Human resources people are generally quite skilled at interviewing executives on any level, but line executives don't fare so well. After all, they usually haven't taken any courses on interviewing techniques; they don't interview job candidates very often; and they don't really know how to go about conducting an executive interview. As a result, if the interview is to go well enough for you to become a viable candidate for the job, you will have to help the inexperienced or unskilled interviewer interview you. To do this, you must know when you are being interviewed by someone who is inexperienced.
Six Signs of an Inexperienced Interviewer
1. Inexperienced interviewers give too little thought to planning an interview. One of the key things an executive should do before an interview is write down the interview questions, yet most executives don't. Instead, they tend to ask whatever comes into their minds, and at most, they have three or four general questions they always ask. Depending upon the answers they get to those questions, they then let the interview take its own course, however meandering and irrelevant that may be. When you encounter a situation like this, you have no choice but to take control.
And this is a major mistake. "Too often," according to William Byham, president of Development Dimensions International, a training and development firm, "the interviewer asks questions such as, 'tell me three good things about you, or three bad things'. In doing this, the interviewer manages only to project their own values and needs on the job candidate, and besides, most executives make pretty poor psychiatrists. The more they try to be psychiatrists, the more they make bad hiring decisions."
2. From a job candidate's point of view, it is often painfully easy to see through such questions and give the interviewer the answer he wants. Interviewers who ask about your father, for example, want to hear about your heroes, they want to know that you had heroes, and they may even vie for the job if they become your boss.
The smart way to deal with this question and other questions like this from these office-chair psychiatrists is to tell them what they want to hear. Unfortunately, this does not always bode well for the course of the interview. Sometimes, you can gently steer an interviewer to a more realistic course, but often the interviewer doesn't progress past the point of idealistic exchanges that reveal little of what either participant needs to know.
3. Inexperienced interviewers often have an unclear picture of what is required to do a job. Every management consultant interviewed for this book echoed the statement of one who said, "I frequently work with two or three managers interested in filling a position. When I ask them what they're looking for, I get three entirely different answers-even though it's the same job." One executive admitted the difficulty in defining certain kinds of managerial positions when he said, "The more general the job of managing, the harder it is to make a decision about whom to hire, and the more often the decision is based on impressions. It's only when you break down a job and are specific about what you are looking for that you can get past mannerisms and personality traits."
Whenever a prospective employer doesn't have a clear picture of a job, it's easy enough to sell yourself to him or her. The only problem is whether you want such an ill-defined job. It's better to try to pin down the person and see if you can get them to describe the job. If they simply cannot describe the job (and this isn't as rare a situation as it ought to be), you should probably treat the interview (in your mind anyway) as a throwaway. You can't accomplish a job that can't be described.
4. Inexperienced interviewers tend to ask single-edged questions. These are questions such as "Do you like your present job?" or "Do you enjoy managing large numbers of people?" that can be answered with a yes or a no. In this situation, help the interviewer by elaborating a little when answering.
5. Inexperienced interviewers don't give the interview the importance it deserves. They permit interruptions; they don't turn off the phone. An effective interview requires 100 percent concentration on the part of both parties. It should be private. Outside interference should be kept to an absolute minimum.
Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do if an executive insists on taking phone calls during an interview. You should, however, take this as a very bad sign. Either this executive doesn't think you are important enough to warrant his full, un-divided attention or he isn't a person who is capable of giving his undivided attention to anyone or anything. Do you want this person for a boss?
6. Inexperienced interviewers place too much importance on intuitive and snap judgments. They mostly subscribe to the' theory that a relationship is made-or not made-in the first four or five minutes of a meeting. "If you don't do well in the first few minutes of an interview with these people, you've struck out," says Bob Hecht.
First impressions aren't always right, though, particularly in situations where the next five to ten years of your life are at stake. Executives who rely heavily on their intuition often fall prey to the halo effect, a recognized interview phenomenon.
When the halo effect takes over, according to William Byham, this is what happens: "The interviewer jumps too quickly to a decision. He has a few words with a job applicant and then decides that this person is good or bad. That would be all right if he or she went on to test these assumptions. But that's not what happens. What really happens is that the interviewer selectively gathers additional data that supports the original assumption. If he already decided that the person was pretty good, then the questions that are asked will reinforce this assumption. Even when an interviewer gets data that operates against his original decision, he tends to discount it. Even worse, when this kind of interviewer decides that someone is bad or not right for a job, then he doesn't even hear the good things that might come later in the interview."
One research experiment showed the strength the halo effect has on people. It consisted of a videotape of a job applicant describing his qualifications for a particular job. He had excellent qualifications, but there was one major negative reason that he wasn't right for the job. The videotape was edited in two ways: in one version, the negative came out at the beginning of the interview; in the other version it came out at the end of the interview.
The videotape was shown to executive recruiters who were asked to indicate if they would invite the candidate back for a second interview. Most of the recruiters who passed negative information early in the videotape asked the person for a second interview. And most of the persons who heard the positive information first passed on the candidate for a second interview. This experiment was especially interesting in that all the interviewers heard exactly the same information about the person being interviewed. That's how strong the halo effect is when it is in operation.
Sometimes the halo effect works in reverse, as when an interviewer makes a snap judgment that he or she doesn't like you. One recent job hunter recalled, "I certainly went on interviews where the person had either made up his mind the second he looked at me or was totally distracted or just didn't like my tie. The interview was a joke. It's clear enough when this happens." And there is little you can do to counteract that kind of snap judgment--in much the same way that there is little damage you can do to yourself once the halo effect has gone into operation in your favor.
See the following articles for more information:
- How to Start on the Right Foot in Your New Job
- What Are the Sources to Find the Information You Need
- The Background of Application Process
- How to Network and Take an Information Interview
