Supervisory Series-Distance Learning

Formerly called \"Introduction to Supervision\" Series\
\
Course Five - Conducting Effective Interviews

A distance-learning broadcast originating from the BLM National Training
Center in Phoenix, Arizona

**September 9, 2004**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: Welcome to the NTC supervisory series. These courses are
designed to familiarize new supervisors with their role and to serve as
review for experienced supervisors. Today\'s course, conducting
effective interviews. And now your instructors Barbara Sharrow and
Vincent Galterio.\
\
B. Sharrow: Good morning. Thanks for joining us. My name is Barbara
Sharrow, and I\'m from the Uncompahgre field office. I\'m the manage
their in Montrose, Colorado. With me today is Vincent Galterio. He is
the human resources specialist from New Mexico state office and Texas
and Oklahoma. Welcome.\
\
V. Galterio: Good morning, Barb. Good morning to our audience.\
\
B. Sharrow: Today with you we plan to examine some of the basic skills
everyone involved in the recruiting process needs to have when it comes
to interviewing job applicants. Before talking specifically about our
objectives and how we will go about involving you in this course let me
quickly review a few things about the push-to-talk system that we will
be relying on today to make this course as interactive as helpful to you
as possible. We encourage you to ask questions and share your concerns
with us throughout this course. If the push-to-talk system is up and
working, we encourage you to use it. When you have a question, press the
push-to-talk button and say, hello, this is, say your first name, and
then say either the state or the office that you\'re from. Then release
the push-to-talk button. This is important. Until you release the
button, you will not be able to hear the instructor. We will acknowledge
you and ask for your question or comment. Stating your name and location
helps everyone know who is participating at different locations.

Imagine for a moment if you were physically in a classroom, you would
raise your hand to answer a question or to join in the discussion. You
can do the same thing here by simply pushing the push-to-talk button.
We\'re all familiar with the protocol for asking questions or making
comments. It\'s the instructor that you\'re interacting with and not the
monitor. As you ask more questions and get more involved you will soon
be focusing only on the content of your questions and not the equipment
you are using to ask it. We may also call upon you to participate in a
brainstorming session, a role play or simply to make a comment. So be
ready. If you do not have access to a working push-to-talk button, you
may also send a fax question or comment to \... We also have prizes
today for participating. We have two books, we have \"Hiring the Best\"
and \"Hire with Your Head\" that we will selectively send to those of
you who participate actively today. Vince, let\'s get started.\
\
V. Galterio: Ok. First let\'s talk about the participant\'s guide.
Everyone in the class should have one and it\'s designed for you to be
able to follow along as we go through the session. Several times during
the broadcast we\'ll direct you to specific pages to either bring your
attention to something or some places for you to do some exercises. It
also has some appendices in the back we\'ve added to give you some
reference material that will be real helpful to you after the broadcast
is over. What\'s this course about today? Well, the goal of the staffing
process is to hire the right person with the right skills at the right
time, and interviewing has always been an important part of this
process. With the introduction of BLMJobs Online or QuickHire, it\'s
become even more important now that everyone do really effective
interviews. Our goal is really quite simple. It\'s to help everyone be
able to conduct effective interviews.

The objective for this course is during the hiring process plan for and
conduct applicant and reference interviews that respect legal parameters
and appropriate documentation resulting in \"Hiring the Best\" possible
candidates. Now, our format for this course today is that we\'re going
to provide you with information that we have gathered through a variety
of research that we\'ve done and we\'d like to help you learn this
material by doing a couple of things. First is we\'ll have some role
play scenarios where we\'ll ask you to watch a video and then give us
some comments on what you saw. We\'ll have some group exercises for you
to complete at your unit. And we\'d like you to discuss these things as
a group, maybe two or three people sitting around the same table and
then get back with us and give us some of the discussion that you\'ve
had. And finally, we\'ve got some resources for you to use after, and
those are in the appendices I mentioned earlier. As with all leadership
courses, in order to be effective, OPM has identified 27 competencies or
OPM leadership competencies as they call them that they feel are
important for everyone. This course uses several of these competencies
and I want to identify them now. The first one that we think that you
will become better acquainted with is human resource management. Then we
have accountability. Oral and written communication. Political savvy.
Strategic thinking. Vision. Decisiveness. And interpersonal skills. You
can find a complete list of OPMs 27 leadership competencies in appendix
E of your workbook. Barb?\
\
B. Sharrow: Before we begin to get going here, why are we doing this?
Why should you care about whether or not you conduct interviews? Takes a
long time to conduct them and may slow down your decision process by two
or three weeks. So what we would like for you to do now is please talk
among yourselves and come up with some ideas and then we will get back
to you in about 30 seconds to hear about what you think as to why you
think we should conduct effective interviews or not. Ok. You\'ve had
some time to consider the question. Let\'s hear some of your ideas.
Anyone out there have any ideas?\
\
Caller: Hello?\
\
B. Sharrow: Hello.\
\
Caller: This is Peggy in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The first thing I have
is the costs involved with training people.\
\
B. Sharrow: You\'re absolutely right. I think it\'s even more than
training people. If you hire the wrong person for the job and they\'re
just plain ineffective, you\'re looking at a lot of money. You look at a
GS11 that you hire at \$50,000 a year. Over a 10-year span of time
you\'re looking at a half million dollars and in these low budget years
that\'s a lot of money.\
\
Caller: This is Mike at the Idaho state office.\
\
B. Sharrow: Go ahead, Mike.\
\
Caller: How about verify oral communication skills?\
\
B. Sharrow: Very good. Excellent. Yes. Anyone else?\
\
Caller: This is Chris Hopkins in New Mexico. This allows you also to
drill down into some of the questions that might have been asked on the
hard copy version or the application that was sent in.\
\
B. Sharrow: Yeah, excellent. You may have noticed if you\'ve put
together some of the online job interview questions that some of them
are fairly generic, and it does give you ample opportunity here to
really figure out if they\'re saying what they did they did.\
\
Caller: This is Lorraine at NTC.\
\
B. Sharrow: Go ahead, Lorraine.\
\
Caller: \--\
\
V. Galterio: Lorraine?\
\
Caller: To make sure the person fits in with the organization to find
out how they interacted, if you talked to their references to find out
how they operated or interacted in their previous jobs.\
\
B. Sharrow: Very much so. Yeah. Someone might be perfectly qualified but
may not quite fit in with your particular office or organization. I
think it\'s time to give away a book. What do you think, Vince?\
\
V. Galterio: I think we\'re going to give a book to Peggy, we\'re going
to send a book to Peggy, I think we\'ll send you \"Hiring the Best\" for
being the first person to use the push-to-talk and that\'s often the
hardest, to get that first person on there, but everyone chimed right in
and it looks like a real interactive group. So thank you very much.\
\
B. Sharrow: When it comes to interviews, I think that they\'re just as
important when you\'re hiring seasonals and volunteers. Often I don\'t
think that we pay as much attention or we tend to jump hiring someone a
lot quicker when it comes to those folks. But it request hurt us just as
much \-- it can hurt us just as much by not taking enough time to do the
interviews with them also. Let\'s spend some time looking at preparing
for the interview. There\'s a whole psychology associated with the
interview process and a lot of people from both sides of the table look
at it as just being one big game. Interviewing is supposed to be
actually an exchange of information to find out if there\'s a good match
for a particular job. From the interviewer\'s standpoint, the game
involves promoting the company and the job while hiding any weaknesses
that either may possess and flushing out the truth about the candidate
assuming the candidate is trying to hide or minimize their weaknesses
from the from the candidate\'s standpoint the game involves nailing down
an offer by hiding or minimizing weaknesses, magnifying strengths and
trying to appeal to what he or she thinks the enter interviewer wants to
hear. This game is a prescription for failure from either side of the
interview table. So why do so many people play the game?

From the interviewer\'s perspective, short-term need to fill the job
quickly and the more severe the need, the lower the job qualification
standards are skewed in order to get a body onboard, and I know a lot of
us have done that. We need to get somebody in a position fast so we
shortcut everything we can to get somebody in there. From the
candidate\'s perspective, tight job markets coupled with an immediate
need to support the family create a distorted view, to the point where
they feel like they can fit into almost any job, they\'re desperate. So
what can we do as the interviewer to minimize the game? Keep in mind, a
good fit will in all likelihood be more beneficial, productive and cost
effective than a quick fit. Remind the candidate before the interview
that you want true personal responses to questions and discussion. Ok,
Vince?\
\
V. Galterio: In preparing for the interview, the first question that you
need to consider is what kind of information do I need to get out of the
process that we\'re about to do. There are a bunch of types of different
information that you\'re looking for. The first is you want to be able
to assess the applicant\'s past performance. Another is to determine the
applicant\'s job-related competencies. And, third, is to unlock the
character and personality traits that would be important to the job and
to your organization. Before you start the interview, it\'s important to
plan or map out a strategy to conduct a structured interview. There\'s
some characteristics we can share with you of a structured interview.
The first is that it has an opening, a body and a conclusion. The
opening is designed to make both the interviewer and the applicant feel
comfortable in their surroundings and prepare them for the questions
that you\'re going to ask during the body of the interview.

The conclusion is designed to give you the opportunity to ask any
questions that you may need follow-up on or give the applicant the
opportunity to ask any questions that they have and also to let the
applicant know what the next steps are going to be in the selection
process. The interview also consists of a set of preplanned questions,
and that\'s important as you map out your strategy. That gives you the
opportunity to make sure that you focus on the specific information that
you want to get out of the interview. Then finally there\'s a
documentation system to an interview. It\'s important that you take
notes or record the information somehow so that after the interview is
over and you\'ve conducted a number of them you can remember what you
heard from each applicant. So the documentation will enable you to go
back afterwards and jog your memory about what you heard. We\'d like to
watch a role play now, and this role play is going to be of an
interview, and we want you to think as you\'re watching it whether there
is enough structure to this interview. After it\'s over, we would like
you to talk in your group there and come back after about \-- I think
we\'ve got this set up for a little over a minute \-- to come back and
tell us your ideas. What you might want to do, if there\'s a number of
people in your room, is select someone to present the ideas that you
folks had, and that way you\'re ready if we do call on you. You can look
on page 5 of your participant\'s guide and there\'s some space there to
write down your thoughts as you watch this role play. So let\'s get it
started now.\
\
Hi, I\'m Lenny and you must be Mary.\
\
I\'m Mary Smith. Nice to meet you, Lenny.\
\
This is great, Mary. We\'re excited to have you here. Our office is
absolutely chaotic. Things are happening, bells are ringing, we need
some help. So we\'re glad to have you here.\
\
Great. Thank you.\
\
Why don\'t you tell me a little about yourself.

Currently I\'m the supervisory outdoor rec. planner at the Taos field
office.\
\
That brings back so many memories to me. We had some wild Christmas
parties there. Whoa! We could probably write a book about that. But I
don\'t think we\'d want to publish that book, probably not.\
\
Oh.\
\
Tell me, I used to know a Bill Engle, he used to be the head of the
support staff.\
\
Yeah, Bill is still there, busy with the \--\
\
What else have you done?\
\
Well, like I say, I\'m the supervisory outdoor rec. planner for the Taos
field office. I\'ve been doing that for four years. Previous to that I
was working at the Zion national park \--\
\
Park volunteer coordinator. Wow, some of my fondest memories have been
working with volunteers. Yes, fun on the trail, and we had parties, and
there were some really good people, yeah. So \-- oh, anyway, what do you
think \-- how was your experience working with volunteers?\
\
Actually, I thought it was wonderful \--\
\
I understand that you were a supervisor; is that correct?\
\
Yes, I am. Currently. Yes.\
\
Do you think you were an effective supervisor.\
\
Yes, I do.\
\
Wow, so did you ever have to fire anybody?\
\
Oh, I\'ve had to fire two people in the last 10 years, and believe me,
it was not fun. Paper work, paper work, paper work. Yeah. Now, I saw
somewhere where I think you were in the SCEP program, is that right?\
\
When I first came into the BLM.\
\
I was in it when I first came through. What were you saying \--\
\
V. Galterio: We\'re back. So you\'ve had some time to look at this role
play and consider what you saw. Let\'s hear some comments from you folks
out there about what you think.\
\
Caller: This is Steve from Albuquerque.\
\
V. Galterio: I got two from Albuquerque.\
\
Caller: We thought that the \-- there\'s a lot of opportunities for
improvements here. The \-- was very short on opening. Didn\'t say what
the job involved. There was a lack of purposefulness. Strayed to some
stream of consciousness kind of dialogue with way too many
interruptions. Some irrelevant personal details. Then finally, there was
no documentation system that we saw there.\
\
V. Galterio: Wow, Mindy, you hit just about all of it right there.\
\
Caller: I\'d add one thing, Vince.\
\
V. Galterio: Steve, go ahead.\
\
Caller: The interviewer needs to keep in mind that the interview is
about the applicant, not about himself.\
\
V. Galterio: That\'s right. That\'s very important. Every time she
started to say something, he cut her off and talked about himself.
Mindy, you caught a lot of the details there that certainly made it
appear to be a very unstructured interview. But I guess I would ask you
folks out there how many times have you been through interviews like
this? You know, there\'s lots of people in this agency that like to
conduct informal interviews because they think that it puts everybody at
ease and the information will flow freely. But Mindy certainly brought
out some good points with the difficulty in getting documentation in an
interview like that. So thank you very much. You guys did a great job.\
\
B. Sharrow: Should we give another book?\
\
V. Galterio: You know, we need to give a book to Mindy for that, hitting
so many of the points on her first go around there. So thank you very
much. That\'s Mindy gores in Albuquerque. I know Mindy.\
\
Caller: Way to go, Vince. New Mexico is capably representing you!\
\
V. Galterio: We\'ll send Mindy, hiring with your head. Thank you very
much. Barb?\
\
B. Sharrow: We\'re going to talk a little more about the disadvantages
of an unstructured interview. There\'s some definite disadvantages as we
just noted. By asking a lot of off-the-cuff questions the interviewer
might appear to be unprofessional to the applicant. Is less likely to
include questions that help assess past job performance and determine
the job and he sees. Would be more likely to ask inappropriate questions
that could get them into legal trouble. We\'ll be talking about this
section a little later. Is more likely to ask each applicant different
questions, making comparative evaluation difficult or impossible. And
also, of course, as was noted, makes documentation difficult. By
comparison, there\'s a lot of advantages to having a structured
interview. The interviewer can stay on track with a set of preplanned
questions and will be more organized and focused, and thus, appear much
more professional.

By preparing the questions in advance the interviewer can assure that
they will help assess past performance and determine job competencies.
By sticking to preplanned questions, the interviewer can also avoid
improper subjects. By asking a standard set of questions to each
applicant, comparative evaluation will be easier. Remember\... it may
still be appropriate to ask different questions of some applicants,
especially if you have a question about a certain block of their history
or a question about their resume. Knowing the questions in advance will
make it easier to document the responses. But don\'t be so structured
that you stifle the interview by making it uncomfortable. Vince, let\'s
talk about types of interviews.\
\
V. Galterio: Ok. Before we get into that, I want to just say that the
mics are open if anyone has any questions at any point, feel free to ask
them. Look at this just like we were in a classroom where we were
standing right in front of you and you might raise your hand, but in
this case, just hit your push-to-talk and let us know that you\'re out
there and we\'ll be happy to address any questions that you want.
Planning the structure of your interview, there\'s the opportunity to
make several decisions at different points, and one of the decisions
that you have to make is whether you\'re going to do the interview by
telephone or in person. A lot of our interviews take place over the
telephone, if the person is local oftentimes you do it in person, but we
use the telephone a lot. There\'s certain advantages and disadvantages
to each of those different methods and we want to go through and talk
about the advantages and disadvantages of both telephone interviews and
in-person interviews.

So one of the things \-- let\'s start with the advantages of telephone
interviews. First, it will be easier to schedule interviews and to
complete the interview process quicker. It may be easier to document the
interview by taking notes without being distracting to the applicant.
And there\'s no travel costs involved. Now let\'s touch on some of the
disadvantages every telephone interviews. One disadvantage of telephone
interviews is that you don\'t get to see how the applicants present
themselves. Also, you\'re not able to observe any nonverbal or body
language responses to specific interview questions. Now let\'s talk
about the advantages of in person interviews. You\'ll see that these are
really the disadvantages of telephone interviews. So they\'re really the
opposite of each other. First off, with an in person interview, you get
to see how the applicants present themselves. You can also observe the
nonverbal communication to the specific questions that you ask, and an
advantage for the applicant is that they are able to see the workplace,
assuming the interview is held there. Some of the disadvantages of in
person interviews include the process may take longer if it is difficult
to schedule in person meetings. It may be more difficult to record the
responses without being distracting to the applicant. And you can make
this easier by having a predeveloped form to record your responses. And
we\'ve got a couple of forms in the workbook, in the appendix. So now
what we want to do is give you the opportunity to talk about this,
advantages and disadvantages, of another decision that you are going to
make when you start to set up the structure of your interview, and that
is \--\
\
Caller: I have a question.\
\
V. Galterio: Go ahead. Who is this?\
\
Caller: This is Cheryl from Idaho, and I was just wondering if, it used
to be you weren\'t supposed to mix. If you offered an in-person, you had
to make it so everybody could do in-person. Is that still the case?\
\
V. Galterio: You know, sometimes that happens, you may be doing
in-person interviews and someone can\'t make it and they say, let\'s do
it over the telephone. But I give you a word of caution on that, you\'re
right, I would stick to one of the or the other as you\'re planning out
interviews but sometimes things happen. The word of caution I would give
you it makes it a little bit more difficult to treat everybody equally.
Someone might challenge your selection later on saying, \"I didn\'t get
the same opportunity as the person who got the face-to-face interview.\"
So someone could question it later on. So if that happens to you, I
would certainly document the fact that you were going to do all the
interviews the same but for some reason someone couldn\'t show up for
the in-person interview and so that you have that to fall back on later
on. What I wouldn\'t do is I wouldn\'t do telephone interviews of
everyone except the people in your office. That gives them an unfair
advantage, in my opinion. So what I would say to do with the people in
your office is do a telephone interview with them, too, and that
certainly gives you a stronger position if your decision is ever
challenged. Does that answer your question?\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you.\
\
V. Galterio: Thank you. Let\'s talk now about the differences between
panel interviews and one on one or individual to individual interviews.
What we would like you to do this time is we would like you to take a
few moments to work at your site there to come up with what you think
are the advantages and disadvantages of panel interviews versus one on
one interviews and we\'ve given you some space on page 8 of your
participant\'s guide to jot down your notes, talk amongst yourselves
there, and we\'ll come back in about two minutes.\
\
V. Galterio: We\'re back. Just like we talked about a little while ago
with the telephone versus in person interviews, you probably noticed
when you were figuring out the advantages and disadvantages of panel
versus individual one on one interviews, the advantages to one are
really the disadvantages to the other. So as a result, let\'s just talk

about the advantages of each of them. How about some responses out there
on what you found as advantages to a panel interview?\
\
Caller: This is Mark up at Montana state office.\
\
V. Galterio: Hello, Mark.\
\
Caller: On the panel interview we feel that the viewpoint would be more
balanced and one of the disadvantages would be more intimidating for the
interviewee.\
\
V. Galterio: That\'s a real good observation. When you have several
people doing a panel interview, you get different perspectives, and each
one of those people who is doing the interview will get a little
different piece of information than the other folks. What else?\
\
Caller: A panel interview would be a better chance of removing bias.\
\
V. Galterio: Absolutely. When you have several people doing the
interview, if one person feels that they saw \-- whatever particular
thing it is that they do, other people are there to say, you know what,
I didn\'t see that same thing and I don\'t think that\'s so big a deal.
That\'s a real good point. Anyone else out there?\
\
Caller: This is Jan in Santa Fe. The other thing I would say is if you
can have some customers on your panel you\'re going to get a variety of
diversity and input as the selecting official to really hear from the
customers that that individual may be serving to really ground truth, is
that the person that\'s going to fit into your organization.\
\
V. Galterio: That\'s a real good comment. You also get better buy-in
after the selection is made because they know that you used customers,
maybe other subject matter experts, or whatever, to get the perspective
of several different people. So people will see your selection as being
even more valid because of the input from other people, especially
customers. Thanks, Jan.\
\
Caller: I use you as an example, since I selected you, but the final
selection was done by two of your customers, your State Director and
also one of your field managers, that really had the final say on your
selection. So that was different for me and I thought it was very
successful.\
\
V. Galterio: So the real question is, do they still feel the same way?
But we\'ll find that out later. Anyone else out there?\
\
B. Sharrow: Vince, I have another point, too. I know that some field
office managers have actually pulled in people from the community to use
in an interview panel, and I think in that way that can add added input
also and buy-in when they get there.\
\
V. Galterio: Great, especially if it\'s a position that\'s going to be
involved in public meetings. They\'ve already met some of the people in
the community and the community already feels good about them. Good.

Anything else out there?

Caller: This is Linda gores from New Mexico. Some of the advantages for
the individual interview, we think those would be quicker, they\'re more
time effective, and there\'s lower hurdles to scheduling the individual
interviews.\
\
V. Galterio: Absolutely, Mindy. Let me just make two more comments about
the panel before I move down to the individual, but that\'s very good,
Mindy. I do want to say, though, that there\'s certainly an opportunity
for more or better documentation when you have a panel. People can take
notes while someone else is asking a question. It\'s not quite as
intimidating in that respect to the applicant and it\'s easier to get
documentation. And the other one I want to make is that you have
witnesses just in case something goes wrong with the selection process
and is challenged. There\'s someone there to say, you know what, this is
what we did during this process, and it gives you maybe a little bit of
documentation for yourself in case there are problems later on. Now
let\'s follow up with the advantages to the individual. Mindy already
mentioned a couple. Someone else out there? Did Mindy hit on them all?\
\
Caller: This is Jan and I\'ll speak for Rene because he\'s not close to
the push-to-talk, he just said, you have a guaranteed consensus.\
\
V. Galterio: Yes, you do. Yes, you do. There\'s certainly an advantage
to that, as Mindy noted, that it\'s quicker, it\'s quicker when it\'s a
panel of one to make a decision. So that certainly is an advantage both
in time and consensus. Anything else?\
\
Caller: This is Mark up at Montana state office. Disadvantage is that
one person might overlook something.\
\
V. Galterio: A disadvantage to an individual interview?\
\
Caller: Yes.\
\
V. Galterio: That\'s right. When you don\'t have someone else sitting
there with you, it\'s hard to capture everything someone says. So it is
much easier to overlook something. The other thing about individual
interviews is none of us are subject matter experts at everything, so if
you put a couple of heads together and you can bring in some people that
possibly can follow up on some of the information from the applicant
that you might not be able to. Ok. I think we covered that fairly well.\
\
B. Sharrow: Thank you for all the comments and discussion. So now Weaver
the type of interview \-- now we have the type of interview we will use
planned and we realize structuring the interview is best for a number of
reasons. We are now at a point where we can focus on developing the
interview questions. As any of you who have put together questions from
interviews in the past know, this is not always as easy as it might
seem. When we talked about planning a structured interview, we stressed
how important it is to develop interview questions in advance. A good
beginning is to review the position description and task statements from
the vacancy announcement to determine what skills and competencies are
necessary for successful performance on the job. There are several
different types of questions that you can use. The first might be
behavioral. Those are questions that are based on past performance, the
applicant is asked what they\'ve done in the past where they had to use
specific skills. Situational questions are based on a situation and how
the applicant would respond to or handle that situation. Personality
profile questions are designed to help you discover personality traits
of the applicant. Then, of course, there\'s open-ended questions where
you ask something that you just hope to get as much information as
possible. And there\'s some positions where you\'re going to have to ask
a closed question such as if in a law enforcement position you might
ask, \"you will have to go through an annual physical, would this cause
any problem to you?\" A self-assessment question asks the applicants to
rate themselves on a specific skill. And informational questions are
designed to obtain facts such as to clarify information from the resume.
So we\'re going to take time now to do another exercise.

We\'d like you to turn to appendix A in your participant guide and take
a look at the job description there and the seven job specific
questions. The questions you see were taken from the BLM online jobs
question library and this example is what a typical response from an
applicant would look like. This exercise is designed to help you write
one or two questions that will verify that information that the
applicant checked is accurate and not inflated. For example, check out
number 1 job specific question on page 19. To obtain more information
from each applicant, you might ask: \"describe your role and a specific
project that required an environmental analysis.\" This would be a
behavioral question. Or, \"rate yourself on a scale of poor, fair, good
or excellent as to your ability to lead an environmental assessment and
discuss why.\" This would be a self-assessment question. You can create
questions that fit any of the previously described styles. Create the
question so it is appropriate to interview all of your candidates.
There\'s space on page 10 to record your interview questions. Now, to
make sure that we look at all the questions, we\'re going to ask
different states to look at different questions. So we\'d like Arizona
\-- anyone in Arizona to look at question number 2, anyone in Colorado
to look at question number 3, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, look
at number 4, anyone in Idaho look at number 5, New Mexico, Texas and
Oklahoma look at number 6, and anyone east of the Mississippi or anyone
else that we might have missed to look at number 7. This exercise may
take a bit more time and we\'d like again for you to discuss among
yourselves and then choose a speaker. So we\'re going to give you five
minutes to complete this exercise.\
\
B. Sharrow: Ok, we\'re back. How about question number 2. Is anyone out
there that looked at question number 2, Arizona?\
\
Caller: This is Becky on the Arizona strip.\
\
B. Sharrow: Hi, Becky. How are you? What do you have?\
\
Caller: Sorry, we\'re still working on this push-to-talk. I\'m getting
all kinds of feedback.\
\
B. Sharrow: I can hear that.\
\
V. Galterio: We hear an echo here, too, Becky.\
\
B. Sharrow: Let\'s go onto number 3. How about number 3, Colorado?\
\
Caller: Hello, this is Charise.\
\
B. Sharrow: Hi, Charise. What do you have?\
\
Caller: This is Charise from Colorado. In response to question 3 how
about a situational question: how would you go about developing an
implementing an integrated recreation plan for the field office?
Assuming you have other resource considerations.\
\
B. Sharrow: That sounds like an excellent question. If I were
interviewing, I would hate to get it, but it\'s a great question. How
about number 4?\
\
Caller: This is Cindy in Montana.\
\
B. Sharrow: Go ahead, Cindy in Montana.\
\
Caller: We would ask how she would go about describing to people she
supervised the implications of a policy change, for example, the Utah
wilderness settlement, and how it affects how we do business with the
BLM.\
\
B. Sharrow: That is an excellent question. How about any other questions
on number 4? Maybe we\'ll go onto number 5.\
\
Caller: This is Diane in Idaho. We would ask a behavioral question. You
have worked with and planned numerous activities. Please give us an
example of your project from beginning to end. We would also ask a
self-assessment question, how would you describe your ability to meet
deadlines. Then a personality question. In working with new people, how
do you go about getting an understanding of them. Those are three we
came up with.\
\
B. Sharrow: That\'s excellent. That\'s very excellent. Ok. How about
number 6?\
\
Caller: This is Bob in New Mexico. We have a couple of behavioral
questions we would ask. For example, to describe specific projects the
person has been dealing with in regards to the wilderness preservation
act. What experience did they have with RMP principles? How would they
go about, for example, determining what the signing needs are for a
given area. For a situational question, perhaps asking them, given that
you\'re given the it is a took create a recreational site and how you
would go about prioritizing the needs in an area of environmental
concern versus the needs of developing the site.\
\
B. Sharrow: Wow, ok. I think folks will want to be \-- be wanting to
watch this broadcast just to find out what kinds of questions they might
be getting on the other ends of things. How about number 7?\
\
Caller: This is Ruth at Eastern .\
\
B. Sharrow: Welcome, Ruth. What question do you have?\
\
Caller: Since she\'s \-- obviously has a lot of supervisory experience,
we would ask a behavioral question, something along the lines of how do
you motivate and inspire people?\
\
B. Sharrow: Very good. Excellent.\
\
V. Galterio: You know, Barb, one of the reasons why we first thought
about doing this satellite broadcast is because of the comments we\'ve
heard about BLMJobs Online or QuickHire and that applicants are able to
really self-qualify themselves and folks are worried about them
inflating their experience, and these questions were all excellent at
getting at exactly what the person does, and so that\'s the \-- the
interview is the tool for making sure that \-- you\'re verifying all the
information people gave to get themselves on the certificate in the
first place. Every one of those questions fit that perfectly. So great,
great job.\
\
B. Sharrow: Ok. Does anyone else out there have a really good question
that they think they would like to ask the applicant? You know, Becky,
did we ever get back to you? I don\'t think we ever got back to Becky.
Is your push-to-talk working?\
\
V. Galterio: They must be trying to reconnect or something.\
\
B. Sharrow: Yeah, that\'s probably true.\
\
Caller: This is Lorraine at NTC, we also had question number 2, and one
of the things we were looking at, because the person claims to have an
expert, is to ask them to demonstrate or what \-- ask them how they
qualify themselves as an expert. So they\'d have to tell us what
they\'ve done as an expert.\
\
B. Sharrow: That\'s very good. Yeah. And I think that will help
distinguish between candidates also as you\'re asking different
applicants that same question, the responses are going to vary greatly
and that will help you distinguish in your final decision making
process.\
\
V. Galterio: One other thing we didn\'t use here was the resume. We put
a sample resume in the appendix there, too, but we didn\'t use it for
just consideration of time, but along with those job specific questions
or task statements, as they\'re actually called in QuickHire, you\'d
also pull out the resume and get your questions from there, too.\
\
B. Sharrow: Ok. There\'s also lots of other different types of questions
that you can ask. Perhaps not so much of the applicant, but the other
ones you might want to ask would get at their analytical ability, their
communications skills, their decision making skills, their initiative,
their interpersonal skills, leadership abilities, planning and
organizing skills, presentation skills, problem solving skills and how
do they manage their time. I find that those questions are often asked
better of supervisors, peers and subordinates to get a really good
360-degree view of the applicant. When we\'re done here today you may
want to check out appendix B where we put some sample interview
questions if you need some help getting going, which it doesn\'t sound
like most of you out there participating do. You did great. And appendix
F contains a list of reference books and websites. When we were putting
this course together, one of the things that we found was there\'s about
90% of the information out there is for the interviewee. Only about 10%
of the information is for supervisors who are actually trying to get the
right candidate for the job. So we tried \-- we put in a list for you to
refer to. A couple of other thoughts. There may be value in sending the
questions that you come up ahead of time to the applicant. That will
really give them a chance to put together a really well thought out
answer to your question. Or the other thing that you might want to do
with certain job positions, you may want to ask, for examples of their
work, such as a portfolio. And some of the positions I can think of
might be a landscape architect, you might want to ask them to send in
some examples of their work, or perhaps an interpretive specialist, if
you\'re going to have them putting together a whole bunch of brochures
and stuff, have them send some brochures of what they have done in the
past. I think it\'s time to take a break. When we come back, we\'ll have
a thought-provoking role play and discuss how you can stay out trouble.
This break will last 15 minutes.\
\
V. Galterio: Welcome back. We hope you had the opportunity to see a
little bit of that slide show during the break. Those are just
outstanding pictures from all of our different states and offices.
Before the break we talked about why we conduct interviews, talked about
a structure for an interview and gave you the opportunity to create some
questions. Now we want to talk about how to stay out of trouble, and to
do this we want to begin with a role play and I think you\'ll find it
very interesting. You can look on page 11 of your participant\'s guide
for some space to take some notes and what we want you to consider is
what the interviewer did right or wrong and if the interviewer did
anything that may cause him some problems later on. So with that, please
take a few moments, watch this role play, and then talk in your group
afterwards and we\'ll get back with you and hear some of your
responses.\
\
Now that we\'ve talked about your work qualifications, I\'d like to
learn a little more about you.\
\
Ok.\
\
So why don\'t you tell me just a little about yourself.\
\
Sure, I was born an raised in Petaluma, California. I am the oldest of
four children. My husband is a firefighter for the county. We\'ve been
married three years and in fact we\'re expecting our first child.\
\
Oh, really?\
\
Uh-huh.\
\
That\'s wonderful. So when\'s the baby due?\
\
Seven months.\
\
Well, I wish you all the best.\
\
Thank you. By the way, I think you\'re from the same hometown as my
brother-in-law. Did you happen to know a Sydney Davis? I think he went
to Petaluma high school from 1975 through 1978.\
\
No, I didn\'t know him. Little bit before my time.\
\
No big deal. Just curious. I noticed on your application that you\'re
fluent in Spanish, and that\'s definitely going to help you that the
position you\'re applying for. How fluent are you, do you speak Spanish
at home?\
\
My parents speak Spanish.\
\
That\'s great. That\'s great. I wish I was fluent in a second language.
Now, I presume that you are a citizen of the United States?\
\
Yes.\
\
Good. I noticed on your application that you served in the military. I
presume that you had an honorable discharge?\
\
Yes.\
\
Good. Now, this position involves working with children as part of the
bureau\'s interpretive outreach program. Now, for safety\'s sake, I need
to ask, have you ever been arrested?\
\
No. Never.\
\
That\'s good. Now, the job requires work on weekends and some evenings.
Is this going to be a problem with day-care?\
\
No. We\'ve got that covered.\
\
May I ask how do you have that covered?\
\
My mother-in-law.\
\
That\'s good. Good to know. I also noticed on your employment history
that there was a gap in your work from 1995 to 2000, and I was wondering
if you could explain to that me, please.\
\
Yes, I was involved in a very serious car accident and the recovery was
a long time.\
\
Well, I\'m glad you\'re recovered. That\'s good to know. So are there
any problems or disabilities that I should be aware of?\
\
No, I don\'t.\
\
That\'s good. That\'s good for you. We would like to conduct a follow-up
interview next Tuesday, which I think is a pretty important \-- a
religious holiday for some people. Now, is this going to be a problem
for you?\
\
It would be more convenient for me if we could do it on Monday, if
that\'s convenient.\
\
Monday will work. That will work fine. That\'s it for me, Mary, and I do
appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.\
\
Yep, thank you.\
\
Thank you.\
\
V. Galterio: We\'re back. Before we get into your comments about this
role play, I just want to ask that during this one you just give us one
thing that you noticed at a time so that we can keep up with them.
Certainly an interesting interview. Someone like to comment on something
that they saw in there?\
\
Caller: Yes, this is Rene in Santa Fe, and one of the things that came
out right away was that he starts questioning her about her pregnancy
and how pregnant was she and when was the baby due.\
\
V. Galterio: Right. That\'s certainly not a job related question and
it\'s never appropriate to ask anyone about a family question like that.
Good Rene, thank you. Someone else?\
\
Caller: Mark in Montana.\
\
V. Galterio: Ok. Hold on. Hold on. Let\'s go with Mark first, and there
were two people on there. I caught Mark.\
\
Caller: This is Mark. The brother question.\
\
V. Galterio: Yeah, the question about his brother going to Petaluma high
school. The point there is that he could have been fishing for her age
through that. He told her a period of time and asked her basically if
she went to school during that period of time, and she handled it well
and just said, no, that was before my time, but he did get a sense of
her age from that question. Good point, Mark. Who was the other person
that hit their push-to-talk?\
\
Caller: This is Marie in Carlsbad. She talked about her military
discharge and also her ability to take care of children. He was trying
to fish to see if she had probably a police record or something. And
also he talked about her \-- he was trying to fish that she was an
American citizen because she spoke Spanish.\
\
V. Galterio: Yeah, he was making assumptions based on her ability to
speak Spanish and followed up on that comment with asking an
inappropriate question about her citizenship. It is ok to know if
someone is a U.S. citizen, but it\'s not ok to prod about what country
they\'re from, national origin. You also talked about military
discharge, Maria. It\'s not appropriate to ask questions about military
discharge at this point. If it is if it is someone Newcombeing into the
government and veterans\' preference applies they would have submitted
the DD-214 and we would know whether they have preference and certainly
an honorable or dishonorable discharge is important there, but in the
\-- in the normal hiring for a normal job, military discharge, whether
honorable or dishonorable, has nothing to do with it. And also the
questions about her children, those also were inappropriate, Maria.
Thank you. Anything else?\
\
Caller: Rex Boise. He also mentioned about disabilities after he talked
about the honorable discharge, do you have any disabilities that might
cause a problem for you.\
\
V. Galterio: They certainly would. If a person has got a disability and
wants an accommodation, they\'ll request it. But you shouldn\'t pursue
any lines of questions asking people about their disabilities. Good
point. Someone else?\
\
Caller: This is Mindy gores, New Mexico. I had a question. Most of my
comments were in the wrong column, but actually wondered about the \--
in being compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act, what should you
do? Should you ask a question, do you have a disability that I should
know about? Or should you just ignore the subject?\
\
V. Galterio: I believe you should ignore the subject. Let the applicant
request an accommodation if they think that they need one. Otherwise
you\'re better off staying away from it. Even if it\'s an easily,
readily observable accommodation, what you\'re getting at is information
that is specifically related to the job, and so long as there\'s not
something that would keep them from performing the duties of the job
that you have at hand, I wouldn\'t ask the questions.\
\
Caller: Thanks, Vince. We had another question regarding the \-- talking
about scheduling on a religious holiday. That could be perceived as
being sensitive to diverse religious backgrounds and that you might want
to be sensitive in scheduling on a religious holiday if you know it\'s a
religious holiday. Does that go in the right column or the wrong
column?\
\
I would say it goes in the wrong column. The reason why is it looks like
a lot of these questions were just flown there to get personal
information about the person by asking that question he may be looking
for information about is there going to be a problem every time a
religious holiday comes up. He may be looking for information regarding
what particular religion she was. It was certainly insensitive to even
schedule interviews on those days and the best thing he could have done
there was not even schedule interviews on those days and then he
wouldn\'t have had to ask the question. But I just think asking the
question opens you up for comments later on that might hurt you.
Anything else?\
\
Caller: This is Diane in Idaho and I have a question. The applicant
volunteered a lot of personal information in response to his general
question, tell me about yourself. Is that an inappropriate question?\
\
V. Galterio: Well, you know, you could see through the interview that
she was getting more and more uncomfortable, and you could tell that she
knew that these questions weren\'t appropriate. It\'s difficult for an
applicant not to answer the question that the interviewer asks and still
think that they\'re going to get the job. So I think you\'re putting the
applicant in a very precarious position by asking questions like that,
because they\'re going to feel obligated to say something to you. I
would say if I was defending one side or the other in this case that the
interviewer never should have asked any of those questions and put the
applicant in that position. Because it\'s tough not to answer with some
response. Does that kind of answer your question?\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you.\
\
V. Galterio: Anything else?\
\
Caller: Vince, this is Charise in Colorado.\
\
Caller: This is the Idaho state office \--\
\
V. Galterio: Hold on, Idaho. Charise, go ahead. Let\'s take yours first
and then we\'ll get Idaho.\
\
Caller: Could you address the question of the period of absence from
work. Is that appropriate or not, what they were doing at that time?\
\
V. Galtiero: In fact, the reason why I kept prodding for question \--
\-- or for responses from you spokes is there was one good question in
that whole interview and that was the gap in employment. It is
appropriate to ask that. That\'s certainly something that he saw in the
resume and that raised concerns. You should always ask a question about
that. That was a good question. The problem is that the way she answered
it was I had an accident, then he followed up with the question about a
possible disability. So he asked a good question but then followed it
one a bad one. Good catch, Charise, because that\'s what I was kind of
looking for. Idaho, what was your question?\
\
This is Rex from Idaho state office. Since we\'re talking about taking
notes and that sort every thing, should we write down all the things she
says on a piece of paper? Seemed like we get in trouble at that point at
a later time.\
\
V. Galterio: I would not have documented any of that information. We\'re
going to talk a little bit about documentation later on. But that kind
of information in the file, if it\'s kept in the file, will certainly
hurt you down the road. If you get any information like that, and I\'m
going to address this in a minute, but if you get any information like
that, you don\'t want to document it, and you don\'t want to consider it
in your final evaluation. Sometimes people will throw things out that
you want to say, thank you very much, and move on from. Are there any
other questions?\
\
Caller: Vince, this is Jan, I wanted to jump in for a second with Bob
and address the issue you talked about in terms of sending out material
ahead of time to applicants. I did that when I hired my chief cadastral
survey because it\'s not a function that I was real familiar with. I in
conjunction with a cadastral chief in California, Lance Bishop, created
5 studies and asked them submit those to me before the interviews. It
was a really great way to see how they work through analysis, their
writing skills, how they think outside the box, and it really gave me as
a manager that really didn\'t have programmatic technical expertise a
really good insight on the kind of individual I wanted in that job. And
Bob was going to chime in and give his experience since he was on the
receiving end of that as an applicant.\
\
V. Galterio: Go ahead, Bob, we\'ve got some time.\
\
Caller: Yeah, Vince. I guess I would say that it was actually pretty
unusual interview to be able to see ahead of time what kind of questions
they might be asking and kind of give you an idea of the responsibility
you\'re going to be asked to step up for, but also I think because you
have this structured set of questions that you may think that that\'s
all that\'s going to be asked, but then as they drill down into the
situation, it really gives folks doing the interview the chance to see
how people think fast on their feet. So I think it was beneficial for
them to be able to, like what Jan said, somebody that doesn\'t have
expertise on that subject matter to be able to ask questions that
relate. But also for the interviewee to be able to be prepared for some
of the questions that might be coming.

V. Galterio: That\'s great information to share. As we go through these
things, we touch on a lot of stuff and certainly don\'t delve too deep.
So any comments like Jan and Bob just made to share some of your
experiences with the rest of the audience is certainly welcome and
appreciated. Good points. Thank you very much. Let\'s move on here. What
we want to talk about next, we talked about staying out of trouble, but
what you need to know also is that there are some statutes and
regulations out there that require that you do certain things and stay
away from certain questions, and you can find a whole list of them on
page 11 of your participant\'s guide, but there\'s just one or two I
want to point out as being important.

The first one is the civil rights act of 1964, and that\'s one of the
most important pieces of legislate governing employee and applicant
discrimination. Another important piece of legislation is the Americans
with Disabilities Act of 1990 that covers what you can and can\'t do and
accommodations that you have to provide. A third one is union
agreements. Sometimes those cover some of the staffing process, and
it\'s important to be familiar if you\'re in a unit that has a
bargaining unit what\'s in those agreements. And finally, you need to
make sure you know what local policies are out there that might govern
how many candidates you have to interview or when you have to conduct
interviews and certainly there\'s more information about that in BLM\'s
merit promotion plan. So make sure you\'re familiar with that before you
do your interviews. You have got to within these laws if you want to
stay out of trouble and we want to talk about some of the ways to make
sure that you\'re doing the right thing.

First and foremost, and probably about the fourth time we\'ve said this,
make sure all your questions are job related. Always go back to that. If
it\'s not related specifically to the position that you\'re filling, you
better question what you\'re asking. The next one is to avoid getting
drawn into inappropriate discussions, and I talked about this a little
bit a minute ago, but if an applicant calls you to get information about
the job, sometimes they\'ll engage you in discussions that actually
become interviews. So you need to be careful about those kinds of calls.
You can certainly take them but be careful on them. A good example is
maybe the person owns or doesn\'t own a house so they might be a cheaper
or an expensive move. You want to say thank you very much and go into
your next question. Don\'t drill down into a comment like that. Another
important point is to treat everyone consistently. If you have a
predetermined set of questions like we talked about before that helps
you to focus on the specific information you want to ask. Now, that
doesn\'t mean that you have to ask exactly the same questions of every
applicant. Every applicant will have different information in their
resume and different experiences in their task statements, and you\'re
going to be asking questions that are specific to their experience and
their background. So you want to have a predetermined set of questions
that you ask everyone, but don\'t be afraid to get additional
information from someone else. The other thing you want to do is avoid
making assumptions based on appearance or first impressions or biases
that you might have. Every applicant is going to hit you a little bit
differently, but avoid those kinds of assumptions. Finally, you want to
avoid all the questions similar to the ones that we saw in the role
play. I want to run down through a little list of them in here that
you\'ll also find on page 12 just in case any of them generate any
questions in any of your minds. Certainly you want to stay away from
comments on gender, race and color. Age is generally off limits unless
it\'s a position like firefighter or law enforcement that has a maximum
entry age and a mandatory retirement age. National origin or
citizenship, we talked about that. It\'s ok to ask are you a U.S.
citizen but not ok to ask what country are you from or similar questions
to that.

Residence, marital status, anything about the family, probably not
appropriate for your interview. Sexual orientation, certainly you want
to stay away from that. Religion, again, it\'s ok to ask, this job
requires work on Sundays, can you meet that requirement? But that\'s it.
Arrests and convictions are not appropriate to talk about during the
interview process. If you\'ve got any concern about anything there or
something comes out on the declaration for federal employee that they
fill out, lever that to H.R. and law enforcement to pursue. Don\'t ask
about it in the interview. Health status or disabilities, again, perhaps
in a firefighter or law enforcement position that is going to require a
medical exam you might want to tell the person a medical exam is going
to be required but aside from that stay away from health questions. And
finally, political affiliation, union membership and military discharge,
not appropriate during the interview process.\
\
Caller: Vince, this is Cindy in Idaho. I have a question. Going back to
the national origin, I kind of disagree with asking are you a U.S.
citizen because that really should be screened out in the H.R. office
before anyone ever receives the application, especially at our agency.\
\
V. Galterio: That\'s a good point, Cindy. It should be screened out in
there, and you\'re probably right, that it shouldn\'t even be asked.
It\'s ok information to have. You\'re not going to get in trouble, but
you are right, there are other ways to get that piece of information.
Good comment. Anyone else have any questions about any of these?\
\
Caller: Vince, this is Jan. I have a question. If as a supervisor and a
selecting official you believe that the employee may have falsified
their employment application, what course of action should you take?\
\
V. Galterio: I would tell you to immediately contact your H.R. office
and let them pursue gathering information about that. Yeah, that\'s \--
I guess I would just kind of leave it at that. If a formal investigation
needs to be done or some fact finding, that really needs to be done
through H.R., not through the supervisor or the person filling the job,
because there are some requirements that you want to make sure you meet
when you\'re doing any kind of fact finding or investigation that
you\'re going to want to use later on, and you\'re going to certainly
want to make sure that this is done properly, because it might be
something that you use later on to challenge the person if they are
successful in getting the job and you want to take some action because
you\'ve found out later they falsified it. So always go through your
H.R. office and make sure that\'s done properly so you can use it late
or to your advantage.\
\
Caller: Thanks. Follow-up question: Would you then delay the interviews
for that position until the fact finding is done, or how would you
pursue that?\
\
V. Galterio: If you have reason to believe that before the interviews
are done, I would try to find out that information as expeditiously as I
could. You could pursue \-- you could continue with maybe some of the
other interviews. I certainly wouldn\'t talk to that person yet. If you
have a bunch of applicants, maybe you can start interviewing some of the
other ones and hold off and tell H.R. the selection process is being
held up because of this but I really need this information. Again, if
it\'s something you think you want to use to eliminate an applicant,
that\'s probably going to come back later on when the applicant finds
out that they were eliminated because of that, and so between, you want
to make sure it\'s done correctly. So you might proceed with another
part of the process or talking to other people, but hold off on talking
to that applicant if you can. That\'s the way I would handle it.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
V. Galterio: Any other questions? Ok. If you operate within these laws,
that\'s certainly what you need to watch and be familiar with and all
you need to do to stay out of trouble.\
\
B. Sharrow: We\'re ready to do the actual interview now. He so the first
thing you want to do is determine what number will work for the
applicant. Oftentimes they\'d prefer to be interviewed at home rather
than at work. Or perhaps they want to be at a different number at work
where they can have some privacy. So find out and determine what phone
number would work best. Also I found that usually you\'re working across
time zones, so make sure that the individual knows which time zone
you\'re talking about when you set up a time. And then determine what
\-- kind of the length of the interview, and I find that anywhere from
half an hour to 45 minutes is usually a good amount, and you might want
to try at your questions on someone else to see if you\'re within that
time frame. You\'re going to want to review key documents, including
application, position description, job specific questions, interview
questions and any other documentation forms that you plan on using.

You want to set a really good tone when you start the interview.
Introduce yourself and the panel members, and you can provide this
information ahead of time to the applicant so they have a sense of
what\'s going to happen. You want to state the job title, make sure that
they have actually applied for that job, a brief description of the
requirements, the importance of the job, a quick overview of the agency,
and a quick overview of the community. Let the candidate know that
you\'ll be taking notes and you may occasionally need some time to
write. Keep the questions job related. We keep saying that, but it\'s
very important. Questions should be used to assess past performance,
determine job competency and unlock character and personality. You on
might put the candidate at ease by starting off-by-asking the easier
questions. Actively listen. Be aware of your own body language. It\'s
amazing what will come over the phone lines. Paraphrase and clarify to
ensure understanding. Don\'t be afraid of silence. It\'s ok. What to
look out for. Look for explanations and ask follow-up questions that are
job related. Some of the things that you kind of want to be on your toes
about are inconsistencies with resume information. Or, applicants ask
totally inappropriate questions. Overly involved and complex responses
that sound rehearsed. Sudden loss of what had been good eye contact if
doing an in person interview or any significant change of pace f you are
doing \-- either in person or telephone interview. And inappropriate use
of humor. If it\'s happening on the interview, it\'s going to happen at
work.

Generalities, overuse of terms such as knowledge of, experience with,
exposure to or familiarity with. Frequent job changes that are not
obviously better opportunities. Sometimes that\'s ok. But you may want
to ask about that. Criticizing former supervisors, organization or
employees. And as we talked about earlier, gaps in job history. Then
when you\'re closing out the interview, ask if the candidate has any
questions and address them. I\'ve found that it\'s pretty \-- it\'s
pretty revealing to see what people will ask you as you\'re ending up
the interview. Give them appropriate information on the rest of the
process, for example, we\'ll be checking references, we have other
candidates to interview. It will be a few weeks to \-- before a decision
is made, et cetera. Also, you may have it set up that there might be a
secondary or even maybe a third interview process. Then thank the
candidate for their time. Ok. We have another role play. This is a
portion, only a portion, of an interview. There is room on page 15 to
write down your thoughts. What observations do you have about it and
what thoughts do you have about the opening and the body of the
interview?\
\
Come on in, Mary. Mary, I would like to introduce you to Dave Penner.\
\
Nice to meet you.\
\
Thank you.\
\
Can I get you anything before we get started.\
\
I\'m fine.\
\
I\'ve asked the staff to hold the phone calms so we won\'t get
interrupted.\
\
Ok that good. Good. Mary, today we\'re going to do a panel interview so
Judy and I will will take turns asking you questions. I would like you
to know we\'re going to ask these same questions to all of the
applicants and as we go through the questions, take your time, feel as
comfortable as you can in answering the questions and if you think of
something late or to answer a question you forgot about, feel free to
think about it and let us know what that might be. The first question I
have, in looking at your resume I see you have prepared environmental
assessments on your current job. Can you tell us a little more about
your work on preparing E.A.\'s?\
\
We do a lot of filming permits for the environmental assessments, and
so\... Special status species and we want to make sure the wilderness
values remain constant where they need to be.\
\
Good. Next question: what do you enjoy most about your current job?\
\
I really like the diversity in my job. It makes it \-- it makes it more
challenging for me. I work with with a variety of people. There are
always new projects. So many different ways to do the projects. And I
just really enjoy working with a variety of people, the visitors, the
maintenance crew, we still do a lot of the work, of course, for the road
maintenance, and it\'s just fun to interact with that many different
people in different fields.\
\
What do you find the most challenging about your current job?\
\
I would have to say that the thing I find the most challenging, the
wilderness area is very, very large, and I just feel like I never have
the time to do as much as I would like to do. There\'s just never enough
time.\
\
What are your supervisory responsibilities?\
\
Well, I supervise two permanent employees as well as 10 temporary
employees\...\
\
B. Sharrow: Ok. What did you see in this role play that worked really
well for you? Anyone out there?\
\
Caller: It\'s Mark in Montana. There was a good greeting and
introduction.\
\
B. Sharrow: Yes, and I think they really put the applicant at ease.
Other comments?\
\
Caller: This is Jan in New Mexico. I think the body language of both the
panel members was very relaxed, very open. They set the climate that she
could take her time to answer the questions. I liked the fact that he
addressed if she forgot something to just jump back in and add it later
on. It was a very casual but comfortable feeling that the applicant
would receive right off the bat.\
\
B. Sharrow: Ok.\
\
Caller: This is Rene also in Santa Fe, kind of to follow up on what Jan
was saying, it was real important to establish the ground rules for the
interview before they actually started to ask any questions.\
\
B. Sharrow: Excellent, excellent point. You bet.\
\
Caller: This is Lorraine at NTC. I liked the fact that they shared
questions so the same person wasn\'t asking all the questions. They went
back and forth.\
\
B. Sharrow: I think that\'s really good. It also gives a chance, then,
for the people who are on the panel to kind of collect their thoughts
about the next question or writing down their comments. Very good
observation. Anyone else?\
\
V. Galterio: One last one I would make, then, Barbara, it was obvious
they used the application, the resume, the task statements to create
their questions because they were drilling down to get more information
on the information that she gave them.\
\
B. Sharrow: Yep. Yep. Is he I think that was an example, even though it
was very short, not the 30 to 45 minutes we\'re normally familiar with,
but it gives you a good sense of what the feel would be like for a good
interview. Ok. Vince, you want to take the next section?\
\
V. Galterio: Before I go onto my next section I would like to talk for a
second to Cindy in Idaho. Cindy, are you still throughout?\
\
Caller: Yes, I am.\
\
V. Galterio: Cindy, I want to thank you for bringing up that point about
citizenships and the behavior I want to re he in force is don\'t be
afraid to ask questions about what we\'re asking, if you see something
you don\'t agree with. Those are great comments to get \-- those are
great comments to get out to the whole group. So Cindy, what\'s your
last name?\
\
Caller: Pogue.\
\
V. Galterio: Cindy Pogue. We\'re going to send a book out to you, Cindy.
Thank you very much. It\'s time to talk about reference and supervisor
checks and now that you\'ve done your applicant interviews and hopefully
narrowed your field a little bit, it\'s time to talk to some of the
supervisors or references, and I\'ll probably just stick to the term
supervisors here, but it means anyone else who you might talk to to find
out some more information about the applicant. Along with supervisors
and references, sometimes we talk to subordinates or peers of the
employee, too. One of the things about the BLM is that it\'s a small
enough organization where people usually know someone else in the office
that the applicant is coming from, if it\'s a BLM applicant, and
certainly this session is not strictly for internal BLM hires. It\'s for
interviewing everyone. But if there are people in an office where an
applicant works that you know, oftentimes we call those folks to get
some information about the employee, too. Again if you do that,
remember, don\'t ask them anything just because you know them and
they\'re your friend.

Don\'t ask them any kind of personal information that you wouldn\'t ask
of \-- in a formal supervisory interview. Most supervisors don\'t like
to do reference checks. That\'s because they take time and they often
think, I\'m not going to get a whole lot of new information about the
applicant from this. Want I really want to know is their past experience
and I get that from the applicant. Why should I spend the time talking
to supervisors or references. But there are some important reasons to do
that. By taking a bit more time now up front, you can save yourself
certainly a lot of time and money if you make a bad hire later on. It
always gets at least piece of information from the supervisor that you
otherwise wouldn\'t have had, and so spending a little more time now may
save you money if you make a bad hire down the road. Another reason is
in today\'s society you could be held liable actually if you make a bad
hire that results in the \-- in injury to another person. We saw a lot
about this in the readings that we did because most of them are geared
towards the private sector, but you need to be careful in your hiring
and find out as much information as you can so if there is a problem
later on someone doesn\'t come back to you and say, you should have
known this about the person before you hired them. So make sure you
gather all the information you can.\
\
B. Sharrow: I think the worst thing that can happen is you make a
decision, you hire the person, and the next thing, you have someone
calling from their home office saying, I can\'t believe you hired that
person and then they proceed to go into why they don\'t think the person
is qualified for the job. You want to find that out ahead of time.\
\
V. Galterio: That really does happen. That\'s a good point. Finally f
nothing else, it gives you peace of mind that you did everything you
could to make the best selection possible. So what do you want to do and
what do you want to ask when you talk to former supervisors and
references? Again, make sure all your questions are job related. We just
went through a scenario on how to keep out trouble, and it showed
examples of bad questions for applicants. This is not the time to ask
any of those same questions. It\'s not appropriate to ask them of the
supervisors, either. It is permissible to talk to any former supervisor
unless the employee specifically asks you not to talk to someone.

Most common thing here is they don\'t want you to talk to their current
supervisor because they don\'t want them to know they\'re applying for
other jobs, and so if an applicant asks you not to talk to someone, you
should respect that. However, I would never hire anyone without talking
to their former supervisor. What I would do in a case like that where
they told me that I couldn\'t talk to the former supervisor is I would
go through my whole process and make my selection, and if my selection
is someone who told me that I couldn\'t talk to the prior supervisor, I
would tell that selectee that you\'re my selection, I\'m showing it to
you because I\'ve signed the selection certificate and put your name
there. However, I need to talk to your current supervisor now to make
sure there\'s nothing going on that I don\'t know about. Most times the
applicant will say, fine, because you know, you\'re going to offer me
the job. But I think that you certainly before you actually confirm the
offer talk to the current supervisor.\
\
B. Sharrow: I think also you need to be ready \-- you might want to not
say you\'ve already signed the certificate because if something does
come up with the interview with the supervisor you don\'t want to get
trapped by them saying, you already offered me the job or whatever.\
\
V. Galterio: I guess I should add you certainly want to document the
reason why you\'re doing what you\'re doing, the fact the applicant told
you you couldn\'t talk to the current supervisor, so maybe that\'s a
good point, a little short of that, but the applicant may want to see
something from you saying, I want a guarantee, because my concern is my
supervisor is going to hold this against me, and I just want to know,
maybe not a guarantee, but I just want to know that I\'m your first
choice. So that\'s a good point, Barb. But certainly document the fact
that you\'re picking \-- that that employee is your first choice and
barring any new information they\'re going to get the job.

B. Sharrow: Right. It would be contingent upon a final interview.\
\
V. Galterio: What you want to do with this supervisor is explain your
current job vacancy that you have and ask them questions concerning how
their employee would fit the specific job you have. That keeps you \--\
\
Caller: Vince, this is Sandy from the show shown office in Idaho. I\'m
still a little confused with what you and Barbara were talking about
before about maybe checking with the supervisor \-- we seem to be
contradicting because we say let\'s respect their wishes, and then we
come back and say, but I wouldn\'t hire unless I talked to someone. So
we make a selection and it happens to be the person who says, I don\'t
want you to talk to my current supervisor, and maybe only for the reason
they don\'t want them to know they\'re looking for another job. So you
explain that to them and they say, go ahead then. Then like Barbara
said, what if you do find something, you\'ve already talked to this
person, you\'ve already said you\'re a strong candidate, you\'re really
at the top of our list. How do you explain to him later on or you don\'t
commit yourself \-- I\'m really confused with that one.\
\
It is confusing because I don\'t know that you\' ever heard this from
anyone ever before, and I may be the only advocate of it, but this is my
for do you mean get out my opinion here. I would say to the applicant,
you are the person who is number one on my list and I want to hire you.
Barring me finding out any new information that would change my mind in
making that selection. For instance, let\'s say that you\'re hiring a
recreation person who is going to collect money and in their current job
they\'ve embezzled a little from the fee collection box and there\'s a
disciplinary action pending on what they did. That would certainly
change my mind about hiring that person. So if someone has a problem in
their current job that they\'re trying to hide, you need to find that
out before you actually select them, and the only way you can do that,
possibly, if no one else has told you this already, is to talk to their
current supervisor.

So what I\'m saying is you have the right to know if there\'s anything
going on in their current job, and they can\'t stop you from totally not
knowing anything about what they have been doing for the past four or
five years that they\'ve been in that current job. So I believe that if
you tell the applicant that you\'re my number one choice and I\'ll even
right if that you want to, maybe not sign the selection certificate,
that\'s a good point, but I\'ll even write that down that you\'re my
number one choice, barring me finding out any problems in your current
position.\
\
Caller: I agree with that. When we do usually offer a job, it may not be
dealing with talking to a current supervisor because we usually do have
that option to do that but we usually do say this is a tentative offer
and the F306 has to get checked out and stuff like that. I understand
now. Thank you.\
\
V. Galterio: Thanks for the clarifying question.\
\
Caller: Vince, this is Jan in New Mexico. I\'ll just add another
scenario to that, taking a little different take on it. I have been in
the situation where when I\'m getting ready to come to my \-- maybe top
two or three I\'ve had that same scenario where the employee did not
want me to talk to the supervisor. It\'s not been as serious as you
mentioned, but ran across a situation where they had a legitimate
personality conflict. Both had interesting scenarios. And the way I
handled it is I let the individual know that he was at the very top of
my selection, in the top two or three, but that I had reservations being
able to do a well balanced assessment until I got feedback from his
supervisor. And I gave the applicant an opportunity to tell me from his
perspective first what was going on and then we worked through that and
I eventually got his approval to talk to his supervisor, but he was very
truthful with me on some of the negative feedback that I was going to
get from his supervisor, and that \-- I was able to weigh that in his
favor versus what the supervisor said. So sometimes it is in that
applicant\'s best interest to be honest if there is a legitimate issue
and really talk about that to the selecting official.\
\
V. Galterio: Jan, that\'s a good point. Whenever you hear a piece of
negative information about an applicant, you always want to go back and
verify it because sometimes there are just those personality conflicts.
Sometimes a supervisor and a subordinate just don\'t get along for a
reason that never popped up before. All their prior jobs they did great,
and it\'s just \-- they are \-- styles are just too different. So you
always need to dig a little deeper when you hear something negative.
Thank you, Jan. We just talked about \-- the questions that you asked,
want to make sure that the applicant fits the requirements of your
specific job. That\'s really the information you\'re looking for,
you\'re trying to get at their skills and their abilities and their
performance and even their character and what the supervisor thinks of
those aspects of the applicant.

You need to understand that many former supervisors might not even talk
to you. Sometimes if it\'s a supervisor in a private company, there\'s
company policy against doing reference checks with all the litigation
that goes on nowadays, a lot of companies say we\'re not going to give
any reference checks on former supervisors at all. Another reason may be
that supervisors are reluctant to give negative information. Sometimes
you can hear ten good things about a person and one bad thing and the
thing that weighs most heavily on your mind is the one bad thing.
Supervisors know that and so sometimes they\'re reluctant to give out
negative information. If this happens, there are some things that you
can do to still try to get a little more information.

First, if a supervisor is hesitant on a particular question, that
certainly should be a flag to you to follow up on that with other
supervisory or reference checks that you do. The one supervisor you talk
to may not want to say anything but you may find another one who does.
So make sure you ask that question of other people. As we talked about
with Jan\'s comment,you want to verify that if a negative comment is
made that it\'s not just an isolated case and that other supervisors
will say, no, I didn\'t have any problem with him in that area. That
it\'s not maybe a bias of an individual supervisor.\
\
B. Sharrow: Yeah, and also, you know, it\'s sometimes hard, especially
if you\'re trying to get information about a person who maybe doesn\'t
work within BLM, you may not know as many people to talk to about it,
but you know, one thing I\'ve found is that you can call the general
number for an office, and if a secretary answers or something, you might
be able to ask them for names of peers or subordinates or whatever that
you can talk to, and that\'s a good way of getting again a 360-degree
view of an applicant. One of my former supervisors had kind of a rule of
thumb if \-- when we were hiring that we had to try and interview three
supervisors, three peers and three subordinates before she would accept
our recommendation of hiring someone. And I actually use that as much as
I can and find it saved me a great deal of trouble a couple of different
times.\
\
V. Galterio: Good. Now, if after due diligence and trying to talk with
supervisors and references you don\'t get anywhere, I suggest you
document the fact that you talked to \-- you tried to talk to people and
you didn\'t get much response. That way if there is a problem later on
or if your selection is questioned, you can go back to your
documentation and show \"I tried to get all this information but no one
would talk to me.\" Will performing reference checks and supervisory
checks guarantee you a good hire? No. Nothing can guarantee that. But at
least you can have the peace of mind that you did everything that you
could to try to get the best applicant that you could for your job. You
need to remember that what you\'re trying to do is find out more
information about the applicant and certainly supervisors and references
are in the best position to do that for you. Any questions about this?
Barb?\
\
B. Sharrow: Ok. We\'re onto documentation. This section which is on
chapter 5 is on page 17 of your guide and there\'s some fill in the
blanks there for if you would like to keep this to refer back to. First
and foremost, the documentation must be job related. Treat each
applicant equally in your documentation. And, your documentation should
be sufficient to remember the applicant and make a decision. It\'s
surprising when you are conducting many applicant or reference
interviews how easy it is to start getting candidates confused. And then
remember that everything that is kept in a file, either in your personal
files or in human resources, is subject to a FOIA, the Freedom of
Information Act. Be sure you know your state or your office or your
center\'s policy concerning documentation.

Appendix D is a sample documentation form, and what we\'ve done is just
written up some sample interview forms for peers, for subordinates and
for supervisors, and I would take those and make them work for you.
It\'s just examples you can start from. Ok. We\'re ready to make that
decision. Who should you hire? Keep a few things in mind as you go
through this process. Begin by revisiting the job requirements.
Determine if you needed to any additional interviews. Is there something
nagging at you? Is there \-- just like kind of a funny feeling in your
stomach? Follow up on that and do some more interviews. Review the
documentation on all of your candidates. Resumes, interview
documentation and reference checks. Be mindful of your biases and
analyze your decision to determine if it\'s being made based on the
right information. Finally, and most importantly, hire someone with the
strengths, the talents and personality traits that will fit your
organization, your office. Ok,Vince, you want to wrap it up?\
\
V. Galterio: Ok. We\'ve covered a lot of ground today and we hope we\'ve
given you some tools and information that you can use in the
interviewing process. So let\'s just summarize some of the things we
talked about today. We\'ve discussed the benefits of a structure
interview. Taught you how to recognize legal issues and parameters you
can ask. Given you tools to develop a strategy for conducting candidate
and reference interviews. Helped you to understand the importance and
types of documentation necessary. Finally, discussed briefly the steps
involved to evaluate the information and make a decision. Are there any
final questions out there before we conclude the broadcast? I guess not.
Ok. Then, we\'d like to thank you for your participation. This has been
a great group, one of the most difficult things in doing these is
wondering about how much participation you\'re going to get, and
everyone jumped right in. We appreciate that. It makes our job a lot
easier and a lot of fun. So thanks very much for your participation.

Before I close this out, I want to give out \-- we have one more book to
give out, and Mark in Montana, we would like to give a book to you for
the participation that you gave today. What\'s your last Mark are you
still there? See that? He left too quick. Ok. We think it\'s Mark
KEPLER. We will be sending out a book, if anybody else up there in
Montana is still on, if it\'s Mark, we\'ll be sending a book out to him.
This course was developed by the frog team in the 2004 leadership
academy. Perhaps you saw when the camera was on \-- focussed on both
Barb and I, a little guy appeared in the background there, but that was
our team in leadership academy and we had a lot of fun putting this
together, and certainly again appreciate your participation. Want to
remind you to hold onto to your participant guide. Hopefully U.K.

Use it as a reference tool in the future. Certainly the appendix in the
back were designed for that, to give you websites, a lot of good books
out there that we discovered and we listed those there in case you\'re
looking to read some more information about conducting effective
interviews. There\'s going to be another broadcast in the future on the
other half of the interviewing process, and that\'s the interviewee. We
focused on the interviewer. A course is being developed for the
interviewee, which I think all of us are interviewees at some time. It
will be another interesting one that hopefully you\'ll all participate
in. We also encourage you to watch for the other NTC satellite
broadcasts for the other supervisory series presentations that are there
and announcements will come out as they get closer. Again, thank you
very much and have a great day.\
\
B. Sharrow: Thank you.