Even the most elaborate hiring methodologies eventually boil down to the interview-a painful experience for most parties, but there are ways to make interviews more productive. For most people, the only thing more painful than being interviewed is actually conducting the interview.
Most executive interviewers come to the task unequipped, unprepared, and unenthusiastic.
Last spring, an HR discussion group on the Internet identified 15 all-time favorite interview questions. Byham dismisses them as meaningless, inappropriate, or illegal. Productive interview questions, Byham argues, are narrowly defined and well-crafted. They focus on probing for the specific behavioral attributes that define successful employees. And they're designed to elicit actual experiences rather than hopes and dreams - not what people say they would do in the future but what they have done in the past.