A post crossed my desk that revived a subject from many years ago regarding the “One-Question” interview.  The contention is that it is possible to conduct an effective interview only asking one question.  Without spending much time on the analysis, common sense tells us that this is most likely not true.  But let’s take a closer look and see what’s wrong and how to fix it.

Before revealing the question, you need to be warned:

Here goes: “Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now, could you tell me all about it?”

Let’s analyze.

First, this is a Yes-No question.  The correct answer is either yes or no. Yes or no question are of little value because you don’t get effective behavioral data as a result.

Second, the question has handed control of the interview to the candidate.  Controlling the interview simply means controlling the agenda.  By asking this open-ended question, the interviewer is now going to get what the candidate wants to tell them as opposed to getting the specific data they need to predict success.

Third, the question raises the anxiety level of the candidate.  The person needs to “figure out” what you are looking for.  Increasing the anxiety level in an interview never adds value.

Finally and most importantly, the answer does not help predict success.  It is necessary to interpret the answer and try to map it to the job.

Here is a much better approach.  First, determine the behavior necessary for success on your job.  Find specific situations in the person’s past where they had the opportunity to demonstrate the sought after behavior.  Ask specific questions designed to get them to “TELL YOU HOW THEY BEHAVED”.

Here is an example.  Look for situations where the candidate needed to solve problems and overcome obstacles to complete a project or task.  The reason for this line of questioning is you know the person will need to solve problems and overcome obstacles to be successful on your job.  Look at the person’s background and ask about a specific project or task e.g.; “What was the biggest problem you faced when installing the new software package?  How did you solve the problem?  What resources did you use?  Who helped you with the solution?”

The sequence of 4-5 effective, behavioral question results in information that helps to predict success.

Of course no single question leads to an effective interview.  You goal is to gather as much data as necessary to predict success and make a quality hiring decision.  The more data, the better the hiring decision.

As always, I welcome your your comments.

Click the link for more information on effective interview questions.

I do my best to monitor my marketplace.  I get dozens of Google Alerts daily on various hiring terms.  This is just one of the tools I use to stay on top of my subject and marketplace.

Today I received an alert about an article on how to select winning employees.  The article boils down to 2 pieces of advice.

1. Ignore experience

2. Interview for personality

The author contended that experience didn’t matter and that personality was the driving force behind success.  He said to identify 8 personality traits, ask questions to see if the person had them.  And if they did not have at least 5 of the 8, eliminate the candidate.

Thanks for nothing!

Even if this advice was correct which it most definitely is not, nowhere in the article did the author explain what to ask or how to determine if the person had the personality traits.  On other words, he told you what to do without telling you how.  Not much help.

I could spend the rest of this post explaining why the advice is wrong but I won’t.  You can get volumes of quality advice on my <a href=”http://selectingwinners.com/blog”>Selecting Winners Blog</a>.   The purpose of this post is to help you evaluate the the advice based on the source.

After reading the article, I spent some time researching the author.  It turns out the person who wrote the article is a financial adviser.  I am not quite sure why this person was writing an article about hiring employees but it is a huge red flag.

The source of the advice you pay attention to is critical.

It is not a good idea to look for advice on your investments from your golf instructor.  It is also not a good idea to look for hiring advice from your investment adviser. Remember, everyone has an opinion.

Hiring is one of the most important jobs you have as a manager or business owner and cannot be left to chance.

The advice you follow needs to be from a reliable, proven source.  Try to evaluate the source of any advice before you put it into practice.

As always, I would love to hear your comments!

Just recently I ran across a white paper that listed the top 100 questions you should ask a sales candidate.  In the intro, it was suggested to use these as the standard questions asked of every candidate.  The reasoning was this approach empowers you to compare candidates.This is a prime example of advice that has been around for years that is not effective.  Let me explain.

On the surface it seems logical if you ask everyone the same questions you can compare answers.  The problem is if you ask everyone the same questions, by definition, the questions need to be general generic questions.  As a result, you get general, generic answers that do little to predict success on the job.

Here is an example from the list.  “Do you feel sales is a team sport or an individual sport?  Why?”

The first problem is the question is asking for the person’s feelings.  How are you supposed to evaluate feelings?

The second problem is how are you supposed to compare one person’s feelings to the next?  It just doesn’t make sense.

Here is another example form the list.  “Which has a greater impact on sales results … sales process or sales people?”  Just as a side note, the correct answer is, “It depends.”  Here is another question where you are asking the person for their opinion.  Opinions are of very little use in predicting success on the job.

Also, how can you compare one person’s opinion to the next?  The idea that these types of questions help you compare candidates is just false.

A list of 20, 50, 100 standard questions seems like a good idea but quickly fails in the real world.

The fix is really straightforward.  Step one is to have a list of critical requirements for the position.  This list acts as the standard.  Next develop questions specifically for each candidate designed to determine their strength or weakness against each specific requirement.

Finally, make certain your questions are behavioral in nature.  An effective interview question requires the candidate to provide data (not feelings or opinions) that helps you predict success in the position.  Behavioral examples of how they handled the same or similar situations to those they face on your job are best.

Here is an example of an effective, candidate-specific question: “How did you overcome the price objection during the ABC sale?”  The answer to this question gets you specific, behavioral data that allows you to predict success on your job.  For the next candidate you might ask: “How did you handle the delivery schedule issue during the XYZ sale?”

In both cases you are getting specific about how the candidate handles problems during a sale.

The goal is not have each candidate answer the same questions,  Your goal is to have each candidate demonstrate knowledge, skills and abilities as relates to specific job requirements.

For more than 35 years I have been studying the subject and teaching companies how to hire top employees.  I try to read most everything that is being written.  Some from experts.  Some from amateurs.  Some from practitioners.

Some of what I have read adds real value.  Some is interesting but not actually effective.  And some is just plain wrong.

This past weekend I was reading the Inc 500 report and in the middle of the report was a page titled, “Words of Wisdom”.  It had 10 ideas put forth by CEO’s from the list.  And at number 4 was the phrase I have railed against for years.

“Hire Slow, Fire Fast”

Just so we can limit the conversation, I have no problem with the second half of the phrase.  Fire fast is good advice.  However, the better job you do of hiring the less likely you will face the problem of firing.

It is the first half of the phrase I have the problem with.

On the surface, this seems like such good advice.  Take your time, be considerate, don’t rush into a decision.  It just sounds right.  And as a result, the uninformed and the mis-informed have been repeating it like it was the gospel for years.

To understand why this phrase makes no sense we have to go back to the beginning.  Why do you hire employees?

This is not a rhetorical question!

The answer to this question is at the heart of my argument.  Many people think you hire to fill a position.  How often do you rush to fill a position when someone leaves your organization?  How often do you let your organization be driven by “headcount” or some other measure of how many employees you have?

There is only one reason to hire employees.  That reason is to satisfy a business need.  That’s it.

Now you might be thinking that this is not a very profound revelation.  But let’s look a little closer.  Think about the last person you hired.  How well did you frame the business problem the new person was going to address?  And I am not talking about a generic job description.

Did you have very specific, time-bound and measurable results the person needed to deliver to satisfy your business need?  Whether you wrote these down or not, I can guarantee in your conscious our unconscious mind you had very specific results you wanted from this new employee.

If your new employee delivered these results, you were probably quite happy and had a successful, prosperous business.  If the new person did not deliver the results, you were most likely unhappy, your business suffered and you were forced to employ the second half of the phrase.

Employees prime purpose is to satisfy business needs.  And that is the only reason you should hire an employee.

Now let’s go back and explore the first half of the phrase, “Hire slowly”.

If I was to profess that your best course of action was to satisfy your business needs slowly, how much credibility would you assign to the advice?  Anyone who tells you to hire slowly does not understand why you are hiring.  They don’t realize that every day you have a business need not being addressed you are either losing money or wasting money.

You have to hire as fast as possible once you have identified a business need and then determined to satisfy that need with a new employee.

One of my long-time clients has monetized the process.  They hire many direct sales reps.  They calculated exactly what it costs on daily basis to NOT have a salesperson in the field selling.  Armed with that number, they can make very informed decisions about what strategy to use and how much to spend in their recruiting activities.

Before you get the wrong idea, I am NOT advocating rushing into decisions.

What I am advocating is to move through your recruiting and hiring process as swiftly as possible … without violating your due diligence process.  You need a proven and thorough selection process but that doesn’t mean it needs to take a long time.

One other myth while we are on the subject.  Market conditions have no effect on this argument.  Many people are taking much longer in the selection process due to the fact that there happen to be so many candidates currently available.  Market conditions do not change the fact you have a business need.

Everyday you have that position open you are losing or wasting money.

From now on -

Hire Fast and Fire Fast

I welcome your comments!

(B) Tell me about overcoming objections.

(G) How did you overcome the biggest objection in the ABC sale?

(B) Have you ever created a budget?

(G) Step me through the last budget you created.

(B) Do you use a system to manage your time?

(G) How did you plan your schedule today?

(B) What was the last book you read?

(G) What have you read in the last year to keep your skills current?

(B) How will you manage projects if we hire you?

(G) How did you put together the project plan for ABC?

(B) When is the best time to close in a sales cycle?

(G) At what point in the call did you start closing?

The burden have reversed from not being able to find candidates to having too many to deal with.  Many people have never faced this problem before and are looking for solutions.  This 22 minute video gives you the model I have used successfully for many years to deal with this specific problem.  The ideas can be put to use immediately and don’t cost any money.  As always, I welcome your comments.

There are eight questions on the tool designed to give you better insight into the “hidden signals” a candidate can give you in the interview.  First, what are you doing looking for signals when you should be gathering specific behavioral data.

For those of you that are new to this blog, let me repeat something I have said many times.

DON’T TRY TO FIGURE A PERSON OUT IN AN INTERVIEW!

You are not a trained behavioral psychologist so don’t put yourself in a position where you need to be one.  During an interview you should gather information and try not to evaluate.  Save the evaluation for after the interview when you have as much information as possible.

Forget the signals and stick to business.

Next, the 8 questions are all yes-no questions.  Another sure-fire recipe to be mislead and get as little information as possible.  Yes-no questions don’t provide you with very much information.  Instead of asking, “Do you pay attention to how you plan your schedule?”  (I know this is absurd but I just read a suggestion that you should ask this question in an interview from a so-called reputable source)  You should ask, “How did you put your schedule together this week?”  You can follow up with, “What changes did you make?  How did evaluate whether or not to make the change?”

The bottom line here is to be very careful what advice you follow when it comes to interviewing.  Along this line, I want to tell you a quick story.  I was teaching a class this past week and a participant took exception to my rather forceful stance on the merits of the Selecting Winners model.  I used the opportunity to share with the person (and I will share with you) my take on the situation.

We live in a world of ideas.  There is certainly more than one way to do anything.  My suggestion is that you try the Selecting Winners way and see if works.  If it doesn’t you have my permission to throw it away (and call me any name you choose).  You should also try some of the other stuff you hear about to see if it works.  I have always been willing to put Selecting Winners up against anything you want to bring to the table.  There is a reason I stand behind all my products with iron-clad money back guarantees.

If you disagree, I would love to hear from you.  Please leave your comments.

Let’s start with the single biggest offender when it comes to creating ambiguity .. general questions.  How many times have you read or heard about the 10 or 12 magic questions that you should ask every candidate.  By definition, if you ask everyone the same questions they must be general generic questions (Tell me about you most recent job).  You are only going to get general generic answers to these questions.  This creates uncertainty and ambiguity.

The next big offender is not defining your requirements.  Try interviewing for attitude.  I can promise that 5 different people are going to interview for 5 different things and come up with 5 different conclusions.  Requirements need to be clearly defined describing the behavior necessary for success in the position.

Another ambiguity creator is the term “competencies”.  I conduct an interesting experiment in my live classes.  Each participant is given a 3×5 card and told to define the term competency.  No two answers are ever the same.  What effect do you think it has to tell people to interview for a whole list of competencies?

Finally, not interviewing in correct chronological order is a huge mistake.  The candidate is constantly confused when you skip all around their background.  And you get lost as well.  It is impossible to to detect trends and patterns (order and consistency) when you bounce all over the place.

Your goal in the interview is to predict whether or not the person will be successful on your job.  To do that you need to know what knowledge, skills and behaviors are necessary for success.  And you have to determine if the person exhibits those requirements.  Any action, process, question or task that introduces ambiguity into the process only makes your job that much harder.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Please visit our main page to learn more about the variety of solutions we offer for your hiring issues.

Unfortunately, the mob mentality is not good when it comes to choosing employees.

Many of you will defend the practice of group interviews (although I hope no one will defend 25 people at once) insisting on the real benefits.  Let’s look at your arguments.

“”We get more information” is one argument I hear all the time.  My response is that you still only have one questions being asked at a time.  There is only one answer being given at a time.  If anything, you have opened the door for multiple interpretations of the same information.  It really is an opportunity to create ambiguity instead of clarity.  You are NOT getting more information by having multiple people in the room.

“The more opinions we have, the better our decisions” is another argument.  The problem once again is “more opinions”.  You really don’t want opinions.  You want informed judgments based on data.  But, you are not getting more data by having multiple people in the room.  It is much better to have a few informed judgments from individuals who have had the opportunity to go “deep” in their questioning to get real data.  This is accomplished with a series of one-on-one interviews.

“Others can observe body language and reactions while someone else is questioning” is still another argument.  There is certainly merit to the fact that you are so busy figuring out what you are going to ask next that you do miss some reactions.  This problem goes away, if you are prepared with your questions and trained to ask them in a way that allows you to listen.  And, how many of us are trained to effectively interpret body language?  It is way too easy to get off track and make a mistake with this approach.

Now let’s look at a few of my “downside” arguments for not conducting group interviews.  First, you put the candidate under extreme pressure.  How many of you would like to be grilled by 25 people at the same time?  Increasing a candidate’s anxiety level never improves the quality of data you get.

Trying to control multiple people’s input is very difficult.  Who takes the lead?  Who follows up?  When is it OK to interrupt with a follow-up questions?  Who decides when a subject has been exhausted an it is time to move on?  What are the politics between the people in the room?  Should you interrupt the boss?  I could go on but hopefully you get the point.

Finally. what happens if 24 people vote yest and 1 person votes no?  How do you resolve this situation.  Hiring is not a democracy.

It makes so much more sense to have 2-3-4 well-trained interviewers with over-lapping focus conduct a series of one-on-one interviews.  Afterward, they can compare notes about the data each uncovered helping to make an informed decision.

Although group interview might seem like a good idea on the surface, once you understand the dynamics of an effective hiring process it is simple to see they are not very effective.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Please visit our main page to learn about the variety of custom solution we have for your hiring issues.

Just yesterday I read the feature article in a major business publication titled, “The Hiring Game, New Times, New Rules.”  (The fact that they use “game” in the title should be your first clue that they don’t get it.)  The article outlined that, due to the current economic conditions, the power in the has shifted from candidates to the hiring managers.  Idiots!!!

There is no power in this relationship.  A good hire has to be win-win.  It cannot be anything but and expect to survive.  If either side loses, everyone loses.  For years there have been dozens of books written about how to win the employment game (either hire better employees or outsmart the employer).  When you stop and think about this, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s assume a person applies for your job and is sparkling in the interview.  You are overwhelmed by the person’s personality, energy and enthusiasm.  And, you hire them on the spot.  But, what you are unaware of is that the person just finished reading a book on how to ace the interview and what you witnessed was a great act and not reality.  This happens all too often.

Now the person reports for work and the real story is told.  It doesn’t take long for you to be disappointed.  Now you are faced with the unpleasant task of firing the person and having to repeat the process.  Not a lot of fun in anyone’s book.  This represents the classic case of a candidate playing a game and winning the interview.  Unfortunately, you both lose in the long run.  You can NOT have a winner and a loser when it comes to hiring employees.

The article went on to talk about  how employers are really putting candidates through their paces now that they were in charge.  Let’s assume that “putting them through their paces” means they are now doing a thorough job of selection.  My question is, “What were they doing before?”  Doing a thorough job of selection should never be an option?

On the other hand, if putting them through their paces means playing games and trying to gain advantage then this is just as unproductive as the candidate playing games.  An interview needs to be an opportunity for both sides to gain enough information to determine if there is a good match.  Think of it as a sales call.  The sales person needs to find out if the prospect needs and wants their product and the prospect needs to determine if the salesperson has a product or service that satisfies their need.  If either side fools the other, both will ultimately be unhappy.

Let me put this employment relationship in a different light that will hopefully simplify everyone’s thinking.  A job is simply a “Behavior Rental Agreement”.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  We enter into a contract with a person and both parties have to hold up their end of the agreement.

You don’t hire a person because you like them or they look good in a suit.  You hire someone because you want something in return.  You have a job that needs to be done.  You need a business need satisfied.  You hire someone to accomplish these tasks.  And in return, you will offer compensation.  It’s really a simple contract.

Now, if you entered into a contract with someone and they did not hold up their end, you would take action.  The exact same principle holds true in the behavior rental agreement.  The contract has been violated if the person does not deliver the behavior necessary to satisfy your needs.  The contract has been violated if you do not deliver an environment where the person can be successful and the compensation agreed upon.

This really is a simple situation.  Going back to the selection process, it is not an opportunity for either party to exert their will on the other, it is a simple data gathering process to determine if the parties can satisfy each other’s needs.

How many of you have ever bought a tool or piece of equipment because it was pretty or you liked it?  Then why would you hire someone for similar reasons?  The same logic and evaluation has to take place when you go through the selection process.  Hire someone because you are absolutely convinced they will deliver on their end of the agreement and satisfy your business need.  Apply the same evaluation to the person that you would to a piece of equipment.

One more quick rant.  A person recently told me she could tell quickly if someone will fit in her company because she looks for midwestern values.  I am from the Midwest (born and raised in Cleveland … Go Browns!) and I will bet you this person would not hire me!  Please do not put yourself in the foolish position of believing you can figure out other people.

You are much better off using a proven selection system (like my Selecting Winners System) designed to get you the information you need to make an informed decision.  The bottom line is that you are much better off using a proven structured process rather than relying on gut-feel and other less effective techniques.

When you read or hear about one of these latest and greatest hiring methods, my advice is to always run it by your common sense test.  Does this seem too good to be true? (I once read about the 3 questions interview)  Does the techniques describes seem like it would get you information that will help you predict success on the job?  Are you going to be comfortable using the technique?  You will be amazed how far a little common sense will take you.