Draw out their personality. As an interviewer, you have got to create an environment for them that makes them comfortable. If you’re sitting rigidly across the table from them with a stuffed tie and an arms-crossed posture, then you’re not going to get there. You need to allow them to see some of who you are. I try to make it a point to let my own personality show through in the first 10 minutes of an interview so they get a sense for that openness. Set that tone at the beginning of the interview to encourage them to follow suit.
[It’s] really just being genuine. I won’t hesitate to tell a personal story about how I got here or why am I in this position at McCarthy or why am I the guy that they’re sitting across the table from. There’s lots of stories. The plain old, ‘I worked hard, I was successful on this project and then I got assigned this project’ — the methodical, technical reprise of how I got here isn’t really interesting to anyone, but the notion of some of the mishaps I’ve had along the way and some of the change of philosophy and impact it had on me are more compelling for people, so I try to share some insight on my personal professional development.
Dig deeper. I seldom make any decision off of the first interview. I don’t like to do a 30-minute interview. I like to talk to the person for an hour or so, then I usually make it a point to tell them to go home and consider what we’ve talked about and sleep on it. I kind of want to do the same because how I feel at that moment might be a little different the next morning when I wake up or a week later, so I like to let that first interview settle in.
Then have a second interview. In the second interview, hopefully, you’re starting a little more advanced. In the first interview, the first 30 minutes is trying to relax. The second one, you get more to the personal issues quicker. … Some of the things that you have a better chance of getting done in the second interview is kind of peeling back some layers of the onion, if you will, of business philosophy.
Some of the things you can get to are flexibility. How adaptable are they going to be to the systems we operate versus the ones they’ve been doing in their other past jobs? How adaptable are they going to be to our personnel? We do a lot of stuff (from) a teamwork approach. It’s never just one person doing something. We usually have two sets of eyes on every activity, so it’s important that people can interact and work well with different personalities. On one job, it may be personality X, and then the next job of dealing with two people, it’s personalities Y and Z. Their flexibility and adaptability on interpersonal skills is important. I don’t think I get much of that in the first interview. You get a better sense of their interpersonal skill sets because you’re deeper into the conversation.
It’s a reactive thing. I don’t have a set of standard questions, but if they want to talk about their particular approach on how to deal with this certain aspect of the job they’re interviewing for, you can react to what they’re focused on and you can dig into it a little deeper. It all has to stem from a unique approach to that individual. You have to listen to what they’re saying, and from that, you can kind of see where they’re thinking, and that steers you in the appropriate areas to steer a dialogue to try to get deeper.
How to reach: McCarthy Building Cos. Inc., (858) 784-0347 or www.mccarthy.com