I have five kids. It took me forever to notice how we teach children to learn rote answers to questions in school, then repeat the answers on a test. We call this learning!
I went to school myself, of course. I didn't notice how broken our educational system was, back then. I was just happy to make it out alive!
I got disgusted halfway through my junior year of high school and made last-minute arrangements to graduate a year ahead of schedule. I thought it was just me that found fault with the excessively authoritarian and rote-learning-based system of education in the U.S.
Turns out that it wasn't just me. We don't learn anything when we memorize test answers and spit them out on test day. That's the opposite of learning.
When we move out of school into the workplace, we carry with us the structures we learned as students. As managers, we interview job-seekers as though they're taking oral exams at school. We ask them questions and then evaluate their answers. This is the worst way to learn about a person!
When you hire someone to work in your shop, you're bringing them into a special environment. You will depend on them, and they'll depend on you. A job these days is much more than just a set of tasks. In our knowledge economy, we need to be able to rely on the fact that everyone on the team has his or her brain working.
Your teammates need to be asking questions in their heads all the time. "Is this still the best process? Should we improve it?"
"Why do I keep running into this problem? How can we take care of that?"
You need inquisitive, proactive people on your team. You need people with intellectual curiosity to help you move your business forward.
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The traditional interview format is fatally flawed, because it uses the school-based technique "I'll ask the questions, and you'll answer!" That's a great way to figure out whether someone knows who the Secretary of State is, on a citizenship exam. Asking questions and waiting for a job-seeker's answers is the worst possible way to decide whether or not to hire someone.
We can be smarter than that. Here's the right way to interview a job candidate -- ask him or her to ask you questions, instead.
We are a publishing and consulting firm, but we do some executive search projects for our strategy clients. Once they know us and like us, they say "Will you help me find a new VP of Marketing?" When we invite candidates for a job interview, we tell them to bring questions to ask us.
The first part of the interview is theirs. They get to ask us as many questions as they like. If the entire job interview consists of the applicant asking us questions and getting answers to them, that's fine.
That's no problem! We have recommended many brilliant candidates for hire when we didn't ask one question at all. You can learn a lot more about a person through his or her questions than by asking him or her to answer your questions.
Let's take the VP of Marketing example. Here are the opening questions that two VP of Marketing candidates asked us at their job interviews.
Us: So, as we mentioned in our email message, the floor is yours. We'd love to hear your questions for us!
Candidate One: Well, I saw that this organization uses
Us: Sorry, we have no idea about that. Any other questions?
Candidate One: Can you tell me about their direct marketing efforts?
Us: Sure. (We talk.)
We didn't recommend this candidate for an interview with the CEO. She is a lovely woman, but she asked us tactical and irrelevant questions. This person is going to head up the marketing charge for the company. We can't recommend someone whose head is in the weeds. Who cares what marketing software the client uses?
When people get to ask their own questions instead of answering your questions, you get to see their neural activity. That's the point of a job interview!
Here's another opening to an interview with Candidate Two.
Us: So, as we mentioned in our email message, the floor is all yours! We'd love to hear your questions.
Candidate Two: Great! I know the client is very big in analytical tools for manufacturing processes, and I'm wondering where they plan to take that? What's the next hill to climb, since they've already got upwards of seventy percent market share in their category now?
The rest of Candidate Two's interview went the same way. We were thrilled to meet someone who could see the big picture. Candidate Two was curious about the future of the business and her opportunity to help the company get where it wanted to go. She didn't ask us one question about tools or methods. Why would any of that matter? She knew that if she got the job, she'd put together the set of tools and methods that worked best.
You can switch up your interview technique to see your candidates' brains working, just as we did. Get rid of the interview script and give up on the idea of asking your favorite job-interview questions. Ask the candidates to ply you with questions, instead. You'll learn a lot about each job-seeker and even better, you'll learn something about yourself.
We teach the whole process, called Interviewing with a Human Voice, but you can dive into this interviewing approach just by letting the job candidates ask you questions and take the interview where it's meant to go. Watch the quality of your interview conversations improve!
