How will she interview?
Last week I attended a webinar, which featured some “big names” in staffing. Lou Adler, Dr. Charles Handler of Rocket-Hire, Dr. John Sullivan of San Francisco State University (a prolific writer on Human Resources), and Tom Janz of PDI prepared the audience for the possibility that they would be bloodied and bruised as a result of their “dual.” It didn’t happen!
Much to my surprise, the webinar could have been over in ten minutes. The experts agreed that understanding and using behavioral interviewing must be performance based.
For example, you don’t merely ask, “Tell me about a time when you met a deadline.” The presenters felt the question was bland, perhaps with no real reason for the question. “Tell me about the last time you had to make a deadline. I’d like to know details about the situation, the expectations, the obstacles you faced and whether you were able to achieve the results you needed.” You want details. You want to see the personality and motivation of the interviewee. You want to know about the rest of the team and the interaction of the project participants.
One company where I was part of the team for hiring customer service representatives, we scored the answers to each question one to five with five being “far exceeds the expectations.” We established the best people to hire were the ones in category three as they were not over-qualified and stayed for years. The candidates loved customer service and were not looking for the next job during orientation. They were focused on the job at hand. We only hired three’s and four’s. We had a wonderful hiring team, trained and skilled at ascertaining what was important for their openings. Other companies may want the “fives” for their positions. They may only want the extremely motivated, career oriented, top performers.
Lou sounds a bit like a Baptist preacher as he admonishes his listeners to wait at least a half an hour into the interview before making a decision to hire or not. Research demonstrates the decision to hire is based too frequently on good communication skills and appearance, rather than a good performance record. Everyone thinks they know how to interview others and can be blind-sided. In an article last year by Dan and Chip Heath, titled Why It May Be Wiser to Hire People without Meeting Them, they made a good case which agrees with Adler, additionally encouraging work samples as part of the process.
Assessment testing seems to be growing again. But assessment tests and work samples are tools in your interviewing tool kit, not the complete basis for decisions.
Behavioral questions definitely can improve the caliber of your new hires, but the questions must be performance based. You need to think about whether your team needs another outgoing, talkative person with persuasive answers or a quiet “worker bee” as part of the mix. You need to look at skills, experience, personality, and, of course, the results of your questions you and your team prepared in advance. Each team member should have a specific set of questions to avoid asking the candidate the same questions repeatedly. By pulling the team together immediately or within 24 hours of the interview to integrate the data gathered from the interview, you can move quickly. Your candidate will be impressed by your ability to make decisions and fill positions efficiently.
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