Intelligent Interviewing

If you would tell the typical hiring authority that the need to be trained as an interviewer is as important as being trained and educated in their chosen profession, chances are you would get a pretty perplexed response. Understandably so, but the act and the art of interviewing is more than just a hunch or a gut feeling. It takes time, training, and a genuine cognizance of how crucial -- not to mention cost-effective -- it is to find the right person the first time. An understanding of the needs of your clients or employer is paramount to serve them effectively.

Equally important is an understanding of the personnel needs of your clients, firm or employer. Just as putting the wrong part in a car engine can take a situation from bad to worse, filling a position in your company with the wrong individual can be every bit as disastrous. The interviewer(s) should easily be able to determine whether an individual can handle the technical requirements of a job if they pay attention to the answers. Once you have concluded that the candidate can do the job, the issue now is to ascertain how the remainder of the team may be affected by how the candidate would go about doing the job.

Here's the question to ask yourself and all those involved in the interview process: Does this candidate fit into the culture of our organization (or department, or team)? If the answer is "No" and you still choose to hire that individual, prepare yourself for the disintegration of the morale and comradeship that is so essential to the flow of the working environment and efficiencies of the group. Better to hire the candidate with lesser skills and the right mix of temperament and values, than to hire the most talented individual on the earth who is totally counter cultural to your team. You can train skills a lot easier than temperament and personality. Framing interview questions that afford you the ability to judge compatibility allows you to more confidently evaluate whether or not a candidate will be successful in your particular work environment.

Build your interview around questions that will reveal these areas of concern:

- Integrity/honesty/trustworthiness
- Personality/temperament/ability to work with others
- Past mistakes
- Creativity/creative thinking/problem solving

Creating these questions through the method known as "behavioral interviewing" will help elicit the answers you're searching for. The premise of the behavioral technique states that past behavior is the best predictor of future performance. If you want to know how someone is going to handle a particular situation in your office, find out how a similar circumstance was handled in the past.

Try this process of questioning:

1. Tell me about a time that you had to overcome a particularly difficult obstacle in order to achieve the completion of your task. This will show what the candidate considers a difficult obstacle.

2. Why did you choose that approach? Did the candidate take the safe route? How does the individual handle fear and possible conflict?

3. What were the results? How did it turn out? This will show how the candidate measures results.

4. How satisfied were you with the results? Does the candidate easily accept less than excellent?

5. If you had to do it all over again, what, if anything would you do differently or change? Can the candidate see alternatives?

6. What specifically was the most important thing you learned through the process that you have carried with you and grown in as a result of this experience? How does the candidate learn from experiences?

You will have to determine the specific interview questions that will most appropriately fit your needs. The best way to do this is by getting input from your team. Gather them together and ask the group to list the most important requirements of the position and which individual traits they feel will enable the new hire to most effectively work within the group.

It's essential to interview yourselves first, so as a group you will be consistent throughout the course of the interview. This process also helps to galvanize your group for the united purpose of making a team decision. By employing this interview method, you will find that when it comes to making a hiring decision you will have something more concrete to go on than just a gut feeling.

For more example questions of Behavioral Interviewing, you can contact Personnel Consulting Group in New Orleans at (504) 581-7800 or (800) 783-7533.

Frank Loria is the president and CEO of The Personnel Consulting Group. Frank shares his 24 years experience in the executive search profession. For more information and a list of suggested books and articles to consider, contact the author at 504-581-7800 or e-mail:  Frank Loria, CPC