Spring 2012 Drake P3 Certification Workshop

“The certification workshop was very interactive. I especially enjoyed working in the system as soon as we learned about a feature of the system. The diversity of the attendees (different industries, roles within their company and knowledge of the Drake P3 system) made the small group work much more interesting and it was a great way to learn from each other.”~

Merry Lee Lison, Director of Human Resources – TRC Global Solutions

“The Drake P3 workshop provided me with foundational knowledge to more effectively use the system. It also enabled me to bring my learning back to the office and share it with team members. Since the training, we have invited Janine to Direct Supply to design and facilitate a custom training for one of our business unit leadership teams. Each and every experience that I have had with Janine has been positive and has provided valuable learning!”

Sarah Heronymus Rolfs, Organizational Development Manager – Direct Supply, Inc.

Save the Date! A Drake P3 Certification workshop has just been scheduled.

When: April 18-19, 2012
Where: BMO Institute for Learning, Brookfield WI

If you’ve been using the system for several years and need a refresher, or you’re a new user who would like to sharpen your understanding of the full breadth of system’s capabilities, this workshop is for you! During the workshop you will gain hands-on experience applying the Drake P3 system to your organization!

BONUS: SIGN UP FOR OUR CLIENT’S ONLY LINKEDIN GROUP AND RECEIVE A SPECIAL WORKSHOP DISCOUNT. CONTACT US FOR DETAILS!

Workshop Agenda

Day One – 8:00 am to 5:00 pm

Opening and Introductions
Personality Profiling and Behavioral Style Overview
Trait Interactions and Impact on Behaviors
Communication Profile
Additional Selection.expert Components
Practical application of Selection.expert Concepts
Action Planning

Day Two – 8:00 am to 4:00 pm

Review of Day 1
Introduction to “Flexing”
Traits in Conflict–Fight vs. Flight
Management and Team Reports
Performance Coaching–Case Studies
Team Dynamics and Communication
Action Planning

REGISTER NOW!

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Taking Your Interviews from Good to Great! – Tip #4

Our last post examined using the acronym SARGE to gather important candidate information during the interview. But what are some common candidate responses to expect when interviewing and how can you be prepared to deal with them? Our final blog posting in the series, Taking Your Interviews From Good to Great, will explore a fourth interview technique – how to overcome three common candidate responses, the slip, bluff and silence.

SLIP
The “slip” happens frequently with candidates who are not familiar with a behavior-based interview. Candidates will often revert to an opinion-based response when asked to provide a specific work example. It goes something like this.

Question: Tell me about a time when were able to increase your company’s visibility with a potential customer who wasn’t previously aware of your company.

Response: That happens all the time. I target prospective customers and put together a prospecting strategy to introduce my company to them.

Do you see what happened? The candidate appears to give you the information you seek when in fact he slipped into a generic, broad response. As the interviewer, it’s your challenge to redirect the question to get a specific behavioral based response. Here’s how you can get your candidate back on track.

Question: I’m sorry I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. What I’m looking for is a specific example when you were able to introduce your company to a prospective customer who didn’t know your company existed. Can you tell me the last time it happened?

Response: Ummmm…that would have been last month. I read about a company who was expanding their business into our market. I knew our service would be a big help in their expansion.

Question: So, what did you to introduce your company and products to them?

When a candidate “slips” into an opinion-based response, you need to reinforce that you’re looking for a specific example. Let’s face it. Most candidates can demonstrate a general knowledge of the skills that lead to success. But you’re more interested if they are able to apply that knowledge effectively in a work situation. Listen carefully to your candidate’s response and ask yourself if it’s an opinion-based response or a specific example that demonstrates their competence in that area.

BLUFF
The “bluff” is when a candidate claims she is not able to recall a specific, work-related example. There are some schools of thought that if a candidate can’t quickly relate a specific example this is an indication that it’s not a strength of the candidate. In some cases that may be true. However, in other cases the candidate may be nervous and having a hard time thinking of a good example. The best course of action is to reassure the candidate – but not let them off the hook.

Question: Tell me about a time when were able to increase your company’s visibility with a potential customer who wasn’t previously aware of your company.

Response: Hmmm. I can’t think of a time when that happened. We’re a pretty well-known company.

Question: It can be difficult to think of an example. I’ll give you another minute.

Response: Well, there was a prospect who didn’t know that our company offered a product line especially designed for his industry.

With a little more persistence, the interviewer gave the candidate the time needed to think of an example that fit his question.

SILENCE
The third response type can be especially uncomfortable – silence. In this situation the candidate struggles with an answer and hopes you will start talking and move on. The more experienced you become in interviewing the more comfortable you will become with silence.

Some ways to handle silence are to pause and count to 10 – and then count to 10 again. Oftentimes, the candidate is formulating the response in his head or he is mentally evaluating the best response between two possible answers. Allow the candidate time to work through the response mentally. If you try to fill the silence you can disrupt their thought process. If the silence persists, be reassuring and re-word the question. This may give the candidate a better understanding of what is desired and trigger his thinking. A word of caution when re-wording the question – be sure you are asking the same question. We’ve seen interviewers re-word the question and it turned into an entirely different question.

For many people, talking descriptively about themselves may not be what they expected or what they are used to doing. When the candidate is having problems with their responses, you will have difficulty gathering the kind of information that you need to choose the top candidate. Being aware of the 3 common candidate responses and how to overcome them will allow you to hire top performers more often!

Do you need assistance in developing your manager’s interviewing competence? Contact JS Performance Strategies to develop your manager’s interviewing skills.

Taking Your Interviews from Good to Great! – Tip #3

So you’ve implemented interview tips 1 and 2 – creating job-specific interview guides and conducting a behavior-based interview. But using these two interview techniques doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll get a good candidate response. This week we will examine an important third interview technique – using the acronym SARGE to gather important information during the interview.

What is SARGE?
SARGE is a simple acronym to keep in mind as you’re conducting the interview to ensure you gather all the information needed to evaluate the strength of your candidate.

S ituation ~ what was the situation or challenge the candidate encountered

A ction ~ what specific actions did he/she take to handle the challenge

R esults ~ what was the end result

G et references ~ will the candidate provide a name and contact information to verify the example

E valuate ~ how good of an example did the candidate provide

As you listen to your candidate’s job-specific example, you may determine to ask more probing questions to get more details about the situation. You may also pick up on the candidate describing a situation using the word “we.” However, you want to know what specific actions the candidate took, so you will use follow up questions to isolate the candidate’s actions. Equally important, you will want to know the end result of the candidate’s actions. Did he save the company money? Did she satisfy the client? Did he resolve a customer complaint effectively?

The next element of SARGE, asking for a reference, allows you to verify the candidate’s story. This technique accomplishes two important things, 1) it provides you with references the candidate may not typically give you, and 2) it sets the tone early in the interview that you will do some additional investigation to validate their responses. If a candidate is inclined to exaggerate or fabricate an example, asking for a reference will send a strong message that you will be verifying the information so she should be accurate in the examples provided.

At the end of each interview you will have gathered important insights to evaluate your candidate and determine the “goodness of fit” to the job. Using a common rating scale will also allow you to do an “apples to apples” candidate comparison.

Next week’s blog will explore our final interview technique – three common candidate responses, the slip, bluff and silence, and how to overcome them. Be sure to check back for the final interview technique to take your interviews from good to great!

Do you need assistance in developing your manager’s competence with behavior-based interviewing using SARGE? Contact JS Performance Strategies to develop your manager’s interviewing skills.

Taking Your Interviews from Good to Great – Tip #2

Have you ever hired someone who knocked your socks off during the interview only to see her performance fall short when you hired her? There are plenty of candidates who have mastered the art of interviewing; unfortunately, once hired you find out they haven’t perfected the art of performing. While there is no silver bullet there are several techniques that will help you gather information to make more informed hiring decisions.

Our last post examined the first interview technique – creating a custom interview guide – to take your interviews from good to great! This week we’ll explore a second interview technique, conducting a behavior based interview.

What is a behavior based interview?
The behavior-based interview is based on the premise that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. In other words, what a person has done in the past is an important predictor of what a person will do in the future. A behavior-based interview focuses on gathering concrete data on past job performance. Here are a few examples of behavior-based questions.

• Tell me about your most difficult sales call in the past 6 months.
• Tell me about a time you encountered an unexpected obstacle that interfered with your ability to get the job done.
• Tell me about the most challenging customer complaint you resolved in the past year.

You’ll notice an incredible thing happening when you begin asking behavior-based questions. As your candidate describes a particular work situation you get a clear sense of how they typically handle customers, co-workers, and managers. You begin to imagine how their work habits will work in your environment and you are able to more accurately assess their “goodness of fit.”

Equally important to asking a behavior-based question is knowing what to listen for so you can appropriately evaluate the strength of your candidate’s response. Let’s return to the question mentioned earlier, “Tell me about a time you encountered an unexpected obstacle that interfered with your ability to get the job done.” Your candidate’s work-related example will provide insight into his determination and creativity in overcoming obstacles and challenges. You will listen carefully for his persistence, his creativity in overcoming an obstacle while working within company guidelines, and his definition of an obstacle. Using your candidate’s examples you will be able to evaluate if he’s the right person for the role.

Behavior-based interviews are proven to the most reliable technique to gather relevant job-related information and should account for the majority of your interview questions. Check back next week for the third interview technique that will take your interviews from good to great, using the acronym SARGE to evaluate the strength of your candidate’s responses.

Do you need assistance in developing your manager’s competence with behavior-based interviewing? Contact JS Performance Strategies to develop your manager’s behavior-based interviewing skills.

Taking Your Interviews from Good to Great! – Tip #1

What are your strengths?

Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?

Describe your weaknesses.

Ring a bell? Are these the questions you typically ask? Then this week’s blog (and several to follow) will give you a broader perspective and freshen up your interview approach. During the upcoming weeks we’ll examine 4 interview techniques that will take your interviews from good to great!

Interview Technique #1 – Create an Interview Guide
Before you begin interviewing candidates take the time to create an interview guide. Why take the time? Here are just a few benefits of creating an interview guide.

• Focuses your interviews on job competencies that are critical to job success
• Probes the candidate’s knowledge, experience and ability in areas that are predictive of job success
• Identifies “what to listen for” so you can quickly evaluate the strength of the candidate’s response
• Uses a consistent format and rating scale for “apples to apples” candidate comparisons
• Allows you to gather better information during the selection process

When you gather better information you are setting yourself up to make more informed hiring decisions! So where do you begin? A systematic job analysis will help you identify the competencies and behavioral tendencies that are predictive of job success. Once you’ve identified these important job characteristics you’re ready to develop an interview guide.

Remember to use the proper mixture of question types in your interview guide. The following questions illustrate the types of questions you should include in your guide.

• What are your strengths? This is an opinion-based question and it focuses on self-evaluation.
• What were your typical job duties in your last job? This question focuses on work duties and responsibilities and is an experience-based question.
• What was your major? This question focuses on education and is a credential question type.
• How do you administer CPR? This is a technical question whose goal is to determine if the candidate can meet the job’s minimum performance requirements.
• Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your manager. This is a behavior descriptive question and the focus is on a specific work-related experience.

Without an interview guide, interviewers tend to rely heavily on opinion-based and experience-based questions. In reality, opinion questions should represent only about 10% of the total interview and experience-based questions should comprise another 20%. Can you identify the most effective interview question type? If you guessed the behavior descriptive interview question, you’re right! This type of question should be used 60% of the time. Our next blog post will examine the important benefits of using this question type as part of conducting a behavior based interview.

Do you need help with conducting a job analysis, creating custom interview guides or educating your managers how to be better interviewers? Contact JS Performance Strategies for help!