Avoid the most common pitfalls

Tips for a successful Assessment

9. Learn how to tailor the questions for each interview

It is a common practice to develop a set of scripted questions, and to pose all the same questions in the same way at every interview. This may seem like a very logical and sensible approach to interviewing. And inexperienced assessors love it – at first. But it soon becomes apparent even to novices that this is not a good approach. Here's what's wrong with using a standard script in this way.

1. A script impedes the flow

The use of scripted questions is a barrier to conducting an effective interview. Did you ever have a job interview when the interviewer read a fixed set of questions verbatim from a script? If so, this surely wasn't a very free-flowing interview, it probably took a long time, and you surely weren't very impressed with their technique!

It's much better to work from a list of topics that need to be explored, to allow some flexibility in how questions are posed and how the interviewee flows, to skip over questions that have already been answered, and to refer to the topic list mainly to fill in blanks.

2. It's a mistake to always ask each question in the exactly same way

For example, if the topic is communication of the vision, the question needs to be put differently to senior leaders than to front line. Senior leaders need to be asked how this communication is performed, while the front line need to be asked about how it is received. Assessors can learn to do this naturally – unless they are constrained by a script that prescribes the exact wording of the question.

A better approach is to train assessors how to conduct interviews in a conversational manner, working from a topic list. This is easy to learn, feels more natural to both interviewers and interviewees, and is a more effective way of gathering information.

3. it's a mistake to set out to ask everyone all of the questions

This seems very logical in principle but in practice it just isn't sensible. To illustrate, assume again that one of the interview topics is communication of the vision (and assume that the interview process is essentially top-down, which is another good practice).

If the senior leaders describe a process to communicate the vision to lower levels in the organization, then clearly it makes sense to ask middle management about this process -- and then perhaps the front line. However, if the senior leaders acknowledge that little has been done to get the vision out to people at other levels, then there is no sense in pursuing this particular topic any further.

A better approach is for the team to progressively eliminate questions that have been already answered adequately during previous interviews. These topics are easily identified during the team's debriefing meetings, when they review progress and compare notes. At the same time, the team may also decide to 'dig deeper' in future interviews on certain topics that have not yet been answered.