What Type of Employee Are You? Coaching Questions for the Interview
We have to change what we do when we hire people. We need to make people transparent with themselves. I hear from so many people that tend to take a job as a steppingstone, yet no one says that in the interview. You never hear someone say, “I'll be here a few months, and then move on and take your training to another company.”
Employers should ask some pointed questions to help organizations reestablish their workplace culture. We talk about expectations like a cliché. Use this during our interviewing and onboarding processes. To illustrate this concept when people take jobs, ask one question:
What type of worker are you?
Before you answer, here are three choices. Be honest with yourself because we're going to hold you accountable. Then we’ll ask what we should do when you don’t illustrate those attributes.
1) “I’m outstanding.” You go beyond the call of duty. You never exhibit a negative attitude. You’re positive, upbeat, and committed to learning. You're open to and seek feedback on your own.
2) “I’m a really good employee.” You're mostly helpful. You seek help, expect and are receptive to feedback, even if you don’t always agree.
3) “I’m a lackluster employee.” You work with a negative attitude. You don't help teammates, you’re a bit arduous and tough to work with, and don’t take feedback well.
Your first reaction is to hedge. Most people want to qualify their response with a range. “I'm between a two and three.”
Don't give them permission to hedge. Make them commit to the type of employee the company can expect. They’re either one, two or three, not in between.
99% of people in an interview will say, “I'm going to be outstanding.”
Fantastic, John, here’s the next question: When you don’t exhibit those things, what should we do?
This is where an interview gets interesting. If he says, “Call me into the office to remind me,” then the next question is, “Has someone had to do that with you before?”
If the answer is yes or occasionally, it’s safe to deduce they exhibit some attributes of just good or not-so-good employees. Would it be fair to then end their employment right on the spot? Because the employee’s word is either worth something or not. The company adheres to that commitment from the beginning.
Now, most HR managers might vehemently disagree. “You can't do that in an interview.”
Yet these are the conversations we need to have.
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We're putting so much expectation on leadership right at the start. It's okay to look at an employee during the interview, or even with existing workers to ask, “What kind of employee are you going to be: outstanding, good or not?”
No hedging.
Rating questions are so interesting. I always tell people in questions with a scale, they can't go in the middle. Almost every time, they hedge. “I'm between a three and a four.” They give themselves permission to occasionally have the bad day.
No, either you're committed or you're not. I think we've lost sight of an employee commitment. People forget things they’ve said and commitments they made in the interview.
Recently, a friend’s son took another job in sales, claiming it was a great company and a better fit for what he wanted. Great. I asked how long his son was with the prior employer. Six months.
“Wow, that's an impact,” I replied. To which he asked what I meant.
He and his son never considered the impact to the company.
My friend explained the manager wasn't that great according to his son.
I focused on that. His son was fresh out of college, only in his first role six months, and he already knew he had a bad manager.
Most in leadership know people just come and go in a company, they walk out when something better comes along. My friend hadn’t looked at it from that perspective. I think it's awesome his son found a better fit, but what is his longevity with this new company? Six months? That's a dangerous pattern. Continuing to chase “the better fit.”
We have to be candid with our employees and ask, “What type of employee are you going to be? When anything outside of those attributes happens, what would you like me to do?”
Get them to think about accountability.
Empowering Talent & Transforming Learning | Strategic Leader in Workforce Development
2 年Fantastic questions and points. The more we dig in, the easier we’ll be able to tell if we think that person would be a good fit for the role. Dig in from the start and eliminate the multiple interviews over weeks or months.
Executive Leadership Coach | ICF-PCC | Senior Practitioner - EMCC | Hogan Certified Coach, Top Coaching and mentoring Voice.
2 年Tim Hagen, I feel talent strategy with aligning the candidate to your organisation in terms of values and culture matter. I am leaning towards assessments sometimes just to get an understanding how one can make the best out of the immense potential of an individual. #hogancoach#
I'm a proud blue/white collar worker with a professional way... becoming and helping others to become ALL they are supposed to BECOME. "Leadership is influence: nothing more and nothing less." -J.C.M
2 年You know my experience has been quite different that begs these principles you are putting forth for people like me to consider be consider too by the leadership of the company. My experience has been based on the need for gainful employment. As I presented myself in the face to face interviews about "my core values, vision, mission, strategy" of my personal life which incorporates work, play, family, community aspects of my life THEY THEMSELVES were on interview to as I was deciding if I wanted to commit to them. As we both passed this phase and inter into an employment contract and began to work that in every case as I was won over in the first 12 months I decided to give everything because at least to that point had convinced enough of me to dig in. The point here is sometimes corporate America wants employees they can control, get good work out of BUT NOT pay for what you are worth. And as they reized in my case that I was a different breed...a natural leader...that was serious about doing a good job and making the culture much better. But these companies I found want only so much from their employees without getting serious about taking care of me and investing in me. They found some excuse to let me go. Self employed now.
I just had an interview where I was asked what type of personality was the one that I have the most difficulty with. She wasn't exactly surprised when I described a micro-manager. She did comment that my response was similar to the other candidates. Not a read that I got from either her or her boss so that type was unfamiliar to her. I’ve rarely had managers that began a feedback session with the view of trying to build on my strengths, instead, they were about how I should change everything to do it their way. In other words, “my way or the highway”. That attitude still doesn't address what is working, only what is not.
People & Operation Executive | Workforce Culture | Employee Relations & Performance Management | Talent Acquisition & Talent Management | Payroll & Benefits
2 年Thank you Tim Hagen. I have to wear my HR hat and add that many Managers, Executives and C-suite forget to mention what type of employer and supervisor they are. They often miss having one on one meetings with their direct reports regularly. Everyone is busy! They may rely on info received from their trusted source without knowing the motive behind it or their speculations. Effective communication is the key during hiring process and the course of employment.