The Best Job Interview Hack
The Me-Suite host, Donna Peters, talks about job interviewing--both as an interviewer and interviewee. The quality of your questions is the key.
"I have had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds, maybe even 1000s of people for jobs. I have filtered on education, work experience, perseverance, achievements, character I have probed for how interested is that candidate really in this job. I have administered the airport test to see if we would survive being trapped together at Newark Airport in a snowstorm for five hours. Some of my hires have been iconic success stories, and then there are the hires where I bang my head with the palm of my hand and marvel, Donna, what were you thinking.
So I started thinking deeply about what it really truly takes to identify the best candidate for the job. And I also wondered if the move to virtual screenings and video interviews was changing success factors for hiring. And after much debate with myself and a clustering exercise with sticky notes that made my office look a little bit like John Nash has shed from A Beautiful Mind. I've identified a single common denominator for hiring successm and it's so elegant in its simplicity and applies for in personal or virtual drumroll...
Does the candidate ask good questions?
So why are good questions so important? And that itself is a good question. A good question is so important because it demonstrates research and preparation. It reveals critical thinking and curiosity. It shows comfort with ambiguity and confidence in not knowing. And it challenges the status quo and sparks new ideas. Today, the typical interviewer asks all the questions leaving a smidgen of time at the end for the candidate to slip in a battle question like what has kept you at the company all this time? The future of interviewing is where the candidates are doing the asking to showcase their leadership experience and ideas.
In case you're wondering, there actually is such a thing as a dumb question. It's a question that wasn't informed by preparation that didn't demonstrate intellectual curiosity that wasn't backed by confidence that didn't push the thinking forward. Every job interview should begin with, "What questions do you have for me today?" Your resume is your past. The quality of your questions is your future promise."
