You Weren’t Born With Those Opinions

Doing a quick search in Google for “common interview questions and answers” will yield you 25,100,000 results.

I’m not sure what’s more surprising: the results or the questions that people typically ask in an interview?!

A few years ago, I had the unique opportunity to join an organization called EO.  One of the first things they require you to do upon joining is go through a full day of “Forum Training” in which you get interested to a bunch of fellow Entrepreneurs and you also learn how to no longer offer opinions or advice.  It really messes with your head – even today, after 5 years of practicing, I still find myself struggling to avoid hearing a challenge a fellow member is having and not offer feedback based on my opinions.  As a society it’s present in our lives from the moment we can crawl and reach out for things like power outlets, hot stoves, etc.  ”Don’t touch that!” we yell as parents.  Yet, as our children get older and ask, “Why not, Daddy?” it’s sometimes hard to justify why we told them not to do something.

Instead of Advice or Opinions, EO encourages you to abide by something called “Gestalt Protocol“.  A quick review of Wikipedia will tell you that Gestalt Therapy:

…focuses more on process (what is happening) than content (what is being discussed). The emphasis is on what is being done, thought and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be.

Gestalt therapy is a method of awareness, by which perceiving, feeling, and acting are understood to be separate from interpreting, explaining and judging using old attitudes. This distinction between direct experience and indirect or secondary interpretation is developed in the process of therapy.

Put more simply, by sharing my experiences and how I reacted to a situation that previously happened to me is much more valuable to a colleague than what I would do if I were in their shoes at that moment.  In other words: opinions are worthless.

Mary Schmich wrote an OpEd piece in the mid-90’s titled “Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted On The Young”.  In that was a very appropriate quote:

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

To bring this idea back to the focus of this blog, how to help you HIRE BETTER, I’d offer the following random questions from that Google Search of 25,100,000 results:

1. What’s your biggest weakness?
2. What motivates you to do a good job?
3. How are you when you’re working under pressure?
4. Are you a team player?
5. How long would you expect to work for us if hired?

Can you guess the common theme in every one of those questions?

The answer: EVERY ONE OF THEM CAN BE ANSWERED WITH AN OPINION

One of the ways that we’ve made our process so consistent and effective is that we don’t allow people to share their opinions in interviews.  Opinions in an interview are, simply, worthless.  As a hiring manager you’ll find that you’ll have a LOT more success if you are asking questions that require someone to share with you how they behaved in a situation.  We actually use a lot of the questions from the book Topgrading to assist in our evaluation of talent.  Here are some examples:

1. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you have made in the past year?
2. Describe a situation or two in which the pressures to compromise your integrity were the strongest you have ever felt.
3. What are examples of circumstances in which you were expected to do a certain thing and, on your own, went beyond the call of duty?
4. Describe a complex challenge you have had coordinating a project.
5. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline?

Upon review, what do all of these questions have in common?

They require the candidate to answer based on their experiences.

The Bottom Line: if you’re asking questions in an interview that allow for someone to offer their opinion, there’s a high likelihood that they’ve been to a lot of the 25,100,000 websites that Google returns when you go hunting for common interview questions and how to answer them so you sound like a superstar.  But for job-seekers, there isn’t a single website they can go to that will give them the answer to a question that requires them to share their past experiences.

While there are a lot of people who will argue that past experience is NOT the greatest indicator of future success, you, as a hiring manager, often have the choice of either relying on those past experiences or listening to someone’s rehearsed answers and opinions instead.

Tags: A-Players, advice, Advice is a form of nostalgia, behavioral-based, Brad Smart, career history, chris mursau, EO, hire better, hiring manager, Interview, Scorecard, smarttopgrading, talent acquisition, Topgrading, topgrading methodology