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Getting to Know All About You: Elucidating
Interviews
by Laura Gassner Otting,
President, Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group
(This article is reprinted with the permission of
www.ExecSearches.com, for whom it was
originally written.)
Although interviews are considered one
of the most useful tools available, they are artificial by nature and often lead
to skewed impressions of candidates. Cutting through the artifice takes skill
and practice, and the following guidelines:
“And you would be…..?”
Start the interview with quick introductions
of everyone in the room and their association or history with the organization.
Make sure the candidate is comfortable, with a glass of water and a chance to
use the bathroom before you get started.
The candidate should be the last to
introduce him or herself. Ask the candidate to provide a brief (five minutes or
so) summary of their career and explain what interests them about the position
in question. Some candidates will become immediately comfortable when asked to
talk about the subject they know best, themselves; others get uptight. Be
mindful of the clock and feel free to cut off or move along a nervous candidate
who is babbling away too much of your already limited time.
Talk is Cheap
Ask open-ended questions. Let the candidate
do most of the talking but don’t be afraid to follow up if you feel the
candidate is speaking in overly broad terms. Narrowing a candidate’s answers
will allow you to make a more informed decision.
The most common interviewer’s trap is asking
the candidate what s/he might do in a fantasized situation. Don’t fall into
it. Hearing your candidate pontificate about hopes and dreams of their
performance on an imagined project may be interesting, but it is not really that
informative. Ask the candidate how s/he has performed in situations actually
faced, what was done, by whom and at whose instruction. After all, you are
hiring a track record, not an interviewee.
The Remaining Questions
Prior to the interview, set an agenda and
stick to it: roughly half of the allotted time should be dedicated to the
candidate describing his or her career’s track record; a quarter of the time
should focus on specific questions relating to the primary challenges of the job
in question; and the remaining quarter should be given to the candidate as his
or her opportunity to ask questions.
Pay close attention to the types of
questions the candidate asks and the boldness with which s/he asks them. You
will learn a great deal about their preparation, intellect and personality, just
as they will learn this about you and your organization by the way you describe
it and, if applicable, interact with the other people administering the
interview with you.
Keep track of your own lingering concerns
and unanswered questions. Some of these questions might be answered as the
interview takes on its own life, but most can be explored in further interviews
and ought to be discussed in depth with the candidate’s references.
Nothing Is Ever As it Seems to Be
An important caveat: the interview is but a
staged performance with actors playing predetermined parts. A good interview is
akin to an Oscar-caliber performance. A bad one gets you, “Don’t call us, we’ll
call you.” So, keep in mind that you are not the Academy and you are not
judging a person based on a single performance. The interviewee that shows up
at 2pm on a Wednesday, having taken off the morning to sleep in and prepare, is
not the employee that comes to work at 8:30 on a crisis-infused Monday morning.
For that information, you must ask former
employees, peers and bosses. You must reference not only the people that the
candidate gives you but also the people s/he doesn’t. So, remember to ask for
names of team members as the candidate describes projects. You’ll want to
reference check these people later.
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Illegal Questions
You cannot ask questions, explicitly
or implicitly, about race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, age, sexual
orientation or disabilities. But here are some questions that you ought
to:
1.
Take a few minutes and walk us through
your career history as a way of introduction.
2.
Describe your experience with strategic
planning. What worked, what didn’t?
3.
What state will your
nonprofit/division/department be in when you leave?
4.
What do you consider to be your
management/leadership style?
5.
Describe a decision you have made where
an employee has successfully changed your mind.
6.
How would you rate your hiring skills?
Have you ever had to fire an employee?
7.
What challenges do you foresee in the
job?
8.
What would your
superiors/subordinates/peers/board say about you?
9.
Why this job, at this time?
10.
Describe a
particularly challenging situation that you handled well, and one that you
handled not so well (and what you learned from it). |
Laura Gassner Otting is founder and president of
Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, a niche consulting firm dedicated to
strengthening the capacity of nonprofits and their staff,
and specializes in
helping nonprofit organizations nationwide with their hiring processes.
Increasing the
capacity of nonprofits and their staff.
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