Remember Those Open-Ended Questions
The interview process can commence with a stream of open-ended questions. You should listen attentively to prospective employee answers and follow-up again and again if necessary.
What's the first thing that you want to know about future members of your staff? What their credentials are, of course! Obviously, you want people to fill jobs who can do certain things and who display certain skills. If you're in need of an employee to work intensively and extensively with computer programming, you can't ignore solid computer skills. But, as we've made abundantly clear, useful skills are by no means limited to mere technical skills.
Among the areas you should survey in the interview process of prospective employees is their salary requirements. The open-ended question, “Explain why you feel you deserve what you're asking for” allows job applicants to make a case and justify their monetary pleas.
The Kinds of Questions
Begin the interview process by getting to the meat and potatoes of the talent and ability sitting in front of you. Find out what exactly this wannabe employee has to offer in both hard and soft skills across the spectrum. Here are some examples of open-ended questions you can pose to job applicants in the initial interview:
Can you describe your greatest strengths? Your greatest weaknesses?
Are there any skills you have that you'd like to improve?
What hard decisions have you made in your work career?
When confronted with problems and obstacles in the workplace, how do you address them?
If you've been in work situations where you've had to persuade people to follow your lead, how did you accomplish this?
How well do you work with people? What do you believe are the requirements of a team player?
How do you handle pressure situations?
How do you adapt to change?
How do you deal with performance plans and the deadlines associated with them?
What knowledge and skills have you acquired in your current job?
Questions like these reveal potential employees' work ethics. Finding people with hard technical skills should be at the top of your agenda, of course, but you need to complement these skills with commendable work habits, and those very important soft skills, too.
In the interview process, don't circumvent prospective employees' educational history. This is an area worth exploring with open-ended questions like, “How did your college experience change your life?” and “What extracurricular activities did you participate in?” And don't forget, “How does your educational background prepare you for the job you're seeking?”
Examining the Answers — and More!
Most interviewees — and you can count on it 99 out of 100 times — will give all the anticipated “right” answers to your queries. But scripted answers, remember, are scripted only up to a point. And sooner or later, people go off script, and you've got to be especially attuned to their words and demeanor when this occurs.
In fact, it's your job to get interviewees off their prepared scripts. Consider the interview process an engagement at the Improv. “When confronted with problems and conflicts in the workplace, how do you address them?” This question, for example, is broad and loaded with opportunity — for you, looking to hire a competent employee, and for a job applicant, wanting a chance to exhibit some depth of thought and reasoning.
