Monthly archive for April 2025

Question

I had a behavioral interview with a company that I was dying to work for. If you’ve never had one, they can be brutal. They ask questions like:

• Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
• Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.
• Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.

The Human Resources (HR) woman who interviewed me was an iceberg. She stuck to the script and would not budge from it. So what’s the best way to handle heavily-scripted behavioral interviews?

Nick’s Reply

In my opinion the behavioral interview is just more HR hocus-pocus. Witness your own experience. The interviewer isn’t interested in you, but in the cleverness of your answers. Behavioral interviews are yet another excuse for not knowing how to directly assess whether a job candidate can do the job.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce blithely recommends behavioral interviews: “The goal is to assess a candidate’s potential for future success based on their past behavior.”

Say what?

“Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results”

YieldStreet shames every HR executive that defends behavioral interviews:

“The above regulatory risk warning appears on nearly all investment materials, including prospects about mutual funds, equity investments, and even alternative investments. It is so ubiquitous that even those with only a passing interest in investing are familiar with it. In fact, the phrase also applies to various fields, including finance, sports, and business in general.” [emphasis added]

I’d love for an HR expert to refute that and swear behavioral interviews are different.

HR does not understand engineering, R&D, marketing, or any other function in a company, above a cursory level. No one outside a functional area is really suited to assess a candidate’s ability to do the work. The cleverness of candidates’ answers to canned questions — “behavioral” or otherwise — is not what we’re looking for! How they do the job is. And interviewers who devote their time to thinking up clever ways to indirectly assess ability are wasting a company’s money. The behavioral interview should be a direct assessment of ability to do the work.

Where’s the behavior in a behavioral interview?

The great contradiction, lost on CEOs, stockholders, and others who foot the recruiting bill is that the “behavioral” interview has no behavior in it. It is bereft of behavior. It is all about talk. Tell me about a time… (Gee, should we be having a glass of wine in this interview right about now?) There are books that will teach you how to psych out the behavioral interview — and provide you with loads of “answers.” And that should be no surprise. Any scripted interview can be answered with scripted answers.

Just think about the magnitude of arrogance here. We’ll wire you up for a video call. We’ll show you nothing and no one in the company. We’ll ask you staged questions. We’ll record everything you say. We’ll run it through the A.I. interview analyzer (too bad we can’t get your whole body in there). And somewhere in a lab there’s a goon trying to figure out how to assess you for a job just by drawing a little blood…

Put your own behavior in the behavioral interview

If you want to cope with the behavioral interview, it’s important to think about what any interview should focus on: Behavior that demonstrates you can do the job profitably. (What a concept, eh?)

Here’s my idea of how a manager should conduct a real behavioral interview. Put the candidate in front of the work. Provide a bit of basic instruction, and let the candidate have at it. No, you can’t expect perfect performance. But the manager can observe (the behavior — remember that?), ask questions about the candidate’s performance; answer questions about the work, and discuss what the candidate is doing and thinking.

There is no way for a candidate to fake this. The only book the candidate can read to prepare for such an interview is one about the work: engineering, marketing, jamming the frammitz, or whatever. It can’t be faked. In the end, the manager judges the candidate’s ability to learn the work and to do the work. Coincidentally, this is how a manager evaluates employees — on their performance, not on double-talk.

I call this The Working Interview. Is it a perfect solution? Maybe not, but give me an engineer for an hour, and I’ll teach her how to interview another engineer better than any personnel jockey could with 50 psychologists backing her up.

Have a real interview with a real hiring manager

Okay, okay. So how should you deal with the behavioral interview? The only sensible strategy is to ensure that you’re going to interview with the hiring manager — not surrogates. Few candidates realize that they can insist on interviewing only with the manager. (Why waste your time with anyone else?) Please see How to get to the hiring manager. Politely answer the manager’s questions, and emphasize that you’d like a few minutes during your meeting to demonstrate your plan for doing the job profitably.

How to Say It
“I’m here to do a real behavioral interview. I’m here to show you — not just talk about — how I will do the job. Can we move out to your work area?”

A savvy manager will bail you out of the “interview laboratory” if you offer to do the job during your interview. But it takes brass — and lots of preparation — to ask for the opportunity. But there’s no magic involved.

Have you ever been asked to do a behavioral interview? How did you handle it? Did it help you get the job? If you’re a hiring manager or an HR manager, what’s your take on the behavioral interview? Can it predict the future?

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Question

I need to hire someone with some specialized skills that my team does not currently possess (a cross between a business analyst and a project manager). I have interviewed several people in my company who do the sorts of things I think I need. They are not available to assist, as they are already booked on other projects, but are willing to talk about what they do, how it benefits the company, what their credentials are, and so on. I even have the hiring slot available.

Now for the tough stuff. I have basically cobbled together a fictional position description to satisfy the Human Resources Department and posted the position internally. First, how do I determine what questions to ask potential candidates, since I am looking for skills neither I nor my team know much about? Second, how do I guide the successful applicant into a working slot that we are basically making up as we go along?

Nick’s Reply

That’s a good one. How do you select a person to do a job you haven’t defined which requires skills you don’t understand?

Beware the broken job

I applaud your honesty. Many managers try to fill jobs like that while pretending they know exactly what they’re doing. I call this a broken job.

• There’s no clear, objective definition of the work or the desired outcome.
• There’s no clear, objective measurement of performance.
• The manager is throwing bodies at a problem the manager doesn’t really understand.
• The manager desperately needs to have a short-term task done, but can’t specify what the job will entail afterward.

This is where honesty, candor and a willingness to break the rules will be more helpful than ten HR managers and a highly polished job description.

Do you need an employee or a consultant?

My first step in a situation like this would be to forget about the job description. You don’t really have one — except to appease HR — and you don’t really want one. It could lead you terribly astray. If you don’t know what you need, you’ll wind up hiring the wrong person to do it, and you’ll fire them for doing it poorly!

Step back and get a handle on what it is you’re managing. Are you managing an ongoing function or an outcome? This will help you figure out whether you really need to hire an employee to perform the function, or to contract with another department or consultant to manage the process that will yield the outcome you need.

Pick one or two people on your team to work with you on this “development” project. Then, break the rules. Don’t fill the position — not yet. Rent some help instead.

Get help

Invite a few consultants to come talk with you about the deliverable you’re trying to produce. (Alternately, arrange to have one of those internal experts visit with you. Maybe you can arrange for a part-time assignment, or a series of nice dinners where they can eat and teach.) Pay each of these consultants to show you what the deliverable is and how it’s produced. This should not take a lot of time or cost a lot of money. Using more than one consultant will help you triangulate on the truth you seek. Having a couple of team members work with you will keep you honest and avoid tunnel vision.

Finally, hire the best of the consultants to help you define the process (that is, the job), and to help you establish metrics for performance. This will take longer and cost a bit more, but it will cost less than hiring the wrong full-time employee from the get-go. As a manager, your first objective is to understand the work, not to get the job done.

Don’t set yourself up for failure

Once you’ve got a handle on what the work is all about, how it’s done, and how to measure performance, you can decide whether you need to hire someone, or subcontract the work to another department or assign the whole thing to a qualified consultant. You probably don’t need to be able to do the work yourself; you just need to “get it”.

You can even have the consultant help you recruit, guide a new hire into the job, and do some training. (HR might have a bird when you suggest this. Be ready to squawk back.)

Just remember: ultimately, the person responsible for the hire and the job function is you, not the consultant (or HR). If by this point you’re still not confident about managing this kind of job function, you need to seriously consider subcontracting it or assigning it to another department that can handle it. Don’t set yourself up for failure.

Beware the job description

Companies often waste their money on consultants. But, I believe this is a situation made for a consultant — an expert whose help you can apply over a finite period of time at a finite cost to improve your own ability to do your own job as a manager more profitably. Don’t be afraid to go into learning mode with a consultant. Admit what you don’t know and ask questions. Ask to be taught. Have the right attitude, and you will soon develop the knowledge you need to move ahead and tackle the challenge you face.

Job hunters take note. This honest manager has provided us with an important lesson; a secret about hiring. The job description on file down in the HR department might be a sham; nothing but a place-holder for a position that no one understands. What does that tell you about job descriptions? They’re often perfunctory, designed to satisfy bureaucracy’s hunger for paper; not to help you prepare for a job interview. To get the real scoop on a job, go talk to the manager and the manager’s team.

Ever apply for, or try to fill, a broken job — a job you don’t understand? Why does this happen? How can it be avoided? How should this manager proceed? There’s a whole other angle on this that I didn’t even touch on — what is it?

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Question

I have a new job lined up, so I am getting things in place to give notice at my current job.  My primary concern is bad references from this employer. The owner is extremely unprofessional, resulting in a dysfunctional work atmosphere. When I share examples of what happens at work with friends, it’s embarrassing to say them out loud. They are passive aggressive behaviors that you often need to witness and experience to understand. Given what is directed towards me in the office, and the phone conversations I have overheard when employers have called for references on former employees, I do not trust that I can use this person as a reference. Do you have a suggestion for how to objectively assess the risk of using this type of employment situation as a reference (the alternative being a 16 month hole on my resume)? And how much notice do I give in this situation? I feel trapped and want to minimize the ongoing negative impact of this employer. Thanks for your insight!

Nick’s Reply

It’s not at all uncommon for smart people to rationalize – and I think that’s what you’re doing. You make it clear what kind of person you’re working for. Why would you expect a useful reference from the owner, or even risk using this person as a reference? I think you know the answer to your own questions. I’m happy to tell you I think you’re right.

Balance bad references with more good references

References don’t have to be current or former bosses. There’s no hole in your references if you substitute others – co-workers and other managers in the company that you trust, and vendors, customers and others that think highly of you and your work. I’ve seen many cases where a job candidate had to explain (briefly – always make this brief) that their last boss was not someone of the highest integrity.

If your other good references from the company are candid with whoever is checking your references, they may acknowledge that your old boss is venomous and may give undeserved bad references.

The classic career advice in this situation is to just avoid listing your boss as a reference by saying it could cost you your job. But what if the new employer gives you an offer that you accept, and then asks to talk with your boss?

Put bad references in context

I find that candor can be the best solution to this problem. But I caution you – do not dwell on this when you explain to a new employer. Be brief. Don’t complain. Don’t explain. Don’t tell the story – keep it short.

Everyone knows there are some bad people out there. Your goal is to put them in context. If the new employer must talk with your boss, suggest they also talk with other people at work who (a) know and respect you, and (b) people that will put your ex-boss’s questionable comments in context.

I think that’s most of what you need to know. But if you feel you need more detailed help with your transition, see Parting Company: How to leave your job.

Don’t get stuck fearing the consequences of leaving – that’s a good way to get hurt. If you’re good at your work and have other good references who will speak up for you, move on.

As for how much notice to give, let that be determined by how difficult your boss makes your departure.

I wish you the best.

Has your boss ever given you bad references? What was the outcome? How have you avoided listing references you were worried about? Has an employer ever checked references behind your back, with people you didn’t tell them to contact?

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Question

I am a fan and am so glad I’ve followed your advice to not do an exit interview. I started working at a medical start-up two years ago as a nurse. I loved the job and the team and felt passionate about the work I was doing. Then the medical director lost the office manager and mismanaged things to the point that pay checks have been erratic. We are behind seven pay checks from last year and a handful from this year. The team is leaving and now it’s unsafe with the skeleton crew.

I have secured another job. Part of me feels that, as the only nurse, I have to give a good chunk of notice. One month is professional notice in my field. But, seeing as I haven’t been paid and it’s unlikely I’ll recoup any of the money owed to me once I leave without legal action, I don’t want to lose any more pay. The longer I stay, the more liability I hold. How much notice would you recommend that I give in this type of situation? Thank you in advance.

Nick’s Reply

I don’t normally reply to questions by e-mail, but I’m making an exception because I’ve got a soft spot for nurses (you’re more important to patients than doctors!) and your problem is an emergency. I also have a thing about employers who don’t meet payroll.

Paying employees is not optional

Your employer may already be in a lot of trouble. You will find some good resources at Workplace Fairness. Here is one useful tip from that website:

“Many states have laws that require employers to pay employees for all hours worked, and which require employers to pay employees at regular intervals, such as biweekly or semimonthly. These laws may impose penalties on employers who do not comply with the law, and may even provide for criminal prosecution.”

Please: Contact your state’s department of labor and employment immediately for guidance.

If employer hasn’t paid, see a lawyer

Given how much you are owed, you might want to consult a good labor attorney to protect your interests. An initial consultation need not cost much if anything. For a few extra bucks, the lawyer could write a demand letter and get you paid before the employer gets sued by creditors.

You must use your own judgment (and legal advice if you pursue it), but if I were owed seven paychecks, I’d be gone with a simple notice that I am resigning effective immediately because I have not been paid. I would not work one more hour. (See Giving notice when you resign: 6 ways to avoid trouble.) But first, check with your state’s labor office and/or a lawyer. You are being taken advantage of and that’s unforgivable.

Please let me know how this turns out. I admire your dedication and integrity — but don’t be played for a fool by an unscrupulous employer. You’re not being unprofessional; they are!

For more about how to leave a job, please see Parting Company: How to leave your job. I’m glad my advice about exit interviews proved helpful to you!

Reader’s Follow-up

Thank you for the response. It really helped to give me courage to get the heck out of there. I gave two weeks’ notice which I know I did not owe them. I felt some loyalty to some of our repeat patients. But I ended up not working all of my notice and e-mailing that I was no longer coming in and that I wouldn’t let my investment in my patients be leveraged against me to put my license and pay at risk.

Other employees and I have reported the owner to the labor board and legal action has started. I’m currently enjoying a stress-free two weeks before starting a more stable job. Thank you!

Dear Readers: Has your employer ever withheld your pay? What did you do about it? Does this reader owe any notice to the employer?

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