Win Trust Before Grilling

Prepare him for the tough questions

During an interview, a candidate might try to hide a flaw or become angry when you press her about it.

So, Bobby Merrill advises us to calm the candidate down before a hard grilling.

First, he coaches him about the need for honesty. It makes good sense but, unless I was speaking to an inexperienced teenager, I think this would sound condescending.

Billy, I hope this will be an interesting interview for you. I'm interested in getting to know you. I promise to be completely upfront and honest, and I need the same from you. Honesty here is more important than anything else."

Then he goes after him, as he must, for the standard gaps-in-the-resume routine.

* Your work-history lists years but not months. Please tell me what those are?
* It looks like there was a gap between these jobs. Tell me about that
* There's no graduation date. Did you graduate?
* Looks like you went back to school after working a while. Tell me about that

In my experience, candidates absolutely hate this because the gaps are put there deliberately to hide weaknesses they don't want you to know. And, which they act as if you don't have a right to know.

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G Lord-Ketchup

Comments

[gretchen]

but you do have a right to know. and if the candidate does get angry, maybe that's sending a loud early warning sign.

[Canadian Headhunter]

Gretchen, when you ask for the year of graduation they immediately know that you want to know their age -- which it is illegal to ask in Canada.

And, when you ask for history that goes beyond the jobs they have listed right back to graduation, they become cranky because you are judging them on information they think is irrelevant by now.

That's true to some extent as well. Hiring managers and recruiters are interested in career progression but the candidate might be right that they are more biased by it than anything else.

[gretchen]

Still gotta disagree. I'm not one to build an interview around a resume, but I do see omitted relevant information as red flags. (yes, like graduation year ... besides clarifying whether or not they graduated, I also need to know how many years of post graduate work experience they have. Both are entirely relevant and valid since most of the jobs I've recruited on require a degree and X number of years of post graduate experience. I do not want to know - nor to I think it necessarily leads to my knowing - their age.) When there are gaping holes in relevant details, I will probe. I'm all about transparency so I'll let them know why I'm asking. I'm not trying to be obnoxious but 1) I need to understand the real story (if there is one) and 2) I know my hiring managers are going to probe even harder, and I need to be ready to address the concern on my candidate's behalf.