John Sawatsky recently conducted a seminar on interviewing sources during the Sports Summit at Poynter. The session offered good advice for job recruiters as well.
“Interviewing,” Sawatsky said, “is not an art or a science. It is a social science.” As the interviewer, you should control the discussion. “It’s all about good, probing, open questions.”
He advised using questions that place the interviewee in the work environment, where he or she is likely to recount actual performance.
This is a good technique for recruiters. For example, if you want to discover how perseverant your candidate is, ask:
- Looking at your last job, tell me about a time you tried your best and failed.
- How many times did you go at the issue?
- What obstacles did you overcome?
- How did you determine that it was time to move on?
- How did you accept that failure?
- What did you learn from it?
If you want to learn about teamwork, ask:
- What do you do to encourage cooperation with colleagues at work?
- How do you build relationships when stress, deadlines and getting your own byline are priorities?
- What would your colleagues say about you as a coworker?
If you are after how well your candidate adapts to change and learns on the fly, use questions such as:
- What are some of the most significant changes you faced at work?
- How did you show you could adjust to these changes and learn?
- What helped you deal with these changes?
- Talk about some of the key skills that you acquired by adapting to change.
Have a plan when you begin the interview. Know where you want to go and what you need to learn from your job seeker. Then, just as if you were going for the story as a reporter, ask good, probing questions that get to the heart of who this job candidate is.
Done well, the discussion will give you the information you need to make a good hiring decision.
