#372: Getting Hired In MedTech

So here's a question that I really, really, truly stand by. One of the biggest complaints from candidates is that they walk out and they feel like everything went well, but they have this kind of uncertainty of did it go well? Did it not? I hope it went well. Please let me know what you hear. I hope next steps will happen. And they don't know. Okay, well, I want to give you some agency over that. And I want to give you a question that if you ask this, you pretty much have a 67% chance of establishing closure to the conversation. And it goes like this. Welcome to the Global Medical Device Podcast, where today's brightest minds in the medical device industry go to get their most useful and actionable insider knowledge, direct from some of the world's leading medical device experts and companies. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, guys, today I want to talk about a game-changing solution for medical device companies looking to streamline their quality and clinical processes. It's called Greenlight Guru and their EQMS and EDC platforms that are truly revolutionizing the med tech industry. If you're in the medical device space, you know how challenging it can be to manage quality and clinical data while staying compliant with ever-changing regulations. That's where Greenlight Guru comes in. Their quality management software is purpose-built for medical device companies, ensuring you stay audit-ready and comply it every step of the way. What really sets Greenlight Guru apart is their clinical evidence management platform. It's a modern cloud-based EDC that simplifies data capture and management for clinical studies. With real-time data visibility and advanced analytics, you can make informed decisions faster and bring your devices to market more efficiently. Imagine having all your quality and clinical data in one centralized location accessible from anywhere in the world. That's the power of Greenlight Guru. Their platforms are user-friendly, scalable, and designed to grow with your company. Plus with their exceptional customer support, you'll always have a team of experts ready to help you succeed. So if you're ready to take your medical device company to the next level, it's time to check out Greenlight Guru. Visit www.Greenlight.Guru today to learn more about their EQMS and EDC platforms. Don't let inefficient processes hold you back any longer. Streamline your quality and clinical data management with Greenlight Guru and focus on what matters most, bringing life-changing devices to patients who need them. (upbeat music) - Hey everyone, welcome back to the Global Medical Device Podcast. My name is Etian Nichols. I'm the host for today's episode. With me today is Mitch Robbins. Mitch, how are you doing today? - I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me Etian. - Awesome. Glad to have you on the show. I wanted to talk to three different specific, I don't know, audiences, I guess, that people might be listening. Number one, companies that are planning to hire and companies that are looking to expand and grow their business in 2024, specifically what they can be doing or what they should be doing. And I want to get too detailed on this yet, but I'm just kind of lay out the episode a little bit for some people who are listening. The interview prep, if you're about to go in and get a job looking for that new role, what are some things you ought to be getting started doing? And then I also want to address people who may have been laid off and you're between jobs, with some things they could be doing. But maybe if we start at the top, what are you seeing in the industry and the good, the bad, and the ugly, and how companies can be improving? - So I would say that right here, where we are in 2024 as of present days, definitely an employer's market. The pendulum has swung if you would. A couple of years ago, it was a super, super, candid driven market. And now employers have more choice, right? Hiring his slow down a little bit in Medtech over the last 18 months or so. Hopefully we're gonna see a pretty significant pickup from the late spring through the rest of the year, I hope. But right now, for those that are hiring, they have more choices than they probably have in a long, long time. I've been doing this over 15 years at this point, and it's been a long time since I've seen a market like this. But what I'm noticing is that companies almost have the blinders on with this mentality that if somebody wants to work here, they'll jump through our hoops, they'll wait for us, and it is what it is. And what I would wanna say here, like I've talked about in other forms is that, you have to realize that regardless of market conditions, hiring is a two-way street. It just is. And if you aren't willing or prepared to court a candidate, the candidate will still have options and get to work where they want elsewhere, right? And so when it comes to preparing for the interview, as far as giving interview times, or coming back to a candidate with feedback in a timely fashion, these are the things I'm talking about is that the canned experience does matter regardless of market conditions. And I always say that you are giving a message to the marketplace, no matter what. What message do you want to give to the marketplace is kind of your choice based on the actions that you present within this canned experience? So that's the biggest piece that I would say. It's just really kind of think about it. The fact that it is a two-way street, canons are interviewing you as well. They may need a job, but they still have choices of where they're ultimately going to work. - Yeah. - Does that make sense? - Yeah, it does make sense. Even though the pendulum has swung, you still have to think that there are other companies out there, especially the thing that I'm curious about is even though the pendulum has swung, now that we're in a pretty much a remote world, or at least to a large extent, people do have options globally almost. And so that seems like another dynamic that companies need to be thinking about just in that realm that they could potentially have options. - Yeah, they have options, and they also, it's like how do you want somebody to feel about working for you, right? If it takes two weeks to hear feedback versus two days, what's, there's a big difference there, right? I've talked to people who interviewed for a role and then six weeks later they had followed up and somebody's like, "Oh, I'm sorry. "I forgot to get back to you." Yeah, we put the search on bold. - Well, really? You know what I mean? Things like that. And I get, you know, the bigger the organization, the more positions people are responsible for and human resources or talent acquisition, the more things that can slip through the cracks, but there's multiple players within an interview process, not just one point of contact. And I really do believe somebody, a friend of mine put it to me best, hiring is a team sport, right? It's not just a one-to-one interaction, it's a team sport and it takes a team to court a candidate, in my opinion. - So what are some of the specifics? When you say those blinders that people have on, aside from the response times, what are some other things that they could and should be doing? - Yeah, so whenever we take on a search, I always look at the search as two sides of a coin, okay? On one side, you've got what we call the performance profile. In essence, what somebody's done in their previous experience that's going to help give the employer confidence that what they need help with this person can do, right? So past performance to help predict future success, performance profile. The flip of the coin is the employer value proposition. What is so differentiating, so unique, so compelling that's going to stop somebody dead in their tracks and make it a no brain, or to at least one, having exports for a conversation with you. And two, why would they want to work here versus doing the same job elsewhere, okay? And so I think this is the piece that gets missed a lot, especially in an employer-driven market where they feel like cans are just coming out of the woodworks. Well, what's in it for the candidate? Are you taking time throughout the interview process to talk about, hey, if you come in and you do XYZ, here's what growth looks like for you. Or, hey, I know that you've got options. You're probably interviewing for fairly similar roles elsewhere. Let me tell you what I think is different, why I choose to work here. And what might be in store for you as well. And really taking the time to focus on some of the pieces that are in it for the candidate versus looking at the interview process as almost like a quiz. Hey, jump through our hoops, pass our tests, then we'll decide we want to hire you. Makes sense? - Yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. The thing that I thought of when you were talking about that is last year, there were a lot of layoffs, which is likely what's contributing, I mean, obviously, contributing to this, this different shift in the pendulum like you're talking about. But that being said, I would expect companies, nobody wants to go through that. So how can we improve our hiring process? Not just to make it a better experience. I don't mean to use the word just because that's incredibly important, like you say. How someone feels as they get hired it's going to likely impact their performance moving forward. So that makes a huge difference. How also though can we choose these candidates and really be picky enough in such a way, choosing enough, I don't know the right word exactly, but that they'll have endurance. - Yeah, so I think it's a couple of things. One, I think that sometimes I've seen where people just get on the phone with somebody because they have an application and they feel like they need to at least bet it out, but they can clearly see this isn't the right person. So being tactful and professional and perhaps responding earlier than getting on a phone call and saying, hey, professionally we're not going to be moved forward with the process. Once the person is in the process, having a speedy process. Having a situation where you've identified ahead of time, the key stakeholders that need to be involved with the interview to make a key decision. Not being fly by night, they talk to me now, who else should we have them talk to? Oh, we need them to talk to Sally in marketing. She's not available for two more weeks, so we'll figure that out in a couple weeks and then we'll figure out what's next from there. Really having a process out on, okay? These are the four players we need involved. What do their schedules look like over the next couple weeks so that we have perhaps preset times where we can plug and play people if we find somebody who's qualified. Being quick and decisive with feedback and getting back to the candidate, keeping them engaged throughout the process, knowing that they are perhaps interviewing elsewhere, understanding where the candidate is in the process with the other roles so that you can mirror your process. If somebody's got to make a decision by next Friday, what are you going to do with your situation so that you're in contention for that decision that needs to be made on their behalf, especially if it's somebody that you want. And then being really clear on your compensation, if you can pay up to $150,000 and you're interviewing somebody who is most recently making 165,000 thinking that, oh, you're going to show them enough in this role that they're going to somehow get so excited that they're going to put the blindfolds on themselves and make that compromise, you're fooling yourselves. And I see it way too many times, you get all the way to the end of the process, everybody's excited, you can't put the deal together. - Yeah. - So those are a couple of things that come to mind. - That makes sense, that makes sense. One of the things, and I don't mean to skip too far ahead into the, where we talk to the person interviewing themselves, but I can remember at one point in my career, going through the interview process and I got hired at this company, so it's kind of weird to think about. So I've seen both sides, but I remember going through this interview process and one of the people who came and interviewed me, kind of like you said, you know, kind of a revolving door of people coming through, the one guy, he didn't say hardly anything. He just got a sat there and just looked at the paper and asked me a few questions, then just stared at me and then left. And I thought, well, I wonder if he was just stuck in the process or whatever. Well, I come to find out later, that guy's probably the most important person in the process because he is the linchpin on who will be successful in this company because you have to work directly with this guy, but he's just sick of being on an interview process. So I don't know from both sides of this, if you have a comment or a thought on how to navigate those situations, whether from the company or the interview side, but that was an interesting experience for me and just popped into my head. Yeah, and you're being very polite and tactful here, but I'm sure you had a sinking feeling. You didn't feel very good when you saw that happen. And you were probably thinking to yourself, one, did I do something wrong? Two, why was he even here if he didn't, you know, for that period of time? He didn't ask me anything and you weren't feeling very good. So really, again, it goes back to that impression. What impression do you want to leave? It also goes back to interview education too, I think. I think there's a lot of companies who put people in positions to interview who don't know how to interview. - Red point. - Yeah. - And so you get something that's looking at a resume who's trying to, on the spot, think of what to ask, but one, they don't know why they're asking yet. And two, they don't know, well, let me, yeah. In essence, they don't know why they're asking that question. Ultimately, what are you hoping to get from that? Response is gonna help you make an educated decision about this person. And a lot of times people don't really know what to do because I think that is a huge gap, especially in middle management. I don't think that there's enough emphasis put on training around what are we looking for as a culture? I mean, as a company overall, what are we looking forward from a technical skill set specifically? And, you know, it's funny. I'm not trying to go off on a tangent here, but when I ask somebody, what are your two, if not three critical priorities, you're hoping this person can come in and help with right away? In essence, what I'm trying to get at is, you have pain on your plate right now. By hiring this person, you're going to help, that person's going to help supposedly alleviate that pain. By way of helping get some of this stuff off your plate. Usually what I hear in response to that direct question, and I get this almost verbatim is we need a team player. We need somebody who's got eight years of experience doing, you know, regulatory blah, blah, blah. We need somebody who really is a good cultural fit. And I sit there to myself and I say, what did I not ask clearly enough to get the response that I'm looking for? And I don't think it's that because you saw the question's pretty darn clear. It's that a lot of times people aren't thinking that way. They're not looking at this as a solution provider who's coming into an organization that can provide solutions. They're somehow looking at a resume and says, do they have eight years? Yeah, they do. That's good. Do they have the right titles? Yeah, they do. But they're not necessarily taking that and equating it to what does it mean from a business standpoint? And so again, it really truly comes back to mindset and like, why are we in this interview in the first place and why are the people that we've asked to be a part of it in this interview? That was a really good point about the training before the people who are doing the interview. I think that's a, I'm going to throw one more example out there and you're going to laugh at me because as a manufacturing engineer, I remember my boss didn't have time to interview somebody. She said, Etienne, someone's coming in today. I need you to, I'm like, okay, this is the first time I've ever interviewed somebody. So I had a lot to get done. I had to be on the floor. So I brought her to my desk and I'm like, listen, I have this, I'm not allowed to have this, this little mini fridge under my desk, but I do because I'm friends with the maintenance guy. So I hear I have a coke and we're going to go walk the floor in a minute here. And I just want to introduce you to the meanest machinist that I know and see how you do if you're cool with that. And she's like, all right, and that's what we did. Yeah, that's probably not the right way to do things. I mean, it would put her in a real life situation. You're saying, like, say, yeah, I think there's brilliant. That's one of the biggest pieces that's missing. I don't want to cut you off. I want to talk about that. No, no. So at the end, kind of jazzed up about this because this is, this is my jam. But we call that the test drive in essence, put it in. People are going to give, there's going to be flat about this too, because people are going to say, you, you're asking a candidate to do too much work for free. That's not right. No. What I'm saying is, let's say you come down to the end of the process with the rate of mishires, almost the flip of a coin. Go look up the studies. You'll see it. It's like 48% or so, okay? Almost the flip of a coin. What the test drive in essence does is say, okay, we've got our interview feedback. We've asked really good questions. We have a, you know, a feeling that this is the right person. My gut is the cherry on top saying this is the right person. Now, let's put it to the test. Can this person actually do what the resume says they can do and what they vocalize that they can do? And we put them as in as real life of a scenario as we possibly can to see how they would ultimately perform. That could be a case study. It could be, you know, dealing with components right on the table and ask them to put something together, whatever it may be. But the point is you, that's what you mentioned. I brought them out to the floor. I showed them what I wanted to see how they would perform. That's exactly how you validate if somebody might be the right person or not. So I think it's great. Yeah. It really kind of begs the question to me before and after. And it's kind of funny because I think I'm regulatory term. So you talked about validation. I immediately lock kind of that one. The next term in my mind is like post-market surveillance. And I think of two things or verification of effectiveness. What are you going to go with? So there's that initial validation of getting that person, make sure they can do the job, going to fit, doing all those things. After that, though, I mean, what if we were wrong? You know, what about a trial period? Have you ever heard of anything like that? And what are your thoughts on just the different methodologies companies can use for both validating and verifying after the after the fact? Yep. So I think a lot of that comes down to, so you've made your decision. Okay. Most companies have a 90 day ramp in one way, shape, or form, right? Some sort of onboarding period. Most I can't speak for all states. But a lot of states are at will, right? And so you've got this 90 day onboarding period that is so crucial. What happens a lot of times, though, is people, higher managers are overwhelmed to begin with. They barely had time for the interview in the first place. The person comes onboard. They're kind of relieved. They hope this person can run with it. And then they get sidetracked and leave the person to sink or swim. Okay. And then say, oh, this person's not performing, right? Oh, they're not doing what versus, okay, within the first two weeks, we've got exactly what this person's going to do for onboarding. And we've got them set up with training. They're going to meet these key stakeholders. Within 30 days time, we're going to actually have a sit down and go over what have we done in 30 days time. We're going to be as open as we possibly can talking about any potential concerns on either side of the coin. In 60 days, we're going to do the same thing. In 90 days, that doesn't happen very rarely happens. So what happens is, instead, somebody's not performing. They drag their feet to say anything about it because they don't want to deal with the conflict. Or like, I really don't want to get HR involved. There's so much paperwork. I have to document this. I have to do this. I don't know how to handle this situation. That starts to fester more and more and more. And then the person either is fed up and they leave themselves. Or the higher magic can't handle it. And they find out how to fire. And then they come back and say the recruiter didn't do their job. They brought it in the wrong person. And all of that could maybe even go back to the thing that you alluded to at the beginning or spoke to, which is, do you actually know why you're hiring them? Six months from now, they still have eight years experience. Six months from now, they still have this degree and so on. But we didn't really clearly know even during the interview what we were asking the two. We are going to try to shoot for a regulatory submission for a class three or as a beating product in nine months. And so we need you to help us get there. Not just be a team player. You make an awesome point as far as how clear are your objectives? How clear are your expectations of this person? And how do you gauge their performance? Is it a gut feeling? Are they should be getting more done in less time? Is it how objective truly is it? And can that person measure themselves against what has been made clear? So let's shift gears a little bit and look at it from the interview we or the new hires perspective. What should they be thinking about going into these? Already knowing kind of what you said. We'll have it about what the companies are doing and thinking about. How can an interviewee set themselves up for success? So are we talking about post on boring? Are we talking about preparing for the interview? Let's start preparing for the interview. Just do these chronologically, I guess. All right. Let's do it. So here's what I have said for years. I use the analogy of a teeter-totter. So on one side, you've got the candidate on the other side, you've got your perspective employer. And you think of a ball rolling back and forth on the teeter-totter. Two people are bouncing up and down, the ball is rolling back and forth. The ball is representing kind of the value or the leverage. How do you keep the ball on your side? How do you keep leverage? You keep leverage by demonstrating massive value. The more value you demonstrate throughout the process, the more leverage you create for yourself. And I'll explain. So people say, well, what do you mean? How do you demonstrate value throughout the interview process? I break it down to a couple of things. Number one, it's based on the value of the questions that you ask. Number two, it's based on the value of the answers to the questions. And number three, is more so character piece. It's more so about how enthusiastic, how prepared, how well presented are you. And so then I can break each one of those down. But the point is, the more value that you create, the more levers that you have to make your own decisions throughout the process. I always tell candidates, I don't care if you don't want this job. I don't care if you go in, you know, I can never in my life could I work there. That's great. I want it to be your decision. I don't want them to come back and say thanks, but no thanks. And so as long as you can keep the ball on your side of that tea tart, the more empowered you are to make your own decisions. So how do you do this? Number one, as far as questions, so often people come into these interviews. And they're hoping to get answers that they don't walk out with. And the reason is because vanilla questions get vanilla answers. So the more specific and pointed you can be with your questions, the more clear everybody's going to be. And you're going to know much faster. Is this something I want to learn more about or it's not? So when somebody says, what are you looking for in this person? It's a really vanilla question that's going to get a really broad answer. Or so what would be a specific question? A specific question, again, goes back to, hey, obviously you got a ton of priorities on your plate. What are the two or three most important priorities or projects you're hoping this person come in and work on right away? Great. Now if they tell you that you're backing into the answers to the test, they just told you what they need help with. Now you reflect on your own experience. And you talk about very specific examples of where you've done something similar. What does that do? It gives the hiring manager, whoever's in front of you, the confidence that you could do what they need help with. Fast forward six months from now. How would the department, how would this position? What would need to happen for you to have the confidence you hired the right person? I love that question. And it could be different timeframes. It could be six months, it could be a year. But what you're doing is you're getting the person to have to stop from it and truly think and cast a vision for you. Give you the colors of the rainbow. They no longer can necessarily be generic. Because now you're asking them say, wow, you know what? It's a great, well, we would have had our submission done on this. We would have taken care of these outstanding capas on this, whatever it may be. Okay, great. You just got their vision and now you're going to be the solution to help catalyze them to getting towards their vision. How excited do you think that hiring manager is going to be after you heard what they want to help with and now you explain how you're going to help them? Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, so those are so the value of the questions. The value of the answer is a lot of people go wrong in two ways when it comes to answering interview questions. Number one, they're too vague with their answer. The resume looks great. It looks like they've got all this experience. But then they give you a really vague answer that doesn't give you the confidence that what's on the resume is actually what their skill set is. The other way they go wrong is that they are way too detailed and they talk in circles and they give you every single detail possible to the point where you don't know what they said. And again, that doesn't exude. It's not going to create confidence in the person who's interviewing you. Yeah. So a lot of people have heard it as star. I use situation solution outcome. What was the situation you were dealing with? What was the solution that you came up with? And ultimately, as a result of that solution, what was the outcome? For most questions that are asked, you know, behavioral based, tell me about a time you did this, tell me about a time you had trouble with this, you can use this. And what it does is it creates such specificity that nobody can argue that you have the experience you say you have. Right? Yeah. So I'll stop there because I've been talking for a while. Do you have questions on that piece? Yeah, no, that's really good. I like the situation solution outcome. That's really good. Is that tied to inspiring confidence specifically? I'm trying to, I was trying to take notes on some of the questions. The three areas that you really recommend. The questions, the enthusiasm, the inspiring confidence. Am I getting that right? Yeah. So it's the value of your answers to people's questions, the value of the questions that you ask. And then, you know, you're basically your enthusiasm, your character is the other piece. And as far as the situation solution outcome, I think what happens is people get thrown for a loop very quickly. Because they're nervous. They're not used to interviewing. Interviewing is not where you could just flip a switch and all of a sudden you're a great interviewer. I always say, you know, tiger woods, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, you name it. They didn't just go out there and shoot the basket, shoot the ball in the championship game. They're sitting at the free throw line four o'clock in the morning, practicing their shot. You can't expect that you wake up the next day and start interviewing. You got to, you got to practice for this. Yeah. And so the situation, well, I have a question about that. So if that, it is such a unnatural thing for a lot of people, especially in their, you know, it's like, okay, I'm going to do this once every couple of years or maybe for a period for a couple of years. How do you convince people that that is important? So I've run into two types of individuals. The one is, I've got this in the bag. Don't worry about me. I appreciate your, your coaching, but I've done this. I'm, I'm seasoned. And then they usually flounder because they didn't prepare. That's the truth. The other one is somebody's like, I really appreciate this. But then they get a little intimidated because there's so much information. So they get a little overwhelmed. And how I boil that down as I say, here's the deal. You're, let's say you're a manager right now, okay? You have a team. So you interact with your team every single day. You have a senior director that you report to who has a vice president that they report to. And you interact with them. As a matter of fact, you're brought into some of the C-suite meetings on your projects and you have to present. And this is part of your responsibility on a day-to-day basis. There is no difference between what you're doing in that company versus what you're about to talk about. The only difference is the people. You both share a passion for the same thing. Working in medical device, helping, you know, patient save, get care to patients. You both are passionate about quality. You both have bosses that are at fairly similar levels. The only difference is the conversation dynamics. So if you can put yourself in the mindset, all I'm doing is having a conversation about things that I live and breathe every single day. Hopefully that takes some of the nerves out because that is your life. What's interesting when you put it in that context is just it's kind of a two-way street. And the one hand, yes, look at it like a conversation you would ordinarily ordinarily have in your job. But if you also look at the conversations that you have in your job as something of a negotiation because a lot of times they are. If you're in a meeting, you know, who's going to talk first? Who's going to say what? You know, that's something of a negotiation. You're trying to navigate those political waters. You can take that and learn it on the job and then apply it to this negotiation skills. Would you agree or what do you think? 100% 100%. And I also think about, you know, in a negotiation, a good negotiation is you, nobody wins everything that they want, but you come to a fair and reasonable, happy medium, right? But when you're negotiating, you're also thinking about what's important to that other person. Yeah. And I think a lot of times people come in so focused on how do I sell myself? That they forget that if I can understand what's really important to this person, and I can create a scenario to where I am seen as somebody who actually can help them with what's important, I'm going to win. And that's why whenever somebody's interviewing, for example, on a panel, it's one thing to interview with HR, it's another thing to interview with the hiring manager. What about the peer group? Yeah. So walking in and saying, hey, this person obviously, you know, I pride myself on the fact that collaboration across functional areas is important. What's important to you? How can this person help you? Well, I appreciate you asking. As a matter of fact, I'm really fed up because last time we were going through this, they didn't care about, man, that is frustrating. As a matter of fact, I think I've seen that in the past. And here's what we've done about it in my current organization. How fast did you just get that person to resonate with you because they feel listening to? Right? Yeah. And so I think people miss that part. This is just a situation where you sit down, find out what's important to that person, tell them how you can help. Really is. Yeah. To listen to care is a huge, huge lever to pull. I'm going to throw out one more example because you, as you were talking, this, this instance popped into my mind straight out of college. I'd never worked in a corporate environment per se. I was a machinist, welder, did CAD, and things like that. But I was not in the office yet. So one of my first interviews, these crazy people, they brought in a nine person panel. I sat in a conference room. I was waiting for one person to come in and interview me. They brought nine people from varying levels of the company. And I just sat there. You know what, one through my mind, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to own this. I'm just going to let, you know, I get in this job. That's the way I looked down, I'm like, I get this job. So I'm going to own this. And by the time that was done, we had such a good time. I made friends with pretty much everybody because I just didn't care. I mean, two certain degrees, kind of like that phrase. You got a drink death like wine and crave life like water. I don't know, kind of, you're going to mess that quote up. But two or three months later, it was a long time. They came back and said, hey, we really want you for whatever reason. But the money, you know, it's just, it's just interesting. The different ways you approach these conversations make a big difference. Your mindset, you mentioned mindset a couple times. Huge. And, you know, what's sad is people, I love that story, by the way, because in, in, look how it worked out. But, you know, sadly, when you're interviewing, the people who are interviewing you only have that much time to make a judgment call as well. Right? Yes, there could be some follow-ups, but it's still a matter of a finite piece of time. Maybe it's two meetings instead of one, but it was 30 minutes each or an hour each. That's only two hours to make a judgment call, okay? And same with the candidate. That's why these impressions are so important. But when people are nervous or they're not prepared, that's all the interview panel has to go off of. That's it. And so when you hear the feedback on the back end, well, they didn't think that you had the experience with this. And the can's like, I really do. I do it, they're like, I'm sorry, they didn't hear it. So they only could judge on that. So the point is coming back to what you said is the more that you can relax and realize that this is just another group of professionals in your same industry, who share the similar interest to you to get things done for patients, the more hopefully common collect you can be. And I cannot express this loudly enough, the importance of preparing. And we haven't even dug into that. Like, well, how do you prepare? What do you prepare? But you've got to prepare. You can't just show up and be like, I've got to call tomorrow. We'll see how it goes because then you don't have the leverage to make your own decisions. You're putting it in the fate of what they think. Well, okay. So let me tell you how I think about preparing. And then you can fill in the gaps. Because that way you can, because I don't have that your experience. When I think of preparing, I think I want to know what this company does. I want to think I want to know what this team does. And then I want to know who the people I'm talking to do. That's kind of, I think big picture, medium picture, you know, granular for the specific people. Not getting into the specifics of what to do with each one of those. But what is your head going? What do you think? Yeah. So that's a great, you know, high level overview. So a couple of things. So remember, it comes back to what I said. The value that the answers that you give to questions, the value of the questions that you ask. And one of the biggest things that people think they're prepared for, that they're not, is why are you interested in working for Greenlight Guru, for example? Why Greenlight Guru? And what you'll hear a lot of times is, you know, remote, obviously, it's kind of stormed the scene. But before you speak, it's close to home. I hear that it's a good culture. And this position really lines up with my skill set. I really haven't said anything about why Greenlight Guru specifically. I've, instead, articulated what is kind of important to me that I could find in many different companies. You want to be able to express very clearly, what about that company stands out? Why, why us? To give them the confidence that you've actually done some research so that you'd know who you're talking to, okay? The second piece is when it comes to questions to be prepared for. Most questions are going to be things that you're doing on a daily basis anyways. I don't care if it's handling conflict. I don't care if it's how do you submit a 510K. I don't care if it's how do you present a stance that is contrary to what other or other functional areas want and how do you make your case, whatever it is, you're dealing with it. So if you already know kind of some of the major areas you dealt with or are dealing with and also you look at your performance reviews, what are you benchmarked on? What do you held accountable for? That's usually where those questions are going to come from. So taking the time to have some thought-out responses, they're going to ask me about conflict. I've got three bullet points to talk about a very specific situation and what we did about. They're going to ask me how do I present or how do I submit a 510K and then what goes into a 510K? Well, I know that and I'm going to talk about that. The point is you can give yourself some bullets. Sometimes people feel like it's not good to come in with notes. I 1000% believe you should come in with notes, okay? Because it keeps you on track, whether it's the questions that you want to ask or if you need to jog your memory for responses, you've got some bullet points there. I don't want to go off on a tangent too much, but the other piece I would say is when somebody's asked a hard question, you're faced with a crossroads. You can either BS your way through it and try to make up your best answer or you can be vulnerable and honest to say you don't know the answer. Or here's the added bonus. You need a minute to think. Two of those three is okay. One is awful. Never BS your way through, okay? Because you know this, you're a technical guy. You're an engineer by trade. Somebody's always going to know more than you. And all they'll do is you just keep pushing the boundary and see how much you're going to BS, right? Okay. So versus somebody's like, you know what? I don't know that answer, but here's what I would do to go find it. What you're demonstrating there is one honesty, integrity, vulnerability, and resourcefulness. What kind of attributes would you want to hire? Some of you BSs or those for keep areas, right? But if you need a minute to think, it's okay. Hey, I really want to make sure I give you as clear and articulate as an answers possible. Can I have just one minute? I want to think through what you said or I think you said this. Can you just clarify one more time? There's nothing wrong with that. There really truly is nothing wrong with that. So those pieces and then I would say there's so much information out there. You want to know, hey, has this company gone through a recent funding round? Are they trying to get funding? If they're a public company, what do some of the recent press releases and some of the earnings reports say, you want to know the finance piece as well because you don't know who in the organization you just be to. And you want to call out the fact that you've done some research. You can research their LinkedIn profiles. What are their key interests? What are their hobbies? So that you have some commonality. Hey, I saw your Bears fan. I'm sorry, I am too, right? That's me personally. But there's so many different avenues of research that you can do so that you're fully prepared. And then also as far as the questions that you want to ask, I always say, take the whole panel. I'm going to talk to a director of finance. I'm going to talk to the VP of marketing. I'm going to talk to the VP of regulatory. I'm going to talk to the director of human resources. Something is important to all these people that is different from the next. Yeah. So what questions do I want to ask this person on purpose that's related to their functional, functional area and how my position relates to what's important to them? What questions do I want to ask? And then what's similar questions do I want to ask in each of the interviews to see how much consistency I get back? Yeah, that's good. I like that. I'm going to throw out one question that I ask at the end of the interview if I pretty much run out. So this and I think it's dependent on the person. But I remember going through as VP of engineering, VP of product, all the different way. And then I ended with the VP of HR. So I sit down with her and we're talking and she said, so do you have any questions for me? And my mind was mush. And so I said, you know, maybe one question would be what question would you ask or what if I not ask? I'd really like to know because my brain is just kind of blank at the moment. But I know there are things that I still need to learn. And she's like, that's a good question. And she just went through all these different things I hadn't thought to ask. And I don't know if that would always work. But I wanted to get your advice on that. I don't know if it would always work too. But what I like you say is what am I not thinking of that I should be thinking of? That's a great question. Yeah. Right? It's almost like in a way, maybe the technical terms are right, but it's almost like reverse psychology in way. It really is. Like what am I what should I be thinking of that I maybe have missed that I should know about this opportunity or I should know about the company? I think it's great. You know, you were mentioned the VP of HR. The other thing too is people I said earlier of vanilla question gets a vanilla response. What type of person are you looking for? What are you looking for in this person? Hey, historical, you're the VP of HR. Obviously culture is a huge priority to you if maintaining, you know, consistency across the board here. How would you how would you explain the types of individuals who have thrived here? Culturing the types that really haven't. Yeah, that's good. Let's see how they describe it and how does that align with you? It might drop a flag. It might be it might just actually solidify that this is the right place for you, but let them actually describe it or or how do you describe culture? What does that mean to you? What does it mean to XYZ company? Well, to us, it means this, this, and this because that can be such a buzzword, right? So if you're curious about the cultural aspects asking those other things, the other thing I want to throw out to you at the end is before the interview, you could talk to people who used to work there, who currently worked there, who have a friend who works there. What should I expect? What do you like about working there? What concerns do you have? What do you think? What's one thing that you think I should be thinking about before I come to the interview? Things like that to kind of get a different vantage point as well. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. What about the onboarding? We alluded to that earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So let me get to that, but I want to say one more thing because you mentioned at the end, you asked a question. Did it not? I hope it went well. You know, I hope next steps will happen and they don't know. Yeah. Well, I want to give you some agency over that and I want to give you a question that if you ask this, you pretty much have a 67% chance of establishing closure to the conversation and it goes like this. Etienne, you know what? First and foremost, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it. I also want to let you know I'm really excited about this opportunity. Before we wrap up, are there any questions or concerns I haven't addressed for you in order to give you the confidence? Now, this is where it changes. If it's the first round in order to give you the confidence, it makes sense to move forward in the process. Or if it's at the end, in order to give you the confidence, I get to be successful in this role. Here's why I suggest asking this question so strongly. I've done this for over 15 years. This is my 16th year in the business. There's only one of three answers you can get. The first answer is they're going to acknowledge the value of the conversation as well and tell you what they want to do next. The second response that you might get is somebody would voice a concern to you. Guess what? It's a second chance. It's an opportunity right then and there to alleviate that concern and do some clarification. The only other answer that I know of is some sort of poker face, where one of two reasons that they don't want to respond. One, they can't. They need to debrief with their team and go through it or two, they just are caught off guard. They don't know what to say and they want more time. They might say, no, appreciate the conversation as well as a matter of fact. I'll talk with the team and we're going to come back to you, as quickly as we can. No, I think there was a great conversation. I've got a couple other interviews lined up and then we can certainly get back to you. Guess what? Two out of those three answers are productive in your favor. Either it's positive or it's a concern that you get to address. Either way, they both work for you. I would really highly recommend people add that so that they don't feel that uncertainty walking out as much. I really like that. That's really good. I'm going to put that my arsenal of questions. I think you alluded to open versus closed questions too. That one's almost like closed. It's loosely open because you have that third, you know, maybe option. But is that something that you you want to touch on or is that something you've thought about? So I think during the interview, you want to ask his open ended questions as possible for where it makes sense. And you want to ask very specific direct questions where it doesn't like what are the two or three critical prayers you're hoping the person can work on? If they give you the response I was joking about where they say we need some of you as a team player, you need to push back because you need specificity. Yeah. In the other hand, open ended questions gives you much more color like hey, what would you what would need to happen within the next six months for you to for you to feel like hey, you know what? This absolutely was the right hire. You want that really open because you want to understand where their vision is and then you can back into their vision. So I think it's a kind of a yin and a yang thing. Yeah. Something that I've always really cared about when I'm doing the research on a company is the CEO themselves. And you know, I mean, everybody has a different metric to judge a company by, but I really care about what the CEO, I always try to read everything they've written if they if they publish things, things like that. That's one thing that I care about. Should carry is a gal or guy who's driving the organization. Absolutely. Yeah. So they just throw that one out there. The first, you know, make yourself known all that, all that jazz. Yep. So a couple of things I would say that you really got to take agency over this and not necessarily leave it to somebody else to tell you what to do. Meaning that not every hiring manager is going to be the best on boarder. Not every talent acquisition department is going to be the best on boarding, you know, have the best onboarding program. Keep in mind that you're from day one going to be judged on your performance in one way, shape, or form. So have some agency over what you need. I haven't gotten my computer yet. Who do I need to follow up with? I'm not just going to sit there waiting for IT to ship me the computer. I'm supposed to meet the manager and he's blown me off two times. I'm going to follow up and try to not your manager, but perhaps a cross functional team member. I'm supposed to have a status meeting with my manager. Let me have some agency over following up to when we're going to do it. I don't understand, you know, what the objective is here. Let me schedule a meeting and ask questions. You really got to take some responsibility over this. I hear too many times like these off the record conversations. They're just kind of leaving me, you know, to the wind. I don't know. I'm doing my best. I don't know. Well, what can you do? Have you expressed that concern? No, I really don't. I haven't because I don't want to open a can of worms. It's not a can of worms because if you manage your things, you know what you need to do and you're not able to do that, that's not good for them either. So that's the biggest piece I would say. I think it's almost like unlocking the matrix. When you realize in business that you're there to get something done, not necessarily just do task X, Y, Z, B, C for in perpetuity, but actually move the business forward. When you unlock that, it's kind of like, there's a phrase, see if I can remember it. Don't throw me to the walls because I may be, I may come back leading the pack. Go lead the pack. It's okay. You know, maybe they're, they need a leader at this point. So yeah, I think that's good that you pull that out. That's awesome. And recognize too that you are one of many, many, many priorities for all the other stakeholders. Your manager, talent acquisition, cross function, but they've all got their plates full too. So you need to speak up and squeaky wheel gets the grease. It just does. Right. Yeah. At one more analogy on that, my dad always, he was a farmer and he said, you know, the cows that would come up to me to get medicated were healthier than the ones that I had to chase down to give their medication. Not that you want to be a cow, but I think sometimes the farmer analogies, you go get what you need. You're going to have a better relationship with your manager. So you know what, that's a great analogy. I love that one. Absolutely. Yeah. Talk to farmers. It always helps. They have the best analogies. Did you grow up in Indiana? I actually grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, believe it or not. Oh, you did. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, I'm right now I'm limping because of an old rodeo wound, but you know, eventually I'll walk again. We alluded to a lot of the layoffs that happened last year. Yeah. There's probably a lot of people in that imposition. You know, maybe they're going to take your advice, hopefully to take your advice on preparing for the interview, but maybe they don't have an interview yet. What are some things they can be doing right now? Sure. So I would say anybody who's looking for a job right now who's been laid off has to be networking their butts off. You cannot rely on the fact that you sit down and bust out 100 applications a day and think that you're being proactive. Please understand that these people who are fielding the applications are overwhelmed like you can't imagine. They're getting 200 applications in 20 minutes sometimes for one job and they're managing 25 jobs. Okay. And you expect that your application is going to somehow cut through the noise and land on their desk at the right time in the right place. Please, you can't, you can't operate that way. So you have to network your butts off. You should be using like LinkedIn, like there's no other. You should be reaching out to the people who know I can trust you already and letting them know what you're after. And you've got to be specific. I'm looking for this type of company, this type of role, this type of compensation. Who do you recommend I speak to? Who do you think that might be able to advance my own initiatives here? And that's obviously formal if you know somebody. But the point is that you got to start having these conversations. The other thing is if you are applying online, please do not be afraid to connect with the hiring manager online and use your phone. Go on the LinkedIn app. On your phone is the capability to send a selfie video. Nobody's doing this. Okay. I do this in my own business. I would tell you that I get a tremendous response rate and most of the times like, wow, what a great introduction I haven't seen that before. Okay. So it's still early on to use video through the LinkedIn DMs. Do that. You'll stand out. If you want to apply, that's fine. Follow up. Hey, I noticed you're looking for this and you're hoping that somebody can do this, this and this. I actually did that at XYZ. Here's what we did. Even if you're not in a position to hire me, I'd welcome the opportunity to connect and give as much value to you as I can knowing that that's what you're looking for. Or hey, I just submitted my application online. I'm sure you got 100 things. This is why I think I might be a good fit. Are you open to speaking for 10 minutes? Yeah. And the people who are going to push the envelope and really stay proactive and stay true to following up as we say the gold is in the follow up are the ones that are going to win. There's no other way right now. There just isn't one more thing at the end. One more thing. I want to make this also really an important statement. I've seen this too many times where an executive or somebody in a high level leadership position is getting anxious because they've been out on the market for a while and they're not getting traction. And then they get an interview for a job that's two steps below their skill set and their compensation what they should be making. And because of the anxiety of not having a job, they feel like they need to take this job. Please, if you're somebody who's thinking about this, please take a deep breath and slow it down for a minute and realize there's other avenues where you can make money. You can do consulting. There's ways to use your skill set for the time being because here's what's going to happen. You're going to get onboarded. Within six months, you're going to get bored. You're going to frustrated. You're going to regret this decision. The company's not going to be thrilled because you're not engaged. The market's going to turn and get busier. Recruiters going to call you about a position that's at your level and you're going to leave. That's not good for anybody. It's not good for anybody. That's those are the things I would say. Yeah. No, that's really good. One of the things that when you were talking about knowing what you're doing, knowing what you did previously, being able to present that to people as you network, one of the things that I think about a lot when I talk to people is they don't always know what industry they're really in. And when I say that, we're in Medtech. That's one thing. You're in recruiting or I'm in podcasting. Whatever you want to call it, but are you in Medtech? Are you in orthopedics? Are you in the regulatory side of that? How specific can you get? Is that helpful in your mind or what do you think? Yeah, I think that so basically marketing terms, avatar. Who is the avatar that you serve and what is important to them? The more narrow and specific you can be and understand who you're reaching out to what their specific pain points are because it's fairly similar to what you've dealt with, the more you're going to resonate with the person that you're hoping to get a response from. So absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's I just think people should really think a little bit more about that. Are you in Medtech? You have the option to be a class two, IVD that works in Europe. You know, and that is your sweet spot that, you know, now you know, you don't want to get outside. You may be want to get outside that, but that helps with networking. Who does look for? Who does search for? And look for as many warm introductions as possible. You know, I always somebody put it best to me. You want to do you want to use every tool in the toolbox. You can above the line. What is above the line? Above the line is all your warm stuff below the line is the cold stuff. So before you reach out cold, and if if you need to, please, I'm saying to do that, but before you do, hey, John Smith, the hiring manager at, you know, X, Y, Z company. Who am I connected to that knows John Smith? Oh, Etienne knows it. I've known Etienne for years. Let me at least ask Etienne, how does he know John Smith? Oh, John and I go golfing, you know, once a month as a matter of fact, blah, blah, blah. Oh, that's awesome. Dude, he's got a position. Is there any way you'd be willing to make an introduction? Yeah, I'd be happy to. Well, guess what? How much warmer, how much stronger is that introduction going to be versus had you just done what I said, send a video cold? So always try to think above the line, like, how can I get to this person warmly? The other thing too is the more value you can somehow create for somebody and help before they ask, the better off you're going to be in any network situation. Now, if it's, if it's, and you've got different types of reaches, right, you've got those that might be a little bit longer play where while I'm filling out these applications and reaching out to these people cold, I've got this other hot list that I'm going to warm the heck up. I'm going to send, maybe I had a report that I did at X, Y, Z company that's public information. I'm going to send it because I know that they're going through something similar. I'm going to give it to them. Then my next touch is, Hey, did you have a chance to read section 3.8? I noticed that you guys are dealing with this. Did that help you? Great. Hey, would you be open to an introductory conversation? I love what you guys are doing over there. I'd love to learn more on that call. I'm happy to share anything else that might help you. Great. That's a whole networking stream in addition to these hopefully quicker wins of, of the approach. What's crazy to me is that over 16 years, you know, the actual strategy probably hasn't changed a lot with those warm leads and so on. But with LinkedIn, everything else, you've probably seen amazing changes with the ability to see connections. That's crazy, isn't it? And just how much is that people's fingertips, how much information is on the internet, how much you can educate yourself very, very quickly, and how quickly you can reach people that you want to reach through the power of LinkedIn. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. That's so cool. But people, but here's the other thing I would say though, people sometimes feel like, Oh, I can't necessarily go outside the process. If they're interested, they'll call me. It's not that way. It's not that way. I think in today's market, it used to be eight touches until somebody knows your name and remembers you in sales. Now it's like 12. I think it's like 12. So it's no different with this. You're just another application in a sea of 200. Make them want to know you. Make them want to respond to you. The only way you could do that is getting outside your comfort zone and being proactive with your outreach and do it, you know, professionally do it with value, leading with value, but do it. And don't feel like you're circumventing a process. That process is broken. The process of going online, spending 40 minutes to fill out an application and hoping for the best, it's broken. Yeah. I think we don't always know the value of ourselves. And so that's pretty important as well. But like you said, life begins at the end at the end of your comfort zone. So definitely get out there. That's awesome. Where could people find you? And do you have any last piece of advice recommendations? I know we're kind of to the end here, but any last piece of advice for the audience? I would say my advice again comes back to thinking of the other party that's involved. And the more that you can think about the other party's perspective and what might be important to them, the more you're going to win, whether you're hiring somebody or whether you're interviewing somewhere. Same thing with networking. Put the other person first. What can I do today that's going to create value and a lasting impression with that person? And then what I would say is if anybody has any questions, they can always reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn, Mitch Robbins, the Anthony Michael group is the name of our search firm. We have a brand new brand spanking new website, the Anthony Michael group.com. The people are more than welcome to check out. We'd love to hear from you. Okay. Well, we'll put a link in the show notes so people can check that out. But Mitch, thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. I hope people are able to take this and really apply it and come out of the other side and make 2024 the best of your ever. So thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. I really do appreciate it and love your podcast. So thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Take care. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, can I ask a special favor from you? Can you leave us a review on iTunes? I know. Most of us have never done that before. But if you're listening on the phone, look at the iTunes app. Scroll down to the bottom where it says leave a review. It's actually really easy. Same thing with the computer. Just look for that leave a review button. This helps others find us and it lets us know how we're doing. Also, I'd personally love to hear from you on LinkedIn. Reach out to me. I read and respond to every message because hearing your feedback is the only way I'm going to get better. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.