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Want to find out if your job candidate was really paying attention during the interview? Want to see if he or she can truly organize their thoughts well? Want to see if your candidate can retain information and present it in a clear and concise manner?
The next time you have to recruit and hire employees, establish the practice of having them write up the "minutes" of the interview and send them to you. I've used this practice on several occasions and it amazes me how this one exercise can distinguish one candidate from another.
There are a lot of people who are great at interviews; they can talk their way into a job quite well. However, some of these folks have trouble putting their thoughts on paper and that potential superstar you thought you were hiring can turn out to be a major dud. Having people send you the minutes from their interview demonstrates if they were listening to you and also paying attention to their own dialogue.
I had a person tell me a story in the interview that they conveniently left out when they sent in the minutes. When I questioned the person, she said "well, as I was writing the minutes, I realized I wasn't telling the truth!" Needless to say, I didn't hire this person for the job.
If you're going to use this practice, I encourage you to tell your candidates upfront that you require them to do this. To wait until the end of the interview isn't fair to them and could catch someone completely off guard. In one instance, I provided the major sections to my candidates as to I wanted in the minutes to allow them to still focus on the interview as opposed to worrying about how to organize their thoughts.
Try this and let me know what happens!
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