From the Ask Tom mailbag.

Question

When you talked about interviewing for “fit” with our company culture, you said that we should interview for behaviors. I understand what you mean, but I don’t know what the questions sound like.

Response

Creating the interview questions for candidate traits like fit, values and attitude just takes a couple of steps. First, we have to translate the warm fuzzy into a behavior. Let’s start with “fit,” since that is the one you asked about.

Ask yourself the question, “How does a person who fits our culture behave?”

I work with a company that has a real sense of urgency in everything they do. People show up to work early, they start projects early, they return phone calls quickly, they turn paperwork around fast. It is a real culture of “gitter done.” People without that sense of urgency don’t last long at this company. It is an important area to interview for.

So, step two is to ask the person about those critical behaviors. Here is how it sounds.

Tell me about the working hours at the XYZ company? In your position, what time did you arrive for work? In your position, what was the most productive time for you?

In your position, what kind of customer interaction did you have? How many phone calls per day did you receive? How did you handle that phone call volume? When you could not answer a question in the first phone call, what was your system to make sure you returned the call later with the answer?

In your position, tell me about your paper workload. What kind of paperwork did you handle? How quickly did it pass across your desk and on to the next step? What was your system for handling that paperwork?

Remember that the purpose of these questions has to do with behaviors that “fit” the culture. I am not looking for the correct way to run an “in” basket. I am looking for momentum, energy and action, because those are important to “fit” in our culture.

Tomorrow, we will look at questions that interview for “values.” -TF

From the Ask Tom mailbag.

A week or so ago, I received an interesting cross communiqué from Joshua Herzig-Marx, who was compiling some thoughts about hiring. In his article he was discussing the sometimes misguided tendencies of hiring managers to consider fuzzy ideas like

How well will the candidate fit with our existing team?

Does the candidate share our organization’s values?

Will the candidate bring the right attitude?

And I got to thinking. These ideas are actually good ideas, fuzzy as they may be. Here is the rub. How can the hiring manager, who is not a psychologist, evaluate the candidate on fit, values and attitude?

Actually, I observe many companies who spend lots of dollars on psychometric testing to learn the answers to these elusive questions. These are not unimportant. (I love double negatives, drove my English teacher crazy).

You have to get down to behaviors. You are not a psychologist, but you can spot positive behavior and negative behavior in the workplace. Observing and evaluating behavior is what managers do. Play to your strength. Interview for behaviors.

Fit. How does a person who “fits” our organization behave?

Values. How does a person with our values behave?

Attitude. How does a person with a positive attitude behave?

Now, interview for those behaviors. Yes, the fuzzy stuff is important and it can be a valuable part of the interview and the criteria for hiring. -TF

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

This question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” seems to be drawing a lot of fire this week. Susan posted a comment:

Rather than assume that Joann lost control of the interview, look at the approach she was taking. It seems she took the nondirective approach to the interview which allows the candidate to have control. The question asked is justifiable, however, the reliability and validity of the answer is minimal.

Quick recap. I sat in on an interview where the interviewer lost control simply by asking the 5 year question. Susan is suggesting that the question might be appropriate if the interviewer is choosing a nondirective approach to the interview.

The sole purpose of the interview is to capture data (facts) so the interviewer can make a hiring decision. Anything that detracts from that purpose should be seriously questioned and likely discarded from the interview process.

Right now, you are reading this so you can make better hiring decisions. I will guarantee you that, right now, candidates are reading articles to defeat you. Candidates are being coached by headhunters to take control of the interview, so they can tell you only those things that are to their advantage.

Allowing the candidate to take control of the interview is a dramatic waste of your time and pulls you away from your purpose of gathering facts so you can make a better hiring decision. Candidates are being trained to specifically derail you from this process. -TF

“But what about a question looking to the future? Could this reveal their goals and help us understand how to motivate them?” asks Bob in response to yesterdays post. For the past two days, we have been looking at the question –Where do you see yourself in 5 years?-

In our Hiring Talent Workshop, we spend a great deal of time looking at ineffective questions and the 5 year question is at the top of the list. So what about Bob’s interest in learning how to motivate a prospective candidate who is about to become a new hire?

Is motivation a critical issue? Absolutely! So, Bob brings up an important subject.

The problem with the 5 year question is that it calls for speculation. Any question about the future invites the candidate to make stuff up or outright lie. Now, I know that no candidates you interview ever inflate the truth, but I have run across a few that have.

But if motivation is critical, and it is, then I am keenly interested. And if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, that will be my focus. And if all motivation springs from interest and passion, here is what my questions sound like.

Tell me about a time when your manager struck gold with you, and tapped into a particular interest that got you revved up on a project. What was the project? What was your interest? What were you passionate about? How did your manager know about your passion for this project? What was the result of the project?

If goals are of interest in the hiring interview, here are my questions.

Tell me about a time when goal-setting played a critical role in the success of a project. What was the project? How were the goals set? Were these personal goals or goals for the team? How often did you review the goals with your manager? What was the result of the project?

These are critical issues, interest, passion and goals. Future questions simply invite candidates to make stuff up. Focus on the past. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior . -TF

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

I quietly sat through the interview as an observer. During the debrief after, I fielded the following question, “Well, what did you think?”

I did have a number of thoughts. “At what point did you think you lost control of the interview?”

Joann looked puzzled, “Lost control?” I was silent. “What do you mean, lost control?”

“I was just curious if you noticed. At what point did the candidate begin to ramble and make stuff up?”

“Do you think he was making things up?” Joann asked.

“Oh, without a doubt I said. About two minutes into the interview, you asked him a question, and that is when it started. In fact, the manufactured stories continued through most of the interview.” I could see that Joann was beginning to fume, thinking the candidate had put one over on her. But I continued. “And all this fabrication was at your invitation. Do you remember the question you asked?”

“No.” Joann was definitely agitated.

“You asked him where he thought he would be, professionally, in five years. Anytime you ask a question about the future, you invite the candidate to speculate, fabricate and invent stories that you have no way to verify. It provides you with no useful information.”

I sat quietly. I knew this would take some time to sink in. -TF