Get Help with your Dog-Tired Interviewing Style

Interviewing woes getting you down?As a recruiter, a bone-weary hiring process is the source of real headaches.Unfortunately, these headaches can lead to frustration and fatigue. As a result you may experience some of these feelings.

• Tired of interviewing order-takers with buckets of qualifications but no fire in their bellies.

• Yearning to hire independent-thinking humans instead of employing robotic drones or cold fish.

• Fretting about all the other important things you could be doing instead of stressing designing fresh interview questions.

I know that painful struggle and feel that frustration too. That is why I shared my 77 Super Skills Interview Questions and free hiring guide to help you nix those hiring hassles.

But what if your interview questions are not the problem?

“A dog-tired interviewing style can cause you a terrible pain in the unmentionables."

Might your interviewing style be the culprit?

If this is the case, all that is needed is an upgrade of your interviewing style. As a result you will power up your questioning technique and improve your hiring decisions .

I sense some resistance. You haven’t traditionally made updating your interviewing style a priority. Perhaps it is time to change that.It can be tempting to hang on to perennial HR hiring favourite; the behavioural interview. You might see the appeal in clinging to your old competency-based score sheets and job description-anchored interview questions.

Sticking  with what you have always done, might not be your wisest strategy. Because the reality is the potency and value of the old ways are vanishing .Furthermore, the old industrial era interviewing style no longer fully satisfies the demands and expectations of candidates and recruiters.

Today, human-led purpose, connectivity and experience are prized. Therefore, relying on your traditional functional questions to get the job done is short-sighted and outdated.

What does this mean? Don’t you feel the increased burden to reduce recruiting risks and get hiring decisions right?To ease the pressure you need to prioritise a few things

1. Avoid any ‘gaming’ of your hiring process by discouraging clichés and coached candidate responses.

2. Design heat-seeking, probing questions that will help you uncover what makes your candidate tick so you can hire for maximum contribution to grow your business.

3. Uncover superlative talent, gifted technicians, hungry learners and generous knowledge sharers. Because genuine warmth and brilliance might be right under your nose, waiting to be discovered if you care to ask.

If your current interviewing style cuts the mustard and your questioning technique yields the desired and expected results; then you are in good shape – no need to worry.

But if you need some help with your tired (but not so broken) interviewing style, read on.

Learn how to harness the powerful rule of 3 to update your interviewing style and hire remarkable people.

How to Fix Your Bone-Weary Interviewing Style

Our crafty creative cousins outside of the HR discipline are on to something.

A little cross-discipline adventuring reveals many fascinating and unexpected finds. Storytellers, entertainers, comedians across the ages; different media and genres know of this power and have used it to great effect.

The Power of Three.

How many trinities can you think of - holy or secular?Here are some trios.

3 Wise Men.

3 Little Pigs.

3 Musketeers.

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.

Garlic, thyme and onion – sacred flavor trinity of Caribbean cooking.

Compelling and memorable stories are built on the 3 act structure, Beginning-Middle-End

Copywriters harness the mystical power of three to benefit their clients and their business.

Some ‘Invoke the ‘Magic of 3’ in Serious Business Writing’.

While others use The Rule of 3 to create memorable content and become an engaging writer.

So how can recruiters, HR pros and business owner interviewers conjure up the magic of three and use its power to hire remarkable people?

Step 1: Get Your Hands on Fresh Interviewing Style Inspiration There is a new breed of intrepid recruiter in town challenging conventional interviewing styles. They are the kind of hiring hounds that don’t mess around.

The powerful 3 part formula is their secret weapon to sniff out authentic candidates and their stories. These trendsetters use it to breakdown commoditised boxed-in thinking and create an exceptional interview experience. You can spot this species by their measured, straight-talking interview style.

They are excellent, purpose-led conversationalist; and are prone to indulge in seemingly off-beat exchanges with their candidates. Meandering away from scripted questions is their specialty; as they prefer to use a loose framework to entice their candidates to tell their story.

Each candidate is treated an original and unique potential contributor. Learning about their candidate’s story and journey so far is the primary purpose of the conversation.

This slow hiring approach drills deep to uncover motivations and what the candidate is willing and able to do for the team or organisation. Of course, completing interview score sheets and job-related competency metrics are useful. But they believe that is only a small role in the hiring story. Especially relevant is the role of interviewer as story connector. 

Adopting this role is effective in extracting precious nuggets from the candidate’s story (their hopes, triumphs, ideas, passions, values, skills) and linking them to the organisation’s purpose and values.

Come on take a break from the usual and revive your interview process.

Step 2: Boost Your Questioning Technique to the Power of 3. Now you may have your interview questions sorted. But here is where many newbie and veteran interviewers blow it. They fall victim to the triple threat of overconfidence, misjudgment and a laissez faire attitude to task of hiring remarkable people.

First, they neglect to probe and dig deep underneath their candidate’s response. Finally, they shoot themselves in the foot by failing to give their candidate a 3 point framework to showcase their value. Don’t let that be you.

You may find that the best future employees are resistant to being discovered.Some gems may be obscured by poor interview technique; their brilliance and worth hidden behind nerves or lack of self-belief.

Other candidates have been mistakenly allowed themselves to become over-prepped, rote-learned, cliché churning answer machines. Here is where the powerful rule of three can help you overcome these challenges.

Let’s clarify the roles first in this interview story.

The candidate is the hero.

You are the director.

Your interview questions set the scene.

For example to discover empathy and kindness you may use this one. Tell me about a time when you messed up in a customer service situation?

Direct how much time the candidate spends on each act. Be rigorous. Move their story along with probing questions.

I use this story-interview framework to find my candidate’s UVC – Unique Value Contribution.

Act 1: 20% of the response to the question. Candidate introduces their story by describing the problem/situation they faced.Don’t allow the candidate to linger too long here. Keep the pace snappy.

Act 2: 40% of the response to the question. This is the meat of the adventure. Therefore, interject with probing questions.  This will keep your candidate on track and curtail fluff and waffle.

• What happened?

• What did you do?

• How did you do it?

• Who did you work with?

Act 3: 30% of the response to the question. Dig deep to uncover the outcome and the moral of the story. You are not necessarily looking for perfect. You are looking for lessons learned.

• What happened?

• Was it positive or negative? Expected or unexpected?

• Why did you do that? Why did that happen?

• What did you learn or unlearn? How will you apply what you have learned? How will you share those lessons?

Step 3: Practise Extreme Listening. I am sure you are a good listener. But being good is not enough to hire remarkable people.Use this key to unlock the valuable information hidden in your candidate’s responses.

Extreme listening as explained by James Altucher is like a Black Belt 9th Dan interviewer prowess that helps you to locate for patterns and inconsistencies in the interview flow .As you listen to your candidate’s response to questions, borrow these prompts from Altucher and ask yourself the following:-

• What are they telling me that doesn’t matter

• When are they skipping the facts?

• Do they ever answer the question?

• Do they ever contradict themselves?

• Tone?

The Powerful Secret to Going from a Good Recruiter to a Great One

The only way to find out is to give the powerful rule of three a try yourself.

Whether you’re a new recruiter or a proven interviewing veteran, you need laser-sharp questioning skills to discover the gem of an employee buried underneath poor interview technique (yours or theirs). Stay sharp!

Hone your interviewing skills with the power of three. Let me know how you get on.

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