Interviewing e gov april2016

Dr. Leahcim Semaj
Intl. Keynote & Motivational
Speaker
Above or Beyond
876-383-5627

Dr. Leahcim Semaj...
Noted among the leading Motivational
Speakers, Creative Thinkers and Problem
Solvers in the Caribbean.
This Psychologist combines ancient wisdom
with contemporary ‘livity’ to bring fresh
insight to old human problems.

06/04/2016 www.LTSemaj.com 4
Chinese Proverb
•What I hear, I forget
•What I see, I remember
•What I do, I understand

06/04/2016 www.LTSemaj.com 5
Performance Driven Learning
• People remember
• 20% of what they hear
• 40% of what they see and hear
• 70% of what they see, hear and do

Format for Workshops
• Part 1: The Presentation
– Reasoning
– Motivation
– Data
• Part 2: Participant Work Groups
– Participants join small working groups to explore issues arising from the
presentations.
– They will identify the challenges, the change strategies for self and/or
circumstances, and the help that will be required.

Format for Workshops
• Part 3: Participant Presentations
–In this session, the participants will share
experiences and conclusions from the working
groups with the full gathering.

Another JobBank Presentation
4/6/2016 www.jobbank-ja.com 8

Before the interview

INTERVIEWING DISTANCE
•the distance between the interviewer and the area just
outside the interviewee’s “personal space bubble”
•The interviewer who operates from this distance is said
to be in a dominating, but not threatening position

PROXIMICS
•is the study of spatial
distances that
people maintain
between themselves
and others in
structuring
transactions

The distances are:
• Intimate - used where a close relationship exists
• Personal - which is not defensive but also not close
• Social - used in small group and social situations
• Public - used when interacting with larger groups

DECEPTION
•is the intentional act concealing or distorting the
truth with the intention to mislead another
person into a false judgment
•Interviewees deceive when they willfully decide
to hide information from the investigator
•what they know, or what they did, and why

KINESICS
•is the study of the relationship
between body motions and
communication
•in other words, the study of body
language

PARALANGUAGE
•encompasses vocal effects
•such as tone of voice that carry
meaning, and the use of silence

INTERVIEWING ZONES AND LOCATIONS
•The distance between a questioner and the
respondent can influence the outcome,
failure or success of an interview or
interrogation
•4 zones are hypothesized:

Public Zone
•This is an open area more than 12 feet in
any direction and larger than an average
room
•This room is suitable for casual interviewing

Social Zone
•In this setting, the surrounding space is
roughly equivalent to an average room. It is
confining, but not restricting
•A social zone is suitable for interviewing -
12ft.
•(Interrogators should start here)

Personal Zone
• The surrounding space is not larger
than an average room
• the questioner and respondent are
close but not touching
• This zone is appropriate for
controlled interviewing and light, or
non-intensive interrogation 4ft.
• (Interviews should start here)

Intimate Zone
•This is a more confined
space, perhaps half the
size of an average room
•The questioner is face-to-
face with the respondent,
well within touching
distance and touching as
circumstances of the
dialogue dictate

Intimate Zone
•At the beginning the
participants should be no
more than 2 feet apart
•This zone is intended for
intensive interrogation - 1.5ft

CONVERSATION LOCATION
•In the conversation location the participants are
located about 6 feet apart
•This is a “safe” distance for the interviewee
•just beyond easy physical reach
•Participants have adequate space to lean forward
without touching

•They can move their legs comfortably.
•The interviewer can observe the
interviewee for nonverbal communication
at critical moments
• i.e. it is easier to see the interviewee shake a
leg, wiggle a foot, and so on

MODERATE LOCATION
•The moderate location brings the participants to
within 4 feet of one another
•This is now outside the “safe” distance
•It is close enough for the interviewer to gently
touch the interviewee’s arm or shoulder if
appropriate

INTIMATE LOCATION
•In the intimate
location the
participants are at first
situated about 2 feet
apart

THE INTERVIEWER
•Identifying and developing interview skills
demand a concentrated effort on a continuing
basis
•The investigator will suffer if he/she feels too
confident

Some Guidelines for the
Effective Interviewer

Incite response, listen and control
•The interviewer must occasionally volunteer
comments, but his/her first requirement is to
listen
•The interviewer maintains control of the
conversation
•relinquishing it only when doing so is prudent

Assume nothing.
•Be certain that you comprehend the comments
the interviewee makes
•Be confident that the questions asked are
understood, no matter how tedious and detailed
the questioning may become.

Examine personal abilities and shortcomings
candidly
•The best interviewer is one who knows himself
/herself and recognizes how he/she appears to
others
•Capitalize on your abilities and appear, even to
the most perceptive interviewee, as mature,
intelligent, and broad-minded.

Establish an image
•Generally, the interviewer
should keep his/her personal
and professional image as
simple as possible

Establish an image
• You must present yourself in a way that will influence
the factual response
• Remember, a good interviewer is flexible and uses a
variety of approaches

Be curious
•Open-minded curiosity should accompany the
interviewer/interrogator in all endeavors
•You must want to know the interviewee and the
facts and should enjoy the discovery, inwardly

Avoid emotional entanglements
•Anger, boredom,
disgust, fear, pity,
resentment, joy or even
elation

Avoid emotional entanglements
• the range of emotions the interviewer experiences
during the process must be suppressed
• Anyone can adversely affect the responses

Good intelligence
•good understanding of human nature, the ability
to get on well with others, and patience and
persistence are indispensable attributes that
make a good interrogator

SETTINGS, LOCATION, INTENSITY AND
APPROACH
•To assist in ensuring a successful
interview, the interviewer must make
allowances for many factors

The Factors
• Where the interview will take place
• Where the participants will be located within the
interview room
• How intensely the interviewer will press for
information
• What approach will be used in questioning the
interviewee?

These elements
•require careful planning because they have
a significant impact on the outcome of
every interview

ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING

Privacy
•Conduct your interviews in a
comfortable, private room
•Choose an environment that is
quiet and free from
disturbances

Privacy
•The place for interviewing in your total control,
should be neat, clean, and generally comfortable
with regard to ventilation, air-conditioning,
lighting and the like

PERSONAL SPACE
•This is an invisible boundary
surrounding each of us
•When strangers intrude in our
personal space we become very
uncomfortable

PERSONAL SPACE
•Most Jamaicans reserve
personal space within an arm’s
length (12-18 ins.) around them
for intimate conversation

PERSONAL SPACE
•They will allow casual interactions in spaces
between 18 inches and 4 feet
•Interpersonal transactions will normally take
place outside of four feet

Personal space
•varies with culture and also with social
status
•People with high social status assume and
are granted more personal space than
people of lower status

Cultural Variations
•With over 160 countries in the world, it is
reasonable to consider each culture to have its
own customs
•How we smell, our odor, what we wear, where
and how we stand and sit when we convene,
and other factors make up the differences
between cultures

Why all this!
•living in a melting pot of cultures called Jamaica,
and our diverse jobs demand that we become
sensitive to them, respect and adapt to each so
that we do not insult anyone unnecessarily

Knowledge of proxemics
•can help you become a
better interviewer

Knowledge of proxemics
•Whether standing or seated during an interview,
be sensitive to the interviewee’s level of
comfort, and use it to define how the
interviewee defines his/her personal space
•Enter this space with care and avoid alarming
the interviewee.

Begin the interview;
•position yourself about 6 feet away from
the interviewee so as not to create fright
or anger
•conversation location/personal zone

Begin the interview;
•This distance does not seem to offend
anyone, be they male, female, young, old,
victim, witness, suspect, or from various
cultural background

Where to Start
•It is from the distance of six feet and closer that
necessitates care and consideration, because to
move too close too fast may cause the
interviewee discomfort and interrupt rapport.

•Most interviews take place at the moderate or
conversation locations
•Begin the interview with yourself and the
interviewee in the conversation location, about 6
feet apart

APPROACHES
• In practice, approaches are built around the questions
asked
• Structured Approach
• Semi-Structured Approach
• Non-Structured Approach

These approaches
• directly influence question formulation in the degree of intensity, and
the coverage from general to specific in review and encouragement

In a structured approach
• the questions address topics such as spelling of the interviewee’s
name, date of birth, place of birth, parents name;
• in essence they are fact-finding questions

The structured approach
• is used at the beginning of the interview and forms
the basis of the interviewer’s direct observation,
evaluation and, assessment of the interviewee
• The questions asked during the structured portion of
the interview require less thought from the
interviewee

The interviewer
• Uses basic fact-finding questions without accusation or intimidation
• Encourages the interviewee to comply by asking questions that can
be answered easily

The interviewer
•Does not ask for factual
information during the first 4
minutes

The interviewer
• Is being given the opportunity to note the
interviewee’s interaction status
• i.e. whether or not the interviewee is taking on a bold
assertive role
• a cooperative role
• or a submissive role

The interviewer
• Being bold, confident, and without defensiveness
tends to signify truthfulness
• Is similarly being evaluated by the interviewee and is
determining whether he/she will be treated fairly

Everything the interviewer does
•sends a signal to the
interviewee
•His/her presentation
encourages or discourages the
interviewee to comply

Towards the end of the structured approach
•there is a transition into the primary phase:

Questions
• vary depending on when they are asked during the interview
• the same basic questions are used with each interviewee
regardless of what is being investigated
• the interviewer waits until he/she reaches the point of
nonstructural approach
• when specific review and persistent encouragement can resolve
inconstancies and introduce interrogation

As you ask a question in the
nonstructural approach
•you are listening for responses that will
give you some hint about how to
formulate the next question

QUESTION FORMULATION
•A question is a direct or implied request for the
interviewee to think about a particular matter
•Interview questions are the key to an
interviewee’ knowledge and feelings

Keep them simple
• To encourage the interviewee to answer
• Regard the interview as a conversation
•not a cross-examination

Do not grill the interviewee
•as a prosecution
attorney might do
• Ask questions in a
conversational tone
and manner

your purpose
• to hold a conversation with someone who has
knowledge or has experienced something that you
want to know about
• Make sure that you are asking questions and not
making statements that do not call for answers

PHRASING AND PRESENTING QUESTIONS
•Trust yourself to ask
properly worded
questions spontaneously
with a natural manner
•Make your questions
specific, definite, and
concrete

PHRASING AND PRESENTING QUESTIONS
• Vague, general questions allow the interviewee to
evade the truth
• Make your questions more pointed and complex after
evaluating the degree of the interviewee’s compliance
• Decide when to talk, when to listen and when to
observe

Assumptions
•implied in your questions
and phrases
•may arouse different
reactions in interviewees
• Cooperation
• Apathy
• Suspicion
• Hostility

Keep in mind that
•your vocabulary could cause embarrassment or
resentment
•When interviewees do not understand the
words you use
•they may become embarrassed or insulted,
refuse to cooperate or just lie

Abruptly asked or tricky questions
•are not appropriate, and are mostly self-
defeating

PRINCIPLES OF QUESTION FORMULATION
• The following guidelines will help you formulate
effective interview questions:
• Use closed questions when appropriate
• Use open questions when appropriate
• Dare to ask tough questions
• Use leading questions when attempting to assist the
interviewee to rationalize or save face
• Handle trial-balloon questions cautiously

Ask self-appraisal questions
•For example:
•“Has there been any time when you have thought
of stealing from the company, even though you
never actually did?”

TYPES OF QUESTIONS
• Two main types of questions are generally asked during
investigative interviews:
1.Closed questions
•usually require a simple yes or no answer
•or the undeniable fact such as name, address and so on
2.Open question with a stated or implied who, where, what,
when, how, and why and cannot be answered with yes or no

Closed questions
•are useful when you want to maintain maximum
control over the interview and save time
because they limit the interviewee’s response
options

Open questions
• help interviews flow by tapping an interviewee’s
objective and subjective thinking
• For example:
• “Why would anyone think you had something to do with
the loss?
• Is there something that you have said or done that would
provoke suspicion?”

There are a variety of open
questions
each with its own characteristics and use

Reflective Questions
•act like mirrors reflecting the
interviewee’s comments
•They are used to handle objections
from the interviewee, and will often
take the form of
• “Let me see if I’ve got this straight...”

Directive questions
• are used to direct the interviewee’s attention to areas of common
ground

Pointed Questions
•stir interviewees into action
•They are specific in nature
and design, pointing most
precisely to a goal.

Indirect Questions
• allows the interviewee to express his/her opinion, suggestion feelings

TECHNIQUES FOR EFFECTIVE QUESTIONING
•Have the gall to ask
•Encourage cooperation
•Mentally assume an affirmative answer
•Pursue unanswered questions
•Identify and challenge deception
•Handle the trial-balloons

HOW TO TERMINATE THE INTERVIEW
• Always assume that more information is forthcoming
and that you need to ask the right questions and give
adequate encouragement

HOW TO TERMINATE THE INTERVIEW
•Even when it seems you have reached the
termination point
•when it seems as though all questions have been
asked and answered
•continue to assume more information is available

You might ask
•“What else is there that you can tell me about your
preparedness for this position?” or
•“What else should I know about you?”

In most cases
• You will need to
speak with the interviewee again
• If you have any doubts, you can tell the interviewee
that you may contact him/her in the future
• You might make an appointment for a second
interview and give yourself time to prepare further

Group Session One
• PLAN FOR AN INTERVIEW
1. Senior
2. Mid Level
3. Junior
• DESIGN THE SPACE
• PRE-INTERVIEW ACTIVITIES
• WHO WOULD BE ON THE PANEL?
• Why?

Session 2
The Interview

In The Interview

Interview Techniques for
Effective Hiring
http://business.time.com/2013/10/09/interview-techniques-for-effective-hiring/

Hiring is a risky business
•given that so much of your company’s
success rides on tapping the right people
for the job.
•Interviewing is really more art than
science and, all-too-often, job candidates
who look good on paper and ace the
interview process completely choke once
they actually get the job.

Bad hires are more than an
inconvenience:
•they’re expensive.
•According to research from
CareerBuilder, 41% of companies say
that a bad hire costs them at least
U$25,000.

How can you better your chances
of making a good hire?
•These tips may help you and your
managers to hone your interviewing
skills and improve the chances of
choosing the best people for the job.

Before you begin the interview,
•have candidates sit near some of your employees
for 10 or 15 minutes.
•Do they interact with their potential future
coworkers, and if so, how?
•Their behavior can give you insight on their
personalities and show how they may or may not fit
with your office culture.

2 Way Process
•Ideally, an interview should be a two-way
exploration so that both parties can determine
whether the candidate is a good fit for the job
and the company.
•Look for candidates who ask questions about
you to find common interests or shared values.

Remember,
• you can glean a lot of important insight
into how someone thinks and relates to
others by asking questions that don’t
directly relate to the job at hand.

For example,
•ask candidates what they do for fun.
•This can help you understand whether they
look for creative or competitive activities.
•Have they ever won a contest?
•Again, it doesn’t have to be work-related;
•Ask them what it was and how they earned it.

Who is This?
•Your interview shouldn’t consist of simply
checking off a list of job requirements.
•You want to see the person behind the
resume.

Which candidates think clearly?
•Pay attention to whether they dig deeper for
details.
•Do they listen well and retain knowledge?
•Ask them to summarize information you
described earlier in the interview.

Finally,
•ask candidates to describe their very first job
and how they got it.
•If they got a job when they were young to
earn spending money or to pay for school,
•it’s a sign that they developed a strong work
ethic early in life.

Hiring The Right Person
For The 21st Century

Based on
•The Big Idea: 21st-Century Talent Spotting
•by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz

Hiring For Potential
•Potential is considered to be the most important
predictor of success at all levels,
•from junior management to the C-suite and the
board.
•We have to learn how to identify people who
have it
•and to help companies develop and deploy them.

Designing The Future
•As business becomes more volatile and complex,
• and the global market for top professionals gets tighter,
• organizations and their leaders must transition to a new
era of talent spotting
•One in which our evaluations of one another are
based not on brawn, brains, experience, or
competencies,
•but on potential.

The First Era
•The first era of talent spotting lasted millennia.
•For thousands of years, humans made choices about one
another on the basis of physical attributes.
•If you wanted to erect a pyramid, dig a canal, fight a war,
or harvest a crop, you chose the fittest, healthiest,
strongest people you could find.

The First Era
•Those attributes were easy to assess, and, despite
their growing irrelevance, we still unconsciously
look for them:
•Fortune 500 CEOs are on average 2.5 inches taller
than the average American,
•the statistics on military leaders and country
presidents are similar.

The Second Era
• Emphasized intelligence, experience, and past performance.
• Throughout much of the 20th century, IQ—verbal, analytical,
mathematical, and logical cleverness—was justifiably seen as an
important factor in hiring processes (particularly for white-collar
roles),
• with educational pedigrees and tests used as proxies.
• Much work also became standardized and professionalized.

The Second Era
• Many kinds of workers could be certified with reliability and
transparency, and since most roles were relatively similar across
companies and industries, and from year to year,
• past performance was considered a fine indicator.
• If you were looking for an engineer, accountant, lawyer, designer, or
CEO,
• you would scout out, interview,
• and hire the smartest, most experienced engineer, accountant, lawyer, designer,
or CEO.

The Third Era of Talent Spotting,
• Driven By The Competency Movement
• still prevalent today.
• David McClelland’s 1973 paper “Testing for Competence Rather
than for ‘Intelligence’”
• proposed that workers, especially managers, be evaluated on specific
characteristics and skills that helped predict outstanding performance
in the roles for which they were being hired.

The Third Era of Talent Spotting,
• The time was right for such thinking, because technological
evolution and industry convergence had made jobs much more
complex,
• often rendering experience and performance in previous positions
irrelevant.
• So, instead, we decomposed jobs into competencies and looked
for candidates with the right combination of them.
• For leadership roles,
• we also began to rely on research showing that emotional intelligence
was even more important than IQ.

Today: The Fourth Era
•The Focus Must Shift To Potential.
•In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous
environment
• (VUCA is the military-acronym-turned-corporate-
buzzword),
•competency-based appraisals and appointments
are increasingly insufficient.

•What makes someone successful in a
particular role today might not tomorrow
•if the competitive environment shifts,
•the company’s strategy changes,
•or he or she must collaborate with or manage a
different group of colleagues.

•So the question is not whether your
company’s employees and leaders have the
right skills;
•it’s whether they have the potential to learn
new ones.

Tips For Conducting
an Effective Job Interview
•Prepare by conducting a "job analysis":
•Interviewers should consult with at least one
"Subject Matter Expert" to generate a specific
list of the most important aspects of the job and
what is required to perform it successfully.

Prepare questions in advance:
•An interview format in which all job candidates
are asked the same specific questions further
ensures that information obtained from
candidates is relevant and comprehensive.

Prepare to be flexible:
• What if the interviewer asks a pre-developed
question, but the candidate doesn't provide enough
information?
• Interviews that simply move on to the next question
at this point, without leaving room for follow-up
questions often do not collect enough information
from candidates.

Ensure the interview isn't too
short or too long:
• Since it is important that all candidates get the same
opportunity to answer the same questions — without
feeling rushed — it is generally best to limit the
number of interview questions.
• A good rule of thumb is to ask no more than 4 to 6
questions in a 30-minute interview,
• and no more than 8 to 12 questions in a one-hour
interview.

Focus on the interview during the
interview:
•Despite what some experts recommend, the
evidence suggests that soliciting candidates to
ask questions too soon reduces the interview's
reliability.

Include more than one interviewer:
•The use of multiple interviewers greatly
increases the reliability of the process.

Talking too much.
• If the interviewer talks too much then several things happen:
• the interviewer does not gather enough information to make
an informed decision about the applicant,
• the applicant feels that the interviewer may not be that
interested in them or their application,
• and the process can not be used to adequately compare the
skills and abilities of all the applicants being considered.

Accepting general answers.
•By not “digging” for more clear answers,
you may not get a good feel for what the
person can really offer you.

Relying on memory instead of notes.
•When you are seeing several candidates in
one day, it can become very confusing.

Questions You Can't Ask
•Direct questions about:
•family,
•marital status,
•age,
•religious or political affiliation
•are not permitted within the employment
interview in the USA.

Do:
• Lower your candidates’ stress levels by
telling them in advance the kinds of
questions you plan to ask
• Ask behavioral and situational questions
• Sell the role and the organization once
you’re confident in your candidate
• Provide relevant, real-life scenarios to
reveal how candidates think
• Make the candidate comfortable and sell
the job
• Take detailed notes

Don’t
• Forget to do pre-interview prep —
list the attributes of an ideal
candidate and use it to construct
relevant questions
• Involve too many other colleagues
in the interviews — multiple checks
are good, but too many people can
belabor process
• Put too much emphasis on “cultural
fit” — remember, people adapt.

Video
• https://hbr.org/2015/01/how-to-conduct-an-effective-job-interview
• Scroll to the base, right click save as and then save. Then link in your
presentation as always.

Listen Slowly

Best Interview Technique You
Never Use
The more questions you ask, the more you learn
about a job candidate, right?
Wrong. Here's a better strategy.
BY JEFF HADEN
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/best-interview-technique-you-never-use.html

Q & A
• Eventually, almost every interview turns into a
question-and-answer session.
• You ask a question.
• The candidate answers as you check a mental tick-box
• (good answer? bad answer?).

Q & A
• You quickly go to the next question and the next
question and the next question, because you only have
so much time and there's a lot of ground to cover
because you want to evaluate the candidate
thoroughly.
• The more questions you ask,
• the more you will learn about the candidate?
• Or not.

Listen Slowly
•Sometimes, instead of asking questions, the
best interviewing technique is to listen slowly.
•In Change-Friendly Leadership, management
coach Rodger Dean Duncan describes how he
learned about listening slowly from PBS
NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer:

What to do:
•Ask a good question,
• listen attentively to the answer, and then count
silently to 5 before asking another question.
•At first that suggestion may seem silly.
•5 seconds would seem like an eternity to wait after
someone responds to a question.
•Of course it would seem like an eternity,
• because our natural tendency is to fill a void with
sound, usually that of our own voice.

How it works:
•If you resist the temptation to respond too
quickly to the answer, you'll discover
something almost magical.
•The other person will either expand on what
he's already said or he'll go in a different
direction.
•Either way, he's expanding his response, and
you get a clear view into his head and heart.

From Interview to Conversation:
•Giving other people sufficient psychological
breathing room seemed to work wonders.
•When you bridled your natural impatience to get on
with it, they seemed more willing to disclose,
explore, and even be a bit vulnerable.
•When you treated the interview more as a
conversation with a purpose than as a sterile
interrogation, the tone of the exchange softened.
• It was now just two people talking...

Listening slowly
•can turn a Q&A session into more of a
conversation.
•Try listening slowly in your next
interviews.
•(Not after every question, of course:
•Pausing for 5 seconds after a strictly factual
answer will leave you both feeling really
awkward.)

HOW?
•Just pick a few questions that give candidates
room for self-analysis or introspection, and
after the initial answer, pause.
•They'll fill the space:
•with an additional example,
•a more detailed explanation,
•a completely different perspective on the
question.

WHY?
•Once you give candidates a silent hole to fill, they'll
fill it, often in unexpected and surprising ways.
•A shy candidate may fill the silence by sharing
positive information she wouldn't have otherwise
shared.
•A candidate who came prepared with "perfect"
answers to typical interview questions may fill the
silence with not-so-positive information he never
intended to disclose.

And all candidates
•will open up and speak more
freely when they realize you're
not just asking questions
•you're listening.

Group Session Two
• PLAN FOR AN INTERVIEW
1. Senior
2. Mid Level
3. Junior
• IDENTIFY THE POST
• STRATEGIES & QUESTIONS
• GETTING TO CONCENSUS
• The performer, Biases
• AFTER THE INTERVIEWS

Interviewing e gov april2016

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