I received an email from a reader today, along with an outline of their hiring process. They spend about 6-8 hours with each candidate, most of which is a series of auditions. They spend maybe an hour with behavior-description questions.
These folks have an atypical problem–they’re hiring for consultants, so they need to know how the consultant will work. What I find fascinating is the response from a candidate, “in NYC people get hired pretty much based on a handshake so why should I bother to do any amount of the work you are asking for.”
Ahem. I have some NYC clients and colleagues, and that is not their experience. And, if a candidate pushes back that much when I’m looking for guaranteed ability to perform a particular job, I’m pretty sure I don’t want that candidate.
On the other hand, there’s not a lot of interaction with a variety of people in the consulting company, and I would change that. 6-8 hours of auditions can look a lot like the interviewer is trying to get the candidate to work for free, something hiring managers want to avoid.The number of and time spent in auditions does depend on what you want. For most organizations, one brief audition before the in-person interview and one 30-45 minute audition during the interview is sufficient. The more strategic the person, (i.e. the higher in management, the more key the position), the more auditions you may need. But don’t neglect the in-person interview. The interview, especially with behavior-description questions will create rapport and start to build a relationship with a candidate, something auditions do not do.
Warning: I’m on a rant. Yesterday’s Wall St. Journal had an article called “Behind ‘Shortage’ of Engineers: Employers Grow More Choosy” (if I could figure out the URL, I would paste it in here, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Sharon Begley is the author, and the WSJ requires registration. If you’re not a subscriber, it costs money.)
Sure enough, Begley describes multiple cases of hiring-manager shortsightedness:
Eliminating people without BSCS degrees (even though they had work experience in similar companies!)
Some were overqualified
Some weren’t familiar with a specific piece of software
Maybe it’s my head cold, but this seems completely nuts to me. They did all this reduce the number of phone screens from 200 resumes? Phooey on them.
Here’s one reason why, quoting from the article Companies often draw up extremely narrow job descriptions, recruiters and staffing managers say, causing searches to get drawn out. I supposed if you don’t analyze the job and write a real job description, you have to write a narrow job description and use filtering software to eliminate the multitude of candidates.
I don’t see why you can’t write a good job description, and if you want, put a test-like thing in place to screen candidates before you even review their resumes. Ah, but that would require real strategic and tactical help from the HR folks, which may not be possible in many organizations.When hiring becomes strategic, then people will invest some time in setting up a hiring process that works rather than one that dehumanizes candidates and increases the cost to the company.
Last week, at the AYE Conference, I led a workshop called “Conversations with Candidates.” One of the participants wanted to know, “How do I build off a behavior-description question?” I’ve always led the conversations intuitively, so I had to think for a minute to describe what I do. If the next questions doesn’t just come to mind, I use the ORID technique from Art of Focused Conversations
Here’s what ORID means:
O: Objective. Ask a question that deals with sensory input: What did you notice? What stood out for you?
R: Reflective. Ask for interpretations based on reflections: What was challenging for you? What was easy? Where were you surprised?
I: Insights. What insights do you have? What did you learn from that experience?
D: Decisions. What might you do differently the next time?
Here’s how this might play out in an interview. Let’s assume you’re asking about a person’s ability to solve problems. You might ask these questions:
Have you been on a project with problems before? (closed question to establish a context)
Tell me about it. (Behavior description question.)
What did you notice most about that project (or the problem)? (The O question.)
Did anything surprise you? or What was particulrly challenging? What was particularly easy? or What was fun? What was drudgery? (the R question.)
What did you learn from that project? (The I question.)
Have you taken those learnings and applied them to another project? (D question, with a behavior-description slant) or What will you do differently on your next project? (D question, hypothetical.)
There are tons of ways to use these questions in an interview. Put them in your toolbox and see where they lead.
Here’s what ORID means: