8/14/2019 Interviewing Interviewing Skills -Hiring Winners Part Two - Chandramowly

1/1

It was late 60s.Mr YB wasgetting ready for his first

job interview withKannan Devan TeaCompany (now Tata Tea).

He was called a day prior to theappointed date and as instruct-ed, the 18 year old wore a tie,long suit and sat in the mensbar at High Range Club wherecandidates were tested forsocial fitment. Candidates wereasked what they would like todrink and when it was his turn,he said he would have a softdrink. People looked at him

with different expression andsmile and the bar man with pity.

There came a heard loudHello there. YB looked up tosee a florid red face in a bodywithout neck and a large smilethat said, So you dont drink,eh? YB smiled and nodded.Tell me something young fel-low, he said, Do you playcricket?YB said that he did butother people who played withhim wished that he didnt.

Then he asked, Are you aMason? At the time, not beingaware of the Free MasonsSociety, YB thought it was about

building walls and said No. Imnot. He looked at YB up anddown with a funeral expressionon his face and said, You dontdrink, you dont play cricketand you are not a Mason. Boy!You dont have a chance

Did they select YB? MirzaYawar Baig narrates such strik-ing facts to bring out the quali-ties, characteristics, behav-iours, values and beliefs thatensure to hire winners. Now wego on to our silent dialogue.

Q uest ion: Yawarji, a re there no links between person-ality factors and perform-ance? To predict peoples

behaviour, dont we need to

know what motivates themand what they want out oflife?

Answer: Mowly, as youknow,curre nt or past behaviouris better predictor of futurebehaviour than any abstracttrait or personality description.For example, what you want outof life does not typically relateto the competencies that areimportant for a particular job.

Asking 'Good' Questions

Question: Yawar, in a hir-ing interview asking a good

question is important.Competency based interviewsin fact requires one to preparequestions before hand. Howshould an interviewer learnto ask questions that will

yield sufficient data for accu-rate assessment of a person?

Answer: Interviewers mustremember that they are inter-viewers and not investigatingdetectives to triple up candi-dates or catch them in a lie.

They must first create anatmosphere of comfort andfrankness where they can mutu-ally assess for respective needs,

the candidates as a prospectiveemployee and interviewersown need as a prospectiveemployer.

Structured interviews probein to peoples experience withright questions, which bringsout what a candidate has donein the past and predict what hewill do in the future.

It is sufficient to understandthe displayed behaviour than tounderstand the basic reasonsfor it.If one gets angry it is indi-cated by the tone and the bodylanguage.

Interviewers need not go fora psychoanalysis to under-

stand what are the underlying

childhood experience for theanger.

Thats true. Interviewersmust be trained and madeaccountable for following astructured hiring process.

They must be aware of theenormous cost impact of wrong

hiring. Interestingly cost ofwrong hiring is a hidden costand is not calculated in mostorganisations. Wrong hiresbleed reputation, profitabilityand the organisational culture.

Another factor that is oftenignored is that most people hireless competent people thenthemselves as exceptional com-petence of others create anxietyin many managers.

Question: Sir, if managershire people better than them-selves, they would be underconstant pressure and find itdifficult to motivate high per-

formers.

Answer: True. But this pres-

sure is very good to have as itconsistently enhances the capa-bility of organisation. This iswhat I call creating positivestress by building-in internalmechanisms of discontent. Sohiring high performers is themost ef fective way.

Question: But, how do wedistinguish outstanding per-

formers from those who areaverage?

Answer: Hiring managersmust look for the evidencewhere a candidates perform-ance exceeds position require-ments. Find out whether he orshe takes initiative to transferknowledge and trains others.Get to know if he or she takesinitiative in identifying chal-lenging goals.

Discover if he or she thinksbeyond immediate job and seeknew business opportunities.Remember, winners attract peo-

ple like themselves. Losers do

the same.Question: Yawar, they say

hire for values and train forskills and it is better to hirea squirrel than training aduck to climb a tree. In your

practice of helping businessleaders develop a winning

culture, how do you look atwhat one needs to hire andwhat you can train-in?

Answer: Mowly, we all knowthat values are important.Values drive behaviour andbehaviour drives results. Sovalues must be hired afterensuring its actual practice. It isimportant to focus on values,beliefs and attitudes since it isextremely difficult to changethese by training.

It is simple to screen forthese and hire those who havethem already. All skills andsome attitudes such as cus-tomer focus or results orienta-

tion can be trained.

But the attitudes such ashunger to win or a constantself-improvement are difficultto train.

Hiring Template

Question: Yawar, in the

competency based interview-ing, we recommend develop-ing an assessment sheet whichcaptures the needed technicaland leadership competencies.

In your book, you suggest todevelop a specific template.

Answer: Yes. The HiringTemplate. Time spent creatinga useful template eliminates alot of wasted time in post inter-view aggravation. In its techni-cal part, the template mustanswer factors such as: Whatbasic skills?

What technical or functionalskills must be hired? Whatdegree, diploma or certifica-

tion? What are the expected per-

formance standards? What kindof previous experience expect-ed? The other part is the Valuestemplate, which reflects corevalues of company with opera-tive definitions for each value.Observable behaviours are stat-ed for each value for assess-

ment.Who are they?

A winner is the one whomeasures up to both technicaland values dimensions.

My thanks to Mirza YawarBaig for permitting me to reflecton this silent dialogue onHiring Winners. The bookalso has an interview guide,which helps us to build a struc-tured hiring process.

Key points

To summarise some keypoints of the guide, interview-ers must be clear about the oper-

ating definitions of their organ-isational values.nBesides reviewing the testresults if any, they must reviewthe resume and highlight thepoints they need to probe.nMost important is to set out aquality time to do justice to eachcandidate.nBefore starting the interview,it is suggested to plan the open-ing statement to set the stage formutual candor.nThe questions must be basedon required competencies speci-fied on the hiring templateandmust be open-ended.n

Facial expression must beneutral and friendly than overlyeffusive.nRelaxed posture,tone, speed ofspeech and accent are all-impor-tant.

Yawar thus cautions, At theend of the interview the peopleyou did not hire should leavewith a longing to work for you.

The author is former corporatevice president - HR and currentlyHRD and Leadership CompetencyBuilding Consultant. E-mail:

cmowly@hotmail.com

Looking beyond: How does one hire a winner?Values, characteristics and behavioursmust be hired than merely focusing onskills, which can be taught by training.Yawar Baigs, Hiring Winners overtlybrings out the techniques of effective

interviewing says M R Chandramowly.