The trick to assessing competence – the ability to do or be something successfully – is to observe what people do, not simply what people say.
When you ask a job candidate for example a hypothetical question, you mostly get a hypothetical answer, an outcome backed up by decades of research. People think they know what they’d do; given a chance they are pretty inconsistent in what they actually do. Even facts fail to often change our minds or change our actions.
It has become a land of canned answers and conned conviction. Taking a cue from a certain White House occupant, people of all stripes are convincing in what they say even if facts are short. Many candidates know the questions they will likely get and have ready answers in hand. And with what’s often a 25-30 minutes job interview, it’s tough to get a feel for a candidate beyond a roster of key behavioral competencies.
These candidates know answers, but do you know them?
As someone who has interviewed thousands of candidates, trained and worked in assessment centers and seen more exec candidates than I can remember, there is one area you can get a feel for and that’s the candidate’s genuineness.
Are they authentic, do they genuinely behave the way with you as they do with others, or are they putting up a false front?
And since genuineness stems from self-awareness, one of the four key derailers for a leadership career, assessing authenticity assesses indirectly self-awareness.
I don’t know about you but I get a human “buzz” when I’m with people who are authentic. There is a sense of connection that somehow they’re giving me a portal to who they are, not who they hope you think they are or think they should be.
For competence assessment junkies (me included) there are some behaviors that back up that genuineness:
- Do you know more about them at the end of the interview than you did at the start of the interview as a person, not just a candidate.
- Do they admit weakness and failings, their doubts and foibles or just share their strengths?
- When they smile is it a genuine or Duchenne smile, or are they faking a smile by using the “wrong” facial muscles?
- Are they curious about you as a person, or just another interview slot to endure?
- How did they behave around others, receptionists and junior staff in particular? Receptionists, as an aside, can spot a stinker a mile away.
- Do they act in a way that supports who they say they are or are their actions off a few degrees from their words?
It turns out that the experience you have with authenticity in someone correlates to a host of factors, many of them I’d want to see in the workplace. Every time I’ve had that feeling that a candidate was not authentic or had some other agenda I was right, and the candidates ended up cratering in their job and leaving early.
Grant Hillary Brenner, MD reports the following research:
“What stable personality factors were related to increased authentic experience? Honesty/humility, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness had significant positive correlations with experienced authenticity.”
So listen or feel that sense of authenticity and genuineness backed by the behaviors that drive it the next time you interview a candidate or even take a coffee date with a prospective mate.
You’ll be glad you did.
Life Back West is an occasional set of writings focused on ways people, teams and organizations can be both more effective (doing the right thing) and more efficient (doing the right thing well). More about my 30+ years of work coaching execs, start up and leadership teams can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar at the Back West blog. Now welcoming new and known clients.