5 ways to learn the most about a job candidate
Consultant Laurel Barton has helped businesses hire hundreds of employees. One of the most common hiring mistakes employers make, she says, is this: They talk too much.
"What you need to do is question people, not just tell them things," says Barton, president of Oswego Consulting in Lake Oswego, Ore. "Let the candidate talk 75% of the time."
Getting the right information from potential employees is important for two reasons. One, you want to have the right people working for you, and a good interview is one way to ensure that happens.
In addition, employee turnover is so expensive. Barton says that it typically costs one-and-one-half to two times the annual salary of a position to replace an employee in that position. So mistakes made when hiring have an impact on company finances.
Here are five steps that Barton and others recommend for effectively talking with potential hires:
1. Have an interview plan. It's not enough to say, for example, that you need a great salesperson. "You should list the qualities of what makes a great salesperson for you — ability to work with others, a good personality, timeliness, whatever — so you can develop the questions and ways of determining whether a person has the attributes or competencies you want," Barton says.
2. Do identical interviews. Taking the time to prepare your questions in advance will help pose similar questions to different candidates. If you ask completely different questions, you could wind up confusing yourself and not being fair to the candidates.
3.
Conduct behavioral interviews. In addition to the conventional methods of reviewing an applicant's job history and skills, you should ask questions that give the candidate a chance to explain how they react to specific job situations.
The biggest problem with behavioral interviewing, Barton says, is that people can prepare in advance for these questions. "Colleges and Web sites have materials available on typical questions and how to give the ideal answers," she says. The solution is to probe a little deeper, so you know you're getting honest answers and real-life stories rather than canned responses. For example, if you're asking how someone handled an unhappy customer, follow up by asking questions about which store or business the applicant was working at, how many people were in the store at the time, how the person felt during the event, how their supervisor reacted. "If someone isn't totally telling the truth, it is going to be very hard for them to hang on through three or four additional questions," Barton says.
4. Ask open-ended follow-ups. You cannot ask questions that don't apply to the ability of someone to perform a job, such as age, marital status, and so on. But there are questions you can ask that can help tell you a lot about the person. Questions that are open-ended, instead of allowing for a simple one-word answer, give applicants the chance to communicate useful information about themselves, says Therese A. Hoehne, director of human resources at Aurora University in Aurora, Ill. Barton says one of her favorite questions is about how the applicant got along with his most recent boss. "People will answer that question," she says. "I've had many people tell me they didn't get along with their boss. That can tell you a lot about who they can or cannot work with; it might also tell you something about whether they're going to get along with you."
5. Ask "performance" questions. With performance questions, instead of simply looking at a resume that lists a candidate's areas of experience, you can ask exactly how they would do something that is part of the job. "This is the difference between asking someone if they know how to use Microsoft Word, and asking them how they would format a master document for invoicing in Word," Barton says.Performance questions can be like mini-tryouts. A restaurateur interviewing a chef can ask if the chef has experience with breakfast orders, but he'll learn a lot more if he asks the chef to prepare two omelets.
The whole process of effective communication in an interview comes down to remembering your goal, Barton says. "It's easy to make the mistake of interviewing the resume — just checking off that what's on the resume is what the candidate has done," she says. "A good interviewer will communicate with the candidate and use the interviewing process to learn about that person."