Interviewing Better
“Slow to hire, quick to fire.” Our desire for speed and the pressure to execute often drive many leaders to do the opposite. “We need to fill this role now!” so we hire quickly but are slow to remove underperforming employees. It can lead to what Guy Kawasaki called “the bozo explosion.” In addition, several leading Human Resource firms suggest that the average cost to replace a terminated employee (i.e., the cost of employee turnover) is about 50 percent of that employee’s annual salary. When considering high turnover in any organization and the cost of terminating a poor hire, making effective and well-informed decisions in the interview process becomes a critical leadership skill.
A client of mine leads a well-established executive recruitment firm, and here are some of the questions he asks during an interview process:
What else should we know about you?
When we talk to your references, what issues might they raise about you that would make you want us to hear your side first?
What have you done for self-improvement in the last five years?
What have we not asked that we should have?
How does this job fit into your career development? What experiences have prepared you most for this next step?
For a few people, Emotional Quotient (sometimes defined as the capacity of individuals to recognize their own and other people’s emotions) is natural. Still, for most, it needs to be honed and developed. When we ask the direct reports from your last job on a scale of 1 to 10 to rate your EQ, how might they respond? What score would we hear if we asked colleagues from your first job? How would you explain your growth in exercising your EQ?
Thinking back on the bosses you’ve had, what were the characteristics you liked and disliked? And why?
What tasks should your superiors not give you, those you don’t enjoy or areas at which you do not excel?
Why might this be the right job for you? And what concerns do you have about it?
As you look back on your last three jobs, please list several employees you have mentored and what has happened to them since.
We want to avoid the “bozo explosion.” We want to avoid both the relational and financial costs associated with a bad hire. There is no “silver bullet” in the hiring process. Still, perhaps by taking more time to ask better questions, we allow ourselves to make informed decisions about the talent we are intentionally recruiting to build the kind of culture we desire.
Dig Deep…Keep Going!