I am a firm believer that the person who is conducting the interview, whether it’s a recruiter or hiring manager, should be leading the conversation, or as I like to say, “Taking control of the interview.” Think about it, they have a finite amount of time and probably a pretty full day of meetings, like most people. They hopefully have prepared questions and an agenda of the information they want to learn in advance. The interviewer should be able to help the candidate to feel comfortable in opening up and sharing, but also know how to reign the candidate back in should they go down too many rabbit holes, as often happens, which could affect the interviewer’s ability to cover all the needed topics.
That all being said, many hiring managers don’t know how to do this effectively and thus don’t take control of the interview. If you can recognize the signs that your interviewer is not as strong in the skill of conducting an interview, you will have an advantage over all other candidates like no other.
Routinely professional recruiters will see a candidate give an answer to a question that was never asked, while not answering the question that was. I might ask a question like, “why did you leave your last job?” Which will lead the candidate to tell me a story about how they were promoted and happy there with many details around the company. Then after 60-90 seconds, they tell me about the new job they took at the next company. At which point, I will ask again, “so why did you leave that role exactly?”
Believe it or not, this happens all the time. I think it is common when a candidate is not sure how to answer the question, or perhaps they feel the answer is not a positive one. As a result, the candidate attempts to filibuster. I don’t think it’s always intentional, but it will always lead a good interviewer to ask the question a second time. If you are interviewing and able to catch yourself being overly detailed in your answers, while not exactly answering the question, and the interviewer has not “reeled you back in,” you might be working with one of three types of interviewers.
- They are not experienced and a little unsure of how to take control of the interview.
- They might not be listening to your actual answers, because if they were, they would have caught the fact that the question went unanswered.
- The interviewer is just tired of talking with you and has already mentally checked you off as not a potential for this role.
If you are interviewing for a role, you should be able to assess what the skill level of the person you are talking to is terms of interviewing. If you can figure this out, it will help you. If you think you are working with option 1, then you can gain some confidence that you should be able to help this person along in the interview. For the sake of this article, let us assume you are having a great interview and it is option 1 because if it is option 3, you are probably not getting to the next level. If it is Option 2 you need to probably shorten your answers.
I have written before about EI/EQ interviews. Please read this article if you are not familiar.
That article is also relevant for motivational interviews as well.
When you interview with this format in mind, you are potentially going to get many unique questions, with multiple follow-up questions. Here is a great way to figure out if the hiring manager is just asking questions or is confident in what they are looking for.
If I ask you, “Tell me about a time you said something you later regretted.” I am probably looking for your ability to have self-control, and frankly self-awareness immediately afterward. Hopefully you, as the candidate, can give me a good one-minute to two-minute answer, about a bone head thing that you once said. Now, here is the part to be aware of, if you don’t get asked any follow-up questions, then I as the interviewer, might not really understand what I am looking for. Think about it, you are going to tell me a story about something you did wrong, and I don’t seem to want to know the context around it?
I should care about things like, what was your relationship like with that person before you made the comment. This would help me determine if the tension was building up for a while. Perhaps you could not take it anymore, which has now taught me something about your ability to deal with conflict or perhaps your inability to deal with conflict.
I should also ask questions about your relationship with this person after you said your regretful statement. I want to know if you were able to mend the relationship, if so, how long did it take? All these things tell me more about you, and if I don’t ask the follow-up questions, I really have not learned too much about you as a person.
If you find that the recruiter is not following up with additional questions related to the story/explanation you just gave, you may be dealing with an inexperienced recruiter and you may want to lengthen your answer to include more details surrounding the event described. Here is my approach.
Answer the first question you get in less than two minutes. If you don’t get any follow-up questions, it is possible you already answered all the follow-up questions in your story, so don’t overreact yet. With the next question, answer it in less than 3 minutes, and be sure to add a few more supporting details around your story. If you don’t get any follow-up questions again, then you have just received a strong indication that the person you are talking to is again falling into one of the three categories mentioned at the beginning of this article. If you think the interview is going well, I will say it is most likely option one: They are not experienced and a little unsure of how to take control of the interview.
If that is the case, then you will need to give them more context around your answers and slowly increase the information you are sharing by one to two minutes with each answer, capping it out around 4-5 minutes total per answer. This will ensure you give them more information and they will have a better sense for who you are, which should give you the edge over the other people you are interviewing against.
Perhaps this sounds a little counter-intuitive, as I started this article saying people often answer the question that was never asked, and that is true, but this is different. You are going to answer the question that was asked first, and be sure the person you are speaking with understands thing like:
- Your motivation for making the comment.
- How you fixed the relationship after you made the remark.
- How long it took you to confront the person and apologize.
All these things are really what matters when you get a question like that. EVERYONE has said the wrong thing from time to time, so if I, as the interviewer, only learned that you are like everyone else, then I have not been able to distinguish you from the other candidates I am interviewing. You just ended up at the bottom of the ravine with everyone else, to continue with the car metaphor.
When a candidate gets, no follow-up questions to complex answers, he/she must realize the interviewer could be more uncomfortable with the interview process then the candidate, and it is time to help the interviewer along with the important information they need to see. If the candidate does not do this, it is unlikely the interviewer will get there on their own.
If you can be sensitive to this cue, it will help you be a better candidate than the other ones that sit in that chair later in the day, and hopefully, make you the clear favorite for a future inside the team to which you are applying.
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