There is a multitude of factors that need to be addressed like; experience, cultural fit as well as ensuring you remove your own unconscious bias.
The humble old interview enables you to filter through your candidate pool, but ultimately, as an interviewer, we are all just trying to figure out: Can this candidate really do the job?
Asking the right questions when running your interviews is key. But, there is one ultimate question can help you figure it all out.
The major challenge in this role is (describe the challenge you're hiring for). How would you go about solving that, and What have you done in your past experience that is most comparable?
This question is called the Most Significant Accomplishment (MSA) question and was developed by author and industry expert Lou Adler.
A good way to approach this question can be to give the interviewee 10 minutes of prep time to prepare their response. This filters out ‘on-the-spot tales’ and ‘reflexive stumbles.’ It also allows your interviewee a short window of critical thinking time, which can be important.
After your interviewee gives you their answer, make sure you dig right down to really quantify their answer. You can do this by using the following probing questions;
By using the MSA as part of your interview processes, you will uncover many of the themes you need to know about your candidate, like; managerial style preference, complex problem-solving ability and self-awareness. The key difference is that you will be using the job’s real challenges or objectives as the compass or baseline behind these themes.
The candidate’s response will let you paint a detailed picture of their accomplishment, from a scale, team and complexity standpoint and compare it to the requirements of the role.
It helps you and your candidates save time by pairing the right skills and background to the right role.
Asking for detailed evidence (by using the probing questions) will quickly identify those who are prone to exaggerate or those who just interview extremely well.
By using this method, you will elicit complete answers that really do relate to real job-needs. You can be confident your final candidate/s has the critical skills and experience to deliver on the most critical parts of your job.
Good luck with your hiring!