Category: Hiring

Hiring, Interviewing

How To Find Out What People’s Values Really Are

Values tell you how people are likely to behave

When I am working with clients on objectives, it often helps to clarify the difference between Values, Behaviours and Objectives:

  • Objectives are what you need to achieve
  • Behaviours are how you do it
  • Values are why you do it that way

Know what their values are

When we are recruiting or dealing with new people it can be very helpful to find out what their values are. The key is to ask the right questions.

Just ask the right questions

Most people will happily tell you if you just ask. This is because we all tend to think that our values are right and are shared by everyone else.

How to ask questions to discover values

Get the individual talking about something they have done, preferably in a difficult situation. Then ask them why they did it that way. It’s a very useful interview technique.

An example of how to find out values

I once observed a candidate, a woman called, Esme, doing a role-play, a task that formed part of an interview process. She wore a bright red suit and matching stilettos. She was playing the role of an administration manager dealing with a surgeon, Dr Kildare, her task was to persuade him to meet the new targets.

Within a few moments she was shouting and screaming at a surprised Dr Kildare. Then she lifted him up by his lapels. His feet were dangling in the air.

After the task the director and I interviewed her. Up till this point she had been the leading candidate. I asked her why she had handled the meeting with Dr Kildare as she had.

She would have got the job

Had she responded that she was very sorry for the way she had behaved, she was just nervous and it had not gone as she had planned, she probably would have got the job. However, that was not what she said.

‘You can’t negotiate when you only have 25 minutes with someone.’ She told us authoritatively,

This told us all we needed to know about her values. She didn’t get the job.

Another example of how to discover values

More recently I was interviewing candidates for a client and we asked one of them why they had lied to a client. ‘Well, they’ll never know.‘ She said with a shrug. The candidate who got the job, when asked about her behavior in a rather difficult situation had quite a different response: ‘Once you’ve promised something to someone, that’s it. You must keep your promise.’

Find our more about questions and which ones to ask in this booklet:

Questions made easy

The more experienced I get, the more I realize that questions are the answer to most problems and difficult situations. Using questions instead of telling people things is more effective in most communication situations from negotiation to learning, from interviewing to coaching and in virtually all difficult situations with anyone who is behaving badly.

This booklet, for just £6.25, contains my top 22 questions gathered over many years, variations on them and when and where to use them.
Armed with these you can deal with most situations. Some are gems that will work in many different situations (so you will find the same question in several sections); others are for more specific use.

In this booklet you will find:

  • Four questions to help you to identify objectives and goals
  • What not to ask in performance reviews and appraisals (and why)
  • Six questions to ask in performance reviews and appraisals
  • Questions to help you formulate development objectives
  • 31 questions for Coaching & Problem-solving
  • 2 questions to establish training needs and learning objectives
  • The questions not to ask when establishing skill levels
  • 10 questions to find out what someone can really do
  • Questions to help learning including a worked example
  • Questions for learning reviews
  • Questions for  when your mind goes blank
  • Questions for panics
  • Questions for dealing with situations when someone has behaved badly
  • Questions for Interviews to identify skills and behaviors
  • Questions for interviews to identify values
  • Questions for dealing with performance issues
  • Questions for when you need answers, action or help (and what not to ask)
  • Questions to get decisions
  • Questions to persuade others
  • Questions for sales situations (with a worked example)
  • Questions for negotiations
  • Tips on the easy ways to come up with the right questions and get the right answers
  • A summary of the 21 standard questions you can modify to suit your situation
Hiring

Why you should never use resumes or CVs to sort your candidates

Nine reasons why you should never use resumes or CVs to sort your candidates

This is the method most people use to identify the candidates they are going to invite in for a final interview.

If you’ve ever found it difficult, you may be surprised to learn that it’s not only you – it’s because CVs and resumes just don’t give you information you need to make the right decision.

Here’s why :

  • Writing your CV or resume is a skill not correlated with the job
  • There is often vital information missing
  • Some resumes and CVs are full of lies
  • It’s too easy to submit a resume or CV
  • It may be written by someone else
  • It’s not a level playing field
  • Most are too general
  • You can’t tell how good the experience is
  • You can be too swayed by qualifications

Writing a good resume or CV is a skill

Being able to write a good resume is a great skill. And it’s one that not many people have. The correlation between that skill and being able to the job you want to fill is usually very low. How much do you like preparing your own resume or CV? How good do you think it is?

So people who are good at writing resumes and CVs aren’t necessarily going to be good at the job. Conversely, those who send in poor resumes or CVs could be some of your best applicants.

Missing information

I worked with one client who was asking for help with his resume. We went through the ghastly closely typed lines of the document this amazing software architect had produced. As we did, it transpired that he’d forgotten to mention a project he had initiated and run that had saved his employer £6m a year over 10 years.

I’ve come across many examples like this.

Lies

Possibly even worse I’ve come across examples where items on a resume or CV were at best inaccurate, and possibly just lies.

So you can easily end up rejecting good candidates and interviewing people who are very poor candidate but are good at constructing resumes (or candidates who have had their resume updated by an agency).

It’s so easy to submit a resume or CV

Another issue is that many job sites make it very easy for candidates to submit a resume or CV at the click of a button. So they just ‘apply’ for hundreds of jobs. Then you can be left in the position of having to wade through all those applications. How many times have you called a candidate you are interested only to find they don’t even remember your company, or applying for the job?

Did the candidate write it?

Many people don’t do their own resume or CV. There are companies that provide this as a service.

Level playing field

Using resumes and CVs means you are unable to judge candidates on a level playing field, which is vital if you want to find the best ones.

You need a specific set of skills, behaviours and values

Unfortunately candidates tend to use the same resume and CV for every job. It’s a pretty general document and tries to be all things to all people. So it’s hard for you to see if they have the specific skills and experience you are looking for.

Levels of experience

It’s very tempting to assume someone with several years experience is going to be a better candidate than someone with just one year. But this isn’t always the case. Would you prefer the person that had spent ten years doing a potentially poor job, over one that had one years’ experience potentially doing a great job?

Qualifications

And it’s also the same when it comes to qualifications. I’ve seen candidates who appeared to be extremely well qualified turn out to be useless. (Sometimes worse than useless.)

A better way

Far better to design an application form to get the information you need. Yes, it may take a bit more time initially, but in the long run it will not only save you a great deal of time, but will also get you higher quality candidates.