Stop “Telling” in an interview instead ask “How”
If you are in HR or executive search, how many times have you heard a hiring manager say when referring to a hire that is under performing and about to be let go, “I don’t know why they aren’t performing, I told them during the interview exactly what that job is. I can’t figure it out.”
Most of you just thought to yourself, “Too many. More times than I can count.” or “Just about every time we had to let a person go before their probation period was over.”
Why? What went wrong? It should be obvious from the hiring manager’s comment, “I told them exactly what the job is.” The key word is “told.” My guess is that the candidate probably even replied, “No problem, I’ve done that before and can do it for you.” Well, with that level of assurance from the candidate, who wouldn’t hire them? After all, if the candidate couldn’t do it they would tell you, “Sorry, I haven’t a clue how to do any of those things, but I’m a fast learner.” and you still would have hired them. Right?
The reply to the hiring manager should be, “Stop telling the candidate all about the position and having them respond, ‘Yes, I can do that.’ instead start asking, ‘How would you do this?’” If they say they can do it, shouldn’t they be able to tell you how? If they can’t tell you how they would do it, then how do they know they can do it? Seems to me if someone tells me they can do something, they should be able to at least explain a little bit about how they will do it.
In our training workshop, Advanced Interviewing – Eliminating Embellishment and Exaggeration, this is one of the biggest issues hiring managers do that creates all the problems. They assume that because they told the candidate the job and the candidate responded affirmatively, all is fine. WRONG.
Train your hiring managers to stop telling and to start asking “how” questions. For example:
1) How have you reduced turnover in your last company?
2) How have you improved customer service?
3) How would you improve customer service in our organization?
4) How would you use your experience in sales to improve our sales process?
5) This position requires managing and improving our accounts payable department, have you done this before? When the candidate replies, “Yes” follow-up with, “How have you done this? and “How you would do it here?”
6) Can you give me an example of how you did X?
How questions engage the candidate, start a dialog, opens the interview up, and allows for the candidate to tell you rather than you telling the candidate.
Get your hiring managers or anyone in your company that interviews to start asking “How” questions and interviewing accuracy will increase dramatically overnight.
Need help sourcing top talent? Download for FREE the chapter from our best selling book, You’re NOT The Person I Hired, on sourcing top talent. CLICK HERE to download this Free chapter.
Join our Linkedin group, Hiring and Retaining Top Talent, it is one of the most active groups on Linkedin on this topic. CLICK HERE to join.
I welcome your thoughts, comments and feedback.
Brad Remillard
Related posts:
Tags: Hiring Errors, Hiring Failure, hiring process improvement, Interview Questions, Interview Techniques, Interviewing
Face-to-Face Interviewing, Interviewing, Phone Interviewing | bradremillard December 9, 2009
About the Author
Brad Remillard is a founding Partner of IMPACT Hiring Solutions, co-author of "You're NOT the Person I Hired", and "This is NOT the Position I Accepted". Brad is an award-winning international speaker, retained executive recruiter, and expert on hiring and retaining top talent, and executive job search.
3 Comments to “Stop “Telling” in an interview instead ask “How””
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By Joshua Geissler, December 10, 2009 @ 10:36 am
Completely agree that the word “HOW” can help solve many of the hiring problems. I was in charge of a workforce of 250 employees and many of my problems could have been solved by replacing many words with the word “HOW” and listen to what the candidate has to say. Even the most honest of people if unemployed, with family and obligations will get creative on their answers and resume to become EMPLOYED!
By ferd, December 10, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
Unless the job is repetative and uncreative, the manager is silly to think that they “told them exactly what the job is”. Most jobs require and expect more than that, especially as situations change. This manager probably doesn’t have a good grip of what he and his company really needs, or at least is poor at communicating it. I agree with the author that job interviews need to probe a candidate’s ability to think and adapt, as well as prove relavant experience. However, hiring managers also need to think about what candidate traits will serve the job through its forseeable future. Otherwise, the manager is setting himself up to be disappointed.
By David Brodeur, December 16, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
Brad:
Great stuff. There is so much emphasis on the “behavioral” aspects of the interview that recruiters and hiring managers forget to find out HOW a candidate did what they say they did on their resume (Past) and then HOW they intend to re-create that or re-invent it (Future) at their prospective new employer.
I applaud your efforts to go back to one of the basics of conducting a solid interview.
Merry Christmas to you and the ASSE membership.