INTERVIEWER BAD
BEHAVIOR
There is a plethora of articles providing tips for applicants in preparing for a job interview; however, there is very little material available on what makes a good interviewer. The result should come as no surprise that there are many bad interviewers. As a result, a poor interviewer can turn off, and possibly lose, an outstanding candidate (and potential employee). Furthermore, one can learn much about an organization's culture from the hiring process and experience.
The longer the economy struggles, the worse some employers seem to treat job seekers. And, job seekers, feeling a lack of power, increasingly feel they have no choice but to put up with it.
Inasmuch as one of our services at RGL Consultants is Outplacement (Career Transition as it is now more "politically correct" known), we are informed by our outplaced candidates of more and more bad behavior from employers, such as:
- Employers who never bother to get back to interviewees with a decision, after putting them through a battery of several interviews, lengthy application forms, and time-consuming assessments
- Employers who miss scheduled phone interviews with no warning or acknowledgment, after the candidate arranged his/her schedule to be free, and are left waiting by the phone
- Interviewers who are 30+ minutes late for the interview, and finally meet the applicant with a handshake that is weak and clammy, and no apology for being late
- An unfriendly (usually in silence) lead to the interview location, with no positive acknowledgment to the candidate
- An interviewer who takes a phone call while in the interview, and punctuated by yelling and swearing to the other party -- or takes a call and proceeds to discuss his/her last golf game with the person on the other end
- An interviewer scrambling at the last minute trying to skim the applicant's resume, giving the impression (and probably correctly so) that they haven't even looked at it until that moment
- Standard questions that are asked, with no eye contact taking place
- Interviewers who are rude, arrogant, and exude an "I hold all the cards here" attitude
Obviously, employers who behave like this are short-sighted. Good candidates know that how they are treated during the interview process may be a strong indicator as to how they may be treated as an employee. If an employer is rude or inconsiderate to job candidates, there's a good chance that their employees don't feel valued either.
But, when job seekers are desperate for work, they don't feel that they have the luxury of writing off an employer for bad behavior. The perception is that they must tolerate this behavior in order to increase their chances to be employed. If candidates are selected for a position, they typically find that the bad interviewer behavior is continued throughout the employee-employer relationship.This negatively impacts both parties; poor behavior and outrageous demands from the employer motivates the new employee to continue the job search process, "on the employer's dime", to find a better environment.
HR and recruiting professionals aside, the rest of hiring interviews are conducted by people who think they have a clue about hiring - but, in reality, they don't. Most are managers who have never had any formal training in how to hire someone. And, unfortunately, it shows.
Consulting group, Robert Half International, identifies five types of interviewers that can cause a bad interview: (1) the "first timers" are likely nervous and highly scripted. Going off topic or away from their list of questions is likely to cause them anxiety; (2) the "silent type" gives minimal response and little interaction, so it can be difficult to elicit any information about the job, or how the interview is going; (3) the "never ending interviewer" who can't seem to stop talking, even about completely irrelevant subjects; (4) the "intimidator" that immediately puts the applicant on the defensive, regardless of how good the response to a questions might have been; and finally (5) the "power trip interviewer" who continually conveys to the applicant that he/she should consider themselves fortunate that they are even being given the opportunity to be considered for the job.
Inappropriate or illegal questions, poor preparation in advance of the interview, lack of internal communication to perspective candidates, internal problems that come boiling to the surface, or just plain unprofessional behavior, all count as "red flags" for the candidate, and should be carefully evaluated.
The secret of good interviewers is that they generally don't ask traditional, closed-end interview questions. They don't need to. They jump into a professional conversation that does a couple of powerful things in a one-hour chat:
- Gets the applicant excited about the opportunity (or, equally important, make it clear that the interviewee and the job are not a good fit).
- Gives the applicant detailed information about the job, management, the goals, the culture, and what life at this workplace would be like.
If either of these does not happen, it's a problem. If the interviewer used the time together to satisfy his/her need for more information about the interviewee, while sharing almost nothing about the job and company, that would result in a big negative on the interviewee's score card.
As you consider interviewers in your organization, what do their score cards look like? Can we help with an Interviewer Training initiative?
