As most of the readers of the Capitalist know, I'm a big believer in the behavioral interview, where you ask for specific examples of what a candidate has done, rather than accepting the general hypotheticals most candidates provide. Of course, it's easy to be a cynic and say that behavioral interviewing stinks, but my experience is that such criticism usually comes from those who have never watched a good behavioral interviewer grind for more detail from a candidate.
The good interviewers get the behavioral detail from a candidate. The good candidates, on the other hand, give a wealth of behavioral detail without being asked.
Last week, I talked to Jason Seiden, who's a management consultant who helps organizations manage and develop Gen X and Gen Y talent. Check out his blog here, good stuff. We had a great conversation, I subscribed to his blog, etc.
Jason emailed me over the weekend with a link to the following video - a great primer on finding action orientation in a candidate as you conduct the behavioral interview. Give a listen and I'll see you after the jump below the video (email subscribers click through for video):
That's good stuff. You'd love to have a candidate who would do the work for you, especially in the dimension of action orientation (ironic, isn't it?), but be prepared to dig. Most won't...
As for Jason, I think he mentioned he's got plans to do upwards of 200 videos similar to this. If they're all like this, I'll be tuning in. Makes me want to run to Best Buy and grab some video gear...
You meet people who don't live behavioral interviews, even though LOTS of research has shown that it substantially increases the accuracy of hiring decisions?
Posted by: Chris - Manager's Sandbox | October 29, 2008 at 11:31 AM