CONDUCTING AN EFFECTIVE INTERVIEW:

How to Paint an Accurate Picture of the Candidate

Karen is a Managing Director at a financial services firm.  Her previous two hiring decisions have turned out to be mistakes.  In each case the candidates were personable but lacked certain key skills necessary to undertake their roles in the organization.  Karen is about to recruit an Assistant Vice President and hopes to avoid the mistakes of the past.  She dreads interviewing because she never knows what to ask and she is very self-conscious.  She has sought coaching to guide her through the process.

Defining Skill-Sets

Karen has advertised the AVP position, including all the academic requirements (MBA), professional experience requirements (3+ years in financial services business development), and skill set necessary to succeed in the position (see below). 

As Karen's coach, my first step is to ask Karen to list in order of priority the skill set necessary for a candidate to succeed in the AVP position.  Karen lists the skills in the following order:

1. Good Negotiator

2. Analytical

3. Organized

4. Handle Pressure

Interpreting a Resume

I ask Karen to select, prior to our meeting, her preferred candidate from among resumes received.  I ask her what attracted her to the candidate.  She lists attributes she likes in the following order:

• She came from Turkey to study in the U.S.  That has to take a lot of guts, especially for a woman.

• I like that she is international.

• She worked at the IMF.  That's impressive.

• She did graduate work at the London School of Economics and University of Michigan and she has an undergraduate math degree from MIT.  That's very impressive.

I ask Karen what her overall impression is of the candidate.  Karen says the candidate is very bright and a "go-getter".   I ask Karen if she thinks the candidate could do the job.  She says "yes" right off the bat.  I then ask her if she has any concerns.  Karen is concerned that the candidate is too ambitious for this particular job and imagines she is more of an investment banker type. 

These presumptions represent Karen's first interpretation of the candidate.  They are based on Karen's own personal experiences (including the fact that she is a woman in a high-level position in banking) and her values (she is impressed by well-reputed institutions).  The presumptions may or may not turn out to be accurate.  Nevertheless, making these presumptions is an important part of the resume review process.  And in fact, it is something interviewers do all the time when they read a resume.  Where interviewers get into trouble is in failing to identify the presumption as just that.  In other words, the presumption is so automatic that in the interviewer's mind it is immediately perceived as fact.

At this point, I guide Karen through a testing of her first impressions.  To do this, we analyze the resume together in detail.

Testing Presumptions

Below are two of our dialogues:

Diana: Why do you think the candidate is smart?

Karen: Because she was a math major.

Diana:  What does that mean to you?

Karen: It means she's analytical.

At this point I ask Karen whether she perceives any difference between analytical and quantitative.  Karen realizes she has confused the two. 

Diana: What kind of analytical work does the AVP job involve?

Karen: Reading legal documents, analyzing them and writing memos setting out the analysis.

Diana: How relevant are quantitative skills for this job?

Karen: You have to have basic MBA quantitative skills but analytical thinking and writing skills are more important.

Diana: Is there anything on this resume that indicates writing skills?

Karen: No.

Diana: We have just identified a new area of inquiry for the interview.  It's an important area too.  Remember that you listed analytical skills as the second most important skill for the job.

Next, I ask Karen to look at the candidate's employment record.  She again points out how impressed she is by the IMF position and reiterates that given her credentials, she thinks the candidate would be dissatisfied with the AVP position and appears more suited to investment banking.  I then point to the fact that the candidate had a Summer Associate position in investment banking at Morgan Stanley the summer before graduating from her MBA program but did not return after graduation, as typically happens, instead going to the IMF.

Diana: Does the fact that she didn't go back to Morgan Stanley change your opinion of the candidate?

Karen: Well I'm very curious why she didn't go back to Morgan Stanley, especially since she seems so driven.

Diana: Is it possible she's not as driven as you initially thought?

Karen: It's possible.  I no longer have a clear picture of her drive.

Diana: Is that something you want to find out about in the interview?

Karen: Yes.

Diana: We have just identified one more area of inquiry for the interview.

Collecting Issues for the Interview

As you can see from the above two dialogues, it is very valuable for us as interviewers to test our presumptions against the resume.  In this process, it is particularly important to pay attention to how our values and experiences lead us to our presumptions.  For instance, without this process, Karen might have hired a candidate that was quantitative but not analytical because, on the surface, Karen was seduced by the MIT math degree.  The process also allows us to collect "issues" for investigation during the interview.  This in turn gives the interviewer a focus.  The interviewer no longer needs to worry about what questions to ask.  The interview becomes a meaningful encounter and less stressful.