Originally published by Lou Adler on LinkedIn: A Twist on the Single Best Interview Question of All Time
Three years ago on this blog I suggested that asking candidates to describe their most significant accomplishments was the most important question any interviewer could ask. More than 1.3 million people read the post. The idea behind the question is to compare a candidate’s major accomplishment to the primary performance objectives of the job to determine ability to do the work, motivation to do the work and fit with the hiring manager and company culture. Due to the positive response, Lynda.com asked me to prepare a short course covering the concept. The intro is below.
Last week I came up with a new version of the question but you’ll need to try it out since I’m not positive it will work. Please put your results in the comments or email them to me at lou@louadlergroup.com.
To get started, here’s the original question.
Think about your most significant accomplishment in your entire career. Now can you tell me all about it?
To get a sense of the power of this type of performance-based question, consider your most significant career accomplishment. While you can probably summarize it in a minute or two, consider the other information revealed if you also had to describe your role in the project, how you got assigned to the project, who was on the team, the actual results achieved, how you prepared and managed the plan, where you took the initiative, the challenges you faced and how you overcame them, the problems you solved and the process you used to make important decisions. It’s the subsequent fact-finding that makes the question so insightful.
By asking a similar question for all of the other performance objectives defined as essential for on-the-job success you’ll learn even more about the person. Here’s how this same question is modified to handle this:
One of the major performance objectives for this job is (describe). What have you accomplished that’s most comparable?
Aside from understanding fit, viewing the accomplishments over an extended period of time reveals ability, growth, impact and what drives the person to excel. This is the type of information needed to decide if the person should be hired or not and if your job opening represents a true career move.
Now here’s the revision. Last week I heard about how some pilots are tested for competency when starting a flight simulator exam. The pilots are first told that the test involves an engine failure at takeoff and the examiner asks the pilot how demanding he/she believes this situation would be. The second question involves asking the pilot how confident he/she would be handling the situation. The pilots are assigned numerical scores for each answer and the stress score is subtracted from the confidence score. The surprise was that those with net positive stress scores far outperformed those with negative stress scores in the simulator test.