The Metiss Group's Blog

Most people have heard stories about silly interview questions aimed at gauging a candidate’s fit: “If you were a tree, what would you be and why?”, “What animal are you most like?”, and “If you were to get rid of one state in the U.S., which would it be and why?”.

Also, there are the mind-bending questions Google asks trying to determine how smart a candidate is: “When there’s a wind blowing, does a round-trip by plane take more time, less time, or the same time?”, “Using only a 4-minute hourglass and a 7-minute hourglass, how can you measure 9 minutes.”, “At 3:15, what is the angle between the minute and hour hands on an analog clock?”.

While hiring managers may have good reasons to ask these questions, asking this single question can provide much more insight into a candidate’s qualifications: “What would you consider the most significant accomplishment in your career?”

Follow up these with these probing questions:

• Tell me about your role and the team involved; why were you chosen?
• What were the actual results achieved?
• When did the project take place and how long did it take?
• What were the 3-4 biggest challenges you faced and how did you deal with them?
• When did you go the extra mile or take the initiative?
• Explain your manager’s style and whether you liked it.
• What were some of the biggest mistakes you made?
• What aspects of the project did you truly enjoy?
• What aspects did you not especially care about and how did you handle them?
• Hiring managers will be amazed what they can learn about a candidate by digging deep into just this one event.

Empowered hiring managers ask insightful interview questions to make more successful hires.

Source: Lou Adler of The Adler Group

Stephen Covey’s popular “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” was published in 1989 and has sold more than 25 million copies in 38 languages. This iconic inspirational book is as pertinent today as it was when first written. Though Covey presented many lessons to apply to the selection process, the most important is Habit #2: Begin With The End In Mind.

All too often hiring managers get caught up in the details of the selection process and lose sight of why they are making the hire to begin with.  It is important to find a way to accomplish the success factors associated with a job.  If hiring someone achieves that objective, great.  If the success factors can be accomplished by some other means, that’s great too.

Hiring managers shouldn’t assume making the perfect hire is going to ultimately achieve success. They must start by defining what success in the job looks like and recruit, hire, on-board, and manage towards those goals.  A good hire alone without success defined will not necessarily achieve the objective.

Empowered hiring managers “Begin With The End In Mind,” define success, and achieve the results they are looking for.

Right now there is a team working on the next iPhone.  There is a team working on preventing Alzheimer’s disease. There is a team working on a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. What teams are going to achieve their objective? What makes for a successful team?

Patrick Lencioni in “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” developed a model of high performing teams that includes five key characteristics: inter-team trust, healthy conflict, team member commitment, team member accountability, and team results orientation. But before someone can be a high performing team member, they need to have been hired into the organization.

In all likelihood, a new hire will be assigned to a team sometime in their career. Hiring managers should screen for teamwork skills along with other job requirements.

Here are some questions for hiring managers to ask candidates to understand how well they will perform in a team setting:

• Describe an effective team in which you’ve participated.  What made it a good team? Describe a team that was less effective. What was the difference between the two?
• Have you ever seen someone violate a trust relationship with another team member? What was the trust issue that was violated? What was the result? How could it have been avoided?
• Give me an example of a group or team decision that was made and you felt that it was wrong or was something you disagreed with. How did you handle it? Were there others who agreed with you? What was the end result?

Empowered teams choose new hires who will make great team members and experience more success.