Let's Stop Asking the 20 Standard Canned Interview Questions

One of the questions I pose in my Interviewing Refresher Workshop for Vistage Groups is: Where did you learn what interview questions you should ask?

The millennials will answer that they found their questions on the internet. For all those managers who are Before-Millennial-Generation, your typical answer is: I am using the questions I was asked on my first interview 22 years ago. These fall into the category which I call the 20 standard, stupid, inane, traditional, mediocre, and worthless questions.

What do these questions sound like?

Tell me about yourself

Why are you here today?

What do you know about our organization?

What are your strengths/weaknesses?

What kind of boss do you like to work for?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

We like people who enjoy working in teams – how do you feel about teams?

We need people who are committed – are you committed?

Then we add insult to injury because the second person to meet the candidate, ask the same questions as the first interviewer. We barely collect enough information to make a decision. Layered with first impressions, you can see how we start to go off the rails in our objectivity and rationale thinking when it comes to interviewing.

Why do we ask silly, traditional, non-useful interview questions?

Perhaps, we’re a victim of tribal hiring – these are the questions we’ve always asked. We randomly picked questions off the internet, playing closet psychologist – if it’s good enough for Google, maybe we could use the same techniques. In many companies, we’re just winging the process of asking interview questions. Does the fact that most of the studies of interviewing over the past quarter of century show that at best it’s a 50/50 level of accuracy. When we treat interviewing as a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach, it’s no wonder that the process is random and variable. Layer all of this on top of the fact that every manager in your organization does it differently.

Here’s a couple of questions I’ve got that I am still shocked by today. I’ve raised these in other articles. First, is there any process in your organization where you will allow that level of random variability in the results, outcomes, and success? Probably not. Why do you allow it to occur in interviewing? Second question: Is there any process where you allow each of your managers to do whatever they want in the interview? Whenever everyone has a different perspective on what is the right approach – then the best you can hope for is a 50/50 outcome. It’s time to stop this interviewing insanity, and start using best practices to move the success of the process from 50/50 well into the 80% plus range.

In our next installment, we’ll dig into the 5 core interview questions that yield 80 percent of the data you need to make an accurate decision of whether the candidate can achieve your outcomes, results, expectations – and they can do it with a set of behaviors and style that is consistent with your culture and values.