A few days ago Mark Rogers, the UK General Manager for Apple Computers, told me that for a job at Apple and above Manager level there will be around eight interviews.

Actually this came as no surprise. The energy that Apple put into selecting the right individual for their senior appointments is indicative of the energy that they put into everything they do!

However, when mentioning this to some of my business friends, they thought this process too long and protracted and would take up too much valuable time. Yet my argument would be that it’s better to expend valuable time at the start of the process and to get it right than to have to waste it later in clearing up a mess!

This latest video may help you decide

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70% of graduate interviews now include a telephone interview and 42% of companies now use video conferencing interviews when seeking to hire senior executives.

These statistics came as no surprise to me but when a friend asked me for advice on both techniques I thought I would share the info with my blog followers. Here’s the first with ten tips on handling a telephone interview and within the next few days I’ll upload more tips on managing the video interview.

http:youtu.be/hihecyzGLzk

This week I’ve been talking to two businesses that are expanding about their interview programmes.

66% of hiring managers regret their decision
Both were surprised when I told them that 66% of hiring managers regret their interview based decisions. When you consider the vast sums of money that organisations invest in their recruitment process one has to wonder what’s wrong. The problem is that, despite some having very prescriptive systems, most companies interview and select their new hires very badly. In fact around 40% of new hires go on to fail to deliver the results anticipated.

Top talent walks away
The biggest problem is that many managers will hire on whether they like the person. Then again I know of some interviewers that like to place a lot of pressure on candidates. Only a desperate job hunter will put up with this technique and most “top talent” will simply walk away. The lesson here is that asking questions to make them squirm is ineffective and counter productive.

Future tense questions reveals capability more effectively
Then again most questions are “past tense” and historical questions and a well prepared candidate can shine.
I always suggest asking most quwestions in the future tense that include actions that they would use in the job on offer. It becomes easier to to assess capability for the job that needs doing.

Much, much more revealing
Posing a top talent candidate a real and actual business problem and holding a discussion and debate with them using a white board to record detail and thought processes will reveal much more about “thinking, compatability and ability” than just posing questions. It may take longer, it may be less structured than you currently use but it is also likely to be much, much more revealing.

I observed an interesting discussion between an HR Director and his team yesterday on the ethics and legal consequences of looking at social media pages of candidates as a part of employee selection. The discussion arose from the article in the Young Island Blog I had pointed out earlier.

Facebook was a particular area of discussion simply because many people are more relaxed over the content they post on their Facebook pages. Specifically, some employers are requesting applicants to provide access to their social media accounts as a condition of employment.

Prove they weren’t discriminated against
His comment to the team was, “I’m waiting for the first gay, Muslim or another religion where the candidate hears about an employer accessing their Facebook activity, then not getting the job and making the
employer prove in court that they were not discriminating against their sexual
orientation or religious beliefs when they failed to get the job”.

Examination question
Although this topic has been discussed ast great length on-line and in the media I’m not sure that there’s been a satisfactory conclusion. Doubtless it’s a question in some HR or Law examinations. Certainly the more I’ve thought about it the more complex the answer seems to be.

Any thoughts?

For some weeks I’ve been tweeting “Strange but true interview questions” that I’ve discovered. Interview questions such as “Why are manhole covers round?” and “If you were a salad, what type of salad dressing would you choose and why?”. Whenever I’ve asked interviewers the purpose of such questions the replies usually include “It brings some humour to the interview”, “I want to see if the candidate can think on their feet”. I’ve never been convinced by the answer.

An antidote to boredom
I was delighted to discover that Peter Honey the chartered psychologist and the founder of Peter Honey Publications Ltd agrees with me that such questions are a waste of time and could only be useful to someone trained in Psychology. In his article in People Management Peter states that It has nothing to do with assessing candidates; they have been invented
purely to entertain interviewers.They are an antidote to boredom and I must admit I totally agree with him and the reason that I’ve recommended that my clients don’t use such questions.

Interviews are stacked against interviewee
Peter considers that interviews are being stacked against interviewees who are not well turned out, have poor body
language, are not verbally fluent and who are too honest. This is
despite the fact that he or she might be perfectly capable of meeting
the demands of the job.
It is one of the reasons why my business Assimilating-Talent developed the “Interviewless Interview” process some years ago as a way of reducing prejudice and poor interview selection.

I’m not surprised that I’m often I get asked for my recommended replies to specific questions but this hides the real question I’m being posed. The real question is “How do I sound different, better and more attractive than the other candidates?”. Over this last week I’ve talked to three groups of people about how to prepare and shine at interviews.

Introductions first.
Yesterday I was talking to a university student that hopes to gain a placement at a large technology firm and defer the last year of his degree to gain experience in a job. I’m sure that he will do well but first he must pass a day long interview where he’s bound to have to introduce himself to a group of people.
 
Most introductions are either it’s too short such as “I’m an accountant” and gives no further information on expertise or capability or it results in a ramble of words that has little impact and even less meaning for the listener.
 
For real impact candidates need to develop a twenty to twenty five word description of yourself and your skills that you can memorise and deliver with confidence. The objective is to gain the listeners interest and engage in further conversation. It’s no different from the elevator pitch used by business people (too often very badly!)

Think through the questions you will be asked
Another group I was talking to were in sales and wanting to know how to look different. My advice was to write down the questions you expect to be asked and then ask a friend to ask them and then listen to your answer and make suggestions for improvement. Practice the answers time and again until they sound right to you and answers the underlying questions the interviewer is wanting to discover. (Many interview questions are wanting two or three points addressed)

What questions will you ask the interviewer?
This is an important area because it shows interest and reflects the research made into the future employer (you should have looked at and studied the corporate history, products and their prices and so on)
Consider asking questions on what the company would expect you to have contributed, learned and achieved by the end of the first year
  

Sales and Marketing interview questions
Have a look at my YouTube channel for further interview films

I’m having great fun collecting examples of “strange but true interview questions” and their answers. Some of which I’m posting onto Twitter for the enjoyment of my friends and followers.
One of my favourites is “If Aliens landed in your garden and offered you a job on their planet what job would it be?”.

Favourite interview answers
My favourite answer to the interview question “What’s your greatest weakness?” is still the candidate that responded “Kryptonite. I have yet to discover whether he (I presume it’s a he) got the job.

Other strange but true interview questions that caught my eye include:

• Why are manhole covers round?
• If you laid all the roads in the UK end to end, how many times round the world would they go?
• If you were a type of cheese, what cheese would you be?
• If you were a salad, what type of salad dressing would you choose?

Three Admirals
Another interview answer I like is for the selection board for the Royal Navy, made up of three retired Admirals, interviewing some school leavers. One candidate was asked to name three famous British Admirals. The answer came “Nelson, Drake… and I didn’t catch your name Sir?”
He didn’t get selected for insubordination which I think most unfair!

Over the past weeks I’ve been talking to various businesses about the strategies that they are developing for 2012 and beyond and in the light of continued hard times.

The one common factor in my discussions is that there seems to be a great emphasis on sales and sales team restructure to maintain growth. Identifying the successful sales team members isn’t difficult and identifying those that need replacing isn’t difficult either. The problem is that those at the top probably won’t be able to deliver more and those at the bottom are difficult to motivate.

Greatest potential growth
Possibly the greatest potential growth from a sales team will come from the average performers. That is those that are producing between 90% and 125% of their target on a regular basis. This is partly because this group tends to have more people in it than the top or the bottom and motivating them to produce more has the greatest potential for success.

Sales team restructure strategy
When developing strategies for a sales team restructure they should include changing territory, clients, working times, information and support given to the sales team and a good study of the recruitment process and criteria for those joining the team.

This video on sales and marketing interview questions might help

despite the high levels of unemployment many of the businesses that I talk to are finding difficulties in hiring gifted and talented people to join their teams.

This is backed up by the recent research from the CIPD talent planning survey 2011 that found that 52% of businesses are finding it difficult to fill vacant positions with the talent they need to do the job. The CBI suggests that more than half of their members aren’t confident of finding talent to meet their needs.

So what can a business do to find gifted employees?

1. Consider using job boards such as those on LinkedIn and Facebook
2. Consider using on-line groups and forums to say you are seeking talent
3. Ensure that you are looking for the talent that will match the business strategy
4. Consider internal candidates
5. Consider if the job, benefits and profile of your business will attract the very best and if not then restructure the position so that it will be attractive to the talent you are looking for
6. Calculate your talent needs for the present, medium and long-term and create strategies to deliver these
7. Don’t be too rigid in recruiting the “very best”. The perfect employee doesn’t exist. But make sure you capture the “best available” before your competitors.

Each week I like to take time to catch up on research reading. So last night I reread Anne Fisher’s article in FORTUNE/CNN Where she talks about interviewers resorting to desperate
measures in their efforts to narrow the field of candidates. It strikes me that interviewers and company’s will experiment with interview techniques too often and without understanding what they will do with the answers. Like having too many interviews or a number of personality tests.

Silly Questions
Anyway, back to the silly questions. In most
cases the interviewers were reported to be more interested in how candidates responded, identified their thought processes and seeing if they kept their cool. Some of the questions, however, are truly bizarre!
Here’s three of my favourites:

“Using a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself on how weird you are.” Capital One (COF)

“Explain quantum electrodynamics in two minutes, starting now.” Intel (INTC)

“How many balloons would fit in this room?”  PricewaterhouseCoopers

Candidates questions
What would the reaction be, I wonder, if the tables were turned and candidates started to do the same? With that in mind:
What would be the questions you might be tempted to ask an interviewer for a job?