Taking Your Interviews from Good to Great! – Tip #4

Our last post examined using the acronym SARGE to gather important candidate information during the interview. But what are some common candidate responses to expect when interviewing and how can you be prepared to deal with them? Our final blog posting in the series, Taking Your Interviews From Good to Great, will explore a fourth interview technique – how to overcome three common candidate responses, the slip, bluff and silence.

SLIP
The “slip” happens frequently with candidates who are not familiar with a behavior-based interview. Candidates will often revert to an opinion-based response when asked to provide a specific work example. It goes something like this.

Question: Tell me about a time when were able to increase your company’s visibility with a potential customer who wasn’t previously aware of your company.

Response: That happens all the time. I target prospective customers and put together a prospecting strategy to introduce my company to them.

Do you see what happened? The candidate appears to give you the information you seek when in fact he slipped into a generic, broad response. As the interviewer, it’s your challenge to redirect the question to get a specific behavioral based response. Here’s how you can get your candidate back on track.

Question: I’m sorry I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. What I’m looking for is a specific example when you were able to introduce your company to a prospective customer who didn’t know your company existed. Can you tell me the last time it happened?

Response: Ummmm…that would have been last month. I read about a company who was expanding their business into our market. I knew our service would be a big help in their expansion.

Question: So, what did you to introduce your company and products to them?

When a candidate “slips” into an opinion-based response, you need to reinforce that you’re looking for a specific example. Let’s face it. Most candidates can demonstrate a general knowledge of the skills that lead to success. But you’re more interested if they are able to apply that knowledge effectively in a work situation. Listen carefully to your candidate’s response and ask yourself if it’s an opinion-based response or a specific example that demonstrates their competence in that area.

BLUFF
The “bluff” is when a candidate claims she is not able to recall a specific, work-related example. There are some schools of thought that if a candidate can’t quickly relate a specific example this is an indication that it’s not a strength of the candidate. In some cases that may be true. However, in other cases the candidate may be nervous and having a hard time thinking of a good example. The best course of action is to reassure the candidate – but not let them off the hook.

Question: Tell me about a time when were able to increase your company’s visibility with a potential customer who wasn’t previously aware of your company.

Response: Hmmm. I can’t think of a time when that happened. We’re a pretty well-known company.

Question: It can be difficult to think of an example. I’ll give you another minute.

Response: Well, there was a prospect who didn’t know that our company offered a product line especially designed for his industry.

With a little more persistence, the interviewer gave the candidate the time needed to think of an example that fit his question.

SILENCE
The third response type can be especially uncomfortable – silence. In this situation the candidate struggles with an answer and hopes you will start talking and move on. The more experienced you become in interviewing the more comfortable you will become with silence.

Some ways to handle silence are to pause and count to 10 – and then count to 10 again. Oftentimes, the candidate is formulating the response in his head or he is mentally evaluating the best response between two possible answers. Allow the candidate time to work through the response mentally. If you try to fill the silence you can disrupt their thought process. If the silence persists, be reassuring and re-word the question. This may give the candidate a better understanding of what is desired and trigger his thinking. A word of caution when re-wording the question – be sure you are asking the same question. We’ve seen interviewers re-word the question and it turned into an entirely different question.

For many people, talking descriptively about themselves may not be what they expected or what they are used to doing. When the candidate is having problems with their responses, you will have difficulty gathering the kind of information that you need to choose the top candidate. Being aware of the 3 common candidate responses and how to overcome them will allow you to hire top performers more often!

Do you need assistance in developing your manager’s interviewing competence? Contact JS Performance Strategies to develop your manager’s interviewing skills.