interviewing — BLOG — Next Levels Coaching

As your candidates move through the hiring process, it can be helpful for the committee to create a series of questions that will cut through the applicants’ buzzwords and bullet points to get a more accurate gauge on how they will perform on your team. According to a study by Leadership IQ, 46% of new hires do not last longer than 18 months primarily due to poor interpersonal skills even though candidates may be qualified. Asking questions that get at this issue can make a big difference.

When thinking about the questions, you can choose ones that invite both scripted and unscripted responses. Common questions allow them to share their prepared and practiced responses, such as tell me about yourself and why would you be an asset to this company, but it is only going to reveal so much. You want to ask some questions that yield impromptu responses to engage in real-time self-reflection. This can show the best clues to whether the person would be a good fit.

1. Here are some attitudinal, career, and background-focused questions that can tap into both their scripted and unscripted responses:

· Tell me about yourself and highlight two turning points that led you to apply to this position.

· What are your superpowers? Give me examples of your strengths and put them in the context of your previous jobs.

· Tell me about your track record of success. What did you do to create your success and whom did you have to partner with to make that happen? [Research shows one of the best indicators that somebody will be successful in the future is if they have a winning past track record].

· What are you not good at or do not like? How have you addressed these weaknesses or found workarounds?

· What are your pet peeves when it comes to collaboration? What types of people do you find the most challenging to work with? What is your strategy if you find yourself on a team with some of these people?

· What do you look for in an ideal teammate? What do you have to offer to the team?

· Whom do you admire as a leader and why? How would your teammates describe you as a leader?

· What are the ingredients of good company culture? How would you contribute to an incredible culture?

2. Behavior Questions: Asking behavioral and future-focused, realistic questions related to how they would approach their job can give you a lot of data on their potential performance. Knowing what they would do can yield more robust responses than attitudinal questions that are more theoretical and philosophical. For example, what is your philosophy on leadership versus how you would handle this issue?

Here is a sample set:

· If two colleagues are not getting along, how would you handle it? Name 2-3 specific things you would do. Other variations include: Tell us about when your team had disagreements. How were these differences resolved, and what was your role?

· What are the steps you would take to manage an underperforming employee?

· Can you tell us about a time when you disagreed with your manager’s directions or priorities? How did you respond?

· Tell us a time when you made a mistake or were asked to go back and make corrections. How did you handle it? An alternative can be, what was your biggest failure? What did you learn from it and how have you avoided repeating it?

· Have you had to work with someone whose personality was particularly different from yours? How did you make it work? Another variation: Tell me a time when you had difficulty working with someone, what made them difficult to work with? What steps did you take to resolve the problem, what was the outcome? What could you have done differently?

· Tell me about a time you faced a challenging situation? What did you do to improve your situation?

· If you are trying to get a new initiative implemented, walk me through how you would do this.

· Tell me about a situation in your last job where you volunteered to help somebody outside your area or an important project where you volunteered even though you did not have anything to do with the core assignment. Tell me why you did it, what was the result, and what was your role? [A question like this helps you assess their track record of collaborating or teaming up with others to succeed.]

3. Questions to assess their preparation and career aspirations:

· Can you tell us what you know about our company and what stands out the most?

· Please tell us what you understand this position to be? What excites you, and what concerns you?

· How do your values and mission align with the company’s values and mission? You can follow up on their response and provide some of the company information if you are trying to figure out alignment.

· What are your career goals? What would need to happen for you to achieve your professional aspirations?

4. Questions to help understand their listening, communication, and curiosity skills: This could involve formatting some questions as directions.

· Teach us about one of your passions, something that you know a lot about or consider yourself to be an expert in, and as if we do not know anything about it.

· What have you been learning about lately or what is a recent topic that has captured your curiosity?

5. Questions that help reveal their level of self-awareness:

· What have you been doing to work on your non-strengths?

· What conditions can you do your best work in?

· What is the biggest misperception people have about you?

The misperception question is about whether they know how they come across to others, even in ways that may not be a true reflection of who they are. Tony Hsieh, the former Chief Executive of Zappos, uses this question often. He said, “I think it’s a combination of how self-aware people are and how honest they are. I think if someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they’re not self-aware, I think it’s harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.”

Tony Robbins said, “successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” To truly understand if the candidate is going to be a right fit, you want to inquiry well. Specifically, behavior questions can be the best indicator of how the person will perform on the job.

Quote of the day: “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” -Jim Collins

Q: What are your favorite interview questions to ask? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 5/5 will focus on the concluding parts of the interview process]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to get clarity on the hiring process to secure the best candidate, contact me to learn more.

Which questions do you ask to get the best candidate?

Organizing a successful hiring process can determine if you secure the right person for the job. A crucial component to success is the interview stage as it is a great way to get to know your prospective employees, both the hard skills and intangibles such as passion, initiative, goal-orientation, and cultural fit.

Below are some steps to consider when you are designing the interview process. Be sure to filter any of these tips based on the culture and mission of your organization.

1. First-round individual interviews. If you have many applicants, you can have a brief 30-minute group interview meant to cull the list further and separate the A from the B and C players. As you move to the preliminary one-on-one interviews, the goal is to get to know your candidates a little deeper. You can open your interview by letting them know you would like to spend 25 or so minutes getting to know them and then leaving some time to answer any questions they may have. Give the candidate the first words instead of telling them about the company as they can parrot what you would like to hear.

2. Beware of biases. While the interview is going to give you some essential data, there are inherent problems of deception. Psychologist Ron Friedman argues, “The interview is dreadful in predicting if somebody’s going to be successful because they're measuring their ability to think on the spot. 80% of people lie and it seems like it’s almost advantageous for them to lie if they want to get the job.” Another problem is that people have biases in hiring. As humans, we are hardwired to make quick decisions, to go with our intuitions. The way we think is largely shaped by various unconscious biases which ultimately influence the way we perceive reality. In fact, according to Quartz publication, 60% of interviewers will decide about a candidate’s suitability within 15 minutes of meeting them. Some will even have made that determination within seconds of the interview. When we have formed our intuition, we are no longer considering new information, we are just rationalizing it.

Here are some common biases in which to be mindful:

· Confirmation Bias. Is the tendency to search for information that confirms some preliminary assumptions you may have. For example, suppose you see a tall person, you may think they are a good leader and then ask questions that can evoke favorable answers such as – tell me a time when you led a group successfully versus a more neutral question - how much experience do you have leading a team?

· Halo Effect. We assume that just because somebody has achieved success in one area, they are likely to excel in another area. They were incredible coders so they are likely to lead a technical team, but they are two different skill sets that need to be individually assessed.

· Overconfidence Bias. Is the tendency to hold an over-bloated assessment of our skills and abilities. Some hiring managers believe they have a special talent to choose a candidate based on their gut, but our personal experiences can be limited. To have an accurate read, we need to have more objective measures in addition to our instincts, however strong they may be.

There are steps we can take to interrupt our biases and have a fairer process:

A. Have a standardized set of questions. Ask all candidates the same questions, write them down in advance and execute. The reason is that if we think somebody is extroverted, we are going to ask for examples of when they led a group, whereas if we think somebody is introverted, we may not ask them about speaking in front of an audience because we assume they may not have. The way we frame the question influences the information we get, and when we ask the same questions, we level the playing field.

B. Have a scorecard. This is an idea mentioned by Geoff Smart and Randy Street in their book, Who: The A Method for Hiring. Their card has three parts: mission, outcome, and competencies so you are clear what you are looking for and so the candidate is clear on what to expect.

· Mission: 1-5 lines of why the role exists. For example, the customer service representative is to help customers resolve problems with the highest level of courtesy. You can ask candidates how their mission aligns with the company’s mission.

· Outcomes: 3-8 specific outcomes to achieve an A performance. For example, improve the customer performance score from a 7-12 measured by x, y, and z by 12/1. Another example could be to work with a team to generate copious ideas and then choose the most innovative one, gain consensus and galvanize the team to execute by a specific date. You can ask how they feel about achieving the outcomes.

· Competencies: - Choose the capabilities that most matter to the work. At Google, Kim Scott talked about hiring for general cognitive abilities, leadership, role-related responsibilities and expertise, and googliness (the culture piece).

· Technical Competencies or hard skills: These are the skills and behaviors that people need to do the job (coding, product management, creating the strategic vision and executing, designing, etc.). You can ask them how they have exhibited those competencies and provide an example from a previous job or how they would complete a realistic project they would have to do for this position.

· Interpersonal or soft skills: These are all the intangible that allows the work to get done and the business results to be achieved. It can involve being self-aware and understanding how they are being perceived, managing their time and being dependable, being an effective communicator and clearly spelling out expectations with respect and openness, as well as being a listener and excellent team player.

· Leadership skills: Do they know how to develop others to advance in their role, do they know how to motivate, inspire, care, and appreciate others, can they run high performing teams, manage conflict, and promote DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) initiatives? Managing and leading a team is different than being an individual contributor.

· Cultural Competencies: Do your values and mission align? You can share the values of the company (e.g., hungry, humble, and smart) and ask how they exhibit those values, and provide an example from a previous job.

· You can use the what/how/tell-me-more framework for follow-up questions. What do you mean? What happened? What does that look like? What is a good example of that? What is your role? What did you do? What did your boss say? What were the results? What else? How did you do that? Please walk me through the steps and how you overcame any obstacles.

Based on the responses, you should provide a score from A-E or 1-5 to each of their questions. When you are done, you can review the scorecards with the hiring committee and advance the candidates with the highest scores. If there are none, you may need to re-source potential candidates.

C. Have a committee. Eliminate siloed interviews in favor of at least 3 people on a panel because each person can be attuned to different aspects and see different things. You can assign roles, such as a hiring manager to organize and then others that are looking for specific competencies. The panel should be made up of not only the hiring manager but peers and if there is a heavy cross-functional component, that person should be there as well. The committee should also be diverse in different areas such as experience, gender, race, etc. Before the interview, members should know the competencies, take notes, fill out a rubric independently, keep a tally, and then debrief their observations and compare impressions and scores. If one person gave a score of a 5 in consciousness and the other gave a score of a 2, the idea is not to agree but expose the different perspectives and increase understanding, vote, and move on. If there are any aspects that you are unsure about, you can drill down on those specific things in the next interview. Southwest conducts a lot of peer and team interviews. These processes help delay and test our intuitions so our decisions are more grounded in more data sources.

Many people complain just how hard it is to get the right hire. The process can be lengthy and there is no guarantee that you are going to bring on great people. Thinking about interrupting biases, having uniform questions, a scorecard for evaluation, and a committee to thoughtfully review the candidates can increase your chances of securing the right candidate.

Quote of the day: “Hiring is the most important people function you have, and most of us aren’t as good at it as we think. Refocusing your resources on hiring better will have a higher return than almost any training program you can develop.” - Laszlo Bock, Former SVP of People Operations at Google

Q: What’s your process for conducting group or one-on-one interviews? How do you choose among the candidates you interview, which criteria do you use to assess a candidate’s performance? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 4/5 will focus on asking the best interview questions]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to get clarity on the hiring process to secure the best candidate, contact me to learn more.

How do you disrupt your biases when hiring?