Hiring based on skill level alone is insufficient. Achievement involves not just a person’s skill set, but mindset as well. Just because a candidate possesses the skills to do the job does not mean he or she will also stretch to achieve challenging goals or focus on hurdling tough obstacles — all requirements for achieving great results. People with the "I can" attitude demonstrate their greatest human potential, the power to produce exactly the outcome they desire.
In today's highly competitive business environment, employers have the responsibility of identifying the cream of the crop. But are they always hiring the high performers? If you as a manager are spending time, energy and resources motivating employees in an attempt to make them more productive, perhaps you should reevaluate your hiring strategy. You don’t have to motivate the driven. Stop expending energy managing the marginal. You can learn how to do a better job hiring the high performers.
Most resumes are structured to promote an applicant’s skills, and interviewers tend to focus on this while ignoring the rest of the picture. When technically astute individuals conduct an interview, all too often they overlook the details of the big picture, focusing on the candidate's knowledge of Java, C++, Oracle and so on. However, skill level is merely an indicator of an ability to do a job, not a guarantee that the person actually will.
One of the missing links to predicting a candidate’s future performance is attitude — the person’s way of thinking in analyzing possibility or perception of achievability. There are two types of attitudes and we’ve all personally experienced them — believing we can accomplish a goal, and believing that something is impossible.
Any person can have a good attitude when the going is easy. However, the undeniable test is when challenges arise. Conquering obstacles is a rudimentary part of all achievement and the common thread woven through all success stories. It’s also the part that’s missing when poor results are achieved. Subtle “I can't” thinking becomes a negative, underlying force that depletes energy, holds back problem-solving and ultimately stops a person from achieving.
Conversely, positive thinking produces energy which fuels persistence, tenacity, and resiliency, all of which are key ingredients to problem solving. These characteristics are common to all highly successful people.
How to Hire the “Attitude”
Given that attitude may be even more important than skill set in acquiring a new employee, how do you assess for a positive attitude during the interview process?
 Start with three-part, behavior-based skill assessment interview questions, probably similar to what you’re already using. Since both the high performer and the low performer can perform well when circumstances are obstacle-free, make sure that each question is phrased to include a real life obstacle or difficult challenge that would be encountered in the prospective job. This is part of motivation-based interviewing and will assist in measuring the candidate's obstacle-resiliency. Words such as “difficult,” “toughest,” and “challenging,” are all useful.
Probe further about the “action taken” by the candidate during the obstacle situation and finally ask about the “end results.” This method of questioning is known as O-SAE and is a key component of motivation-based interviewing.
"O-S stands for “Obstacle Situation”
"A" stands for “Action Taken”
"E" stands for “End Results”
Sample O-SAE Question
O-S: Tell me about a specific time when you... *had to
debug some code that you did not write.
A: What actions did you take?
E: What was the outcome?
*You only need to change the backend of the
O-S question each time to create a new question. |
Now it’s time to learn how to determine whether a candidate has an attitude that is conducive to overcoming obstacles or giving in to them.
There are only two types of responses you’ll receive from obstacle questions; “I can and I did and let me share the specific details with you since you asked” and “I can’t and I’ll tell you why it was not possible for me to do.” You should know that only those who have worked hard to overcome the obstacles are able to provide the specific details about how they figured it out. You can't fake it. This makes the word “specific” a power-word for interviewers to distinguish between the two attitudes.
Since “I can’t” thinkers believe many obstacles are impossible to overcome, they answer obstacle-questions by explaining the rationale behind their pessimistic point of view. They are unable to provide any specifics details about how they figured out a solution because their mentally-defeatist attitude caused them to give up. You’ll quickly notice that these candidates do not hold themselves accountable for poor results. “I can’t” thinkers build a case designed to take themselves off the hook. It’s a case built on the foundation of “It’s not my fault, I was powerless.”
High Achievers have the “I can” attitude. They do not make excuses; they don’t see themselves as being powerless. Instead they believe in their ability to successfully confront tough obstacles, enabling them to produce the desired results. They accept responsibility for the results they produce — good or bad — then work on doing it better.
The “Predominant” Attitude
The key to accurately assessing a candidate’s attitude during an interview is to determine his or her predominant attitude. Predominant attitude is important because daily all of us think “I can” thoughts sometimes and “I can't” thoughts other times. However, each one of us has an entrenched habit of thinking that tends to lean more in one direction and that will eventually impact our level of achievement. While difficult to see in ourselves, predominant attitude is more evident in others. This makes it an ideal interviewing assessment tool.
As an interviewer, you’ll be able to determine predominant thinking in each of your candidates, if your questions are all consistently formatted to include an obstacle. Since attitude affects results, predominant attitude is a vital piece of data for predicting future job performance.
Your skill assessment questions will now provide two pieces of information: skill level and attitude. Realize that attitude assessment is separate from and in addition to skill assessment even though you are using the same questions to do both.
For rating a candidate’s level of skill, I recommend a 1 to 5 rating scale, with five being the best. For rating the candidate's attitude, I recommend the letters “I” and “E.” “I” stands for an Internal Locus of Control or the “I can and I did and let me share the specific details with you since you asked” type of response. “E” represents an External Locus of Control and it goes with the “I can't and I'll tell you why it was not possible for me to do” replies. Rate each response accordingly.
In a one-hour interview you can easily get a dozen clues or about as many as you have skill assessment questions. It will provide enough to see a pattern emerge. Count each answer that clearly shows how the candidate responded to the difficulty. Next, tally them to determine which is predominant — the “I can” attitude (I) or the “I can't” way of thinking (E). The predominant attitude is the one exhibited in more than half of the responses.
Conclusion
Motivation-based interviewing takes into consideration basic human nature more than behavior-based interviewing or hiring decisions based on a candidate's skill level alone. By incorporating attitude assessment, one of the missing links in many employee selection processes, you can do a better job hiring the high performers.
Attitude Assessment Exercise
Question 1: “You mentioned to me that your reason for job hunting is because you believe your current company may be in financial trouble because they’re asking you to accomplish impossible tasks such as cutting your cost center budget by more than 10 percent. What did you do? What was the end result?”
Answer: “I’ve been managing this department for more than 10 years and I know how to do it. Every year it takes more money to operate than the year before, not less. They need to understand that. I can’t do a good job if the company is always wanting to cut back. It’s just unrealistic.”
Question2 :“Tell me about a specific time you discovered a problem with a project you were working on. What did you do? What was the end result?
Answer 2: “I discovered a problem with a security model we were designing. It threw us for a loop at first because it looked like our whole model might have to be scrapped because of this flaw. But something inside of me told me the foundation was solid, that there was a simple way to get around this problem. Perhaps just a slight adjustment. But no one could come up with any ideas or ways at first, including me. I kept turning it around and around in my head, then I came up with the idea that if we changed one component to a table from a view it would allow us to maintain referential integrity, and it worked. It solved the problem.”
Answer Key:
Question 1: External Locus of Control — “I Can’t” Attitude Example.
Question 2: Internal Locus of Control — “I Can” Attitude Example.
You can test and improve your interview question writing skill level at the Hire Authority Interactive Skill Building Center — It’s free. Simply go to www.hireauthority.com/quiz.htm |
 About the Author
 Carol Quinn has more than 20 years’ experience in interviewing and hiring. She is president of Hire Authority, Inc., a company that teaches corporations how to hire more High Performers. Clients include small and medium-sized companies as well as BP, the second-largest energy company in the world, which nominated Hire Authority in 2004 for its Helios Award in Innovation for delivering breakthrough solutions. Quinn’s cutting-edge interviewing and employee selection methodology is taught in ten countries in English and Spanish. She is the author of two books. |