Could you tweet your interview questions?

When asked for the secret of great interviews, the late CBC journalist Barbara Frum responded, “Short questions.”

This is good advice, whether you are preparing to interview a newsmaker or a job candidate. Today, she might say, “Ask questions that are short enough that you could tweet them.”

It may not always be possible to limit your inquiries to 140 characters, but it’s a useful guide for interviewers to have in mind. The value of interviews is in the answers—what the candidate says—and not in the words of the person conducting the interview. After more than 20 years of training managers and supervisors to conduct interviews during my Interview Right to Hire Right workshops, I can confidently say that the most common problem is that interviewers’ questions are too long. Rather than simply request information, interviewers include unnecessary words that reduce the effectiveness of the questions and often lead the candidate to the answer the interviewer is looking for.

“Describe a time when you had to deal with an upset customer. How did you use your listening skills to understand why he or she was upset and how did you use what he or she told you to generate a list of alternatives to resolve the problem in a way that created a win/win situation for the customer and for your organization?”

This lengthy question is filled with clues to how the interviewer wants it to be answered. The interviewer is leading the candidate away from answers that might show him in a bad light and toward a response closer to the type of past behaviour that the interviewer is looking for. Imagine what goes through the candidate’s mind. “I understand what he’s looking for. I need to describe my excellent listening skills and how I used these to resolve the problem. Oh yeah, I better talk about how I generated alternatives to solve the problem. I’m pretty sure that I did that once, and he’s only asking for one example. I know that I better not say that I usually told the customer, “It’s against company policy,’ or that she would ‘have to talk to my supervisor,’ or point out that what happened ‘was not my fault. I wasn’t even here.’ ”

How might Barbara Frum have asked for information if she had been conducting this interview?

“Describe a time when you dealt with an upset customer.”

Ten words. 54 characters. Short enough to tweet, but long enough to require the candidate to provide a detailed response, providing information on which to base a hiring decision.

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During his Interview Right to Hire Right workshops, Nelson works with participants to write short questions that will yield high-quality information that will enable them to identify the right people to hire. Contact Nelson (nmscott@telus.net or (780) 433-1443) to schedule Interview Right to Hire Right training for your leaders.