Cardinal Talent’s recruitment ethos is soundly based around collecting and recording evidence, to ensure the right candidate for the right job.  We do this at every stage from the initial conversation with the client to the start of employment.

With the introduction of the Equality Act, we need to ensure we are even more scrupulous than before about asking questions.  One extremely effective method of keeping out of harm’s way is to employ a competency based or critical incidence based format.

The approach is effective because it is incisive, does not rely on sector specific information and reveals whether a candidate is likely to be able to do what the client organisation requires.

Essentially the process enables the interviewer to transport the candidate back to a specific period or project, get them to relive that time, answering questions like:

  • Tell me about a time when…
  • What have you done in…
  • How would you…

The questions are set against specific competencies which include leadership skills, team building, adaptability, managing change and communication skills.  Within each of these competencies, there will be contributory activities and behaviours.  For example in change management specific behaviour includes:

  • Being able to encourage others
  • Being able to work to tight deadlines
  • Being able to manage conflict
  • Being able to influence those with opposing views

 So typical open questions can be:

  1. Tell me about a time when you had to encourage a colleague to change his/her mind?
  2. Tell me about a time when you had to handle a difficult situation?
  3. What can you do now, as a result of Project x, which you could not do before?      

These questions are deliberately open, and are a direct invitation for the candidate to place themselves in the mouth of a funnel, “in the moment” of the specific incident.

Once there, the candidate can be asked supplementary questions such as:

i.              What happened next?

ii.             What options did you consider?

iii.            When was that?

iv.            How was that received?

v.             What was the result?

Using supplementary or probing questions the interviewer gradually draws the candidate down into the funnel  with the 3 fold objective of:

  1. gaining more information;
  2.  checking authenticity of the account;
  3. revealing the specific behaviour being  investigated.

The advantages of using this methodology are that the interviewer can structure the interview, making the process easier to administer and creating a way of managing the collection of evidence.

Using a soft or hard copy document means candidate responses can be recorded against each question, a process vitally important for selection evidence, feedback to candidates (see September 2010’s Newsletter), quality assurance and process objectivity.

Call me.  We can tailor train to suit your team.

Further information:

 The Equality & Human Rights Commission http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/home/

Eggert, M (2007). Perfect Answers to Interview Questions. London: Random House Books. 39 -67.

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