Consulting Journal: Techniques

Techniques: How to interview

by David Blakey

Think again. The traditional ideal candidate may not be your ideal candidate for today.

[Monday 13 May 2002]

I wrote a while ago about techniques when you are being interviewed. There will also be times when you will be interviewing other consultants. This may be for a position, working for you or your organization. It may be for a specific assignment, working for a client. Really, the only difference between the two will be the possible duration of the professional relationship. It is usually expected that the relationship will last for a longer time when you are interviewing someone for a full-time job rather than for a contract for a single assignment. This is no longer the case, especially in professional services such as consulting. People tend to change jobs more frequently than they used to.

There are two questions that you should seek answers to:

Can they do the job?
Will they do the job?

The first question is the easier one to prepare for and the easier one to get the answers to. If you can prepare a job description, then you can build a set of questions that will tell you whether the candidate matches the job description. In many cases, your questions will be confirmation of the skills and experience in their résumé. So making a good assessment of their abilities should be easy.

The second question is harder to answer. Will they do the job? Will they be available to get the job done? Consider the following. If you need a consultant who will arrive at a given time, will do what needs to be done and who will then leave at a given time, then you do not need to answer this second question. If the job or assignment needs a ‘nine-to-five’ mentality, then anyone can do it. If, however, you need someone who can travel away from home, can get to early morning and late evening meetings, and can put in extra work outside normal hours, then you need to look beyond their abilities.

Often, their résumé will tell you what you need to know. If it does not, then ask questions based on the following three problem areas.

Alternative schedule

Do they have another schedule in their lives apart from work? Watch out for these areas.

Sports
If someone regularly plays a sport at the weekend, then they are not going to be available for work. There is another point here, of course. People who play sports usually risk injury, so that they may become entirely unavailable. Be wary of sports players.
Exercise
Even if people do not play football every Saturday morning, they may visit a gym regularly. Gym visits are usually timed to be immediately before or immediately after the working day. They make people unavailable for the meetings that happen before or after the working day.

Alternative work

Some people have other ‘jobs’.

Voluntary work
Many professionals do voluntary work, where they use their skills to help others. The immediate problem with these activities is not that they take time away from the work that you want done, but that the voluntary work will not get done. The more time that these people have to put in for you, the less they have for their voluntary work. This can lead to stress. Make sure that there is no commitment to achieve goals within any voluntary work. Check also for alternative schedules, as above.
Dependants
This is a tricky area. In many countries, you can ask candidates questions about what they do for other people, through voluntary work, but not what they do for their own family. Children aren't a problem. Professional people have arrangements for taking care of children. Professional people with professional partners have plans and alternatives in place for dealing with problems. Anyway, asking about children is not usually a problem: people are happy to talk about their children. But beware of other dependants who may make unpredictable demands upon the candidate.

Addictions

It is often not recognized that some addictions cause major disruption in the workplace.

Gambling
Gambling is an enormous problem in some parts of the world. Compulsive gamblers may be absent from work, they are likely to be delusional, and they may be criminal. Some compulsive gamblers have defrauded their employers of large amounts of money to pay for their addiction.
Alcohol
While alcohol consumption may be controlled during the working day, many people need to drink each evening after work and spend some parts of their weekends either drinking or recovering from its effects. Problem drinkers are less easily identifiable than problem gamblers, as you may not be aware of the problem until they arrive drunk for an evening meeting or seriously hung-over for a morning meeting. You can get some clues from an interview by talking about the organization's social activities and then asking if the candidate enjoys end-of-week boozing sessions.

Finally, you might want to consider the following when you are preparing your résumé or being interviewed. Times have changed.

To many employers, your sports activities may no longer show that you are a ‘good team player’ but rather as someone who may not be able to make a full commitment to their career.
Your voluntary work may no longer mean that you have ‘community spirit’ but mark you as someone whose other commitments may clash with your career.
Your visits to bars may no longer identify you as being a ‘social’ type of person but may indicate that you may be unreliable.

The world of work is less relaxed than it was a few years ago. The honorary chairman of the local sports team who ‘props up the bar’ each weekend may have to rethink their priorities.

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