“My last boss just couldn’t be pleased. For example, he would tell me to not do something without first checking with him. But, sometimes I couldn’t find him to do that and then, when he finally got back to me, he would get mad because I wasn’t doing anything. But the really neat thing about him was that he didn’t mind if you needed to leave work early.”

This might be the response of a job applicant when asked by the interviewer, “Tell me what you liked and disliked about your last supervisor?” What do you think you might learn from those four short sentences? Do you think that person has a lack of initiative or is someone who follows instructions well? By closely listening to some additional follow-up questions, you could probably find out a great deal about the kind of employee this person is.

We had a lot of response from our last e-blast concerning interviews. First of all, I do not want to intimidate anyone who is required to do interviews. Many of us are put into that job without any training and expected to do a good job. However, now more than ever, it really takes some skill to be an effective interviewer. But, just like any job, you can always learn and become more skilled so the purpose of this e-blast is to give you some ideas on how you might ‘hone’ your interviewing skills.

The first priority of a good interviewer is to understand what result they are after. That result should be finding an employee that fits into your organization well and meets the expectations placed upon him or her. By constructing questions based upon the specific job and the specific location, there is a greater likelihood that can happen.

It may take some time and effort initially to develop your interview questions but, once you have developed them for a particular position, you can then use them over and over. Think about a funnel when you are coming up with your questions. The funnel is wide at the top where you put the liquid in but very narrow at the bottom so the liquid is very focused when it comes out. Your questions should be constructed in the same way.

An example of a poorly constructed interview question: “Can you use Microsoft Word?” This question is like many of the personality tests on the market today. Many people are going to give the answer that they feel the interviewer wants to hear—“yes”. But, are they power users of this computer program or do they know a little about it, or do they really know how to use it at all? If the interviewer is satisfied with the answer and moves onto the next area of the interview, they have learned little. However, do not feel that you cannot use this type of question. But, you must be prepared with secondary and tertiary questions that elicit the information you are seeking.

An example of a better way to construct the above question: “Give me examples of how you used Micro- soft Word in your previous job?” This question forms the top of the funnel—it is a broad question. The way the question is phrased forces the job applicant to be rather concise or focused with his answers. You should still have your secondary and tertiary questions available but there is a good chance you will not need to use them.

I watched some of the confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel Alito before the Senate back in January. It did not take long before I found myself yelling at the television for the Senators to “just ask the question!” Of course that didn’t last too long because my wife was quick to point out to me that she was the only one hearing my frustrations.

If I had to grade the Senators’ interviewing skills during this hearing process, I would had given most of them an ‘F’ because 13 out of 15 of them spoke longer than the job candidate. I think their goal was to impress the public with their knowledgeable elocution rather than finding out about Judge Alito’s qualifications and beliefs.

That is the most common mistake made by interviewers–speaking more than the job candidate. Often, the candidate leaves the interview knowing a lot about the interviewer and the organization but the reverse is not true. Often the interviewer ends up rating the candidate highly when, in fact, they are judging how well they listened to the interviewer rather than having learned anything about the candidate.

As an interviewer, if your first impression is that you like the person, everything after that just reinforces the initial impression. Many times, job candidates pay a compliment to the interviewer, the office, the organization or something that distracts the interviewer and gets the whole process off track. Don’t take the bait. Politely thank them and then return to the prepared list of questions that are asked of every candidate for a particular job. If the candidate attempts to ‘hijack’ the interview by coming to it well prepared with their own list of questions, make them wait until you have gotten what you need from them and then let them ask what they wish.

Remember, a lot can be learned about a potential candidate by just letting them talk. And, the interviewer also needs to remember that there are many people who are much better at ‘selling themselves’ than they are at ‘delivering the goods’. So the interviewer needs to develop good listening skills to pick up on subtle clues provided by the candidate about how he or she truly behaves.

“Well done is better than well said.” Ben Franklin

In September 2004, I interviewed a recent college graduate who had a political science/pre-law degree for a case manager position with our firm. After the initial interview, he moved along to the next phase of our process by taking the Simmons Personal Survey. His overall results were 84/100.

Note: The following was submitted by AnnMarie Forcier, human resource manager with Carter Mario Injury Lawyers in Milford, Connecticut.

However, the category commentary provided by John Beane is always more useful to us than the final numerical score. In this case, those comments included the following: high energy, ability to handle stress in a fast-paced environment, good work ethic, confident, able to work on his own within established parameters, hardworking, positive outlook, and willing to take on responsibility.

It sounded too good to be true! The only area that minimally concerned us was that he was highly change oriented. Would we be able to keep him challenged enough to remain with us for a while? We decided to take that chance.

It wasn’t very long before we noticed the assessment results were right on the mark and being demonstrated consistently in his performance. He was focused and productive. He was extremely organized. He demonstrated a great overall work ethic and received positive client feedback. He even moved closer to the office to shorten his commute.

We remembered his need to be challenged so we decided to give him some additional tasks. He began to assist management with research and assist his supervisor with tasks. He progressed into a functional team leader while still carrying a caseload.

Recently we have developed a need for a supervisor. We contacted John for his opinion of this person’s potential in that role. We were very pleased to hear that his profile indicated he would probably be a better leader than a case manager. He has strong leadership characteristics and his other characteristics are well integrated which makes him capable of taking on a number of different kinds of roles. We will be promoting him to this role and are confident that he will be successful with this new challenge.

A characteristic that began as an uncertainty for us has turned into a definite plus. This was not the first time that I’ve contacted John for some insight into someone’s profile and their potential to move into other roles, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Defensiveness. That is a word that we use in our coaching and hiring reports often because we see a lot of surveys that indicate the person is defensive. But just what does that term mean and how does it affect job performance?

The answer to that question is that defensiveness has a huge impact on job performance! According to Kathlyn Hendrics, Ph.D, a best-selling psychology author, “Defensiveness costs companies billions of dollars in productivity and results every year.” In our reports, we usually refer to defensiveness when talking about someone who has very high self-esteem or, sometimes, low self-esteem. This defensiveness is related to how a person feels about himself or herself which is their self-esteem.

Self-esteem, like all other emotional character tendencies, is determined by a combination of genetics and environmental influences and, perhaps, even health issues. Very high self-esteem can be secondary to an upbringing by parents who provided only positive feedback resulting in someone who feels they can do no wrong. People with low self-esteem can appear to be defensive in an attempt to protect themselves but they are always aware of their shortcomings and open to improving their performance. Let’s talk about the employee with very high self-esteem first.

You know this kind of person. This is the person that always has a reason why they are not at fault for anything that goes wrong – someone didn’t give them the right information, their alarm clock malfunctioned, the stars and moon were out alignment – it is always someone or something else’s fault. This is the person who has such high self-regard that they are unable to comprehend that they have any shortcomings or faults.

Now, if this person’s work related character tendencies match the job requirements, then their defensiveness may not be much of a factor in his or her job performance. But consider this. Jane Doe #1 has very high self-esteem and very high consideration and work. She needs to feel helpful and to stay busy so she ends up taking on others’ responsibilities instead of focusing on her own. Regardless of how many times her manager asks her to concentrate on just her tasks, she will always justify why she is helping someone else.

This Jane Doe may be very capable of performing the responsibilities of a job but would she be a good hire? Probably not because she would not listen to what she is being told and, therefore, would never change her behavior. Or, she would require so much supervision that she would take more effort than would be worthwhile.

Now lets consider Jane Doe #2 who has very high consideration and work but low self-esteem. How will her job performance differ from Jane Doe #1? She still has the need to take on others’ responsibilities but the difference is how she responds to the criticism of her performance. Even though she may still become outwardly defensive, she realizes she is wrong and listens to what she is being told and then may make changes in her job performance. According to Dr. Hendricks, “The capacity for learning on the job is a critical factor in business success.”

However, high self-esteem can actually be beneficial to job performance when the person is required to put himself or herself ‘on the line’ and can fail at their work because of factors that are outside their control. Attorneys, salespeople, surgeons, etc. need to ‘protect their psyche’ from those failures so that they can continue doing the job. But, for people in supportive type roles, high self-esteem is generally detrimental to job performance.

Calling John Beane at Staff Development Services was definitely taking a ‘leap of faith’. Although we had heard good things from other law firms about John’s services in helping identify good employees, you’re always thinking in the back of your mind that this is just another ‘personality’ test with okay results but is it really worth the effort and money.

But, we decided to give it a try—what did we have to lose? I called John and found out the services could be started immediately. He emailed me everything I needed to get started. It was necessary to read over the instructions a couple of times but, once I administered the survey, it was really very simple to do. That was about three years ago and I am definitely a fan of John’s services now.

Initially, I used the report to just help me do better at hiring people. I must admit that many times I hired a person because I liked them. And face it, it really doesn’t take much common sense for a potential hire to realize that they need to ‘put their best foot forward’ during an interview.

But, I quickly realized that this report gave me information about a person that I had never been privy to before. We were lucky if one out of three hires turned out to be successful before we began using the survey. And, although I don’t have any specifics, I know we are doing much better hiring the right people now, especially in case management which is the hardest area to staff.

Over time, I realized that the reports were more valuable that I had originally thought. We now use them for multiple purposes. They are good reference material to provide better training for new hires. No one is perfect and the report helps us determine a new employee’s weaknesses that we might need to pay special attention to. And, it allows us to be more insightful to the person’s needs during the training and orientation period.

For example, we hired a person to be a legal secretary. In the hiring re- port, it stated that she would not perform well if she had to answer to too many people but everything else was a ‘fit’ for the job. In our environment, she would be expected to report to a number of attorneys. But, we modified the job so that she just works with one or two attorneys. She is one of the best legal secretaries we have ever had.

If someone is being considered for a promotion, we go back to his or her hiring report. Often in the report it might say that a particular candidate could be utilized in other areas if needed in the future. By looking at the report, we can review the per- son’s strengths and weaknesses to help us determine whether they could succeed after being promoted.

Recently, we changed the flow of cases in our pre-lit department, and we used the survey to help do this. Instead of expecting case managers to do everything, we broke the job into components.

One component consists of handling the more routine, mundane tasks; more of the clerical type work. This frees up the case managers’ time to interact with the clients, adjusters, etc. and to manage the overall flow of the cases. To decide who should be assigned to which positions, we looked at surveys to determine who would fit each of these roles best.

Occasionally, there is a person who can ‘do it all’ but it is easier to find a person who can do just one of these roles well. It seems to me that the employees are happier because they are doing work that is comfortable for them to do. And, if for some reason one of these people does leave the firm, it is easier to replace them than trying to find that rare person who can ‘do it all’.

If possible, I am the one who administers the survey, because I realize the importance of doing it correctly and I know that I give the same instructions every time. When I get the report, I read every word carefully. I even highlight points that concern me or things that I want to remember. I never just read the summary. And, I feel that John and his firm has helped me to do my job much better and has helped to make our firm better. Like I said, “I’m a fan!”

(Note: Amy Key is the General Manager of Hughes and Cole- man in Bowling Green, KY with offices in Louisville, Lexington, and Nashville, TN)

On the Lighter Side

Those of you who conduct employee reviews may enjoy these ‘gems’ gleaned from a variety of sources. These are the type of employees we work hard to keep out of your firm.

• “Since my last report, this employee has reached rock bottom and has started to dig.”
• “I would not allow this employee to breed.”
• “This associate is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won’t be.”
• “Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap.”
• “He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle.”
• “This young lady has delusions of adequacy.”
• “He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.”
• “This employee should go far – and the sooner he starts, the better.”
• “This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.”