Under Pressure

Today we welcome our first guest blogger from the now famous Recruiting Blog Swap.  Beth Carvin is the CEO of Nobscot Corporation, and you can learn more about her here, here and here.

Why do managers give interviews where they stare off into space for five minutes? Is it because they are creepy, and working at that company is like working in a house of ghouls on Halloween? That might be an applicant's impression but not necessarily the case.  More likely, the reason for the bizarre interview behavior is that the manager learned somewhere along the line that they should test applicants by simulating a stressful situation.

This kind of pressure cooker interview tactic was in vogue around 25 years ago but you still see some vestiges of it today.  The theory was that if an applicant seems timid or if the job calls for an employee to attend challenging meetings with potentially intimidating people, this unusual interview will give the interviewer an opportunity to see how the employee will react.  Will he handle it with aplomb or will he freak out and bomb?

When I was in recruiting I had an applicant who experienced this type of interview. The applicant was a bright, experienced young man applying for a Controller's position.  I sent him out for an interview with a medium sized company in the real estate industry. He came back after both his first and second interviews very enthusiastic about the company and the opportunity. After his third interview, which was held with the President, he called me within minutes of returning back to his office.

Beth C. : How did it go?

Applicant: Ummm......I'm not so sure.

Beth C. : What do you mean? What happened?

Applicant:  Well.....About half way through the interview the manager turned his chair to face the outside window. He sat facing the window for the rest of the interview!

Beth C. : How odd.  Let me talk to the company. It sounds like you might have just experienced a stress-tester interview.

Sure enough, when I spoke with the company, there were some concerns that the applicant might be a little young for the Controller level position. The company wanted to be certain that he could carry himself well in high level meetings with some top community leaders.

What the company didn't realize was that in testing for how the applicant reacted to stress, they were also potentially turning him off.  Would you like to work for a CEO that turns his back on you when speaking to you?

Luckily, as a third-party recruiter, I was able to explain to the applicant the reason for the unusual interview and assure him that the CEO was in fact very sane and that the CEO liked him very much. He was offered a position which he accepted and all worked out well.

Later, when I worked in Human Resources, I knew that I couldn't always control what managers would do or say in the interview. To counter that, I always made sure that I acted as a confidante to the applicants that I sent onward to meet with corporate managers and executives. This gave me the opportunity to follow up with applicants after their meetings and clear up any misperceptions that were formed during the interview process.

You might not be able to fix your interview process over night, but a little extra communication with applicants can go a long way.

And for the record, I'm not a believer in stress interviews. I prefer the approach of encouraging applicants to feel completely at ease with you as outlined in this article by Liz Ryan.

If you are on the receiving end of a stress interview as an applicant, this article gives some good tips on how to handle it.

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