Interviewing and hiring is hard. Knowing the right techniques to use can make it just a little bit easier.
You’re going to interview a candidate. You have one hour to get to know them, see what they’re capable of and determine if they’re going to fit into your team. How do you fit that into an hour? What questions do you ask to gauge their experience, their personality?
What NOT to do…
In the interviews I’m in, I’m often not alone. I’ll either have someone from HR or a recruiter in the room, or I’ll be there with the hiring manager. The mistake I see over and over is asking hypothetical question, e.g. “Our team often has projects with challenging timelines. How would you deal with such a project?”. More often than not, you’ll get a textbook answer. “Let’s make sure we have a very solid plan upfront”. “I will be strict with our risk and issue tracking and reporting”. “I will be on top of the project team so I can quickly correct if we fall behind”. These textbook answers will tell you if the person knows theory, but these answers tell you nothing about how they will respond in real life.
Experience
My own experience in interviewing and hiring started some 15 years ago. When I worked for Accenture, one of my tasks as a manager was to interview new applicants. At the time, Accenture invested in an excellent course to prepare us for interviews. It was a 2-day course, which included theory, but also actors and mock interviews to conduct or observe. Key to the training was the STAR(S) technique, one that I still use to this day. Since my training, I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews and hired dozens of consultants, employees and contractors. I’ve used the method in every single interview.
The STAR(s) Framework
If you search the internet for the STAR framework, it’s often referred to as a method for candidates to answer questions. That works as well, but I really like to use it as an interviewer. Let’s start with the framework:
Situation: ask the candidate to describe a situation from their past where they’ve encountered a specific situation. For example: “Tell me about a project you’ve managed where you had very challenging timelines”. Let them describe the project to you and what its main challenges were.
Task: ask them to explain their role in the project, their responsibilities. Pay close attention to this one. Candidates frequently start to answer questions with “We…”, e.g. “we had this very challenging project” or “it was our responsibility to…”. You’re not hiring the rest of the project team, just this candidate (potentially). Keep asking until you understand exactly what their role in the project was. I also like to ask about key stakeholders and their role in the project, e.g. who did they report to and what was that person like. Or, who else was part of the project team?
Actions: next, ask the candidate which actions they took. How did they handle the situation?
Result: what was the result of the candidate’s actions? Did the project succeed?
Self-reflection: although not part of the original STAR model, it’s a question that I love to ask. No one is perfect. What did they learn from the project? What would they do different next time?
Red Flags
There are a couple of potential red flags in each of these steps to keep an eye on.
Situation: if the situation they describe is long ago (especially if more than 5 years), it’s not necessarily a reflection of how they’d respond today. Ask for a more recent example. If they don’t have one, it’s better to accept the fact that they don’t have an example and move on to your next question.
Task / Action: if they cannot explain their own role and actions (vs. the others), that’s a major red flag. In one interview, I pushed this to the point where I asked someone to create an orgchart of the team on a flip-over (a great test of presentation skills b.t.w.). The candidate still couldn’t clarify their role, and we decided not to hire them.
Result: is the result S.M.A.R.T.? Can they put numbers to the result, e.g. the project was over budget by 5%, or went 1 month over time.
Self-reflection: if they can’t answer this question, or they believe they did everything right, or if they can only blame others for what happened, that’s a clear red flag. No one is perfect, and a job done perfectly does not exist. Self-reflection is a key skill for any candidate you hire.
Recap
When interviewing, skip the hypothetical questions, unless you’re interested in getting text book answers. Use the STAR(s) model to inquire about actual situations the candidate encountered in the past. They’ll tell you more about the projects on the candidate’s CV, but more important, they tell you how the candidate responds in specific situations. They’re a much better prediction as to how they may respond in the future.
If you’ve tried the framework, let me know how it went!
In my next story, I’m going a bit deeper on the topic. What are the main topics to ask about when using the STAR(s) framework. If you haven’t already, subscribe below to receive it!