Lewis Lin, who coaches job seekers on interview skills, has posted a fascinating list of questions that Google asks job applicants.
140 questions Google asks candidates
November 6th, 2009How recruiters can hurt your reputation
October 22nd, 2009Think back to the last time you were looking for a job. Chances are, you either were contacted by a recruiter or made direct contact yourself with the hiring company. And chances are, even if you got the job, you weren’t entirely happy with the recruitment experience.
Stories are legion about human resources professionals who not only fail to respond to unsolicited and solicited inquiries but also fail to follow up with candidates they’ve interviewed in person. And when it come to outside recruiters, well the story usually is worse.
I know the excuses: We’re too busy to follow up with everyone who responds to a job posting. Applicants should understand that if we don’t follow up with them, we’re not interested. And, if you’re an outside recruiter: We work for the hiring company, not the candidates, so they can’t expect service from us.
I also know the damage such behavior can do to the reputation of the hiring company and the recruiter it engages.
I have vowed never to do business with the bank that put my stepdaughter through a series of interviews and then left her in the lurch, never responding to her emails and calls about the status of her candidacy. And I have vowed never to refer a client or candidate to one of Manhattan’s best know media recruiters after she agreed to meet with an old friend about his career prospects and then brushed him off with a perfunctory and rude telephone call. (By the way, he’s an owner of one of the world’s most prestigious media companies, so her rudeness is all the more astonishing).
So how should a corporate or outside recruiter handle candidates to ensure that a hiring company’s reputation, and a recruiting firm’s reputation, isn’t compromised?
1) Make clear what a candidate can expect. If you are posting an ad online or in a newspaper, it’s entirely proper to state that applicants who do not meet the stated requirements for the position will not receive a response because of the volume of expected applications. If you are a recruiter, put together a standard email message explaining that the process of sourcing candidates is likely to take xx weeks and that a candidate should not expect a response from you until then. Send it after you receive a CV from someone you’ve contacted.
2) Release candidates as soon as it’s clear they aren’t going to make it to the next round. I periodically go through the list of candidates I have contacted for a position (a list that may number in the hundreds) and release those who don’t measure up against the top twenty or thirty. (I never release the last couple of dozen until the very end because the top three choices I present to a client might ultimately decline an offer).
3) Put together, if appropriate for the level of position you are filling, an update email that goes to all candidates. It can state briefly where you are in the process (“We continue to source candidates for this position.”), what the next step will be (“when we have completed the sourcing process we will reach out to those candidates whom we want to interview in more depth”), and give an estimated timeline (“we expect this process to take another month.”
A bit of work? Yes. But that’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it? And if you want to recruit employees who reflect well on the company, consider your role as the company’s initial contact.
Bad Bosses
October 22nd, 2009This interesting piece from Newsweek talks about how employees deal with bad bosses. If you’re a manager and find yourself the recipient of a lot of unusual flattery, perhaps you’ll find it telling. Then again, if you’re the sort of bad manager this piece describes, the odds are, sadly, you won’t know it.
The Making of a Toxic Boss
Power and incompetence are a bad combination. Behold the Mr. Dithers Syndrome.
By Wray Herbert | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 19, 2009
The iconic bullying boss has to be Mr. Dithers, Dagwood Bumstead’s nemesis in the long-running comic strip Blondie. Mr. Dithers is blustery, mean, stingy with praise and money, and both physically and emotionally abusive. And he’s gotten away with his intolerable behavior for more than 70 years. (Click here to follow Wray Herbert)
It’s no wonder that so many readers sympathize with the hapless Dagwood even today. A recent survey reveals that a startling 37 percent of the country’s workforce—some 54 million people—have bosses who scream at them, belittle them, sabotage their work, and are otherwise aggressive. Social scientists and policymakers are very concerned about this toxic phenomenon, if only because of the enormous personal and economic costs. It’s hard for people to do their best work when they are busy trying to avoid the office ogre.
So why are workplace tyrants so common? What’s the psychological dynamic underlying such dysfunction at the top? It’s not simply the power; there are many powerful bosses who are good and decent—or at least tolerable. Power corrupts only some—but which ones and why? Two psychologists recently decided to explore one possible explanation: perhaps it is power, but only power mixed with incompetence, that leads to aggression and abuse.
Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California and Serena Chen of the University of California, Berkeley, ran a series of experiments to test this theory in different ways. In one, for example, they drew a sample of volunteers from a massive database of American workers, with a diverse array of jobs and careers and workplaces, and gave them a battery of psychological tests. These instruments have been used and refined over many years, and are designed to hide their true purpose, which is to measure certain psychological traits that people wouldn’t necessarily want to reveal, specifically: feelings of inadequacy and incompetence and aggressive tendencies, both verbal and physical.
They also gathered information on how much formal authority and power each volunteer actually exercised in the workplace. The idea was to see if indeed power and feelings of incompetence interact in creating an intolerable boss. And that’s precisely what they found: people who felt inadequate were abusive only if they also were in positions of power, and powerful people were mean and aggressive only if they suffered from self-doubts. Neither power nor incompetence was enough by itself to turn a boss bad, just the combo.
It won’t surprise a lot of workers to learn that their mean-spirited supervisor has secret feelings of inadequacy. But the researchers wanted to double-check these results, so they did a laboratory simulation of the workplace dynamic. They used what are called “primes” in the jargon of the field: they had some volunteers write about a time in the past when they felt particularly powerful, an exercise which is known to activate these internal feelings. Some of these empowered workers also recalled and wrote about a time when they performed admirably at some task, while others wrote about a past experience of inadequacy. As a laboratory measure of aggression, they created a ruse in which the volunteers had to choose how much noise to blast at a stranger, ranging from completely benign to head-rattling.
Again they found that it’s the interaction of power and inadequacy that engenders abuse. Fast and Chen believe that this dynamic reinforces itself in the workplace, because people who gain power pressure themselves to perform at a higher level, and thus are more apt to feel inadequate in their powerful role. This threatens their ego, and they become defensive. Defensiveness often comes out in the form of insults or worse.
So what can be done to stop this cycle from escalating? In still another lab experiment, the psychologists again manipulated feelings of power and competence, and again measured workers’ aggression—in this case their willingness to undermine another worker’s performance. But in this version of the simulation, the researchers deliberately boosted some of the volunteers’ feelings of self-worth by praising them for their leadership skills. Others got no such ego booster.
The Well-Crafted Job Description
October 13th, 2009A shout-out to J.K. Glei of Behance Creative Network, the 99% productivity think thank, the Action Method project management application, and the Creative Jobs List for this excellent piece on putting together a job description. I found it on OpenForum, a great resource for small business owners (http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/managing/article/save-time-with-a-well-crafted-job-description-j-k-glei)
“For those of us who lack a dedicated HR person, writing a job posting that makes it easy to weed out the unqualified candidates – and thus waste less time reviewing non-relevant apps – is of paramount importance. Here are a few tips on how to build some self-selection into your job postings:
” 1. Include instructions that help you filter. You always want to be clear about how to apply for the position. Do you want a cover letter? Is a portfolio required? If it is, say so. Most importantly, clarify a specific subject line (e.g. JOB: Office Manager) that you want them to include. If the applicant overlooks any of these guidelines in their application, you can weed them out in seconds. They’re probably not the “detail-oriented” person you want. Speaking of…
” 2. Be specific. Get rid of stock phrases like “detail-oriented” or “team player.” The more that you use hackneyed phrases, the more likely you are to get bland applications that echo the same vague language. Instead, be specific. Tending to the details means different things for different positions: for customer service, detail-oriented might mean being particularly empathic, attuned to callers’ moods; for a web developer, detail-oriented might mean writing clean code that can be easily picked up and adapted by any other developer.
” 3. Ask questions. Typically, job descriptions just outline the position’s responsibilities and necessary skills, while asking nothing specific of the applicant other than a cover letter, resume, and/or portfolio. While these materials give you a general view of the applicant, they tell you little about how they might fit into your particular company. Yet, asking a single question can go a long way to separating the wheat from the chaff. They can be specific to your company: Tell us one thing that you think would improve the functionality of our website? Or more general inquiries about personality: Describe an instance where you took initiative outside of work. When compared side by side, applicants’ answers to these sorts of questions can be incredibly telling.
” 4. Bounce the job descript off someone who actually does the job. Unless you’re a stickler for always maintaining current job descriptions, it’s often the case that something on the skills list will be either outmoded or missing. Check in with the person actually doing the job – if there is one – for some feedback on what might need to be removed or added based on changes in the position’s responsibilities.
” 5. Let your company culture shine through. Are you running a fast-paced start-up with 5-10 people who work weekends? Or is it a fairly established mid-sized company that gives employees summer Fridays off? Whatever it is that defines the culture of your company (e.g. early-morning surfing trips, group lunches, standing meetings, etc), let that shine through in the job description. The more you show of your own personality the more likely you are to attract like-minded people.”
Executive Recruiters: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
October 12th, 2009For the most part, executive recruiters have a bad reputation. For the most part, it’s deserved.
That’s not to say that recruiters don’t perform a valuable service (after all, that’s how I make my living!)
- The right recruiter will have an extensive network of contacts in the field in which he or she specializes.
- The right recruiter will be savvy about using the Web and the host of search tools available to source candidates (a development that has eroded the advantage large recruiting firms once had with their proprietary databases).
- The right recruiter will save you time and money by exhaustively sourcing dozens if not hundreds of candidates for a position.
- The right recruiter will use scientifically validated psychological assessment tools to take a peak behind a candidate’s façade and better determine motivation and cultural fit.
But the right recruiter is hard to come by. Here are some of the problems endemic to the field:
COMPENSATION: Retained search firms generally charge a fee equal to one-third of the first-year’s compensation that is finally negotiated with the successful candidate. It’s a formula that makes about as much sense as the six percent real estate agent commission – which is to say not much sense at all. But more important than the illogic and expense of that commission is the fact that it doesn’t align the recruiter’s interest with that of his or her client, the hiring company.
I have listened to a recruiter who landed a candidate for a job at a proposed compensation of $180,000 a year hint that the hiring company would go as high as $240,000. That meant not only an additional $60,000 that the company had to pay in compensation, but another $20,000 that went into the pocket of the recruiter (one-third of $60,000 equals $20,000).
Solution: If you’re going to engage a recruiter, insist on negotiating a fee upfront. If the recruiter declines, find another recruiter.
EXPERIENCE: The ideal recruiter will have worked in the field in which he or she recruits. That’s right – worked, not just recruited. It takes a substantial amount of experience to understand the culture of the pharmaceutial industry, the legal profession, the media business, etc. An especially talented recruiter might be able to suss out the cultural issues that are relevant. But better to hire a recruiter who’s been there and done that. A recruiter with real experience in the field also is more likely to know who’s who and how various figures are seen.
Again, I learned about this problem the hard way. When I stepped down as publisher of a New York City newspaper I was asked by my employer to help recruit a successor. The employer engaged one of the nation’s largest recruiting firms to help. I spent too much of my time explaining to the recruiter why the billionaire owner of a newspaper who carried the honorary title of publisher was unlikely to be responsive to our entreaties to take an actual working position and why the skills learned in running business-to-business magazine weren’t exactly transferable to publication of a free distribution daily.
Solution: Ask the prospective recruiter what experience he or she has working in the field, ideally as a manager, in which you are recruiting. If the recruiter doesn’t have such experience, and can’t convince you that he or she can transcend that, look elsewhere.
INSIGHT: A good recruiter should have spent more than a few years in psychotherapy. That’s not because clients or candidates are crazy (although God knows some are). It’s because a recruiter needs to be able to recognize his or her own biases and discard them in evaluating a candidate.
One recruiter that I worked with seemed congenitally unable to see beyond the tip of her own upturned nose. A graduate of a not-quite Ivy League school, she placed undue emphasis on the status of a candidate’s alma mater and how he or she dressed. Brooks Brothers ruled, even if the candidate we were recruiting was headed for a dot com and would never again wear a tie.
Solution: Work only with recruiters who use, and understand the importance of, scientifically validated assessment tools. I say scientifically validated because the market is full of tools that haven’t passed muster when it comes to ensuring they aren’t biased in terms of race, ethnicity, or gender.
TRANSPARENCY: Almost all recruiting firms guarantee a client that they will not solicit employees from that client’s firm for a period that generally last twelve months from the end of an engagement with that client. In the case of a big firm that does lots of work in the media field, for example, such a guarantee may well put most of the best candidates for a job off-limits. A good recruiter will volunteer to share his or her off-limits list with a prospective client. In any case, you should ask to see it.
Solution: If a recruiter won’t share the list, go elsewhere. If the list is overly restrictive, go elsewhere.
COURTESY: Most candidates hate recruiters because most recruiters aren’t very nice to candidates, at least to the unsuccessful ones. A good recruiter will know that he or she holds, to some degree, your company’s reputation in his or her hands. That recruiter will be responsive and courteous to all candidates, always following up in a timely fashion to let unsuccessful candidates know their status. There simply is no excuse for not responding to every call and every email. No one, and I repeat no one, is too busy to do that no matter how large the search.
Solution: You should get a recruiter’s commitment to follow up with all candidates and you should consider checking that commitment with a blind call or email during the process.
Framing the job….
October 12th, 2009So you’ve decided to add a position to your startup company (or perhaps to a business of longstanding). You know what you’re looking for, but how exactly do you put your expectations into words?
Here’s a list of questions that I use with clients of my retained executive search firm. It’s a useful reminder of the sorts of issues and concerns that you should be thinking about when you go about putting together a position description for a new hire.
1) BACKGROUND
a) Please provide a brief history of your company and a description of its principle products and services. If your company is publicly traded, please indicate its trading symbol.
b) Please name your company’s primary competitors and briefly describe the market for the products or services of your the company or the unit for which you are hiring.
c) Please list the names and titles of your company’s principal officers (i.e. CEO, COO, President, SVPs, etc.)
2) POSITION
a) Please specify the title of the position you want to fill.
b) Please specify the name and title of the person to whom this position reports and indicate where that supervisor sits in the company’s leadership hierarchy (e.g. reports to SVP Sales, reports to COO).
Name:
Title:
Reports to (title):
c) What are the primary responsibilities associated with this position? Please list (use additional sheet if necessary):
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
__________________
d) Is this a newly created or an existing position? (please circle one)
i) New position
ii) Existing position
e) If this is a newly created position, why was it created?
3) CANDIDATE BACKGROUND
a) Must the successful candidate have experience in the same industry (i.e. would you consider a Director of Marketing for Digital Television for a position as Director of Marketing for Cellular Telephone Services)? (please circle one)
i) Yes
ii) No
b) Must the successful candidate hold or have held a position of the same or similar rank (e.g. Must a candidate for CEO have previous experience as a CEO or COO? Must a candidate for SVP/Sales have sales management experience as opposed to marketing management experience?) Please circle one.
i) Yes
ii) No
c) How many years of experience in the field for which you are hiring is desirable? Please indicate ____________
d) Does this position require a college degree? Please circle one.
i) Yes. If Yes, is the minimum degree acceptable. Please circle one:
(a) A B.A. or B.S
(b) A Master’s
(c) A Doctorate
(d) Other. Please specify ____________________________
ii) No
e) Does this position require specific technical training? Please circle one.
i) Yes. Please specify ________________
ii) No
4) CANDIDATE EXPECTATIONS
a) What are your specific expectations of the person you hire to fill this position (e.g. develop digital sales division from scratch, establish and manage new Southwest regional sales office, reduce time to market of new consumer products by 12 months, increase sales by 22 percent over three years, increase organization membership by 15 percent and organization revenues by 25 percent)? Use additional sheet if necessary.
i) ____________________________
ii) _____________________________
iii) ____________________________
iv) ____________________________
v) ____________________________
vi) ____________________________
b) Please list three or four positive characteristics of the best person you have seen in this or a similar position (e.g. aggressive, self-starter, collaborative, good listener, good networker, meets deadlines, energetic, contemplative, team-player, willing to follow direction, competitive with coworkers, etc.)
i) ____________________________
ii) _____________________________
iii) ____________________________
iv) ____________________________
v) ____________________________
vi) ____________________________
b) Please list three or four characteristics that you do not want to see in candidates for this position (e.g. aggressive, self-starter, collaborative, poor listener, does not meet deadlines, soft-spoken, contemplative, loner, competitive with co-workers, etc.)
i) ____________________________
ii) _____________________________
iii) ____________________________
iv) ____________________________
v) ____________________________
vi) ____________________________
5) COMPENSATION
a) Please indicate the salary range for this position. $___________________
b) If the duties of this position include sales, will compensation be tied to a draw system? Please circle one
i) Yes
ii) No
c) If the answer to 5b is Yes:
i) How much is the draw? (Indicate dollar amount) $_______________per _________
ii) How often is it paid? Please circle one.
(1) Weekly
(2) Bi-weekly
(3) Monthly
(4) Quarterly
(5) Other (please specify)_______________
d) Will a bonus be offered? Please circle one.
i) Yes
ii) No
e) If the answer to 5d is Yes, what is the maximum amount of the bonus? (Please specify percentage of salary or absolute dollar amount)
$___________________ (or) _____________________%
f) How often will the bonus be calculated? Please circle one.
i) Weekly
ii) Bi-weekly
iii) Monthly
iv) Quarterly
v) Semi-annually
vi) Annually
vii) Other (please specify)_______________
g) How often will the bonus be paid. Please circle one.
i) Weekly
ii) Bi-weekly
iii) Monthly
iv) Quarterly
v) Semi-annually
vi) Annually
vii) Other (please specify)_______________
h) Will the bonus be based on achieving (please circle one):
i) Quantitative goals?
ii) Qualitative goals?
iii) A mix of quantitative and qualitative goals?
i) Will a commission be offered? Please circle one.
i) Yes.
If Yes, what is the percentage of the commission? (If the commission percentage is a sliding scale, such as 10 percent of first $250,000 sales, 15 percent of next $250,000 sales, etc., please explain in detail).
___________________________________%
ii) No.
j) If a commission is paid, how often is it calculated? Please circle one.
i) Weekly
ii) Bi-weekly
iii) Monthly
iv) Quarterly
v) Semi-annually
vi) Annually
vii) Other (please specify)_______________
k) How often is the commission paid? Please circle one.
i) Weekly
ii) Bi-weekly
iii) Monthly
iv) Quarterly
v) Semi-annually
vi) Annually
vii) Other (please specify)_______________
l) Is there an override on sales of the unit supervised? Please circle one
i) Yes
(1) If the answer is Yes, please indicate the percentage of the override. ________________%
ii) No.
m) If there is an override, how often is it calculated? (Please circle one)
i) Weekly
ii) Bi-weekly
iii) Monthly
iv) Quarterly
v) Semi-annually
vi) Annually
vii) Other (please specify)_______________
n) If there is an override, how often is it paid? (Please circle one)
i) Weekly
ii) Bi-weekly
iii) Monthly
iv) Quarterly
v) Semi-annually
vi) Annually
vii) Other (please specify)_______________
o) Does the compensation plan include equity? Please circle one.
i) Yes.
(1) If Yes, what is the percentage of total equity available to the occupant of this position?
(2) What is the current value of that equity?
(a) If publicly traded, please use stock market value and specify the date calculated.
(b) If privately held, please indicate if company is an established enterprise or a startup (please circle one)
(i) Established enterprise
(ii) Startup
1. If a startup, please indicate what funding round you currently are in? Please circle one.
a. A round
b. Mezzanine
c. B
d. Other
2. Is further funding likely? Please circle one.
a. Yes
b. No.
(3) Over what period of time will the equity vest? Please indicate number of years _______________
ii) No, will not offer equity.
p) Does the compensation package include an employer-provided health insurance plan? Please circle one.
i) Yes
(1) If Yes, who is the plan administrator (name insurance company)_____________________
(2) What is the waiting period to join the plan? Please indicate number of months ________________
(3) If Yes, what is the estimated monthly cost to the candidate of his or her share of insurance plan as a single subscriber? Coverage only of candidate $___________
(4) If Yes, what is the estimated monthly cost to the candidate of his or her share of insurance plan for coverage of the candidate, his or her spouse, and two children? Coverage of candidate and family $_____________
ii) No
q) Do you offer company-paid life insurance? Please circle one.
i) Yes
(1) If Yes, what is the multiple of salary that is offered?
ii) No.
r) Do you offer long-term disability insurance (other than state or federally mandated Worker’s Compensation)? Please circle one.
i) Yes
(1) If Yes, is coverage paid for entirely by the company? Please circle one.
(a) Yes.
(b) No.
(2) If coverage is not paid entirely by the company, what would the monthly cost be to the person filling this position? $______________
ii) No.
s) Please circle any of the other benefits you offer:
i) A company car?
ii) Reimbursement for mileage (if applicable)?
iii) Membership fees for social clubs useful for company networking (e.g. country clubs, golf clubs)? Please give specifics: __________________
iv) Other (please specify type and value)_______________________
t) How many paid holidays do you offer each year? Please state number:
u) How many paid sick days, if any, do you offer each year? Please state number:
v) How much paid vacation time is offered with this position? Please state number of days
w) What is the number of years of service required to reach the next highest level of paid vacation? Please state number of years.
x) How many weeks are included in the next highest level of paid vacation? Please state number of weeks.
6) CONTRACT
a) Do you intend to offer the candidate a contract or is this an employment at will position? Please circle one.
i) Yes, intend to offer a contract.
(1) If you intend to offer the candidate a contract, what is the term of the contract (in years)?
ii) No, this position will be employment at will.
7) RELOCATiON
a) Will you offer relocation benefits to the successful candidate? Please circle as applies.
i) Yes, will offer relocation.
(1) If Yes, do those benefits include:
(a) Purchase of the candidate’s current house or apartment?
(b) Payment of fees to the broker who sells the candidate’s current home?
(c) Transportation from the new work location to the candidate’s former home if his or her family stays behind to sell the house?
(i) If so, how many trips?
(d) Payment of fees to a broker who helps the candidate find a new home or apartment?
(e) Temporary living expenses at the work location (rent, utilities, etc.)? What is the maximum amount you will pay? $_____________
(f) Payment of moving and storage costs?If so, what is the maximum amount you will pay? $_______________
Thanks for your help in filling out this questionnaire. If you have any questions about it, please email or call me at henry@intermediatorgroup.com or 212.742.0071.
Please print and sign your name when you have completed the questionnaire and indicate an email address and telephone number below at which you can be reached for followup questions.
Name:
Title:
Email Address:
Telephone Number:
Ask and Ye Shall Receive….
October 12th, 2009Friends still shake their heads in amazement when I tell them about the “interviews” I was subjected to when I applied for a job at a major US media company.
No, I wasn’t asked to name my favorite animal. Nor was I quizzed about how I would resolve some theoretical problem of the sort that one would only encounter in the most obscure Harvard Business School case study.
What was remarkable about my “interviews,” with more than a half-dozen senior executives, is that no one asked me a single question. That’s right. You heard me. No. One. Asked. Me. A. Single. Question.
And by the way, I got the job!
Over the years I’ve learned that my experience wasn’t so unusual. Because most supervisors or managers spend relatively little time hiring employees, many companies haven’t put much energy into coming up with a standard process that ensures the employer learns what he or she needs to know. At the company where I was interviewing, busy managers spent their allotted half hour telling me their perceptions of the requirements of the job.
Notice my use of the word “standard.” At many companies, prospective employees are quizzed to a farethewell. But the questions aren’t organized or standardized. So while one interviewer is focused on a candidate’s experience implementing change, another is focused on a candidate’s attention to detail, and a third is focused on a candidate’s ability to think strategically. When the three interviewers get together to compare notes, they find it hard to construct a coherent picture of the candidate.
What to do? Here’s where the human resources department comes into play. The HR staffer overseeing the hiring process should sit individually with each of the people who will be interviewing candidates and quiz them about what the position entails, what kind of candidate is likely to be best suited for it, and what questions are needed to elicit the information required to make a hiring decision.
Likely as not, the HR manager will discover some differences in focus, if not downright conflict. There’s no better time than before the job posting to discover that the VP Sales is looking for someone with a strong network of contacts while the CEO is looking for someone whose primary strength is managing a team. These two goals don’t necessarily conflict. But making sure that everyone on the hiring team knows what’s needed in the position is key to a successful hire.
Once the HR manager has established the qualifications needed for the position (and established what the position is all about), he or she can set out to draft some questions. These aren’t questions that interviewing managers have to ask in a rote form. But they should provide the interviewers with some guidance on the most important issues and qualities to look for.
Once the interviews are over, the interviewers can meet with the HR manager to discuss what they’ve heard. Obviously areas where different interviewers hear different answers to the same question demand some follow up.
In addition to the detailed, position-specific questions that are necessary, some interviewers like to answer a general set of questions that can be helpful in determining a candidate’s “fit” in an organizational culture. One set I like comes from the ghSmart & Company and Smart & Associates consulting firms, who describe their approach as a TopGrading interview.
Here are questions they suggest:
SCREENING INTERVIEW GUIDE (used in initial screening of candidates)
• What are your career goals?
• What are you really good at professionally?
• What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally?
• Who were your last five bosses, and how will they each rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them?
THE TOPGRADING INTERVIEW GUIDE (used in a follow up round of interviews)
• What were you hired to do?
• What accomplishments are you most proud of?
• What were some low points during that job?
• Who were the people you worked with? Specifically:
o What was your boss’s name, and how do you spell that?
o What was it like working with him/her?
o What will he/she tell me were your biggest strengths?
o What will he/she tell me were areas where you needed improvement?
• Why did you leave that job?
THE FOCUSED INTERVIEW GUIDE (used to hone in on specific skills and responsibilities)
• The purpose of this interview is to talk about ________________.
• What are your biggest accomplishments in this area during your career?
• What are your insights into your biggest mistakes and lessons learned in this area?
