Sense of Urgency

We had been working as a group for forty-five minutes and the words at the top of the list were sense of urgency.

Nanci, the head of the hiring team, was curious, “How can you interview someone for a sense of urgency?”

“You cannot see a value or a trait,” I replied. “You can only observe behavior that may be driven by that value or trait. So when we think about a sense of urgency, what behaviors are we looking for?”

“They don’t procrastinate and they don’t wait until the last minute to get a project started.”

“And what else?”

“They are quick to attack problems that might cause a delay.”

“Good, now we have identified two behaviors, enough to work with for now.”

You see, I don’t know how to interview someone for a sense of urgency. But I can come up with a dozen questions about how the candidate starts projects and prevents delays.

When a role in your organization requires a value or a trait, simply translate it into a behavior that you can interview for. -TF

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