A Common Myth

The idea of a perfect initial question is a myth in the world of interviewing. A question that promises to unlock a candidate's entire potential or flawlessly predict their future performance doesn't exist. If it did, candidates would rehearse their answers, turning interviews into scripted plays rather than genuine conversations.

More to the point, the real power of an initial question lies in its ability to start a dialogue—particularly about a specific instance from the candidate's past.

To put it more bluntly: if you are looking to improve your results as an interviewing team, you may be over-focusing on finding the “right questions” and underweighting the importance of interview skill and execution.

To be clear, good initial questions do matter. And they should follow the PROB framework:

• Focus on the Past, not on hypotheticals
• Only dig deep where it’s Relevant
• Keep your questions Open-ended to avoid hypothesis chasing and judgment
• Be comfortable asking 1/3 of the questions about “Bad” stuff (mistakes and weaknesses)

Beyond that, you should also try to avoid “showing your hand” too much with “Front Door” questions that broadcast what a good answer will sound like. Savvy candidates can easily reverse-engineer those.

Other than that, 90% of the magic in great data elicitation is going to come from a skilled (trained) interviewer asking high-quality follow-up questions, with great rapport, while effectively managing the conversation.

There are a lot of skills that are involved here that have to be deployed simultaneously. The one thing I can guarantee is that asking a “great” initial question and then just sitting back for 3-5 minutes while the candidate goes on a monologue isn’t going to be a productive (or enjoyable) experience for either party.

Instead, embrace the fact that the best job interviews are engaging dialogues where the interviewer is interjecting frequently but not for very long (you as the interviewer should only take up 5-10% of total talking time). And once you have the confidence to manage a conservation, you will start seeing the magic of simple questions (e.g. “What was your proudest accomplishment there?”) because you’ll know that you have the ability to facilitate a great dialogue.

Keep it simple, and keep it interactive.

If you want to boost some these skills, we cover them via modular, engaging content in our Talgo on Demand Course. Contact me at [email protected] to find out more.