It's an Interview, Not an Interrogation!

Years ago I went on a job interview where the interviewer had her questions for me typed on a sheet attached to a clipboard. The lady didn't look up at me once during our half-hour talk. She kept her eyes glued to the clipboard in front of her.

As I answered her questions, she took notes on her clipboard, and she also wrinkled her nose to show her disapproval with the words coming out of my mouth.

"Have you ever worked with event registrants on the telephone before, answering their questions about refunds and so on?" she asked.

"Not that, exactly," I said, earning a massive nose-wrinkle for my trouble. "I've certainly helped people on the phone before, just not on the topic of events --"

"What is your greatest weakness?" the lady barged ahead, not waiting for me to finish.

Back then I didn't realize that I didn't have to stay in that room to be ignored and insulted. I could have gotten up and left. I should have. I didn't know I had permission to do that. I was too young.

I thought that the big, scary world of jobs and employment had a kind of governmental aspect to it -- I thought that you had to do whatever an employer representative told you to do. Hah! Now I know better.

There's a shift happening in the talent market, and you have to know about it. You have to be aware of it whether you're a job-seeker looking for work, or an HR person or hiring manager looking for talent.

For seven or eight years it's been a buyer's market. People were taking jobs below their capabilities and the pay scale they were used to.

Not now! Employers are going to have to work harder to get good people in the door and keep them. They're going to have to market and sell to their job candidates the way job-seekers have been marketing and selling to employers.

I want every organization in the world to become a Human Workplace and get the benefits that Human Workplaces get, but I know that won't happen overnight. A great way to start making your organization more warm and more human is to change your interview process.

A job interview is not an interrogation -- it's a conversation. The point of a job interview is to talk about the job opening, not to quiz the job-seeker about his or her failings and put him or her on edge. A job interview should be a pleasant, friendly conversation just like the conversations you have with new people you meet at work or at the gym, or anywhere.

Our interview protocol is called Interviewing with a Human Voice. When you interview a job candidate using the Interviewing with a Human Voice approach, your first question is "So, what are your questions for me?"

You won't spring that question on them, because a lot of job candidates won't be expecting it. You'll tell them in the email message that you send to confirm the interview, "Please bring your questions for me to the interview. We'll start our conversation with your questions!"

My genius professor in grad school, Thomas Goodnight, taught my fellow students and I the basics of rhetorical analysis. When I saw that class title on my schedule I thought "That sounds like the most boring class ever." It wasn't!

Rhetorical analysis turned out to be fascinating. Mr. Goodnight taught us that people have questions rumbling around in their minds. They don't walk around with empty heads. You can't start throwing information at people before they understand where they are and other essential pieces of information that will get them oriented.

While I was in Mr. Goodnight's class, I completely revamped the new employee orientation at U.S. Robotics, where I was running HR at the time. "Tell them where the bathrooms are, first!" said Mr. Goodnight.

"Next, tell them where the emergency exits are. Then, tell them where the coffee station is and when they can get coffee and snacks. Tell them when the orientation will be over, and what will happen then."

A job interview works the same way. People come with questions in their heads. That's good! Let your job candidate get his or her questions answered, first -- not last, if at all! Their questions are much more significant to you than your questions are, for three reasons:

• Just like the newbies in orientation, your job applicants won't be able to relax into the interview conversation until they understand certain things that they are curious about. Your answer to a question might make them more interested in the job, or make it clear that it's not a good fit. Get your applicants' questions answered first so that the two of you can focus on talking about the job and your candidate's background.
• When people ask questions that they've constructed themselves, you see their brains working. That's what you want to do in a job interview! You will never learn as much about a person from his or her answers to your questions as you will from his or her questions.
• Your job applicant has gone to some trouble to be with you today. You are the host . The person in front of you is your guest. Guests get to ask their questions first!

Your candidate's questions may take a few minutes to answer, or they may use up the whole hour you've allocated for the interview conversation. Either way is fine. You can use the entire interview answering your job-seeker's questions. That might be the best interview you've ever conducted.

If your job applicant runs out of questions, no problem! You've got questions of your own. That being said, you're not going to think about interviews ever again, I hope, as question-and-answer sessions primarily. They are friendly human conversations, no different from networking meetings that happen between new acquaintances over coffee.

When I have coffee with someone I'm meeting for the first time, I don't pay attention to who's asking questions and who's answering them. The conversation moves ahead organically. We talk the way people do when they are curious about one another.

That's your job on a job interview, whichever side of the desk you are on: to be curious, to stay attentive and to acknowledge and appreciate the person you're talking with -- not as a means to an end (to fill the job opening, or to get the job) but because people are magnificent and special in their own right.

If you feel nervous going into a job interview as the hiring manager or HR screener without a list of questions to ask, here are a few you can jot down and bring with you:

• What appeals to you about this job, from what you know of it so far? How would this job, as you understand it, grow your flame?
• What have you done elsewhere, either at work or at school, that seems most relevant to this position? I'd love to hear that story.
• As you look at our company and in the research you may have done already, where do you think we could improve? What is something we could be doing differently than what we're doing now?

You are looking for good judgment. You are looking for maturity, even in a very young person, and for common sense. Not every candidate will display these qualities.

You won't bring a clipboard into the meeting and take so many notes that you never make eye contact with the job-seeker in front of you. You are chatting with a living, breathing person. Save the clipboard for a time when you're assigned to go out in the stock room and count widgets. The widgets won't care whether you make eye contact with them or not.

It is a new day in the talent market. Whether your organization is feeling the pinch in the talent-acquisition arena yet or not, Interviewing with a Human Voice muscles are very good muscles to grow. People are not bushels of corn to be graded by size.

They walk into job interviews with amazing life histories, stories, ideas, perspectives and thought processes that no traditional interview script will ever touch. Celebrate them!

Your interview with a job-seeker or a company representative is a moment in both your lives. Its ripples could change the world, whether you two decide to work together, or not. A job interview is not a clerical task. It's an opportunity to generate sparks that can light up our planet. Can you turn the dial to see the possibilities, and then step into them?