Questions and the Common Ground

Everyone knows a good job interview goes in two directions — the potential hire is learning as much about the organization as organization learns about the candidate.

Yet often the questions that get swapped around come from very different places. The organization reps, in trying to gauge the qualifications and character of the candidate, attempt to draw these out through very practical questions like “explain to me how you accomplished X when you were at position Y” or “give us an example of one time you encountered problem Z and what you did about it.”

And in the other direction, the candidate, seeking to understanding what lies behind the veil, asks more general questions like “what would make a person most successful in this role” and “what methods of communication do you typically use in coordinating your projects here.”

The above are useful questions, and come from reasonable standpoints. But there is a more common ground on which both the interviewer and interviewee stand, and it can be used as a platform to find connections (or lack of them) that might otherwise be missed.

For instance:

Important elements emerge here, like personality traits, frustrations, heartfelt desires and even ethics. For the candidate’s benefit, some of the true workings of the organization become implicitly revealed — if the interviewers choose to mention one particularly rough day when they lost a long-time client, its a potential insight that the organization is client-focused. For the organization’s side, if the candidate mentions a day when he felt everyone was against him at work, maybe his interpersonal skills need to be scrutinized.

These are not “end of the line” questions and answers, but they can yield insight that straightforward questions miss. More importantly, you may find a true correspondence of values between the two parties — and that’s a huge deal, often signifying a potentially high-value and long-term relationship.

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