Vested in the interview
In fact, Bryant Howroyd’s practice is to ask just one question, and then immediately throw the ball to the job seeker. Bryant Howroyd’s first question, after greeting the job seeker, is:
What is your understanding of our meeting today?
How’s that for turning the interview topsy-turvy?
But Bryant Howroyd understands she can tell more from candidates by the quality of their questions than by the quality of their answers. So the next instruction is:
I would now like you to ask me seven questions.
Depending on the quality of the applicant’s response to the first query, Bryant Howroyd invites the applicant to ask her from three to seven specific questions. The higher her initial estimation of the applicant, the more questions she requests. What’s more, Bryant Howroyd gives the applicant permission to ask her any questions at all. No limits. And then she listens. “I learn a lot more about people by allowing them to ask me what they want to know than by having them tell me what they think I want to know,” she says. True, the hiring company ultimately selects the applicant, but “the applicants I most admire insist on being full partners in the selection process,” she says. Now, are you really ready for an interview with Janice Bryant
Howroyd? Robin Upton is a career coach at Bernard Haldane Associates, the largest career management firm in the United States. Based in the firm’s office in Dallas, Texas, Upton coaches her candidates to ask two questions of the hiring manager. The first question is:
Now that we have talked about my qualifications, do you have any concerns about me fulfilling the responsibilities of this position?
Does it seem counterintuitive to ask the interviewer to articulate his or her concerns? Many candidates think so. But they are being shortsighted, Upton argues. Once objections are stated, the candidate can usually address them in a way that is satisfactory. Unstated objections will doom the candidate every time. Upton’s second question is:
As my direct report in this position, what are the three top priorities you would first like to see accomplished?
This question, she says, effectively determines the hot buttons of the hiring manager, demonstrates the candidate’s understanding that every hiring manager has priorities, and underscores the candidate’s commitment to action by the final word in the question. Remember, “accomplish” is a term dear to the heart of every hiring manager.
If you don’t ask questions in the interview, many recruiters will wonder if you will avoid asking questions on the job. “If I set up a scenario for a technical candidate, and they don’t ask qualifying questions, I really wonder if that is how they would approach an application development project,” says Kathi Jones, director of Employee Central at Aventail, a Seattle-based provider of extranet services. “Are they letting ego get in the way of asking the hard questions? Do they play on a team or play against the team? I think you can learn as much from someone’s questions and their thought process as you can from the answers,” she adds.
Here’s another wrinkle. Recruiters expect candidates to ask enough questions to form an opinion about whether they want the job or not. If you don’t ask enough questions, recruiters who may otherwise be willing to make you an offer may nevertheless reject you because they have no confidence you know what you would be getting into. “At the end of the day, as the interviewer, I need to feel satisfied that the candidate has enough information on which to make a decision in case I make an offer,” says Richard Kathnelson, VP of human resources at Syndesis, Inc., in Ontario, Canada. Open-ended questions that generate information-rich answers signal to Kathnelson that he is talking to a resourceful candidate who knows how to make informed decisions, a skill vital to any job.