From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
It was a pleasure meeting you last Thursday and even more so, hearing your ideas. Much of what you discuss is very similar to my own beliefs, but it was very instructive to hear them so clearly explained and validated. Taking the ideas from theory to practice, how do you use the diagnostic interview to hire someone who may have worked in a completely different field, or even not really worked before?

Response:
The critical role requirements in higher stratum roles depend less on technical skills and more on managerial skills. In large part, managerial skills transfer well from one business model to another.

In any interview, I am specifically listening for the candidate’s description of the work. In that description, I am listening for the Level of Work. Specifically –

• Elapsed time – related to the Time Span of Projects. What was the length of their longest project?
• The Story – beginning, middle and end. Where does the story of their work begin and where does the story of their work end?
• Level of Work – specifically –
• Individual direct output (S-I)
• Coordination of many elements, including the supervision of outputs of others (S-II)
• Creation of single serial systems, work flows for efficiency, consistency and predictability (S-III)
• Integration of multiple systems and sub-systems (S-IV)

While I am listening for clues about the Level of Work, I am also evaluating effectiveness, based on the candidates description related to the Level of Work. This is where the assessment of a candidate from a different field will require additional judgment on the part of the interviewer. Here are some questions behind the questions –

• How well do the behaviors described in the candidates field translate to our critical role requirements?
• How effective will this candidate be in adapting habits and behaviors from their former work to our work?
• How effective will this candidate be in learning new skills identified in our critical role requirements?

Where the candidate has NO work experience, just coming out of school, I will still ask questions related to circumstances where the candidate was making decisions and solving problems. How did they organize their schoolwork? Extracurricular activities? Volunteer work? There is always something that will reveal Applied Capability, suitability for a role.