I’ve been working with more and more senior managers (and executive recruiters), helping them assess their CxO candidates (CEO, CIO, CTO, Senior VPs, you name it). By the time someone’s made it to the senior management level, they know how to make themselves sound good, so you can’t ask the strength/weakness question, even if you wanted to. But you do have other choices.As with all jobs, the job description is key. Let’s assume you care most about strategic planning and the ability to turn those plans into tactics, succession planning, and general management style. Based on those qualities, preferences, and skills, here are some questions you could use.:
- “Tell me about your management style when it comes to strategy. Give me a couple of recent examples.” Strategic thinking is an ongoing issue for senior managers. If all they do is one off-site every 19 months, they are not managing the strategic direction of the organization. When you ask for a couple of examples, you’re allowing people to use last week’s Operations Committee meeting, where they readjusted the product roadmap plus the quarterly strategic planning meeting, plus whatever else they have up their sleeves as examples.
- Follow up that question with, “Tell me about a time you changed strategic direction. Why did you choose to, how did you choose, and how did you carry out the changes.
- “Tell me how you make things happen in your current organization.” Some senior managers work through groups of people, some give more specific direction to their managers. This question helps you learn whether this person prefers more group decision-making or one-on-one decision making. You’ll need to ask more questions to see if your initial assumption is correct. “So based on what you told me about working with your OpCom, you tend to work more with each manager to set direction, and use the OpCom to bring the group together for information?”
- Some very young senior managers haven’t had to do succession planning yet. But you can ask this question, “Have you ever planned for any management job’s succession? What did you do?” and follow up, if the first answer was a yes with, “Have you ever planned for your succession? What did you do then?”
- Asking questions about general management style can be a little tricky. Here are some questions you can consider. “Tell me how you prefer to manage and give me an example.” That’s so open-ended, you need to be more specific and ask about the particular functional skills, such as giving feedback, coaching, organizing the work, and so on.
When you interview senior managers, do you look for something else? Let me know and I’ll post more questions.
Labels: candidate, interview, senior manager
May 22nd, 2007
Over at Employment Digest, there’s a post called The top 10 ways to bomb a job interview, aimed at candidates. But hiring managers and HR folks can be just as likely to bomb an interview. Here are my favorite ways:
- Change your toddler’s diaper while interviewing a candidate. Yes, this happened to me early in my career. The hiring manager changed the poopy diaper during our interview. I like casual workplaces, but that was too much for me. (No, I was not a parent yet.)
- Interview a candidate in the lobby. The lobby might have been ok, but the traffic level and the interruption level was quite high.
- Interview a candidate in the stairwell. Yes, I sat on concrete stairs in an unheated stairwell, wearing a nice suit when it was below freezing outside. I was shivering about 10 minutes into the interview. When I asked to move someplace inside, my interviewer said, “I can warm you up,” and proceeded to hug me from the side. Ooh ick. (I extracted myself and ended the interview shortly.)
- When the HR manager starts negotiating about salary and the candidate doesn’t even know if he or she wants the job. One of my interviews started with the HR manager. The HR manager must have been under orders to keep salaries down. The first thing he said was, “You make too much money.” I said, “Not yet. I’m looking for a raise from you if I come to work here.” The conversation went downhill quickly. I left and called the hiring manager from reception, explaining I was leaving. He convinced me to wait 5 minutes, but it was hard to take anything seriously from those folks.
- Use a panel interview to interview an extrovert. I do love to speak, so when a group of 6 people tried to interview me in one hour, I took control of the interview. I had a blast. I don’t think they learned anything, but I sure did. I interviewed them.
- Ask the candidate to sit in an uncomfortable or short chair. One hiring manager kept a short chair in his office, for other people to feel uncomfortable in, because they had to look up. I’m five feet tall; I look up at everyone. I complimented him on his choice of chairs and I thought he was going to have a stroke. (I actually meant it.) I’ve sat on lab chairs (good luck doing that in a skirt), and plenty of chairs that were too high.
- Take the candidate on a walk around the facility without warning that you’ll be going through manufacturing areas. Back in the days I wore nice suits and shoes, one hiring manager decided to take me on a plant tour. I was not dressed for the tour, and requested we postpone it. “But we always take people on a plant tour the first interview.” “But I’m not wearing the right kind of shoes. I’ll destroy my shoes if I walk in here.” “What’s more important, the right job or your shoes?” “A manager who cares about my safety.” I left.
- Invite a candidate to interview from 9:30-2:30 and ignore lunch. At 1:15, I asked the current interviewer what the story was about lunch, and he said, “That’s not my job.” I suggested we talk while I got a sandwich from the cafeteria. He looked worried. “Don’t worry; I’ll pay.” I did, but decided these folks were too flaky.
- Making a candidate wait for your staff to interview. I agreed to an 8am interview, because that’s when the interviewers could start. I arrived at 7:50, and ended up waiting until 8:45, because no one came into work that early.
- Making a candidate wait in the hall until the receptionist arrives. Same interview as above, but not only weren’t the interviewers in at work, neither was the receptionist.
Have any more good bombs to share?
Labels: interview
May 21st, 2007
I’m doing a webinar Thursday, May 17 for Kennedy. See Using Behavior Description Questions in Phone Screens. I am expecting to take questions and help people convert their essential technical skill, non-technical skill, and elimination questions into behavior-description questions. I hope you decide to join me.
Labels: phone screen, webinar
May 16th, 2007
I’m one of the folks writing a monthly column over at Recruitingtrends.com. My first column is Exploiting
May 13th, 2007