Many employers are introducing "problem-solving" or "case-analysis" questions in an effort to discover how candidates really perform (rather than just letting them talk about their work).
Career counselor Kathleen Voss attributes this trend to the fact that, during the past 10 to 15 years, candidates have become more familiar and comfortable with the interview process.
"Candidates are slicker and more polished," says Voss. "This makes interviewers suspicious. They aren't sure they're getting accurate information because people are so well-prepared."
Because so many candidates are so well-prepared-to the extent that they sound over-rehearsed and mechanical-employers have discovered that they need additional strategies to get at the truth. So, don't be surprised if you're asked to write a memo, deliver a presentation, or think through a hypothetical situation.
In their search for a new associate for their small general practice firm, Oak Park, Illinois, attorneys Morris Seeskin and Eileen Fein asked candidates only two questions. Fein, who practices family law, gave candidates the facts from one of her family law cases, and then asked them to come up with viable case strategies. Seeskin repeated this exercise using one of his civil practice cases.
Applicants weren't expected to formulate a final solution. Instead, says Seeskin, "We really wanted to know how the person would think about the problem, so we could see whether we felt comfortable with their style."
One attorney, who'd been practicing law for two years, failed the test by responding that he hadn't studied family law since law school and didn't have a clue how to approach the case.
"You can tell a lot about people's thinking by the questions they ask," says Seeskin. "This guy failed to come up with a single question that would help him solve the problem."
From that encounter, Seeskin and Fein knew the candidate would never be resourceful enough to handle their diverse caseload.
Dick Knowles, a consultant with J.K. Knowles Construction Inc. in Chautauqua, New York, likes to present hypothetical situations to engineers and technical people. For example, he might ask a construction engineer,
"What would you do if your crew was digging underground and ran into rock?"
Such questions are valuable, Knowles says, because they allow him to see how people think. He adds, "I've found that it gives me a more accurate evaluation tool, which means that there's a better chance that things will work out in the long run. Otherwise, we end up having to fire people. Why put everyone through that if it isn't necessary?"
Bob McCarthy applauds this new trend toward "scenario questions," in which candidates are asked to think through a problem in front of the interviewer. "It makes it real because you get to see how people work, rather than just listening to them tell you how they work," he says.
Aficionados of this technique often rely on the "in-basket exercise," in which they take a piece of paper from their in-basket, read it aloud, and then ask the candidate how he or she would handle it.
During one interview, Jerry Hannigan was asked to solve three different marketing problems. Hannigan believes that the questions were only partly asked to test his expertise. "Actually, I think the interviewer wanted some free marketing advice for some problems he was struggling with," Hannigan says. "But it didn't make me feel exploited; it was nice to be able to demonstrate that I know how to do rather than endlessly talking about it."
For the most part, this interview format requires a shift in emphasis from finding the "right" answers to showing you know the right way to come up with answers. Denver psychologist Linda C. Jones suggests the following five-step process for dealing with problem-solving questions:
- Listen intently to what's being asked.
- Ask clarifying questions to determine exactly what the interviewer is looking for.
- Respond by first explaining how you'd gather the data necessary to make an informed decision.
- Discuss how you'd use that data to generate options.
- Finally, based on the data you've gathered, the available options, and your understanding of the open position, explain how you'd make an appropriate decision or recommendation.
Using Jones' process, the situation could be handled as follows:
- Clarify whether the employer has established an intended market, and if so, who the company has targeted.
- Determine the watch's best features and how they're beneficial to this market.
- Discuss how to obtain this information (focus groups, telemarketing surveys, etc.) if the interviewer can't provide it (which, of course, he can't because he hasn't given her a real product to sell).
- Discuss ways that this data could be used to develop effective selling strategies.
- Finally, explain how to select a selling strategy based on the information received.
Many situational questions are set up to explore the issue of "fit." The interviewer wants to know if the way you think about-and handle-the problem or situation is consistent with the way the rest of their group operates.
Rick Ehlers, president of Worklife Concepts in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, remembers working with a candidate who was interviewing for a sales position with a young and aggressive computer services company. The hiring manager posed the following situational question: "We are sending you on an assignment to Carmel, California. You have an unlimited expense account. What kind of car are you going to rent?"
The candidate knew the question was a test. But, of what? His frivolity with other people's money? His taste in cars? Or something else?
He thought about the company: the image that it clearly wanted to project as a brash, up-and-coming, go-getter in the marketplace. He thought about his hypothetical assignment. After all, he reasoned, things are a little looser in California. And he formulated his response: A Porsche!
Later on he discovered that the three candidates who passed the "car test" had been bold enough to rent Porsches, Ferraris and Jaguars.
One well-meaning candidate (who tried to save his future employer money by renting a Honda Accord) was definitely out on his ear. Ditto for the unfortunate applicant who preferred to drive a Mercedes-Benz. Although the latter candidate managed to get the price range right, he blew it on the image front.
While problem-solving questions always have a "How would you handle . . . ?" or "What would you do if. . . ?" theme, some questions are designed to reveal your character or values.
One human resources manager was asked: "What would you do if one of your employees came to you with knowledge that the company president was having an affair with a secretary?"
A Dartmouth graduate who was interviewing for a rookie cop position got "zinged twice" with questions of ethics. First, he was asked, "What would you do if you pulled a drunk driver over for a traffic violation and it turned out to be your mother?" Later, he was asked what he'd do if he saw his sergeant pocket a knife from a crime scene.
Both questions obviously reflect an interest in knowing how the candidate personally deals with sensitive legal issues. But there is no "right" answer. There is only your answer. And sometimes the hardest thing of all is to stand up for your beliefs, knowing that it might cost you the job.
When Roger Gilman, a philosophy professor at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, first interviewed for his current position, a prospective coworker questioned him closely about his grading practices. From the interviewer's tone of voice, Gilman inferred that the man preferred instructors with lenient policies.
Gilman, who considers himself a "hard-but-fair" evaluator, didn't cave in to the interviewer's pressure. "I could've told him what he wanted to hear. But it wouldn't have been true. And even though I wanted the job, I didn't want to lie to get it," Gilman says. "If I didn't get hired because I told the truth, I wouldn't have been happy there, anyway."
As it turns out, the professor had been trying to trick Gilman into admitting he was a "soft touch." The interviewer believed many of his coworkers were too easy on students, and he was determined to weed out future offenders.
Although this particular story has a happy ending (Gilman got the job), it might easily have played out differently. Had he fallen into the trap of saying what he thought the interviewer wanted to hear, he probably wouldn't have been offered the position.
Simulations
Simulations are a specific form of problem-solving question. What makes them different is that you're expected to do more than think through a problem and come up with a strategy. More often, you have to actually do the work.
For example, a candidate for a stockbroker position was put into a room with a telephone, given a list of prospective customers and asked to make phone calls in which he tried to sell stocks to customers. What made the situation "fake" was that he wasn't calling real customers; he was calling company employees who had been coached on how to make his life difficult. What the employer was looking for in this case was how he handled difficult customers--which was, of course, what he would be expected to do if he were actually hired for the job.
In another case, a group of candidates for assembly-line positions with an automobile manufacturer were asked to work together as a team to assemble part of a vehicle. What the employer wanted to see was how well they worked as a team. Although these candidates had never met each other before, they were evaluated as a group and hired or rejected based on whether they worked together efficiently and cooperatively as a team.
There's only one way to anticipate unusual situations like these: by networking. By talking to people who work for the company-or who have interviewed with the company--you can find out how its interviewing process works.
Although you still have to go through the simulation, at least the "surprise factor" will be eliminated. That, in turn, should help minimize some of the anxiety these stressful interviews invariably generate.
Unrelated Questions
Some questions rely on an untrained psychologist to make psychological interpretations, and, as a result, their usefulness is highly suspect.
Outplacement consultant Jim Kacena remembers working with a displaced executive who was asked, "If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have one other person with you, who would it be?"
In an attempt to show love and loyalty, some people would say their spouse. Others might pick a fantasy lover--say, Meg Ryan or Tom Cruise--seeing solitude as an opportunity for an exciting sexual rendezvous. Adolescent, maybe: but does it really mean you'd make a bad business executive?
Fortunately, the candidate who was asked to play out this Robinson Crusoe fantasy opted to be stranded with a boat builder, and in the process demonstrate his resourcefulness.
However irrelevant a question may seem, you can do your best to make it relevant by making sure that your answer reveals something positive about your character or work performance. Don't get seduced into the game and forget why you're there in the first place.
A capital equipment salesman was particularly effective at converting seemingly obscure questions into opportunities to display his qualifications.
When confronted by a human resources representative with the following one-two punch: "What characteristics did you learn from your mother?" and "How about your father?" the 42-year-old candidate responded, "From my mother, I learned to have confidence in myself--that I can do anything I set my mind on. From my father, I learned the value of persistence."
By marrying the qualities of self-confidence and persistence, he conveyed to the recruiter that he had two character traits that would also make him effective in the sales role he was pursuing.
But he wasn't content to let the recruiter passively process the information he provided. Instead, he followed up with a question of his own: "I'm curk as what you're looking for in that question?"
Unfortunately, the recruiter didn't have a good rationale for her select, in strategy. "I'm not sure," she said. "But someone asked me that question in an interview once and I liked it. So, now I ask it all the time."
Her flimsy response notwithstanding, it always makes sense to check out how the interviewer is processing your response so that you won't be misinterpreted. Otherwise, there's no telling what someone might do with that particular information.
For example, should you be asked the favorite of Barbara Walters: "If you could be any kind of tree, what would it be?" your response might be, "I'd like to be an oak tree. Does that mean I'm strong and proud?" Or you can provide the interpretation yourself: "I think I'd like to be a cherry tree in blossom because they're so lively and attractive." (However, you wouldn't want to say, "I'd probably be a weeping willow because I'm depressed and cry a lot.")
One of the best answers I've heard to this question came from a laid-off facilities manager who responded by asking, "What kind of trees do you hire?"
To the question, "If you could be any kind of animal, what would it be?" my personal preference is to say, "I think I'd like to be a human being."
In some cases, the questions aren't so much a test of imagination (or a misguided attempt to interpret your psychology) as an interviewer's search for clues to compatibility.
When Candy Gilmore interviewed with Fort Howard Corporation, she was asked, "What is your position on nuclear disarmament?" Knowing that it was a "fit" question, she chose a middle-of-the-road answer that wouldn't antagonize anyone.
In that same interview, she was also asked, "What kind of bridge player are you?" as a way of determining her competitiveness.
If you can figure out that competitiveness is the issue at stake, you can answer the real question beneath the question. Sometimes, however, the phrasing of the question makes it too obscure to figure out.
Rather than second-guess the interviewer's motives, you can always say: "Can you tell me how this relates to the position?" which is a way of asking politely, "Do I need to play bridge to work for you?" This tactic may surface the concern more directly.
"What's your favorite movie" or "What's the last book you read?" also fall into the "What do they really want me to say?" category. Again, don't let the questions throw you off. Sometimes, an interviewer is more interested in how you respond than what you actually say.
After being asked, "Did you see the movie Batman?" one candidate replied, "No, I didn't."
This innocuous enough exchange resulted in an interviewing tirade. "I can't believe you haven't seen Batman!" the interviewer fumed. "Don't you know it's already grossed $15 million? It's the most popular movie around. How could you not have seen it?"
The candidate didn't lose her cool. "I didn't see it," she said. "What do you want me to do--lie?"
Apparently, that was the right answer because the interviewer warmed up considerably after her response. His outrage, it seems, was staged to gauge her response to irrational bosses.
He might have been happy with her, but what does that tell you about the office environment she might encounter? This might be a good time to ask more questions about the seemingly temperamental people she'd be working for.
While you never want to be rude, it doesn't hurt to hold interviewers accountable for the questions they expect you to answer. It may even make them think twice before asking those questions again.
Unspoken Questions
Interviewers are often understandably suspicious. Much as they want you-c r someone-to be the perfect person for the job, they don't always know how to get the information they need to make that assessment. Their list of typical, behavioral and even esoteric questions is their way of trying to determine who you are, what you want and whether you can help them accomplish their goals. "Sometimes they'll ask you what they want to know directly, saying things like: Why should I hire you? What's your best skill? How did you get along with your former boss?" At other times, they will try to infer those answers from your stories. When they say: "Tell me about a time when you failed," they're really trying to ascertain your strengths and weaknesses. Or, if they ask you "Tell them how you deal with irate customers," they clearly want to determine whether you have the style and ability to handle unhappy customers the way they like their customers handled. Questions about your favorite colors, books and trees are much more subjective. Although you may not know how employers plan to interpret your responses, it's clear that they're going to interpret them in some way.
Beneath every question is the implied "Should I hire you?" Knowing this, your task is made easier. Every time you answer a question, you should be providing information that says "Yes!" resoundingly to the unspoken question. This means that each time you open your mouth during the interview, you need to say things that will convince the employer you're the right person for the job.
As career counselor Phyllis Brust points out, "An interview is not a popularity contest. Your goal isn't to win friends. It's a time to talk about your qualifications."
When people lose out on job offers, it's usually because they haven't distinguished themselves in unique and meaningful ways. No matter how badly an interviewer performs or how strange the questions you're asked, you must get your message across. You must convince the interviewer that you can really make a difference in her organization.
"Employers want people who can add value," says Brust. "If you didn't get a job offer, the odds are it's because you didn't convince them that you could really add value."
