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7 keys to learning things about candidates during an interview that the
candidates dont know about them selves

By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute




Brining in the wrong people and then keeping them on board is one of the
most costly mistakes you will ever make as a manager. Since letting go of
someone often means they should not have been hired in the first place
understanding how to find the right people is a good place to start.

The first thing you want to understand during an interview is what you can
and can not easily change.

You can easily teach an intelligent, honest, accountable individual to excel.
It is much harder (though not impossible) to lead a skilled person to be
accountable and honest.

As an HR director I found that the main two reasons managers fire
employees are an inability or a lack of willingness on the part of the
employee to change. The weakest link is the ability to identify the
willingness to change and since drive is so vital in maintaining excellence
this reason is the number one root cause for termination.

How can you know if a person has the desire and the ability to change?

Most interviewing tools will tell you which questions to ask. After years of
interviewing and teaching others how to interview I have found pre-prepared
questions to be a waste of ev eryones time.

By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com3
The real key to effective interviewing is the interviewers inability to see
things as they truly are.



What do I mean by that?

When you ask a candidate a question there are several things that get in your
way of knowing the real answer:

· When the candidates truth isn¶t the real truth (though he or she may
whole heartedly believe it)

· The candidate may be prepared to answer your questions and the
answer reflects what he or she thinks you want to hear not the actual
truth

· Your own emotional blockages like an investment in finding someone
ASAP, you need to avoid conflict and maintain harmony, being
distracted by a million things etc.

By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com4
To overcome these and see reality you¶ll need to:

· create an authentic experience-- where the candidate reveals to you
his or her true self

· look in the right places and ask the right questions² you can only ask
a limited number of questions per interview. The tendency to ask
generic questions is not an effective way to go.

· Reveal the truth about the candidate, not the candidates perception of
the truth² rare is the case where a human being really knows what he
or she is made of. Most of us have a faulty perception, either we think
we can do better than we can or we dismiss our abilities and think we
can do less.

Furthermore, many managers just want to find a ³good candidate. But
³good has no meaning if you are nuoets astiokni:n g gtohoe qd for w hat?


By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com5
With that assumption and since you can¶t expect to ask someone a question
and get the factual truth in response you need to figure out three things:


· what the candidate s truth is
· the actual truth
· the candidates anbatilitiuesr alof t he kind it¶s hard to teach and his or
her willingness to learn and change



The third component is really all you need to know to make sure the
candidate will be able to solve problems, manage themselves, make
decisions etc. What we are looking for here is what you ca² tnhe ¶t teach
component of performance that is really in the either you have it or you
don¶t categ ory.

It sounds simplistic at first but since you can only focus on very few
components you are better off identifying core abilities, ones that are at the
heart of many other skills than trying to cover each skill (i.e. problem
solving, decision making etc.) individually.

Now that our challenge is well defined we can go ahead and increase our
ability to learn more about candidates than even they know about
themselves. Here are a few techniques we teach managers to use:

By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com6
1. Make the most out of the resume


Expert interviewers prepare well because they know that it is impossible to
focus on all of the aspects that need to be covered during an interview
session and because they know a resume hides many clues that will aid them
later in navigating the interview itself.
The key to an authentic interview, one in which the candidate reveals his or
her true self, is the element of surprise. Generic questions are repetitive, you
can prepare for them and rehearse to the point you yourself believe what you
are saying. The types of questions that elicit an authentic response are
individual and conversational. Individual in the sense that they were tailored
to the specific work record of the individual employee and conversational in
the sense that one question leads to another.
By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com7
Action item
Find three resumes online or in your old files and compare all three. What meaning
can you assign to the differences in layout choices? Which style appeals to you most
and why? -- make sure your choice isnt about which layout you personally would
have chosen but to do with what the resume is out to accomplish.
Look at how the candidates market themselves. Notice the differences and ask yourself
which one of them is least appealing and why that is. Look for consistency, clarity and
try to get a sense of how balanced their ego is.
Remember not to come to any conclusions, this phase is designed to build questions
not to provide answers and any conclusion you make now could be far from the truth.

2. Look for patterns and contradictions in the preparation stage

A quote I love from the Kabala says: the meaning of words is in between
the letters. Because here you¶ll find that the truth in humans is hiding
between actions. The key to unlocking the authentic truth about the
candidate is in cross checking and comparing contradictions and repetitions.
If an expert recruiter sees indications of order and organization such as a
coherent outline of years (using the same structure² say month and year
instead of sometimes making mention of the year and sometimes omitting it
etc.) alongside a clean break down of sections that is using a constant format
this could indicate a pattern.
If on the other hand the margins on the page are very narrow (text ends very
close to the edges of the page) and writing is in long continuous sentences, a
different pattern forms.
By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com8
A hypothesis is formed at this stage. In the first case the recruiting expert
may want to see if the organized pattern comes across also in things like
time management and how this person would feel about working with
people who are less organized. The recruiting expert would then formulate
those questions and wait until the interview to learn more.
In the second case the question of knowing to differentiate between the
important and peripheral aspects will come up. Here again, relevant
questions will form to look into this suspicion.
The questions for each interview are different because each candidate is
different. If you can¶t catch the uniqueness of the individual sitting in front
of you in the questions you outline, you are going into the interview ill
prepared.
Contradictions would be treated in the very same way. A resume that is
neatly organized but has typos in it would make one wonder and lead to
specific questions during the interview etc.


3. Looking for values and basic assumptions during the interview
Say you notice the candidate drumming his or her fingers on the table. As a
stand alone behavior it is difficult to know what this behavior means. It can
be anything from a passion for rhythm and drumming all the way to
resistance to authority.

To know which meaning to assign to behaviors during an interview you
need to see them in context. While looking at a resume was about building a
theory comparing what you saw in the resume with the interview will give
you a sense of the candidates truth and a sense of what their real abilities
are.
The great advantage to this line of questioning is that it is individually
tailored so candidates can not prepare to answer the questions in advance
and their answers are hence a closer representation of who they truly are.
By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com9
If you find consistency between the resume and the answers you were
provided you know something of value about this candidate. If there is a
mismatch, dig deeper to find out what is hiding.
Action item
When you get an opportunity to interview, or if thats not common for you next time
you have a one-on-one session with one of your employees, try to look for behaviors
that strengthen what you know about this candidate or employee or that contradict
with what you saw so far.
It may be insecure body language that follows your perception of this individual being
insecure (will strengthen your conclusion in this case). It may be an ability to carry
thoughts in a concise manner despite the fact that this person writes long and foggy
documents. Ask yourself or the other person to explain this gap or repetition. How
does that fit in the big picture of who he or she at work?
Notice the way he or she presents the answer to your question. Is it consistent with
what you saw so far?
Notice how aware this process makes you of your own perceptions and
misconceptions?

4. The interviewers responses and introspections a re as important
When someone is angry with us we respond emotionally and physically even
if we are not aware of it. When we feel sorry for someone, when we feel
superior to someone, when we simply don¶e rest lipokne d osno tmheoe ne w
inside.
Identifying the way you respond to someone else, your own emotional and
physical reactions are a great clue in interpreting reality.

By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com10
5. Detach yourself of your own emotional limitations



Once you become aware of your e suunrdface rer th es²pothnossee sback
of your mind thoughts that lead to conclusions and then to a physical and
emotional response, you can test those emotions and eliminate the irrelevant
ones. It will help you dramatically in getting closer to seeing things as they
truly are.
Like therapists or anthropologists, interviewers must know how to leave
their own imbalances and limitations outside the interviewing room. No one
can control the initial emotional response or making an initial assumption
about someone else, but we can all learn to be aware of our automatic
responses, make a point to understand them, and then move them aside.

By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com11
6. Peruse the candidates emotiona l triggers
An interview is a contrived situation. No one is themselves and so it is very
difficult to conclude or predict much about what will happen when the
candidate is hired based on the obvious behaviors in the interview.
Candidates prepare to the point they know exactly what you are going to ask
and what you want to hear, how they should sit and which weaknesses of
theirs to spill out. They know to sound professional and enthusiastic but not
too much as to not come across too eager.
We are most authentic, exposing our basic assumptions and values, when we
are emotional. Any reaction that is off balance, and that includes an excess
of positive or negative response falls into this category (you are just as
emotionally vulnerable when something great happens as when you
experience something bad).
Experienced interviewers notice emotional responses and follow their paths
with additional questions that intensify emotions to asses the candidates
evasive values, attitudes, and basic assumptions.


By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com12
7. Look for Core Reasons



Direct answers are often just the beginning of a long discovery trail. An
effective interview feels more like a conversation to the candidate because
the interviewer is focusing and stretching the understanding of the
candidates basic assumptions through a certain example. Most soft skills
can be located in pretty much any discussion, and as the interviewer asks
core questions like why, the answers become more revealing.
Action item
During a conversation you have try to engage yourself in understanding why the
person in front of you is making the choices they are making. Look for their inner
logic²if they are choosing a certain line of action it is because it makes sense to them.
You are not asked to accept their logic, just to follow it to the point that you
understand why it makes sense to them.



By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com13
Finally, when you look at interviewing through the lenses of the eight skills
of KindExcellence and through global optimization vs. local optimization in
particular, you realize the importance of keeping things real. If your team
talks a certain way that type of talk should be your style during the
interview. If you have certain expectations of your team, those same
expectations should be represented during the interview as well.

Hiring top talent by ³selling them something that isn¶t real will only lead to
disillusionment somewhere along the way. Unrealistic expectations are a bad
recipe.

There is nothing worse than hiring an unqualified candidate and firing him
or her after three months except hiring a qualified candidate that is not a
good fit for your team and parting from them after long months of
frustrations.


By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com14


Other articles by Reut Schwartz-Hebron:

On Insightory.com:
· 7 Ways to Change Other People with Zero Resistance
· Your Organizational DNA is Dictating Your Achievements
Published articles:
· The 5 Basics of KindExcellence
· Can You Learn to Have Better Management Intuition?
· 7 Things Great Interviewers Do Without Knowing
· Additional articles are available on the KindExcellence Institutes website and
blog: www.KindExcellence.com and blog.KindExcellence.com




Reut Schwartz-Hebron is the president of the
KindExcellence Institute, an international consulting
company based on a revolutionary business model that
combines kindness with excellence. The KindExcellence
Institute works with corporations and certifies
consultants to increase productivity and decrease
voluntary turnover worldwide.
Reut started her career as a lieutenant ranking commander in the military (was the first
woman consultant to be offered a field position with a combating unit) and has worked
since with all types of organizations including mega corporations like Intel, Avaya,
Marconi and GSK all the way to small non profits. Reut is a published author, a radio
and TV guest expert and an international speaker. She can be reached at
reut@KindExcellence.com

Copyright 2008, Reut Schwartz-Hebron. May be reproduced without charge, with proper
attribution and brief bio. Send notice of where and when article is to appear to
reut@KindExcellence.com
By Reut Schwartz-Hebron, President, The KindExcellence Institute
www.KindExcellence.com