CareerBuilder.com has put out another link-bait article titled Top Interview Questions. I wonder if they send this version out to their employer customers and a modified version out to the jobseekers in a separate email? Anyway, here is the list: What circumstance brings you here today? This is one of the best opening questions ever. This open ended question surprises many candidates. If they do not respond quickly, just sit quietly and wait for the response. Some candidates reveal problems with their current employer, potential insubordination, and both positive or negative character traits. How would your best friend describe you? What would you say are your 2 greatest weaknesses? How… Read More
Continue ReadingInterview Questions For Gen Y
From CollegeRecruiter.com’s Sample Interview Questions for Those Hiring Millennials: William recommends that interviewers “incorporate more personal questions that expose a candidate’s personality, work ethic, and personal motivations” because “how a person approaches life is often indicative of how they’d approach work.” He therefore recommends rephrasing typical interview questions in a way that they better apply to the personal lives of your candidates. Sample interview questions in this area include: How do you primarily communicate with friends? How often? When you have a dilemma to solve, how do you approach it? How do you spend your free time? (Do you prefer doing activities solo, with friends, or in groups?) Excellent advice… Read More
Continue ReadingAssessments Shorten Interviews
I’ve read many sales technique articles recently that discuss how to approach a prospect. Salespeople are expected to have a cursory knowledge of the company itself, it’s market and, to some extent, whether or not they have a solution that may be a fit for this prospective customer. Gone are the days of cold calling a prospect and asking what it is their company does. I think everyone can agree with that paragraph. So why do companies still expect hiring managers to go through the added discovery of sorting out communication styles, motivations and skill sets? Granted, most managers want to verify these items, but assessments provide a starting point… Read More
Continue ReadingStupid Candidate Tricks
This post from Steven Rothberg over at CollegeRecruiter.com had me laughing. Isn’t it amazing how out-of-touch some candidates can be during a phone screen or interview? From Steven’s post: Candidate asked the interviewer for a ride home after the interview. Candidate smelled his armpits on the way to the interview room. Candidate said she could not provide a writing sample because all of her writing had been for the CIA and it was “classified.” You have to read the other 7 mistakes in the list. Unbelievable…and entertaining.
Continue ReadingThe Wrong Stuff
Are you aware of all of the interview questions being asked behind close doors at your company? There are many hiring managers who are unaware of what constitutes a good interview questions. Most managers know enough to avoid questions regarding marital status, religion and ethnicity, but how about the oddball questions? Don’t ask, don’t tell from MarketWatch discusses some of the odd questions that occur during an interview. “Why aren’t you married yet?” “Would you join a church to get a job?” Those are just two examples of questions job seekers said hiring managers asked them in a job interview, according to a new survey of more than 3,000 job… Read More
Continue ReadingMediocrity In The Hiring Process
Hiring salespeople is the difficult combination of science and art weighted perfectly to select the right person for the position’s requirements. Obviously, knowing the position’s requirements is the preeminent step. Many sales managers believe they know what it takes to be successful in the position and they do to a certain extent. Yet, their knowledge often consists of themes as opposed to specifics. This reason drives us to profile the sale as the very first step in our sales hiring process. ManageSmarter.com’s Is Hiring Mediocre Good Enough? approaches a hiring process with some valuable insight and other items I wouldn’t recommend. First, the reason astute hiring is mission-critical to corporate… Read More
Continue ReadingTalent Scarcity, But Plenty Of Grill Time
The recruiters conference I attended last Friday started off on the right foot – we calculated the cost of a bad hire (even for a $6 an hour employee, it can run $2400 or more), interacted with the moderator about CEOs’ perception of candidates brought in by an outside agency (79% unfavorable) and even discussed the challenge of finding “A” players in a tight talent market. But when the speaker explained their approach of grilling a candidate on each and every job back to high school (Tell me your bosses name. Spell it. Tell me your closest peer’s name at that job. Spell it.) during a 3 to 4 hour long third interview,… Read More
Continue ReadingWhat You Can Ask In An Interview
This article on HR World – 30 Interview Questions You Can’t Ask and 30 Sneaky, Legal Alternatives to Get the Same Info – is making quite a splash on the web today. I think it is an interesting read with some excellent suggestions regarding how to phrase interview questions. To give you a sample: 12. What you can’t ask: Do you have kids? This one is for positions in which the candidate may work with children. The added experience of children at home may be a bonus for you, but it’s not an employer’s place to ask about this. Rather, inquire about the candidate’s experience, and they may volunteer this information to… Read More
Continue Reading"We’d Rather Miss A Good One Than Hire A Bad One"
Interesting story today from the AP – Employers study applicants’ personalities – that discusses hiring processes designed to see if a candidate is the right fit. These processes are a good start, but much of what they are trying to accomplish could be done through assessments. Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employers are pickier than ever about whom they hire. Businesses in fields where jobs are highly coveted — or just sound like fun — are stepping up efforts to weed out people who might have the right credentials but the wrong personality. But if you would rather take the longer route, there is this approach: Rackspace… Read More
Continue ReadingGood Interviews From Bad Salespeople
How about this thought – many bad salespeople are good interviews because they have much practice. We have seen many salespeople do well on the phone but once we dig into their history, we find a consistent pattern of 2 year stints. But man do they say the right things on the phone. For this reason, we tend to run a difficult phone screen to weed out the pretenders. In fact, just this week we received a resume from a candidate with whom we are familiar. He worked for one of our customers 3 years ago and displayed flamboyant incompetence. As they say in the Wall Street Journal, it wasn’t… Read More
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