Transcript - Episode 003 - A Visual Interview
Episode 003
What is a visual interview?
You can listen to the episode here: https://therebelliousrecruiter.podbean.com/e/episode-003-what-is-a-visual-interview/
Typically, I am not a fan of an uber-scripted employment interview. A visual interview is one of the few interview-forms that I am a fan of. What is it? It’s a way to spark conversation with a candidate that works with their hands.
Today we’ll explore the why and how to use a visual interview, and what to expect from the outcome.
Hi, I’m Daava Mills, the Rebellious Recruiter. I’ve been in the trenches of finding people for 20 years. I’ve worked with Production and Quality departments to develop a new type of interview, which had immediate success. Today, I want to share this process with you.
So, pull up a seat. Let’s chat.
(Intro music)
About 10 years ago I was having a conversation with my COO. He told me he wanted everyone coming through a particular division to leave the interview going “Wow, they are really safety focused.”
Well, how was I supposed to do that? I mulled on it for a couple weeks.
Then I was watching a webinar. The instructor said “if you need to hire people who work with their hands, give them something to play with in the interview.”
That’s when it hit me. You see, back in the 70’s and 80’s, if you worked in the skilled trades, and you wanted a job, you showed up to a job site, tool bag in one hand, and lunch pail in the other. The superintendent would walk up to you, size you up, he would either tell you leave, or he would say “You have until lunch.” And you’d try out for your job by doing the actual work, usually for free.
Then I-9’s came along, and safety managers became a thing, and workers comp became vital, and then having a person work for free for half a day was not a thing. And for good reason, I want to be clear about this.
But it changed the game. Eventually managers would do some skill based tests, in conjunction with a interview, and decide whether or not you could do the job, and give you a job offer based on good results.
I am going to use welding as the example as we move forward. In welding you can do an 8 inch flux core butt weld with 5/8th wire and half inch plate, but it won’t really tell you how a person will weld over 20 feet, but it’s a start.
Let me fill you in on what I am talking about so you can follow along. A butt weld is a nick name for a groove weld (because it looks like the crack of a butt). Imagine two thick plates of steel coming together with diagonal cut edges forming a V. There is a thin piece of metal under the base of the V tack welded into place, that’s called a backing plate, then the V is filled up with melted wire. The end result is a groove weld, sometimes called a butt weld. Then the backing plate is cut or ground off. Resulting in one smooth sheet of metal.
There are generally two types of people who weld, Fitters who put the puzzle together, and Welders who fill it up. Some people are Combo Welders, meaning they can do both with ease. But usually, a combo welder will have a preference for one or the other.
Okay, back to the webinar. This concept hit me. Why are we evaluating peoples hard skills based on the way they talk? If I am hiring a person to work with their hands, and to be safety focused, why am I hiring based on their verbal communication skills. Verbal communication skills are merely a plus.
I sat down with the Production Manager and Quality Control Manager, with a crazy idea I had drafted. They gave me the go ahead, and I spent a few days designing a new type of interview, I called the Visual Interview.
First, I went to the welding department and asked for a crappy butt weld test plate from the scrap bin.
Second, I typed up and laminated cards with words on them.
Third, I went to the interwebs and I researched welding safety violations in pictures.
The result was a three part interview box.
Part one:
Pictures of egregious safety violations
- things like a picture of a guy teaching a baby to weld. The baby was in a diaper, and no personal protective equipment except for a hood shield.
- Another picture had a guy welding in a quilted down vest, with lack of flashing between him and the next welder.
- We had a picture of a guy copper brazing with wood chips on the floor.
- A guy up on scaffolding with no fall protection.
You get the idea.
Part two:
We had five placards with words laminated.
- Waste control
- Customer care
- Quality
- Safety
- House Keeping
Part three:
The crappy weld test plate
This is how it was used.
I put the pictures into a bound flip book.
First Part
The first picture was the baby. This caused almost every interviewer to ask one of two questions, “is this a real picture?” or “is that a baby?”
Now I did this because I'm a military brat, Air Force if you're curious. But I can sing all the Armed Forces Medleys when required, due to years of singing for July 4th Church Services, I digress though. My dad planned strategic actions for wars. So, I heard a lot about meeting management and leadership growing up. After war game exercises they always had a 45 minute debrief. Not supposed to go longer than 45 minutes. One of the tips I heard was always open the meeting with a joke. Being that it was the 70's and 80's, I knew a lot of jokes that flight crews shared around the table, most these days are not politically correct, and I don't share them anymore. That being said, I thought the picture had a morbid humor about it, so I popped it off to start the interview.
(You can see the picture HERE.)
Every once in a while, a candidate would casually respond "He doesn't have pants on." Which was an interesting response. We'd respond "Can you see that it's a baby?" They’d respond with a "yeah, I guess he is." We'd take note of that. We started noticing that it was a pre-cursor to a pattern moving forward into the next responses. This picture became our siren call that the interview was not going to go well, and this person was not safety conscious.
On the pictures with the two welders with no flashing between them, we’d ask “if this was next to you, what would you do?” We quickly termed this the “Bro Code Picture.” The result was we wanted welders to stop what they were doing and secure the area. Sexism aside in the answer, we still called it the Bro-Code Picture. Tell the guy or gal next to them to put on his leathers, and put up the flashing. We needed all this to be done without involving a supervisor, unless one person wouldn’t cooperate. You see, people watching out for each other is super important. The more they watch out for each other, the less the supervisor is called in for petty disagreements. Plus, if a person is willing to call the other person out, they are willing to listen.
The other pictures told us how aware the interviewee was in their environment. Like, did they notice the wood shavings were a fire hazard, etc.
Second Part
Then we pulled out the placards. We told the interviewee to put them in order of importance. I want to stress that there is no one way here. People’s personal family history and culture actually drove how they responded most of the time. Some cultures stress customer care first, because without customers you don’t have an environment in which to worry about safety.
Some people would say housekeeping is important because it leads to safety. So I want to stress here that verbal communication was not a skill most these people had, so we really had to listen and ask a lot of “Why” to get to get to the bottom of what they thought. Then we would explain what was important in our work environment, and “why.”
The bridge we were making is here is listening to how these people were speaking, but once they had a picture to spark how they were communicating to us, the communication took on a whole different style. Because people that work with their hands are usually visual learners. People like me who sit in an office all day, I’m really highly auditory. So for me, verbal communication is normal, but I had to learn to create a verbal communication path for somebody who doesn’t normally verbally communicate.
Third Part
The crappy weld plate. We’d hand them the plate and ask “what happened?” A natural fitter would pick up the plate and hold it at eye level to see how the backing plate matched up to the mild steel they’d talk first about the fitting error. A natural welder would look at it flat and pick at the slag, and ask about the weld tip being used. This part just told us where they leaned on the skill spectrum. But it was still something interesting to see in action, when the person wasn’t coached, or led to respond. Their natural instincts took over.
What was the result of this?
Six months later I pulled the safety report. The results were eye opening. You see, according to OSHA 40% of job related injuries are with workers who’ve been on the job less than a year.
Only 1, ONE injury on a team of over 100 welders. Only one new hire injury in 6 months with a person hired under the new interview process. Statistically speaking, it should have been much higher. I knew we were on to something, as all the other injuries were people who’d been with the company over 6 months, many over a year.
We were able to whittle the interview down to just three pictures, and eventually dropped the placards and weld plates. I still think they are an important part of manufacturing. And would highly recommend that giving a person something to play with helps create a more natural conversation in the interview. But after the first few months of the interview process the Production Manager had it under control, and we were hiring good people. So, he focused on what gave us the most bang for the buck.
So, now that you can’t try people on for free for four hours, this is the next best thing. If you hire people that work with their hands, I highly recommend you give this method a go. If you need help crafting something, I am simply an email away, and I love working within the manufacturing environment.
And that’s a wrap for today on the topic of What is a Visual Interview.
As always, I’ll be bringing you new information weekly. Be sure to subscribe wherever you are listening to this. Feel free to comment, rate, and review what you hear. Share this podcast with other leaders that may be building “out of this world teams.” You can email me at daava@millsgroupllc.com with your thoughts or questions. I may use your subject matter in upcoming shows.
It’s great to meet you and thank you for listening. I know you only have so many hours in the week, and I am grateful to spend this time with you. Until then, make it a great day! See you on the flip side.