What's the best way to ask the questions?

Follow our five "do-ings" to make sure you're asking the right questions, the right way!

One of the key tenets of the Hirebest approach is the focus on unaided data. If an interviewer asks a question that begins with "Tell me about a time when…", they are telegraphing the answer they want to hear, right in that question. 

But if they instead ask for the candidate's three biggest accomplishments – the interviewer will learn what the candidate is most proud of, what they thought they did best. The interviewer can listen to see if those accomplishments match what is crucial to the role as outlined by the Cipher, AND they don't need to worry that the candidate was "stretching the truth."

The other great thing about unaided data, is that you get three answers. First is the actual answer the candidate shares; the second lies within any patterns you may start to notice (e.g.: of strengths across career); third is the data they aren’t telling you. Absence of data is data! 

By asking open-ended questions, the interviewer maintains control. 

If an interviewer is asking a candidate about their past mis-steps, and asks a question like “any more weaknesses?”, a smart candidate will jump on this opportunity to say "No – you’re such a good interviewer, you got them all!"

Now what are they going to do?

They can get into a sparring match with the candidate and really try to unpack, "Well, what's one more? What's another one after that?" But by now, it has disrupted the flow of the interview, and they have entered a negative place about this negative question. So instead, ask open-ended questions. 

You're going to ask your questions with as few words as possible. You're going to then... be quiet. And you're going to do that sweetly, with an expansive, welcoming look on your face. 

It's actually a highly respectful tactic, and one that produces great data. So rather than asking, "Well, in that job, I guess you probably had some issues with different bosses. And what might be the boss that..." 

No, no, no, no. "What didn't go well on that job?" That's all you have to ask. They'll fill the silence.

This is a fun one. Sometimes you get a "talker" who loves to tell all the detail behind every single story. You're looking at your watch and noticing that you're running out of time. You need to take back control.

You’re going to do this both verbally and visually. For the next question say, "Great. For this next question give me the top three, four, five big headlines and then we'll choose a couple to dive into." To really catch their attention, bring your hands about eye-level, and make three exploding "fireworks" with your fingers, as you say "three, four, five."

This does a few things for you. First you're showing through visual cue, you're disrupting their pattern, so now they're going to listen to you a little more clearly.

Secondly, amp up you your rate of speech while you say that so you're letting them know, "We've got to move this along. We're going a little bit faster now."

Third, they'll give you a variety of headlines, so you're learning all of the types of data you could go after, and then you're choosing the ones that are most important to your Cipher, so you can drill into those rather than get stuck on something that isn't as relevant.

It can be very easy to ask unaided questions in an open-ended fashion, to use "Fireworks", to use "Short, Silent, Sweet," and never get to the specifics that you need to obtain quality data against your Cipher. 

So make sure you're always remembering to Drive to Specifics:

What was your biggest accomplishment? 
Great, what was your role on that team?
What specifically did you do?
What are the parts that you did really well?
What are the parts that you didn't do well?

Get all the color behind that, especially if it's very relevant for your Cipher, so that you know what they will be able to do well, and what they will struggle with.