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

By Lou Adler, April 2, 2008

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:

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First ask the candidate to describe his or her most significant major accomplishment. Then ask the following follow-up questions to better understand the person's actual role and the significance of the accomplishment:

1. When did it happen and how long did it take to finish?
2. What was your specific role and who was on the team? As part of this please draw a work chart describing the people you worked for and those who worked for you. Also describe those you worked with, inside and outside your department or company.
3. Describe the environment and culture. I'd like to know how decisions were made, the systems you used, how your boss managed the team, and what you liked and didn't like.
4. What was the actual impact you made? Please provide specific details and facts.
5. What were the 2-3 biggest challenges you faced on this project? Walk me though step-by-step how you handled the most difficult one.
6. Describe the technical skills you used and those you learned. Give me some examples of how you applied these.
7. Describe how you influenced others to overcome differences of opinion and how others influenced you.
8. How did you boss manage you on this project? Is this how you like to be managed?
9. Give me 2-3 examples of initiative, or where you went the extra mile, or where you exceeded expectations.
10. What did you like most and least about this project?
11. Give me a specific example of the biggest problem you had to solve, whether it was handling something technical, a team issue, or meeting a tough schedule.
12. Describe the planning process you used, and did you achieve the plan?
13. How did you grow, change or develop as a person?
14. Describe the recognition you received.

While this type of question takes a least 15 minutes, it provides the interviewer great insight regarding the candidate's abilities to handle significant accomplishments. If the accomplishment is comparable to real job needs, all the better. However, this type of questioning can be even more valuable by using the same questioning and fact-finding approach for different accomplishments spread out over different periods of time. By repeating the question for different accomplishments, the interviewer can quickly observe the person's consistency, performance, and growth over time.

To increase assessment accuracy, have other interviewers use the same questioning process, but have them focus on different job factors and time frames. For example, one interviewer can focus on team accomplishments, another on technical accomplishments, while a third focuses on both from earlier jobs. Organized properly, this segmenting process provides the hiring team a balance of detailed information to better predict the candidate's competency and motivation to handle all job needs. (Here's a formal debriefing form we use to gather and evaluate this information.)

Here are some other ways to re-phrase the most significant accomplishment question. Remember to follow up each accomplishment with the fact-finding techniques above.

1. (Review the candidate's resume and pick a project that occurred before or after the one initially described.) Please tell me about your most significant accomplishment when you were at (company).
2. Why did (company) hire you? Could you describe what you accomplished there and if you were successful?
3. Please describe your most significant team accomplishment, where you were a key member of the team.
4. Please describe your most significant management accomplishment, where you built and managed the team to achieve a significant task.
5. Please tell me about the biggest project you've handled where you had the least amount of experience or skills. This will help me understand how you've handled projects that were way over your head.
6. Describe the biggest mistake you've ever made?
7. Describe your most significant individual contributor project where you really had to demonstrate the depth of your technical or intellectual expertise.
8. Tell me about an accomplishment where you took on a major leadership role, defining the project, getting the resources, and successfully completing the task.

Rather than spend a lot of time describing the job, it's better to break the job into smaller two-minute sound bites, and use these as introductory statements to the accomplishment questions. Here are some examples:

1. One of the major objectives for this position is to accomplish (describe the specific task). Could you please tell me about your most significant comparable accomplishment?
2. Part of this job involves dealing with a broad range of people in different functions and management levels. Some of these people include (describe the types of people involved) and the interaction involves working on (describe the tasks). Please tell me about a major team accomplishment the best represents working with this type of group.
3. A typical problem you'd be expected to handle on this job is (describe a common, but significant problem). Please describe something you've handled that best compares with this type of issue.
4. A specific challenge we're now addressing on the job is (describe). Please tell me about something you've done that is most similar to this.

You can use this same questioning and fact-finding technique to recruit the candidate using growth and challenge, rather than compensation, as the primary benefit. During the questioning, look for weaknesses or gaps in the candidate's background that your position fills. For example, if the person has not managed as big a team, ask something like this:

This position has a staff of 10 people through two supervisors. Since you've only managed six people directly, the job might be a bit of a stretch management-wise. To determine if the gap isn't too wide, please tell me about how you built and developed your team and how you organized and tracked their activities and performance.

This technique is called the push-away, and if the candidate is strong, she'll attempt to convince you why she's competent. This is a powerful recruiting technique that can be used to demonstrate that the gaps represent growth opportunities. These could cover the gamut of skills including technical, decision-making, managing, problem-solving, and team building. As long as the gaps aren't too big, it forces the candidate to sell to you, and in the process sell herself on the merits of the job. This helps shifts the decision to accept the offer based more on the opportunity it represents, rather than the compensation.

Providing the evidence needed to convince a client to meet a candidate who doesn't quite fit the job description is another benefit for the recruiter. As part of this, have your candidate prepare a short half-page write-up describing two major accomplishments. Submit this along with the candidate's resume. Then ask your client to review the accomplishments early in the interview. This will force the interviewer to focus on substantive performance-based issues that directly relate to real job needs.

The one-question performance-based interview and its variations make a powerful interviewing and recruiting technique. It's easy to learn and use, and easy to train others. When the findings from the hiring team are collected in a formal debriefing process, it does a far better job of accurately predicting on-the-job success than any other interviewing system. Perhaps even more importantly, it begins the recruiting process without the interviewer or recruiter having to oversell. Once you start using this process, and then getting your clients to use it, don't be surprised if you start making more placements with fewer candidates.