Your role as an interviewer is to
draw out information from the employee that is critical to your
understanding of the employee’s capabilities. Most of us are better at
presenting our own point of view than we are at drawing out information
from others.
A good name for this skill of gathering information from others is
probing.
When you probe, you:
- get others involved and participating. Since
probes are designed to produce a response, it’s unlikely the other
person will remain passive.
- get important information on the table. People
may not volunteer information, or the information they present may not
be clear. Your probes help people open up, and present or clarify
their information.
- force yourself to listen. Since probes are most
effective in a sequence, you have to listen to a person’s response.
When you use probes, you help improve
communication on both sides of the table.
Types of Probes
There are five probes that help you draw out
information and ideas from candidates.
- open probes
- pauses
- reflective statements/echoes
- summary probes
- fact-finding questions, and
- closed questions
Think of a funnel with the probes arranged from
the lip to the spout. This gives you an idea of how probes work. The
open probe allows the most information to flow. It is least restrictive.
The fact-finding probe is most restrictive since it gathers simple
responses like “yes” and “no”, or some factual response. The others fall
in between in terms of the amount of information they reveal.
Effective interviewers also tailor their probes to the particular
employee they are dealing with. For example, if you are interviewing a
very reserved, quiet person, using a lot of open probes and pauses will
help get them to open up. If you have a very talkative person, you can
contain the discussion with more fact-finding questions.
Experienced interviewers use a variety of probes. They balance open
probes with fact-finding probes. They pause to let employees consider
the questions they have just asked.
They periodically summarize what was heard to
check understanding.
Caution: Fact-finding Probes That Become Leading
Be careful in using fact-finding probes. They can often turn into
leading questions—probes that clearly telegraph the answer you want. The
answer is built into, or implied by, the question, so they lead or force
the answer you want to hear.
Examples of leading questions are:
“That’s a really good idea isn’t it?”
“You would be willing to work on your punctuality wouldn’t you?”
“We need employees who take initiative. That describes you doesn’t it?”
How to Probe for Details and Test for
Truthfulness
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