Save your interviews from the Death of Story

From years of interviewing candidates for Fortune 100 companies and Most Admired companies, I have learned that the majority of the available workforce has no idea how to talk about themselves. In fact, no idea how to be themselves!

If you're in a management position and have any hiring responsibilities I am sure you have asked yourself the following questions once or twice, "Wait, what was her answer to that question? When did I stop listening?"

Most likely the reason for your wandering mind is not that you indulged too heavily during happy hour the night before, or that you were distracted by the looming quarterly report deadline. Rather, it is the content (or lack-thereof) and delivery on behalf of the candidate. But you encourage it!

All too often the candidate arrives with a resume in-hand (one they hope will speak for them), and will wait for you to ask them questions. That is how nearly every “career counselor” or college career center has coached the newest class to the workforce. It is no wonder so many interviews are incredibly boring. The uniqueness of these individuals has been surrendered to the “right” approach to interviews. And I suspect a part of you thinks “this is just the way it is.”

I say, hogwash!

Yes, you will have to ask questions. And yes, your candidate will need to provide answers. Furthermore, it is the onus of the candidate to keep your attention, to show you the art they will bring to your organization and that unique human element that will make your business unit better.(Thanks to Seth Godin’s work “Linchpin,” for providing the term “art” to describe one’s work)

For me, the interview is not about questions. It is about story.

I want to be engaged with the story of a candidate who has impacted people, customers, peers, superiors, and I want it to evoke some passion and emotion in me. That is how I know a candidate has the “stuff” that will move my company forward. It doesn’t have to be a heart-wrenching tale of how she saved a failing product, it can simply be about a single interaction with a customer who had a question about the power button – but how that customer’s question led to a human connection. When a candidate can tell this story in response to a question – I say, “brilliant!” One step closer to a good fit.

I suspect there are plenty of people who can “do the job” you need done. You’ve settled for them before, and you’re at risk of settling for them again. The pressures of the daily tasks slowly eat away at your willingness to hold out for the best addition to your team. Instead, you are daily more convinced that you just need a candidate to fill the empty shoes, to complete the overdue tasks. If you settle for this, you are settling for a path that will only make you less able to share your art, passion, and uniqueness with others.

And the more you allow this to happen, the more you entrench not only yourself, but your entire business unit, your whole company in practices that stunt growth, limit creativity, and slowly kill the art you try so hard to share with the world. It all starts with YOU. You are the gatekeeper of story, your own story, as well as that of your organization.

All too often we accept the lack of story from candidates we interview. We gloss over it in our haste to fill a position. And every time we do, we contribute to the continuation of our boring vanilla interviews.

Answer for yourself this question:

How did you respond the last time a friend, peer, or direct report asked, “will you help me prepare for an interview?” (Can you even remember the last time you were asked that question?)

Did you blow them off? Did you ask them meaningless “interview questions” that fit the mold we have grown to expect? Or did you engage them in a different way, engaging them to tell a story?

Last week I nearly fell prey to the very same temptation -- to maintain the status quo. Contribute to the death of story. The decline of my own and another's art.

Look here next week for the tale of my fight against the death of story and my battle to keep interviews engaging, interesting, and a more accurate judge of character…