- Questions are the necessary link between the purpose of the interview and the results. So, if you have not defined the purpose, you will not be able to work out the right questions and accordingly will not get from the interview the results you want.
- To sharpen up your interviewing, you have to sharpen up your questions. If your questions are off the point, too wide-ranging or too general, you will waste a lot of valuable time and show little for your efforts. It is not enough that you get your interviewees talking, what is important is that they talk about the things you need to hear.
- Planning means going into an interview with your main questions worked out in advance, but the supplementary questions which arise from the interviewees' answers can be just as important, because they may reveal more about the feelings that lie behind the answers. By using your main questions as a guide you will be free to put supplementary questions that will add substance to facts.
- Every interview is different, even interviews for the same job, because every candidate and every application form or CV is different. Interviewers who rely on a formula of favorite questions are treating interviews as a mechanical process instead of as a single, unique relationship.
- Questions are the interviewer's main method of controlling the interview. Without them, the interview becomes a mere conversation without direction.
- Within certain legal limits (in the United Kingdom the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Opportunities Act, which prohibit questions that discriminate on the grounds of race, gender and religion) you can ask more or less anything you want. This power should be used to encourage the interviewee to make the most of the interview, not to demolish the interviewee's self-confidence.
- Too many questions spoil the interview. Some inter viewers believe that the best way to get information from an interviewee is to throw out one question after another almost without giving time to reply. The old rule applies: the more is less; the less is more. The fewer (but better) questions you put, the more information you will obtain; too many, and you will drive your interviewee to silence.
- Questions should be based on mutual understanding. They should be expressed in a way you and the interviewee both understand. Interviewing is not a quiz; it is not the function of interviewees to try to interpret what you are asking, and as they are usually too shy or too fearful to ask interviewers to explain themselves, they will attempt to answer what they think you want to hear. In other words, they will not be giving freely of their own thoughts and feelings.
- Just as every interview has a purpose, so should every question. You should never ask questions merely to fill up the time you have allocated for the interview. If you have all the information you need, the interview is over, whatever the clock may say.
- Whatever the purpose behind each question, you should, wherever possible, make this known to your interviewees. Questions about personal circumstances, for example, should be asked only if they are strictly relevant to the interview, and the more open you are with your interviewees, the more likely you are to receive their full and honest reply.
Interviewees who know the right questions to ask will usually succeed in getting the information they require. It is for this reason that writers on interviewing go to considerable lengths to explain what kinds of questions are good and what are bad, and to help interviewers, they also provided long lists of questions they should be asking in different types of interview.
Useful though such lists may be, they also disguise the fact that questions are as personal to interviewers as their style of asking them. Some general questions may be appropriate to certain kinds of interviews, such as recruitment, but formula questions produce formula answers.
Questions have seven main functions. These are:
- to encourage the interviewee to talk freely and openly
- to control the direction of the interview o to assist the interviewee to concentrate
- to pick up points that have been overlooked
- to encourage the interviewee to expand and explain
- to get behind a mere recital of facts
- to achieve the purpose of the interview
- open, not closed
- short, not long
- single, not multiple
Sometimes also called direct and indirect questions, these are essentially the two main types of question asked in interviews. The open question is one which requires the interviewee to respond in as much detail as possible.
The closed question is one to which only one reply is required: 'Yes', 'No', or possibly 'Maybe'.
The rule about these two types of question is simple: in general, open questions produce open answers, closed questions, closed answers. Note the ‘in general' because, as with all rules, there are exceptions. More on this below.
To ask an open question, introduce it with one of the six Ws: Why, When, Where, Who, Which, What? as well as How, Asking open rather than closed questions is the best way to encourage the interviewee to answer in as much detail as possible, because, unless the interviewee is being deliberately obstructive, it is almost impossible not to give a full reply. If therefore you are interviewing a candidate about his last job, your question 'What were your responsibilities?' is much more likely to produce a more detailed reply than 'In your last job, did you do this or that?'
Other advantages of open questions
Open questions are less time-consuming than closed ones. 'What are your outside interests?' takes far less time to deal with than 'Do you have any outside interests?', because a positive reply to the latter can result in your having to go through a whole range of possibilities - 'Sport?' 'Er - no.' 'Reading?' 'A little', and so on - before you get the full picture of the candidate's leisure activities.
Open questions are more enjoyable to use. They make the interview less like an inquisition and more like a conversation. Moreover, they challenge the interviewee to think more carefully about answering them than closed questions, where a single word will do.
They show that you are taking both the interview and, more important, the interviewee seriously. Not only does it demand more time and effort to think up good open questions, but it also shows more consideration for interviewees.
Facts are not usually enough; the feelings that lie behind them are often far more important. Indirect, open questions are the only way you can properly reach these feelings. 'How are you managing with the new machine ?' will get you a fuller and more useful response than the direct 'Having trouble with the new machine, are you?', because the worker's problem with the machine may have less to do with the machine itself than with the clumsy way their supervisor has handled its introduction. Only with open questions will you get to the truth. Closed questions, as the word implies, effectively shut it off.
Yet, despite the obvious advantages of open questions, closed questions are asked far more frequently. This is partly because they are seemingly more natural to us. They are what we generally use when we have a conversation in which we talk without paying much attention to what we are saying or, indeed, to what we are being told. Open questions require more forethought and, let's face it, in interpersonal relations (of which interviewing is a prime example) thinking is not something we like to do if we can avoid it.
The skill of asking open questions is relatively simple to master. Whenever you think of a closed question, for example 'Did you get on well with your previous employer?' which will expect a simple 'Yes' or 'No', pause mentally and put one of the six Ws in front of it - 'How did you get on with your previous employer?' or, even more specific, 'What problems, if any, did you have with your previous employer?' Quite soon you will find that you have developed the habit of turning all your questions into open questions.
Closed questions can be used:
- when all you want is to establish facts. ('Your first job was with XY &c Co. ?' 'Yes.' 'And you were with them for. . . ?' 'Six years.')
- when you are establishing a new line of questioning. ('We've dealt with your education, now let's turn to your recent work experience. Did you enjoy your work at XY &C Co.?')
- when you want to get the interview back on course. ('Before we go on to that, I'd like to ask you, is it true that you walked off the job without asking your supervisor?')
- when you want to develop a theme. ('Can you take decisions on your own, because I'd like to put to you some possible negotiating situations that you might find yourself in.')
- when it is half of a two-part question. ('You know that our factory is in Manchester?' 'Yes.' 'How do you feel about moving home?')
