The confusion of a game show contestant illustrates what’s wrong with how questions are asked during interviews

TV game shows everywhere begin from a common premise: a host, three or four contestants and questions that test their knowledge of trivia. The appeal of these shows is the opportunity to play along. You want to answer the questions before the contestants do. You feel good when you do, frustrated when you don’t, and bewildered by how wrong the contestants’ answers can be.

The response of a primary school teacher on The Tipping Point, a British game show I saw during a recent visit to London, stood out because it was so unmistakably wrong.

“British Airways?” she responded when asked to name a “British businessman who founded a company in 1850 that still bears his name to organize tours of Europe.”

Clearly, she had not understood the question. If she had, she still might not have known that the correct answer was Thomas Cook, but it’s likely she would have realized that British Airways was a company that was not created until air travel became common, decades later.

The source of her confusion was in how the inquiry had been made—the same way as questions are commonly asked during interviews. Orally. This may work for many contestants and candidates, but not for all.

Being a game-show contestant or being interviewed for a job are stressful experiences. Nerves may make it difficult to focus and really hear what is being asked. It’s common during interviews for candidates to begin to answer a question and then stop to ask that the question be repeated.

Nervousness is only part of the problem. Educators know that different people learn in different ways—they take in information in different ways. Some are auditory learners, for whom the traditional questioning techniques work well. Not so much for visual and tactile learners. And there are those people who are hearing impaired. Oral questioning creates a barrier to them being able to understand the inquiry so that they can respond appropriately.

There is an easy solution. Put your questions in writing. Print each question on a card. As you ask the question, pass the question card to the candidate, who will be able to both hear and read the question. The candidate is able to review the question, if necessary, without needing to ask that it be repeated.

Having used question cards for several years when interviewing, I have found they offer several benefits:

• It ensures fairness because the interviewer must stay on script. Every candidate sees the same questions.
• The quality of responses is better. The candidates are more focused and more likely to stay on topic. Their answers will yield the type of examples of past performance that are valuable when assessing the candidates’ responses.
• There are fewer interruptions to the flow of the interview from candidates requesting that the question be repeated or from interviewers needing to stop candidates who have gone off on irrelevant tangents because they misunderstood the request for information. The time allocated to the interview is used more efficiently and interviewers can learn more about the candidates during this time.
• An unexpected benefit is that question cards give tactile learners something to hold in their hands. Some will jot down notes on the card to help them organize their thoughts, which means they may provide more complete responses. Hint: Prepare at least one extra set of question cards, so the candidates interviewed later won’t have access to the other candidates’ thoughts.

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The use of question cards is just one of several powerful interviewing techniques that almost no one except Nelson Scott tells managers and supervisors about, and which are included in his Interview Right to Hire Right workshop. To learn more about Interview Right to Hire Right or to schedule training for your managers and supervisors, contact Nelson via email (nmscott@telus.net) or telephone (780) 433-1443.