What exactly do hiring officers have in mind when they interview a job applicant? Do they know the correct line of questioning to take, or do they just operate by the seat of their pants?
It would be a great advantage for job candidates if they knew how the interview would play out. But are there really any specific rules that savvy human resource managers or hiring officers should follow?
And do they follow them?
“Some managers fly by the seat of their pants and don’t consider interviewing a skill but a conversation,” said Diane Arthur, president of Arthur Associates Management Consultants, a human resource development firm based in Northport, N.Y. “But most interviewers are not idiots. Nothing is scarier than the thought of making the wrong hiring decision because you end up with high turnover, cost to the organization, morale problems and frustration on the part of the hiring manager because the work is piling up.”
Arthur, who has been in human resources since 1980 and has owned her own consulting firm since 1988, believes intelligent interviewing is a learned skill. And that’s why, as a consultant for the American Management Association, she has devised workshops and seminars for the organization on the subject.
A program she created for the AMA on recruiting employees is being given throughout the U.S. and will be presented in Chicago on April 12-14. In addition, Arthur is the author of “Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting & Orienting New Employees,” (Amacom, $59.95), which is used as a course book.
“The biggest mistake interviewers make is that even if they ask the right questions, they usually only focus on what a person can do right now, but they have to find out more than that,” said Arthur. “They also have to ascertain what a person will do in the future and how they will fit into the organization.”
She admits that she, too, made mistakes, when she was a hiring manager for several companies.
“The mistakes were very early in my career, and one was that I focused on asking open-ended questions that, obviously, candidates answered easily,” said Arthur. “And that’s all right for a beginning, but interviewers have to follow up by asking for specific examples of what the applicants actually did in those specific situations.”
And here’s what she says a job seeker can expect from a well-trained, professional hiring officer:
First, the best will have a controlled and directed approach. They will know what they’re looking for. They will try to identify specific skills or qualities that the job requires and then ask questions based on them.
Next, they will ask questions about your past achievements, what you want to do in the future–and all the while they will be on the alert to ascertain just how well you will fit into the corporate culture.
Often, when a new hire doesn’t work out, Arthur says the employer usually “figures that the new hire was the problem, but it often is due to a mismatch because the hiring officer didn’t ask the right questions.”
Knowing that the person who is interviewing you knows exactly what to do to evaluate you, what should the job seeker do to prepare for this educated scrutiny?
“Focus on what you have done and what you can do for the potential employer,” Arthur advised.
And ace the job interview.
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Carol Kleiman’s columns also appear in Sunday’s and Tuesday’s Business sections. Hear her on WBBM Newsradio 780 at 6:21 p.m. and 10:22 p.m. Mondays and 11:20 a.m. Saturdays. Watch her “Career Coach” segments on CLTV. E-mail [email protected].