Interviewing is one of the most used of all management proce- dures. Managers conduct selection interviews, disciplinary inter- views, performance interviews, and exit interviews. However, at least one study from the late 1990s discovered that in the majority of the firms where this was true, less than 30 percent of the man- agers conducting interviews had participated in any type of inter- view training.
A manager at a Maryland company confided that he was re- quired to conduct numerous selection interviews as part of the company’s recruiting team, but he had never been trained in interviewing techniques or given any guidance.
‘‘I’m a manager, so I am supposed to know how to interview.
All managers are supposed to know how to interview.’’
For identifying training needs, the interview is an information- gathering procedure. The specific information will vary, but in all cases you want to discover something. And it is not always an easy task.
Sometimes the person you are interviewing may not want to tell you what you need to know. Other times, the interviewee may not have the information you seek, and still at other times, your motives may be suspect. However, if you follow some basic rules
and guidelines for preparing for and conducting an interview, you will greatly increase your chances of success.
Knowing Whom to Interview
In most cases, this is the individual who completed the question- naire or otherwise contacted you that a training need might exist.
There are situations in which the initial communication may di- rect you to an interview with someone else. For example, a man- ager may describe a problem his employees are having with materials received from another department. In such an instance, the majority of the information you require may be from that other department.
When you are identifying who it is you want to interview, keep in mind that if you need to talk to a number of people, it may be better to have a meeting with all of them at one time.
Planning the Interview
To be successful, an interview should be planned with a specific objective and identification of the information desired. As with any other management activity, to be successful you should first establish an objective. In creating your objective, keep in mind your primary purpose is to obtain information. As an example, your objective might be:
To obtain the necessary information to determine the training required for a successful
As a part of planning for a needs identification study (see Chap- ters 5 and 6), you identified some of the specific areas where you might need information. In our example of the orientation pro- gram, a number of subject and sub-subjects were given. All of those represent areas in which you require information. Your overall objective is to obtain information for a new employee ori- entation training course, but the objectives for individual inter- views may differ depending on whom you are interviewing. For example:
Interview Subject Objective
A human resources To identify the terms and professional conditions of the organization’s
health insurance program A new employee To discover what information
about the organization would have assisted the new employee Once an objective is established and the general subjects iden- tified, you next need to develop your questions. Successful inter- views do not just happen. They are planned and the questions predetermined and sequenced.
Designing the Questions
Questions should be designed to obtain the information you need.
An excellent planning method is to list the information required and beneath each item the question or questions you will use to obtain that information.
For example, assume you are preparing to gather information to identify the training needs for a retail salesperson to learn the store’s selling system. Two areas you’d be interested in are the types of sales and the return procedures. Perhaps the questions you have prepared to gather this information are as follows:
Types of Sales
❐ What types of sales are made in your department?
❐ Approximately what percent of total sales does each type represent?
❐ What are the most difficult types of sales to process?
Return Procedures
❐ What are the steps to process a return?
❐ How is a return authorized?
❐ What returns are acceptable?
One danger of not preparing your questions in advance is that you’ll miss a key point. Another is that not having prepared ques-
tions can lead to confusing interviews that are either too short or too long. An interview is too short when the interviewer forgets what to cover, and too long when there is no plan to keep the interviewer focused.
For an information-gathering interview there are a number of guidelines to assist you in developing questions.
Be Sure the Questions Relate to the Interview Objective
By first listing the subject and then the questions, it is easy to determine if the questions will prompt the type of answers—and the information—you require. For example, assume you are in- vestigating training needs for a supervisor’s position. You know one of the required competencies for a supervisor is decision making, which is defined as the ability to consciously select an alternative from two or more. You have developed the following two questions:
1. What steps do you (i.e., the supervisor) follow to make a decision?
2. What was the poorest decision you ever made?
The first question will probably elicit an answer regarding the person’s decision-making skills, but the second question, al- though related to decision making, will probably give more insight to the person’s judgment. Actually, if the second question had a follow-up—What could you have done to make your poorest deci- sion a good one?—you’d be even more likely to obtain the type of information you are seeking.
Avoid Questions That Are Answerable in One Word
Generally, one-word answers are of little assistance, and they put you in the position of asking the interviewee to explain or justify the answer. The interview becomes a type of interrogation. If you ask, ‘‘Do you feel the current training course is effective?’’ and you receive yes as an answer, you really do not have much informa- tion that will assist you. You have to then ask a ‘‘why’’ question,
and generally ‘‘why’’ questions should be avoided. You will do bet- ter by framing your question as follows:
How does the subject matter covered in the training course assist employees with their on-the-job performance?
Avoid Questions That Communicate a Desired Answer
Sometimes in attempting to place a question in a proper context, a desired or seemingly desired answer is communicated along with the question. For example:
Our company’s president believes that all new employees should attend a four-hour company orientation course. How do you feel about that?
Chances are the person will agree with company president even if she thinks the orientation should be longer or shorter. Or suppose you ask this question:
We have always felt that, to be a successful, a supervisor must have strong leadership skills. How do you feel about that?
You will probably receive an answer that expresses agreement that leadership skills are important for a supervisor, rather than what the interviewee really thinks.
These types of questions control the input you receive. In fact, they often get you the answers you want rather than real informa- tion.
Structure All Questions Neutrally
You are trying to obtain information, so you do not want to appear to be defending or praising current training, or attacking or critic- izing the interviewee. Instead of asking:
What causes you to be so critical of the current training course?
You will do better by asking:
What suggestions do you have for improving the current train- ing course?
Use Questions That Encourage Application and Not Regurgitation of Facts
Asking ‘‘What is good management?’’ may get you a textbook an- swer. A better question is one that requires the interviewee to indicate her own thoughts regarding management in action. For example:
What causes some managers to better motivate their employ- ees than others?
Sequence Your Questions
Ask your questions in a logical order. You will begin your inter- view by stating its objective. The first questions should be a logi- cal extension of that objective, and they should proceed in an order that makes sense to the interviewee. Jumping all around can confuse things and tends it reduce the depth of information you are given.
Give consideration to the difficulty in answering some ques- tions. Begin your questioning with easily answered questions.
Save the more difficult ones for later in the interview—when the interviewee is more comfortable with the process. You don’t want to begin an interview with an employee by asking: ‘‘So what are the reasons your performance is failing?’’
However, near the end of the interview, you might be able to ask a similar question:
So, all things considered, what do you believe is causing you the greatest difficulty in meeting job standards?
Also, keep questions about one subject together and sequence them. For example, suppose you are seeking information about an individual’s flexibility. You might ask the following questions—
each after receiving an answer to the previous one:
❐ How do you react when your decisions are challenged?
❐ If your decisions were challenged, what would you do if asked to make a similar decision in the future?
❐ How many ways do you believe there are to make a deci- sion?
Develop a Summary Question
This is not a necessity, but it assists in bringing the interview to a logical conclusion and provides the interviewee a way of summa- rizing his total responses.
A summary question should require a relatively short answer and allow the interviewee to provide an overall summary of the information. For example:
All things considered, what three words best describe a suc- cessful supervisor at our company?
Or:
In summary, what are the three most important requirements to succeed at your job?
Or:
In conclusion, what are the major elements of a successful sales call?
Adopt an Interview Planning Form
Figure 8-1 is an Interview Planning Form. It is a useful device for planning your interview. The top half of the form is used to record the identifying information about the interview while the bottom half is used to list the subjects of the interview, the questions, and the interviewee’s responses. As an example:
Objective: To identify the training needs of new inven- tory control clerks
Interviewer: Training Manager
Interviewee: Bill Johnson, Inventory Control Clerk
Time and Location: 3:00 P.M., Thursday, March 10 in Training Conference Room 3
Subject: Inventory Control Codes
Figure 8-1.