They don’t care. You should show that you do!

Telemarketers hang up on me within 30 seconds, before even mentioning the product or service they are selling.

Their unsolicited calls often begin with a question: “How are you today?”

Because the caller asks, I assume he must want an answer. So, I tell him.

“Thanks for asking. My back is pretty sore today.”

Click! The telemarketer has hung up on me.

Well, that was just one telemarketer. Surely the next one will want an answer.

“How are you today?” he asked.

“All the better for receiving your call. I was feeling lonely and a bit down.”

Click!

That one gave me an epiphany: telemarketers don’t care.

Under pressure to produce, they don’t have time for conversation. Just a “Fine” or “I’m OK” before they launch into their sales pitch.

For them, “How are you today?“ is just a social convention. They are reading a script, and when we answer with more than one or two words, they don’t know where to go next.

Asking without caring about how people might respond comes up in other encounters we have daily. Whenever we make a purchase or pay for a restaurant meal, we are told to “Have a good day.” The speaker is usually just going through the motions.

Related Article: Has saying thank you become just a habit?

Words without meaning are often what staff experience when being recognized, too. Their  leaders drop clues that they are just going through the motions and staff members recognize those clues:

• The message is generic. Everyone hears the same words or receives the same letter of commendation.
• The recognition is impersonal. Recognition usually occurs in groups, rather than individually. The focus is on events, rather than day-to-day recognition.
• The person making the presentation doesn’t know the person being recognized, can’t pronounce their name, doesn’t know what they did or understand why it is important.
• The person doing the recognition lays it on too thick, as if they hope that among the many platitudes there will be at least one that fits the circumstance.
• There appears to be no relationship between the words of appreciation and anything the recipient did.

Attend an event to mark service anniversaries and someone will stand at the front of a room filled with people who have remained with the same employer for five, 10, 15 years or more, to speak about how valuable everyone is to the organization.

“We really appreciate you and your dedication to ABC Corp. You all work so hard and produce such great work.”

Those are the same words that have been spoken thousands of times to thousands of other employees in thousands of organizations.

Scanning the room, you’ll see people who are loyal to the organization, who work hard every day and produce terrific results. But then there are others. They feel no attachment to their employer, never work particularly hard and are responsible for shoddy outcomes.

All that everyone in the room has in common is survival. Over the past five years, they haven’t quit, they didn’t die, and they avoided being fired.

The speakers don’t seem to care about the differences in people’s commitment and productivity. They might care that the people who stay saved them the resources they’d need to invest to recruit their replacements.

For recognition to be meaningful, you must care about people and what they do. You must know staff members as people and value them as individuals.

When you are seen as caring, the recognition you provide will be perceived as Genuine, the one essential ingredient of GREAT staff recognition.

Including two other ingredients will be interpreted as evidence that you care. 

Recognition that is Explicit shows you are paying attention to what people are doing. You can be specific when describing the performance you appreciate.

Before you can recognize people in Appropriate ways you need to know them well enough to understand what is important to them. How you recognize them should reflect their interests and what’s important to them and respect their preference for recognition that is public or private.

Leaders who care about staff members as individuals don’t rely on generic, one-size-fits-all techniques and trinkets. They don’t send “Dear Occupant” letters that obviously convey the same cliche-filled message to everyone. They don’t host events where everyone is praised equally.

Whenever you read a book filled with staff recognition tips, tools and techniques, such as Thanks, Again!, realize that not all the suggestions will be right for you and your circumstances. Identify the ones you can adopt or adapt as Appropriate ways to recognize staff members you care about. Avoid others that would not be Appropriate for your workplace and staff.

Because they don’t care about us, telemarketers will hang up on us when we tell them how we are really feeling.

When staff believe leaders don’t care about them, they will “hang up” on them, too. When all recognition is generic, staff will conclude, “They don’t know me and they don’t know what I do.”

When staff members believe that their leaders know who they are, care about them and understand what they do, they will be more engaged in their work and less likely to leave. Staff members will feel they are where they belong when they feel their leaders care about them as individuals.

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Thanks, Again! Is available at Audreys Books, 10702 Jasper Ave., Edmonton (and on their website) and online from Amazon, Indigo, FriesenPress Bookstore, Barnes & Noble and from the Apple Books app.

The case for evidence-based hiring

A campaigning politician recently promised that, if elected, he will employ an “evidence-based decision-making model” to resolve society’s problems. This would contrast with his opponents’ practice of “decision-based evidence-making”—seeking evidence to support decisions that have already been made.

Sounds good. Wouldn’t we all welcome a world where decisions were based on the best available evidence?

Yet, while no one would admit to doing the opposite—using an evidence-making approach—the world is full of examples of decisions that were made without first carefully examining the relevant information.

Often, decisions are made first, then followed by a scramble to find reasons that justify the choices of politicians and business leaders. “Evidence-makers” rely on conspiracy theories, “alternative facts” (thanks to former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway for inventing the term), and the deliberate misinterpretation of credible research findings.

It happens in politics, where solutions that are popular (i.e., what gets you elected) may be at odds with approaches that work elsewhere or are supported by mounds of research. It happens in business, where policies are created to address problems that don’t exist.

Alas, it also happens when hiring, when decisions are driven by factors that may be unconscious, such as gut feelings, biases and first impressions.

Detective Hercule Poirot provides an interesting take on the power of the subconscious near the end of the 2023 film, A Haunting in Venice: “My subconscious mind assembled facts ahead of the rational.” 

A rational approach is essential whether identifying a murderer or identifying the right person to hire. When you have a vacancy to fill, you must use interviews and reference checks to gather pertinent evidence before making your hiring decision.

Before beginning to gather evidence, identify the competencies and attitudes the ideal next addition to your staff should possess. Develop questions that will reveal evidence that candidates have what you are seeking. Create a rubric that enables you to objectively assess responses to each question. What would you expect of a potential top performer? What would be acceptable? And what would be an unsatisfactory response?

During interviews, avoid asking opinion questions. Don’t ask candidates, “What would you do if …?” Ask how they have responded to circumstances similar to those they might encounter if hired. 

Don’t ask if they feel collaboration and customer service are important. Instead, ask them to describe a time when they collaborated with co-workers or how they resolved a customer’s problem.

Don’t ask references if they would hire this candidate again or for their assessment of the individual’s performance. Ask them to describe how the candidate has collaborated with colleagues or how they responded to a customer’s issue.

Keep your questions short to avoid providing hints about what you would prefer to hear from the candidate. 

Decision-first hiring often results when interviewers make a quick judgment about candidates. Once judgments are made, interviewers stop listening for evidence that is contrary to their first impressions. 

Keep an open mind. Resist the urge to make early assessments based on what happens early in interviews. Candidates who perform poorly early on may redeem themselves as the interview progresses, while early “front-runners” will fade in the stretch. Collect as much evidence as you can before making hiring decisions.

When you practise evidence-based decision-making, you are setting yourself up for hiring success. You will be prepared to select the right people to fill your vacancies.

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Want to make evidence-based hiring the norm in your organization? Contact Nelson (nmscott@telus.net or phone/text 780-232-3828) to schedule an Interview Right to Hire Right workshop for your leadership team or to learn more about this and other workshops and programs.

Genuine curiosity can lead to more inclusive workplaces

While I was writing Thanks, Again!, I had the opportunity to pitch the concept to a literary agent, who asked a question that changed the trajectory of the project.

“Is there anything in the book about DEI?”

I didn’t exactly respond, “Huh?” 

But apart from understanding that she was referring to diversity, equality and inclusion I was very much lost for an answer. There wasn’t anything in the manuscript about DEI. 

What does an old white guy know about DEI? 

How could staff recognition be linked to DEI? How could recognition contribute to creating a more inclusive workplace, a place where everyone felt they belonged, somewhere they were comfortable being themselves?

I had to learn more before beginning to write Theme 22: Diverse and Inclusive: Recognition for Workplaces Where All Feel They Belong. First, I looked at what DEI experts were saying, but I didn’t stop there. 

What I did next turned out to be the most rewarding part of researching the book. I spoke to people for whom DEI was part of their lives. I showed them what I had written so far and they told me what was missing.

They described their lives as members of a “minority.”

To be honest, I was nervous venturing into their lives. Fear of offending others can prevent us from learning more about the values and culture of those with whom we work. What will they think? Will I be showing my ignorance? Will I be asking questions to which I should already know the answers? 

Fear and discomfort should not stop you from asking questions motivated by a sincere desire to learn. If you don’t engage with people, how will you increase your understanding?

I soon discovered that people welcome the opportunity to talk about their background and beliefs.

By being curious, a bond was developing with those with whom I was talking. I learned about their lived experience, which helped me understand who they are today.

In Thanks, Again, I built on an idea from Micheal Bach. In his brilliantly titled book, Birds of All Feathers, Bach suggests making “diversity moments” part of staff meetings—“when someone shares something about themselves to help educate their co-workers on the diversity that exists around them.”

Related Article: An exercise to better understand the diversity of your workplace

When presenting my Where Staff Feel They Belong at a recent convention, I conducted an impromptu diversity moment.

Spying a woman in the audience wearing a hijab, I approached her and asked if she would be willing to explain Ramadan to me and others in the room. This she did with a simple, easy-to-understand explanation of the daily fast that Muslims observe during the holy month. I believe that most left that session with a better understand of Islam.

Did she mind that I put her on the spot with my question?

“No,” she responded. “I enjoy talking about my beliefs.”

This experience reminded me of another spontaneous learning opportunity several years previously, when I asked participants in a non-credit college communication skills course to identify barriers to effective communication. “Accent” appeared on the resulting list. 

Without thinking about what might go wrong, I asked the three participants who I perceived as having accents to share what they did to overcome this communication barrier.

It may have been that one of the participants misunderstood the question or that she saw this as an opportunity to say something that she felt needed to be said. Either way, the insight she provided was valuable.

“I find it really difficult to understand the accents of people in Canada.”

I like to flatter myself that both these experiences were planned to create a valuable opportunity to learn about how individuals are shaped by their backgrounds, cultures and beliefs.

Whether that was the case or not, these episodes and my experiences while researching Thanks, Again demonstrate the power of genuine curiosity to strengthen connections with others.

Be curious. Ask questions. Be attentive. Listen to learn and understand. Make yours a more inclusive workplace.

You asked: About Team Recognition

The Question: How do I recognize the team for what it did?

The Answer: This question takes me back to when I was working on my first book, Thanks! GREAT Job!

A reader who agreed to read an early draft felt something was missing. All the tips were focused on recognizing individuals for what they did and there was nothing about team recognition.

“Where I work, we consider ourselves to be a team,” she wrote. “We want to be recognized for what we do as a team.”

She had made a good point. There was little in what I had written about how to celebrate team successes.

I added a chapter on team recognition, which included a caution that team recognition did not eliminate the need to recognize individuals.

Both team recognition and individual recognition are needed; they complement each other. Feeling part of a team that is being recognized for what it accomplished together is important, but staff members also need to feel they are valued as individuals and appreciated for how they contribute to the team’s success.

Team recognition can lead to individual recognition. Begin by describing what the team achieved and then acknowledge individuals for how they contributed.

Years ago, our son’s minor hockey coach used a year-end celebration of the team’s winning season to highlight each player’s unique contribution.

There were the usual awards you would expect, such as “Most goals” and “Most assists.” Other awards showed that the coach noticed what the player did: “Top faceoff man,” “Best at congratulating teammates for a good game,” and “Most defensive forward.”

Here are a few ways you can celebrate teamwork and what the team accomplishes:

• Invite everyone to a celebratory lunch or dinner, host a pizza lunch or schedule a barbecue in the parking lot at the successful conclusion of a project.
• Invite the team to plan for the celebration of its success. Provide a budget to make a celebration possible.
• Schedule a team outing—a movie, sporting event or concert.
• Involve team members in the planning of celebrations as milestones are reached, rather than  always waiting until the project has been completed. 
• Schedule a “Teamwork Day,” when teams from different departments can show off what can be accomplished through teamwork. 
• If the team receives a tangible award, follow the example of what happens in the National Hockey League. Each member of the Stanley Cup winning team is given the trophy for a day. Many return to their hometowns with the cup to celebrate where their hockey journey began. Allow each member of your team to “own” the trophy for a day, during which they can display it in their work area or take it home to share with their family.

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For more on team recognition, check out Thanks, Again! (Theme #24: Team Recognition). Thanks, Again! is available from bookstores everywhere, including Audreys Books, 10702 Jasper Ave., Edmonton (and on its website), online from Amazon, Indigo, FriesenPress Bookstore, Barnes & Noble and from the Apple Books app.

You asked About: Recognition in Larger Organizations

The Question: How do we deliver recognition in a larger organization?

The Answer: The answer depends on your position within the organization. It’s different if you are a frontline leader, who supervises the work of a small number of workers, than if you lead an organization with hundreds or thousands of employees.

Whatever your role, wherever you fit in the hierarchy, you can always take the initiative to increase the amount of recognition for the people whose work you supervise. Don’t wait for others to take the lead. Recognize excellent work when you see it. You don’t need anyone else’s permission to acknowledge work well done. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

That said, when top leaders set the example, the commitment to staff recognition will spread more quickly.

I was specific about the audience for my most recent book, Thanks, Again! More Simple, Inexpensive Ways for Busy Leaders to Recognize Staff: managers, supervisors, school principals, small business owners, department heads and other frontline leaders who grasp the power of staff recognition.

Thanks, Again! was not meant for senior leaders. Yet it contains a few pages that look at recognition from the perspective of senior executives who understand the importance of staff recognition and are committed to creating a culture where staff feel they belong, feel valued as individuals and appreciated for what they do.

Senior leaders in larger organizations cannot do it alone. They can’t recognize everyone in the organization. They obviously can’t know all employees, and what they do, well enough to provide recognition that is Explicit, Appropriate and Timely.

They must share this responsibility with other leaders in the organization. Recognizing staff becomes an expectation of leaders up and down the hierarchy.

It begins with senior leaders becoming role models for a recognition-rich workplace by recognizing people who report directly to them for behaviours they want to see repeated. That includes managers and supervisors recognizing staff members for doing their jobs well. Senior leaders should recognize the recognizers.

Senior leaders can pave the way by providing the tools and training others need to recognize staff effectively. Leadership team meetings should regularly include discussions of the use of staff recognition to boost morale, increase engagement and improve retention.

Senior leaders can pass on staff recognition tips, tools and techniques they encounter. They can ensure all managers and supervisors have a budget for staff recognition. 

During regular one-on-one meetings with their direct reports, senior leaders can ask them what they have done to recognize staff since the last meeting.

A useful criteria to include when recruiting for leadership positions is the candidates’  demonstrated ability to recognize staff. While people can aways be trained to recognize others, the ideal situation is to hire people who have a record as recognizers.

During hiring interviews for leadership positions, candidates should be asked to describe how they have recognized a staff member or co-worker for doing their job well. Successful candidates should have a track record of recognizing others effectively, appropriately and frequently for their contributions or achievements. 

Effective staff recognition can begin anywhere in the organization, but when top leaders set the example the commitment to staff recognition will spread more quickly.

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Theme # 4 (Senior Executives, Front-line Staff and Recognition ) of Thanks, Again! was written for senior leaders. Thanks, Again! is available from bookstores everywhere, including Audreys Books, 10702 Jasper Ave., Edmonton (and on its website), online from Amazon, Indigo, FriesenPress Bookstore, Barnes & Noble and from the Apple Books app.

Are you inadvertently “leading the witness” when interviewing?

Fans of courtroom dramas such as Law and Order will be familiar with a line that appears in many scripts: “Objection your honour; counsel is leading the witness.”

The Oxford Dictionary of Canadian English offers two definitions of a leading question:

1. a question that prompts the answer wanted.

2. A craftily worded question intended to lead the questioned person to say something incriminating.

Leading questions can change the witness’s memory of the event.

“Did they tell you not to tell anyone?” prompts the witness to answer “Yes.”  Asking “What did they tell you?” doesn’t limit the scope of what the witness remembers about the conversation. 

On the other hand, rather than asking, “What did you see when you entered the house?” a lawyer might lead the witness to a single-word answer by asking, “Was the glass broken when you entered the house?”

“Leading the witness” is not limited to courtrooms. Questions can be manipulated in surveys when the purpose is to confirm a point of view and not to learn what people think. 

During hiring interviews, interviewers phrase questions in ways that will sway the candidate to answer in a particular way. After requesting  the candidate to recall a specific experience, they unintentionally hint at the appropriate way to responding by adding, “What did you do?”

For example: “Describe a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker. How did you resolve this situation? What did you do to restore your relationship with this individual?”

Ideally, the interviewer would want to learn exactly what the candidate did to resolve the situation and restore the relationship with the co-worker but leaving those extra questions unasked provides candidates with the latitude to answer the main question as they wish. 

If an interviewer stops after requesting that the candidate, “Describe a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker,” they might learn about how the candidate feels about conflict and who is responsible for resolving them. You could learn that the candidate’s solution was to avoid interacting with this co-worker in the future. Perhaps they left it to the other person to take the first steps toward restoring the relationship or expected their supervisor to step in to resolve the conflict.

 It’s unlikely that’s what you would hope to hear from a potential staff member, but you would have learned none of this if you had asked how the candidate had resolved the conflict and restored the relationship.

The best way to avoid asking leading questions is to ask short questions. If necessary, you can follow up the candidate’s initial response with additional questions to learn more about the candidate’s past performance.

Whether in the courtroom, conducting surveys or participating in hiring interviews, the goal should be to learn as much as possible. Asking questions that hint at the appropriate response will limit what you learn. And when hiring, what you don’t learn can prevent you from making the right hiring decision.

No Quick Route to Hiring Right

Fleur Perkins: Which do you want? You can have it quick or you can have it right.”

John Barnaby: How about both?

— Midsomer Murders, Season 21, Episode 1: “The Point of Balance”  

What Deputy Chief Inspector Barnaby wants—a quick path to identifying the murderer—is similar to what many managers, school principals and others in leadership positions wish for when hiring: to fill the vacancy with the right person as quickly as possible.

Barnaby wants immediate answers to his questions so he can quickly fill a vacant jail cell. What killed her? Is there DNA under her fingernails? When did she die?

The pathologist deflects each question by saying that she will know more after she  “gets back to the lab,” where she can examine the body before providing definitive responses to Barnaby’s inquiries.

When Barnaby’s impatience with the pathologist’s cautious approach becomes obvious, the pathologist responds with a question of her own: does the police officer want quick answers or does he want them to be correct?

Receiving answers that are both quick and right when investigating a crime or when hiring would be ideal, but if you can have only one, making the right decision always trumps one that is quick.

As legendary western lawman (and some historians would suggest, occasional outlaw) Wyatt Earp said, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.” True during gun fights. True when hiring.

Success in detective work or in hiring comes from slow but steady progress after examining all the available evidence to make the  arrest or hire the right person. It’s not done by acting quickly.

The temptation to fill a vacancy quickly is hard to resist, particularly in the face of pressure from other staff, from clients or customers. Vacancies mean that some tasks will go undone and existing staff may be required to assume a greater workload.

Getting it wrong comes with consequences. Failing to hire the right person is the equivalent of arresting the wrong suspect. Wishing to avoid the short-term pain caused by a vacancy can lead to the long-term pain of living with a hiring mistake.

Like detectives, you want to get it right the first time.

Taking time to review the evidence gathered from resumes and during interviews and from reference checks before making a job offer is as important as taking time to examine all the clues before identifying the killer.

As we learned from Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare, success can come from proceeding with caution rather than acting quickly and carelessly. Slow and steady wins the race.

Fleur Perkins gets it. Whether investigating crime or hiring staff, you must want to “have it right.”

Don’t wait until the end to ask for feedback

The way Princess Cruise Lines conducts surveys can be model for collecting staff feedback. 

Three days into our nine-day cruise aboard the Diamond Princess, a brief, half-page survey from the  hotel general manager asking for “First Impressions” was left in the passengers’ cabins.

“Our crew is always looking to share our hearts with you and exceed your expectations. Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions you’d like to share with us below.”

What Princess is doing that is better than what other organizations do is not waiting until the end before asking for feedback. 

Data collected after the cruise ends, after hotel guests have checked out, or after a service has been completed may assist the organization in improving what it does in the future, but those completing after-the-fact questionnaires won’t feel the impact of their feedback. They won’t benefit from any changes.

When Princess collects feedback just a few days into the cruise, it has an opportunity to make things right for the current guests. There is a potential benefit to the guests for taking time to answer the cruise line’s questions.

This approach to gathering feedback resonates with me. It’s a practice that I encountered years ago and incorporated into my daylong workshops, such as Interview Right to Hire Right, Staff Recognition: One Piece at a Time and Retaining Staff Without Spending Buckets of Money.

Just prior to the lunch break. I distribute a single sheet that asks participants to rate how well their expectations were met during the first half of the day and what mid-course corrections are required to better meet their expectations during the remaining hours.

The feedback I receive is always useful, whether it indicates that the workshop is what participants expected or that adjustments are needed to provide more of what participants really want. Some respond with questions that they wish to have addressed during the afternoon.

While there is still an evaluation form to complete at the end of the workshop, I have found that when participants understand that they could receive an immediate benefit from completing the survey, the quality of the feedback is greater than what I learn from end-of-the-day questionnaires. What I learn from midday assessments allows me to make same-day adjustments and improve the quality of future workshops.

A midpoint check-in is a concept that can be implemented as a tool to collect meaningful feedback from staff. A better approach than relying on annual staff surveys is a series of pulse surveys that ask about a single topic or a limited number of topics.

These brief surveys can be completed quickly. Limiting the number of topics means less time is needed to analyze the results before the organization can act, based on what was learned. 

Like Princess Cruise Lines passengers or workshop participants, staff can feel the impact of their feedback immediately.

How to write interview questions to get evidence you need to identify the right person

Along with resumes and application forms and reference checks, interviews are an important component of the process that will assist you to identify the right person to hire—as distinct from the “best” person.

Interviews are an opportunity to learn more about candidates than what you learned from their resumes or application forms. It’s an opportunity to collect evidence about candidates’ previous on-the-job experience. Have they done the right things in the right way for your workplace?

The questions you ask during interviews determine the quality of the information you gather. Before writing your questions, be clear about what you want to learn from the candidates’ answers.

Questions should be tailored to the vacancy to be filled and to the culture of your organization.

If you ask questions because they are the questions that everyone is asking, you can be assured that those are the questions the candidates have prepared themselves to answer. You will learn little about candidates from their well-rehearsed answers. 

There are three considerations when deciding what you will ask about:

Your top performers—What do they do that makes them successful? Write and ask questions that require candidates to describe how they have responded to circumstances similar to what they will experience if hired. Do the candidates provide evidence of having responded as your top performers would respond?

Your organization’s values—What candidates have done previously tells you about their values related to integrity, collaboration, teamwork, customer services, etc. Ask questions to ascertain if the candidates’ past behaviour corresponds to how you would want them to perform. Has what they have done demonstrated that their integrity or commitment to collaboration aligns with that of your organization?

Your organization’s future—What skills, competencies and values are required of staff members who will help carry your organization to its desired future? Use interviews to determine if candidates possess what you will need from them to move your organization forward.

Use the following guidelines when writing interview questions:

Think past tense: Ask about what candidates have done, not what they will do. You want evidence of how they have acted, not speculation about what they might do. Keep in mind the principle of behaviour description interviews (BDI). It states that, “Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.” People tend to respond to situations in the same ways as they responded to similar circumstances in the past. Does what you hear from the candidate align with what you would expect top performers to do and the values of your organization? Begin your requests for information with phrases such as, “Describe a time when …” or “Recall when you were …”

Keep your questions short: Challenge yourself to write questions that could be tweeted, especially back when tweets were limited to just 140 characters. The longer the question, the more likely you are to provide hints about how you want it answered. Candidates will listen to interviewers’ words for hints about what they want to hear. The more talkative interviewers are, the less effective they become.

Be prepared to ask followup questions: Probe to learn more. The more you learn about candidates, the better prepared you are to decide who is the right person to hire. Ask when and where what they describe occurred. Encourage them with “tell me more.” Seek clarification when required. Point out inconsistencies.

Plan how you will assess candidates: Create an assessment tool that consists of a rubric against which you assess candidates. In this way, you will be prepared to compare candidates against standards you established prior to the interview and not to each other.

Prepare to take notes: Create a note-taking form that includes your initial request for information, followup questions and the assessment rubric. 

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Participants in Interview Right to Hire Right workshops will have opportunities to craft and receive feedback on questions they can use the next time they have a vacancy to file. Contact Nelson to schedule a workshop for your leadership team (nmscott@telus.net or 780-232-3828).

Are You Being Fooled by the People You Interview?

The group of six women at the nearby table in my favourite coffee shop were obviously in high spirits. Loud. Each excitedly speaking over the words of the others. An abundance of laughter.

It was evident that most were recent university graduates who were looking for their first jobs. They regaled each other with tales of their interview experiences, particularly how each had attempted to fool interviewers into believing that she was the right person to hire.

The loudest burst of laughter came when one recalled what she did when asked, “Where do you expect to be in five years?”

“I lied!”

While lying to potential employers is not a practice I condone, it’s not a surprise that it happens. Most people looking for employment search the Internet, attend workshops and scan books on how to conduct a successful job search. 

The wide availability of such resources is why most job seekers are better prepared for interviews than the people who will be asking the questions.

Websites, training and books all include suggestions on how best to respond to common interview questions, such as about the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, why the interviewer should hire them, and career plans (“Where do you expect to be in five years?”).

These are the types of questions I had in mind when I included “asking the wrong questions” in my list of 13 reasons managers are “unlucky” when making hiring decisions. Asking these questions provides opportunities for candidates to recite the words they practised in anticipation of being asked the question. Settling for those well-rehearsed answers is another reason that managers make poor hiring decisions.

Those responses fail to yield valuable information on which to base hiring decisions. There is no evidence of what the candidate has done in previous jobs. Past performance may be the best predictor of future performance, but if you learn nothing about what they have done previously it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do if hired.

When participants in my Interview Right to Hire Right workshops argue that asking about where the candidate expects to be in five years results in useful information about the candidates, I suggest that if they feel they must ask about career plans they should ask a followup question: “What steps have you taken toward reaching your career goal?”

If they have done nothing to move them closer to their goal, does that goal really exist? Or are they just responding to your question in the way they learned to respond during a workshop on conducting a job search? Are they lying in hope of fooling you into believing that they are the right person to hire?

The old saying is, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” 

And if they fool you trice, it’s time to get some training in how to conduct interviews.

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I have previously written that a right time to ask about career goals is after people are hired, with the intent of providing learning opportunities that will help them grow professionally.

Better yet, link their career goals to how you recognize them for their successes and contributions. In my new book, Thanks, Again! More Simple, Inexpensive Ways for Busy Leaders to Recognize Staff Theme #10: Linking Staff Recognition to Career Goals suggests 24 ways to do this.