get in from their work email, they were only able to get in through their phone, wanting to make sure they will get credit. Yes, yes, yes. If you were able to register-- I mean, if you're registered and you attended, you will get credit for this absolutely. All right, folks, let me get down through the questions here.

Got a lot of great questions. I'm going through a lot of them trying to find the ones that will have the widest audience appeal, will be the most interesting to the majority of us. Yeah, here's a good question.

This is a really good question. It's just talking about, if the assumptions that everyone has to be the same on a team, can that limit the type of individuals you get on a team? Shouldn't the goal be-- and I'm paraphrasing-- to get a team that can respect each other rather than having everybody be the same?

Yeah, you're making a really, really good point. And I didn't mean to say that-- when I was giving the example of that accounting team, I didn't mean to say that every team is going to be like that. That particular team wanted to be like that, that was their choice.

And the five of them got along really well. They had all been working together for a long time. And they were looking for someone else that was going to fit in that culture. And so, yeah. So that was their-- but in general, you're right. In general, bringing people in with different backgrounds, different skill sets, different ideas can be helpful to a team.

It's helpful to get new blood into an organization. I think we all that getting-- I mean, I've gotten some great new ideas from people coming in from the outside that had done things differently or that were a little different than some of the existing people on the team. And they brought in a nice-- they brought in a nice new perspective or a new ways of thinking.

So you're right. But my point is when you're establishing that profile, make sure that profile works for what you're looking for ideally for your team. Thank you. That was a good question. A tons of questions today, folks. Thank you for all the interest.