For Interview

HOW TO SIZE UP A MAN IN SIXTEEN MINUTES
Lon D. Barton, President Cadillac Associates, Inc., Chicago

You haven’t got unlimited time top interview job candidates. So you have to use shortcuts. Here is one shortcut – a set of eight basic questions to ask. The answers will give you a quick idea as to whether the man is tight for your company.

In this the age of the depth interviews, aptitude batteries and the Polygraph, are there shortcuts - indicators of character, drive and competence – that you can use to size up a man without resorting to stereotyped, inaccurate devices?

Yes, there are. In fact, asking a few questions, you can gain a clear picture of whether a candidate is suitable for your organization. You can reduce the number of basic questions to eight. If you figure on getting an initial answer from a candidate to each of these questions in one minute, then you can size up your man in eight minutes.

Is this a valid technique? I can only give you an empiric answer. It has worked for me in screening literally thousands of candidates for executive positions for which we have received job requisitions from a “blue look” of American industry.

What are the questions? Let’s look at them quickly first and them examine each one more carefully:

1. Which of the jobs listed on your resume did you like best and which least?
2. How did you get your jobs?
3. Why are you interested in a position with our company?
4. What are your plans – short range and long?
5. What job would you choose if you had the complete freedom to do so?
6. What are your major assets? Weaknesses?
7. What are your hobbies?
8. What was your father’s occupation?

Laboring the obvious?

Your first reaction to these questions may that they labor the obvious, that these are questions which any candidate should be asked. However, the evidence shows that corporations today are wasting thousands of dollars on personnel nostrums to help them make decisions when putting these eight questions together to develop a logical pattern of an individual’s fitness would do the job better - and save time and money too.

While looking at a man’s resume me, you have a chance to make your first judgments on him – his age, marital status and education; the number of jobs he has held over a given periods; the caliber of companies he has worked for; his progress with those companies (this is one of the most important “questions” of all); his appearance and some indication of his personality, articulation and social sense.

Now let’s take a closer look at the eight basic question. Running through all of them you will find one basic quality: each question should help you arrive at the objectivity and apparent honesty of the executive, which are major criteria in executive fitness. But let’s look at each one of specifically.

ZERO MINUTES

1. Which of the jobs listed on your resume did you like best and which least?

His answers here can give you specific areas where he can be of most value to you. If he is non-committal, if he likes all of them, you may have an indication of drive or the lack of it, or a lack of discrimination or planning for his own growth. It is normal to have preferences.

FOUR MINUTES

2. How did you get your jobs?

He may have obtained them through family connections. This in itself is not bad if the applicant is well qualified. His reply also will give you an indication of resourcefulness. Has he planned to get this type of job, and embarked on a definite campaign to obtain a particular job then he can be valuable to you in putting this imagination to work. Or did he just take if as a means to an end.

SIX MINUTES

3. Why are you interested in a position with our company?

Many men I interviewed candidly say, money. If this is the sole motivation, then I tend to pass over them. If a man can show research on your firm and why he feels working for you would be stimulating both for him and the firm, then he has passed one of my hurdles. This question is another attitude indicator. Answers to it will go a long way in developing your pattern of the individual.

EIGHT MINUTES

4. What are your plans – short range and long?

This is a major if not the most important question of my eight. Every executive should have definite plans for where he plans to be and what he plans to be doing one year from now, five and even ten years from now in a general way. Failure to be able to verbalize on this indicates that the man has not evaluated his own potential or his relationship with his chosen work. A definite plan will give you, the interviewer, a chance to see if his ideas mesh with those of your own, but I would give a man a plus just for having specific goals. Most men don’t.

TEN MINUTES

5. What job would you choose if you had the complete freedom to do so?

Here again we have a good indicator of suitability for your firm. I like imagination but this imagination should mesh with the realities of the man’s capabilities and what you can offer him in your company. The dreamer probably belongs in another echelon of your firm.

TWELVE MINUTES

6. What are your major assets? Weaknesses?

I once screened a man for an executive position with a top electronics firm. When I asked him about his weaknesses he looked me squarely in the eye and said, “I have none.” I happened to know that he was a heavy drinker. I don’t expect a man top reveal his inmost personal secrets to me,. But I do expect him to know his faults – whether it be a dislike for detail, sloppy dress or bad grammar. The man who is aware of his faults is making an honest effort to correct them and, more importantly, has shown insight and thought in evaluating his own situation. Assets should be stressed too as an indication of self-confidence.

FOURTEEN MINUTES

7. What are your hobbies?

This is a “fishing” question in several ways. It gives me the answers to a lot of othjer questions. You get a view of a man’s outlook on life and his aptitudes by talking hobbies. This is not a flat generealization, but it is surprising how many good engineers play chess or have other sedentary hobbies. Good salesmen tend to have more gregarious hobbies. They enjoy meeting people in their work and it shows up in their off hours activity.

SIXTEEN MINUTES

8. What was your father’s occupation?

Whether we like to face it or not, the age of the man born in a log cabin who becomes president is almost past. Many men exceed the professional stature of their fathers, but few exceed it very far and here is a good rule-of-thumb measure of executive potential.

The man’s attitude in answering this question will give other valuable clues to his total make up is he defensive about his father? Does he bewail his fate in not advancing farther than his father? Does he deride his father for being foreign born or for other ethnic or religious shortcomings? Does he alibi? He doesn’t belong with you.

These are my eight questions. But no one question or situation can give you the answers, just as no one aptitude test can tell you all you need to know about a man.