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Guest post by: Carol Quinn Become an Author

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Does Your Applicant Succeed When It's Easy And Quit When It Becomes Tough? To effectively assess any applicant, it is imperative that interviewers uncover certain information about their applicants. Because of the relationship that exists between an interviewer and an applicant, applicants are forced into selling themselves during an interview. No applicant wants to be rejected. They want the job offer even if they don't want the job. The applicant knows that they must accentuate their positives and successes while minimizing their negatives. Many interviewers listen to these success stories and automatically assume that the applicant is a high achiever when in truth, even the lower performers have some successes that they can talk about.

It is very important for interviewers to determine specifically how the applicant reacts when the going gets tough. This is crucial information for accurately determining whether an applicant is a top performer or just posing as one. Anyone can succeed when the path involves smooth sailing and is relatively obstacle-free. In the real world, of course, no job is without its share of difficulties. High performers achieve more results despite the obstacles, the hardships and the imperfections within every work environment. Lesser performers make these their personal excuse for the lack of achievement.

Interviewer Tip:

When assessing an applicant's skill level, ask for examples of past behavior in situations that involved an obstacle of some kind.

Many of the questions that we ask applicants are phrased poorly, often without us realizing it. These questions may be behavior-based, but ask only for happy-ending success stories. For example, "Tell me about a time you exceeded a customers expectations." Both high performers and low performers can answer this type of question fairly well.

Improving your interview questions is not difficult. The key is to phrase questions so that you request specific and actual examples of past behavior in situations involving an obstacle or problem. A better way to phrase the example question would be, "Tell me about a time you dealt with an irate customer." High performers will be able to talk in much greater detail about the action they took to conquer the obstacle. The lower performers will lack much of or at least some of this effort and will offer up more excuses as a substitute for the lack of results. Do this with all your skill assessment questions and it will help you to better distinguish between the different performance levels.

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