If you’re preparing for an interview – as a candidate or a recruiter – these innovative techniques will get you thinking about the best ways to uncover the answers most useful to you.
The digital revolution has changed how we live. It’s also changed the recruitment process, with tech organisations’ wacky interview questions spawning much debate. Out with “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”; in with “How much should you charge to clean all the windows in Seattle?” (an actual question asked at a Facebook interview). The thought of these mind-bending curveballs makes life stressful for the interviewee – as well as making the task of choosing the best candidate for the job all the harder, even for the inexperienced recruiter. Thankfully, the hype around leftfield questioning is much exaggerated. A new book by the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, concedes that while questions like “How many golf balls would you fit inside a 747?” have and may continue to be asked by some of the tech giant’s hiring managers, the practice is discouraged and answers to these questions are ignored by application reviewers. Why? Because they’re ‘worthless’ says Google executive Laszlo Bock. But so too, he says, are interview staples such as “ Tell me about yourself”. So how are job interviews meant to work in today’s world?Step back in time
While Google developers are busy shaping the future, its HR executives look to past influencers to unlock the secrets to discovering best talent.
A 1998 study analysing how well different assessment techniques predict a candidate’s future success, concluded that ‘unstructured job interviews’ (code for ‘a generalised Q&A’) have only a 14% success rate of gleaning a
candidate’s suitability. Much more successful was a competency based ‘structured interview’ with questions designed to unearth specific characteristics and skills inherent in the ideal candidate.
“Tell me about a time your behaviour had a positive impact on your team. (Follow-ups: What was your primary goal and why? How did your teammates respond?” is one such suggested by Google’s Bock. (If you’re preparing for an
interview, it’s wise to think about some of these answers in advance.)
“Yes, these questions are bland,” he admits. “But [they] give you a consistent, reliable basis for sifting the superb candidates from the merely great, because superb candidates will have much, much better examples and reasons for
making the choices they did.
“Sure, it can be fun to ask ‘What song best describes your work ethic?’ or ‘What do you think about when you’re alone in your car?’ – both real interview questions from other companies – but the point is to identify the best person
for the job, not to indulge yourself by asking questions that trigger your biases (‘OMG! I think about the same things in the car!’)”
Use your network
Google advocates “cross-functional interviewers” – “someone with little or no connection at all to the group for which the candidate is interviewing to provide a disinterested assessment,” says Bock.
If you’re planning on hiring in your team, reach out to someone outside your discipline and ask for their thoughts on the type of person the role you’re trying to fill could benefit from; show them CVs you’d like an opinion on; even
invite them into the interview. Use your external network too – individuals doing your role in a different organisation may have a
different perspective on how you should approach recruitment for a specific role.
It’s all in the whys
“Purpose-based interviewing” is a technique advocated by Arizona-based headhunters, Y Scouts. It boils down to asking probing questions to understand what really motivates an individual – put simply, why they do what they do. Why
are their goals, skills, applications and motivations such as they are? And, ultimately, how do they fit with your organisation’s values?
Taking these principles, Forbes Leadership deduces there is one question guaranteed to identify a candidate’s key strengths: “When in your life have you been so passionately focused on an activity that you lost track of time and
what were you doing?” Considering your own answer to this question will no doubt unlock your most valuable skills – invariably those
that energise you most.
Don’t forget to listen
It might be tempting to stick to the script, particularly if you’re a newcomer to recruitment, but ignoring opportunities for digression limits you – whichever side of the table you’re sitting.
“Nothing is worse than to watch someone go down a laundry list of questions and not explore something with a little more depth after someone has answered a question,” says Yahoo Global News Anchor and celebrated interviewer, Katie
Couric.
Katie’s fellow journalist Jim Lehrer suggests active listening necessitates that you “resist the temptation to
respond too quickly to the answer. The other person will either expand on what’s already said or go in a different direction. Either way, you get a clear view into head and heart.”
This doesn’t mean you can’t have a failsafe stock question in your bag; seasoned interviewers know certain questions will always highlight a future star or don’t-go-there candidate.
CEO of LearnVest, Alexa von Tobel’s go-to questions are her carefully worded variations on the age-old “What are your weaknesses?”: “What are you genuinely bad at?” and “Tell me about a time on a Sunday that you were thinking about
going back to work and you hated your job.” She claims such wording – and her probing follow-ups – sidestep the candidate tendency to use the question to showcase a strength, allowing the interviewer to really get to the
bottom of a person’s limitations.
If you haven’t yet cultivated your own tried and tested question, read around until you find one which feels authentic to you and try it out in your next interview. Google’s Bock uses a surprising source of inspiration for great
questions – the US Department of Veteran Affairs. Their website includes a career resources section housing a comprehensive set of questions designed to draw out specific qualities
and competencies. “Use them,” says Bock. “You’ll do better at hiring immediately.”
Examples include:
Creative thinking: “Tell me about two suggestions you have made to your supervisor in the past year. How did you come up with the ideas? What happened? How do you feel about the way things went?”
Customer service: “Tell me about a situation where you assisted a co-worker. What was the situation? What was your involvement and what was the outcome?”
Interpersonal effectiveness: “Describe a situation where you felt you had not communicated well. How did you correct the situation?”
(It’s a helpful exercise to consider your answers to these questions – regardless of whether you have an interview coming up!)
Build good old-fashioned rapport
A seminal 1964 Harvard Business Review article on effective recruitment strategies is still pointed to by recruiters as highlighting one of the key pillars of sound interviewing – building rapport.
At the heart of rapport building, says experienced FBI interrogator, Robin Dreeke, is what he calls “ego suspension”.
“Most times, when two individuals engage in a conversation, each patiently waits for the other person to be done with whatever story he or she is telling. Then, the other person tells his or her own story, usually on a related topic
and often times in an attempt to have a better and more interesting story. Individuals practicing good ego suspension would continue to encourage the other individual to talk about his or her story, neglecting their own need to
share what they think is a great story.”
Timing is everything
All the preparation and best intentions in the world are undermined if you choose the wrong interview time. According to Glassdoor, Monday and Friday interviews fair worst as you’re likely either winding up or winding down. Hunger
will distract around midday; around 2pm you’ll be suffering from post-carb slump. The best time to conduct an interview, concludes the survey: 10:30 am Tuesday. Practically speaking, space out interviews during the times your energy
levels peak.
