BE different

The CV/Resume is a sales document and should not form the basis for an interview.

Even today managers seem to believe that interviewing potential employees by using their CV/Resume’ as the basis for interview questions is a sound idea.

The CV/Resume’ is a sales document, the potential employee is selling themselves - it is their agenda, a list of their strengths. The task of the interviewer is select the best person for the job and company in question – this is the interviewer’s agenda. The interviewee is prepared to answer questions about their CV/Resume, what they are not prepared for are questions about the behaviour (competencies) required in the actual job being advertised, this is the interviewers agenda.

It is easy to ask questions based on the CV/Resume’ that is why many managers do it and select the wrong candidate. Recruitment and selection is expensive and it is more expensive if you get it wrong! The solution is to break the job down into - Professional/Technical requirements, System/Procedure requirements and Intra-Personal/Team requirements. Then break the requirements down into the key behaviours (competencies) you are looking for. As the systems and procedures differ in each organisation the best thing is to concentrate on the other two areas.

Preparing behaviourally based questions is not easy but once designed can be used for other roles where similar competencies are required. The next most important thing is to spend 50% of the interview or more on the Intra-personal and Team competencies. You would not be interviewing those who did not have the Professional and Technical background so it is best to check this area with some probing questions.