If you look for George
Thomas Contractor Inc. in
the phone book, you won’t
find it. In fact, you won’t find
the company advertised anywhere.
That’s because George
Thomas, founder, president
and CEO, has built his $8
million construction company on sheer reputation.
Part of that is doing good
work, says Thomas. But it
starts with being selective
and hiring the right people.
“We make it very difficult
to get into the company
because we get a better class
of worker,” Thomas says.
Smart Business spoke with
Thomas about how to interview to find the right employees are right for your team.
Q. How do you know when a
job candidate is right for your
company?
For me, it starts with looking a man or a woman in the
eye and quickly building a
first impression.
There are often things that
people will say to you or write
on their resume or application.
As the CEO, you must know
what to listen for and study
the application to see if there
are inconsistencies.
Sometimes it’s not what a
prospective employee says; it’s
what he doesn’t say.
Q. How do you spot inconsistencies during the interviewing process?
For example, if I would look
at their resume and it says, ‘I
worked for so-and-so from this
period to that period, and for
so-and-so from this period to
that period,’ then in the conversation, something else
comes up that they worked,
for but it’s not in that time
frame nor is the name mentioned. To me, that’s an inconsistency as to why didn’t you
mention that.
Then I would probe a little
bit into, ‘Well, I’m looking at
your resume, but it doesn’t
mention this particular thing
that you did for three years.
Why is that? Did you forget it?’
It may be that they got fired
or they had a bad experience.
It may not be their
fault, or it may be
something they want
to forget. But they didn’t put it down.
When you’re looking
this person in the eye,
most seasoned or better
entrepreneurs or
employers, after looking
at the resume and the
qualifications, they kind
of get a sense of the
rightness and the truthfulness of what they’re
dealing with. I look for
that.
Then, in some cases, I
sense that they are just
very forthright, open,
honest people.
Sometimes I feel like
I’m getting a little bit of a line,
and that causes me to look
more carefully at the information that they’ve given me. It
also tips me to ask questions
that I might not otherwise ask
— probably knowledge that I
have in the more difficult areas
of running a job.
Most people, because I’m
older, don’t realize that I was in
the field for many years when I
was younger. They don’t understand that I know construction
extremely well.
I will ask questions directly
pertaining, which kind of catches them off guard, about more
difficult things like, can you do a
rafter cut. Then, all of a sudden,
I’ll know pretty quickly if they’re
running me a story or if they
really know.
I don’t try to catch them off
guard. I listen to what they tell
me, and if it doesn’t seem completely correct or as if I’m not
getting a totally truthful story
about their abilities, I will probe.
Then that’s a whole different
set of questions, which go
directly to the quality of the product. Most CEOs don’t know
how to do that, they’re just
CEOs. They didn’t spend 12
years in the field with a belt on.
