In this Project Management Recruitment Ideas, I’m going to cover a new kind of interview technique – the strength-based approach. In an article in this month’s Recruiter, the strength based approach covers an interview technique that some organisations are turning to as they turn away from the “competency based” approach. Many of you will be familiar with the competency based approach – the kind of interview where the same question can be asked of any candidate regardless of their previous experience, allowing organisations to make a comparisons across a shortlist of people. We covered this in a previous Project Management Recruitment Ideas.
What Do I Need to Know About Strength Based Interviews?
The strength based approach is the exact opposite to competency based interviews and “aims to assess and recruit people based on their natural skills and abilities”. The idea is that an employer can “distinguish between what people can do and what people love to do”
The strength based interviews consist of rapid fire questions that go beyond just work based examples (which is the competency approach). The approach, which will include questions designed to bring out the interviewees personality may sound like a nightmare to some people but is it really just another new fangled approach to something which ain’t broke?
The strength based approach consists of about fifty questions – asked and answered quickly – so there is limited time to probe answers. Early adopters of the approach however will still rely on competency based interviews for subsequent interviews; only using the strength based as a quick sort for a long shortlist (yes, an oxymoron I know!)
Feedback from early adopters have also shown that strength based interviewing is only really useful for graduate recruitment and entry level roles – so as a project management candidate you can probably breathe a sigh of relief that this technique will never be “used on you”.
The strength based approach would be pretty useless for the project management industry – apart from of course the areas which are designed to determined personality and cultural fit. The quick fire questions – some of which include scenarios of “made up” projects – would not bring out the depth of experience, management ability, technical aspects, skill levels required, the level of competency – and of course how you have brought all these together on “real life” projects.
The typical project management interview will continue to use the competency based approach, however the feedback on this approach has been compelling from the strength based adopters;
- Competency based interviewing makes it difficult to distinguish between candidates
- Candidates know how competency based interview works and “often know the answers by rote”
- Competency based interviews feel tired and candidates can “draw on skills that they no longer possess”
It begs the question then, if competency based interviewing is old hat with candidates able to pull the wool over the interviewer’s eyes by just being a practiced interviewee – what is the optimal interview technique when interviewing project management candidates?
In the project management field wouldn’t a combined approach of assessment testing (against other shortlisted candidates), theoretical knowledge and a presented work example be a more rounded interview process? A three stage thorough process that tests and assesses the project candidate could be carried out in one session with a second stage being more focused on organisation orientation and indepth project understanding. This seems more like a strength based approach to me.
It is just a thought, but it seems organisations may want to reconsider their project management interview processes if they really do want to find the right employee, but would that be too much effort, time and change for the human resources function to set it up?
What do you think – is it time for an interview rethink? Have you attended an interview which was different to the norm? What did you think – good idea or new fangled idea better consigned to the bin? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
