The Demand

In your next interview, you drop the “tell me about a time when” questions and replace them with a real conversation about your actual operating challenges. If you keep asking rehearsed-answer questions, you learn how well the candidate prepared for a performance, and you learn nothing about the person who is about to work in front of your Guests.

The Work

  1. Before your next interview, write down one real, specific challenge your operation is facing right now. Plan to share it honestly with the candidate instead of hiding it.
  2. Ask the candidate: have you eaten here? If yes, let them talk about the visit without prompting. Note whether they talk about the food or about how they were treated and what they noticed about the room.
  3. Run your three-question filter on every candidate before they get an apron: do they share your values, do they have a genuine desire to serve, are they coachable. Describe a real Guest situation from the stage and watch their instinct — do not ask what they would do, watch how they react.
  4. Identify your own Killer Interview Question: name the single most critical issue for your business right now, the thing that costs you the most if you get the hire wrong, and build one question around surfacing it.
  5. Use that question in your next three interviews. Do not proceed to an offer for any candidate who fails the three-question filter, regardless of how short-staffed you are.

Before your next hire, you have replaced your rehearsed interview questions with your own Killer Interview Question and the three-question filter.