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A stack of resumes sits in front of you. You’ve read them and sorted them into accept and reject piles. You think you’ve found candidates likely to fit in your company. You want the right people in your company and the on your team. But how can you decide among these applicants which are the “right” people? What do you need to look for in your new hires? Who will help you gain the competitive edge you need? Will they step up and help move your company forward? Keep in mind, it may take several months to hire the right person but it can take years to get rid of the wrong ones.
On the other side of the table, as a job seeker your resume has resulted in the opportunity for an interview. How can you find out if this is a place you want to work? Do they have a culture and environment where you can make a major contribution?
Years ago, Dee Hock, CEO Emeritus, VISA International, described his philosophy of hiring and promoting. His advice holds true today:
“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
– Fast Company [Oct. 1996]
You also want to hire people who can handle non-directive leadership and who don’t expect leaders to have all the answers – people who champion their ideas, take ownership and thrive in an environment of continuous change and uncertainty. You want a level of maturity and/or willingness to learn that doesn’t necessarily correspond to the number of years in a specific role. These are qualities that fuel creativity and innovation.
Conventional interviews target knowledge and experience but these alone won’t get us the caliber of employees or staffing you want for creating innovative organizations. These knowledge and experience questions are the easiest to ask about and for the interviewee to answer. Yet these are the last two qualities on Hock’s list. How do you interview for integrity, motivation, capacity, and understanding?Let’s take a look.
Interview Questions For The “Must Ask” Topics
You might need all of these questions or just a few. Use what you feel you need and want to find out what you need to know. For many of these questions there is no “right” answer. It often works just to see how people deal with the unexpected topic.
Integrity: Honesty, Authentic, Reliable, Accountable, Ethical, Fair, Trustworthy.
Interviewing for this can be difficult. One approach can be to see how they define integrity followed by the question, “What is the difference between integrity and ethics?” Additionally you might ask, “What is the most critical ethical dilemma you’ve faced so far in your career? And how did you resolve it?”
Another approach is situational to find out how this person operates when their integrity is tested. For example, “How have you responded when someone asked you to do something that would compromise your values and integrity?”
Sometimes people will look the other way if others in your company are operating without integrity. Such questions might be, “Think of a situation when you discovered that someone you worked with was untrustworthy? What did you do? (Optional: If you’ve never encountered an untrustworthy colleague, what do you think you would do if you did?)” And “When you’ve seen an employee heading toward an ethical problem that could be avoided, what action did you take?”
Finally, you can find out something about their leadership style by asking, “As a leader, what do you do when you discover that you’ve made a mistake? Perhaps even a mistake that only you know you made?”
Motivation: Attitude, Self-Awareness, Passion, Humor.
Alfie Kohn, in this book Punished By Rewards, states people are motivated by three things, 1) Collaboration, to be a part of the decision making process, 2) Choice, to be able to choose what work they would like to do and how they solve the problem, and 3) Content, people want to do meaningful work.
Looking into their ability to collaborate, ask, “What would you describe as your best collaboration experience? How did it start? What happened? Who collaborated with you? How did it turn out? What about it would you like to replicate? What wouldn’t you replicate?” As well as, “How have you known you wanted someone on your team?” Or, “How have you known you wanted to partner or collaborate with someone?” Since we don’t always get to choose with whom we collaborate, it is also important to know how they deal with differing opinions beyond conflict resolution. Ask them to define what in their life is a “difficult” person and their best techniques in working with them.
Choice is a large motivator and to determine how this relates to your company ask, “You can choose where you want to work. What interests you about our organization?” And, “What projects or products in our company would you like to contribute to and why?” You might also ask, “What’s your personal mission and vision? How do you see your views fitting with our mission and vision?” and “How do you define success?” This last question can often take interviewees off guard and the reaction can be very informative.
People want meaningful work and they like to solve problems. Many times people will work long hours to find a solution or perfect a presentation. Interview questions could be, “What’s the most fun you’ve ever had at work? Remembering that, what actions would you take to re-create that climate?” Or “Think about the times when you’ve put a lot of effort into your work. What was it about you or the work that kept you going?”
Capacity: Creativity, Talent, Potential, Intelligence, Perception.
Capacity is the ability to learn, another difficult trait to determine in an interview. People learn in different ways and may depend on their interests. In this area, questions such as, “What was the last new thing you learned?” and “What do you want to learn next – personally or professionally?” Another question along this line might be, “How do you learn best?”
Since we learn more from our failures than our successes, questions about how the interviewee deals with failure might be, “Give me an example of how you deal with failure? What about an example of your dealing with the failure of others?” or “Tell me about ways you have successfully taken risks in the past. What risks have you taken that were not successful? What have you learned from these? How did these situations affect your future risk-taking?”
Feedback is essential to learning and how we give and receive it can express a person’s willingness to learn. A few good questions to uncover this ability might be, “How do you gather feedback? How do you give feedback?” and “What do you do best?”
Creativity and imagination along with risk taking, are important in innovation. For each person, creativity can take many forms. These questions might be useful, “How do you define creativity?” and “What have you done that you consider truly creative, professionally or personally?”
Understanding: Comprehension, Compassion, Tolerant, Forgiving, Insight, Good Judgment.
As Albert Einstein said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Which brings the first question, “What is the difference between knowing and understanding?”
There are a few questions around the idea of compassion, tolerance and forgiveness such as, “How do you give someone bad news?” and “If you are a team leader and someone on your team is not working up par, how do you handle it?” You can also ask them how they define compassion.
At this point in the interview, you should be in full conversation mode and questions aren’t really needed. If you want to learn more about the person’s awareness, ask them describe a “turning point” book or event in their life and how did it shift their views?
The Interview
Listen. Listen for authenticity in the candidate’s answers and for any passion they may have about the topics. On which questions did they light up? Did they answer any questions with “standard” comebacks? Are they looking for you to respect them? Or like or approve of them? Listen between the lines. You can listen best when you interview the candidate in person but good listening is also possible in other formats.
Observe the broader context. What kind of questions are they asking you? Have they, at any point, started the “interview dance”? In other words, are they saying what they think you want to hear?
If you sense any red flags during the interview, pay attention. Red flags may come based on your previous experiences or they may tap into your intuition. You don’t have to justify your red flags – if you sense them, move on to other candidates. The world is full of bright, competent people who want to work in a company like yours. Many people, when they bring up their bad hires, can trace it back to a red flag in the interview that they chose to ignore.
Do you trust this person with all the information in your company? That they will know what to keep confidential? You should not ignore this red flag.
The Interviewee
You can use these questions to find a company where you want to work. You hardly know the culture you might be walking into or the leadership style of the person to whom you will report. Nothing is worth working in a low-trust culture, for a command and control leader or in a culture of fear. I once asked a CEO how he defined trust. He answered with, “I tell you what to do and I expect you to do it.” This is not someone I want as my leader.
By asking the following questions you might uncover more about the culture and leadership styles to help you determine if this is a place you want to work, “When you have made a mistake as a leader, how do you deal with this with your direct reports?” and “What was your last failure and what did you learn from it?” These maybe difficult questions to ask but they will give you the information you need to see if you might be a fit with this culture.
In Summary
It can take a long time to detect and get rid of a bad hire. Leadership guru Jim Collins and others advocate letting them go immediately but this is not always possible in this world of litigation and process. We need to spend the time necessary to discover more about the people we hire before we hire them. Take the time to discover integrity, motivation, capacity and understanding matter as well as sensing those important red flags. Experience and knowledge still matter – but not as much as we might think.
