Why is interviewing people so hard?

by Robert French on July 24, 2009

Most entrepreneurs, executives and managers find interviewing hard. Either they don’t like it or they are just not very good at it. There are a number of reasons, some of which apply to just about everyone faced with the job of interviewing a potential candidate:

  • Lack of comfort. Some people are not comfortable with the whole process of interviewing. Either they feel inadequately trained or they find it hard to make the hiring decision that will have a huge impact of the company and the candidate.
  • Conflicting goals. Should I be selling the person on the job? Should I be checking them out? Should I be doing both and, if so, how?
  • No plan. Very few interviewers go into the meeting armed with a planned list of interview questions that will tell them very specifically if this candidate is right or wrong for this job.
  • No training. The whole subject of how to hire great people is remarkably absent from business training curricula and most of the books on the subject deal with interviewing tricks and (supposedly) clever questions to ask candidates.

There are, of course, other reasons why people find interviewing so hard but I believe that the above four are the big ones. Let’s examine each of them.

Getting comfortable.

Nobody feels comfortable doing something that they have not been trained for and that will also require them to make an important decision. There are however some things that you can do to increase your comfort level:

List the things you want the candidate to be able to do (Performance Goals) and be specific. For example:

  • I want this salesperson to sell $200,000 of XYZ product per quarter;
  • I want this programmer to be able to write a Java program to update a database with sales transactions and finish the program within 2 weeks;
  • I want this manager to organize the accounting so that we can have financial statements complete by the fifth working day of the month.

List as many Performance Goals as you can (at least 10) and make sure that they are specific, time related, quantified and achievable.

Focus on the candidate’s performance. You need to know how she or he has performed in previous jobs. Get specifics, for example:

  • What was your sales quota? What amount did you actually sell? How was your performance compared to other sales people in the company?
  • How many Java programs have you written that update databases with 50 or more tables? How long did the most complex one take? What difficulties did you encounter and how did you deal with them?

The best way to get comfortable with the interview process is to learn how to do it in the context of a complete hiring system, but more on that later.

Resolving the conflicting goals.

In many ways, interviewing (in fact the whole hiring process) is a bit like dating. On the one hand, you want to make a really good impression and on the other hand you want to check out the other person completely.

You need to plan the interview in such a way that the candidate is talking 65-70% of the time. The meeting should take 1 to 1¼ hours and be structured as follows:

  1. Introduction to the company and the job. 10 minutes (maximum)
  2. Your questions to the candidate. 40 minutes+
  3. The candidate’s questions to you. 10 minutes+
  4. The wrap up. 5 minutes

During Stage 1 you sell the candidate on the company and the job.

During Stage 2 you check out in detail whether the candidate is right for the job.

During Stages 3 and 4, if you think the candidate may be right for the position, you take every opportunity to sell the candidate on the job.

Having a plan.

Having a plan for an interview entails:

  • Having a good environment for the interview: a clean and tidy office; having water, juice, coffee or tea available; being dressed appropriately;
  • Having a written list of very specific questions about those elements of the candidate’s performance in previous jobs that relate to how you want him or her to perform in this job;
  • Having a place on the list of questions to jot notes about the candidate’s answers;
  • Having good clear answers to questions that you think the candidate may ask about the job, the company and the salary or compensation package.

    Training.

    Our system How to Hire Great Employees – First Time, Every Time has a wealth of information on:

    • How to get comfortable with the interviewing process;
    • How to analyze the job in order to find out how you want the successful candidate to perform;
    • How to analyze the candidates’ résumés so that you will know the right questions to ask;
    • How to structure the interview;
    • How to develop a list of questions that relate each candidate’s performance;
    • A questioning pattern that will let you get the truth about the candidates’ performance without appearing aggressive or overbearing.

    Most importantly, it takes you through a step by step process to define the job you want done, find a source of well qualified candidates, prepare a package that will impress the candidates with the job and the company, select, interview, check out, test and hire the very best people. To find out how to turn yourself into a world class hiring manager, click here.

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    Hiring people in tough economic times

    by Robert French on July 24, 2009

    As I write this, we are in one of the toughest global recessions since the 1930’s. Investors of all stripes have seen sometimes as much as 50% of their portfolios wiped out. Many have put their money in safer investments (or in cash) but the wiser investors are carefully buying up good quality, undervalued stocks that will rebound when we start to pull out of the recession.

    Entrepreneurs and corporate managers can learn a lot from these canny investors when it comes to hiring. Now might be a good time to hire good quality, undervalued employees who will pay big dividends when we start to pull out of the recession. If your company is looking to hire, there are some misconceptions that you should be aware of which can turn these opportunities into disaster.

    But there is a way to take advantage of the recession, big time.

    Let’s start with the Big Fallacy: “Because we’re in a recession, there are a lot more good people out there, looking for jobs, who we can hire.” This is a commonly held belief and it is completely incorrect.

    If you value your business or organization, you want to hire good people, right? But how do we define good. For any job, out of all the people who could do it, 25% are good to excellent, 50% are average and 25% are from below average to incompetent. You, I hope, want to hire from the top end of the good employees, let’s say at least from the top 10%, or even better, from the top 3%.

    But as a recession deepens and companies lay people off, unless they are bound by union contracts, the people they lay off first are in the bottom 25% and the people they lay off next are in the average range. Companies will fight like mad to keep the good people who are in the top 25%!

    The end result is that the people looking for jobs in a recessionary market are usually (but not always) in the average to poor end of the performance scale. So instead of looking for 1 person in 10 you are having to find that 1 person in 25, 50, 100 or more.

    However, there is one great way for you to turn the tables in your favor.

    Many of the companies who employ the sort people that you want to hire are also caught in the recession. They may have had one or more rounds of layoffs and of course, they have laid off the poorer performers. So the people who are still working for them are probably (a) the higher performing employees and/or (b) overworked because of the layoffs and/or (c) worried about the future of their jobs and their company. Here is a pool of people who are probably good performers and who might be very motivated to switch employers. These are the people who you should be targeting to hire.

    That said, how do you find these people? How do you approach them? How do you persuade them to consider working for you?

    The usual answer to this question is to employ an employment agency or headhunter. This can be a good solution if you use a firm that will proactively go out and find you the candidates who are currently working. Unfortunately, these firms are the exception rather than the rule, most work from a database of résumés of people looking for work.

    But, if you can find the right one, now might be a good time to use a headhunter. During a recession employment agencies and headhunters are all hurting financially and you may just get a break on the fees. Nevertheless, even at discounted rates, a headhunter can be expensive.

    Our system How to Hire Great Employees – First Time, Every Time will show you how to source that top 10% of employees: how to find them, how to approach them and how to make them fall over themselves to work for you. In addition, if you decide to use a headhunter, it also has a information on how to find the right one and how to work with them so that you get the best results from them.

    Most importantly, it takes you through a step by step process to select, interview, check out, test and hire the very best people from that top 10%. To find out how to turn yourself into a world class hiring manager, click here.

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