One of my favorite things to do on Sunday mornings is reach for the Business section of The New York Times and check out Adam Bryant’s Corner Office column. It’s a Q&A-style interview with interesting CEOs (many of them women!), and it’s always chock-full of great leadership lessons and management tips. Plus, it’s presented in an easy-to-digest format (which is always helpful on a Sunday morning!).

In this past Sunday’s Q&A, Erika Nardini, CEO of sports and men’s lifestyle site Barstool Sports, was featured, and my favorite part of the interview was when she detailed her process for vetting job candidates. After saying she was a “horrible interviewer” because of her impatience, Nardini explained a unique process for gauging potential hires’ interest in the job. “Here’s something I do,” Nardini said. “If you’re in the process of interviewing with us, I’ll text you about something at 9 p.m. or 11 a.m. on a Sunday just to see how fast you’ll respond.”

The maximum response time Nardini will allow? Three hours.

“It’s not that I’m going to bug you all weekend if you work for me,” said Nardini, “but I want you to be responsive. I think about work all the time. Other people don’t have to be working all the time, but I want people who are also always thinking.”

This reminded me of another favorite Corner Office column that discussed a unique hiring technique favored by Walt Bettinger, CEO of Charles Schwab. In the Q&A, Bettinger said he invites a job candidate to breakfast — but arrives at the restaurant early, pulls the manager aside, and says, “I want you to mess up the order of the person who’s going to be joining me. It will be OK, and I’ll give a good tip, but mess up their order.”

Why does Bettinger do this? “I do that because I want to see how the person responds. That will help me understand how they deal with adversity. Are they upset, are they frustrated, or are they understanding? Life is like that, and business is like that. It’s just another way to get a look inside their heart rather than their head.”

Do you have any unique hiring tricks you may want to share? If so, please send them to me at mcampanelli@napco.com. Perhaps we’ll cover them in an upcoming article.

Enjoy!

Melissa Campanelli
Co-Founder
Women in Retail Leadership Circle