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    High-Impact Interview Questions: 701 Behavior-Based Questions to Find the Right Person for Every Job
    High-Impact Interview Questions: 701 Behavior-Based Questions to Find the Right Person for Every Job
    High-Impact Interview Questions: 701 Behavior-Based Questions to Find the Right Person for Every Job
    Ebook273 pages2 hours

    High-Impact Interview Questions: 701 Behavior-Based Questions to Find the Right Person for Every Job

    By Victoria Hoevemeyer

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    About this ebook

    "Tell me about a time...." The words evoke a child's fairy-tale innocence. Yet when used by an interviewer, they can help to determine the suitability of a job candidate by eliciting real-world examples of behaviors and experience that can save you and your organization from making a bad hiring decision.

    High-Impact Interview Questions shows you how to use competency-based behavioral interviewing methods that will uncover truly relevant and useful information. By having applicants describe specific situations from their own experience during previous jobs (rather than asking them hypothetical questions about "what would you do if..."), you'll be able to identify specific strengths and weaknesses that will tell you if you've found the right person for the job. But developing such behavior-based questions can be time-consuming and difficult.

    High-Impact Interview Questions saves you both time and effort. The book contains 701 questions you'll be able to use or adapt for your own needs, matched to 62 in-demand skills such as customer focus, motivation, initiative, adaptability, teamwork, and more. It allows you to move immediately to the particular skills you want to measure, and quickly find just the right tough but necessary questions to ask during an interview.

     Asking behavior-based questions is by far the best way to discover crucial details about job candidates. High-Impact Interview Questions gives you the tools and guidance you need to gather this important information before you hire.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateSep 26, 2005
    ISBN9780814429112
    Author

    Victoria Hoevemeyer

    VICTORIA A. HOEVEMEYER is an OD expert who has helped many organizations transition from traditional to behavior-based interviewing. Currently serving as director of talent development at Lexington Health Network, she is the author of the first edition of this book.

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      Book preview

      High-Impact Interview Questions - Victoria Hoevemeyer

      Introduction

      If there is one thing almost everyone who has conducted an interview can agree on it’s probably that they would rather have every tooth in their head extracted without the benefit of anesthesia than conduct an interview. OK, so it’s probably not quite that bad. But, most people don’t like conducting interviews (with the possible exception of those individuals who believe they have an innate talent for interviewing). One of the reasons people have given me for disliking interviewing is that they are already so overworked that they see interviewing as just another imposition on their already over-full schedule. They wish there were a way to make the whole interviewing process go away.

      The recruitment process is one of the most important tasks any hiring manager will undertake. Unfortunately, very few hiring managers have ever been taught how to perform this critical task well, which is probably why so many dislike having to do it.

      A bad hiring decision will not only affect the hiring manager directly, but may also have repercussions throughout the entire organization. At the very least, a bad hiring decision has the potential of:

      • Negatively impacting the hiring manager’s day-to-day operations

      • Playing a critical role in determining his team’s ability to achieve their annual goals and objectives

      • Creating havoc with other tactical and strategic directives

      The impact a bad hiring decision has on others cannot be ignored either. Within the organization, it can lead to aggravated or irritated coworkers, low morale, and additional training time. A bad hiring decision can also have a negative impact on customer service—and potentially even on customer retention. And this does not take into account the time and other resources that could be lost if the employee needs to be terminated and the time that will need to be invested in filling the position again.

      I wish I could say that this book is going to take all of the pain out of interviewing, or that it will result in a great hire every time. Unfortunately I can’t say either of those. What I can say is that this book will provide some anesthesia to the pain of the interviewing process. The anesthesia comes in the form of competency-based behavioral interviewing (CBBI)—which is not anywhere nearly as cumbersome, intimidating, or complicated as it may sound.

      CBBI is simply a structured interview process that focuses on gathering specific, job-related, real-world examples of behaviors the candidate has demonstrated on previous jobs. Because of its focus on competencies, CBBI minimizes the impact of personal impressions that often result in bias during the interview and, as a result, in subjective hiring decisions. The focus of CBBI is not only on matching the candidate with the technical, special, and functional skills required for the position, but ensuring the candidate possesses the competencies for success in the position and the organization.

      While this book examines a variety of issues relative to the recruitment process (e.g., telephone screening interviews, making the hiring decision), the focus of the book is on the CBBI questions themselves. This is because one of the primary reasons people cite for not using CBBI is the difficulty in coming up with good, relevant, appropriate questions. This book takes the time, confusion, and complication out of the equation. Once the competencies for the position are determined, it is simply a matter of turning to the list of sample questions for that competency and selecting the question(s) that best solicit the type of information you need on that competency to determine whether or not the candidate is a good fit.

      So, if you are looking for new or better ways to predict the on-the-job performance of candidates, to reduce the percentage of bad hires, or simply to enhance your current competency- or behavior-based interviewing process, you’ve come to the right place.

      CHAPTER 1

      Interviewing: The Way It Is (Warts and All)

      Behavior-based interviewing, or competency-based interviewing, has been used in some organizations for as long as twenty-five years. Most organizations, however, continue to use a traditional interview format, which is sometimes interlaced with situational (also called scenario, hypothetical, or what if) interview questions. The new kid on the block that is making its way into interviewing is the brain twister interview question.

      Before getting into competency- or behavior-based interviewing, let’s start by taking a look at each of the other interviewing techniques.

      Traditional Interview Questions

      Almost everyone is familiar with traditional interview questions. This would include questions such as:

      • Do you prefer to work alone or in a group?

      • What are your greatest strengths or weaknesses?

      • What did you enjoy most/least about your last position?

      • How would you describe yourself as a person?

      • What kind of books and other publications do you read?

      • Where do you want to be in five years?

      • Why should I hire you?

      • How well do you work under pressure/stress/tight deadlines?

      • How would your coworkers or supervisor describe you?

      • Describe the best boss you’ve ever had.

      • Walk me through your work history.

      From an interviewer’s standpoint, far too many of us can, in our sleep, ask these types of questions. And we are so familiar with the answers that we can almost recite them word-for-word with the candidate.

      From a candidate’s perspective, there are not many people who have interviewed for a position who have not been asked most—if not all—of these questions. While there are some candidates who find comfort in these types of questions because they have pat answers for them, many are frustrated because they feel that their true strengths and potential contributions are not coming through.

      And Their Unique Offspring

      I would be remiss if I failed to talk about a variation of the traditional interview question. It is a subcategory of questions that I kindly refer to as unique. This includes questions such as:

      • Who are your heroes and what makes them your heroes?

      • If you could be any animal in the jungle, which one would you be and why?

      • If you were given a free full-page ad in the newspaper and had to sell yourself in six words or less, how would the ad read?

      • If you could invite three people—living or dead—to lunch, whom would you invite and why?

      • If you were a bicycle, what part would you be?

      • If you had unlimited time and financial assets, what would you

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