Industry Insight

Interviewing and Hiring: Taking Steps to Make the Right Choice for Your Business

• By Dan Sakimoto, MBA, Sr. Training Consultant, Strategic HR
  As published in the Summer 2003 issue of Administrative Eyecare Magazine

One of your key employees within your company has given notice that he or she has taken another position, so you need to hire a replacement. It shouldn’t be that difficult -- just look through some resumes, bring in a few candidates, interview them and pick the best one, right? It sounds easy at first, but the more you think about it, the more daunting the task becomes. Your business, like most businesses, can go only as far as your people take it, so you need to assemble the best work team possible. In other words, you really don't want to blow this.

The reality is that when it comes to interviewing and selecting job candidates, the stakes are indeed very high. For example, HR Magazine estimates that nearly 80% of turnover is due to hiring mistakes. Development Dimensions International, a world-wide human resource development consulting firm, maintains that a professional job that pays $48,000 annually and turns over too quickly can cost a company more than twice that amount in advertising, travel, interview time, training, lost productivity and other costs. Moreover, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 30% of business failures are due to poor hiring practices.

Adding to your interview concerns are the legal implications and exposure that come with a job interview. Over the past three decades, an unprecedented number of civil rights laws have been passed in an attempt to prevent unfairness and discrimination in the workplace. This legislation has a definite impact on the types of questions you can and cannot ask a candidate during an interview. In particular, these laws either restrict or altogether prohibit questions regarding areas such as race, national origin, religion, age, sex, marital status, citizenship and physical disability.

What’s an administrator to do? You certainly don't want to get yourself into a legal mess, and you don't have time to analyze the eloquence of candidate answers to traditional (and vague) questions such as, "What are your strengths?" You just want to hire some good help! The answer may come with a concept know as Behavioral Interviewing.

Behavioral Interviewing is an interviewing style that focuses on relevant, specific experience that candidates have obtained through their years of job or educational experience. It is based on the premise that past behavior is the best indicator of future performance. This technique is best used as a complement to, not instead of, more traditional interview styles, which gather information about a candidate’s years of experience, positions held, reasons for making job changes, and levels of responsibility. As a result, it is typically most effective for second or third interviews (or when multiple interviewers participate, and each interviewer focuses on one specific area), once it has been determined that the candidate meets the base requirements for the position.

This interviewing style requires the interviewer to pre-select probing, open-ended questions that are based solely on the technical and performance skills necessary for success on the job. For example, a behavioral question regarding customer service might be, "Tell me about a time when you had to deal with an angry customer regarding a billing problem and describe how you resolved the situation." In response to these specific questions, candidates share and discuss concrete, "real world" examples of how they accomplish goals, interact with others, and solve problems. Behavioral Interviewing assists in effectively evaluating each applicant by probing detailed examples of a candidate’s success in past work environments, which is typically a good predictor of future success.

This type of interviewing is particularly effective because candidates are instructed to respond to questions by providing specific examples of how they have achieved a result when faced with a particular project, task or problem. Answers that are hypothetical are not acceptable, because we are trying to evaluate what candidates have accomplished, not what they would or could accomplish.

This type of interviewing is also valuable because it is defensible, for example, in justifying why one candidate was selected instead of another, or in the event an applicant alleges that your company has used discriminatory hiring practices. By asking each candidate the same pre-selected questions that are based solely on actual job requirements, interviewers focus on the topics that are most relevant to success in a particular position. They ensure that all applicants are assessed fairly by asking the same questions of all candidates. This consistency in questioning the applicants reduces the tendency of a hiring manager to make a selection because the manager "likes" or "feels comfortable" with the applicant. The result is that managers evaluate relevant experience, based on objective, pre-determined criteria, and can easily substantiate their hiring decisions.

By using Behavioral Interviewing during you hiring efforts, you employ objective measures to select the best qualified, most suitable candidate for your position, and have thereby taken the critical steps in making the right choice.