Successful Interviewing: Techniques for Hiring, Coaching, and Performance Management Meetings

Knowing which types of legal questions to ask during the various stages of an interview is the main ingredient of effective interviewing, but it's not the whole picture. To get the most out of every interview, you should encourage interviewees to talk, actively listen when they ask or answer questions, understand and interpret their body language, and explore contrary evidence—that is, seek information to balance a one-sided picture.

Consider Michael's interview with Sonia, the director of human resources, when she interviewed him for a promotion from compensation analyst to compensation manager. She properly identified the five stages of the interview and effectively posed legal competency-based, open-ended, hypothetical, probing, and close-ended questions. However, she failed to encourage Michael to elaborate on sparsely worded answers, did not listen closely when he talked, disregarded body language (his and hers), and did not examine which of his traits required improvement. Had she focused on the

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