An interview with Rev. Dr. K. Bill Dost, Managing Director, D&D Leasing
When looking to hire for your business, it can often help to have a look at how other top executives and successful business owners approach the hiring process. This way, you can learn from their experience and make a great new hire of your own.
Enter Bill Dost, Managing Director at D&D Leasing, a successful SME equipment finance company servicing the alternate credit marketplace. Bill answers our questions and provides his unique approach to hiring in his answers below:
1) What’s the best advice you’ve ever received regarding finding employees? Why was it the best hiring advice?
Always benchmark and use a recruiter. Benchmarking will satisfy all involved, especially yourself, showing that your people are well paid, and the right recruiter will get past all of the chuff, so that you only see the most appropriate people for your position. Often, the people the right recruiter brings you will all fit; it’s a matter of their personality, and ability to assimilate into your culture that your interview will show. Our corporate culture is based on our Core Values, and we ensure we interview for them and really will not hire someone with all the right skills who is missing a core value. We are so focused on our core values that we ensure our recruiter knows and embraces them as well.
2) What’s the most effective job interview question you’ve ever used … and what was the outcome from using it?
Way too many to list! My job interviews typically consist of 27-30 questions, follow-up questions, and 1-2 hours of time, depending on position and multiple interviews. I like to wear people down a bit so that I get a truer answer as opposed to a practiced one. I like to know the person is human underneath the business vibe they are giving me. I always ask for strengths, weakeness, what people would say about them, and what significant others would say about them. I ask them how they entered their career and why they enjoy it. I ask: what would make them a good fit for our organization? I tell them a lot about our company and then ask them to ask me questions as well. We also discuss our Core Values at the end of the interview (after we’ve checked through interview questions to see if they have them or not) and ask again if they think they have them.
3) When it comes to finding employees, what is the best time/money-saving tip you know? Can you quantify your savings?
For me it’s time savings—I REALLY rely on our recruiter to only bring me candidates that fill our job description, so I guess it’s a job description. I see the recruiters job to ensure I’m not killing my days by interviewing the wrong clients, as you can imagine that at 1-2 hours a pop I don’t want to do a ton of them.
4) What’s your best advice for avoiding hiring mistakes? Why?
Multiple interviews, really make sure the job description is accurate, make sure the recruiter understands what you are looking for AND rely on your Core Values to weed people out.
5) Which source of job candidates has proven the best for you to find employees? Why do you think it’s the best source?
Combo of recruiter, backed up with an internal referral. All of our internal referrals go to the recruiter no matter what so that we’re not biased going into an interview, as otherwise, it may create a bit of an old boys’ club, but it seems to have so far been our most successful way of hiring.
6) What question about hiring employees are we missing from this list, and what’s your answer to it?
Do you use a recruiter and why? Are you very detail oriented in the job hiring process or very loose (i.e. do you know what you want or are you simply trying to fill a body)? How do you gauge the value of a resume?
We are very specific with our approach to the job hiring process. Also, we look at the resume in conjunction with the job description and the recruiter’s initial feedback, in order to ensure we get someone who is the right fit.
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