Guinness' Record for the Shortest Interview Course
Moral: If you know what you need done it only takes two questions to figure out if a candidate is competent and motivated to do it. If you don’t know what you need done, take a tour of the factory, and call me in the morning.
This is no fairytale.
Many, many years ago I was contacted by a business owner who had heard me speak at a business leader’s conference. He was clearly desperate. He implored me to tell him the two questions I had said were all you needed to ask to fully assess competency for any position. He was looking for an operations VP, and being a full-time executive recruiter at the time, I told him I would be happy to reveal my secret assessment technique, but we needed to meet in person and discuss the actual job first. He refused, demanding the questions on the spot. Sensing panic, I relented. Before proceeding though, I asked him what was so urgent that he needed the questions instantly. “The candidate is in the waiting room,” he quietly confessed.
After getting some sense of his business and the position he was trying to fill, I told him to follow these instructions without compromise, then call me as soon as the interview is over.
1) First, do not meet the candidate in the office. Take the candidate for a tour of the manufacturing facility, instead.
2) As part of the tour, stop at work stations that best demonstrate some of the biggest operational problems the person taking the VP job would have to address immediiately. These turned out to be poor factory layout, too much scrap, outdated process control measures, and excess raw material inventory.
3) At each work station, describe the problem for a few minutes, then ask the candidate “if you were to get this job, how would you fix it?” Then have a 10-15 minute give-and-take discussion around his ideas. Based on this, evaluate the candidate on his insight, the quality of the questions and the soundness of his approach for implementing a solution.
4) When you’re done with this line of questioning, ask the candidate to describe something he’s already accomplished that’s most comparable to the problem needing fixing. Spend another 10-15 minutes on getting specific details about this, including names, dates, metrics, type of equipment used, how vendors were managed, how labor problems were solved, who was on the team, how these people were managed and the results achieved. Don’t be satisfied with superficial or general answers. I told him he must push to get actual details even if painful, and especially if he already thought the person was hirable.
5) Then move on to the other work stations, describe each problem, and ask the same two questions
6) It should take at least 90 minutes to complete the tour. When done, tell the person you’re impressed with his background, and will get back to him in few days after seeing some other candidates. Then call me and we can discuss your reaction and figure out next steps.
The call came three hours later. The owner’s insight was profound. He said the candidate aced the problem-solving questions, but didn’t have any evidence of achieving comparable results. He told me the candidate was assertive, insightful and clearly understood the problems that needed to be solved. However, the owner said the candidate’s answers to the comparable accomplishment questions were vague, shallow and short. He went on to say it was like talking to two different people. One was eloquent, animated and confident, describing how he’d solve the problems. The other was like a fish out of water, hesitant and unsure, lacking details, along with confidence. He concluded the candidate was probably a great consultant or staff person, but one who couldn’t be left alone in charge of a factory. This was rather insightful when you consider he only had a 10-minute course in interviewing under his belt.
He then gave me the search assignment. We filled it in about a month. The person hired took the same tour, to the same spots and answered the same questions. The difference though was our candidate could not only tell the owner how he’d solve the problems, but he had also accomplished something comparable. Also critical to this true story, the person hired was not from the same industry, had different academic credentials than listed in the job-description, and had less overall experience. More important, not only did he successfully eliminate the initial four problems once on-the-job, but another half-dozen or so, too.
Moral: If you know what you need done it only takes two questions to figure out if a candidate is competent and motivated to do it. If you don’t know what you need done, take a tour of the factory, and call me in the morning.
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Lou Adler is the Amazon best-selling author of Hire With Your Head (Wiley, 2007) and the award-winning Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules! His new book, The Essential Guide for Hiring and Getting Hired, will be published in December 2012.
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10yThanks
Director of Service Operations with 25+ years executing global service strategies for large national/international businesses
11yI think a boots on the ground interview and tour is a fantastic idea. I do not hire C level employees but it also works very well at the grunt level. High "D" David
Head of Talent and Culture
11yAfter many years of coaching hiring managers and constantly assessing how candidates are interviewed, I would probably would have seen the strength in someone who exhibits the ability to think on their feet and come up with great solutions on the spot during the interview process. Prior experiences doing exactly what you want are great to have but doesn't always guarantee the same outcome in a different environment. I would opt for the strategic thinker who was able to understand the challenges on the spot offering carefully thought out and constructive solutions.
Intensive training for managers & supervisors working in FQHCs and other community health organizations.
11yAs a consultant and trainer, I have been delivering similar interviewing skills training to a range of organizations for years, and have found that the key is to truly understand what you need before you start. Do you absolutely need someone who has done it all successfully in the past and can most certainly hit the ground running, or can you afford to take a chance on someone with great ideas who may not yet had the opportunity to implement them? There are great stars out there who just need an opportunity to shine, but you need to be clear regarding when you can take the chance and when you can't. The more you understand the job, the current and long-range needs of the organization, the risks you can afford to take (and those you can't afford not to take), and what it takes to be successful in your company's culture, the more you can successfully ask the right questions and gain the information you need to make a great hire!
Dynamic Project Manager | Professional Engineer
11yCertainly the first question makes sense and demonstrates basic capability to see and analyse the problem. But the second question eliminates the possibility that a young inexperienced candidate might still be very capable at executing his ideas ( note I might not use this argument for a VP since this role must be filled with experience). In my own hiring experience, I've chanced on some exceptional employees whose ideas were great and when loosed on the work were executed despite having no prior demonstrable experience doing that kind of work. I would therefore argue that "similar" task accomplishments are maybe not as important as any reasonable evidence that the candidate is ready and willing to take action to meet a target. In the story, the fish out of water might have actually had very dissimilar experiences that could not be drawn on, causing his weak-kneed responses, but that would have reasonably demonstrated the ability to execute which was the ultimate purpose of question. So my addendum to the article might read, give the responent a chance to describe any successfully executed plan and judge the merits of their candidacy on that response.