Article from “The Press” 25 October 2005

Asking all the right questions; DOs & DON’Ts

(c) The Press and Fairfax New Zealand Ltd. 2006. All rights reserved

Business is investing more money than ever to get behind the veneer of increasingly interview-savvy job candidates.

Louise Bleakley investigates whether conducting an effective interview is as easy as one might think.

DOs & DON'Ts

• DO prepare a list of standard questions concerning the candidate's skills, abilities and past work performance that relate to the job.
• DO use open-ended questions - don't put words in his / her mouth.
• DO try to put the candidate at ease.
• DO use scenarios such as: "What would you do if..?"
• DO ask the candidate to recount an experience which demonstrates key skills required for the role.
• DO listen carefully to the candidate's answers. If they do not provide you with specific results, probe until they do.
• DO, to improve the filtering process, include general questions in the application form regarding: commitments that would prevent one from fulfilling the role; conditions that might aggravate or cause a health problem in the role; criminal convictions, if relevant to the role.
• DO be prepared to justify the use of any required employment test - the most legally defensible tests are those that involve "a piece of the job".
• DON'T ask: "We want an organised, dynamic team player ... what kind of person are you?"
• DON'T patronise the candidate.
• DON'T argue with the candidate.
• DON'T ask about his / her age, race, ancestry, religion, height or weight, credit history, sex or gender, pregnancy or medical history, family or marital status, physical or mental disabilities, unless the information is related to the task or the function of the job.

Source: Guy Associates

Rosita Guy has been charmed by a few cunning interviewees in her time. Unfortunately for them, Guy is not someone won over by first impressions. "A young man came in, sat in front of my table and told me what beautiful eyes I had. He was quite a hunky looking fellow, but I told him, no, that's not going to work."

Guy runs interview training courses for her firm, Guy Associates. When she started out in the human resources game first impressions were very important. Now, 20 years later, Guy tells clients to avoid first impressions and gut feelings. "I think there has been a lot of work in how to be presentable in an interview ... some interviewees on face value come across very well so you have to go behind the scenes," she says.

John Duncan, of the Human Resource Institute New Zealand (HRINZ), says traditional techniques have an extremely low correlation with success. Even in today's tight labour market, the "casual chat" is being discarded in favour of more methodological, time-consuming interviews. Duncan says interviews have become more structured during recent years. Before the interview, the human resources team will decide on several open-ended questions. These might require the candidate to imagine how they would act in a hypothetical situation, or will require him / her to dredge up past experiences which demonstrate their skill or experience in a particular field. "The theory is that past behaviour is a good predictor of the future."

Dr Dave Ripley, a senior lecturer in management at the University of Canterbury, says a good place to start an interview is: "tell us about your knowledge, skills and capabilities in relation to the job description." This can be followed by `what would you do if ...?' questions, he says. Another question is to ask how they keep up to date in their area of expertise. The art of conducting a good interview requires more work than many people realise. "Often people think `I can interview, I can ask questions'," Ripley says there is a move away from the unstructured interview to the structured format whereby interviewers ask a standard set of questions based around the job requirements. "The structured interview has higher validity," Ripley says.

In today's globally competitive, lean economy, businesses are more concerned than ever before with the increasing cost of turnover. Employment laws are more stringent than they were 10 years ago. Guy says that when she started job hunting 20 years ago, she was always asked if she was married, had a boyfriend, was engaged or planned to have children.

She says she often helps employers extract information while remaining within the law. "Interviewers have to use techniques to find out information they require but they have to put it in a way that's legally defensible," Guy says. Besides the cost of recruiting and training a new employee, firing an employee, for good or bad reason, may result in lengthy and expensive lawsuit.

Employers are more worried than ever before about getting caught with the wrong person, Guy says. "More and more now we live in a world where we can't just say we don't like her, let's get rid of her." The employment tribunal has made it much more difficult for employers to fire somebody without good reason, so they are investing more money than ever in getting it right the first time.