Make Like A Presidential Candidate in Your Next Interview and Ignore the Question...

Topic - Interviewing...

Subtopic - What candidates do when you hit them with a hard question...

Finding - Most candidates flounder, but the sharp ones spin some BS based on their prep work and communication skills, and look really good doing it...

Recommendation - If you interview for a living (or part of your living), you're only as good as your ability to listen to the answer to your question and dig in and DEMAND (politely, of course) an answer to your question...

Been watching the presidential debates?  It's like a massive panel interview, but only one person on the panel gets to ask questions and follow up.  Imagine if every one one of your candidates had a million dollars in prepping for your interview, and opted to prep with 10 behavioral answers of their choosing.  By the time they were ready for your interview, they'd be pretty slick with those answers, wouldn't they?

Here's what else would happen.  Regardless of your question, they'd answer with one of the 10 pre-packaged behavioral answers.  And unless you're on top of your game, you'd take it and LIKE IT...

More on the art of the interview dodge, presidential style, from the Washington Post:

"A review of the debate transcripts shows Obama, McCain and Biden all repeatedly dodging questions, adroitly transitioning from questions they were asked to questions they wanted to answer.

In a series of particularly relevant experiments, psychologists Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton recently showed that most people are extremely poor at spotting even dramatic discrepancies between questions and answers. They found the failure was especially acute when answers were semantically linked to questions -- for example, when a question about the war on drugs is parried by an answer about health care. Audiences seemed to notice dodges only when answers were completely unrelated to the question -- such as responding to a question about illegal drugs by discussing terrorism.

The psychologists found that irrelevant answers delivered fluently and with poise scored higher with audiences than answers that were accurate, on-topic, but halting. And when they had actors deliver the same answers to audiences -- once fluently and once with "ums" and "ahs" -- audiences judged the hesitant responses as intellectually inferior to the fluent ones."

What about you, oh interviewing sage?  Do you accept the BS, or do you get in the pit and try to love someone by grinding for a real answer?

Of course you grind.  I'd expect nothing less...

Comments

[Meg Bear]

Classic that my first reaction on seeing the debates was "hey that's exactly like an interview". While it has been awhile, I have always had 5-10 stories that I am going to tell during an interview. Then I just wait for a somewhat close question and jump into the story. If I didn't have a seedy past I guess politics might have been for me ;-)

As for others doing this to me it depends on what I'm trying to find out. If the candidate doesn't give me anything useful then I'll call them on it, otherwise I tend to use the story to gather additional info about them. If they are too far off then odds are I don't want to waste my time asking further info anyway, if they are only slightly wandering then I do attempt to bring them back.

If they wink at me then they're in of course!

[KD]

Meg -

Thanks for checking in. Let me share this - if you prepare 5-10 behavioral scenarios for the average interview, you'll do very well. After all, each scenario could be used for 2-3 types of behavorial interview questions/dimensions...

Great point, and I've shared that as a interview tip point before. Calls for a post with Meg Bear as the model!!

KD

[The Career Encourager]

I dig and dig and will ask and re-ask a question if the candidate avoids it. If we get to my 3rd attempt and still no answer, the interview wraps up rather quickly. My clients love it that I do this for them since it saves them the reputation as a harda** but gets the job done. Interesting note - a few months ago I helped a client hire a Senior-level Accountant. It's a tough job in a tough environment, but the benefits and opportunity are good so I had plenty of applicants. Several tried to duck and dodge in the interview and I tossed them out. "Cathy" lasted through 3 rounds with me sitting in on each one to observe and coach the directors/exec who she would be impacting. When I made the offer, she was so excited and she said, 'You know - those were the toughest interviews I ever had for a job and it makes me feel really good to know that we went so in depth and learned so much about each other. It just makes me feel really confident that this is going to be a great match for both of us." Here we are 7 months later and everyone agrees it was a great hire. It is SO worth the effort to take the time to do it right!