A Holiday Gift from OPUSBOB: Interviewing Skills

For the holidays OPUSBOB gives the gift of understanding candidates and the interviewing process.

The topic of this video blog is Interviewing Skills and specifically what I want to talk to you about today is how to look for evidence of behavior in the interview process. The areas that I am focusing on have to do with important skill sets that an individual needs to have in order to be successful in a job that you are hiring them for and when we think about the sales position, certain areas which really standout that you can’t look for evidence of behavior or listening skills, writing skills, presentation skills and closing skills and the reason I say that we can look for evidence of behavior is because these are all areas that you really don’t need to question your candidate about almost any good sales candidate, I have to say they are a good sales person but a good sales candidate if asked the question are you a good closer, we will say yes I am an excellent closer but in fact the interview process and the hiring process is very much like a sales process and so instead of asking the question are you a good closer, you can look to see how the person closes you and here is where it really gets interesting.

There are very different closing styles and a closing style has more to do with the behavioral style then it does whether one is right or wrong.  For instance people that are very assertive and people that are impatient may go to close early and often. People that are more patient, people that are more consensus-oriented may allow the process to go on a bit longer and in a sense allow you to extend the offer to them versus them closing you.

Now is one style better or worse well that really depends but what traditionally happens is if one style is the way that the manager is and that persons closing skills measured up and narrowed the manager style, they will be more comfortable with that and the manager, if the manager is a high dominance, low patience person themselves we said well I love the way that person really came after me. But if the manager is more laid back then that high dominance, low patience person may have been a huge turnoff for them so our ability to read good or bad, right or wrong is really more tied into how we match up with our candidate and as a result of that we have a tendency to hire people that are more like us and sometimes we end up passing on the candidates that although their style is different from us, it can actually be more effective.  The more you know about your own personality style and the more you know about your candidate style, the more effective you can be because it’s not really whether the style is right, it’s whether they are able to use that style to their benefit. Thanks for your time.