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2016-02-25 11:03:41
Rebecca Knight
January 23, 2015
The virtual stack of resumes in your inbox is winnowed and certain candidates
have passed the phone screen. Next step: in-person interviews. How should you
use the relatively brief time to get to know and assess a near stranger?
How many people at your firm should be involved? How can you tell if a
candidate will be a good fit? And finally, should you really ask questions
like: What s your greatest weakness?
What the Experts Say
As the employment market improves and candidates have more options, hiring the
right person for the job has become increasingly difficult. Pipelines are
depleted and more companies are competing for top talent, says Claudio Fern
ndez-Ar oz, a senior adviser at global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and
author of It s Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding
Yourself with the Best. Applicants also have more information about each
company s selection process than ever before. Career websites like Glassdoor
have taken the mystique and mystery out of interviews, says John Sullivan, an
HR expert, professor of management at San Francisco State University, and
author of 1000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent. If your organization s interview
process turns candidates off, they will roll their eyes and find other
opportunities, he warns. Your job is to assess candidates but also to convince
the best ones to stay. Here s how to make the interview process work for you
and for them.
Prepare your questions
Before you meet candidates face-to-face, you need to figure out exactly what
you re looking for in a new hire so that you re asking the right questions
during the interview. Begin this process by compiling a list of required
attributes for the position, suggests Fern ndez-Ar oz. For inspiration and
guidance, Sullivan recommends looking at your top performers. What do they have
in common? How are they resourceful? What did they accomplish prior to working
at your organization? What roles did they hold? Those answers will help you
create criteria and enable you to construct relevant questions.
Reduce stress
Candidates find job interviews stressful because of the many unknowns. What
will my interviewer be like? What kinds of questions will he ask? How can I
squeeze this meeting into my workday? And of course: What should I wear? But
when people are stressed they do not perform as well, says Sullivan. He
recommends taking preemptive steps to lower the candidate s cortisol levels.
Tell people in advance the topics you d like to discuss so they can prepare. Be
willing to meet the person at a time that s convenient to him or her. And
explain your organization s dress code. Your goal is to make them comfortable
so that you have a productive, professional conversation.
Involve (only a few) others
When making any big decision, it s important to seek counsel from others so
invite a few trusted colleagues to help you interview. Monarchy doesn t work.
You want to have multiple checks to make sure you hire the right person, Fern
ndez-Ar oz explains. But on the other hand, extreme democracy is also
ineffective and can result in a long, drawn-out process. He recommends having
three people interview the candidate: the boss, the boss boss, and a senior
HR person or recruiter. Peer interviewers can also be really important,
Sullivan adds, because they give your team members a say in who gets the job.
They will take more ownership of the hire and have reasons to help that person
succeed, he says.
Assess potential
Budget two hours for the first interview, says Fern ndez-Ar oz. That amount of
time enables you to really assess the person s competency and potential. Look
for signs of the candidate s curiosity, insight, engagement, and
determination. Sullivan says to assume that the person will be promoted and
that they will be a manager someday. The question then becomes not only can
this person do the job today, but can he or she do the job a year from now when
the world has changed? Ask the candidate how he learns and for his thoughts on
where your industry is going. No one can predict the future, but you want
someone who is thinking about it every day, Sullivan explains.
Ask for real solutions
Don t waste your breath with absurd questions like: What are your weaknesses?
You might as well say, Lie to me, says Sullivan. Instead try to discern how
the candidate would handle real situations related to the job. After all, How
do you hire a chef? Have them cook you a meal, he says. Explain a problem your
team struggles with and ask the candidate to walk you through how she would
solve it. Or describe a process your company uses, and ask her to identify
inefficiencies. Go back to your list of desired attributes, says Fern ndez-Ar
oz. If you re looking for an executive who will need to influence a large
number of people over whom he won t have formal power, ask: Have you ever been
in a situation where you had to persuade other people who were not your direct
reports to do something? How did you do it? And what were the consequences?
Consider cultural fit, but don t obsess
Much has been made about the importance of cultural fit in successful hiring.
And you should look for signs that the candidate will be comfortable at your
organization, says Fern ndez-Ar oz. Think about your company s work environment
and compare it to the candidate s orientation. Is he a long-term planner or a
short-term thinker? Is he collaborative or does he prefer working
independently? But, says Sullivan, your perception of a candidate s disposition
isn t necessarily indicative of whether he can acclimate to a new culture.
People adapt, he says. What you really want to know is: can they adjust?
Sell the job
If the meeting is going well and you believe that the candidate is worth
wooing, spend time during the second half of the interview selling the role and
the organization. If you focus too much on selling at the beginning, it s hard
to be objective, says Fern ndez-Ar oz. But once you re confident in the
candidate, tell the person why you think he or she is a good fit, he
recommends. Bear in mind that the interview is a mutual screening process.
Make the process fun, says Sullivan. Ask them if there s anyone on the team
they d like to meet. The best people to sell the job are those who live it,
he explains. Peers give an honest picture of what the organization is like.
Principles to Remember
Do:
Lower your candidates stress levels by telling them in advance the kinds of
questions you plan to ask
Ask behavioral and situational questions
Sell the role and the organization once you re confident in your candidate
Don t:
Forget to do pre-interview prep list the attributes of an ideal candidate and
use it to construct relevant questions
Involve too many other colleagues in the interviews multiple checks are good,
but too many people can belabor process
Put too much emphasis on cultural fit remember, people adapt
Case study #1: Provide relevant, real-life scenarios to reveal how candidates
think
The vast majority of hires at Four Kitchens, the web design firm in Austin, TX,
are through employee referrals. So in November, when Todd Ross Nienkerk, the
company s founder and CEO, had an opening for an account manager, he had a
hunch about who should get the job. It was somebody who d been a finalist for
a position here years ago, says Todd. We ll call her Deborah. We kept her in
mind and when this job opened, she was the first person we called.
Even though Deborah was a favored candidate, she again went through the company
s three-step interview process. The first focused on skills. When Four
Kitchens interviews designers or coders, it typically asks applicants to
provide a portfolio of work. We ask them to talk us through their process. We
re not grilling them, but we want to know how they think and we want to see
their personal communication style. But for the account manager role, Todd
took a slightly different tack. Before the interview, he and the company s head
of business development put together a job description and then came up with
questions based on the relevant responsibilities. They started with questions
like: What are things you look for in a good client? What are red flags in a
client relationship? How do you deal with stress?
Then, Todd presented Deborah with a series of redacted client emails that
represented a cross-section of day-to-day communication: some were standard
requests for status updates; others involved serious contract disputes and
pointed questions. We said, Pretend you work here. Talk us through how you d
handle this. It put her on the spot, but frankly, this is what the job
entails.
After a successful first round, Deborah moved on to the second phase, the team
interview. In this instance, she met with a project manager, a designer, and
two developers. These are an opportunity for applicants to find out what it s
like to work here, says Todd. But the biggest reason we do it is to ensure
that everyone is involved in the process and feels a sense of ownership over
the hire.
The final stage was the partner interview, during which Todd asked Deborah
questions about career goals and the industry. It was also an opportunity for
her to ask us tough questions about where our company is headed, he says.
Deborah got the job, and started earlier this month.
Case study #2: Make the candidate comfortable and sell the job
When Mimi Gigoux, the EVP of human resources at Criteo, the French ad-tech
company, interviews a job candidate, she looks for signs of intellect,
open-mindedness, and passion both for the company and for the role. Technical
expertise can be taught on the job, but you can t teach passion, drive, and
creativity, says Mimi, who is based in Silicon Valley.
About two months ago, Mimi opened a requisition for a new member of her team.
She was particularly interested in one of the applicants: a person who had
previously run talent operations at several top companies in the Bay Area. We
ll call him Bryan.
Before the interview, her team communicated with Bryan about the kinds of
questions Mimi planned to ask. I don t believe in tough interviews, she
says. If candidates perceive a hostile environment, they go into
self-preservation mode. And when Bryan came in for the interview, she did
everything she could to make him comfortable. She started by asking him
questions about his hobbies and interests, and Bryan told her about recent
trips he had taken to Nepal and Australia. It told me that he was open and
intrigued by different cultures a characteristic she deemed critical for the
recruiting role.
Mimi then moved on to past professional experience. Her aim, she says, was to
find out what inspired him to move from one job to the next. She also asked
behavioral-based questions. I wanted to see how he identified patterns and
problems, how he has managed difficult personalities in the past, and how he
worked cross-functionally, she says.
As the interview progressed, Mimi became more and more convinced that Bryan was
the right person for the job. She shifted from asking questions to detailing
how special this company is. She explains, I wanted him to walk away from the
interview thinking: I want to work at Criteo.
Mimi offered the job to Bryan; he accepted but later had to retract for
personal reasons.
Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist in Boston and a lecturer at Wesleyan
University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, USA Today, and
The Financial Times.