“I don’t understand,” Ben defended. “For the entire time that I have been responsible for hiring people, I have always used the resume to ask my questions.”
“That’s because you didn’t have any other questions to ask,” I replied. “Here is the biggest problem in most interviews. Without an extensive bank of prepared questions, the judgment about the candidate defaults to how good the resume looks, first impressions and gut reactions.”
“Okay, okay. How many questions are we talking about?” Ben relented.
“You divided the tasks into different Key Result Areas (KRAs). How many KRAs do you have?”
“Let’s say six,” Ben bit his lip.
“Ten questions for each KRA, six KRAs, that means sixty written prepared questions.”
“Sixty questions, are you out of your mind. Who has that kind of time?” Ben said, pushing back.
“You can spend the time, creating questions on the front end, or you can spend the time managing behavior on the back end. The choice is up to you.”
Sixty written questions seems high but there is validity to what you say. Using the notion of grouping you will likely find that spending chunks of time dedicated to a task will pay off in the long run. I would examine these sixty questions and look for themes that may allow you to reduce the total number of questions down significantly.
David, most interviewers go in with only six written questions, if any. They figure that’s enough, that they will ask other questions off the resume and the candidate will fill the rest of the time with stories. This interviewer will emerge from the interview with scant amounts of information related to the work in the open role. Do NOT look for ways to reduce the number of questions. More questions, specifically about the work in the role, will yield more detail, will more likely reveal REAL experience, or NOT. -Tom