Page 158 - Boost Your Hiring

144 Boost Your Hiring IQ

interview process is with broad or open-ended questions. These are
questions that can be used for any position. Examples of broad or open-
ended questions are:
• Tell me about yourself.
• How would you describe yourself?
• What are three words that describe you?
You are attempting to get information to use as a springboard to
then move to more specific questions. In other words, the things you
hear in the answers to these questions will supply you with more fo-
cused or specific questions to ask. Here are some specific questions
that might result from something you picked up in the answer to a
general question:
• Could you tell me more about the project you mentioned from
your last position?
• I’d like to hear more about the 20 percent saving you achieved at
your last company.
• Can you give an example of a time when you used those excellent
problem-solving skills you mentioned?

When candidates mention something in the interview or have written
it on their résumé, that information becomes fair game for you to ask
questions about. If, for instance, candidates say they are very organized,
you can probe to find out what being very organized means to them.
Ask for a specific project or time when their organizational skills made
a difference.This would be a behavioral question: Can you tell me about
a time when you were able to make a difference in a project because of
your organizational skills?
The answer to this question will tell you whether candidates are using
interview jargon or whether they really have the “very organized”
skills they claim to have.

The Structured Interview

Interviews and interviewers come in all shapes and sizes. There is no
set standard for interviewing, and so you may conduct interviews ac-
cording to your own or your company’s standards. It will be in your
best interest to have some structure to your interview, even if your
general discussion is unstructured.