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Jordan Burton brings 17 years of expertise in executive assessment and interview training, helping top VC/PE investors and high-growth startups hire the best of the best. He has trained over 3,000 executives and investors on hiring strategies and interview techniques. As the head of business development at Talgo, he manages relationships with industry leaders like Sequoia Capital, TH Lee, Insight Partners, Twilio, and Scale AI, as well as over 50 venture-backed startups. Previously, he was a Partner at leadership advisory firm ghSMART, a consultant at Bain & Company, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.

 

In this episode, Jason and Jordan discuss:

  • Creating a comfortable interview environment to encourage open sharing
  • Strategies for young professionals to avoid hiring mistakes
  • Approaching candidates with an open and curious mindset for objective evaluations
  • Benefits and risks of informal assessment techniques like lunch with employees
  • Prioritizing an exceptional candidate experience to attract top talent

Key Takeaways:

  • A mindset of curiosity and openness transforms interviews into genuine conversations, allowing candidates to showcase their true potential without the constraints of premature judgments.
  • Evaluating only role-relevant experiences ensures fairness in candidate assessments, making post-interview decisions more objective and data-driven.
  • Crafting an exceptional candidate experience—through rapport, coordination, and clear communication—becomes a competitive advantage in attracting top talent.
  • The ability to recognize the right talent fit is a skill honed through practice, coaching, and a willingness to hire individuals who may surpass one's own expertise.
  • Long-term business success is built on talent development, not just individual competence, emphasizing the need for clear expectations, proactive hiring, and strategic redeployment of struggling employees.

 


“If you want to differentiate, have an outsized impact, and build an organization that achieves more than anyone expected, view yourself primarily as a talent builder and developer—that’s the job. When I hear the life stories of those who prioritize hiring exceptional talent, developing, coaching, and grooming great people, their careers are spectacular. They realize it’s not about them. They are comfortable hiring people better than themselves, and they are the ones who end up in the most important, high-impact roles.”

 - Jordan Burton

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Listen to the podcast here:


Jordan Burton- Exceptional Interviews

Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell, and my guest today is just a lot of fun. When I read his bio, I kind of put my finger on it, like, yep, let's interview this guy. So, today's guest is Jordan Burton. Besides doing cool things like having an MBA from Harvard, being a partner at ghSMART, and a consultant at Bain & Company, here's a unique fact about Jordan: he's interviewed over 500 CEOs and C level execs in his role with private equity firms. So, here's the deal. This guy's learned a lot from all these conversations, and he's here today to give us insight into just some of the things that he's learned. And Jordan, I'll let you kind of introduce yourself, but before we do that, I want to one, welcome you to the show. Jordan, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Great to be here.

Two, you said you listened to a few episodes, and our very first question is really the same. And you know when we're recording this, not when it's going to drop, but when we're recording this is a week before Thanksgiving, so it's kind of a neat time to ask this question, but as you and I engage one another today, Jordan, who or what comes to your mind that you're especially grateful for?

Oh, wow. It's funny, my wife and I have a practice of doing a daily gratitude that we share with each other every day. And it's amazing when you just focus some time on that, my answer to your question is so broad, I wouldn't know where to begin, but I guess there's really the basics of health and family having two great kids. I'm grateful to live where I live, and near the ocean and all of that. I guess, from a professional perspective, I'm grateful for all the people who have contributed time and effort in teaching me, mentoring me along my career. I think if I go with that lens, there's people who make a point of trying to make others better, providing feedback, providing coaching, and they do it on a volunteer basis and it kind of makes all the difference in the world. It certainly has been one of the forces that shaped my career most strongly.

Oh, yeah, you make me think of that saying on the shoulders of giants, right? Like, anytime we get to do what we do, we're just standing on the shoulders of people that taught us and help us cut our teeth and all those things, and I think about that when you answer that question. So, yeah, so good. Thank you for that. There may be people that are listening to this that don't know a whole lot about you, and I gave a little bit as far as your intro, but you know, a guy that's interviewed over 500 executives, and not just like 20 minute conversations, but like four or five hour conversations with these founders and CEO types and that type of thing, how does one give us a little history about and about you?

Well, back to my thing around people who've contributed and mentored and all of that, I had a fabulous boss who was actually my boss in two different companies earlier in my career. One was at Bain & Company, when I was right out of college, then did a startup in the kind of .com era. His name's Randy Street, who ended up being Managing Partner of ghSMART, this exec assessment firm. This really was the big left turn in my career. I was really on a business path. I thought I would maybe be an investor, maybe be a founder, entrepreneur type. I guess I sort of am, in a way, with my own practice, but really this talent or human capital space was not even on my radar, and he stayed on me. I think one thing that people do who end up doing well in terms of hiring outcomes are the people who really do minor networks for great talent. He did a fabulous job of staying on me, and I made this shift into being a professional interviewer. And certainly, at the time we're talking 2006-2007, there weren't a lot of us. Still weren't that many of us. And some people confuse it with headhunting and thinking that you're a recruiter, but really, you're a professional interviewer, and it was just an amazing journey to embark on. Learning the skill of how to talk to very accomplished people and gather information about where they've been, what they've done, and map that to any given role, and to be able to predict with pretty high accuracy how they're going to perform in that role. What an awesome tool to have in your arsenal, and I'm forever grateful to him for helping me make this big left turn.

Sure. And so, from there, you've had all these conversations. I hear the props to your guy Randy Street, for sure. Hopefully he listens to this and hears this and smiles. But you've taken that experience and then you've done a few different really important things with that. Can you describe that? And then we're gonna dig into the weeds of each, I think.

Sure. I mean, my passion, even back to when I was doing assessment, as my primary day job, I still am involved, I still do exec assessment, but I've leaned more into training over the years, which is, you can have even more impact if you teach other people the tools, the skills of great interviewing, helping people make great hiring decisions. What could have more impact in the world and getting the right people in the right roles and helping avoid hiring mistakes? But essentially, as I built this personal skill in interviewing, I really did feel a profound desire to train, and it became so compelling that I felt like this is something I wanted to pursue independently. Being in this sort of San Francisco Bay area where a lot of high growth technology companies, a lot of founders, entrepreneurs, I really wanted to target individuals and leaders, who were starting game changing companies that were going to be wildly innovative and help solve some of the biggest problems we face. So really, I went independent, I guess, call it seven years into this journey. So, it's been about 10-11 years that I've been on my own. I do have others involved with me now, but I struck off on my own about 10-11 years ago, and it's been an amazing ride, essentially trying to distill great interviewing into something that is teachable, scalable, that you can actually impart to others who have day jobs, because not everyone wants to or is able to Interview all day long. You got to find with short attention spans, how do you help them build this skill in addition to all the other things that they're doing as leaders?

Yeah, so, so true. When you say some of these things, you know, I was 21 years in corporate America, and I was a hiring manager, and you talk about the interviewing process versus the day job, it just brought me right back to that spot, Jordan, because, you know, I had all these day-to-day responsibilities. Oh, and then I needed to interview and hire people and so, I think a lot of our audience is in that seat and so, not that you can distill all those conversations and what you're trying to do at your company, Talgo, which we haven't even hit on yet, but we will, when you say you're trying to distill all that down into bite sized chunks for that person that has that responsibility of interviewing and hiring along with like you say, their day job, any types of things that come to mind? And maybe it's a story or two where you can illustrate like what it is that you help people with, and what that looks like on a day-to-day basis? I don't know if you want to take the question that way or say, hey, here's the top tips for interviewing. I don't know how you want to do that but tackle it as you see fit.

Sure. So, I speak to a lot of CEOs and leaders about their hiring pain, and there's 50 different versions of the same story, which is essentially, I interviewed this person and the picture that emerged was x. I hired them and the picture that emerged was Y.

Oh, yeah. Oh, man.

Help me understand, how do I get the truth of someone rather than the spin, rather than the pitch? And unfortunately, there isn't just sort of like one magic pill you take that gets you the X ray vision. There's a layering of techniques, but it is relatively simple. I mean, I think back to a story that was kind of earlier in my assessment career, where there was an exec who was final round to be the number two of a very large Fortune 500 company that you've heard of, and everyone on the board and leadership team was excited about this person. And in the course of this, you know, call it four-and-a-half-hour-long interview with me, what unfolded was a fundamentally different story than everyone else had heard. We actually got all of the side stories, all of the truth behind these resume bullet points that seem so great and without, of course going into too much detail, there was a lot of manufactured impact in this person's past. And what it required, if I had to distill like one skill, one capability that moves the needle most on getting the truth is creating a comfortable space where a person gets in flow. We call it being fascinated. Approaching the candidate from a place of deep curiosity and legitimate interest to learn about who they are as a human being. When you cultivate that, people can enter into a flow state where they share themselves very freely and openly. By the way, this can lead to situations like the one I mentioned, where people end up revealing that the stories on their resume really are not what they seem to be, and it ends up in a no hire, a big mistake avoided, or it's just as likely to lead to a yes, where you have someone who may not package or present information when they're giving a sales pitch, but when you really engage them in a dialog where they feel heard, where they feel connected with, the truth of their greatness emerges in a way that it wouldn't otherwise do that. So, there's certainly been times where I have found that this engaging interview actually moves someone up in the queue who might not have otherwise made it. But long-winded way of saying rapport. Connect with a human being from a place of curiosity, and they're much more likely to share their truth and frankly, enjoy the process.

You know, in your answer, you said things like being fascinated, being curious, you use the word legitimate, like being legitimately interested, and here's what I think of, and I'd like us to dialog a little bit about this. A mistake that I made as a young manager was, man, I had some boxes that I needed to fill and I needed to check off some boxes, and I needed positions that I needed to get people in, and man, I may have not been fascinated with them, I may have been fascinated with the job that I needed to get done. So, if you're listening to this podcast right now, and you man in the back of your head, or in the truth of all truths, that maybe you, I don't know, maybe perk up and listen. Because how does one, and this is Jordan, where I need your input, how does one become genuinely fascinated, really interested, curious in the way that you know you mentioned? Like, oh man, and I'm sure there's no 30 second answer to that, but what comes to mind when I ask that?

Here's what I would say. Look at your calendar and see when your next interview is. Like, for anyone listening, when is your next candidate interview> Stop and think about if I end up with an absolute awesome high performer who's a great fit for our culture and the way that we work, what is that going to do for the next year of my life? What is my life going to look like when I have that kind of leverage, that kind of capability on the team? And then imagine what it would be like if you make a mis hire. These are the most critical decisions leaders make. They all know that. We've asked leaders over many years, and they will all say these are the most important decisions they make, yet, there's something about when that interview pops up on our schedule, like, you're about to make one of the most important decisions that you're going to make this month, this year, like this is needle moving. Step two, look at this person's LinkedIn or a CV, whatever's in front of you, and just start to get curious about it. This is an interesting constellation of experiences and whatnot. Don't get into judging whether they're good or bad, just say, I wonder what kind of a person would take this unique, interesting path, and I have an opportunity to sit with another human being and kind of unpack this little puzzle. So, if you combine this like this is the most important thing I need to do, I really need to pay attention to this part of my calendar today, and secondly, look at this interesting human being in front of me, at least on paper, that can cultivate in you a degree of engagement, a degree of curiosity, of attentiveness that will radically impact the quality of information you get from the person. And there's one other little thing.

Yeah, this is so good. It's so rich. Bring it. What's the third thing?

Here's the hard one. This one's counterintuitive, but it's true. When you become a professional interviewer, at least if someone's training you the right way, they have to teach you not to judge the person in real time.

Yeah. How do I do that?

Yeah, you're tempted to say, ah, that was kind of a poorly packaged answer. Now I think they're a bad communicator. You're going to go about trying to prove that hypothesis. That kills curiosity, that kills the openness. The candidate feels it, they start holding their cards closer, they're going to feel judged at the end of the interview. So, what we want to do is withdraw from that. Simply taking notes can help keep your mind off this constant judgment. Is this going well? Is this not? And also, instead of judging whether we like this person, whether this is going well, instead just make a judgment, are we on to something? Are we on to a story that's relevant for this role? Are we using time wisely? So, give that judging part of your brain something to chew on, which is, are we on to a relevant story? And distract it from the thing that says, do I like this person.

Yeah, that's so good. There are so many things to unpack there. I mean, one of the things I’m thinking about is it so important to not do what I said I was guilty of early in my career, and just check boxes and put warm bodies in spots. Now you've got, man, I mis hired and going through them not doing their jobs, not reaching expectations, whatever the bad stuff is, and then having to go through the letting go process. That’s just a whole thing. I love how you start it with, hey, look at your calendar and what your next appointment is, because if that gets in the way of you making a very, very good hire, well, then we need to work on your calendar first, I suppose, right? Because how much more time is it going to take if I mis higher, then, oh, I got to make sure I'm done in 45 minutes, because I got a lunch or my next appointment or whatever, so that comes to mind. And then the non-judgmental part. Boy, I can say I've been guilty of that too. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Talk to me about that. I don't know if there's tips or techniques or if there's just a general direction that I'm facing, because I do want that person to fit the culture of my company, the locker room, so to speak, and it is important for me to at times like this person, so I don't know, unpack that a little bit more.

Sure. So, to be perfectly clear, of course, we're going to be passing judgment on this person. There will be a hire or no hire decision at some point in this process. The point is, don't make that in real time while you're talking to the person. That's what the candidate picks up on. You form a hypothesis, and you go about chasing that hypothesis, you look for confirmation of that early bias. It can introduce all kinds of noise into your decision making. So, to be clear, we will pass judgment, but let's do that after we've done this data gathering process, this journey with the person to learn about them. Trust that if you're taking notes and you're talking about stories that are relevant for the role, you're going to be able to go back and look at those notes and be able to map that to the needs of the role and make a data driven informed decision. There's a little bit of trusting that if I capture this information, and if we're using the time to talk about information that's relevant, at the end of this hour, whatever we have together, there will be a transcript, there will be a record that I can use to pass judgment. I don't need to do it right now.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. I'm gonna ask you a question, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, and I'm smiling in advance because my wife is a health coach and sometimes when we're at a gathering or a cocktail hour or something, you know, somebody will cross their arms, and her name is Amy, they'll say something like, Amy, what do you think about ketosis? And you know, like, okay, wait a minute. There's so much to unpack there, right? Depends on what exactly you're asking and all kinds of other things. And so, she always smiles and gives some coy answer and tries to do her best. So hopefully I don't do the same thing to you right now, but at risk of that, one of a manager, mentor of mine, you talked about in my very first question, you that your mentors and people that kind of showed you the way early on, this guy, he had a technique of he would interview, I think he was very good at that, putting people at ease and having them talk freely, that type of thing, but if they passed his filter, he would do this thing where he would send the candidate out with the troops, so to speak, like to go have lunch. Not even, like a dinner, not the formal, big thing, but just, hey, you know, go hang out with the crew a little bit, and then the crew, so to speak, will come back and it was like, you know, thumbs up, thumb thumbs down type of thing. What do you think of that technique? Good? Bad? I don't know. What type of insight do you have there?

It's interesting. So, this person that you're hiring is going to work with other people in your organization, for sure, and there is value to having those people have an experience with the person and form some sort of perspective on what that working dynamic is likely to be like. I do think that doing things like lunches can be a great way for both sides to get to know each other in a more relaxed setting than just a true interview. My concern on this one is bias creeps into processes in so many different ways. If we have a crew of lunch goers who are all surreptitiously like, this is my chance, I'm going to pepper them with questions, or I'm going to throw them a curve ball, or I'm going to see how what they order at lunch, and make some judgment about who they are, I want to steer clear of that. I will say that if you go and have lunch with somebody and they're rude to the server, or otherwise a very antagonistic or something else that just feels very off for the for the norms of the of the company, that's great. I would just be cautious about making things sort of this
affinity test. Is this person like me? Do I want to get a beer with this person? You can end up with monocultures if your litmus test for a hire is, hey, I want somebody that we go out and we have fun. Is that what you do on the job every day? Are you guys going out and grabbing beers? I mean, that has its own issues.

Yep, yep.

So, I would say, be open to a person who may have a different background, who may look or act different than you do in certain ways. But by all means, if there's clear signs of someone's behaviors being against things that are important in your organization, that's data. That's data.

Yeah. So good. Thanks for allowing me to ask that and not telling me to go fly a kite like sometimes my wife does. So, that was very good. When I was doing some research on you, I saw this idea that really intrigued me, and I'd like us to tease it out a little bit. You've got this thing on creating an irresistible candidate experience; maybe that's what you've already been referring to, but in case it's not, I'd love for you to just tease out that idea a little bit.

Yeah. Why is the candidate experience important at all? Some people can throw it out there as like, yeah, that's something that HR says is important, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to grill them, because we need to grill them. And I caution people; candidate experience is critically important, especially when you start aiming high and you start really going for people who have a lot of options, who have been consistent high performers, you're going to try to get them to say yes to your offer and not something else. We pretend that hiring decisions are an objective list of intellectual pros and cons. What's interesting, people make these all important decisions, remarkably based upon emotions, upon the connections that they had with other people. You'll see people take a lower salary or less of a step up because they felt connected, they felt a kinship, they felt heard and understood in their interviewing process. So, we say focus on making candidates feel wonderful while you're learning about them, right? And the best ways to do that, I would say we've already hit on one, which is rapport. We want everyone who's going to have a meaningful interaction with this candidate to be focused on that interaction and not checking Slack, and not late to the meeting, and not looking at their second screen, if it's a video based interview. Great eye contact, great curiosity and warmth. Aside from that, let us be coordinated as a team. Let's not have eight versions of the same conversation where it's obvious that we're not in any way coordinated, right? Let us play different roles. Instead of making this like eight little performances that the person has to go through. Let's leave time for their questions. This is a two way get to know you process. Let's make sure that this is a two way street. I say do that at the end. Learn about them first, leave plenty of time at the end for their questions.

Sure.

And I would just say, communicate. It's amazing how many candidates we hear say I didn't know where I was in the process. There was three weeks between this conversation and this one. Just have the courage to be coordinated and make a point of following up with the candidate, letting them know what's coming next. Those sorts of things make a huge difference, and you'll find yourself getting yeses from candidates you couldn't believe you could attract before.

Oh, so good.

Companies are terrible at this. It's easy to differentiate. Your competitors are bad at it.

That's so true. What a great statement. And I see that over and over again. I mean, what we do here at Rewire, when we look under the hood at organizations, sometimes they're so polished, everything looks bulletproof from the outside, and then you look under the hood and you're like, oh, it's a mess. And so, you can guarantee what you just said; your competitor’s kind of stink at the candidate experience and interviewing and setting proper expectations and all that. Boy, here here. I could not agree with you more. I had another podcast guest use this term, and I must have said it one hundred times since the interview, which is, clarity is like a magic wand, and what you just referred to, like, when's my next conversation, where am I in the process, what is this going to look like? Like, just setting all that out, even if, and I'll add my two cents, I'd love to hear your take on this, but even if it's like, well, gosh, I'm embarrassed, because this next conversation isn't going to be for three weeks, so, I'm not going to tell them that, or I'm going to leave that out, or say it might be 10 days, but then it ends up being two weeks. No, no. Just say it's going to be three weeks and that's better than the person just not knowing, right?

It is. What's even better than that is saying, let's not make it three weeks; let's decide that this is so important,

Sure, sure, sure.

If there is something that is going to be sub optimal, transparency, I mean, most high performing candidates want to be in environments that are transparent and humane.


Sure.

So, I would keep it really clear with, yeah, hey, there's a very important stakeholder who's on vacation for two weeks. It's really important that they have a connection with you and get a chance to meet you, so, I just want to let you know that, that there is going to be that gap. That makes sense.

Yes, so good. So, we said in the beginning, there's a couple paths that we can go down. We've gone well down this path of interviewing and candidates and the importance and flow state and being legitimately curious and interested, but there's also this path of just you having these conversations. With the time that we have left Jordan, is there another path that we can go down on something around that topic that you find interesting, that some of our listeners might gain some insights from?

Sure. What an awesome privilege I've had of being able to hear the life and career stories of so many great people. There are patterns that emerge from those stories that I'd be happy to share.

Please.

Things that kind of come from my own interviewing history. I guess one thing I could say is, this is proper for those of your listeners that are already in senior leadership positions, this will not be news to them, but for others who are mid-career or get smaller team leadership roles right now, as you ascend in organizations, or as your organization becomes larger, the importance of managing people, building talent, developing talent, it becomes the job. Truly. If you look at CEO roles of very, very large organizations, it's essentially about setting strategy and surrounding yourself with great people.

Yeah.

And what's so funny, look at our education system. It is all about teaching individual competence. We come out of all these programs with our own skills to be great individual contributors, and nobody teaches us how to be leaders.

So true.

If you want to differentiate, if you want to have outsized impact, if you want to have an organization that does amazing things ahead of what anybody could have expected, view yourself as largely a talent builder and talent developer. That's the job. And when I hear the life stories of people who have been very focused on hiring exceptional talent, developing challenging coaching, grooming great talent, their careers are spectacular. They realize it's not about them. They're comfortable hiring people who are better than them.

Right on.

They are the ones who end up in some of the most important high impact roles. It's true force multiplier.

And, you know, I've seen the opposite of that, Jordan, where the founder is the charismatic, they really are intelligent, they really are skilled, and there's not this lifting others up, it's just all from the top down, and yeah. I don't know, man, that seems like a harder row to hoe, and especially if the founder has a health issue or they want to get out of the business or whatever. It's just, it's very different. So, yeah, I love what you're saying there. What else?

There's a flip side to the kind of hiring great and development and developing great talent. If I looked across all of these hundreds of interviews, and I looked at what's the most common liability limitation challenge that these senior leaders have had, if you just aggregate all these conversations, kind of be like a word cloud, not firing fast enough would be a candidate for that.

Oh.

And what's funny, I mean, there's an understandable reason why people struggle with this. These are difficult conversations; just some of the most difficult conversations of our lives, right? If you do one thing to make that much easier and a much more humane and straightforward process, when you bring on somebody, have some kind of a written document that explains what success looks like in the role. Something that says, here's what expectations are, this is how we think about measuring this role. What's great about just having that conversation up front is that when you do that and the individual struggles with important parts of the role, they know it, and they will either seek help, seek guidance, seek to build their own skills, or otherwise, they'll come to you, and it can be a much more straightforward, more objective conversation. It's no longer personal. It's no longer a gotcha. It's not like a surprise to this person. Onboarding is this overlooked part of the process where just setting clear expectations from day one with somebody can make the process of reallocating or redeploying or removing somebody who's not getting the job done much more painless, and by doing that, you can avoid what I do believe is probably the most common
challenge that senior executives have in my experience of listening to their stories.

I do too. The expectation of those senior execs is that they haven't expressed that properly or at all sometimes. The performer that doesn't meet those expectations, and then the hiring or the senior execs are mad, and it's like, well, wait a minute. There wasn't that clarity that you're talking about. So, I really appreciate the way that you outlined the problem, but then also gave a path to the proactive solution to that. There is this saying: hire, slow, fire, fast, like when it isn't working, especially if you've done those proactive things up front and you know what? Sometimes it still doesn't work. You could have somebody do all the things that you just described for the last half hour, and they do it exactly right, they do have a document, and look, we're human beings, we're not robots. Sometimes things come up, or it didn't work out, for whatever reason, people change their mind, people are in different season of life, whatever, and then it's just time to part ways. But when it's time, boy, it's time to rock and roll, right? I mean, you tell me.

Yeah, nobody wins when you when you got somebody who is struggling and it's coming through in your demeanor, when you communicate with them, they're under pressure, you're under pressure. Prolonging that isn't in service to anyone; do them the service of helping them move on to a role where they can be successful.

I appreciate that.

Everybody wins if you can view yourself as, I'm going to help redeploy this individual into an organization and a role, and do that, like, take it seriously or let us rank them, find a role that's a great fit. No one wins when they're struggling.

Yeah, I have seen firing execs do exactly that, like, literally have suggestions, and sometimes even gone to the point of making a phone call or two and about that redeploying. Like, sometimes it's not a good fit for whatever reason, and if you can help that person into another role, great. And we've all heard a story like this, hey, I got fired from so and so, and it's the best thing that ever happened to me because of blah, blah, blah, you know?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, really good.

Yeah. I've interviewed some very high performing leaders who've been fired in their past. There's a role that didn't work out. That's okay. We're really looking for fit to context. What kind of roles do they thrive in? So, it isn’t like you their career is doomed because this one didn't work out.

So true, so true. Well, I know as a result of our conversation today, and I feel like we could go another, you know, 30 or 40 minutes, but we're gonna head towards home here, Jordan, but I know as founder of your company, you've got some resources for people, and so I'd love for you to, one, let people know how to reach you and two, if you've got some specifics, like, if you're listening to this, listener, and you're like, you know what, this guy's got some good tips, I want more, how do people find you and how do people find more about you and what you're doing?

Thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, our mission at Talgo really is helping leaders build this career superpower. Imagine if you had the ability to get it right way more often than you get it wrong? We're never going to be 100% hit rate, but imagine if you could be 80-90 plus percent effective in getting the right person in the right role? It is transformative. We want to provide that through an immersive experience where you learn a set of processes skill science and also the art. The human dialog. All the ways that we can manage conversations to learn about a person. So talgo.io is our website, T, A, L, G, O. It is like talent algorithm. We have a program where, on your own time, you can get the curriculum from us, and we pair that, it's not just like a like an E Learning passive thing. You absorb some curriculum, whenever, wherever, and then have live experiences with myself and my business partner, Matt, to actually practice and build the art and the skill. That's Talgo on demand. That's one approach. We also do quarterly programs that are kind of, we have a curated list of folks, some are investors, some are founders and other business leaders that come together once a quarter. We have one coming up in January that will be an opportunity for individuals to go through a fully live four session experience, where you'll spend a little time four consecutive days. We're figuring out whether we're going to do right four consecutive days, or if we are going to spread it out a little bit, but an immersion with a lot of other smart, motivated people who want to build this career superpower, and hey, you get to do a lot of practice interviewing and build your skills in a low risk environment. We're really excited about it and would be happy to make that available to folks.

Nothing like real role playing. It's the thing. And I always get this pushback of, well, it's fake, we're not in a real environment. That's okay. When you practice, when you do those things, not just hear what you and I have talked about, and nod your head and go, okay, I'm going to try that, but when you're actually role playing, and, you know, extra credit, you can even video yourself, I don't know if that's going to be part of your program or not, but when you're doing those mock interviews or mock role plays or conversations, oh my gosh, do they help. They're not always comfortable, but boy, do they help.

Yeah, we do a lot of individual coaching. So, of the Talgo on demand programs, one's called the founder, and that's one where we actually do provide the one-on-one coaching, so, we can actually be your guinea pig. We'll play the role of whoever you're interviewing for. You can interview us. It's really fun, because we can kind of match where the person's at in terms of their skill level, give them some challenges, throw some things out that candidates commonly do, like dodging a negative, ending around your question around a mistake, or a weakness, or talking too much, and you got to reign me in. So, that could be a great format as well, to help you build this incredible kind of X ray vision.

Yeah, such great resources. Well, Jordan, you brought it. I had a had a feeling you would. This was so good. I've got a page worth of notes here, and I have a feeling our audience will be doing the same thing. And boy, I would suggest they reach out to you. Such good information. So, thank you for your insights today, thank you for your expertise and this just thank you for being so generous with us today.

Thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed it.

Boy, oh, boy, so many insights from Jordan Burton. Some of the things I wrote down were- well, first of all, not firing fast enough. If you've got somebody that's not working out, provide an off ramp for them that helps them and you, the organization. But everything that he said around interviewing from the very, very beginning of, okay, I'm heading into an interview, let me look at my schedule and see what I've got next, and really scheduling proactively and intentionally, because the conversation that you're about to have with a potential candidate is something that could be one of the most important conversations that you have. Period. Being fascinated by them, being legitimately interested and curious about them, that allows them, the candidate, to be comfortable and really get in a flow state of a conversation with you. Being non-judgmental. That was an insight, because, gosh, we all do it, but at the same time, if we're doing it in the midst of the interview conversation, then what we're not doing is being curious and interested in them and those types of things. And one technique that he gave of doing your best to be non-judgmental during the interview process is potentially taking notes. I thought that that was really good. And making sure that the candidate experience is filled with clarity, proper expectations and next step. So, those were just half of the page of insights that I had, but it doesn't much matter what my insights are, as we say at the end of every episode of The Insight Interviews, is really what's most important to you. What insights did you have?

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Thanks for reading. If you got any value at all from this episode, a little nugget all the way up to some big, huge insight, please do us a solid by subscribing, recommending, rating, and reviewing us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google. That stuff matters to us, and it allows us to continue interviewing more awesome people.


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