Follow-Up: A Key Interviewing Skill

Transcription

1 Follow-Up: A Key Interviewing Skill Asking planned behavioral questions starts you in your search for STARs, but you will often finish that search by asking follow-up questions. It s not unusual to ask several follow-up questions either to get one complete STAR or to get enough STARs to evaluate a candidate in a target. Asking follow-up questions helps you explore candidates experiences in depth, giving you the behavioral information you need to evaluate them fairly and accurately. For this reason, follow-up is a key interviewing skill. All follow-up questions should be phrased as behavioral questions so you get the information you need to evaluate candidates fairly and accurately. Interview Questioning Is a Cycle As you interview for a target, you repeat a cycle of asking planned and follow-up behavioral questions until you get enough complete STARs to evaluate the candidate s behavior. Repeat this cycle until you have enough STARs to be able to rate all your assigned targets. The chart below and on the following page illustrates the cycle for collecting STARs in three targets. Although you probably won t have to ask this many follow-up questions, all are included to provide examples of the complete questioning cycle. Planned question Situation/Task Action Result Collect more STARs Work Standards Describe the last time you missed a deadline. What caused you to miss the deadline? Under those conditions, exactly what did you do? What effect did that have on your manager s commitments? How about an example of when you met a tight deadline? Safety Awareness Describe the biggest safety risk you took in the last six months to get production moving. What influenced your decision to take the risk? Describe your actions. What were the consequences of your actions? Tell me about another situation in which you had to take a safety risk. Development Dimensions International, Inc.,

2 Planned question Situation/Task Action Result Collect more STARs Stress Tolerance Tell me about the last time your team leader caused you to become upset. Describe the situation that created your reaction. Exactly how did you react in that situation? What happened as a result of your reaction? Describe a time when your team leader upset you, but it wasn t resolved so easily. Follow Up or Move On? Many times during an interview, you ll need to decide whether to continue to pursue STARs for a planned question or target or to move on. Following are some typical situations, information, and guidelines to help you make this decision. 1. Should I keep following up under this planned question? Three questions asking for another example usually are sufficient for following up a planned behavioral question. However, when particularly interesting information is provided, it might be appropriate to ask additional follow-up questions. The interviewer who stops asking for additional STARs too soon often fails to get the most important and revealing examples. Even when a candidate has difficulty thinking of another example and there s a pause in the discussion, don t be too quick to move on. A short wait can produce an important STAR. When it s clear the candidate has no more examples to give (or has given three or four STARs), compliment him or her and move on. If the candidate can t provide additional examples, empathize by saying you understand how difficult it is to remember specifics. 2. Should I keep following up in a sensitive area? When the discussion enters a sensitive area that the candidate might find difficult or stressful, decide whether continued questioning is necessary. Although you never want to place a candidate under undue stress, you don t have to back off from a line of questioning just because it s in a sensitive area. To make it easier for a candidate to discuss sensitive situations, use rapport-building techniques to maintain the person s self-esteem and show empathy for his or her feelings. These techniques will help you get the in-depth information you need and keep the candidate feeling good about the interview. Development Dimensions International, Inc.,

3 Try to follow up to gather relevant STAR information, but stop asking questions if the candidate seems uncomfortable or emotional. For example, don t force the candidate to spell out a negative conclusion for an action when it s obvious from the information already given that the result was negative. 3. Should I move on to the next target? When you have fewer STARs than you would like in a target but think you need to move on in order to cover all your assigned targets, ask yourself these questions: How significant are the STARs I have in this target? Are they recent? Do they reflect situations that are similar to those in the job? Are they significant in terms of their impact? How important is this target compared to the ones I still need to cover? Which targets am I alone responsible for covering? As you gain interviewing experience, it becomes easier to recognize how strong your STARs are in a target and when you can move on to the next target. 4. Is this information worthwhile? In some interviews the question isn t, Should I follow up? but, How do I redirect the discussion to another area? This situation arises when a candidate begins to provide irrelevant or legally sensitive information. Some interviewers allow candidates to continue to give information they don t want or shouldn t hear simply because they don t want to interrupt. Some interviewers even follow up. When a candidate provides information you don t want, interrupt and redirect as quickly as possible. For example: Thank you for that information, but I d like to get back on topic. We were talking about your experience at... Redirect the discussion when the candidate begins providing legally sensitive information, such as handicap status, religious affiliation, marital status, or age anything not related to the person s ability to do the job. Without saying that the information is sensitive, interrupt the candidate and suggest that you d like to focus on a topic that s more related to the job for which the person is interviewing. Development Dimensions International, Inc.,

4 5. Should I get all my STARs from one question, or should I ask two or three questions under a target? Ideally, you should do both: Ask at least two questions under a target and ask for additional examples under each question. Asking two planned behavioral questions allows you to probe different aspects of the target. Asking for additional examples, especially a contrasting example, gives rich data for evaluation. If you get a good mix of examples in response to the first planned question, perhaps you can eliminate the second or third questions. Experience will help you make this judgment; the important thing is to get at least three good STARs. Targeting Follow-Up Recognizing follow-up opportunities and following up to get complete STARs is the first order of skills you need to master. The second order of skills is to ask follow-up questions that focus on the target you re seeking. Follow-up questions are not asked in a vacuum; they re asked relative to the target for which you re collecting STARs. When following up, keep this question in mind: What kinds of behaviors am I looking for in this target, and how should I focus my follow-up to get them? The interview guide helps you focus your questions by providing the definition and key actions for each target. The key actions remind you of the kind of information you re looking for. For example, for Initiating Action, the key actions remind you to look for STARs in which the candidate did or did not respond quickly, take immediate action, or go above and beyond. Use these key actions to guide your questioning as you follow up with the candidate to get STARs that reflect the target. The follow-up questions below are worded to focus on specific targets. The arrows point to the key actions the question is trying to uncover. Decision Making What made you decide that action was needed? Identifies issues, problems, and opportunities What sources of information did you use? or How did you know what questions to ask? Gathers information What did the data show? Interprets information What else did you consider in making your decision? Generates alternatives How long did it take you to decide? Commits to action What were the consequences of your decision? Chooses appropriate action Development Dimensions International, Inc.,

5 Planning and Organizing How did you prioritize the tasks you described? Prioritizes What did you do after you got approval? Determines tasks and resources What scheduling problems did you have? How did you solve them? How did you schedule your time? Schedules What resources did you include in your plan? Why? Leverages resources What did you fail to plan for? What was the impact? Stays focused Initiating Action What prompted you to take that action? What was the usual requirement? Goes above and beyond What caused you to do that? Takes independent action When did you get things straightened out? Responds quickly Tips for Following Up Behavioral follow-up questions are worded in the past tense ( What did you do? or What happened? ) and seek one specific STAR or part of a STAR. Words such as usually, typically, or would indicate a theoretical question. Use a behavioral follow-up question to seek a specific past example. Leading questions seek yes and no answers or ask a candidate to choose a response in a multiple-choice style. Use a behavioral follow-up question to seek a specific example without leading the candidate to a response. If the candidate can t think of a STAR, suggest something from his or her background that you think might yield an example. For instance, You said that at ABC Co. you had to make a number of difficult decisions. Was there a decision you wish you could do over again? Sometimes a little coaching is enough to help a candidate think of a STAR. When you have enough STARs in a target, move on to the next target, even if you haven t asked all the planned behavioral questions. Development Dimensions International, Inc.,

6 Be prepared to adjust if a candidate provides information that answers a question you planned to ask under another target. Note questions the candidate already has answered; you ll want to skip them or, if you need more STARs in the target, modify the questions or develop new ones. If you get a STAR that you think belongs in another target, write a note so you can classify it correctly after the interview. Stay Out of the Woulds When following up, it s easy to ask a candidate, How would you handle that? or What would you say in this situation? Avoid these would questions because they lead to theoretical responses. There is one exception to this rule: You can ask a would question to gain insight into a candidate s knowledge or thought processes in a specific area of the job. For example, to find out if a candidate knows the steps in troubleshooting a piece of equipment, you might ask, What steps would you follow in troubleshooting a large printing press, such as the XYZ model we use here? In this case, you re asking the candidate what he or she would do in a specific situation. The candidate s response can tell you how well he or she knows these steps. Once you have this information, you can follow up for an example of when the candidate applied this knowledge to a real problem. The information you ll get will give you insight into the candidate s actual performance, which is much more significant in predicting his or her future performance. Observable Behavior Another source of behavioral information is to observe the candidate s present behavior. You can do this by: Observing what the candidate says and does during the interview. Having the candidate participate in a Targeted Simulation, an exercise that simulates situations found in the job. Observing Interview Behavior The interview is a rich source of behavior when evaluating a candidate in the targets of Communication and Impact. As you observe how the candidate handles the interview how articulate the person is, how well he or she listens you are gathering the behavior you need to determine the candidate s strength in these targets. Development Dimensions International, Inc.,

7 Targeted Simulations Targeted Simulations place candidates in situations that closely resemble (or simulate) those they would face on the job and ask them to take action. The actions candidates take provide behavior in the targets; these demonstrations are recorded by an observer and used along with interview data to evaluate the candidate. Valuable Insights Whether collected during the interview or through a Targeted Simulation, observable behavior provides valuable insights into a candidate s strengths and weaknesses in the targets. One reason this behavior is so valuable is that it s collected firsthand. As you or another member of the selection team watch the candidate in action, you re getting a clear, unfiltered look at his or her performance. That picture of actual performance helps you predict how the candidate might perform in similar circumstances on the job. Development Dimensions International, Inc.,