Jeremy was trying to figure out what went wrong in the interview process. This was beginning to look like a bad hire. “We finally got it out of him. After fifteen minutes of probing in the interview, we discovered his experience that we needed to fill the job requirement. But this guy has been on the job for three weeks, now, and he doesn’t seem to have a clue.”
“In the interview process,” I replied, “if the behavior is frequent, examples should come from the candidate easily. If you have to really probe and dig, it is likely the behavior is not frequent; in fact, the pattern of behavior may be only occasional, even rare. If this is a critical behavior for the position, you may have the wrong guy.
“So, if you are the interviewer, ask for an example. If it comes easily, ask for another example. If it comes easily, ask for another example. These examples will likely establish a pattern of behavior. In the interview we are looking for repeated patterns of behavior.” -TF
Tom – you continue to offer the very best advice on hiring – advice that anyone can follow. In the past you wrote about regecting fuzzy criteria (attitude, fit, values, etc.) for the rigor of past behavior. I’ve quoted from this and another column on a recent entry of my own.
Do you ever offer onsite training outside of Florida? And where’s the book?