Web Exclusive
Don’t Ask
Effective hiring practices are more important than ever, but interviewing gets little or no attention.
By Mark Murphy
Mark Murphy is chairman and CEO of Leadership IQ, a leadership-training firm based in Washington, D.C. Adapted from Hiring for Attitude: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting Star Performers with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude (McGraw-Hill) ©2011.
Many interview questions are utterly useless, and some are actually dangerous (legally speaking). And many commonly asked questions have a built-in flaw whereby they elicit rehearsed replies. As a result, they deliver skewed data that can negatively impact your hiring decisions.
This article introduces four types of bad interview questions. There are a lot more than that, but I selected these four categories because they represent the kinds of poorly formed interview questions that my firm, Leadership IQ, surveys and studies have found to be the most commonly used across a broad spectrum of industries. If you (or your organization) currently use any of these types of questions, it’s important to understand why they are so bad and to stop using them immediately.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard These Before
Leadership IQ’s numerous studies and interviews with hiring managers have revealed that the following three questions are the ones most interviewers use. Frighteningly, these bad questions are the ones a lot of interviewers rely upon when making their final hiring decisions:
- Tell me about yourself.
- What are your strengths?
- What are your weaknesses?
Apart from being unbelievably clichéd, what’s wrong with these? Well, first, they’re too vague, allowing for only vacuous answers. Second, because these questions are so well known, and because it’s remarkably easy to conceive of and verbalize any number of empty answers, virtually every candidate has ready a canned answer. And third, because all those rehearsed vacuous answers sound the same, it’s nearly impossible to differentiate between future high and low performers based on any of the answers.
Some people try to justify their use of these questions by arguing that the vagueness of the questions and the vacuous nature of the answers they inspire make them a rapport-building exercise to be used at the beginning of the interview. But rapport-building is all about getting people relaxed and making them feel comfortable enough to open up to you, not about making them recite a vapid answer to a question that is trying to judge them.
Clearly, you want to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of people you interview, but asking these three questions will only reveal how well your candidate can recite scripted answers. The purpose of an interview isn’t to test recitation skills but, rather, to accurately reveal how a person will perform when working for you. To further prove that “What are your strengths?” etc. are worthless, think about the answers you usually get from an applicant in response to, “So tell me about yourself . . .”
The typical response goes something like this: “Well, I’m a motivated self-starter—always have been. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve really loved hard work. Those were the values I grew up with: working hard, but not in a way that burns out the people around me; persevering, but still knowing when enough is enough; and collaborating, but also helping other people get better. I’ve also been told that I have a lot of humility and a real appreciation for the feelings of others. I guess some people would call that emotional intelligence. In conclusion, I’m really dedicated to bringing value to others, especially my boss. I’ve never desired a work-life balance for myself—due to some ‘gifted child’ experiments when I was a kid, I don’t need sleep. But I am 100 percent dedicated to being good in my job so that my boss can achieve an amazing work-life balance.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all this were true? Honestly, though, what can you really learn from this response, besides that this potential employee is a good scriptwriter who has a talent for reciting lines?
Now imagine that after you shake off your amazement at your candidate’s brilliant display of critical self-reflection (please note the sarcasm), you ask a follow-up question: “Wow, that all sounds really great. I don’t suppose you have any weaknesses, do you?”
Given the candidate’s initial response, it shouldn’t be difficult to predict the kind of answer this follow up will elicit: “I was really hoping you wouldn’t ask me that because I never lie, and I actually do have two weaknesses. First, my previous bosses have told me that I work too hard. I get way too involved with my work, and I end up giving too much of myself to the job. This also feeds my perfectionist streak—I really like to make sure that my boss never ever sees a mistake come from me. And this leads to my second weakness, which is that sometimes I care too much about my teammates. Here again, I’m guilty of giving way too much of myself in my efforts to help them achieve greatness.”
Now, if reports started rolling in that interviewers were asking, “What are your weaknesses?” and hearing responses such as, “I have a violent temper, and I stalked my last boss” or, “I hate people, and I can’t stand taking orders,” then perhaps this line of questioning would be valuable. But honest responses such as these are rarely heard in an interview, and the odds are small that anyone will answer any of these three questions with complete honesty.
One of the most fundamental tests of the effectiveness of an interview question is the extent to which it helps differentiate between high and low performers. Any interview question that doesn’t distinguish between these two groups is the equivalent of giving a college exam on which every student automatically scores an A. What’s the point of giving a test where everyone gets the same grade? Beware of both any response that comes off sounding puffed-up and hollow—and any question that produces hollow answers.
