Performing
the Interview
In over 21 years of recruiting experience I've learned two important lessons:
First, past performance is the best predictor of future performance; and
second, people who have been top performers tend to stay top performers. The
goal of every interview should be to uncover a clear picture of the candidate’s
past accomplishments. You can conduct a complete interview to accurately
measure past performance and predict future performance with only four
questions.
The Right Stuff
The best predictors of success
are a track record of high energy (work ethic, initiative), team leadership,
and some level of comparable past performance. The likelihood of success is
high for candidates with this profile. Add the strong ability to adept and
produce in a new environment and you've got an excellent candidate. Using just
four questions, this type of profile can be determined for any candidate.
Asking about four to eight major past accomplishments in a patterned question
format is the key to this type of interviewing approach. Past accomplishments
should focus on individuals, teams, and specific projects. When combined with
fact-finding, these questions can reveal all the important details of each
accomplishment.
The Four Questions: What to Listen
For
Question 1: "Please describe
your most significant accomplishment."
Ask this question for the past
two or three projects. Listen for personal energy and impact. Use fact-finding
to get many examples and details--when, why, how, impact, results, and
timeline. Ask SMART questions (Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented,
Results-based, Time-bound). This should take five to ten minutes. Make sure the
candidate paints a detailed word picture of each accomplishment and provides
specific examples.
Question 2: "Please draw an
organizational chart and describe your most significant team or management
accomplishment."
Look for Span of Control and team
leadership over the last two or three projects. Get examples of the candidate's
actual role, the time and effort involved, any interpersonal challenges that
arose, how well the candidate motivated others and dealt with conflict. During
this five or ten-minute discussion; get details about actual team results and
what the candidate would have done differently.
Question 3: Anchoring: "One
of our key performance objectives is __________ [Insert the most important S.M.A.R.T. objective for the
position]. Tell me about your most significant comparable accomplishment."
What you're looking for here is
Job Specific Competency. Make sure you dig out plenty of details in order to
minimize exaggeration. Many candidates can come up with initial examples that
sound great, but as you delve deeper and probe you will discover the scope,
initiative, and resources that helped them to achieve their results. Make sure
that the candidate can anchor each major performance objective of the
new job with a comparable past accomplishment. This question will take at least
10 minutes to answer if you are pushing for details. If they were working on a
team, make sure the candidate clearly identifies their role and not just
team accomplishments. You’re not hiring the team, just the individual player.
Question 4: Visualization:
"If you were to get this job, how would you go about implementing and
organizing ____________ [Insert the most important performance
objective]?"
The purpose of this question is
to see how effectively a candidate would apply his or her capabilities to new
job needs. We call this a visualization question. Their answer should give a
good idea of a candidate's adaptability, as well as their ability to contribute
in a new environment. As you listen to the answer, consider these specifics:
o
Job-specific
problem solving
o
Verbal
communications
o
Reasoning and
thinking skills
o
Adaptability and
flexibility
o
Self-confidence
o
Insight and job
knowledge
o
Creativity
o
Organizational
skills
o
Logic and
Intellect
Ask this question for the top two
or three performance objectives.
Sound simple? It absolutely is …
and it's guaranteed to help you find and qualify candidates. Just make sure you
use fact-finding and lots of examples to get all the necessary details (when,
why, how, impact, result, and time). Ask SMART questions. Situational questions
help target job-specific problem solving, flexibility, insight, communication
skills, strategic and tactical planning, intelligence, self-confidence, and
communication skills. Caution: you must combine this with a strong pattern of
past performance.
Panel Interviews: Learn More
While Staying Cool
If you want to save time, learn
more, and eliminate your emotional biases, try a Panel Interview. If done
right, it can be one of the most effective tools for assessing competency.
Shorter interviews test chemistry and fit but tend to be a little superficial. Hint: "Interviewing"
personality is not the same as "on-the-job" personality.
Here is some basic advice on
conducting a panel interview:
- Make sure each interviewer has
reviewed the resume and Performance Profile before the interview. This is
critical. Unless everybody on the interviewing team has a clear
understanding of the specific performance objectives of the job, a panel
interview will be a waste of time.
- Tell the candidate beforehand
that there will be a panel interview; don’t surprise them!
- Avoid intimidating the candidate
by limiting the panel to three or four people. Use a round table, if at
all possible.
- Assign a leader. This leader
will be responsible for keeping the group on topic. Only leaders can
change the topic. Other interviewers should be observant and ask
fact-finding and follow-up questions for clarification. Leaders should
make sure each important topic is explored completely and not change subjects
too quickly. Explore each topic thoroughly and weave a thread around the
topic with follow-up questions, fact-finding, and examples. The leader
also keeps the discussion moving. Once a topic is fully explored, he or
she should move on to another topic quickly. Also make sure that other
interviewers don't come into the panel interview with a list of prepared
questions.
- Ask the candidate to visualize
how they would solve a specific job or project related challenge. Get into
a give-and-take discussion using the "visualize" question (i.e.,
"How would you handle the task or solve the problem, if you were to
get the job?").
Evaluation and Follow Up
We've told you about the
four-question interview, and how to use it to zoom in on the best candidates.
Let's expand that a bit now, with a Checklist for Candidate
Assessment. This is how you implement the four questions to look for the
traits you want in a winning candidate.
Use the checklist to rate
candidates on a scale of 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).
1.
Energy, Drive, Initiative.
Don't ever
compromise on this one, because it's the universal trait of success. The key to
personal success is to do more than you have to, so look for this quality in
every past job. Get examples of initiative and extra effort. Don't assume that
an extroverted personality means lots of energy; have the candidate prove it by
example, including specific dates, facts, and quantities. But the reverse is
also true: a low-key person often has more energy and enthusiasm than an extrovert.
It takes patience on your part to draw them out.
2.
Trend of Performance Over Time.
By asking
questions about leadership and impact on a company, you get detailed examples
of a candidate's major accomplishments and organizational changes over the past
five to ten years. From this, it's easy to see how the candidate has grown and
impacted the organization. The ideal candidate has had comparable jobs and is
still showing signs of upward growth. Rank this person a 5 on your scale. But
remember: a comparable job doesn't have to be an identical job. Look at staff
size, issue complexity, performance standards, company growth rate,
sophistication level, etc. Combine these factors and search for an upward
growth pattern.
3.
Comparability of Past Accomplishments.
Use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Results-based, and
Time-based) objectives to compare a candidate's past accomplishments with the
required performance objectives of the job to be filled. Be concerned about
mismatching. A highly energetic engineer might be ineffective as a manager, and
highly intelligent leaders aren't always the best candidates for technical or
business development jobs. Make sure you have a copy of all the SMART
objectives handy during the interview, and get anchoring accomplishments for
each one. Give a candidate a 5 if comparable past accomplishments for each one
are offered, a 4 if all but one matches up, and so on.
4.
Experiences, Education and Industry Background.
Use this in tandem with the Past Accomplishments category. Strong education and
experience can sometimes offset a weaker accomplishment rating. Examine
experience in the context of the environment-the pace, style, and standards of
performance where the experience took place. If the candidate's previous
company had a slower pace and lower standards, of course, 10 years of
experience doesn't mean as much. Give some credit for direct market segment or
competitor experience and education. Add a point or two if these add
significantly to the candidate's ability, or if they improve the job fit.
5.
Problem Solving and Thinking Skills.
How smart does a candidate need to be to be effective on the job? Just smart
enough--any less and you're in trouble. A strong candidate needs to understand
the work, solve job-related problems, and anticipate what needs to be done.
Collecting and processing information to make appropriate decisions is
important; so is the ability to apply previous knowledge and experience to
solving new problems. Asking a SMART visualization question about the actual
job tests all of these things much better than any intelligence test ever
devised. You'll gain an understanding of the candidate's thinking and reasoning
skills, adaptability, communications skills, logic, decision-making powers, and
problem solving abilities.
6.
Overall Talents, Technical Competency, and Potential.
How you rank a
candidate in this broad category depends very much on the needs of the job to
be filled. The score should represent the candidate's ability to grow, develop,
and take on bigger roles. To get a 4 or a 5 in this category, candidates should
have a broader focus than the job demands. Search for thinking skills (the same
ones described in Category 5, but here you're looking at them in conjunction
with other abilities to evaluate potential); breadth of business understanding
(candidates who see the broader needs of a business beyond their own functional
requirements add strength to an organization); application of technical skills
(the ability to learn technical skills is often more important than already
having them, unless the job is very technically intensive and requires
immediate knowledge.)
7.
Management and Organization.
Most interviewers focus on individual competency instead of managerial skills.
This approach is a major cause of hiring error! If the management and
organizational aspects of the job are important, spend as much time as
necessary to validate a candidate's competency. Use projects to get at
organizational skills, even if the candidate doesn't have a big staff. Ask a
candidate to describe their most complex team project--you might be surprised
at the answer. Early in the interview, have the candidate draw an
organizational chart for the last few positions. Assign names, title, and direct
and indirect staff size. This shows the size and scope of candidate
responsibility; perfect for comparison with your current job needs.
8.
Team Leadership: The Ability to Persuade and Motivate Others.
Team leadership
is a component of both management and personality: it's important enough to
consider separately. It represents the ability to tap into and harness the
energy of others -- getting them to move in the same direction, to do something
they might not want to do. Team leadership has two aspects -- motivating your
immediate subordinates and motivating people who work in different departments.
Motivating a subordinate is easier: look for managers who can point to a number
of people they have personally helped to become successful. Give high scores to
candidates who consistently go out of their way to hire superior people, and
then take a sincere interest in upgrading their skills. As for motivating
people outside their own department, get examples of major projects and use
fact-finding to uncover the candidate's true role.
9.
Character: Values, Commitment, and Goals.
Character is a
deep-rooted trait that summarizes a person's integrity, honesty,
responsibility, openness, fairness in dealing with others, and personal values.
Save this whole topic until the end of the first interview, or wait for the
second interview. It will be more relevant then, and candidates will be more
open and comfortable with their responses. Ask candidates to explain their
personal value system and how they developed it. Be sure to listen carefully;
this answer can be very revealing. It's important to know why someone wants to
change jobs and what aspects of work that the person finds important.
Understanding a candidate's value system allows you to predict how they will
react to various work-related circumstances. When talking about goals, be
specific: ask a candidate to describe one or two major goals already
accomplished.
10.
Personalities and Cultural Fit.
Personality is
revealed in an individual's accomplishments. Look for flexibility and a pattern
of accomplishments in different situations: as a team member, as leader of a
team, and as an individual contributor. You can discover a preferred
relationship pattern by categorizing the candidate's accomplishments on the ABC
scale: "Alone," "Belong to team," or "in Charge of the
team." This type of analysis becomes even more valuable when the candidate
is free to pick the accomplishment. Keep track of the responses by putting
little marks on top of your notes (I always make three columns: A, B, and C).
By the end of the interview, a definite and revealing pattern should emerge.
