Ask the Right Questions, Hire the Best People

37

SORRY, YOU’RE NOT READY TO START INTERVIEWING

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CHAPTER TWO

SORRY, YOU’RE NOT READY

TO

START INTERVIEWING

N

ow that you have a group of first-tier applicants and a

backup group of second-tier candidates, it seems like

it’s time to take action—to call all the top people and

ask them to swing by for an in-person interview. Right?

Wrong!

Before you make those calls, you should have a clear un-

derstanding of the dominant interviewing styles, the pros and

cons of each, what kind of preparatory work precedes an ef-

fective contact with a prospective employee, and what basic

interview strategies there are to choose from. In this chapter,

you’ll learn about all these areas.

Your dominant interviewing style

Odds are that you are already inclined to one of three

predominant interviewing styles: the “Telephone Screener,”

the “Human Screen,” or the “Manager”—thanks to a combi-

nation of personal temperament and (you guessed it) your

role in the organization and your daily workload.

ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS HIRE THE BEST PEOPLE

38

Review the following profiles closely. I believe you’ll find

that you already instinctively favor one of these three ap-

proaches over the other two.

The “Telephone Screener”

As we’ll see a little later in this chapter, telephone screen-

ing is an effective tactic used by many interviewers in all three

categories. People in this first group, however, rely on the

strategy as a primary means of exploring employment possi-

bilities. For many of these interviewers, the in-person inter-

view is little more than an opportunity to confirm what they

feel they’ve already learned on the phone.

Interviewers who typically fall into this category are en-

trepreneurs, CEOs, high-level executives, and others short on

time and long on vision. Their guiding philosophy could be

summed up as: “My time is at a premium, I have a personnel

problem to solve, and I don’t plan to waste my valuable time

talking in person to anybody but the very best.”

The Telephone Screener is often the dominant interviewer

at small- to mid-sized companies where no formal human re-

sources (or personnel) department exists or where such a de-

partment has only recently been created. The primary objective

of the Telephone Screener is to identify reasons to remove the

candidate from active consideration before scheduling an in-

person meeting.

Among the common reasons for abrupt removal from the

Telephone Screener’s short list: evidence that there’s a dis-

parity between the resume and the person’s actual experience;

poor verbal communication skills; lack of required technical

skills.

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SORRY, YOU’RE NOT READY TO START INTERVIEWING

The “pros” of this style

These interviewers are focused, efficient, and direct. Their

no-nonsense approach often results in comparatively rapid

hires. The time advantage on a personal basis is obvious—

anyone who’s ever handled a day or two of interviews knows

that a single in-person visit with an applicant can eat up an

hour or more of a workday with startling ease.

Telephone Screeners tend not to waste much time inter-

viewing mediocre applicants. Their approach and overall in-

terview philosophy may well be the best for the “emergency

opening” situation—those times when the organization has

lost a key player and must replace the person more or less

instantly.

The “cons” of this style

Telephone Screeners may sometimes be too focused on

short-term outcomes for their own good. For instance, they

may not be in the best position to take advantage of the

strengths a given candidate could bring to a position other

than the one that’s momentarily captured their attention. Be-

cause they’re often acting in response to a single pressing need

within the organization, they may not always pick the best

candidate for long term growth.

As noted earlier, many Telephone Screeners are entre-

preneurs and presidents of companies who conduct extensive

(and often dazzlingly effective) phone interviews, confirm their

own instincts with a single in-person meeting, then hire some-

one on the spot. This may intimidate or alienate other mem-

bers of their team, notably Managers, who have been given no

chance to evaluate the applicant as a potential colleague or

subordinate.