Hello, everyone. Welcome to How to Hire the Right Employees. This is the first topic in the 2025 Deer Oaks/AllOne Health Leadership Certificate Webinar Series. This is, I believe, the 10th year that we've offered this series. So we're glad that you've joined us and hope that you'll be with us throughout the series.

For those of you that are familiar with the series, it is a quarterly series that Deer Oaks and now Deer Oaks/AllOne Health have been offering over the last decade. And basically how it works is there's four quarterly topics. And if you attend all four of the quarterly topics, either in person or by reviewing the recording-- all of them will be recorded-- at the end of 2025, you'll receive the 2025 Deer Oaks/AllOne Health Leadership Certificate.

If you haven't seen the whole schedule, today of course, we're starting with How to Hire the Right Employees. We're coming back on May 19 and presenting Creating a Culture of Improved Employee Engagement. We'll follow that up on August 25 with How to Motivate a Multigenerational Work Team. And then we'll conclude the series on November 24 with Advanced Coaching Skills for Leaders.

And so I hope that many or most of you will join us for the entire series and be awarded your Deer Oaks AllOne Health Leadership Certificate at the end of the year. Now, I do want to do a little bit of a technology check. If you can please locate the Raise Hand icon in the GoToWebinar software on your screen. And I want to make sure that you can hear my voice clearly and see the slides clearly.

So if you could, respond by hitting the Raise Hand icon, just to let me know that we are good to go technology wise. Again, folks, if you could click on the Raise Hand icon. All right, I'm getting everyone now. That's wonderful. Thank you, folks. We are good to go technology wise. I appreciate you helping me with that technology check.

All right. So let's get into today's presentation. I do want to remind you that during these educational presentations provided by Deer Oaks, participants are in listen-only mode, which means of course, you won't be able to audibly share your comments or ask questions during the formal part of the presentation, which should take today, probably somewhere around 30 to 35 minutes, give or take.

But your questions are important to me. When we get to the end of the formal part of the presentation, I will open it up for questions. At that time, we'll use the chat. If you could put your questions into the chat, and I'll answer as many questions as time will allow us this afternoon. So I'm looking forward to that Q&A session here coming up shortly. Let's go ahead and get started, folks.

All right. Let me begin with the general aspects of a great hire. I know a lot of you, probably most of you on the call today, have a good amount of experience interviewing and could contribute a lot to this conversation as well. But let me share, just in general, some of the aspects of a great hire.

And just to give you my background, I've been in a supervisory role now for just about 30 years throughout my career. I've been with Deer Oaks now for going on 14 years-- Deer Oaks/AllOne Health. And so I have hired actually, probably well over 200 people over the years. And there's been times when I've made hiring mistakes, where I hired someone that I thought was going to be a good fit at the beginning or during the interviewing stage.

And then they would come on board and six months, a year, two years in, I would realize that this person wasn't a great fit. And I know you all know, those of you that have interviewed-- and I know most of you today have interviewed in the past-- that there's certain things we can do during the recruiting process and the interviewing process that can increase the likelihood that we're going to make a good hire.

Someone that's going to be a good fit for our team, that's going to join us, stay with us for a while, be engaged and productive, be a good teammate. And that's what we're talking about today, is trying to really get our arms around the best practices in making great hires. And so let's start with some of the general aspects of a great hire.

Now, you certainly want to try to-- throughout the hiring process, the recruiting and hiring process-- try to identify individuals that can be a good fit for your organization, that will have the same values, that will have the same goals, the right experience. And so we'll talk about that a little bit more specifically today.

We also want to bring people into our organization, individuals that will get along well with the other people on our team, that will be a good team player, that will be a positive add to our organizational or departmental culture. And so that's a little bit harder to identify during the interviewing process. We'll talk about some of those strategies here today as well.

Someone said to me, I look to hire swans. And I thought that there was-- they shared this acronym SMART, Working Hard, Ambitious, and Nice. I thought, that's ideal. I think we'd all like to have a team full of people that are smart, hardworking, ambitious, and nice. And then of course, you want to avoid hiring people that have characteristics that would not be a good fit with your team, that you would want to avoid.

And so again, obviously, it's hard to discern that sometimes during the interviewing process. People will put their best foot forward during the interviewing process. They're going to want you to see about them what they want you to see. And we have to use discernment and skill during the interviewing process, and throughout the recruiting process, to ensure at least-- ensure the likelihood of making the best hires possible.

Now, we're human. We're going to make mistakes sometimes. Like I shared at the beginning, I've made my share of mistakes. But if we follow a lot of the processes we're going to talk about today, we will increase the likelihood of hiring the right people for our organization, and minimize making those hiring mistakes that can happen to all of us, as hiring managers, from time to time.

All right. Let's start with establishing an ideal profile for the position. And so I think this is a step that a lot of hiring managers and work teams, HR recruiting staff don't necessarily drill down into. And I want to give people credit. A lot of you today have a lot of experience.

And most people do a pretty good job, or do their very best job in trying to identify the right profile for a position, to screen out those that don't fit that profile, do a good job of interviewing and try to make the right hire, to make a great hire for your organization. And we do the best that we can. But I do believe, if we take a little bit more time on the front end, to instead of just look at the job description as the profile-- now, of course, that's a part of it.

We want there's certain amount of experience and education, job skills that we're looking for in individual or in potential employees. And so that's a part of it. But I think if we go a little bit deeper, we'll be a little bit more mindful of looking for the ideal candidate during the interviewing process. And so the first couple I think are things that all of us would know to do. We're looking at a resume. We're looking for the prerequisite work experience.

You're looking for someone with a bachelor's degree and above. And you're looking for x number of years of work experience or related experience, and specific kinds of experience, so people can demonstrate their skills. And then you're looking at the whole skill set things. So you can discern a lot of that from the resume.

But again, let's keep in mind that people are going to be motivated when they put their resume together, to package themselves in the most attractive way possible. And it may not fully-- what we see on paper may not fully represent the whole picture of what a candidate brings to the table. And so we want to be thinking about, OK, let's go in with our eyes open.

What professional skills do we want? Not just the skills that are going to absolutely fit this particular job description. We definitely are looking for that. But what additional skills are important? Are you looking at people that have good computer skills? Are you looking for people that are great providers of customer service? They've got great interpersonal skills. Because this job has customer service responsibilities.

We want to really be thoughtful. And go even wider in our profile. Just so we're looking-- what we're going to look for during an interview, as human beings, we're going to look for what we've targeted. That's something that we're all going to do. We're going to follow the job description. We're going to look for what we're targeting.

But if we can expand the profile, to not only look at just the obvious things that are-- the obvious educational and professional and skill areas that fit with this particular job description we're looking to fill, but to look more widely. Look also at key interpersonal skills.

And the example I gave here a moment ago, if we're trying to hire someone that's going to do a lot of customer service work as part of their work-- let's say that you work for a municipality. And you're bringing someone on board to do a lot of work around planning. They're going to be a city planner or a municipal planner. They're going to be doing long-term planning.

But as part of that, this individual is going to be networking with stakeholders in the community, as part of the planning work that they're going to do. So let's not just look at their planning skills, their technical skills. Let's look at their interpersonal skills. Are they a really good communicator? Do they provide good customer service? Do they know how to build a good partnership with stakeholders?

Those are the things we want to start looking at, in terms of interpersonal skills. And to drill down a little bit more, what kind of personality are we looking for? Are we looking for someone that's going to be really positive? There are some teams that have-- as we all know, there's a culture in all organizations. A culture, a workplace environment that we've worked to identify.

From HR and from a department level, we work to identify and create a really comfortable culture for people to thrive in. But then, there's individual team cultures. I'm thinking about a team that was doing finance work for an organization. And they were-- everyone on that team was very introverted. They were nice people. And they just were not very outgoing.

And so one of the things you might be looking for, you may not want to bring an outgoing extrovert like me. You can tell just by being with me on this call today. I talk a lot. I'm very outgoing, very energetic. I might not be a good fit on a team that likes their quiet. They might not want a guy like me in here talking all the time and disturbing the peace, so to speak.

And so just be thoughtful about the ideal personality you're looking for. Are you looking for someone that's going to be really positive, encouraging? Are you looking for someone that's really outgoing, or maybe more reserved, because that would be a better fit for that team? Are you looking for someone that's coachable? If you as a supervisor, you know that you do a lot of coaching, you want to work with people that are very open to that.

And so be real thoughtful about the ideal personality. Be thoughtful about desired personal characteristics. If you need someone that's a real hard worker, make sure that that's what you're looking for. And we're going to talk about behavioral interviewing techniques here in a moment that can help us identify those things during the interview.

If you're looking for-- if you know that the position the person is coming into, or the department the person is coming into is going to be met with challenges and struggles, and you've had people leave the organization in the past because they couldn't handle the frustrations of some of the challenges, you need to then be looking for someone that has a documented history of persevering and of hanging in there, and not being easily discouraged during challenging circumstances.

Again, there's some ways that we can ask behavioral interviewing questions during the interviewing proces, to discern some of that. And then last but not least, I think to have an ideal profile, you also want to know what to avoid. If you have a really good culture, and people are very humble and bonded together, you probably don't want to bring in a real egotistical, loud person into that mix. That might not again be the right fit for that team.

But just identify, what are the characteristics we want to avoid? So if those characteristics become apparent during the interviewing process, you can at least put a yellow caution flag next to that person's name. And think, well, this maybe may not be the best fit, because I'm seeing some cautionary lights here. I'm seeing this person might be more self-focused than we're looking for-- looking for someone that's going to be more of a team player.

Or this person might be more of a lone wolf, go off and do things on their own historically, and we're more of a collaborative team that works together. So just be thoughtful about the right fit. And again, we're going to end up looking for during the interview what we're ideally targeting.

And so the more specific and widest you can make your profile, I think the better prepared you will be to ask great interview questions, and be on the lookout for the things that will be the best fit for the position.

All right. Next, I'm going to talk about three different categories of questions. Let me give you a quick overview. We're going to talk about questions that we can ask to determine fit with your organization, questions we can ask during the interview process to determine fit with the position, and also questions to determine fit with the team.

Again, we're going a little wider and deeper than you might be thinking about, just to start the standard interview or the average interview. Again, the more comprehensive we can be, I think the better. And I'm talking about two different kinds of questions, what I call revealing questions. Other people might call them general questions. Revealing questions, I ask those questions to learn more about the person.

And just the context-- try to see if this person is going to fit within these circumstances. So for example, let's say I'm hiring someone again who's a city planner but has a lot of customer service responsibilities, a lot of networking responsibilities. I want to see if they're a good fit with our organization. So first of all, I want to know why they want to come to work here.

Because we're a city. And let's say this person doesn't have a lot of experience working in government before. I'm going to say, what do you know about our city? Why do you think you'll be a good fit here? I just want to know from their perspective in general. This is kind of informational in general. I want to know if they're interested in coming to work here, or if they just need a job.

And so a lot of the answers to those questions will start to fill out that picture when you ask those general questions at the beginning of an interview. And then behavioral interviewing-- I know a lot of you have had training in behavioral interviewing.

I personally think behavioral interviewing is one of the best ways to more specifically identify if a candidate has what you're looking for, or has some yellow lights or yellow flags, caution flags that you might want to avoid. And so the research shows, in hiring, that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

So behavioral questions, as most of you know, are asking questions about something the candidate did in the past, or how they handled something in a previous position, or an example of how they solved a problem. You're looking for concrete-- in answers, they mask I guess the concrete way that they would handle a situation, by being general in their answers.

That's why behave like you could say, are you a good customer? If you just ask general and not behavioral, you could say to this person, there's a lot of customer service responsibilities in this position, tell me about your customer service skills. Someone can answer that very general and not get to the meat of what you're looking for, just by staying very general.

But behavioral questions are harder to dodge. And again, you want to find out specifics. You want specific examples of what someone did in the past that will show or identify what they'll do in the future, working for you in those same situations.

And so a great question about this-- if you know this city planner is going to have networking responsibilities and need to build relationships to say, in the past, in your previous job as a city planner, can you give me an example of how you had to build a relationship with a stakeholder in the community as part of developing a future plan for your organization?

That would be an example where-- that would be a question where you're asking someone to give you a concrete example. If they can't give you a concrete example, perhaps that's not the way they approach things. Maybe they haven't built a lot of partnerships in the past. So that's what we're really trying to look for is we want to, in general, know a little bit about that person, to paint a picture about their potential fit with your organization.

But then ask behavioral questions, looking for specific examples that'll give you a little bit more clarity on if this person will have the capabilities to do that kind of work or perform that task or handle those situations when they come to work for you.

All right. Next, let's talk about questions to determine a fit with the position. Again, we want to hire someone that really wants to work here for our agency, our government agency, or our municipality in this hypothetical work on together, and wants to do this particular job. They're very interested in doing this job. And they will bring enthusiasm and engagement to their work.

And so I want to ask questions first. I want to do the revealing or the general questions, like why do you want this position? I want to know specifically. But this is sort of paint the picture. These are more of the informational questions. And what about your past experience with other municipalities will make you successful in this job for our city, would be an example of revealing questions, again to help that person paint the picture.

And now drilling down into behavioral questions again. To me, the behavioral questions are the most important. The revealing or general questions are going to help paint the picture in general, to help you start to get a feel for, is this person going to be potentially a good fit for the organization, for the position, for the team? But the behavioral questions are going to tell you a lot about how they're going to perform for you on the job, if you hire them.

And so again, if I'm looking for someone that has good customer service skills, I might say, can you give me an example of having a customer come to you, a citizen come to you, in one of your previous positions, with a complaint and how you handled that situation?

Again, if you want to know how someone's going to provide customer service to one of your customers or one of the citizens you serve, when they come to work for you, ask them to give you an example of how they handled a difficult customer service situation in the past, in a similar context. If they say to you, well, I did have a customer one time, a citizen that called that was really, really disrespectful.

And I was getting really frustrated. I hung in there. But I was getting really frustrated, because they just did not treat me very well. And the conversation didn't go very well because they just were-- they were combative. They were disrespectful. I had to establish some boundaries and calm them down.

That would be a yellow flag for me, for someone to complain about a customer being escalated, and how they were treating them, and that they needed to calm that customer down. Now, certainly, obviously we need to have skills to de-escalate difficult or escalated customers. Absolutely. But when someone gives me answers, specific examples of answers that show that they were frustrated by a difficult customer, that gives me pause.

Because I want someone who would be comfortable handling difficult customers, that understands that sometimes customers are difficult, sometimes citizens come with difficult situations. And we really need to hang in there and support them. Because that's why the city exists-- to serve the citizens. And so just be looking for an answer. I would prefer a behavioral answer.

I'd prefer to get in a situation like that is, I had one citizen come to me and they were really, really upset. They had talked to two other people in the city and really hadn't gotten answers to their questions. By the time they got to me, they were pretty escalated. And at first, they were raising their voice a little bit. And I just assured them that I felt for them. And I understood why they were upset. And I committed to them that I will do my best to help you.

And so please tell me a little bit more about how I can best help you. I'm looking for someone that can give me a specific example of how they responded positively from a customer service standpoint and difficult situation in the past. Because that tells me that when that person comes to work for our city, and they're dealing with a difficult customer, I can expect hopefully that kind of behavior in the future.

All right, last but not least, let's talk about questions to ask the candidate to determine their fit with the team. Of course, you want to find someone that's not just technically skilled, but they have great interpersonal skills. And they will get along with everyone else on your team. They'll be a positive add to your culture. And that's really, really important.

And unfortunately, a lot of traditional interviewing questions were around job responsibilities and skills and education. And of course that's important. We do need to check those boxes. But I think it's equally as important, if not even more important, to choose someone that's going to be a good fit for your team. It's going to be a good teammate that's going to get along well with others, that's going to have people's back, that's going to be there, and be a positive add to the culture.

And so I'm going to ask questions about, how do you typically build relationships with coworkers when you start a job? And then behavioral questions, I want examples, is tell me a time when you had a conflict with a coworker and how you handled that? How did you resolve that conflict?

Again, I'm looking for an example of where someone says, yeah, a coworker and I, we weren't seeing eye to eye about an issue. I was trying to be very patient and respectful with that person. Because we all have a different opinion. And everyone's entitled to their opinion. So I went down and actually met with them in person.

When we were emailing back and forth and it was apparent that we were having a disagreement, I went down to meet with that person. And I shared with them that I can tell, you and I have a different opinion, and that's OK. I respect that we're two different people. But you're an important colleague of mine. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you feel the way you do? So that I can be understanding and collaborate with you in this situation.

That would be a good answer. That would be an example of someone that recognizes that difficult conversations happen between coworkers from time to time, and is willing to bend over backwards to try to work out, to collaborate, and be respectful and working through that difference of opinion with a colleague.

And so again, we want to be, I guess-- before I start to get towards the end of our conversation today, I guess I just want to summarize by saying that let's go a little wider and a little deeper, to increase the likelihood of making a good hire.

Because as those of you that have made hiring errors like I've made in the past know, it's very frustrating when you hire someone. You think they're the right person. They're going to be a good fit. And then six months, a year in, two years in, you realize that they were not a good fit. You just didn't-- you just missed it. And I've missed it. I've missed it.

Probably out of the 200 plus people I've hired over the years, there's probably been a few dozen mistakes I've made in there or more. I've done better the last few years just because I'm more experienced now. And I'm a little bit more comprehensive in my approach. And I'm much more focused on behavioral interviewing than I was maybe 20 years ago. But I think we can all relate to making hiring mistakes.

And so a hiring mistake is going to make our lives a lot more difficult later. I think we've all seen the financial impact of having an employee leave and having to replace that position. So there's certainly a financial issue that comes with that when we make a hiring mistake. But it's also the time, the impact on the culture of your team when we've got the wrong person in that position.

Jim Collins, who a lot of you know, who wrote Good to Great, one of his areas that he clearly delineated, differentiated good organizations with great organizations is, great organizations really go above and beyond. And he called it, get it to get the right people on the bus. And so basically, to get the right person in your organization, or on your team, that he says that is such an important piece.

If you don't have the right people on the bus, it's really hard to perform at the highest level. But if you really bend over backwards and be more thorough-- that's why I really spent time today talking about, establish that ideal profile at the beginning, and go much wider than just the technical skills, the job skills, the years of experience.

You're looking for the education. And really drill down into interpersonal skills, personal characteristics, character, things that you want to avoid. Really broaden your profile, so you'll be more on the lookout for those things during the interviewing process. And then as you are interviewing, don't just do general interviewing, where people can gloss over something by saying, yeah, I'm good at customer service. I prioritize that-- with no proof.

We want to also drill down and say, give me examples of how you've dealt with a difficult customer in the past, and how you handled that. That would be an example again, of a behavioral question. And we want to ask at least as many behavioral questions as we're asking general questions.

So you're getting information, through the general questions, to paint the picture of the person. And then you're getting specific behavioral tendencies, examples of specific behavioral tendencies of this person, through your behavioral questions. That again will help predict how they'll act in similar situations when they come to work for you. All right, a couple things just to wrap up. Then I'll open it up for questions.

So here are some more keys to a great interview process. And again, I know I'm preaching to the choir. And many, many of you, maybe most of you today, have done as much interviewing as I've done is again, make sure you're interviewing enough candidates so that you have some comparison. I used to rush the process. There's a temptation in most interview processes to fill a position as quickly as possible.

And 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when I was hiring people, I would try to rush through it. And if the second person I talked to seemed like a potential fit, I might go to check references and move to quickly hire that person. And I came to realize that some of my hiring mistakes early on came from just not taking my time and having enough candidates to choose from.

So the bigger your pool of potential candidates, the better opportunity you're going to have to make a really good hire. You got more and more to pull from. And so try to make sure that you're considering a wide enough audience of potential candidates before you pull the trigger and make that hiring decision. Also have more than one person interview each candidate.

And I know most of your organizations have hiring processes that already have that built in. But if you don't, make sure-- like for me, I have a weak spot. When I'm interviewing, I try to be optimistic. But sometimes I'm optimistic to a fault, where I'll be interviewing someone and a yellow flag will come up. And I'll talk myself into overlooking it.

So I always try to make sure I have someone who's really discerning, that's also interviewing people that I'm interviewing. Because I'm looking for being an optimist. I'm looking for the bright sides of people, the best parts of people. I also need someone that's really good at discernment and looking beneath the surface, to identify possible issues. And so I do think it's important to have multiple people interview each candidate.

And it's also possible-- give candidates some exposure to other team members. I had one example shared with me where after an interview, someone had asked the candidate to sit with a potential future colleague, another worker that was doing a similar position that they were interviewing for. And this candidate let their hair down and were in the interview with the supervisor.

They looked very professional and brought their best foot forward. They let their hair down and got real. I don't know. I'm trying to think. The colleagues sitting next to this person, they let their hair down. And they just showed more of their true self. And that person came back to us afterwards and said, I don't know if I'd want to work side by side with this person. They had some very negative things to say.

And during the interview, the interviewer didn't see that at all. Because during an interview, during a formal interview, again, most times people are on their best behavior. Because they want to look good. But when they were spending some informal time, what they thought was informal time with a potential future colleague, more of the real person came out. So that can also be helpful in making sure you're identifying any potential pitfalls.

And then last but not least, give every candidate a realistic idea of what it'll be like to work for your organization. It can help reduce turnover later. What I mean by that is if there are challenges in your environment, instead of just selling the candidate and what a great place your organization is to work-- yes, you want to certainly let them know the good things, because you want them to take the job and come to work for you if you make an offer.

But give them a realistic idea of what they're going to be faced with. If there are some challenges that they're going to deal with on the job on a regular basis, make sure that you share at least an overview of those challenges. You don't want to have someone join your organization and quit in three months because they thought, I had no idea that this position would be running up against these challenges.

So you want to make sure that you're giving the candidate as realistic a picture as possible while you're, of course, trying to convince them to come to work for you, and talking about all the benefits of working for your organization. All right, folks, I know I covered a lot in a very short period today. I want to give you all an opportunity to share questions. If you can use the chat and share any questions that you have or make any comments, I'd love your advice.

If any of you want to share your best practices with each other, please use the chat. And we'll go through the chat together today. And really would love to have you share your best practices, your tips, your strategies for hiring the best people. And then of course, any questions you have. So please again, use the chat to either share some ideas, some best practices that everyone can benefit from today, and/or ask any questions that you have.

All right. So we got a lot of questions here, folks, in the chat. All right. So let me address a lot of these questions. All right. So we got, where were these recordings be if we try to go back and review them? All you have to do is send an email. You all got an email invitation for today, You all got an invitation for today. And so I just want you to recognize that you got an email invitation.

And so if you hit Reply to that email invitation for the webinar today-- And you can ask for a copy of the recording link to be sent to you. And we'd be happy to do that. I hope that helps. All right. So I was talking a little bit before and I got myself muted by accident, I apologize. I was talking a little bit before how you end an interview if it goes bad.

So one of the things that I wanted to talk about there is, I truly believe that it's really important to give everyone due process a fair chance. And so even if the person you're interviewing is, it's becoming apparent that they're not the right fit for your organization, I think it's really important to let them-- to complete the interview, give them an opportunity to work through your interview process with you.

We don't want to cut it short to the point where someone feels dismissed. I don't want to hurt someone's confidence. They may not be the right fit for us. But if we cut the interview short and just kind of dismiss that person, that person can go away with their confidence shaken a little bit. And that might hurt them in their ongoing job search. There's a good place for everyone in the world. I know we all know that there are good jobs for everybody out there.

And so if the person you're interviewing is just not the right fit for your organization, let's not cut it so short and be dismissive in any way to hurt that person's confidence. So again, just do your best to give them a fair process. And when you do shut it down, shut it down as you normally would. Give them an opportunity to ask you any questions. Thank them for their time.

And so again, I just think it's important that-- I love to share one of my favorite Dalai Lama quotes, is that we should be trying to help everybody. But if we can't help someone, if there's some people we can't help, at least do no harm. I think it can do harm to someone's confidence if we're dismissive in an interview, just because we've identified this isn't the right fit for us. Let's try not to be dismissive.

Let's be as respectful as we can and give everyone a fair process. All right. Let me see. There's a few more really good questions coming in. One of our colleagues said it's important to let the candidates speak. I was trying to address this when I got myself muted there inadvertently earlier. Let me talk about this one here. Again, hopefully I'm not repeating, but I think it's important that we do give people enough time.

That's why I try not to make interviews too tight. A lot of times interviewers will schedule them like every 30 minutes, back to back to back. And as you can tell from the process we've talked about here today, I'm advocating for a very in-depth interview process, to go wider and deeper than we might have interviewed in the past, just to ensure that we're hiring the right people.

And so I think it is important not to schedule the-- make too tightly or the time frame too short. I do think if it's an important position that you're filling, 30 minutes may not be enough time to really get down into the weeds, and learn the things that we want to learn about that candidate, and give the candidate an opportunity to speak, like our colleague said here.

So make sure you're scheduling enough time, and they're not too stacked too closely together where you're rushed to get to the next one. All right, got some more coming. Here's another one. In what instances would you recommend doing a second round of interviews? When I got inadvertently muted, I was trying to answer that question as well.

Just in case I wasn't able to be on audio when that happened, I want to remind us folks that I do believe that if you've got a lot of really good candidates and you don't have a clear favorite, I think it's advisable to have another round of interviews so each interviewer can go a little bit deeper. You again want to be as thorough as you can so you can hire the best candidate.

All right, folks, are there any additional interviews-- or excuse me interviews, forgive me. Is there any additional questions before we wrap up today? I appreciate your patience while I was muted. Any other questions or recommendations that you would make? Some of you did share some good recommendations in the questions if folks were looking over there.

One of our colleagues said that we use at least two people per interview. I think that's a good rule of thumb. Another colleague said, I think three would be great. Are there any other questions, folks, before we wrap up for today?

All right. I want to thank you for being with us today. Let me remind you again that today's presentation, How to Hire the Right Employees-- let me go back to cover sheet here. This is the first topic in the 2025 Deer Oaks/AllOne Health Leadership Certificate Webinar Series, in case you weren't with us at the very outset when I went over the scope of the series.

This is a program where we have four-- we offer four quarterly sessions. Today was the first one. We're following that up on May 19 with Creating a Culture of Improved Employee Engagement. We'll come back on August 25 with How to Motivate a Multigenerational Work Team. And we'll finish up in November with Advanced Coaching Skills for Leaders.

And so again, you will receive a leadership certificate if you attend all four of those sessions during 2025, either live or by reviewing the recording link. And so if you're not able to attend any of the live sessions, you can request a copy of the recording link. We would be happy to send it to you. We do, through GoToWebinar, have the opportunity to take attendance, both live and we do get lists from GoToWebinar as to who reviewed the recordings.

And so we are able to give you credit for your attendance again, either live or via recording. And we would love to have you complete that this year and be awarded that certificate at the end of the year. Folks, are there any final questions before we wrap up today? I appreciate your time and patience.

All right. Thanks again for being with me today. It is a privilege and a pleasure for Deer Oaks to be the employee assistance program provider for all of your organizations. We now are part of the AllOne Health family. And Deer Oaks and AllOne Health certainly appreciate the opportunity to serve your organizations, and serve your employees and their family members.

And I am looking forward to hopefully having most of you be back for future sessions in this series. And I'm hoping that many of you will actually complete the series this year. Thanks again for your time. I hope you have a good rest of the day. Talk to you soon. Take care. Bye.