The Pivot to a Remote Interview Process with Vince Thompson of MELT

Please, please, please wear pants during your video interview! Both parties, not just the person being interviewed. 

Just yesterday, Jessie filled me in on the horror story of her last interview. The interviewer spilled his coffee,  jumped up really quickly to reveal he was in his holiday boxers. While it makes for a hilarious story, it did not win the hire for the company...

Our guest today: Vince Thompson, Founder & CEO of MELT

One of America’s most successful sports marketing and branding agencies, and author of Build Brand You .

Vince has been named one of Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “Most Admired CEOs,” among the “500 Most Influential Atlantans” by Atlanta Magazine, the American Diabetes Association’s “Father of the Year,” one of Sports Business Journal’s “Power Players,” and was listed by BizBash as one of the top 1,000 people in the event industry.

Today we discuss:

• An impressive Pivoting story doing
• Building a virtual hiring process 

Challenge today?

• Business collapsed overnight on March 16th
• Overnight NCAA canceled everything
• Nobody knew what was going to happen
• Had to furlough dozens of employees within weeks
• Breakdown in demographics
• Fear & unrest
• Pandemic, unrest, election …. Oh my
• Made the shift to 100% remote
• The liability gap is HUGE
• Mitigating the litigation dream

Silver linings

• Positive forward facing manner
• Reposition the company - opportunity to showcase what they are doing
• Career development

Why is this important to the company?

• Shifted /evolved the company into a multimedia & event company
• Overnight the market shifted to buyers market
• It will kill the “bounce” mentality
• Prepare for the next evolution
• Good will is good business!

How do we build into your company?

• Building a virtual hiring process
• Bring the heat (first impression)
• Wear something nice
• Know everything about the company, job & the person you are interviewing
• Get a good feeling for the chemistry before diving in
• Trust your gut
• Cease the opportunity to really have a more thorough vetting process
• Improve the process
• What did they do for themselves & others during Covid?
• What did you do to enhance yourself?

*during this time, if nothing was done for self or others…. Not something you want to hire

• Look at the big picture of “Who” the person really is
• A whole different set of ways in which you can
• Can't coach desire & attitude!
• Put something out that is positive, and
• No bad ideas to pitch in the marketplace
• Go from crazy to genius overnight

Key Takeaways:

• Pursue any crazy idea that might have been shelved
• Use a lot more discretion in hing as it is now a buyers market
• Shift in hiring for chemistry & culture to allow us to make more value based decisions 

Guest Links:

LinkedIn: Vince Thompson
Website: MELT
Email: vince@meltatl.co
Twitter: vinnyinc

 

This show is proudly sponsored by Criteria Corp