Tag Archives: interview

Candidates Don’t Make Up Stuff, Do They?

1 Reply

“What do you mean, evidence?” Stella asked. “It’s an interview. If someone says they are up to the task, that they are interested in the challenge, that they really want the responsibility, what more can you get? I mean, I asked those hard questions.”

“Exactly what were the questions you asked,” I wanted to know. “Let’s list out those hard questions.”

“Okay,” Stella started. “I asked if he really thought he was up to the task? I explained just how difficult the job would be and asked him if he would really be interested in the challenge? I asked him why he wanted that level of responsibility?”

“So, you asked him the perfect questions, so he could lie to you?”

But, the Candidate Assured Us

Leave a reply

“Your new supervisor?” I asked.

“Yes,” Stella explained. “Everyone on the interview team agreed this was the best candidate, but she’s been in the role for two months now, plenty of time for adjustment and it’s just not working out.”

“And this candidate had worked at this level before?”

“Well, not really, but she said she was ready for it. That’s why she was leaving her old job, not enough challenge in it.”

“This is a supervisor position, what’s the time-span of the longest task in the role?”

“Nine months,” Stella replied.

“Tell me about it?” I pulled out a piece of paper to make some notes.

“It’s scheduling,” she continued. “Some of our equipment is very expensive, difficult to get and difficult to move from one job to the next. It can cost us $15,000 just for the riggers to relocate some of the pieces. So we schedule our logistics out six to nine months. And when we schedule it, we stick to plan. Too expensive to do otherwise.”

“And your candidate provided evidence of nine month time span work in the past?”

“Evidence? No, but she assured us she was up to the task.”

Discovering Potential Capability in an Interview

1 Reply

Quick excerpt from a candidate interview –

“How are you given work assignments?” I asked.

“Well, I meet with the PMs on a weekly basis, just to catch up on progress completed the prior week, update them on logistics for this week. I have to coordinate with our manufacturing shop to make sure the manufactured cabinets and installation components are all coming out to staging at the right time to be installed. So, I really have to figure things out based on piecing together all these moving parts,” the candidate replied.

“How often are you given work assignments?” I pressed.

“Well, even though I recast everything on a weekly basis, I am really trying to run, believe it or not, one year ahead of schedule. In my role as project scheduler, I use a project management software to book out the jobs based on various schedules and the contracts. It’s not really my job to dissect everything, but I do it anyway, just to double-check, make sure no one is asking for the impossible. It’s only when I plan out a year, especially for some of our big jobs, that I can schedule in all the smaller jobs. Things get very fluid at times. It’s easy to get in the weeds.”

This candidate was currently in a Stratum II role. It was his job to publish details in a 60-day look forward production schedule. To do that, he had to accumulate data from several sources and coordinate people, materials and equipment. From one week to the next, there were significant changes to that schedule that required constant coordination and re-coordination. To be effective required solid S-II (Cumulative) processing.

The question on the table is potential. What is this candidate’s potential? Is it possible that the candidate has greater potential capability than is required by his current role?

I always examine the difference between prescribed duties and discretionary duties. Prescribed duties in this role required a 60-day look forward, a published schedule. As long as that 60-day schedule was published, no one had complaints.

But it’s in the world of discretionary judgment that effectiveness lives. “It’s only when I plan out a year, especially for some of our big jobs, that I can schedule in all the smaller jobs.”

“Oh, really. Tell me more,” I wondered.

“You can’t just schedule projects one after the other. Project schedules have their ups and downs. We have a committed crew on a large project, but we might get a project delay waiting for another trade to finish a segment. If that happens, I have a crew that I can temporarily shift to a smaller project. If I can do that, sometimes I can accelerate the schedule of the smaller project, knock it out and get ahead.”

As I listen to this description and ask more drill-down questions, it appears this candidate may be moving in transition from S-II (Cumulative) to S-III (Serial) applied capability. He is planning “what-if” scenarios, alternate paths to the goal, and truly working a 12-month schedule. I don’t make this judgment based on a hope and a prayer. I make this judgment based on real facts and behavior.

Potential does not live in the land of hypothetical. Potential lives in the land of discretion. How does this person make decisions? What is the Time Span of those decisions?

Divining the Number

Leave a reply

I would like to welcome our new subscribers from the workshop in Denver, yesterday.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
How does a manager determine a candidate’s Time Span capability?

Response:
Don’t over complicate this. Some managers think if they could just divine the number (Stratum I-II-III-IV) life would be good. What decisions would that impact?

  • Which candidate should I hire?
  • Which team member should I delegate this task to?
  • Which person should I promote?

All legitimate decisions.

So here is your answer. Your candidate has Stratum III capability. Just kidding 🙂 But let’s say I’m not kidding 😐 Your candidate has Stratum III capability. Where does that get you in the decision? My guess, nowhere.

Assessing a candidate’s capability can be a futile exercise. It’s like a sucker punch, attracting the manager in the wrong direction. The only thing I care about is the candidate’s capability related to the work. The sucker punch leads me to make a judgment about the candidate (their innate capability), that I am not qualified to make (I am not a forensic psychologist).

Yet, I am an expert about the work. Focus on the work. Focus on the Level of Work. What are the problems to be solved? What are the decisions to be made? Now, I can answer this central question –

Has the candidate demonstrated evidence of effectiveness in this Level of Work, in these tasks and activities, solving these problems and making these decisions?

Most managers make defective hiring decisions because they have not clearly defined the Level of Work in the role. Without this definition, the interviewer asks the wrong questions and bases the hiring decision on some mistaken understanding of experience and skill.

Focus first on the Level of Work, then on the evidence of the candidate’s effectiveness in that work.

Don’t Get Beat in the Paint

Leave a reply

This is the sixth in our series, Six Sins in the Hiring Interview.

This series is a prelude to our Hiring Talent Summer Camp.

Getting Beat in the Paint
Hiring Managers don’t interview candidates often enough, to get good at it, are seldom trained to conduct effective interviews and rely on faulty assumptions throughout the entire process. As Managers, we are totally unprepared. We ask the wrong questions and allow our stereotypes to get in the way. We end up making a decision within the first three minutes of the interview, based on misinterpretations and incomplete data.

The candidates we face have been coached by headhunters, trained through role play, and are intent on beating the interviewer in a game of cat and mouse. They stayed up late practicing their answers, polished their shoes and showed up early. Their preparation is thorough. Though they have scant qualifications for your open position, they are ready to beat you in the paint.

Our Hiring Talent Summer Camp begins Monday, June 18, 2012. It’s online. Don’t get beat in the paint.

Losing Control in the Interview

Leave a reply

This is the fourth in our series, Six Sins in the Hiring Interview.

  • Missing important (and obvious) clues during the interview
  • Head trash, the distraction of the stereotype in the back of your head
  • The fatal decision in the first three minutes of the interview
  • Losing control, losing your head, losing your wallet
  • Asking the wrong (stupid) interview questions
  • Getting beat in the paint

This series is a prelude to our Hiring Talent Summer Camp.

Losing Control in the Interview
I realize I haven’t heard a word the candidate has said for the past four minutes. Then I realized the candidate has been talking non-stop for the past four minutes.

“Can you tell me more about the company?” the candidate asks.

“Great company,” I reply and recite a brief thumbnail about the enterprise.

“Are there benefits?”
“Who would be my manager?”
“Would I have my own cubicle?”
“What kind of computer do I get?”
“Do we have paid holidays?”
“How long before I can take vacation?”
“What’s the work like?”
“Is there a dress code?”

I suddenly realize 45 minutes has passed, I know nothing about this candidate and I have two more waiting in the lobby. I lost control of the interview.

Happens all the time, often with a full complimentary tour of the building. Why do we lose control of the interview?

Who controls the conversation?

  • the person answering the questions?
  • the person asking the questions?

On the surface, it appears the person doing most of the talking must be in control, when, in fact, it is the person asking the questions. Why does the interviewer lose control? Most interviewers walk in the room with a written list of 4-5 questions. The more time the candidate fills, the fewer questions required.

“I had five prepared questions, but I only had to ask the first two, the candidate was really responsive, a good communicator. I kind of liked him.” Who was in control of the interview?

Here is the good news. If you suddenly realize you have lost control, you can immediately regain it by asking your next question. You do have a next question, don’t you. From your list of 60 prepared questions. The person asking the questions controls the interview.

Our Hiring Talent Summer Camp begins next Monday, June 18, 2012. It’s online, and you will have several chances to make that first impression.

Six Sins in the Hiring Interview

Leave a reply

Over the next few days, we will cover the following Six Sins in the Hiring Interview.

  • Missing important (and obvious) clues during the interview
  • Head trash, the distraction of the stereotype in the back of your head
  • The fatal decision in the first three minutes of the interview
  • Losing control, losing your head, losing your wallet
  • Asking the wrong (stupid) interview questions
  • Getting beat in the paint

This series is a prelude to our Hiring Talent Summer Camp.

Missing Important and Obvious Clues
If we could follow a candidate around for a week, we would learn all kinds of things. We would learn about their habits, interests, routines, the way they solve problems and make decisions. Unfortunately, we can’t play Undercover Boss, we only have one tool in our arsenal, the Hiring Interview.

When the candidate sits down across the interview table, they are prepared. They scrub under their fingernails, iron their shirt and wear matching socks. They are ready. Ready to cover mis-steps and blemishes, ready with explanations of their highest achievements. And, as the interviewer, we miss important details. We miss obvious clues. All we have to do is ask.

So, why don’t we ask? Why do we miss fundamental pieces of data that are laying there for the asking?

It’s simple. The candidate is prepared, but we’re not. The reason we miss important details is that we don’t know what details we are looking for. We never sat down and figured out precisely what qualities we are looking for in the candidate. We have a lame job description (usually a derivative version of the classified ad) and a handful of questions that we hope (HOPE) will unlock the key to the candidates psyche.

And we wonder why we make so many hiring mistakes?

Hiring is not rocket science, but there is a method to the madness. And there are no magic tests.

It starts with the work. It’s all about the work. What’s the Level of Work? How is the work organized? What problems have to be solved? What decisions have to be made? What sixty prepared (written) questions should we ask?

If we are prepared, as interviewers, we will know what we are looking for and we will ask the right questions to capture the data. We won’t miss important (and obvious) clues.

Our Hiring Talent Summer Camp begins next Monday, June 18. It’s online, so, no, we don’t serve snacks and we don’t have a swimming pool.

You Can’t Interview for Attitude

Leave a reply

“I get it,” Sara smiled. “I know, for someone to be a high performer, they have to value the work in the role. If they don’t place a high value on the work, it isn’t likely they will do a good job.”

“Not in the long run,” I confirmed. “In the short term, you can always bribe people with pizza, but once the pizza’s gone, you’re done.” (This is known as a diagnostic assessment.)

“I’m with you,” Sara nodded. “But how do you interview for values. I am afraid if I ask the question, straight up, I am going to get a textbook answer. The candidate is just going to agree with me.”

“Sara, when you are observing your team, watching them work, can you see their values?”

Sara stopped. “I think so, I mean, I can see enthusiasm. I can tell when someone is happy.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can just watch them,” she replied. “I can see it in their behavior.”

“Exactly. You cannot see a person’s values, you can only see their behavior. And that is what you interview for, their behavior. As a manager, just ask this question – How does a person with (this value) behave?”

Sara’s eyes narrowed. I continued.

“Let’s say that you have an accounting position and that accuracy, specifically with numbers is an important value.”

“You can’t ask them if they think accuracy is important. Of course, they will say – yes.”

I nodded. “As a manager, ask yourself this question. How does a person behave if they value accuracy in their work.”

“I know that one,” Sara jumped in. “I once asked our bookkeeper how she always balanced to the penny. She told me she always added things twice. People who value accuracy in their work always add things twice.”

“So, what question would you ask?” I pressed.

“Tell me about a time when accuracy was very important. How did you make sure you balanced to the penny?”
______
The next group in our Hiring Talent program starts next Monday. To join the group, follow this link to pre-register.