After a thorough search for a new employee,one candidate has risen to the top,and he has the look of a winner.Impeccable résumé.Extensive relevant experience.Great interpersonal skills.Plenty of energy and enthusiasm.Great new ideas he's eager to set in motion.
So you hire him.And it turns out to be one of the biggest mistakes you've ever made.
That glowing individual,so impressive sitting across the conference-room table,lies to customers and misrepresents your products.He can't satisfactorily explain the irregularities in his expense reports.He backstabs co-workers and takes credit for work he didn't do.
You have to let him go.But in his wake the questions remain:How were we so misled and so wrong?Why couldn't we have seen what kind of person we were really hiring?
The key to effectively interviewing for integrity is seeking multiple examples of behaviors and asking probing follow-up questions that reveal the thinking behind the behaviors described.While integrity-focused questions need be only a small part of the total interview,any ethical issues that arise must be explored fully so that the examples can be accurately evaluated and the best hiring decision reached.
It is important to incorporate integrity questions into an interview - and equally important to know when to ask those questions.Interviewers are wise to save sensitive ethical questions for late in the interview,after rapport has been developed.And,of course,as with all interview questions,once you have asked an ethical question,remember to listen and respond with empathy.
Empathy does not mean acceptance or agreement - it means understanding.You can be empathetic with a person who is telling you about an unethical behavior,without having to bend or sacrifice your own ethical standards,by reflecting the interviewee's feelings ("So you felt really good after the presentation," or "So you had second thoughts after the sales call").And by showing empathy,you can keep the individual talking,providing other examples of behavior that will foster your understanding.
The first step in an interviewing process to screen for honesty and integrity is for interviewers to ask the right questions.These questions need to be geared toward gathering information on past behaviors that illustrate whether a candidate's own ethical values are compatible with those of the organization.
Following is a list of questions,any of which could be incorporated into an interview to elicit examples of a candidate's past ethical behavior and to reveal insights about the candidate's honesty and integrity.While the list consists of 11 questions,most interview situations will dictate using only two or three such questions to obtain examples of past ethical behavior.
Also included are examples of good and questionable answers that candidates might give to these questions.The "rightness" or the "wrongness" of the answers is up to the interviewer's judgment.As such,it's important to train interviewers to follow up answers with more questions to pin down behavior and the thinking behind the behavior,to ask for additional examples,and to have a systematic integration of data so that multiple interpretations of the answers can be obtained and discussed.
