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Keeping The Guy With Red Pants Out
By Ron | November 11, 2008
By the way, I have nothing against red pants. The bad hire just happened to be wearing red pants to his interview that day. We hired Mr. RP prior to the advent of Behavioral Interviewing. Today I would have used this technique to screen him out.
What I have done since is to construct Behavioral Interviewing questions not only for the technical aspects of the job itself, but also to address the culture of the organization. So, first of all, I had to have a good understanding of the culture and the desired culture. The latter is more important because we want to hire people who are going to take us forward. Let’s say that our mythical company has decided that the values of customer satisfaction, teamwork and being positive are very important to our success. I would then create interview questions accordingly:
“Give me three examples when you exceeded your customer’s expectations.”
“Tell me about a time when you went out of your way to help out in another department.”
“Describe situations where you were able to keep your team motivated even during your company’s downturn.”
I have asked these types of questions and followed up with more questions to get at whether my candidates mirrored our values and culture and I have found them very helpful in screening out the Red Pants applicants from getting on our payroll and you can to.
Topics: HR |