| July
/ August 2006
Fine-tune
those interviewing skills
IMPROVEMENT
TODAY CAN HELP AVOID PAIN LATER
IF PROCRASTINATION
IS ANY GUIDE, two tasks that most managers would rather do
next week are hiring and firing. They are the yin and yang
of the employment process – the bookends of too many
people’s careers – and the worse the hiring decision,
the more likely it will lead to eventual termination of the
person hired.
Central
to a sound hiring process is the interview, which bears more
than passing similarity to the performance reviews to follow.
Both require analysis and introspection, some degree of planning,
and an intense period of personal interaction leading to an
outcome that will either delight or disappoint the other person.
Moreover, interviews and performance reviews require skills
that many people fear they lack and compete for time with
the day-to-day demands of running a business. Last but not
least, they require us to make a decision about someone’s
life. That’s a heady combination.
Job candidates
have a unique perspective on the interview, since it is their
lives that are at stake. All too often, the feedback they
provide to their recruiters is that the interviewing process
stunk. For example, interviewers expressed no urgency in filling
the position, showed little interest in the candidate and
basically had him/her confirm résumé information.
That was not to mention starting an hour late or demanding
to know the minimum salary the candidate would accept.
Because
good interviews help ensure successful hires, they should
be conducted with the same foresight and finesse that one
would bring to a major sales meeting, union negotiation, security
analyst conference or board of directors presentation. To
paraphrase a well-known saying, an ounce of preparation is
worth a pound of cure.
How
to build better interviews from the ground up
MORE
THAN ONCE, veteran search consultants have heard their clients
say, “I’ll know what I’m looking for when
I find it.” What a prescription for frustration, delay
and disappointment.
In truth,
the key to successful interviewing is knowing exactly what
one is looking for. The Sanford Rose Associates Dimensional
Search® process, for instance, pinpoints skills required
to perform the job, experience needed to hit the ground running
and management/operational style best suited to the organization’s
culture and long-term goals.
Of those
factors, the issue of style may be most important –
especially at senior management levels. To use an analogy,
it’s a well-known anthropological fact that civilizations
developed when farming communities began to replace wandering
tribes of hunter-gatherers, leading to the development of
computation and written language as crop production was counted
and recorded. In today’s corporation, hiring managers
need to determine the optimum mix of hunter-gatherers to bring
home today’s kill versus cultivators to plan for the
success of next year’s crops.
With
the assistance of your professional search consultant, write
down those key factors that will determine success or failure
on the job at hand and insist that candidates to be interviewed
have demonstrated the ability to meet them.
If a
search has been long and arduous, there can be the temptation
to fall in love with the first warm body – despite obvious
shortcomings (such as lack of experience, missing skills,
poor cultural fit, etc.). Avoid that temptation.
Conversely,
if a search firm strikes pay dirt on the first one or two
candidates presented, there can be the temptation to assume
that even stronger candidates must be lurking in the underbrush.
Avoid that temptation as well; a bird in hand is worth two
in the underbrush.
In short,
remain objective. A well-defined set of expectations can help
eliminate the guesswork.
Plan
the actual interviewing process carefully; it is astonishing
how many participants in how many organizations have no clue
as to why they have been included or what they are supposed
to ask. Decide whether there will be one or several rounds
of interviews, what role each participant will play and how
the process will be structured – e.g., a sequence of
one-on-one interviews versus a single panel interview, or
perhaps some combination of the two. In order for candidates
to be compared on an apples-to-apples basis, Sanford Rose
Associates recommends that a consistent “core”
panel of interviewers see all finalists. Panelists should
have a full understanding of the position opening and how
it interacts with their areas of responsibility.
Time
being precious, the interview is not the place to be confirming
details covered on a résumé; if there is need
for verification or clarification, Human Resources or the
outside search firm can do that in advance. Amplifying information
on the résumé, however, is fair game. Most contain
lists of accomplishments – such as increased sales,
reduced costs, new product introductions and the like. Did
the candidate do that all by herself, or was she part of a
team? What role did her boss play? Etc.
Decide
ahead of time the questions to be asked, and who will ask
them. (A list of really good questions can be found at the
end of this newsletter.) One of the most common problems with
corporate and broadcast interviews alike is the failure to
listen: the interviewer is too busy instead formulating the
next question he wants to ask. If one does listen, then one
can pick up on red flags, inconsistencies and other areas
to probe. (In one recent interview, a candidate responded
to a typical shortcomings question by citing a tendency to
make sure that subordinates’ work was perfect. The astute
interviewer responded in turn, “So others would call
you a micro-manager?” The rattled candidate confessed
that this was so.)
Provide
candidates the opportunity to ask questions as well, since
those will often reveal the candidate’s amount of research,
degree of insight and true level of interest in the job. Likewise,
your responses provide a wonderful opportunity to extol the
virtues of your organization and sell the candidate on the
position.
At the
end, clarify next steps. Unless you are ready to make an offer
on the spot, don’t try to negotiate salary, title and
other factors. It’s fair to ask about the candidate’s
current compensation – but not what he or she expects
in the new job. Once the interviewing process is complete,
make an up or down decision on the individual. Down means
out the door. Up means the candidate remains in the running
with, at most, two or three other top contenders.
–
George Snider
A
few great questions
- What
would you like us to know about you?
- Why
are you interested in changing jobs at this time, and what
is the perfect next job for you?
- Why
is this opportunity a good fit?
- In
your current job, who do you report to? Tell me about their
responsibilities – and yours.
- What
are your three greatest achievements – and exactly
how did you accomplish each?
- How
would your current employees describe you, and how would
your boss?
- Describe
both a shortcoming and a disappointment – and how
you dealt with each.
- What
risks have you taken in your current job, and what happened
as a result?
- What
would make your current employer (even) more successful?
- What
changes in your current job would make you want to stay?
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