Turbo interviewing.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: Employment interviewing

To get to the good stuff during a half-hour interview requires some bold questions.

If you are like most companies, one of your biggest problems is finding good people to help with growth problems. Suppose that today you have four candidates who passed the first stage. They made it past the resume review and will be coming in for interviews. How in the world can you tell in a half-hour or so whether or which?

Our experience is that all the exhaustive interviewing gets results that are about 10 percent better than flipping a coin. We really won't know if we have a fit for our company until months after the hire. The expense of this makes finding the 10 percent worthwhile. Here are some ideas that represent our thoughts about interviewing people to replace those who move up:

The most successful interview is one where you gain some insight into the applicant's personality - enough to relate it somehow to the culture of your company. Finding a person who can do the job technically is a lot easier than finding a person who fits philosophically into your company, someone with a chance of becoming a real contributor. To do this, you will have to put the interviewee under a little pressure.

Don't go down a list of questions. Just ask and relate.

The basics. Be pleasant. This is not the end of the world. It is only a job, only an interview. Besides, it relaxes your prospect, and you'll get more. During the interview, cover the resume, make sure the experience fits, the education is appropriate, the salary range is correct, etc.

Have a simple goal for the interview, and share it. For example, "Mr. Prospect, my problem is that I have to decide if you can do the job you have applied for and if you'll fit into our company. And you have to decide if this is the company for you. We have to do this in half an hour or so, and we'll need to help one another. If you don't think I'm getting the correct picture or that I'm not asking the right questions, you have to help me."

Get the prospect defending him/herself. Pleasantly ask questions that amplify the resume or get away from it all together. "I don't see how your experience...