1. MAKE SURE THE TALENT INTERVIEW STANDS ALONE
Recruiting can be a complicated process. The candidate has to learn about you, the company, the role, and the details of his compensation. You have to check his résumé, make him an offer; he may counter, you then resubmit your offer; and so the negotiating continues until finally you both feel comfortable enough to commit. This process is important, but all of it should be handled separately from the talent interview.
The talent interview should stand alone. It has but one purpose: to discover whether the candidate’s recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior match the job. This is difficult enough without trying to accomplish everything else simultaneously. So set aside a defined amount of time where both you and the candidate know that the exclusive goal is to learn about his talents. Let him know that the interview will be a little different from other interviews. It will be more structured, more focused; less banter, more questions.
2. ASK A FEW OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS AND THEN TRY TO KEEP QUIET
The best way to discover a person’s talents in an interview is to allow him to reveal himself by the choices he makes. In a sense, the talent interview should mirror verbally what will face him on the job behaviorally. On the job, he will face thousands of situations every day to which he could respond in any number of ways. How he consistently responds will be his performance.
So in the interview, ask open-ended questions that offer many potential directions and do not telegraph the “right” direction—questions such as “How closely do you think people should be supervised?” or “What do you enjoy most about selling?”
The direction he takes, spontaneously, will be most predictive of his future behaviors.
When you have asked a question it is best to pause and remain silent. If he asks you to explain what you mean, deflect his question. Tell him that you are really more interested in what he means. Say that it is his interpretation that is important. Let him answer your questions as his filter dictates. Let him reveal himself to you.
Most important, when he answers, believe him. No matter how much you might like his first impression, if you ask him how important it is to be the best and he replies, “Well, I like to be the best, but mostly I just try to be the best I can be,” believe him. If you ask him what he likes about selling and he keeps talking about how quickly he wants to move into management, believe him. If you ask him what he loves about teaching and he never mentions children, believe him. Whatever he says, believe him. A person’s unaided response to an open-ended question is powerfully predictive. Trust it, no matter how much you might want to hear something else.
3. LISTEN FOR SPECIFICS
Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. Therefore questions like “Tell me about a time when you . . .” can serve you well.
But be careful with these “Tell me about a time” questions. First, you should always be listening for a specific example. And by “specific” we mean specific by time, by person, or by event. In this way you will avoid giving credit to the person who rattles off a whole paragraph of theory about how important something is but who never actually recounts a specific time when she did it.
Second, give credit only to the person’s top-of-mind response. Past behavior is predictive of future behavior only if the past behavior is recurring. If the behavior does indeed happen a lot, then the person should be able to come up with a specific example with only one prompt. If he can, then it gives you a clue that this behavior is a recurring part of his life.
For example, let’s say you are selecting for a sales position and you have decided to include the relating talent assertiveness in your talent profile. You might ask a question like “Tell me about a time when you overcame resistance to your ideas.” Notice that you haven’t asked for a. specific—you have simply asked the individual to tell you about a time when it happened. However, you are now listening for a specific.
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Posted by: arlene
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