Over the past couple of months, I have interviewed for two positions; and I have to say, I have been pretty appalled at the process. Everyone in government is enamored of the structured interview process, because the number one goal is to not be subject to an equal opportunity complaint, even thought the goal should be to hire the best qualified candidate. If you are unfamiliar with the structured interview, you can read the entire OPM treatise, but the tl;dr version goes like this. The candidate gets asked a series of timed, canned questions by the panel, WITH NO FURTHER INTERACTION! Dumbness squared.
In the first of the two interviews, I was doing it mostly for practice, because it wasn't the job I really wanted. I knew that it would get me the question bank for when the job I really wanted came open. The bureaucracy did not disappoint. Taking good notes netted me six out of the eight questions for the job interview I actually wanted. Conclusion: either a well-prepared candidate (like me) or a complete sociopath would do well in this process. Why the sociopath? Because there were tons of questions that were seemingly situational but highly predictable, but the sociopath could just make up a story, or just read answers to the question on line. Without follow up questions about details, there was no way to tell if the candidate was lying or not. Knowing there is lack of follow up is bad for the candidate as well, because one might be tempted to exaggerate unverifiable details.
What is to be done? If you are a federal manager, or any manager in a large bureaucracy, you are facing pressure to prove that your hiring process won't get your organization sued. I am here to help. The surprising answer is to conduct a structured interview, but just add follow up questions. Step 2 is to ask questions that will smoke out the liars and sociopaths. The first part is easy, conduct a structured interview, but set time aside for follow up from the panel. Panel members can then deep dive an answer to ascertain what the candidate is really saying, and to get a better sense of the context for the answer. Letting candidates understand that this is the process ahead of time will also help coax better behavior out of the interview process. It can be surprisingly revealing as well. I have had more than one candidate withdraw from consideration during the interview process when the probing revealed actual lack of qualifications, because the resume had some "puffery," to use a Judge Judy term.
The harder part is the design of the questions. You are looking for questions that are revealing in ways that the candidate doesn't realize or can't help but reveal. My favorite example follows. If you are looking for a candidate with project management experience, you can ask a series of questions that are all negative in nature, but are inevitably going to happen if you perform project management long enough. You tell the candidate that if the situation never happened, you will just move on to the next question. The liars and sociopaths will never admit to any of the negative situations, because they lack the empathy to understand that the interview panel isn't looking for evidence of bad behavior, but for evidence of how the candidate handles difficulty. I had one candidate who actually took umbrage (feigned or not, I couldn't tell) that we would suggest that any of these things had ever happened. Here are the questions, developed by my friend with initials PV:
Describe a time as a project manager where you experienced _______. If you never had that experience, we will just move on to the next situation.
a. A project where you had difficulty achieving partnership with a customer.
b. An assignment where you were called upon to ensure the future success of a program or project with a long history of failure and a demoralized team.
c. A project related business situation where your professional and personal integrity were seriously called into question.
d. A never-ending project that you could not complete to the satisfaction of the business.
e. A situation where program/project sponsors were determined to pursue a course of action that violated regulations, organizational rules, and/or your own personal sense of ethics.
Once the answer is yes to one of the situations, make them describe it, and ask follow up questions, even uncomfortable ones. The outstanding candidate will have insight as to what they could have done better and, more importantly, an understanding of the organizational context that led to the difficulty. Liars and sociopaths will not want to reveal anything negative and deny that any such thing could ever happen; but by so stating, they have revealed themselves.
Big caveat: This process is designed for situations where many of your candidates are total strangers. More often than not, we are hiring people who we already know, or who are already established in our organization. Professional reputation is much more important in that context. However, if you have to compare those whom you know to complete strangers, this process will level the playing field and help give you good results. The other caveat is that the interview is only one small part of the hiring process.
To recap, if you use the structured interview process, then you will be subject to applicants who took advice from this guy. God help you.
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