Small Business Summit Center

[Welcome guest bloggers Kevin and Ben Nash of Aspen Organizational Development — Andrew]

One of the most important decisions that business owners and managers make is who to hire. According to Fast Money Magazine, "The most important corporate resource over the next twenty-years will be talent. It is also the resource in shortest supply."

Research has shown that traditional interviewing has about a 20% success rate in separating the best candidates from average candidates. Hiring managers need to think seriously about developing the skills that will help them to make the right hiring choices. Making the wrong decision can be very costly. If the wrong hiring decision is made, estimates show that it can cost the organization the equivalent of up to one year’s salary for that position. For some positions, that is a substantial amount of money. When you take into account the costs of advertising, interviewing, on-boarding, and training, plus the cost of lost time spent with a candidate that does not work out, you can easily see how expensive it is to make the wrong choice.

Recent research has identified 7 key areas that hiring managers should think about when assessing the suitability of a candidate. The first two are obvious. These are:

• The technical skills needed to do the job
• The number of years experience required to provide the candidate with the ability to make good judgment calls in the position

The other areas are not quite so obvious. These are:

• The value drivers that motivate the candidate to go the extra mile
• The personality traits that separate the average performer from top performers
• The situational factors that can cause an emotional response, rather than a well reasoned response
• The ability of the candidate to handle complex information
• And, finally, the ability of the candidate to be successful in non-structured environments.

There are a number of sophisticated psychological assessments on the market that can provide hiring managers with revealing data about candidates’ abilities in many of these areas; however, not all hiring managers have the time or the inclination to use these assessment tools. Another way of increasing the accuracy of making the right hiring decision is to ask revealing questions during the interview and analyze the responses in order to make a balanced judgment regarding a candidate’s fit for the position. The following are 8 revealing interview questions that all hiring managers should ask to delve a little deeper into a candidate’s potential:

1. What should someone doing this job know and be able to do?

Asking this question will highlight how aware the candidate is of the job requirements, and it sets up the discussion for the interviewer to ask follow up questions regarding the candidate’s own knowledge and abilities in these areas. If the candidate is accurate in identifying the knowledge and skills required for the job, it is likely she/he will have thought about it and probably have at least some level of expertise in the areas they identify. Of course it is necessary for the hiring manager to think through what the knowledge and skill requirements really are for the job. As an aid in identifying these, it is helpful to look at successful people who have held the position in the past.

2. What is the best job you ever had and why?

One of the key factors in a successful hire is finding someone who is likely to be a good fit with the culture of the organization. By asking about the candidate’s prior favorite jobs, it allows the interviewer to probe into what kind of atmosphere or organizational culture the candidate enjoys best.

3. What kind of problems do you like to solve?

Depending on the complexity of the job, the candidate may need to work with abstract or ambiguous problems that need to be solved. Alternatively the problems encountered may be routine with solutions that can be found in a manual or guidebook. Depending on the requirements of the job, the goal is to get right kind of problem solvers aligned with the kind of problems they enjoy working with.

4. What kinds of things do other people do that annoy you?

Most jobs require people to be good at maintaining and building relationships with others. If this is a requirement of the position, then hiring managers need a candidate who can cope with the ups and downs of relationships at work. Hiring managers are probably looking for someone who has a high level of tolerance for the foibles of others, or at least can maintain good relations by not showing their annoyance toward others or go out of their way to create conflict. This question can open a conversation about how the candidate handles disagreements and conflicts in the work place.

5. What stresses you out?

We all experience certain situations that are more stressful than others and it is important to understand how the stresses that come along with the position might impact the candidate. Think about what the stressors may be – for example: tight deadlines, upset customers, or extensive travel requirements. Use this question as an opportunity to explore if the candidate is likely to be resilient in the face of these stressors.

6. What energizes you?

This question can be directed either at work activities or activities outside of work. If the candidate, for example, says that they are energized by social or community activities outside of work, it probably indicates that they have an extroverted personality type and, depending on the job requirements, may be well suited to work that involves dealing with customers or sales. If the candidate’s response indicates that they prefer more solitary pursuits (i.e. fly-fishing, sewing, solitaire, computer games), they may have a more introverted personality type that is suited to analytical or technical work.

7. What was the most interesting thing that you learned recently?

Continuous learning is becoming increasingly important for all employees. The shelf life of knowledge may be as short as two to three years, so hiring managers should be looking for candidates that are open to learning new information and ways of doing things.

8. What disappoints you the most?

One of the best predictors of employee success is their level of contentiousness. Potential employees who express being disappointed by others who let them down may be the kind of employees that will bring with them a sense of obligation and commitment to the position.

Using a more carefully structured set of interview questions can significantly increase the hiring manager’s probability of making the right hiring decision; however, for filling those highly critical positions it may be beneficial to use outside services of an organizational psychologist to provide an independent assessment of the candidates’ suitability for the job.