A recent piece by Lou Adler originally appearing in LinkedIn shares a terrific resource for ensuring your interview process yields successful hires. Lou writes that by utilizing the “Discovery Interview Process” it’s important to “define your open jobs as a series of performance objectives and the process of finding and assessing people is not only easier but more accurate”.
Comparing a list of skills in a job description to a the qualifications of a candidate falls short of further analyzing attributes predictive of success.
The article states “Figuring out if your job meets all of these conditions involves a discovery process. The term relates to the needs analysis component of solution selling. This is the step in the sales process when the sales rep figures out the customer’s problem and based on this develops a custom solution. Here’s how this relates to the hiring.
Using the 5-Step Discovery Interview Process
- Prepare a performance-based job description. Before you even start looking for a candidate describe the 5-6 things the person needs to do to be considered successful. Start with an action verb for each objective, describe the task, the timeframe and some measure of success. You’ll be comparing the candidate’s past performance to this benchmark to determine competency, motivation and the career opportunity.
- Conduct a thorough work history review. As part of the work history review focus on why the person changed jobs and if the job change achieved the personal objective. Then look for formal recognition for doing a good job. Compare the reasons for changing jobs and the success achieved to what you need done. These should align closely. Specifically avoid candidates who have “Job Hopping Syndrome.”
- Ask the most significant accomplishment question. Describe each objective in the performance-based job description and ask the candidate to tell you what he/she accomplished that’s most comparable. The fact finding associated with this question is at the core of the discovery process. It uncovers where the candidate excels, what motivates the person to excel and if your open spot offers the 30% non-monetary increase. It takes about 20 minutes to do this properly for each objective.
- Ask the problem-solving question. Spend 20 minutes discussing the most important job-related problem the person will need to handle soon after starting. Don’t worry about the answer. Evaluate the person on the process used to figure out the cause of the problem, the clarifying questions asked and if the preliminary action plan is reasonable.
- Calculate the Job Fit Index to predict Quality of Hire. Based on the Discovery Interview described above you’ll be able to calculate the person’s Job Fit Index. This accurately predicts on-the-job success. As long as all of the factors shown are true the person hired will be a great hire. Getting to yes on all of the factors is the challenge, but in the process of figuring this out you’ll have all of the information needed to make the correct hiring decision.”
While some company hiring processes are streamlined, many could benefit from spending sufficient time to evaluate opportunities for improvement that will yield better results.
Source: Use the Discovery Interview to Predict Success