Screening and Interviewing Techniques (#259)
/In this podcast episode, we discuss screening and interviewing techniques for new hires. Key points made are noted below.
Screening Activities
First off, screening. The intent here is to minimize your investment in interviews by talking to job candidates on the phone first, to figure out as quickly as you can whether someone is worth the effort of a full interview. There are a couple of areas to really dig into during a screening call that can help with this. First, clarify exactly what they’re doing in their current job. In quite a few cases, what they’ve stated on their resume is an inflated version of their actual job, so it can help to walk through what they do in a typical day. By doing this, you can get around an inflated job title and figure out, for example, that someone is not really a controller, but instead is actually a bookkeeper.
It also helps to talk about the scale of the person’s employer. If they’re quite small, like a $10 million company, then chances are, the person doesn’t have enough experience in some of the more advanced topics that you might see in a much larger company, like accounting for derivatives or pension plans.
In addition, if you need a very specific skill set, like someone with a deep knowledge of inventory accounting, then talk through every possible aspect of that area, until you’re satisfied that the person meets your basic criteria.
And finally, this is a good time to talk about salary expectations. If the person wants a compensation level that’s well above what you can pay, then this pretty much shuts down the person as a viable candidate.
So, screening is designed to focus on the minimum criteria that a candidate has to have. It’s not a wide ranging interview, and this is not the time to sell the candidate on company benefits or anything like that. This is not a sales job, it’s a weeding out job.
Interviewing Activities
And then we have the actual interview. Let’s start with red flags. These are statements made by a candidate that could be indicative of problems. For example, he blames his last boss for everything. Sure, the last boss could have been awful, but it’s more likely that the candidate shared some of the blame, and is not willing to take responsibility. Expect more of the same if you hire him.
A slight variation is when the person acts like a victim, always having been put upon by others. Chances are, he has a very low capacity for dealing with adversity. This is the kind of person who will not take the initiative on the job, and who could quit suddenly if there’s any kind of dispute.
Or, probe carefully to see if the person is just looking for a job change in order to make more money, and nothing else. You can consider this person to be a mercenary, who’s only going to stick around for one or two years and then move on to an even higher-paying job with someone else. The obvious indicator is having been through many jobs, with a short tenure in each one.
Another red flag is complaints about the number of hours worked in previous jobs. If you know that the open position is probably going to call for a fair amount of overtime, then focus on this during the interview – a lot – the person might decide not to continue with the interviewing process, in which case that’s one less person to evaluate.
And here’s one that bothers me more than anything else, which is passiveness. There’s no indication of any substantial accomplishments in the person’s background, or even outside of work, like being a competitive cyclist or writing novels on the side. This may be someone who simply shows up for work, without displaying any aggressive behavior to improve the business. If you hire someone like this, expect them to complete their assigned tasks and then dawdle on their computer, rather than coming to you to ask for more work.
Other than red flags to watch for, the rest of the interview is mostly about what I would call essay questions. The objectives are to see how a person thinks, what level of knowledge he has, how much initiative he has, and how well he’s likely to get along with other employees. So for example, a question targeted at how a person thinks might be:
“Let’s say that we acquire another company with messy books. How would you go about cleaning up the situation?”
Or, a question targeted at a person’s level of knowledge might be:
“What types of controls would you like to see in an accounts payable operation?”
Questions about a person’s initiative are more difficult. You could ask about their prior accomplishments, which is one of those standard questions that they’re probably prepared for. It might be more fun to catch them off guard with a different kind of question. For example:
“This position involves running the collections department. Let’s say that I want you to improve the effectiveness of the department in driving down bad debts. Go ahead and grill me with questions about what’s going on in the department right now, and then give me recommendations for what you’d improve.”
Now, that sounds pretty rough for an interview, but how else are you going to find out if the candidate actually has what it takes to improve your operations? In other words, you need to involve the person in current company problems to see if there’s any chance that he has enough knowledge to figure out viable solutions.
And then there’s the issue of figuring out how well the candidate will get along with other employees. This is another tough one, since he’s obviously on his best behavior during an interview. You might be able to gain some insights by poking around with some situational questions. For example:
“Let’s say that the financials have to be completed over the weekend to secure financing, and your general ledger accountant wants the weekend off to deal with a sick parent. What do you say to the accountant?”
Or, “Let’s say that one employee accuses another one of theft, and the accuser is a friend of yours. How do you handle it?”
Or, “Let’s say that you’re competing with someone else in the department for a promotion, and you get the promotion. What do you say to the other person?”
None of these questions are designed to have an easy answer. The point is to put the candidate on the spot and just see what he does. This gives you much richer information that can then be used to make a hiring decision.