The Sterling Family Law Show

The 12-Minute Operational Interview Process That Shows Who Can Do the Job - #193

• Jeff Sterling Hughes

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Your operational interview process is probably too easy. If everyone passes, you're not learning who can actually do the job.


We give candidates 12 minutes, an incomplete file, and a real crisis. The ones who ask smart questions? A-players. The ones who complain? Bucket dippers.


Learn this scenario-based interview system we use to test attorneys under real pressure before a bad hire costs you six figures.


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📄 CHAPTERS  


0:00 - Operational Interview Process: Why Culture Fit Isn't Enough 

1:45 - The 4:15 Friday Scenario That Reveals Real Performance 

4:00 - Why Your Working Interview Should Be "Built to Fail" 

6:50 - Bucket Dippers vs. Bucket Fillers: What Stress Reveals 

9:48 - Designing Interview Gaps That Identify A-Players 

11:48 - Scaling Interview Complexity by Role Seniority 

13:48 - The Six-Figure Cost of Skipping Candidate Evaluation

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SPEAKER_02:

Getting through the culture interview is one thing, but being able to feel in a situation of stress, that's the law firm environment, is huge. So if you're listening to this, the idea behind the operational interview is can they do the job in real time so that you can actually understand their thought process? Which is really what you're trying to assess, right? Can they think in real time? Can they think on their feet? Because this is a real world situation that happens to our attorneys every week. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, the podcast designed to help family law owners build the firm of their dreams. I'm your host, Tyler Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our family law firm only consultancy called Rocket Clicks that was born out of our very own family law firm, Sterling Lawyers, that has grown over 27 attorneys. Today we're continuing our hiring series. We have a three-part interview process, a culture interview, an operational interview, and a final interview. Today we are taking a deep dive into the operational interview. We have Tony Carls, who is the co-founder of Sterling Lawyers, as well as the president of our consultancy. And we have JP Vanderlinden, who runs our client service team. We go deep into understanding what is involved in the operational interview, what questions you should ask, and how you should be thinking about the hiring process for your law firm in general. Gentlemen, welcome back. We are continuing our interview series. And so we have a three-part interview here at both our law firm as well as our consultancy. The first being the culture interview. So, like, are they a good fit? Will they be able to work well with our teammates and well within our firm? The second interview is the operational interview, which is the interview we will be talking about today. And this is the get your hands dirty. Can you actually perform the job? Uh Tony pioneered our operational interview over at our law firm. And so, Tony, give us an overview of what this interview entails and how you use it to help hire great attorneys uh over at Sterling.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. So it's uh it's literally like you said, it's a it's a scenario-based interview. Uh so we give you a scenario and a pretty scanty fake file that you have to then operate from. And our our goal is to see how do you operate with limited information, what type of things do you look for, what types of things do you ask to use, and so on and so forth. Um so you know, we we basically give them uh a type of scenario that we give them. This may have changed in the couple years since I've been there, but a type of scenario that we would give them is um you know, it's it's 4 15 on a Friday afternoon. You're the primary attorney on a on a client um who's active in a custody dispute with their ex-partner. Um a temporary order was issued two weeks ago. Sarah granting Sarah primary placement of their two children, um, Tom having every other weekend. So the situation, Sarah calls your office hysterical. Tom arrived at the school two hours early, told the school they were there was a change in custody and took the kids. So what do you what do you do as the attorney? What are your what are your next steps? And you're given the you're given kind of a a file that is uh an example of kind of what work product and what orders have been in place in the past, and we kind of see how would you navigate, how would you navigate this scenario and kind of move forward? And we're you know, we're looking for them to operationalize how to move this thing forward, how are they gonna care for the client? How are they gonna do all of this stuff? So uh how do they think? Yeah, it's very much a how do they think. Um, and they there's no preparation for this. They we get they get given this in the interview, and that's it's about seeing how they how they think about how to do the work. It transparently, it's it's set up to fail. Um, it's not set up where everybody's gonna pass this, it's set up where it's uh they have you essentially present the scenario for like five-ish minutes. Um, then we get to observe kind of what they're gonna do to process the situation, um, and then they get to kind of give us a presentation. Um, so they have about 10-15 minutes to kind of do the processing, um, and then they have five to ten minutes to kind of present to us on what would they what would this look like, and then we get to ask them a bunch of questions. So this is really a working interview that's pretty hard to do uh because it's it's short time frame, limited information, how do you move it forward? And it's all about how do you think as a as an attorney, how do you operate under stress, how do you operate in a stressful situation? Because like if you don't do good in this, you're gonna not get a job. So, like there's things on the line here, um, and we want to see how you think. That's really the point of it.

SPEAKER_02:

JP, you've been through a lot of operational interviews. What candidates uh really nail this and and where have you seen them struggle?

SPEAKER_03:

So I think uh a couple of things that Tony called out that I double back on. One is they don't get the scenario in advance. So what you're gonna see is how they operate under pressure. There is a there is a type of team member who is very, very good as long as they have all the parameters and they have all the time. So, ideal circumstances, they crush it. This operational interview reveals the people who won't be able to translate that performance into the high pressure environment. So that's a big one is how do they handle stress? I've seen people fluster and flub and try to stall for time and then object and complain about how little time they had. And they they just they just talk about all the reasons why it didn't work. The ones who do really well, they just figure it out. They okay, I have 12 minutes to do this, I can't do it perfectly. What's the best I can move forward?

SPEAKER_02:

Which is really what you're trying to assess, right? Can they think in real time? Can they think on their feet? Because this is a real world situation that happens to our attorneys every week.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, any any role you're in, this can this can happen. So it's not like uh this is attorney specific, but you you can create these for any type of role. We just made one for project manager here, and like they there's there's intentionally gaps left in the left in in the situation to see if they ask ask the questions or identify the gap or whatever, so that we can see we can see how they think and how good are they at what they say they can do. Because you can only learn so much in a resume, you can only learn so much in like you know, behavioral type questions that you're gonna ask in a culture interview. When you put someone under stress, you're gonna like you the people that like instantly complain, you're like, oh, okay, so you're gonna be a bucket dipper in this organization. Like you're you're not gonna be filling, you're not gonna be filling the bucket up, you're gonna be constantly draining the bucket. So, like, you know, it's a that's there's like a interesting tells that happen in this interview that aren't even part of the the question set that are almost better than a cultural interview, because like you get to see them operate and like does their culture interview match their operational interview? There's a whole bunch of things, there's a whole bunch of layers to this that are fun.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a great point, is the getting through the culture interview is one thing, but being able to think on your feet and deal in a situation of stress, which is you know, that's that's the law firm environment, um, is huge. So if you're listening to this and maybe you don't like, you know, the the scenario that Tony gave, the idea behind the operational interview is can they think on their feet? Can they do the job in real time so that you can actually understand their thought process?

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, family law firm leaders, my partner Tony Carls just released his book where he lays bare our precise blueprint for growing sterling lawyers from zero to 17 million. This is the blueprint that we still use daily. And Tony explains it in very simple terms. The truth is, this is not simple to do. Success requires and demands hard work. But if you have the patience and the work ethic to do it, your family law firm will succeed.

SPEAKER_02:

Tony, if someone's creating this uh for the first time and they like this perspective, is there anything else that they should think about as they're building their operational interview?

SPEAKER_01:

Um don't try to make the scenario perfect. Like intent like intentionally leave gaps that you're looking for them to identify um or call out in their their analysis. Like that's one thing. Um another is don't try to make it, don't don't try to make it easy. Make it make it like what is an A plus player do here? And like you're gonna grade against that, and you're not only gonna hire people that crush this interview, because reality is one percent should be able to crush this interview. Everybody, you're not gonna only hire 1% of people that take an operational interview, you'd never hire anybody. But like if you find someone that does a really good job, there you need you you need to move them forward in the final interview faster because they're gonna be really quality. But not many people should do that. So if you're setting it up and like you start doing the operational interview and everyone's getting it right, it's not hard enough. That's the reality. And like we made we went through those mistakes um on both sides. We made you know our our SEO one and our paid one too easy, we've made the attorney ones too easy in the past, and like um, or we were asking the wrong questions, they get into the job, and like the things that we expected to learn from them from the operational interview we actually didn't learn. Um, so it's it's uh expect it to be an evolutionary process over the course of probably like a year-ish for every role for you really before you really can lock it down and be like, okay, yeah, now this is the these are the right, these are the right questions and getting the right behaviors, and then you can really start to see the flywheel of hiring become a reality.

SPEAKER_02:

That's great. And do you ask them questions throughout it or you let them kind of flounder for a little while and and figure stuff out? How does that work?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean that's that that's my tact. I don't know, JP, you can kind of speak to yours, but uh generally we're not we're not uh filling the gaps for them. We're just kind of seeing how they operate in the scenario.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, one of the things that I would recommend is um think about as you're designing your scenario, as you leave these gaps, what you would like them to ask you. Because good candidates, when they discover a gap, instead of just going, oh no, there's a gap, what do I do? They'll go, I'm sitting here with two experts, I'm just gonna ask them a question. Hey, in this scenario, uh, how do you want me to think about this? What about this information I don't have? Um, is there is there an opposing counsel involved I should consider here? Or, you know, what what county is this being handled in? Like it's I what questions do you want them to ask? And then like look for those. Because again, the A players, the top tier, they're gonna ask you those questions. And then you need to be prepared with the answers for like, oh, here's how you can apply it in this scenario. Here's here's what the assumption I want you to make. Keep moving forward. Good question.

SPEAKER_02:

So once they do the thing, right? Whatever the scenario is, they go through it. What happens next?

SPEAKER_03:

So typically we're gonna have them execute the exercise, and then there's a series of follow-up questions. Why'd you do that? Why'd you think that way? Some of it is some of it is directly like cross-examine the work, right? And so, like, talk me through why you prioritize this. I saw you didn't go to this part of the file. I I saw you didn't tell me about that. Because again, you're just trying to get like what's in their brain because you're watching them. Like we have we have our candidates screen share while they're doing it, whole screen. I want to see what websites they go to, do they use AI, what tools they're deploying? I want to see their whole process. And then I want to ask them why. Tell me the thing I can't see, which is what's operating between your ears. So that's that's one question you want to explore. I also have a preset list of you know, usually five to eight questions that I'll use to help me um kind of get a little bit of a better sense of the candidate. So, for example, hey, you only had 10 minutes to do this. If you'd had another 10 minutes, what else would you have done here?

SPEAKER_02:

Great question.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. And so, like, that tells you the like how far could they have gotten it? Like, are they, because again, counter our earlier point, some people do really well in the moment, but they're all kind of reactive. And so this person had like three cards they were gonna play. And once those three cards were done, they were out of ideas. And like you, you ask them and then you kind of figure out like, uh uh, yeah, that's it. You're real shallow. You got no depth to you. Okay, cool. I understand. So have some set of questions that you have pre-prepared, and then also cross-examine the work and what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well said.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh, and anything after that? Yes. So depending on the seniority of the role, um, your role should be more or less complex. So um, your intake team, the operational interview, might only be 30 minutes, right? You might give them just like a real quick scenario, they spend 10 minutes in it. You you ask them 10 minutes of follow-up, and then there's space for them to ask questions. Uh, you're doing it, you're doing an attorney, right? That's at least an hour. I want to give myself plenty of space to explore that. Paralegal, you know, you kind of judge it based on your scenario. You want to, you want to kind of have it probably somewhere in the middle there. You want to give yourself enough space to explore, and the complexity of it should scale with the role. So, for example, when we're hiring a specialist, that's a 30-minute get in, do this work, we're gonna evaluate it. When if it's a manager, we add a level to get in, do this work, cool. Now imagine you had to apply this to your team. Director level, do the work, apply it to your team. Now talk to me about how you run it across an entire portfolio. And so we're gonna scale up the levels to match the seniority of the role. Um, and then you always wanna end. My favorite part is what questions do you have for me? Um, because good candidates, they come prepared with their own questions. And if there's a whole set of criteria in that, we can get to that. But like that's typically how I think about the actual interview portion of itself.

SPEAKER_02:

It's great. Uh, Tony, what do you say to candidates or to law firm owners who are listening to this who are like, well, that's way too in-depth. Like, you can't do this to candidates. That's not fair to them.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh the most expensive decisions you're gonna make are adding new people. So if you're not betting them up front, you're gonna pay for it once they're in your in your doors, either through quality of work or quality of client experience. So you're gonna pay for it somewhere. From our from our perspective, it's worth paying for it up front, and making sure your constraint to get in is really high. Um, so that once people are in, they stick and they're good. Quick hiring because you like what somebody else in the marketplace said about them, or you they they said something that you enjoyed in the interview process and you really but you really don't know them, you know, that's gonna it's gonna be hard. It's really hard uh to make a good decision on someone in an in an hour. You know, it's the reason we do three interviews is it's it's harder to continue to wear the mask consistently that you are gonna put on, that everybody puts on, you know, when you go on a first couple dates uh when you're dating, when you're younger. Everybody, you know, got their hair cut, they made sure they were shaved, and they made sure, you know, they were wearing their best clothes and they had their cologne on and their car was cleaned, and like every little thing was put together so they could try to impress the girl. But by the you know, fourth, fifth date, they haven't they didn't read revacuing the car. You know, they're they're not wearing their nicest clothes anymore. Maybe they're late to the late to the pickup. It's like, oh, okay, so you're your face, your mask is starting to come down in terms of who you really are. And that's what we're trying to do in the interview process. Because the better you can learn who somebody is, the more likely you're gonna be able to predict their future success. 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think the only thing I would add to that, like just to double tap on it, is like even for for our most critical roles, we're a virtual organization, but we fly people out uh or we go fly to them. Um, because you're right, the hiring the wrong person is so expensive. And so this is our process and to to really getting to know and understand our candidates and be able to make sure that they're the the right fit for our organization. JP, anything we missed?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so I would give you two things to think about. One, I mentioned earlier the questions at the end are really important. Uh so like some of the criteria I look for is like, do they ask transactional or strategic questions? Meaning, are all their questions about when do I start? What are the benefits? What's my job description? How many case files do you want me to work at a time? Who will I be working? Like, if that's all it is, those are not good questions. Those are I Googled, what are some questions I should ask and just, you know, see what, see what AI gave me, and I just ran with it, right? I'm looking for a depth of question that says, hey, I looked at your mission and vision and I saw that this is what you have in there. I'd like you to tell me more about this part and how you apply it. Or, hey, I saw that, you know, based on looking at your LinkedIn profile, you've you've grown about 5% year over year. Tell me, like, was that your goal? Are you trying to grow more? What does growth look like in your organization? What's the opportunity for advancement for this role? And what are the KPIs you're looking for for me to hit that? Like those are strategic questions that show you this person is thinking about their next opportunity and they're not just looking for a J O B. So I think that's that's really powerful is look for those questions. The other thing I'll mention is when you're designing your um your tests, think about the things that are hardest to train for, the biggest gap that you're like, I don't want to have to close this gap. I need this person day one ready in this modality. And so whether that's I need them to be ready to talk to our clients, I need to know that their presentation skills and their presence is really good, I need their organization to be on point, I need them to already know the specific statutes for the county that we're working in, or the specific practice type that we're functioning on, or I need to already have you know experience with our case management system. What is the thing it's hardest to train for and optimize for that? Because you only have a short period of time. You can't cover everything. And so, what's the most important thing that you need to know technically that they're able to bring to the table? Um, Tony talked about some of the mistakes we've made. Some of the mistakes we made were we didn't do that. And so we optimize for, oh, they're really good at, you know, putting together a strategic plan. And it turns out that this role does that like once a year. And what they mainly do is, you know, they're in the account and we didn't test them on that. It's like, oops, well, you know, they passed the test, but we didn't test right. So, two things I would I would think about there.

SPEAKER_02:

Definitely an evolution for sure, guys. Love this. Uh, again, three part interview. We have the culture interview, we have the operational interview. Our next episode will be on the final interview before you make that hiring decision. So make sure to tune in and check that out. But appreciate your time and looking forward to the next one.

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Jeff Hughes

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