Hiring Step #7: Tandem Topgrading Interviews, page 117.
- The tandem Topgrading Interview is the most powerful hiring tool.
- It contributes more to improved hiring and promoting than all the other 11 Topgrading Hiring Steps combined.
- The hiring world is chugging along on the equivalent of a 10-minute shallow, superficial online insurance physical exam.
- However, the Topgrading Interview is like a Mayo Clinic five-day executive physical exam – identifying everything important.
- If you were to read only one part of this book very carefully (not skim it), make this the section.
What is the Topgrading Interview?
- A chronological interview starts with school years and progresses through questions about every job, starting with the first job and moving forward to the present.
- Then, there are additional questions – Plans and Goals, Self Appraisals, and a few final Competency Questions.
- Topgrading Interviews delve into every success, failure, important decision, and important relationship – particularly all boss relationships and boss ratings – for every job.
What is the Tandem Topgrading Interview?
- It’s simply using two interviewers for managerial or professional positions.
The Two-Phase Topgrading Interview Learning Program
- Phase 1: Try the Starter Topgrading Interview Guide
- Use the Topgrading “Truth Serum,” the TORC Technique.
- Ask candidates to complete the Topgrading Career History Form.
- Ask a sharp person to be your tandem interviewer.
- The two of you ask all the questions in the Starter Topgrading Interview Guide (Appendix E).
- Ask the candidate to arrange reference calls.
- Make the reference calls.
- Phase 2: Learn and Conduct the Full Topgrading Interview, Using the Full Topgrading Interview Guide
- When you are comfortable using the Starter Interview Guide, it will be time for you to master the full 30-page Topgrading Interview Guide.
- Watch the free 47-minute video, How to Use the Topgrading Interview Guide, at www.Topgrading.com.
- Use the Topgrading Interviewer Guide.
- The only disadvantage of using the Topgrading Interview is that it takes longer than other interviews, and on top of that, there are two interviewers when interviewing managerial candidates.
- With your improved hiring “batting average,” in the long run, you save an enormous amount of time, not only in the entire selection process but in managing A Players rather than B/C Players.
Advantages of Two Interviewers (The Tandem Topgrading Interview)
- Using two interviewers of managerial candidates (not entry-level candidates) turbocharges hiring success.
- Thousands of managers love the tandem model because they have a backup – a tag team with someone else to:
- Help ask questions.
- Probe deeper.
- Offer insights from a different point of view.
- Tone down biases.
- Help analyze notes after the interview.
- Give each other feedback on the interview technique.
- Help provide feedback and coaching for new hires.
How Are Tandem Interviewers Best Matched?
- To truly be effective with your tandem partner, pick an A Player, ideally someone trained in Topgrading.
- Pick someone who is not your clone.
- One interviewer will ask 75% of the questions and take fewer notes, while the tandem partner will ask 25% of the questions and take copious notes.
- At least one of the tandems must be higher in the organization than the interviewer, to maintain control.
- At least one of the interviewers should be an experienced Topgrading Interviewer.
How Do Tandem Interviewers Structure the Interview?
- Both tandem interviewers review the candidate’s resume, Career History Form, and Topgrading Snapshot.
- Tandem interviewers should meet before the interview and talk about how they want to structure the interview.
- Generally, the hiring manager introduces the process and the tandem partner takes over as the principal interviewer for the first half (with the hiring manager taking most of the notes but chiming in with a question or comment periodically).
- There is typically a break at the midpoint.
- Then the hiring manager becomes the primary interviewer for the most recent (and relevant) half of the chronology, with the tandem taking more voluminous notes and periodically injecting rapport-building comments and asking questions.
- Finally, both interviewers ask competency questions.
- After the interview, both tandems review all notes and reach a consensus on rating all competencies.
How to Prepare for a Topgrading Interview
- A couple of days before the Topgrading Interview, you and your tandem interviewer review the applicant’s Job Scorecard, resume, Career History Form, Topgrading Snapshot, and the notes from the Telephone Screening Interview and all Competency Interviews.
- Sit with your tandem and the candidate’s Career History Form, and write on the Interview Guide a schedule for when to start each section.
- With half the time remaining – say, two hours – plan to be discussing a job within the most recent decade.
- It’s important to prepare for the Topgrading Interview. A 4-hour interview of a candidate with 15 years of experience is fast-paced – you must move it along, and not let the interviewee take control, avoid questions, or take you off on tangents.
- Try to schedule time after the interview for the interviewee to ask you questions.
- Be prepared to take copious notes. Interviewees say they very much appreciate your note-taking, particularly when they see you recording their accomplishments and interests.
- Don’t ask permission to take notes. Taking notes shows you are conscientious and thorough.
The Interview
- Opening
- Two to three minutes of rapport building.
- Explain the Topgrading process.
- Education
- To fully understand how the acorn became the oak tree with its strong parts and weak parts, you want to begin early, with the acorn taking root, and then you’ll come forward chronologically.
- Have the candidate describe:
- Schools attended and dates. (Don’t be afraid to start with high school.)
- Grades
- Degrees awarded
- High and low points
- People who influenced you – your career interests, personality, and values
- Meaningful work experience during school years
- Work History
- This is the “guts” of the Topgrading Interview.
- Comprises about three hours of a four-hour interview.
- Each job title is a different job to cover.
- Ask every question in the Work History section for every job:
- Why you took the job
- Your successes and accomplishments (and how you achieved them)
- Your mistakes and failures
- What you liked most and least about the job
- (For management job) How many A, B, and C Player direct reports did you have when you entered the job…and at the end? What happened to change the talent mix – hiring, firing, coaching, etc.?
- Name of supervisor, and that supervisor’s strengths and weaker points
- To receive a job offer, we may ask you to arrange reference calls with supervisors you’ve had in the past 10 years. What’s your best guess as to what the supervisor would say were your strengths, weaker points, and overall performance?
- What was the reason(s) you left that job?
- Experienced Topgrading interviewers begin the Work History section of the Topgrading Interview Guide with another “smorgasbord” question. You learn more if an individual has to organize the entire career history and present it, emphasizing this, excluding that, and so on.
- Self-Appraisal
- Please list your strengths and weaker points, in detail.
- First ask for pluses, since you are a positive thinker.
- Ask for 10 to 12 strengths, and then go back and get elaboration, digging for specifics on ones that are unclear.
- Then ask for shortcomings and weaker points, urging the person to produce at least that many.
- Then go back and get specifics on the weaker points.
- If they list “impatience” as a weaker point, challenge them on it.
- A Players tend to list important strengths, but rarely list many.
- A Players freely admit their weaker points and are willing to talk about how they plan to overcome them.
- Plans and Goals
- What are your goals for your next job?
- What are your long-term career plans and goals?
- Conclusion
- Your tandem Topgrading Interview is over, and maybe you and your partner love the candidate and want to offer the job. Hold on! Your work is not done.
- Topgrading Hiring Steps #8 through #12 remain.
- Interview partners should give each other feedback on the other’s interviewing techniques (Step #8), analyze all information, and write a draft Executive Summary (Step #9), ask the candidate to arrange personal reference calls with former bosses and others (Step #10), and conduct those calls, all before hiring someone.
The “Smorgasbord” Approach
- The “smorgasbord” question shows what you already know – the candidate’s background – so that will save time.
- Asking for specific additional information lays out what you want, which will minimize tangents you don’t need to hear.
- For interviewing managers, this smorgasbord question is most appropriate; for interviewing entry-level employees, asking one question at a time is usually best.
- Example:
- “Would you please expand on the Career History Form information and give us a brief rundown on your college years…particularly events that might have affected later career decisions. I see that you attended the University of Texas, got good grades, participated in the Business Club, and had two summer jobs. We’d be interested in knowing just a little about meaningful work experiences, what the school was like, what you were like back then, high and low points, and so forth. And we’d be interested in hearing about people who influenced you, people who helped you develop the personality, values, or career interests you now have.”
Work History Questions
- Why you took the job?
- If you hire the candidate, knowing her expectations going to work for you will be crucial.
- Learn the pattern of why people took jobs and whether their expectations were met.
- Learn about their values, due diligence, ability to assimilate into a new job, and overall performance.
- A Players tend to take jobs at a higher salary but not for the money as much as for the opportunity to learn, meet challenges, earn promotions, and have fun working with sharp people.
- C Players tend to take jobs just to get a paycheck.
- Your successes and accomplishments (and how you achieved them)?
- Ask for every major success and accomplishment, and especially for jobs in the last decade, dig in and ask how they pulled off the success.
- Probe to see what lessons were learned from each failure, and note if the same mistakes were made in future jobs.
- High performers give you specifics that show their drive, resourcefulness, persistence, and ability to work well with people.
- Low performers are vague about their successes.
- Your mistakes and failures?
- High performers also admit to making mistakes but can explain how they learned from them.
- Low performers avoid admitting mistakes, tend to blame others and circumstances for their failures, and tend to make similar mistakes in the future.
- What you liked most and least about the job?
- When discussing successes and failures, you’ll automatically learn what was most liked and disliked in a job.
- But, if there is any doubt, ask them.
- How many A, B, and C Player direct reports did you have when you entered the job…and at the end? What happened to change the talent mix – hiring, firing, coaching, etc.?
- For all management jobs, ask this question.
- Most A Players tend to inherit a “mixed bag” of As, Bs, and Cs, and struggle mightily to keep and grow the As, develop the Bs, and replace the Cs.
- C Player managers tend to lose their A Players and stumble along with Bs and Cs.
- Name of supervisor, and that supervisor’s strengths and weaker points?
- Later, when you review your notes, you’ll pay a lot of attention to what the candidate liked or disliked in a boss, and whether it is compatible with you, the hiring manager.
- To receive a job offer we may ask you to arrange reference calls with supervisors you’ve had in the past 10 years. What’s your best guess as to what the supervisor would say were your strengths, weaker points, and overall performance?
- This will result in the candidate being remarkably honest in saying what previous bosses will say are strengths, weaker points, and overall performance.
- High performers tend to get along with almost all good and not-so-good bosses well enough to be given Very Good or Excellent performance ratings.
- Low performers tend not to like most of their bosses and describe them as unreasonable, hypercritical, lousy coaches, and so on.
- This will allow you, the hiring manager, to naturally project yourself into the pattern and see if you’re a good fit.
- What was the reason(s) you left that job?
- The logical last question for every job is why they left it.
- High performers tend to leave jobs because they were promoted or someone recruited them for a better position at another company.
- Weaker candidates tend to leave jobs because they were laid off, “couldn’t stand” working for a boss, or were let go in a “reorganization.”
More Advice to New Topgrading Interviewers
- Here are the most common suggestions to our trainees for how to make their first few Topgrading Interviews successful:
- Follow the interview guide – follow the script.
- Move the Topgrading Interview along faster – stay on schedule.
- Don’t wimp out in the Topgrading Interview – ask the tough questions.
- Don’t become discouraged – you don’t need to be perfect. The process is resilient and robust.
