HR must ditch robotic interview scripts

Generic rehearsed questions receive generic rehearsed answers, which don’t do either side justice. It’s time for employers to learn to ask better questions to receive better answers, writes Sue Parker.

The hiring advice ecosystem has it backwards: Google and LinkedIn are saturated with advice on how candidates should answer standard interview questions.

Job interviews are quite absurd and ironic in the corporate, private, accounting, and legal sectors if you think about it.

Both sides enter an interview seeking to learn about each other in the spirit of honesty and mutual benefit.

And yet, what is learnt is often quite filtered and miles away from full disclosure and transparency on both sides of the table. After 20 years in recruitment and job search and career coaching, I am putting up the clarion call for common sense over nonsense.

What should be a direct and robust discussion is generally robotic and jam-packed with embellishments, tangents, egos, and irrelevancies. Honesty is curtailed, interrogations strutted, critical information omitted, and ignorance, rigidity, and arrogance suck the oxygen and humanity out of the room.

Previous PWC research found that nearly one in four employees leave their jobs within the first 12 months. The cost of this turnover in Australia was estimated at $3.8 billion in lost productivity and $385 million in avoidable recruitment costs. So clearly, interviewing processes need an urgent shake-up.

Just like a Shakespearean play, candidates and employers and recruiters have a part foisted upon them entering the interview stage with a given character, costume, and mask.

Well-rehearsed, inane, and trite questions and lines are memorised, and tick-and-flick note pads are affixed as stage props. Improvisation isn’t encouraged, and without agile ad-libbing training, the actors just don’t know how to flip the play around to suit different audiences.

Interviewers ask the same well-studied hackneyed questions, and interviewees answer with the same well-studied hackneyed responses.

The Google highway is filled with a plethora of articles on how candidates should answer difficult interview questions and lists of questions HR, recruiters and hiring managers should ask.

Even when an unusual question is thrown in the mix, it is generally irrelevant to the job and culture. Really, what does the type of bottle, animal, or mountain you resemble have to do with anything?

It’s scary that some companies consider such frivolous questions useful in their cultural analysis.

Uncovering who people are behind their masks is a very special skill. It’s more aligned to investigative journalism than HR. Andrew Denton was a master of having guests share more information than they intended in his acclaimed Enough Rope series.

Behavioural question techniques (CAR = context, action, result) have been the interviewing approach for over 20 years, and the ideology is sound in part. While CAR should still be a component of the interview framework, it needs to move away from full reliance.

There are significant risk levels for inaccurate and exaggerated answers due to well-rehearsed and often plagiarised responses. All that glitters is not always gold, and a confident rehearsed interview performance does not always coincide with expertise on the job,

Role plays, hypothetical skills activities, casual catch-ups and demonstrating competencies and attributes in agile and malleable situations can provide stronger indicators.

Questions are the answers when framed and given at the right time in the right way with the intent of transparency. The below tips will shift the generic:

How to go off-script during an interview:

1. DO – Firstly and most importantly reset the mindset from a candidate-versus-employer interview to a new business meeting between equals.

2. DON’T – ask the vague “Tell me about yourself” or “Where do you want to be in five years” nonsense-type questions. Reframe them to exactly what you would like to know – i.e.: “Tell me about your last few work experience” or “Tell me about your current career objectives”. Or, what elements of your job now can you see as still important in a few years? What or how do you see changing career direction in the coming years (this is a very clever way to understand motivators)? Every interviewer wants to hear different things, and candidates are not mind readers. Not every person is in sales or an extrovert, so be fair.

3. DO – encourage an environment of storytelling versus rigid tick-and-flick Q&A.

4. DO – Ask, “what would you love to learn more about?” Ditch the pathetic “what are your major weaknesses?” No amount of justification, reassurance or rationalisation will make it logical. There are just far better ways to determine EQ and past triumphs over adversity examples.

5. DO – Flip the last question of “do you have any initial questions or concerns?” to the front of the interview. Answers will steer the interview into a more robust and purposeful exercise IF candidates have taken the time to do their research. If they haven’t, why then spend a full one hour or so with someone who is disengaged? Preparation and research is always a two-way street. And, of course, the question can be asked again at the end.

6. DO – Offer a compliment to the candidate when they arrive – this can change the dynamic of stiff conversations.

7. DO – Give candidates permission to be “real”. State upfront that no one or company is perfect (i.e., ditch the ego) and that you want to have a real human chat. And truly believe it yourself – don’t just say it.

8. DO – Ask, “how would you handle XYZ if it happened?” (Versus: how did you handle XYX in the past?) Hypothetical “would” questions really show true competencies that cannot be rehearsed.

9. DO – Discuss the biggest issue your staff and business face now relative to the job and culture. Be transparent, not just the PR silver lining rhetoric.

10. DO – Take some interview conversations out into casual settings. A drink, bite to eat or coffee in a bright cheery environment will change the energy. Try these techniques, and I promise that the results will surprise you.

After running a media recruitment agency for 11 years, I very rarely got it wrong (hey, I am human, after all), and my clients had exceptionally high staff retention rates.

Are you brave and confident enough to go off-script and interview differently?

Sue Parker is the owner of DARE Group Australia and a communications, job search and career specialist.