Hiring is the most important thing you will do as a manager.
How should you Interview? After reading the best books on hiring, the following 9 best practices on Interview stand out.
1. Don’t ask Irrelevant Questions
Don’t ask:
What do you think of the Economy / Share Market?
If you were a Super Hero, what would you be?
How many Petrol Pumps are there in India? (Brain Teasers)
Such questions will only trigger your biases. They do not have any research validity of being effective in predicting future job performance.
2. ‘Behavioural’ Questions Vs. ‘Situational’ Questions
‘Behavioural’ questions pertain to the past.
An Example:
Tell us about a time when you were under pressure to show results at work?
What was the challenge? What did you do?
‘Situational’ questions are future-oriented or hypothetical in nature.
An Example (related to the job being hired for):
Our company is planning to launch a ‘Loan against Gold’ scheme. Assuming we hire you as the Product Manager, how will you go about launching the product?
Experts differ in their preferences. Generally, though, Situational questions are used more at senior-level hiring.
3. Conduct a Structured Interview
A Structured Interview is where you ask the ‘same’ questions to all the candidates. This has been shown to be a better predictor of a candidate’s future performance.
This means that you will need to make a list of questions beforehand that you will be asking the candidates.
4. Conduct a Job Test (Check for a Candidate’s Experience)
In today’s Knowledge-imbued workplace, you can test a candidate’s experience by asking Questions or a Work Test.
Some Examples (of a Question test):
What are your performance targets at work?
Which is a challenge for you? What do you do about it?
Tell us about your 2 big achievements at work?
How do you think our Industry will shape up in terms of technology?
In the software Industry, Job Test frequently takes the form of a Work Test – test for coding, etc.
5. Check for IQ (General Intelligence)
IQ is important. In the absence of a specific IQ Test, a candidates’ School and College grades are a good indicator of his or her IQ.
Internet giant ‘Google’ though checks for a variant of IQ. It calls it ‘General Cognitive Ability’ or GCA. They give Situational questions to the candidate to see how he or she thinks through a problem.
An Example of GCA (related to the job being hired):
Assume we give you a list of Companies to market our Tea & Coffee Dispensers, what are the first 3 things you will do as part of marketing?
6. Check for EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
EQ can be broken up into Self Management and Relationship Management. Sample questions to check for EQ.
For an Individual Role:
Tell us about a time when you were overwhelmed at work.
How often does that occur? What do you do about it?
For a Managerial Role:
Tell us about a dispute with a peer.
What was it about? What did you do? How did it end up?
7. To Avoid First-Impression Bias, Write Down Candidates’ Answers
We are constantly judging people – sometimes our judging starts within seconds of meeting someone.
To counter this, reframe your role from an assessor, to a fact-gatherer, by writing down Candidates’ answers. This write down – notes – will also help you when you sit back to evaluate the candidates.
8. To make a better decision, ensure ‘more than 1 Good candidate’ in the final list
Today LinkedIn is a good source to get a line-up of candidates. Post your requirements there and in a short time, you will get a good list of candidates which you can evaluate to come to a couple of really good candidates.
Alternatively, you can sound out your contacts “Hi, do you know anyone good in banking operations, etc. – we need one at a manager role.”
9. For Good Hiring Decisions, rely On a Committee
In general, committees or crowd behaviour is usually looked down upon. (In the Share market, it even has a name: Herding mentality.)
But when it comes to general interest areas – when we are not run over by our greed, information asymmetry, etc. – we people, as a group, are quite effective. So when it comes to the final decision, ensure the decision on whom to hire is made by a committee, or a couple of managers deliberating it out.
The above is a short note on ‘How to Conduct an Interview?’
In the book ‘21 Office Situations & How to Deal With Them,’ I have explained each of the above steps in detail, as also put together a detailed Sample Interview questionnaire that you can use when you have to interview.
The book is available on Amazon.in