Interview Tips from a Trial Lawyer
By Kathy Geiger
Before becoming a recruiter I was a trial lawyer for 15 years, and spent much of my time interviewing and examining witnesses. Now as a recruiter I conduct literally thousands of interviews each year. My experience in both realms has revealed a number of similarities in the technique for effective interviewing. Here’s how you can learn from my experience to make your own interviewing more effective.
1. Prepare – “For every minute spent in preparation, an hour is saved in execution”
The key to winning a lawsuit is preparation. You may have all the facts on your side, but if you can’t organize and present them properly you’re likely to lose your lawsuit. The same holds true for interviews. If you conduct an interview in a sloppy and unprepared manner, the candidate’s value may not be apparent to you – or the candidate may not wish to accept a position with your organization!
It’s important to start by ensuring you have a clear concept of the position you are interviewing for; its detailed requirements, reporting structure and work environment. Make an honest appraisal of the other personalities in the workplace and the best personality type for the role (known as ‘fit’ issues). Then ensure that your interview questions will accurately assess the candidate – based on this specific position.
If there are several people conducting the interview, assign different questions to each person or appoint one person to keep a check list of areas that have been addressed to ensure that you conduct a comprehensive assessment. You can use the same list for each candidate, but invariably there are candidate specific questions. And don’t forget to take notes during the interview to remind yourself of your impressions for use later on.
A final note about preparation: It is surprising how often interviewers fumble through a resume during an interview. Not only does this diminish the quality of the interview, it is discourteous to the candidate and leaves them with a bad impression of the organization. Make sure you’ve had a chance to review the CV carefully before the interview and add any questions that arise to your list.
2. Open up warmly
In a trial, most witnesses are very nervous. Over the years I learned to start my examinations with very simple and non-contentious questions to put the witness at ease. This ensured an easy flow of questions and often prompted the witness to reveal more than they had intended!
Similarly, most candidates feel some nervousness during an interview. You will gain the most insight into a candidate if you are both at ease, so it is important to establish a friendly or trusting environment at the beginning of the interview. This lets you both get over any jitters and sets the right tone for an honest appraisal.
Try to engage the candidate in a few minutes of friendly conversation. Chat briefly about something breezy – the weekend, an upcoming holiday, or that old stand-by, the weather. You might also want to give a brief overview of the selection process, your own role at the company, the reporting structure for the new hire and the manner in which the interview will be conducted. In any case it is a good idea to quickly underscore the evaluation process at your organization. If this is only the first of up to ten interviews, it is best to say so right off the bat!
3. Put them on the stand
You want to use the interview to gather information in two key areas. First, the candidate’s technical or professional qualifications and experience and second, the “fit” characteristics - the personality, drive and ambitions which make the candidate appropriate for the working environment he or she will enter.
As CV’s are often two pages or less, you will generally need to ask detailed questions in your assessment of qualifications. Craft precise questions about the nature of past work to focus on the specific requirements of the position you are hiring for. Ask the candidate to describe their credentials in that specific area, and how they would approach a specific function or aspect of the position. This should elicit detail as to how their past experience prepares them for the new position.
You can uncover information on fit issues by asking questions that address the candidate’s motivation for past actions. Properly framed, these should give some insight into the candidate’s personality. Don’t be afraid to put the candidate on the spot by asking direct questions about their strengths and weaknesses, the type of work environment they prefer, or the kind of people they like to work with. Candidates should be prepared for this type of question, and you will learn something about the degree to which they have completed self-assessment, if nothing else. If a candidate gets off-track answering a question, gently put them back on track.
Remember that an interview should not be one-sided. Take note of the kind of questions the candidate asks about the job. If their queries surround compensation and benefits, then perhaps money is the primary motivator for this person. Contrast this with someone who asks questions that show insight into your organization and operations, and suggests how they would approach specific challenges. The latter would no doubt make a better hire.
4. Keep them on their toes
A good interview will have a mix of both factual and behavioral questions (behavioral questions are those designed to determine how someone would ask in a given situation). I’m also fond of jumping around chronologically and topically, a technique I learned cross-examining witnesses. It often catches people off-guard and is useful to uncover any façade they have put up. On the other hand, candidates without a hidden agenda do not usually respond with a ‘break’ in character or timing when questioned in this manner. This technique isn’t particularly difficult to use; simply pick two or three questions from your prepared list and ask them out of sequences. Be cautious though – going to extremes with this tactics could result in a rather garbled interview.
5. Trust your gut
If you have thoughtfully prepared your questions in advance of the interview, it should be a breeze to conduct. The challenge becomes reading non-verbal clues to assess the candidate’s personality and abilities. We all have this ability to some degree – call it intuition, people skills or common sense. If something doesn’t ‘feel right’, dig deeper. Ask follow up questions. Make sure that you are not just being told what you want to hear. Some people present a good front in interviews and hide their real personality. Discuss your apprehensions with your fellow interviewers, and do thorough reference checks. I have heard many employers recount situations where they made a hire, ignoring their vague sense of unease because the candidate seemed so ‘perfect’. Only after the hire went wrong did they realize how accurate the warning bells had been.
6. Summation of facts
Wrap up the interview with a quick overview of where the candidate can expect the process to go next. Hopefully you made the process clear at the beginning of the interview, and will be repeating or summarizing. For example: “We will be interviewing candidates over the course of the next two weeks to reach a short list. Once the short list is finalized we will notify all candidates by e-mail (or phone). The second interview is before a panel of three and the final interview is with the VP Finance.”
7. Take notes
During a trial, I would always review my notes and summarize the important answers given by each witness. It was always best to do this immediately after the witness finishes their testimony. Your recollection fades quickly, particularly in a long trial. Fortunately there are transcripts of a trial. You don’t have the same luxury in an interview situation and it becomes difficult to distinguish candidates if you don’t capture your impressions quickly, making it even more vital to review immediately.
Make note of both positive impressions and warning bells. Summarize your notes in a fashion that allows you to compare candidates to one another. In order to rank a number of candidates, prepare a chart that sets out the key functions and personality attributes for the position. Using your notes – and your instinct – to guide you, assign a value on a scale (ie. from 1-10, or poor/good/v. good/excellent). If there are several interviewers, it is imperative to agree upon the scale format beforethe interviews begin so you are working to the same end. Prepare this summary immediately after the interview.
If you follow these tips, at the end of your interview round you will have easy-to-read summaries that will capture your rankings and easily point to the top candidates. And just like giving closing arguments in a trial, the methods discussed above should allow you to conclusively determine the right person for the job and justify your choice to anyone who asks. You can rest your case and feel confident that you’ve won over the jury.
- Kathy Geiger is the Managing Director of IQ PARTNERS' Ottawa office and Director of its National Legal Practice. [Full bio...]
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