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Moving Beyond Behavior-Based Questions
Candidates are often prepped with stories of success, so it's up to the recruiters and hiring managers to mine those stories to determine how reflective candidates are about those experiences and what they learned. Such insights will lead to hiring the talent necessary to help their organizations succeed.
Behavior-based interviewing leads the corporate climber to claim their individual past success should reward them with future opportunities. Most hiring managers have heard the heralded heroics of the success-laden manager, who has also prepared for the interview with stories of their behavior-based successes. But once hired, the much hoped for business improvements are less common past the "honeymoon" period when a favored candidate can seemingly do no wrong. Does the recent economic downturn mean the talent pool of business professionals has sprung a leak? Are there fewer talented individuals in enterprise now than there were previously when blue skies and bulls were still gracing Wall Street? Not likely. The level of talent in today's corps of climbing managers is roughly the same as before. Many managers have survived the tough times by creatively finding ways to make their workforces more productive and their businesses more profitable. But "survival" does not create the kind of interview stories and resume lines that were created in the business environment prior to 2008, where growth, some would argue, was automatic. As commonly practiced, job-interview techniques tend to focus on accomplishments. We argue the focus should be on learning.
The Talent Searcher's Dilemma The statement that "past performance is the best predictor of future success" is only true if a person's past behavior really did create the claimed success, and at the same time, future circumstances (both organizational and marketplace) that led to the previous success were identical to the past. The widely used technique of behavior-based interviewing is based on a partially false assumption that success follows some people and does not follow others. If you can determine the past successes of others, then you can identify and hire the "winners." Now we all know that winners don't win all the time. As a former boss of one of the co-authors so elegantly puts it; "You are good until you are [deemed] bad and you are bad until you are [deemed] good." Nevertheless, we seem to be obsessed with hiring people who have a history of claimed success, regardless of the circumstances that led to the alleged success. As such, we propose that behavior-based interviewing needs to include an exploration of a candidate's learning ability as an essential component in verifying their contribution to business success and to determining how they learned -- and what they learned -- while meeting the challenges of their previous assignment, even in situations where success may not be as evident, such as in the current economic environment. Notice we say that the core assumption of behavior-based interviewing is only partially wrong. Behavior-based interview questions get recruiting managers to the context by helping us see that the candidate has experienced the kind of problem we need them to solve for our company. It does not tell you what the candidate learned from their experience. This is like a gold prospector knowing where to dig, but not actually getting their hands dirty by digging. Digging for what a candidate learned in an experience that gets to the gold. If they learned from their success (or failure for that matter) and they are reflective about that learning, then they are more likely to be able to adapt their experiences to the new market and organizational environment embedded in the new job opportunity.
Complete the Learning Loop Human resource and organizational development professionals may disagree about what makes a good leader or manager, but almost all agree that learning is at the core of leadership and career success. Jack Welch has said that learning is the ultimate competitive advantage. Peter Drucker has said that anyone who does not learn is old and less useful, regardless of age. Chris Argyris gave us the notion of "double loop learning," where information should always be followed by application in order to personalize learning. In our organizations, we want managers and leaders who learn at the double-loop level. If that is the case, our interviews should focus, not just on reported "experience," but how reflexive candidates have been about that experience and what they learned. In an effort to complete the learning loop, we offer three levels of questions: Level 1: Behavior-Based Experience. This is the standard behavior-based question when the recruiter or hiring manager asks: "Tell me about a time when ... " in conjunction with a particular problem that the company is looking for the candidate to be able to solve. Most experienced candidates have been coached or readied themselves to recount stories about a particular success that they have experienced. If the hiring manager follows up with the next two levels, a layer of honesty and reflection that is more revealing may be mined. Level 2: Reflection. Ask the candidate what they think about the above experience. Did it change the way they approach similar problems? Did they rethink how they lead and manage? Did it change relationships? This level will help bring to light how reflective the candidate is. Do they take experience to a higher level and use it to learn and become better? Level 3: Application. Next, the candidate should be asked about how the experience has changed the way he or she would behave in the future. How did that experience change your beliefs? How are you a different person because of that experience? How do you think that experience would make you more qualified for the job that you are applying for? In other words, seek out the generalized truth of the candidate's experience. In our experience, Level 1 stories can be rehearsed, practiced and embellished. But it is very hard to fake answers to the Level 2 and 3 questions. Either the candidates have them or they don't. The questions below are common -- and good -- recommendations for behavior-based interviewing. We have added the important steps of verification and learning that take the questions to the level of reflection and learning:
Question One: Level 1: Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer or co-worker. Level 2: What did you learn from that experience? (Checking for the ability to abstract beyond a specific incident.) Level 3: How did you deal with customers differently now because of that experience? (Checking for turning learning into action.) Question Two: Level 1: Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to get a job done. Level 2: What did you learn about the overall organizational system as a result of that experience? (Checking for the candidate's ability to abstract at a systems level.) Level 3: Did you initiate and any larger system corrections as a result of that experience? (Checking to see if anomalous workloads are seen as opportunities to improve work process.) Question Three: Level 1: Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision. Level 2: What did you learn about your relationship with your co-workers when you made that decision? (Checking for observation and learning related to critical relationships.) Level 3: Did that experience change the way you worked with your team and made decisions as a group? (Checking to see if learning was persistently applied to similar experiences.) Most interview responses begin with 10 second to 40 seconds of noise. Candidates will often talk, but say nothing for the first few sentences after your question in order to fill air space so that they can think. They say things like, "That's an interesting question" or "As I think about the question you are asking I am reminded of a time when ... ." As an interviewer, you want to give candidates time to hem and haw before they tell their story, but make sure they tell it. In addition, when asking Level 1 questions, a candidate may want to follow up with more generic, open-ended questions to lay a deeper context before going on to Levels 2 and 3. Those questions include non-judgmental questions such as "say more about ... " or "how did you feel when ... " These kinds of questions give the candidate time to order their own thoughts about the experience that you have asked them to verbally relive. Staying on one experience and mining down three levels to learn how a candidate learns has several benefits. First, rather than feeling like they are being interrogated, candidates feel like they have been heard. The sense that they have been listened to and understood goes a long way in convincing them to take an offer. Second, the recruiter or hiring manager is modeling in the interview the importance of learning. This is likely at the core of company values. Finally, important things about the candidate that otherwise might just be impressions are learned. The hiring manger is able to see how the candidate thinks in public and how they turn learning into action. This will surely lead to better talent search and selection, regardless of the business conditions that create the pool.
Kee Meng Yeo is the director of Global Talent Development at Amway, an $8 billion privately held company based in Ada, Mich. Originally from Singapore, he has more than 25 years of global corporate experience in a variety of senior HR roles as well as having worked in knowledge management and marketing. November 16, 2009 Copyright 2009© LRP Publications |
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