NEW YORK? The three primary strategies for hiring superstar employees include assessment, situational interviews and a background due diligence. In a previous article, we guided you through the importance of quantitative and qualitative assessments and their ability to measure a person?s skills, past performance, management style and cultural fit. Below we will continue our discussion to include situational interviews. Interviewing practices geared solely towards ?getting to know someone,? or ?predetermined questionnaires? are becoming obsolete. Research has shown that these interviewing techniques have little correlation in the success of selection decisions. These techniques lack congruence in determining job performance and compatibility. The most effective styles of interviewing depict a candidate?s past performance, for it is past performance that is the best predictor of future performance. An interviewing technique for bringing out one?s skills, past performance, management style and cultural fit is often referred to as situational or behavioral interviewing. This style forces the interviewer to ask job-related questions. Below are examples of some situational interviewer questions. 1. Describe situations during work, or other activities where you demonstrated leadership qualities and your ability to lead a group toward a common goal. 2. Give examples from work or community experiences that demonstrate your creativity. 3. Provide examples from past experiences that demonstrate your entrepreneurial side. 4. Describe circumstances that show your ability to work well within a team or independently. 5. What would you improve about yourself? Why? And how would you tackle that challenge of improving these areas? 6. Illustrate an instance when you made a sacrifice to achieve a work-related or personal goal. 7. Portray a time when you failed or failed to accomplish a goal you set for yourself. How did you handle your failure? Looking back, what would you do differently? In some instances, an entire interview might revolve around one job scenario or project. Making candidates qualify and quantify performance and results is crucial to situational interviews. It is also important that the interviewer be trained in these techniques and make candidates aware that the interview is going to be different. As a candidate preparing for the interview, be sure to keep in mind a few of the following tips: 1. Prepare examples and stories for all of the above examples. Painting a picture will provide the interviewer with the most information. A story sets the stage, demonstrates your pertinent skills and has a positive outcome, thus, showing how you solved a problem. 2. Practice describing your examples until they are fairly concise, approximately one to four minutes long. 3. A story can also combine work experience with non-work experience, further demonstrating that you can use the skill in numerous situations. 4. A good story can also combine a distant experience with a recent experience, also illustrating that you have had such skills for a lengthy period of time. 5. Do your homework on the company, interviewer and job. 6. Offer a resume that is results-oriented and is accurate. Remember that it?s all about performance and managerial fit. Resumes are just words. They do not convey passion, style, or cultural compatibility. Competition today does not allow for inferior performance, so hire smart.
