The Core 4 of Results-Based Interviewing

The following is adapted from Recruiting Sucks… But it Doesn’t Have To: Breaking Through the Myths That Got Us Here.

We are all creatures of habit. If someone can articulate how they achieved a result once, they are likely able to do it again. That’s the mindset of a Results-Based Interview?. 

So how do you carry out Results-Based Interviewing? to ultimately hit on the head, the heart, and skill of a candidate? This is the challenge. It’s also the part of the Results-Based Interview that I call The Core Four: Production, Profile, Purpose, and Probe.

Production

The first Core Four concept is production. It’s all about the results side of things and has four pieces to it. The first piece of production is determining the objective for the role and asking targeted questions that help you understand whether the candidate has produced anything similar to the objective. 

What are the candidate’s accomplishments that are most comparable to the results the hiring manager is looking for?

This could take the shape of something like a senior-level candidate completely reorganizing a company and generating an additional five million dollars in profit their first year. In the interview, you’re looking for specific and measurable results. Focus on results first because this opens up the second piece of production: the outcome.

The outcome comes from the questions “How did you do that?” and “Why did you act that way?” These questions move beyond skill and get into the territory of head and heart. First, you ask about objective—did they achieve something like this? Second, you ask how they achieved the outcome.

The third piece of production is obstacles. What obstacles do the candidates need to overcome in order to be successful? This would be framed like a behavior-based question where we ask about a time the candidate has dealt with a very similar obstacle. Be mindful not to lead them toward an answer, because you want to see if the person has in fact gone through something similar.  

Finally, the fourth aspect of production is outlook. Their outlook is how they tackle problems. Here, it might be OK to employ a hypothetical if the candidate has not been in a situation comparable to the obstacle. This question is geared toward how someone would approach an obstacle, tapping into reasoning or the head. What behavior might they exhibit, regardless of skillset? 

Profile

The second Core Four concept is profile. The profile includes a little bit of the skillset but diminishes the importance of the skills. Instead, it favors the ability to produce results.

A person who produces results is the number one thing you should be looking for.

There are four components to profile: capacity, character, competency, and culture. When it comes to capacity, it’s quite basic: does the candidate have the skills to do the job? When we ask about capacity, we focus on results first and turn the focus away from just the skills. For example, if you’re a programmer, you will need to know how to program in Java. That is a must in order to complete the job.

The second piece around profile is character. Have they shown that they want to do the job based on their previous performance? Then comes competency: what are the behaviors a person needs in order to be successful at the specific job? 

Finally, culture hits on the behaviors needed to be successful in the company as a whole. It’s all about whether a candidate fits the culture, not just the specific role. 

Purpose

Core Four purpose is also broken down into four pieces: pain, pleasure, pursuit, and the personal. Pain is simple enough. What does the candidate currently have in their role that they no longer want? What are they trying to get rid of? Knowing the pain they are currently experiencing helps you understand how the person ticks. 

Pleasure is what the candidate currently has in their role that they do like and want to keep around. Generally, these are not financially related. Maybe it’s flextime or remote working. It’s what a candidate doesn’t want to give up because it’s important to them. This starts to get into the why behind how the candidate makes decisions. 

The third piece is pursuit. It’s what the candidate doesn’t currently have that they are driven to go out and get. This information indicates how they operate deep down, at the level of the heart. What’s in the heart will dictate how they act. Which leads into the final aspect of purpose: the personal. 

The personal describes the absolute needs of the candidates—as opposed to their desires. For example, let’s say it comes up that the candidate has a special-needs child at home, and they need to work from home from 9:00 a.m. until noon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It’s something that cannot be adjusted. It comes down to a personal situation that can or cannot be accommodated. This, again, hits at what is in the heart of the candidate.

Probe

The final Core Four idea is probe. It’s how you ask the questions in each of the previous three Core Four concepts, using four questions:

• What are the facts of each situation?
• Why are those specific facts important?
• When are you going to address this?
• How are you going to address it?

As you can see, it starts with the simple question “What are the facts?” without addressing the emotional side; it’s just the facts. Then the discussion moves into why those facts are important and when you’d address them. What are the time constraints around them and how are you going to address them? 

For example:

• “My boss is a micromanager who makes me check in every day.” (What)
•  “It’s important because it shows she doesn’t trust me, and I can’t work this way.” (Why)
•  “I am going to address this issue within sixty days.” (When)
•  “I am going to speak with her about backing off, or I am going to leave.” (How)

Whether it’s about production, profile, or purpose, you can structure your questions this way to get to the head, the heart, and the skillset around what, why, when, and how. By using the Core Four principles, you can identify candidates who not only have the right skills for the job, but also the experience, motivation, and personality traits needed to excel. 

For more advice on effective recruiting, you can find Recruiting Sucks on Amazon.

Steve Lowisz is a recruiting industry veteran and talent optimization guru with more than two decades of experience helping companies find and unlock the performance of their teams. He is an expert on talent acquisition, talent assessment, talent engagement, diversity and inclusion, and business performance, which has allowed him to serve hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals across the globe. As the CEO and founder of the Qualigence Group of Companies, Steve regularly contributes to industry events and publications and has been featured in Fortune magazine, CNN Money, and the Detroit Free Press, as well as on Bloomberg Radio.