October 5, 2006

Last week, I talked about Business Factory, a training programme for newly graduated university students. Enrolled in the four-week intensive action-learning internship programme are 14 bright young people from the Wall Street Institute (WSI) Busines...

On Monday, Khun Lily, an HR executive with WSI, starts to teach the students about the recruitment process. Lily gives a ton of tips and do's and dont's for job candidates, from writing resumes to conducting interviews. In the afternoon, she gives the group an assignment. They must screen 30 real-life applicants who are vying for jobs at WSI. Along with coach Jetdsada and coach Praput, I help coach them with the application screening process. Then, we role-play.

I use the following case as a starting point to learn how a professional recruiter acts in the beginning of a job interview. We divide 14 students into two groups. Each group has to brainstorm to answer these two questions:

What are best practices from the case?

What are the steps from the case?

Let's look at our case study: Sakda applies for a job at WSI. Today he has an appointment with Lily, the first interview of the day.

``Good morning Khun Sakda, have a seat please,'' Lily begins. ``How was the traffic?''

``Not bad,'' he replies. ``I think it's a school holiday.'' Sakda looks a little more relaxed now.

With a friendly voice, Lily says: ``I notice that you showed up 10 minutes ahead of time. That's good.

``Today's interview will be around 30 minutes. I will tell you briefly about our company and the scope of this position. Then, I will obtain more information from you. Finally, you will have a chance to ask questions.

``How much do you know about Wall Street?''

``Not much,'' Sakda replies.

``Then let me tell you briefly about Wall Street Institute. We are the world's leading provider of English language schools for adults. Each year, we service 140,000 students in 26 countries.

``In Thailand, after opening three years ago, we help more than 5,000 customers improve their business English with three branches. Our success comes from what we value: passion, attainment, excellence, persistence, discipline, honour, innovation and elegance. We are still expanding. That's why we're open for new recruitment.

``Let me tell you briefly about this position. We call it service officer, or SO for short. Basically, this role is similar to that of a front-office worker in a hotel. You'll be dealing with new and existing customers, greeting guests, providing information and booking classes.

``Now you know about us. Let's learn about you. Please tell us about yourself.''

In summary, what Lily has demonstrated is a professional approach for an interviewer starting a job interview.

1. Break the ice with small talk, and maintain a candidate's self-esteem by complimenting him or her whenever possible.

2. Introduce the structure of the interview, including how long it takes.

3. Introduce the organisation, its values and its strengths. This will give the brand a positive image.

4. Introduce the job scope briefly.

5. Bridge to the candidate introduction.

After this case study, I introduce interviewing skills based on DDI's Targeted Selection theory.

Targeted Selection is a behavioural approach to hiring popular with multinational companies. The goal of every targeted selection interviewer is to collect job-related behaviour from an applicant's history. Interviewers are trained to focus on their interview skills, and selection decisions are based on five basic interview principles.

1. Use past behaviour to predict future behaviour.

2. Interview for the critical job requirements.

3. Organise your interview into a system.

4. Apply effective interviewing skills and techniques.

5. Exchange information with the other interviewers involved in interviewing.

For example, say you are recruiting a service officer and one critical job requirement is handling pressure. We don't ask how well the candidate can handle pressure, because he or she can simply come up with a good answer without really being able to do it. As we have learned, ``knowing'' and ``doing'' are not the same.

So we ask: ``Give me an example of a situation when you were under pressure?'' Then, follow up that question by asking: ``How did you handle it? What was the result?''

Targeted Selection calls this step STAR: Situation or Task, Action and Result. It's a good way to find out past behaviour in order to project future behaviour.

Students are assigned into two teams for working on two positions: sales executive and service officer. They are given job descriptions of each position. They have to come up with critical job requirements and questions that have STAR characteristics for each one.

Over the next three days, three coaches conduct the interviews, while the students are also able to sit in and observe. They can also ask some questions to the real-life candidates. This is a good way for them to learn how to be effective job interviewees.

Kriengsak Niratpattanasai is the founder of TheCoach, specialising in executive coaching in leadership and cross-cultural skills. Copies of previous columns are available at www.thaicoach.com. He can be reached at 02-517-3126 or coachkriengsak@yahoo.com

Rating:

( HR Variety )