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A Dozen or So Different Ways to Ask the One-Question Interview

Lou Adler, April 2, 2008

Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Newsletter

Early in my search career I realized that many of my clients weren’t very good at evaluating candidates. This made me have to find more candidates than necessary to complete most searches. To minimize this wasted effort, I created the one-question Performance-based Hiring^SM interview, primarily to better defend my candidates from weak interviewers. Once I became proficient with the technique, I started training my clients how to use it. This helped prevent good candidates from being excluded due to bad interviewing, and required fewer candidates to be seen on each assignment. Here’s how the process works:

» Continue reading "A Dozen or So Different Ways to Ask the One-Question Interview"

How to Interview Top Performers

Lou Adler, March 14, 2008

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing

Top people cannot be interviewed the same way as everyone else. Although most recruiters and hiring managers know this, few know how to do it. It's not about selling the job, charming the person, and over-talking. It's about using the interview to get the candidate to sell you.

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Great Active Candidate Sourcing Ideas

Lou Adler, February 20, 2008

Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Newsletter

There are some top-notch, fully-employed people who sometimes voluntarily seek out new career opportunities. Since they’re fully-employed and top-notch they don’t expend too much effort in looking for something else. When they get itchy or at the first hint of trouble they’ll first start networking with friends and former associates. Then they’ll contact a recruiter or two. Then they’ll probably Google for jobs (e.g., searching on the job title and a location) and check out some specialty or niche job boards. If nothing develops from these sources, they’ll probably look at the career websites of some highly regarded companies. As a last resort, they’ll check out the major boards.

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Inside the Mind of the Top Performer - Part I

Lou Adler, January 9, 2008

Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Negotiating, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

Top performers are different than average performers both on the job and how they look for a new one. Simply defined, a top performer is a person who consistently exceeds expectations. While you might be able to determine a person's potential to be a top performer in 30 days or so, it takes at least a few months to determine if a person is a top performer. This has to do with motivation, team skills, and the consistent achievement of results. For a variety of reasons, just because a person can do the work, it doesn't mean the person will do the work. Generally speaking, if a top person takes a great job that perfectly fits his or her needs and aspirations, it's unlikely the person would even consider changing jobs in the first year or so. The person is typically on a steep learning curve, making an impact, and highly satisfied with the current work and the potential future opportunities.

» Continue reading "Inside the Mind of the Top Performer - Part I"

Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments

Lou Adler, December 19, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I wrote a version of this article for ERE in April 2007. It seemed worthy of repeating as a year-end reminder of the critical role that recruiters need to play to ensure that bad decisions don't preclude the best person from getting hired. As you'll find out, the key point of the article is that good candidates, who we spent a great deal of time developing, can often be lost for easily preventable reasons. Setting up some process or check-point can prevent the problem from arising in the first place. If this isn't possible, you need to have some counter-measures ready to employ to mitigate any problems that do arise.

» Continue reading "Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments"

12 Great Sourcing Gifts for the Holiday Season

Lou Adler, December 5, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

If you want to generate one great candidate day after day after day, follow my 12 golden rules for sourcing the best. These are this year's stocking stuffers whether you're hiring active or passive candidates.

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10 Steps to Increase Interviewing Accuracy into the 90% Range

Lou Adler, November 30, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Networking, Recruiting

There are two huge problems when hiring is viewed as an end-to-end process. The first one involves sourcing. Most companies are terrible when it comes to advertising, recruiting, and attracting the best. Of course, as a recruiter, how I make my money is by finding top people that others can't. And, in today's Internet age, this is actually quite easy. However, this is a big waste of time if you or your hiring managers don't know how to accurately assess candidate competency.

» Continue reading "10 Steps to Increase Interviewing Accuracy into the 90% Range"

The One Question Interview Challenge

Bryan Johanson, November 7, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles

Two months ago I gave a presentation to a room full of HR managers and executives from an engineering company in Omaha, Nebraska. After the presentation I had several conversations about their hiring challenges with individual managers. I ended up giving three people copies of the audio CD, "The One Question Interview," with the challenge that they use this approach on their next big hire and report back on their results. Last Thursday I received the following voice message from John Martin of Cascade Engineering. Here's what he had to say:

» Continue reading "The One Question Interview Challenge"

The Secrets of Top Recruiters Finally Revealed

Lou Adler, October 31, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

I'm very proud of the fact that I've helped hundreds (maybe thousands) of recruiters in the U.S. and around the world increase their monthly placement rate by 50-100% and in some cases much more. As part of our planning for our 2008 "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent" tour, I've put together my list of "recruiter essentials" we'll cover during the workshop. These are the secrets that every top recruiter follows in order to maximize their placement rate. [FYI: We've incorporated these same points into our final Recruiter Boot Camp Online program for this year (the four-part course starts Nov. 2, 2007) and our San Jose LIVE: Performance-based Hiring Tour 2007 event on December 5, 2007.] While there are about 20 key techniques we teach during the workshop, in my opinion the following 10 techniques represent the difference between average and great recruiter performance:

» Continue reading "The Secrets of Top Recruiters Finally Revealed"

Compared to What?

Kathy Barton, August 30, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I spent the first half of the '90s working at GE. This was in Jack Welch's heyday: best practices, work-out, and management course from Harvard professors at the training center at Croton-on-Hudson (affectionately referred to as Camp GE.) It was a great experience, but there were a few things about GE's personnel policies that didn't really make sense. One of these was what we called the 10-80-10 policy.

» Continue reading "Compared to What?"

Are You Masking Your Hiring Process Problems with the Wrong Solutions?

Lou Adler, August 23, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Just about every corporate recruiter has too many requisitions to handle as effectively as possible. The problem is magnified when good candidates get excluded for dumb and preventable reasons, generally weak interviewing skills on the part of the hiring manager or a candidate who wasn't at his or her best. Sometimes good candidates are excluded before they're even seen because they don't have exactly the right background. Sometimes good candidates pull themselves out to of the process because the job doesn't seem interesting or the candidate didn't like the hiring manager. Few companies address these problems directly--instead they avoid them, focusing most of their energy and resources on hiring more recruiters or developing new sourcing ideas. This is comparable to buying more raw materials than necessary for a factory that has an excessive scrap rate rather than fixing the scrap problem.

» Continue reading "Are You Masking Your Hiring Process Problems with the Wrong Solutions?"

Unmasking the Well-Prepared Candidate

Bryan Johanson, August 17, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

It's back-to-school week here in Colorado, so my eight children are beginning yet another year of school. It's always interesting to me to gauge their reactions to their new teachers. They form their impressions very early, and some of those impressions are negative. Last night my son told me about his new sixth grade math teacher from you-know-where. "Oh dad, she is absolutely awful! She's extremely strict, she doesn't allow talking in class, and home work has to be in on time. If it's a minute late you get zero credit. She's way too serious, no fun, and she's the hardest, worst teacher in the school. Can you help me transfer out of her class?" We've all had teachers like this one, but what's interesting to me is that as you go through this process over and over with so many kids, you realize that the first day of school is very much contrived. It's a huge multi-act play. Every teacher has on his/her game face. Some try to scare the kids into submission while others try to win the students over by being open and friendly. Each has their own strategy and it's all carefully orchestrated to set the stage for the coming year. In two or three weeks once the impact of the teachers' "first day of school" speeches wear off, I'll start to get the "real" scoop. Sometimes the toughest teacher becomes my child's favorite. What I really care about is simply their ability to teach my children their subjects well.

» Continue reading "Unmasking the Well-Prepared Candidate"

Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy

Lou Adler, June 21, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training

If you want to increase assessment accuracy and save time, conduct more panel interviews. These are much better than an all-day series of one-on-one 45-60-minute interviews. When organized properly, panel interviews help everybody involved learn more about the candidate, even weaker interviewers, if they just observe. Panel interviews also provide a great means for subordinates to get involved in the hiring process. Subordinates should never conduct one-on-one interviews, since they usually are trying to work for someone they like, so they focus on the wrong issues. For another, they're rarely objective, and worse, many of them are weak interviewers. A panel interview overcomes all of these problems. However, I didn't always believe this strongly that panel interviews were that good of an idea.

» Continue reading "Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy"

Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection

Lou Adler, June 8, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I learned to become a better interviewer than my clients for only one reason: to prevent good candidates from being excluded for bad reasons. Too many of my clients were assessing candidates improperly, either overvaluing first impressions or using some narrow range of skills to determine competency.

» Continue reading "Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection"

The Elements of Applicant Control

Lou Adler, May 25, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing

On January 3, 1978, I became a contingency recruiter working for a small, highly regarded, two-person search firm (I was number three). This was a pretty odd job to take at the time, since I voluntarily left my spot as VP and GM for a 300-person automotive parts manufacturing company. Somehow, working 80 hours per week didn't seem worth it.

» Continue reading "The Elements of Applicant Control"

Hot Tip #8 - Don't Get Snowed by Generalities

Lou Adler, April 17, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Recruiter Hot Tips

I advocate the use of a one-question performance-based interview. The essence of this is to ask candidates to describe significant projects followed-up by detailed fact-finding. If you do this type of questioning for 3-4 projects over 3-10 years you'll obtain a trend line of performance. Then compare these accomplishments to the performance profile you prepared when you took the assignment to assess job fit. The key to success here is to get details about each accomplishment, not accepting the candidate's initial responses at face value. An example best illustrates this point.

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What You Absolutely Need to Know About e-Learning

Jason Weseman, September 6, 2006

Topics: Interview Training, Newsletter, Recruiter Training

Congratulations! You made it this far without being scared off by the title of this article! You were able to get past your initial feelings of 1) "What am I going to do without my weekly dose of fabulous hiring tips?"; 2) "e-Learning? What does that have to do with my role as a recruiter?" and 3) "Why does Lou keep letting Jason write articles?" and are now ready to learn more about one of the most important aspects of training and development today.

» Continue reading "What You Absolutely Need to Know About e-Learning"

The 15-Minute Hiring Manager Selection Training Course

Lou Adler, March 16, 2006

Topics: Interview Training, Recruiter Training, Working With Hiring Managers

I was recently reminded of an old story from my pre-ERE days and heavy recruiting days. You might find it useful as you attempt to train your hiring manager clients to become better at defining their real job needs and assessing candidate competency.

» Continue reading "The 15-Minute Hiring Manager Selection Training Course"

My Favorite Interview Question

Lou Adler, August 23, 2001

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Interviewing

Let me describe the single best interview question of all time: "Can you please describe your most significant accomplishment?" It's a great way to start an interview. I spend about 10 minutes on this question, gaining insight in the results achieved, the environment, and the process used to achieve the results. I then repeat the question to gain broader insight into the trend of team and individual accomplishments and see how they relate to specific job needs.

» Continue reading "My Favorite Interview Question"

The Best Interview Question of All Time

Lou Adler, June 28, 2001

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Interviewing

Over the course of the past 20 years, I've been searching for - among other things - the single best question to ask in an interview. What I wanted to create was a One-Question Interview, a stand-alone query that would pierce through the veneer of generalizations, overcome typical candidate nervousness, minimize the impact of the candidate's personality on the interviewer, eliminate the exaggeration which many candidates adopt as an interviewing ploy and actually determine if the candidate is competent and motivated to do the work required. I also wanted this question to begin the recruiting process, convincing the candidate by the question itself that the person asking it was sophisticated and professional, and that the company involved was a great place to grow a career.

» Continue reading "The Best Interview Question of All Time"