Ask in-depth questions to identify characteristics you’re looking for. One of the questions is, ‘Give us a feel for what kind of school you went to. Was it large, small, rural or urban? Generally, what your college years were like. What kind of school activities did you take part in? What people or events during college might have had an influence on your career? Were there any class offices or honors or special achievements during your college years? What were the high points during your college years?’ And then, we also ask for low points.
For some of the work history questions, we ask, ‘What would you say some of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your jobs were? What is your best guess as to what your supervisor honestly felt were or are your strengths, weak points and overall performance?
I think for some of the questions about extracurricular activities, obviously, if they were a fraternity president or they took on some sort of office or they were the leader of their math club or the yearbook team, it shows some sort of leadership there. If they have a 4.0 [GPA], that shows that they’re smart and have a good work ethic.
Maybe they didn’t enjoy school, but they went through the motions and they worked hard and they studied every night in the library to 12 o’clock at night to get good grades. That says something about their work ethic, their desire.
The jobs that they’ve been at, what were the reasons they left, what were the reasons they stayed there, what did they like about those jobs?
Are they willing to admit to some of their mistakes they made at their last positions, and if they are, how did they resolve them? That shows their problem-solving abilities.
Include multiple employees during the interview process. When we hire somebody, we want it to be unanimous. If two people are iffy and two people are gung ho, we want to know why those people are iffy, and maybe that is an opportunity to go to somebody else.
It just improves your chances of getting the best person in the seat, that A player. There’s a stronger likelihood that a 100 percent unanimous decision will work out better than a 50-50 decision if you have four people interviewing them.
When there’s multiple people in the room asking these questions and firing off these questions, No. 1, it’s less time for the interviewee. Rather than going to these three-hour interviews with five different people, you can do the three-hour interview with a set of people in one room, and then you can also see how they handle pressure and how they react to the questions as a group because some people ask questions differently.
How to reach: SGIS, (858) 551-9322 or www.sgis.com
