TIPS FOR CONDUCTING TEAM PARTNERING INTERVIEWS

To close out this chapter we offer a list of commonsense tips for conducting effective team Partnering Interviews divided into four aspects—inquiry strategies, questioning techniques, questioning pitfalls, and what to probe.

1. Inquiry Strategies

   • The easiest way to get the truth is to make the candidate comfortable

   • Know what you are looking for, ask the right question… then listen

   • If the interview is the candidate's first behavioral interview, take the first five to ten minutes of the interview to train the candidate in how to respond

   • Give the candidate the chance to talk first about a few successes before asking for an example of something that did not go well

   • When the candidate cannot come up with an example within ten seconds, ask a different broadbrush question and come back to the first question later

   • Your most powerful tool as an interviewer is silence

2. Questioning Techniques

   • Frame questions in the past tense to singal that you want a factual response

   • Ask only one question at a time … then listen… probe… listen

   • Ask the candidate to headline a major story's begining, middle, and end

   • To personalize a story, ask for the names of key players (unless the information is highly senstive)

   • When the candidate uses "we," ask, "Who specifically did that?"

   • To move a story along, ask, "What did you do next?" or, "What happened next?"

   • If the candidate begins to give irrelevant details, say, as appropriate, "Let's get back to your main actions at that time," or, "Let's move on to another area."

   • To uncover underlying logic, say, "Walk me step by step through…"

   • To get under the hood for special accomplishments, ask, "How did you do that?"

   • To nudge for more detail, try these four words: "Tell me more about…"

   • To surface attribute competencies, ask, "What was going through your mind?"

   • To bring an episode to a close, ask, "How did you feel about the outcome?"

3. Questioning Pitfalls

   • Asking multiple questions at the same time

   • Relying on questions that can be answered "yes" or "no"

   • Repeating the same question when the candidate does not instantly respond

   • Jumping in too soon when there is "dead air"

   • Leading the candidate to the answer you want

   • Permitting the candidate to continue to use "you" or "we" without clarifying the candidate's specific role

   • Letting the candidate respond in the present tense or the subjunctive (would, could, should, ought, might) without pressing for a specific example of what he or she has actually done

   • Allowing the candidate to talk in generalities without pushing for a specific example

   • Working over a candidate when it's clear that the candidate is stuck in trying to respond to a particular question or probe

4. What to Probe

   • Complex events involving many players

   • Events that evoke strong emotion, positive or negative

   • Anything out of the ordinary

   • Frequent dodges such as "I can't exactly recall," "That was two years ago," "Well, there were a lot of people involved," or "We did it as a team"

   • Repeated lapses into the use of "we" or "you"

   • Inconsistencies in the narration of events

   • Overreliance on a few stories—"crutch events"

   • Generalizations, assertions, and inferences

   • Adjectives and adverbs

Hiring Smart Partners

In this chapter we have talked about how companies must rethink the competencies they view as core to their organization's culture and their success. In the twenty-first century, smart partnering is emerging as one of the preeminent competencies needed for outstanding job performance. We have discussed the competencies that directly drive partnering behaviors. These partnering-enabling competencies must form the foundation of an organization's human performance system in the Dual Age of Information and Connections. Hiring people with these partnering competencies will accelerate the building of a partnering culture, and thus a partnering organization. We have shown what it takes to identify these partnering competencies and ensure their alignment with a strategic framework, the success of which hinges on smart partnering

We have introduced the concept of a Partnering Interview. The Partnering Interview is a proprietary, innovative approach for determining the breadth and depth of a job candidate's partnering competencies. Partnering with colleagues to conduct both a Partnering Interview and a structured behavioral interview provides a substantive advantage over conducting only one-on-one behavioral interviews. Simply put, a Partnering Interview models partnering as "how things are done around here." We have presented a protocol for a Partnering Interview, given examples of the kinds of questions to ask during the interview, and outlined a process for evaluating a candidate's Partnering Intelligence as an additional basis for making a sound selection decision. We have provided an extract of a Partnering Interview Plan, a tool that interviewers can use prior to interviews to note critical questions to ask and also during interviews to ensure that interviewers probe all relevant partnering competencies. A Partnering Interview Plan is both structured (it employs preplanned questions that focus on one competency at a time) and flexible (any interviewer can probe for additional information based on the candidate's responses and examples). Finally, we have furnished some commonsense tips with easy-to-follow suggestions for conducting team Partnering Interviews. In Chapter 7 we turn our attention from hiring smart partners to trying to keep them—and to make them even smarter.