By Mitch Rupert, Communications Manager for Tyler Bloom Consulting
It may not seem like it, but the ability to interview other people is like a muscle that has to be trained to get stronger. Unfortunately, unlike a physical muscle which can be trained in a gym before being put into practical use, the best way to get better at interviewing people is to do it often.
Throughout 20 years as a sports writer before getting into the golf industry, I’ve conducted more interviews than there are grains of sand in a greenside bunker. Those question-and-answer sessions have come under a massively different set of circumstances. I’ve asked Major League Baseball’s last 30-game winner Denny McLain about intentionally serving up a meatball to Mickey Mantle so his childhood hero could hit a home run. I’ve asked a teenager how he dealt with the news that he had been diagnosed with cancer. And I’ve even asked my current boss, Tyler Bloom, about taking a Division I pitcher deep in a high school playoff game more than a decade ago.
How you ask questions and how you approach the interview process is just as important as the questions you ask in that setting. I’ve asked good questions. I’ve asked really dumb questions. I’ve been caught rambling with no sense of direction before finally finding my point. It’s the nature of the ebbs and flows of getting better at the interviewing process.
But it’s a process which has prepared me well for my role with Tyler Bloom Consulting, where I spend my days running four to five job interviews, trying to gather information from candidates to see whether or not people are a fit for a job at any number of clubs throughout the country. And believe it or not, many of the same techniques I’ve used to help me interview coaches and athletes from Little League to professional sports, are the same techniques I use daily in job interviews.
Here are the five tips to how you can run better job interviews for your club:
- IT’S A CONVERSATION, NOT A QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SESSION
An interview setting is intimidating enough. Most people aren’t used to being on the end of what can feel like an interrogation. So as an interviewer, if you approach the interview as a conversation more than a Q&A, you’re going to allow your candidate to relax and provide better information on their experiences and thought processes, because at the end of the day, our goal is to gather as much information about the candidate as possible.
To do this, don’t stick to a script. While it is highly advisable to have a list of specific questions you want to get to, understand you don’t have to strictly stick to that script. It’s more important to use it as a guide. Let your conversation carry you to your next point with the candidate.
- DO YOU LISTEN, OR JUST WAIT TO TALK?
In a deleted scene from the movie Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman asks John Travolta this question. It’s a quote which is written on a Sticky Note and hung on the wall behind my computer because it’s an incredibly important idea in the interviewing process, and it ties in nicely with the No. 1 tip on this list. Are you absorbing the information being passed to you in an interview setting, or are you just merely waiting for the candidate to finish speaking to get to your next point? Taking the information provided to you from the candidate and using it to swiftly move from point to point allows you to form that conversational setting which is going to allow the candidate to relax and produce a much better interview result.
- ASK YOUR QUESTION AND GET OUT
The goal in an interview is to let the candidate share as much information as possible. As such, if your questions are long-winded ramblings, you’re only going to confuse the candidate with what the crux of your question really is. So be pointed, ask your question directly and get out of the way. I see it all the time in the sports journalism world where the question-asker is trying to qualify their question so much that they end up answering the question for the subject, and in the long run they end up sounding like Michael Scott trying to explain his sales philosophies to David Wallace.
In fact, your questions don’t even have to be questions to get the point across quickly. For example:
- ‘Walk me through your experience on (insert subject matter).’
- ‘Tell me about a successful fabrication project you’ve worked on.’
The candidate understands exactly what you want to know, and they can take the conversation from there. Fill in any holes with pointed follow-up questions.
- YOUR MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION IS ‘WHY’ OR ‘HOW’
Your most important questions are the ones you ask as follow-ups, especially ‘why’ or ‘how?’ It’s easy for a candidate to say they cut costs, or they reduced the amount of manpower needed for specific tasks. But what is more important is how they did those things, or why they did those things. Those two simple questions can help take a candidate’s answer to another level to give you a better understanding of their skill set.
- HAVE FUN WITH THE PROCESS
If you, as an interviewer, are tense and uptight during an interview, your interviewee is going to be tense and uptight as well. The interview process is overwhelming enough for a candidate, especially those who may struggle with some kind of anxiety issue. Find a way to break that tension early. Go to the same school as the candidate? Discuss your shared experiences. Work at the same facility? Share a story about your time there that invites the candidate to share a story about their time there. Remember, interviewing isn’t just about determining who has the right skill set for the job, but it’s about finding a cultural fit for your crew as well. The more you allow a candidate to relax and share their personality, the more you’re able to get a feel for how the candidate fits into the role.
If you’re in need of further insight and best practices, set up a FREE Talent Strategy Call with our team.
About The Author
Mitch Rupert joined our firm in July 2021. He facilitates candidate communication, interviews and due diligence reports. In addition, Mitch assists with outreach and digital content. Mitch boasts an impressive tenure of over two decades in sports
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