How To Use They Ask, You Answer to Improve Your Hiring Process

By John Becker, Tuesday, December 21, 2021 7:30 AM

To go all-in on They Ask, You Answer is to commit yourself to being an educator first. When someone types a question into a search engine, you want to be the one providing helpful resources to solve their problem.

We know that you don't take this commitment lightly.

Successful They Ask, You Answer companies structure their entire businesses around the framework. They hire content producers who are focused on education and turning their sales teams into teachers.

But They Ask, You Answer can be applied to other situations as well. A particularly valuable use is in recruiting and onboarding — what we call content recruiting.

Every business's success depends on finding and hiring the right people. Unfortunately, businesses get this wrong every day — and the effects are damaging. In a famous study done in 2018, Jobvite found that a third of employees don't even make it through an entire quarter. That's right: 33% of new employees quit their job in the first 90 days.

If someone is leaving that quickly, it likely wasn't a good fit from the start. Maybe the new employees didn't fully understand the job they'd be doing.

According to Chris Marr, a They Ask, You Answer coach at IMPACT, the challenge of hiring was only made worse by the pandemic.

"During COVID," he says, "it was a real challenge for organizations to find and retain great talent."

Whenever someone leaves an organization, whether it's after 90 days or 900 days, it leaves a gaping hole that drags down production and erodes morale.

When companies hire the right people and retain them, the companies are much stronger and more profitable.

To hire the right people, focus on education

When a candidate is applying for a job, the more information they have the better. The company that can educate, build trust, and answer any questions up front is the company that will end up with happier, well-informed, and well-qualified employees.

When it comes to educating, building trust, and clearing up questions, there's no better framework than They Ask, You Answer.

Below, we'll dive into details about how to apply the They Ask, You Answer framework to the recruiting and hiring process.

We'll cover:

Why candidates are a lot like customers
How to get started with content for job seekers
How The Big 5 and other They Ask, You Answer concepts apply to recruitment

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