Looking for Predetermined responses can cost you candidate!

Throughout my career there is one thing I have noticed out of novice recruiters, interviewers, HR personnel, companies who are young or in experienced with hiring and recruiting and hiring managers. That is the "predetermined response". The predetermined response is the response the person asking the questions wants to hear. Anything but this is not good to the person asking the question and in most cases will disqualify the candidate from contention. This phenomenon is most prevalent when the person asking the questions is using a script or questionnaire.

There are several negative connotations that come from this phenomenon, first you come off as being very rigid, closed minded, incompetent, and in some cases dumb. Secondly you lose allot of very good candidates. Coming across dumb, incompetent, closed minded, and rigid, hurts both your name and the company you work for. While you might think there are so many candidates, it will not get out, and or no one will care, you should check out glassdoor (http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm) and then tell me if you still believe no one will find out or it will not matter.

As to loosing good candidates, the reality is, that there is always more than one correct way to answer a question correctly. If indeed the interviewing is being done properly, you are using Behavioral Interviewing, BTOS (http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/the-btos-interviewing...), or some other standardized interviewing style or technique, and you will not be looking for a standard or predetermined response, and you already know what I just said. However if you are not, and you are looking for a standard or predetermined response, then you will lose good candidates.

Companies say they want people who are smart, innovative, and think outside of the box. If this is true why would you want or expect a standard or predetermined response. What you want is the off the cuff, inventive answer.

So the morale is, do not interview anyone with any expectations of what you want to hear. Instead observe, and listen. You do these two things, called Lookology and Lisology or Looklisology (http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/lisology-1 and http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/lookology-1) and you will not lose out on any good candidates, and also make you and your company look good.