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Carol Quinn's Interviewer Tip #3

Guest post by: Carol Quinn

Article Overview: There are an infinite number of resources directed toward job seekers. These sources offer insight into the interview process in order to help applicants ace interviews. Carol Quinn is an advocate for the employer! The ultimate decision to hire or not-to-hire resides with the interviewer. Employers pay a huge price for their hiring mistakes. It's time for the interviewer to be armed with the knowledge to accurately select the best.

Carol Quinn's Interviewer Tip #3

Listen for Clues that Can Help You Determine Whether a Job Candidate is Motivated to Produce Results. When you're interviewing job candidates, you hear plenty of stories about heroic efforts to achieve goals and produce results. How do you read between the lines to determine whether you're listening to a true-life account or a tall tale?

An applicant's choice of words will give you clues. Listen for evidence of the candidate's perceived control in situations that involved obstacles. This evidence will come out while the candidate is answering your interview questions.

Why is perceived control important? Because when people believe they can find solutions, they also believe their actions can affect the outcome. Believing you can find a solution is a prerequisite to searching for one - all required to hurdling tough obstacles.

Conversely, when people believe their actions have no bearing on the outcome, they don't bother to try to find ways around obstacles. This kind of thinking takes ‘the wind out of their sail' leaving them stranded. Convincing themselves that there is nothing they can do, they relinquish responsibility and cover over the results.

Unaware that their own thinking is their biggest saboteur, they credit the high achiever's success merely to external circumstances. These people work best when they are being motivated or pushed by an external source, such as the boss or some kind of positive or negative incentive - not your ideal hire.

How do you spot someone who lacks perceived control or is externally motivated? It's easier to do than you think. Using motivation-based interviewing is the best way. When asking your skill assessment questions, include a real life job-related obstacle in each question. Find out specifically what each job candidate did. Don't assume everyone reacts to difficulty effectively. Interviewers commonly underestimate the importance of their interview questions. An example of a past success that didn't involve an obstacle is NOT an indicator of future success. Once the obstacle is added into your interview questions, listen for words and phrases that indicate excuses, finger-pointing and refusal to take responsibility, such as:

* I knew it was never going to happen, so I gave up.

* There was nothing I could do about it.

* I had no control over it.

* It failed before and it will fail again.

* It's not my fault, they didn't give me the tools I needed to get the job done.

An internally motivated person, or one who perceives their power to produce results, will use a whole different set of phrases, and even more important, the actions that follow:

* We had to think of creative solutions.

* I'm sure it's possible...and it was!

* I wasn't going to give up.

* I'm still working on it!

* I knew we could make it work.

Once you're aware of these clues, they're easy to spot. You'll notice when you hear blaming, excuses and hopelessness, you'll also notice the lack of action and effort needed to hurdle the difficult challenge. Those two go together. When it comes to hiring High Performers, you're looking for a predominant pattern of making the effort to overcome the obstacle. Make sure you look for a pattern instead of making a judgment based on one statement. Even the highest achiever is capable of making excuses once in a while and average job performers hurdle some obstacles. The person you want to hire, however, more often takes ownership and responsibility for their action and inaction.

The goal is to hire more High Performers. For many interviewers, it will involve learning how. One interviewing methodology filled with effective techniques and pointers to help interviewers identify the best is called motivation-based interviewing. It's more effective than behavior-based interviewing and better at assessing motivation. It can be used for hiring any position, requires no additional interviewing time and it's easy to learn. It's worth learning more about.

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Article Tags: ace, advocate, attitude, bad hires, behavior based interview, carol quinn, Carol Quinn, high achiever, high performers, Hire Authority, how to hire, how to hire high performers, how to hire the best, how to write interview questions, insight, interview, interview questions, interviewer, interviewer training, job interview, job seekers, locus of control, MBI, motivation, motivationbased interviewing, quinns



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