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10
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS THAT CAN GET BOFFO RESULTS
excerpt from: June 7, 2004 Canadian
Business Magazine; by: Sarah B. Hood
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Looking to hire? Is "Tell us a bit about
yourself" a staple of your job interviewing repertoire?
If so, the prize candidates may be sailing by, while
you're left with a straggling collection of also-rans.
Since the widespread adoption of behavioural-based
interviewing techniques, many often-used questions are
now considered stale at best, pointless at worst.
Behavioural-based interviewing--also referred to
as "competency-based"--works from the assumption that
past behaviour is the best predictor of future
performance. "Competency is a buzzword you hear a lot,
but that is often misunderstood," says Jan Stewart,
Toronto managing partner with EgonZehnder International
Inc., an executive search firm based in Zurich.
"Competencies are the few, but critical, characteristics
the manager should have." A typical list for CEOs might
include vision, leadership, or teamwork and results
orientation.
Besides offering an accurate basis
for matching candidates to the job, this approach has
another advantage. "Behavioural-based interviewing
enables you to conduct the same interview with
subsequent candidates and compare, removing biases from
the interview process," says Arlene Russell, who has
spent 25 years with Scotiabank, most recently as
vice-president of domestic human resources. "What you're
watching for is the genuineness of answers, something
with depth, and maybe even some reflection."
Effective questions get down to specifics. "We
want to avoid glittering generalities," Stewart says.
When trying to identify a team-oriented candidate, a
question like "When did you achieve consensus?" is too
broad. Instead, you should ask for an example of when
the candidate encountered resistance to an idea, and how
he or she resolved it. "Hypothetical questions to me are
the same," says Stewart. "They just show how smart
someone is on their feet, not how well they can do the
job."
Similar difficulties arise with questions
like, "What have you been criticized for?" "Nine times
out of 10 they'll say 'Being a perfectionist or a
workaholic,' " Stewart reports. If a candidate
identifies an area of weakness, but the job doesn't
require strength in that area, she asks, "Why do you
care?"
So, what questions should you be putting
to potential hires? Here are 10 revealing ones you may
want to consider employing.
1. Tell us
about a best-in-class standard or practice that you've
introduced.
This is a high-level question
designed to unearth strong competency in results
orientation, according to Stewart. For a middle-range
candidate, you might lead off with the
less-sophisticated, "Tell us about a stretch goal you
established for your team." At the most basic level, the
interviewer could start with, "Give me an example of an
action you have taken to improve your work efficiency."
2. Describe a situation when a
subordinate was able to change your mind on a particular
course of action.
This question helps
identify a candidate who excels in team leadership, says
Stewart. Another good one would be (at the top level),
"Tell us about a time when you were successful in
motivating team members to make personal trade-offs for
the benefit of the team." At the lower end, you could
use "Give an example of a time when you had a conflict
with a subordinate."
3. Tell us about the
most unpopular decision you have made.
"Behaviour-based questions are standard here,"
says Dave Scapillati, vice-president of sales and
marketing for Prime Restaurants of Canada Inc., based in
Mississauga, Ont. Prime runs 147 locations of such
brands as East Side Mario's and Casey's Bar & Grill
across the country, and has made the Deloitte &
Touche and CIBC list of the 50 best-managed companies in
Canada for the past four years. If this question doesn't
elicit enough detail about a candidate's skills in
leadership and negotiation right away, says Scapillati,
the interviewer can follow up with sub-questions: "What
was the issue?"; "Why was it unpopular?"; "Why was it so
important to you?"; "How did you get by?"
4. Describe a time when you were faced
with a challenging situation that involved balancing
competing interests in your personal life with issues in
the workplace.
Human rights legislation
prohibits questioning designed to reveal personal
information about such areas as racial heritage and
sexual orientation. But employers shouldn't think they
need to shy away from all questions that let the
candidate talk about life outside the office. "People
give you amazing examples, and some of them demonstrate
that they were effective, that they were creative, that
they looked to find solutions beyond the norm," says
Toni Garro, vice-president of human resources for
AstraZeneca Canada. "It's amazing where people go when
you just give them an open landscape."
AstraZeneca Canada is the Canadian branch of the
international pharmaceutical company whose portfolio
includes the cancer fighters Casodex and Arimidex and
the asthma treatment Symbicort. "We all share a passion
for healthy living and helping people who are ill, and
we try to recruit for people who have a similar belief
system," says Garro. She cautions, however, that the
answers to this type of question vary. "If they're
meeting with HR, they tend to be more open about their
personal life," she explains. "If they deal with line
managers, they tend to talk more about their work life,
because that's what they think they'll be interested
in."
5. Who was your best/worst boss or
mentor?
This question "demonstrates the kind
of leadership skills that they admire," says
Scotiabank's Russell. Therefore, the interviewer is
probably hoping to hear about someone who inspired the
candidate, perhaps someone who excelled at listening and
responding to feedback. If, on the other hand, the
virtues a candidate ends up extolling sound like basic
management skills (as in: "They held meetings on time"),
that's "not too convincing," Russell adds. "You're
really looking for them to describe a leader versus a
manager."
6. What are two areas of
professional development that you're working on?
This question is designed to identify the
genuine "lifelong learner." Asking for just one area is
easy, says Russell. "The second asks them to dig a
little deeper. It asks them about their own
self-awareness and where they are developing." Because
AstraZeneca assigns a high value to a prospective
employee's capacity for growth, says Garro, "if somebody
was struggling with that question, that would be a bad
sign." However, she emphasizes that not all the examples
need to be job-related--personal networking and
volunteer board activities are equally valid.
7. Describe a crisis situation and how
you managed it.
Q9 Networks Inc. of Toronto
and Calgary offers Internet data services, so 100%
uptime is a critical consideration for the company. "If
there's anything that goes awry, we want people to be
able to respond," says Henning von Schmeling, Q9's
director of human resources. He lists multiple
indicators that can emerge from this one simple
question: Did they panic in the situation? Did they act
on incomplete information? Did they bring a team
together in order to address the situation? Did they
assume authority? Were they able to delegate
responsibilities? Did they communicate up the chain of
command and across departments? Did they prioritize? Did
they implement damage control? And finally, did they do
a post-mortem to see what went wrong, why it went wrong
and how it could be averted?
8. When is
it OK to lie?
"I want them to feel pain in
answering that question," says Q9's von Schmeling, who
likes to use it to assess the integrity of prospective
sales staff. "I want to see that they're presented with
a moral dilemma, and that they don't offer a glib answer
like 'It's never OK.' I want them to try to define what
the boundaries are. It's not the specific response; it's
more how they communicate: are there pauses, and are
they thinking about it before they answer?"
9. Describe the job you're applying
for.
Self-evident, perhaps. But beware.
"Sometimes the candidate might be very strong, but if
their expectations of the job aren't accurate, we might
end up with a mismatch," says Scotiabank's Russell.
10. ...And why are you interested in this
position?
"There isn't really a wrong
answer," to that question, Russell stresses. "It shows
what are the drivers for that individual. If they're
really excited that this is a job that will allow them
to interact with customers and build relationships, that
would excite us." As for AstraZeneca, "I ask them why
they're interested in pharmaceuticals," says Garro.
"Generally we get the right answers." Still, some
candidates indicate they're primarily interested in the
perceived stability of the firm, since many others are
going through cutbacks. Q9 Networks tailors this
question to the IT world as, "Do you have a computer at
home and what do you use it for?" says von Schmeling.
"If they were too much involved in doing programming,
perhaps they're too focused on the technical side."
As this last question shows, behaviour-based
interviewing can be adapted to any industry and any
situation. It's simply a matter of asking the right
questions.
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