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Most managers share the fear of hiring a bad fit, no matter how technically qualified the candidate might be. Unfortunately, most attempts to measure fit suffer from a fatal flaw: that being the way cultural screening questions are asked.

Too many managers and administrators-turned-recruiters ask binary questions that make it easy for candidates to guess the most desirable answer. For example, they may describe their group’s team dynamic and ask if it is the type of environment that the candidate finds suitable. Fortunately, there is an alternative type of question format known as “forced choice” that can be used by those in recruiting to garner a much more precise and insightful candidate perspective on cultural issues.

The Problems with Binary Questions in Interviews

Many of the questions asked during interviews can easily be classified as binary or yes/no, true/false questions. While they may be posed in an open-ended fashion, it is clear from the phrasing and tonal inflection what response is desired.

In other cases, the questions probe the existence of behavioral characteristics that any candidate would need to be an idiot to deny.

Examples of obvious “yes” questions:

• Are you a team player?
• Do you work well under pressure?
• Do you share our company’s values?

Unless you are interviewing Homer Simpson, questions like those listed here will result in fairly predictable responses. By asking a question that allows a simple yes or no answer to be provided, you make it way too easy for the candidate to misrepresent themselves and to give the answer that they think you really want.

Consider Forced-Choice Questions

If you wanted to obtain a more precise answer to an important “fit” or preference question, shift to a forced-choice question format. This format requires the candidate to rank a series of possible responses in order of desirability.
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Two early stage recruitment tech firms — EnticeLabs and HireVue, both based in Utah — reported this morning that they’ve received investment dollars to finance their growth.

EnticeLabs, whose first product is an online advertising platform, got an infusion of $2 million from a group of investors lead by First Advantage. The company says the money “will be used to accelerate system development, accommodate higher-than-anticipated sales, and build out the infrastructure warranted by the rapidly expanding client base.”

It also gained the expertise of former Monster VP Neal Bruce, who joins its board of directors.

HireVue, which facilitates video interviewing, received a Series A round of funding led by Peterson Ventures joined by The Garber Fund of Penn State University, and others.

The company didn’t say how big the investment is, though it did say the money would be used to expand management, “strengthen market awareness, and make product enhancements.” keep reading…

To be a fast-growing company, whether a start-up or a new growth unit within a large corporation, there needs to be a product or service that is priced right, that customers are interested in, and are buying. The company also need to hire and manage people well, and you as the owner, recruiting executive, or HR manager in charge are faced with managing rapid growth.

The typical hiring questions that come up are:

• Who do we hire?
• Where do we find them?
• What should we pay them?
• How do we retain them?

While these questions are important, there are two issues that must be addressed first: alignment and transformability.

Alignment addresses the passion and skills the person brings to the organization, and their fit within the organization. Transformability is hiring the person not for the job as it exists today, but as it will exist tomorrow. Addressing the alignment issue without considering the transformability issue will likely result in hiring the wrong person.

Alignment has three components: passion, skills, and fit. In selecting an employee, gauge their passion for the work and for the challenge it represents. Identify the skills needed to support the continuing growth of the company. It could be marketing, sales, operations, or financial skills. Lastly, evaluate how the person will fit into your organization. Fit essentially is how well the person will cope with the “way work is done around here”: with the personalities, the pace, and the customers.

Alignment is important, but in isolation of the second component — transformability — insufficient to ensure that the right person will be hired. You are not hiring for the job as it exists today; you are hiring for the job as it will likely exist 12 months from today.

Remember, we are talking about a fast-growing company, and one of the characteristics of a fast-growing company is that things change — fast.

Think about the last time you changed jobs. While we all like to believe we hit the ground running, most of us took some time to assimilate into the new job, to the way work gets done, to what is and is not acceptable, and to a myriad of other issues resident in a new organization.

Now consider this: you just start feeling comfortable in your work environment (that is, you have assimilated) and you come to work the next day and the job has changed. Your skills are no longer what are required because what is required now is different. This is a fact of life in fast-growing companies.

So when you are thinking about hiring, and you are a fast growing company, think about how the job will look 12 months from now. Think about the skills that will be required, and start looking for candidates who fit the future, not just the current, job requirements.

When talking with candidates, tell them what the job is today, how you expect it will change over time, and that you are looking to fill the job as it will likely exist in the future, not as it exists today. This way, you are being honest.

Some candidates may seriously wonder if you know what you are doing. Others will be energized by the idea that the job will change and they will not only have a chance to grow, but they will be expected to grow. Fast-changing job requirements are not for the faint of heart or bureaucrats. This kind of job ambiguity isn’t for everyone, but if you consider alignment and transformability as you start the hiring process, you are being honest with both yourself and with your future employee. The probability that you will hire and retain the right person increases significantly.

Here are nine questions to consider when interviewing for a fast-growing company: keep reading…

So, there you are, innocently researching a potentially awesome new candidate when you stumble upon her personal blog that goes beyond mere TMI and causes your cheeks to turn crimson. Or, perhaps your eyes are still bug-eyed after reading about some “interesting” history in a candidate’s criminal background check. Or you receive a video resume and your knee-jerk reaction is that the person is simply u-g-l-y with no alibi.

Whatever the case, if you have ever felt as though you might be running into legal issues, the U.S. EEOC’s Assistant Legal Counsel Carol Miaskoff says to listen up to the following basic rules:

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The Northern Lights have seen strange sights,
But the queerest they ever did see … – The Cremation of Sam McGee

While they may not quite compare to the sight spoken of by the nameless narrator of Robert Service’s famous poem, nonetheless some of the tales I’ve heard lately of interviews certainly give Cremation of Sam McGee a run for its money.

By far the most dramatic was the interviewer who spent the entire interview reading email. When the candidate tried to get the interviewer’s attention, the response was, “We multi-task here.”

The interviewers who ask technical questions and then say, “That’s not how I would solve the problem, so you must be wrong,” are, sadly, so common that they don’t even rate.

I must confess that when I heard the first story, I was left speechless. Here’s an interviewer trying to convince a candidate to take a job at a company and is treating that candidate with a total lack of respect. If that’s how the person behaves when the candidate isn’t working there, how will he behave when the candidate is working there? That’s assuming, of course, that the candidate takes the job.

Now, it’s highly likely that some people are thinking that there must be a mistake in the previous paragraph: shouldn’t it say that the candidate is trying to convince the company to hire them? Sure they are; however, it’s a two-way street. The company clearly needs someone to fill a certain position, even if it’s not that specific person. Conversely, that person needs a job, even if it’s not that specific job.

But wait, it’s a terrible economy! Does the candidate really have a choice? keep reading…

We live in a world of pictures, movies, and sound. The printed word is being replaced and expanded by cheap, easy access to video websites like YouTube as well as sites such as Hulu.com and Veoh.com.

According to Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, more than 25 percent of the content that workers view each day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio by 2013. keep reading…

I have not always been a cell phone technology enthusiast. Until my last phone — the world’s smallest brick — refused to charge. This sent me sauntering into the AT&T store, determined to keep my existing pre-historic calling plan. When it comes to cell phones, I am pretty cheap. I root for the vigilant “Rollover Minutes Mom.”

“I never use data services,” I haughtily told the salesperson.

And then it happened. I palmed (pardon the expression) an iPhone. Sheepishly, I upgraded my plan. I am a convert — to unlimited everything! The iPhone makes handheld technology fun and accessible. (I still get a kick out of the level application. I fire it up to randomly to test the lopsidedness of tables. I also play mobile Scrabble. Hours of geeky fun!)

In addition to entertainment value, the iPhone also provides opportunities for recruiters to improve productivity. Joel Cheesman and Michael Marlatt have written extensively about the coming mobile revolution. Joel, who has launched a mobile recruiting marketing agency, outlines why recruiters should be paying attention to mobile technology in an excellent whitepaper.

Most of the recruiting/job-related iPhone applications were developed for jobseekers. Here are a few apps that will help recruiters save time, allow greater mobility, or improve communication with networks and contacts. You may very well have some favorites to add; please include them in the comments. keep reading…

Last week I introduced this series on the use of “live” video interviews by briefly discussing the business case and primary advantages for organizations adopting the emerging best practice. This second and final installment, built on the list of advantages introduced last week, introduces some problems you should anticipate and proposes some approaches to improve the scheduling of any in-person interviews that you hold.

Recording “Live” Video Interviews Provide Several Additional Benefits
Not all firms choose to record and keep their live video interviews, primarily due to technology limitations, cost, or privacy concerns (no candidate wants to find an embarrassing interview posted on YouTube). However, if you do record your interviews, there are several benefits that can accrue to your firm, including: keep reading…

Most of the media coverage these days about recruiting is devoted to social networking, mobile recruiting, and blogging, but the recruiting technology likely to have the most impact if it continues to catch on at the current rate is interviewing candidates “live” from remote locations. The approach I call “interviewing from anywhere” takes advantage of widespread broadband Internet access and inexpensive webcams, two factors that severely restricted videoconferencing as a feasible alternative to face-to-face interviews a decade ago. keep reading…

For many people on the job market, the Art of Interviewing seems like a mystery. That’s why I decided to demystify it a bit by offering a few clues that will hopefully put the whole experience into perspective. I’ll start by looking at a few common words that hold within them a hidden clues about what it means to join an organization. Keeping these words in mind will help both recruiters and the candidates they are working with. keep reading…

I’m constantly quite amazed at the level of ignorance, and often arrogance, which exists with some hiring supervisors.

Do you ever ask yourself how a person got into the position they occupy? I know I do. I constantly hear the overplayed and overstated “people are our most important asset” cliché — yet actions seldom back up this widely accepted ideology.

Recruiting great talent, even in a down economy, isn’t easy, and we’re not even going to talk about retaining them once they arrive. We make it hard enough just to get candidates to take us seriously during the interview process. Down economy or not, great people always have options.

So, for those of you who still need some help in figuring out how to completely sabotage your recruitment efforts, I’ve compiled a quick guide of six easy steps that will get you there faster then you ever thought possible.

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More often than not, it is the simplest things in life and in business that produce the biggest impacts. Having spent more than 30 years analyzing corporate recruiting practices and strategy, I have noticed there are some rather basic questions that, if only posed, would have a profound impact on the effectiveness of most recruiting endeavors.

Unfortunately, the questions are rarely asked, resulting in inefficient, ineffective practices.

Do not pose these questions periodically; incorporate them into your approach to build an engaging candidate experience, a more compelling offer presentation, and ultimately, a more productive hire.

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People are always writing articles about the best interview questions. One author (who positioned himself as a hiring expert) actually advised, “In terms of ‘canned’ interview questions, my suggestion is to select a few questions you like and ask them.”

This is a fine strategy for making friends, but absolute nonsense for a recruiter (I had another word in mind, but it would have been politically incorrect.)

After some initial chit-chat, the only interview questions a recruiter or hiring manager should ask are ones that provide trustworthy and reliable data about whether the candidate has the skills for the job.

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A new job board launched a few days ago, providing evidence that entrepreneurs aren’t intimated by the worsening recession and that they’re still struggling with Web 2.0 forms.

InovaHire is the latest offering in the crowded job board market. It’s a traditional job board except that job postings and employer profiles are free. The company generates revenue on a pay-per-view basis for display ads and links back to advertiser websites. For now these reside in two resource centers: one for candidates that offers things like resume writing and office supplies, and one for employers offering drug testing services and office furniture.

There’s also the usual employer profile enhanced with a clever Amazon-like feature that shows job-seekers what other sites people who visited that employer also viewed. That works both ways. Employers searching candidate profiles get to see who else other employers looked at.

What sets InovaHire apart is a sort of Instant Interview request. When you come across a candidate interesting enough to talk to, InovaHire enables you to contact them and schedule an online interview. Both of you need to have a microphone and webcam, but these are so ubiquitous — and so cheap — that it’s almost a non-issue. Of course there are other online interview solutions out there, but InovaHire’s solution is free and doesn’t require anything special in the way of software or connections.

In other ways, InovaHire is fairly standard, perhaps a touch dated. Resumes have to be entered manually in the fields the company provides. Jobseekers must provide a date of birth, but are told it won’t be displayed, so we have to assume it will eventually be used to target ads based on demos.

Founders Eric Schifone and Tanya Willette hail from New England, in the Boston area. Schifone has experience in high tech recruiting, while Willette, recently out of Southern New Hampshire University, has been working as an independent consultant to small firms for several years.

Originally published August 6, 2008.

Dating and recruiting have a lot in common. Learn how to improve your recruiting efforts by applying the most common dating rules.

Dating rule #1
First impressions are critical.

Recruiting application:
Differentiate yourself. Resist the “I have a great position for you” especially if you have never spoken to them.

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Let’s face it: YouTube, Break, Hulu, and Veoh have changed the way we view movies and videos and, more important, they have changed the way we use the Internet.

We rely more and more on pictures, graphics, and videos to display data, deliver the news, give us instructions, and keep us up-to-date with our families. The facts are amazing. Using Quantcast as my source, here is a rough idea of what’s going on. The online version of the New York Times, for example, has a monthly readership that averages about 14 million people in the United States. And that’s the largest readership of any print media I could find. The online Wall Street Journal does a paltry 4 million and even the prestigious Economist does only 3 million globally and most are seeing declining readership.

On the other hand, YouTube averages about 71 million viewers monthly — just in the U.S. And its rivals are also doing well and growing. Veoh does about 23 million, Hulu about 19 million, and Break about 15 million globally.

This indicates a decisive trend: more and more of us are getting information and education from video, rather than from words – whether in print or online.

We have already seen video slowly gaining in popularity and importance in recruiting. All top-tier career sites incorporate both pictures and video. Usually the videos are of employees talking about their jobs, but some include campus tours or chats with the CEO or a hiring manager. Many recruiters have received a video resume, and chat rooms have buzzed with concerns over the legality of such resumes and whether they should be accepted.

I don’t believe there is any serious legal issue in using video resumes, as long as your organization has a policy about how they are used. They are no more discriminatory than a face-to-face interview and may actually help to showcase communication skills and other positive traits. They can speed up the pre-screening process and may even eliminate the need for the number of interviews we subject candidates to.

Younger candidates, who are just entering the job market, may prefer to create a video resume as it reflects the media with which they are most comfortable. I can also easily imagine a time when the face-to-face interview is replaced with a live, virtual interview, perhaps with the hiring manger and several others also present virtually. The use of video lowers costs, expands the number of people who can participate in an interview, allows asynchronous viewing, and makes it more convenient for a candidate.

Here are just four of the ways organizations are using video.

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An interview with Rich Kenny of Northwest, who talks about the company’s combo with Delta; reducing time-to-hire; background checks; on-the-spot hires; recruitment advertising; and improving the candidate experience.

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Over the past two years, I’ve attended 15 different recruiting events and HR-related trade shows. Surprisingly, over 95% of the recruiting solutions presented had more to do with technology, sourcing, Web 2.0, assessments, and tracking data more efficiently.

Yet in our annual recruiter survey, 50% of most hiring problems are attributed to the lack of assessment, interviewing, and recruiting skills on the part of the hiring manager.

Taming this 500-pound gorilla is the big problem that should be addressed, not seeing more candidates who won’t get hired by anyone. From this cynical perspective, here are some ideas on how to tame your personal gorillas:

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The idea of redirecting recruiters toward internal movement and succession planning seems like a good one, but I’m afraid it is another dead-end recruiting street unless some basic principles are applied.

Wrong-Way Thinking

There is a common fallacy among a significant number of people that anyone can do anything: a good-looking applicant will make a high performing employee; a high performing employee will make a good manager; or, a highly skilled employee in Job A will also be a highly skilled employee in Job B.

Sorry, folks. We all know from experience this is general nonsense. Stories are legend about a top salesperson or technical whiz who failed as a manager; or, about a marketing whiz-kid who fast-tracked into the executive suite only to crash and burn on the job.

Let’s put this puppy to bed. The only time that past performance in Job A accurately predicts future performance in Job B is when both jobs are require virtually the same competencies. If Job B is different, requires more competencies or better quality ones, all bets are off. In fact, the only reliable way someone might even guess at future performance is to know the employee screwed up his or her last job.

Consider the Peter Principle. If you don’t know the term, either Google “Peter Principle” or look it up here. In short, Dr. Laurence Peter gave multiple examples of how employees tend to rise in the organization until they reach their natural level of incompetence. His message: every time that job requirements change — or an employee changes jobs — there is a strong probability that they will not be competent in the new role. Although Peter uses corporate ladder-climbing as his examples, his principles apply equally to all people holding jobs. The Peter Principle is a classic must-read for every recruiter or hiring manager.

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll explain why the Peter-Principle is alive and well.

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Too many recruiters rush the closing process, trying to push the candidate across the finish line before the race has even started. If you want to win the recruiting game, stop the Hail Mary’s.

Instead, consider successful recruiting more like a well-planned football drive, where time of possession is key. If you’re not into football analogies, the idea here is that top people don’t make critical career decisions on the first call or after the first interview. And if you try to push too hard to get a commitment you’ll drive the best away. This is equivalent to a turnover.

With a great football weekend ahead, here’s what it takes to turn a successful drive into a touchdown:

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