Don't Ride the Segue (or Segway)

Most of us know the Segway. A supposedly "cool" innovation that was received by the general public as decidedly... uncool.

Keep that image in mind the next time you are tempted to "segue" your interview from one topic to the next. Most interviewers attempt to do this to make the conversation more "natural" and less "checklisty" or robotic. And there are some people who are true naturals at the art of the segue. But I want to draw your attention to some common ways that it can go very badly and skew the data that your interview is able to elicit.

Problem 1: Random stuff you say.

As an interview coach, I can confidently say that 90% of people are *nervous* when they are attempting to transition from one question from the next. As a result of the nervousness, they feel the need to "fill the air" and they are thinking of what they will say on the fly—freestyling if you will. As a result they will often say things that they did not mean or even realize that they say. 

In the same way that nervous interviewers will ramble and create longwinded questions when a simple and short one would be better, interviewers also insert a bunch of extraneous words into their segue. Any one of these words or phrases could be heard by the candidate and might skew how they respond to your next question. It's like you're introducing random molecular motion into the conversation for no apparent benefit (most of these segues aren't smooth and just make your look nervous anyhow).

Problem 2: Anchoring on the Prior Question

Here is a concrete example. In Question 1, you ask the candidate about their prior role and boss. It turns out they were a engineer at a startup and the conversation starts to drift towards the product that the startup was working on. You want to transition to Question 2 (which will be about their greatest accomplishments in the role) but you are nervous or afraid to "jump" to a new question. (This is a silly fear as I will explain later, but many people have it.)

A common type of segue I see looks like this: "So in terms of that great product you were talking about, what was one of your biggest accomplishments." Now there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this question. But notice that the question grabbed a product-oriented "hook" from Q1 and swung it over to "link" into Q2. The candidate now hears Q2 as being primarily scoped in terms of product. No! That's not what we want. We wanted to know what the person's greatest accomplishment was in this role. Maybe it's product-related, maybe it's not. Now we have (unintentionally) corrupted the data we are going to receive from the candidate.

And this was a fairly innocuous example. People insert (counterproductive) words into their questions all the time.

 
Solution 1: Release Your Fear

You don't need to worry about making the transitions from one question to another sound natural. On the list of things that makes someone a pleasant, high-EQ interviewer who is enjoyable to talk to, this is actually a very low priority. Rapport, curiosity, engagement—really showing genuine interest in the person and their answers are so much more important. If your rapport game is on point, you can simply say. "Great. What was your proudest accomplishment in that role?" Yes, it's that simple. (Other parts of great interviewing are hard. This is not one of them.)

Solution 2: Own it

You should have the implicit and explicit frame that you are excited and curious (see point above) to dive in and go through a set of questions with this person. It's an interview. It's structured interviewing, which most people (in the know) now understand is the only sane approach to getting an apples-to-apples comparison between candidates. No one is expecting that you just "wing it" for an hour of unstructured conversation. That's not what an interview is supposed to be, and your agenda set should make clear that you are a curious person who is enthusiastic to ask these questions!

At the end of the day, be human. Be warm. Be personable. Above all, be curious. And remember, attempting to have "perfect" segues between one question and the next often cause more harm than good.

Good luck!

UPDATE: If you're looking to become a better interviewer and improve your hiring results immediately, we have a Interviewing Mastery Workshop taking place Nov 12-15. Click here to find out more.