By Stephenie Overman
Coaching engineers on how to conduct job interviews with their peers isn’t rocket science, but it does require appealing to their strengths, according to Leila Bulling Towne, founder and CEO of The Bulling Towne Group, located in San Leandro, Calif.
Speaking at the Society for Human Resource Management Staffing Management Conference and Exposition held in Orlando April 26-28, 2010, Bulling Towne noted that engineers tend to get high marks for ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment) on the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator personality assessment.
ISTJs tend to be detail-oriented and to prefer a structured process, with a start, finish and results. They typically do not do well with rapport-building and small talk.
So use their strengths to your advantage, Bulling Towne said. “What you want to do is get them to apply how they operate to the interview process.”
To gain their full support, provide them with information about the importance of good hiring decisions in preventing high turnover costs. And “be prepared to answer: ‘Where did these numbers come from?’ ”
Engineers tend to be most comfortable interviewing candidates about hard skills, she said, but an effective interviewing process must evaluate technical expertise and competencies.
Setting Goals
Coach these professionals on how to:
Create consistency in the interviewing process through use of behavioral interviews.
Strive to create a non-confrontational interview environment.
Refine report-building in interviews.
Find candidates with relevant experience who will fit well into the company’s culture.
“The harder part is the intangible,” she said. “Skills are the ‘what’ they interview for. Competencies are ‘how’ the skill is applied—things like resourcefulness, accountability, strategic thinking. That’s not in their comfort zone.”
Refresh everyone’s knowledge of inappropriate and illegal questions, too. Coach them on behavioral interviewing techniques. Teach engineers who interview job candidates how to ask for concrete examples of using particular competencies so that the interviewers have a clear idea of how a candidate will perform. Teach them how to prod candidates to describe recent examples and to avoid hypothetical situations.
“Plug it in for them, just like they write code,” she said.
Walk them through the interviewing process, from introduction to conclusion. Go over any elements that they might find uncomfortable. That includes a firm handshake, Bulling Towne said. “Force them to practice so they can eliminate the “dead fish” grip.
Stephenie Overman is an Arlington, Va.-based freelance writer and editor of Staffing Management magazine.
