The Profit Builder Unscripted

Catch These Hiring Mistakes Before the Interview

• Vicki Suiter • Episode 71

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Hiring the wrong person isn’t just frustrating—it can drain time, energy, and resources you don’t have to spare.

In this episode, learn a simple yet powerful strategy to make sure the people you meet in person are actually worth your time.

Discover the questions that reveal more than a resume ever could—insights about experience, culture fit, and whether someone can handle the size and complexity of your projects.

From uncovering hidden red flags to identifying real leadership potential, these techniques give you the confidence to move forward only with candidates who truly fit.

By taking just a few minutes on a phone or Zoom call, you can filter out those who aren’t a match, freeing up your schedule for the people who are actual viable candidates.

If you’ve ever walked away from an interview thinking, “That was a complete waste of time,” this episode is for you!

If your interested in having a full proof system for hiring, make sure to check out my “Contractors Hiring Blueprint” course.

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Today we're going to talk about how do you not waste time in interviewing and
person, people who are not really a right fit for your company. know, people are, everybody's super busy these days and it's difficult enough to find people. And when you do find somebody, you want to make sure that before you invest your time and energy, that they're really the right person. And one of the recommendations I have is that before you ever interview someone in person, that you do a preliminary screening with them by phone.

And there are certain key questions that you want to be asking that are really going to help you make sure that you know if that candidate's a right fit or not. And I'm going to share with you my list of questions that I recommend that you ask before you ever meet with somebody in person. So these are my by phone interview questions. So one of them is why are you leaving your current job and or why did you leave it? 

You know this will really tell you something about a person. You're going to listen for things like are they whining or complaining about their last boss? Did they get fired? Were they let go in the last two months? You know, when things are super busy in the industry as they are now, when you're talking with somebody and they just got let go of a job, you can be assured that they probably were not skilled at the job that they were doing. So I would ask more questions.

Who did you report to? This is an important question if you have somebody who they reported to the owner, but they've never had the major responsibility of a bigger projects like the size of projects that you've done. So understanding the size of company that of the person that they worked for can make all the difference in the world as to whether or not they really have the depth of experience that you need.

How many direct reports did you have? That's a really important question. If this person's never managed people, that could be a problem because you want to at least know if they've never managed someone, you want to know that that's going to require some training on your part. And if it's a key part of the role, you may not decide to interview them in person. How many employees in the company or what was the company's volume?

That can make a really big difference as to whether or not they could actually manage projects the size of your company. If they're running the finance department, have they had to manage the finances of a company your size or larger? That's really key when you get to be looking at senior management positions. Tell me a bit about your previous job. Just find out more, like let them talk a little bit. What are their major responsibilities? Who did they interface with daily? What was their interaction with management?

Just kind of, it kind of gives you a sense of do they really have the level of experience and what's the experience they are coming from and how different is it from my environment or my culture? What tools do you use for managing time? If you're dealing with anybody who's in a management position, that's a critical question to ask. Time management is an important element of.

Working especially in construction when you're all about on time, on budget as promised. And also if you're responsible for, you know, the finances of the company or estimating and being able to complete an estimate on time, those are important elements. What experience do you have in negotiating if that's applicable to that position? And then what did you like about this type of work? This is just going to give you a sense of that person and who they are.

So these kind of questions are really helpful for you to start to ask in the, just the initial phone conversation, you're gonna get a sense of whether or not that person's really a right fit. And that will eliminate you spending time interviewing people in person where you go, that was just a complete waste of time. So I highly encourage you to do that. I set these conversations up with people where I'll say, you know what, I just wanna do a quick phone conversation with you.

We're just gonna spend 10 minutes and I just wanna kind of find out if it's a right fit. And if it is, we will schedule a longer interview. So whether you're doing it on Zoom or you're doing it in person, the actual interview itself for the position, you can just make that distinction with somebody that, you know, we're just gonna take a little bit of time. I just wanna understand a little bit more about you before we schedule a formal interview.

So I hope you found this is helpful. If you have questions about it, make sure to go ahead and leave me a comment below or you're welcome to email me as well.


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Vicki Suiter

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