Joann’s agitation turned into confusion, predictably. “But, every interview I have ever been in, that question was asked.” We had been talking about my reasons for not asking the question -Where do you see yourself in 5 years-.
“Joann, what is the purpose of the interview process?”
“It’s to find out if this is the right person for the job,” she replied.
“Good answer. The purpose of the interview is for you to predict the future behavior of the candidate when they come to work for you. Tell me, what is the best predictor of future behavior?”
Joann thought for a long minute. “Well, we sometimes use a personality assessment.”
“Those are okay, but the best predictor of future behavior, statistically, is past behavior. If you want to know how someone is going to behave when they come to work for you, all you have to do is find out how they have behaved in similar situations in the past. The purpose of the interview is to collect facts about the person’s past behavior.
“The problem with your question about 5 years from now, is that it calls for speculation on the part of the candidate, has nothing to do with facts and is not verifiable. But here is the biggest problem. If you ask that question, you will get a response that you can do nothing with. All it can do is confuse you as an interviewer. In the midst of your fact based data collection, you get this speculative response that has nothing to do past behavior and it actually confuses the interviewer.” -TF
The question needs to be timed right, and the answer limited. We need to know about past performance to assess the ‘fit’ but a question about the future posed to ‘final choice’ candidates can help reveal their goals and help us learn how to motivate the new employee.
Bob,
You bring up a new issue related to how we might be able to motivate this candidate when they become our new hire. All of these issues related to hiring are critical. I will talk more about motivation in my post tomorrow.