You at Work: Hiring and Keeping the Right People

Harvard Business Review

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781633694002
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Hiring new employees is high stakes—and keeping them once they're on board is equally important. Every hiring manager needs straightforward, practical advice on conducting effective interviews, checking references, bringing new hires on board, and then helping them succeed. The You at Work: Hiring and Keeping the Right People article collection provides best practices and tips on evaluating job candidates, ensuring that new hires get the right start, and navigating sticky conversations around raises and employee poaching. What's included: (1) a specially curated collection of eight articles from HBR.org on a range of topics, from interviewing candidates to orienting new hires to responding appropriately when an employee has another job offer; and (2) three tools to help you ask the right interview questions, motivate employees though coaching, and give constructive feedback.

How to Conduct an Effective Job Interview

Don’t waste your breath with absurd questions like, What’s your greatest weakness?
by Rebecca Knight

The virtual stack of résumés in your inbox has been winnowed, and certain candidates have passed the phone screen. Next step: in-person interviews. How should you use the relatively brief time to get to know—and assess—a near stranger? How many people at your firm should be involved? How can you tell if a candidate will be a good fit? And finally, should you really ask questions like, What’s your greatest weakness?

What the Experts Say

As the employment market improves and candidates have more options, hiring the right person for the job has become increasingly difficult. “Pipelines are depleted, and more companies are competing for top talent,” says Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, senior adviser at the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and author of It’s Not the How or the What but the Who. Applicants also have more information about each company’s selection process than ever before. Career websites like Glassdoor have “taken the mystique and mystery” out of interviews, says John Sullivan, an HR expert, professor of management at San Francisco State University, and author of 1000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent. If your organization’s interview process turns candidates off, “they will roll their eyes and find other opportunities,” he warns. Your job is to assess candidates but also to convince the best ones to stay. Here’s how to make the interview process work for you—and for them.

Prepare your questions

Before you meet candidates face-to-face, figure out exactly what you’re looking for in a new hire so that you’re asking the right questions during the interview. Begin this process by “compiling a list of required attributes” for the position, suggests Fernández-Aráoz. For inspiration and guidance, Sullivan recommends looking at your top performers. What do they have in common? How are they resourceful? What did they accomplish prior to working at your organization? What roles did they hold? Those answers will help you create criteria and enable you to construct relevant questions.

For sample questions, see the Interview Question List at the end of this collection.

Reduce stress

Candidates find job interviews stressful because of the many unknowns. What will my interviewer be like? What kinds of questions will he ask? How can I squeeze this meeting into my workday? And of course: What should I wear? But “when people are stressed, they do not perform as well,” says Sullivan. He recommends taking preemptive steps to lower candidates’ cortisol levels. Tell people in advance the topics you’d like to discuss so that they can prepare. Be willing to meet them at a time that’s convenient for them. And explain your organization’s dress code. Your goal is to “make them comfortable” so that you have a productive, professional conversation.

Involve (only a few) others

When making any big decision, it’s important to seek counsel from others, so invite a few trusted colleagues to help you interview. “Monarchy doesn’t work. You want to have multiple checks” to make sure you hire the right person, Fernández-Aráoz explains. “But on the other hand, extreme democracy is also ineffective” and can result in a long, drawn-out process. He recommends having three people interview the candidate: “the boss, the boss’s boss, and a senior HR person or recruiter.” Peer interviewers can also be “really important,” Sullivan adds, because they give your team members a say in who gets the job. “They will take more ownership of the hire and have reasons to help that person succeed,” he says.

Assess potential

Budget two hours for the first interview, says Fernández-Aráoz. That amount of time enables you to “really assess the person’s competency and potential.” Look for signs of the candidate’s “curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination.” Sullivan says to “assume that the person will be promoted and that he will be a manager someday. The question then becomes not only can this person do the job today, but can he do the job a year from now, when the world has changed?” Ask the candidate how he learns and for his thoughts on where your industry is going. “No one can predict the future, but you want someone who is thinking about it every day,” Sullivan explains.

Ask for real solutions

Don’t waste your breath with absurd questions like, What are your weaknesses? “You might as well say, ‘Lie to me,’” says Sullivan. Instead try to discern how the candidate would handle real situations related to the job. After all, he says, “how do you hire a chef? Have that person cook you a meal.” Explain a problem your team struggles with, and ask the candidate to walk you through how she would solve it. Or describe a process your company uses, and ask her to identify inefficiencies. Go back to your list of desired attributes, says Fernández-Aráoz. If you’re looking for an executive who will need to influence a large number of people over whom she won’t have formal power, ask: “Have you ever been in a situation where you had to persuade other people who were not your direct reports to do something? How did you do it? And what were the consequences?”

Consider “cultural fit,” but don’t obsess

Much has been made about the importance of “cultural fit” in successful hiring. And you should look for signs that “the candidate will be comfortable” at your organization, says Fernández-Aráoz. Think about your company’s work environment, and compare it to the candidate’s orientation. Is he a long-term planner or a short-term thinker? Is he collaborative, or does he prefer working independently? But, says Sullivan, your perception of a candidate’s disposition isn’t necessarily indicative of whether he can acclimate to a new culture. “People adapt,” he says. “What you really want to know is: Can they adjust?”

Sell the job

If the meeting is going well and you believe that the candidate is worth wooing, spend time during the second half of the interview selling the role and the organization. “If you focus too much on selling at the beginning, it’s hard to be objective,” says Fernández-Aráoz. But once you’re confident in the candidate, “tell the person why you think she is a good fit,” he recommends. Bear in mind that the interview is a mutual screening process. “Make the process fun,” says Sullivan. Ask her if there’s anyone on the team she’d like to meet. The best people to sell the job are those who “live it,” he explains. “Peers give an honest picture of what the organization is like.

Principles to Remember

Do:	Don’t:
Lower your candidates’ stress levels by telling them in advance the kinds of questions you plan to ask Ask behavioral and situational questions Sell the role and the organization once you’re confident in your candidate	Forget to do preinterview prep—list the attributes of an ideal candidate and use it to construct relevant questions Involve too many other colleagues in the interviews—multiple checks are good, but too many people can belabor the process Put too much emphasis on “cultural fit”— remember, people adapt

Advice in Practice

EXAMPLE 1

Provide relevant, real-life scenarios to reveal how candidates think

The majority of hires at Four Kitchens, a web design firm in Austin, Texas, are through employee referrals. So when Todd Ross Nienkerk, the company’s founder and CEO, had an opening for an account manager, he had a hunch about who should get the job. “It was somebody who’d been a finalist for a position here years ago,” says Todd. “We kept her in mind, and when this job opened, she was the first person we called.”

Even though Deborah (not her real name) was a favored candidate, she again went through the company’s three-step interview process. The first step focused on skills. When Four Kitchens interviews designers or coders, it typically asks applicants to provide a portfolio of work. “We ask them to talk us through their process. We’re not grilling them, but we want to know how they think and we want to see their personal communication style.” But for the account manager role, Todd took a slightly different tack. Before the interview, he and the company’s head of business development put together a job description and then came up with questions based on the relevant responsibilities. They started with questions like: What are things you look for in a good client? What are red flags in a client relationship? How do you deal with stress?

Then, Todd presented Deborah with a series of redacted client emails that represented a cross section of day-to-day communication: Some were standard requests for status updates; others involved serious contract disputes and pointed questions. “We said, ‘Pretend you work here. Talk us through how you’d handle this.’ It put her on the spot, but frankly, this is what the job entails.”

After a successful first round, Deborah moved on to the second phase, the team interview. In this instance, she met with a project manager, a designer, and two developers. “This is an opportunity for applicants to find out what it’s like to work here,” says Todd. “But the biggest reason we do it is to ensure that everyone is involved in the process and feels a sense of ownership over the hire.”

The final stage was the partner interview, during which Todd asked Deborah questions about career goals and the industry. “It was also an opportunity for her to ask us tough questions about where our company is headed,” he says.

Deborah was offered the job and started soon after.

EXAMPLE 2

Make the candidate comfortable, and sell the job

When Mimi Gigoux, EVP of human resources at Criteo, the French ad-tech company, interviews a job candidate, she looks for signs of “intellect, open-mindedness, and passion” both for the company and for the role. “Technical expertise can be taught on the job, but you can’t teach passion, drive, and creativity,” says Mimi, who is based in Silicon Valley.

Recently, Mimi opened a requisition for a new member of her team. She was particularly interested in one of the applicants: Bryan (not his real name) had previously run talent operations at several top companies in the Bay Area.

Before the interview, her team communicated with Bryan about the kinds of questions Mimi planned to ask. “I don’t believe in ‘tough interviews,’” she says. “If candidates perceive a hostile environment, they go into self-preservation mode.” And when Bryan came in for the interview, she did everything she could to make him comfortable. She started by asking him questions about his hobbies and interests, and Bryan told...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table Of Contents
• Introduction
• ARTICLES
• TOOLS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS