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Hey there , I hope you are doing well . This episode is a little different . You're just going to be hearing from me no interview . Today . I want to share some of the insight that my fellow sustainability and equine practice alumni have shared with me . Rachel and I have been interviewing for a tech or assistant position for the last two weeks or so .
I asked the best group of people that I know some of their favorite questions on how to really dig in to get to know a technician applicant . I want to share those with you today . It's always hard to add a person to the mobile team . We spend a lot of time together in the car . It's a grueling job some days .
It's also great sometimes because you get to stop for ice cream , but there's a lot of time together , potentially more than in a hospital setting . I have always been hesitant to add team members , but it's definitely time . Rachel needs the help this spring . She didn't even really have a slow season this winter , like we're used to , so it is definitely time .
There's just a collective wisdom in the alumni group that is SEPS . I want to share , with their permission , some of the awesome questions that they found . One that I found personally helpful that I think just found online was the question what is one thing that your friends or family members might say that they would like to change about you ?
I got a lot of really great answers and some good insight to who they are as a person that they wouldn't probably have brought up if I hadn't asked that question . Another great one from Dr Shalyn Crawford was do you get carsick and can you work on a computer in the car ? I don't know that .
I actually would have thought about that , but a huge part of the role that we're hiring for is to help with billing and exam notes while Rachel's driving Really important , although I will say Dr Lisa Kivitt , who I'm going to quote here in a minute , has found amazing goggles that will help with motion sickness .
If you need that link , let me know and I will send it to you . Let's hear from Dr Kivitt . One of the ones I love that she suggested was what's an embarrassing moment or a big failure in your career thus far ? How did you handle that or move on from it ?
I think that opens the door to a good discussion about what people consider a failure and what they do to recover from it . Another one I loved was Dr Caitlin Daly suggested asking people about the last book they read or movie they watched or a TV show that they're binging . That's really important because , like I said , we spend a lot of time together .
Having something to talk about , that you're maybe on the same page as your technician in the car , can be really great and it's a good way to find out what they're into . I also made sure to ask what hobbies they had outside of work to see if there was anything that was in alignment . Dr Julie Setlage gave us a great question .
She said to ask what motivates them to get out of bed and come to work . I think inherently , people are going to say horses , but the ones that expanded a little bit more on that was helpful to see how they operate on their day-to-day basis . She also suggested asking how do you like to receive feedback on your performance ?
I got some great answers from that . A lot of the people we had interviewing were fairly young , so I wasn't even sure that they would have an answer to that , but I was shocked at how many did and most of them said they wished they had more , which was really important to know and also great to hear , because I think that's beneficial for everybody .
And then Dr Louise Batt suggested bringing up the idea of core values and seeing what they thought of were their core values , to see if they were in alignment with our practices core values . So I made sure to send them the list that I love from Brunet Brown ahead of time for their ride along interviews .
I didn't ask them this in their initial Zoom interview but I did ask them to think about it before they came to ride along with us so we could chat a little bit more in depth with them as we are driving around .
And then Dr Kavit mentioned this too , but she suggested asking people to define some well-known horse ailments like colic laminitis , navicular syndrome .
She found it a good way to really weed out who were actually horse people and who just trail road a few times , and she was like I don't care how technical they get , but it is a good weed out and this go round . We were really lucky that we had a lot of people apply with true , actual horsemanship experience , but that's not always the case .
The other question that I found to be pretty helpful and it was a good way to segue into the questions from them . Portion of the interview was to ask is there anything in the job description that sounds scary or you don't want to do it ? And then also , is there anything that you wish was in the job description that you didn't see listed ?
So that led us into a good kind of discussion about skills that they were excited to try but really didn't have any experience on . It was a way to find out some of their interests that we didn't even have listed on the job description , so I thought that was a good point of reference .
So , like I said , this is a quick episode but hopefully helpful to you . Share it with a friend if you know someone looking for a tech . We are also creating a two page interview outline template with a bunch of these questions and kind of a brief overview on maybe how to get started .
I know that for me , hiring was always a daunting process , and the sustainability and equine practice seminar alumni is so knowledgeable in this , and so we wanted to put out a resource using their ideas to share with everybody . It'll be a free download . I'll link it in the show notes . It'll also be on the seminar website , which is just SEP eminars .
com , and you can download it for free . Check it out , bring it into your next interview and we hope that you find it helpful . I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you soon . Thanks again for listening to today's episode . I so very much appreciate you spending some of your time with me . I know how valuable it is .
If you want to do me a favor , please share this episode or any of the episodes with a friend to spread the word , and you can also hit subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss another episode . I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon .