Interview experiences as an interviewer..

astrogeek

A successful frivolous lawsuit doesn't mean the company did anything unethical, that guy would have found something to sue regardless of what was asked in the interview. I'm sure if they hired him he would have found something to sue as well.

McDonalds has been sued for serving hot coffee, but that doesn't mean they should stop serving hot coffee!

philz1982

Like I said, take the advice leave the advice, don't really care...

Zartanasaurus

philz1982 wrote: »

He got fired for discrimination, the two potential hires were acquaintances. The hired was the bosses friend.

The point, which your missing, was that if you ask different questions, not the same question differently, you can be sued for discrimination. But as I said, do what you want, I really could care less if you or your company gets sued or in any sort of legal trouble...

Seems like there was a lot more going on here than just asking different questions. Looks like it was a sham interview when it was already determined that the hire was going to be the boss's friend. Completely different set of facts.

LarryDaMan

philz1982 wrote: »

Depending on the size of your company, you need to ask the same questions of all interviewees or they can come back to you for legal reasons.

philz1982 wrote: »

Like I said, take the advice leave the advice, don't really care...

I'll leave it too, because it's bull. I conducted or helped conduct dozens of interviews when I was with HP and they are a huge company. We had some standard questions, which helped with scoring and comparisons, but of course you have the freedom to ask different questions to different people. It would be silly to be boxed-in with just cookie cutter questions.

On what grounds could that be discrimination? Maybe asking one of them out on a date? and not the others?

pogue

astrogeek wrote: »

A successful frivolous lawsuit doesn't mean the company did anything unethical, that guy would have found something to sue regardless of what was asked in the interview. I'm sure if they hired him he would have found something to sue as well.

McDonalds has been sued for serving hot coffee, but that doesn't mean they should stop serving hot coffee!

I love hearing this hackneyed old story thrown out every time someone wants to point out how rampantly out of control our legal system is..

For the record, McDonald's did NOT get sued for serving hot coffee.

They got sued when a woman got burned after over 700 complaints had already been registered with McDonald's over their coffee being too hot. These complaints resulted in over $500,000.00 dollars paid by McDonald's between 1982-1992. If the coffee wasn't too hot, then why did they pay?

Simple.. The coffee makers had a factory preset temperature, and would have to have been replaced across the entire company in order to address the issue. McDonald's decided that paying off the smaller claims on future injuries was more cost efficient than replacing all the coffeemakers in the company.

Doesn't sound so frivolous now, does it?

From the case itself:

McDonald's claimed that the reason for serving such hot coffee in its drive-through windows was that those who purchased the coffee typically were commuters who wanted to drive a distance with the coffee; the high initial temperature would keep the coffee hot during the trip.[2] However, the company's own research showed that some customers intend to consume the coffee immediately while driving.

This particular case is often used by the restaurant industry to illustrate "frivolous" lawsuits, and are quick to encourage the misconception that the person was driving while drinking the coffee, and that the burns were superficial. Neither was the case. She suffered third degree burns over 6% of her body, and was in the hospital for 8 days.

Russ

paul78

alexander77 wrote: »

So I'm curious about some of you guys experiences interviewing other candidates...

There’s probably some middle ground to being consistent with asking the same set of questions versus letting an interview flow through conversation. I personally use a technique that is similar to what @NetworkVeteran describes. I am not a proponent of using the same narrow questions for job candidates and I abhor the use of technical questions; especially questions which are intended to elicit specific responses. Whether someone knows how to use a specific command which may be relevant to one employers’ environment may not have been relevant in another employer’s environment. Everyone comes with some level of previous experience so a fixed-set of questions may not necessarily uncover a candidate’s previous experience.

I think that having fixed questions which are very specific does have its place but only if the goal is to build a team of the same type of persons with the same personality traits. I generally prefer to augment staff with diverse backgrounds and complementary personalities; specifically I focus on bringing in people that are problem solvers, talent to grow, and passion for their craft versus having specific skill-sets.

A lot of my own questioning is highly dependent on the role of the position; and obviously my own role in the interview process. I tend to use the same basic question sets; but my questions are open-ended, scenario based, and intended to be a topic-starter. From that single question, I would hope to elicit follow-on questions which would be based on evaluating the candidate’s previous experience.

For example – one question that I like to ask is “how do you stay up to date on technology” – if the candidate responds that “I have a lab”, “I attend conferences”, “I like to read xyz” – it would allow me to tend drill-down on “tell me about your lab”, “what conferences do you like”, etc.

Another question would be – “tell me about a time with your previous job where you had to overcome an adversity? How did you deal with the failure?”

That said – regardless of the questions and the role you play in the interview process – hopefully your employer provided you with some guidance on customary appropriateness and the local laws regarding the type of permitted questions.

I hope you found your participation in the process as a good learning experience.