The Metiss Group's Blog

We’ve all seen the heroic detective in the movies interrogate the lying criminal with deep questioning eventually getting them to admit the truth.  Psychologists have long recognized most “normal” people cannot effectively and consistently make-up details about past events on the fly and eventually tell the truth (psychotics are capable of imagining and recounting untrue facts while believing them).

Hiring managers should use a similar approach to interview questioning. When preparing to interview candidates (yes, they do need to do some pre-work if they expect a productive interview), they should plan three or four follow up questions to the initial question.

For example, while probing a candidate’s personal accountability plan to ask, “Tell me about a time when it was necessary to admit to others that you had made a mistake.”  Next follow up with questions like:

• “Who was involved in the situation?”
• “What did your boss do afterwards?”
• “How long was it before you admitted the mistake?”
• “What subsequent mistakes have you made and how have you handled them?”

Answering a series of questions becomes harder with each question and the interviewer will likely gain greater insights into the candidate with the follow-up questions.

Empowered hiring managers dig deeper in their questioning and make more successful hires.

In his recent book “The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business,” Patrick Lencioni describes how a legendary company screens for their core values.  The company’s culture is built around a healthy sense of self-deprecation and humility. When candidates come in for interviews, they typically wear classic business suits, starched shirts and ties. The male candidates are asked to exchange their suit pants for khaki shorts and complete the remainder of the interview (which includes a tour of headquarters) wearing the shorts.  The candidates in their suit coat, shirt, tie, dark socks, shinny shoes, and silly shorts are demonstrating one of the company’s core values. Many candidates object and opt out of the process on the spot; others humbly embrace the notion and continue with the interview.

Core values are critical to companies and if candidates cannot embrace them while seeking the job, they surely won’t live them on the job.

Empowered hiring managers who challenge their candidates to demonstrate their core values continue to have successful organizations.

Why should a leader bother indicating the percentage of time they’d expect an individual to spend on various accountabilities within a job?

That question is often best answered with other questions:

What happens if an HR person wants to spend 50% of their time in compliance and 20% in benefits administration but the organization needs the individual to spend 30% in recruiting and 40% in talent development?

How about the sales person who wants to spend 40% of their time nurturing existing client relationships and 30% of their time networking.  But the organization knows from previous experience the position requires at least 50% of the time cold calling to get those calls and 25% in elaborate proposals and reporting?

On the surface, assigning percentages of time for accountabilities seems like an easy step to skip because it’s assumed “it’s obvious!”   However, it can be the deciding factor for an individual to de-select themselves from consideration in a job and a predictability factor of success for any incumbent.

Organizations empowered to identify time percentages in their job accountability descriptions experience more success.

More and more companies are using assessments during their selection process to help in finding the right candidate. As a result, candidates are becoming increasingly familiar with and interested in selection assessments. Many candidates are now asking hiring managers if they can see the results of their assessments. We strongly urge our clients not to share or even discuss assessment results with candidates until they are hired (using the assessment results during a new hire’s on-boarding helps the new hire get off to a great start).

Assessments are confidential property of the organization for which they have paid and regardless of a candidate’s insistence, hiring managers should not feel obligated to show them their reports or discuss their results. Without expert interpretation, these assessments can EASILY be misinterpreted. So, unless the hiring manager or the candidate chooses to invest in having the assessments debriefed by a behavior expert, the candidate’s impression of what the assessments indicate can create an inaccurate impression of the selection process; this often leads to inappropriate conclusions about where the candidate stands in the selection process.  Since no assessment should ever be a go/no-go decision point, the organization may find itself defending how the assessments are used within the process, not just the validity of the assessment itself.

When candidates ask for their assessment results, we recommend the following response:

“We appreciate your interest in our selection tools, but it is our hiring policy not to share assessment results with candidates. Should you wish to purchase assessments on your own, we’d be happy to introduce you to our assessment provider.”

Empowered hiring managers manage the selection process effectively and are more successful.