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Am I Too Chatty When Conducting Interviews?
This past year, I was promoted to the head of my department, which means I’m in charge of hiring and managing a team of four. Our work is project-based, so I have the opportunity to hire a new cohort about twice a year.
I have these big ideals about how the job interview is an incredible opportunity to get to know candidates from nontraditional backgrounds, to work with the candidate to determine how their skills could translate to a position on my team. But I cannot conduct a consistent interview for the life of me. I plan out my spiel and my questions — then dive off-script at the first awkward pause, overcome by the urge to tell the candidate I know exactly what they mean, and I have the quips and anecdotes to prove it. I feel like I’m hosting a talk show, not a hiring process. This leads to some delightful 30-minute conversations, and some stilted 10-minute chats where I fear the candidate and I both think I’m wasting their time. I’m sure a more standard, professional interview would be more fair, reduce bias and establish me as a trustworthy authority figure.
How do I hold better interviews? Am I moving too fast here, trying to nurture new talent before I’m comfortable managing a team?
— Anonymous
Do these contractors straddle projects, or have return engagements? I bring this up because it sounds like you’re hiring up to eight new people every year — and having to interview, say, two or three times that many to settle on the right candidate(s). That’s a lot of interviews!
In short, you have both my attention and my sympathy.
And my admiration. You come across as incredibly self-aware. But you’re also being a little too hard on yourself. There is a reason you recently got promoted, and I suspect that if your superiors thought that your conversational style was at all talk-show-like or inappropriate, they might not have given you the new role.
You say that you have a desire to prove that you’re “relatable” to prospective hires. I can empathize! I’ve also been “guilty” of what I fear is an overly familiar demeanor when conducting interviews, which is to say: I can get a little chatty.
The question is, why? One answer, which you gesture at yourself, is that you’re anxious about asserting your authority.
This is not uncommon and it is understandable, but I’d encourage you to go deeper. Do you have an element of impostor syndrome in this new role? Do you feel uneasy about demonstrating power or influence in other parts of your life?
I suggest that you step back a bit and try to look at your situation with a little more dispassion. Learning how to nurture new talent while developing a higher level of comfort in managing a new team is a common balancing act among new managers. Multiple learning curves are at play, and they operate in tandem. It’s how people grow. Asserting authority may be anxiety producing, but it’s part of the job, and it’s something you will have to practice as your career evolves.
Listen: It’s entirely possible that you have a hard time conducting what you call a “consistent” interview and that because of this, you’re assessing candidates unfairly. But it’s also entirely possible that you’re assessing candidates fairly despite having a hard time conducting consistent interviews. One does not necessarily follow the other. Do you believe that you’re overlooking qualified candidates based on their reception and responses to your off-the-cuff remarks? Are you seeing evidence of this in the actual work being done by those you hire? Have you made poor hiring decisions over the past year? If not, there is probably nothing wrong with your interviewing style, and you are overthinking this.
Even so, improving your interview skills can’t hurt. Try to stick to your script more, but allow for some time to relax into the conversation. Consider giving yourself five minutes as a “warm-up” when starting an interview with a candidate — set a quiet, vibrating timer on your phone, perhaps — and then jump into the meat and potatoes of the interview.
Lastly, practice makes perfect. (Or close to it.) Interviewing people for jobs is not something that comes naturally to a lot of us. Try conducting a faux interview with a friend in a bit of role-play, and ask for feedback. And push yourself to tolerate awkward pauses in conversations in other parts of your life. Easier said than done, I know, but you can learn only by doing.
A Professional Age Gap Relationship
I manage a team of five communications professionals and am the youngest member of the group by a significant margin. I am in my mid-30s, while my staff members vary in age from early 50s to late 60s. It’s a great team, and we work well together.
I routinely meet with each team member to discuss their workload, problems they may be facing, additional training or employee opportunities, whether they are generally satisfied in their position and if they have long-term goals that might involve moving to a different part of our organization, or to a different organization altogether.
Because of the gap in our age and experience, it can feel awkward (at least on my part) to discuss career goals and how I can help. I usually start these conversations by lightly, but directly, addressing the gap. For example: “Jane, I know it’s a bit absurd for me to speak with you about your career goals when you’ve been here longer and have more experience than me, but here we are!”
Is this the best way to go about this? Should I ignore the age issue altogether?
— Anonymous
I think you’re asking the right question. And I have a simple answer: Don’t be so deferential. It’s not that you should run roughshod over your older team members, but to refer to things you say or do — particularly when they are just your responsibilities as a manager — as “absurd” in light of the age difference undermines your authority. Repeatedly bringing up the gap between you and older team members doesn’t help, either.
So yes, I think at this point, you should ignore the age issue altogether. Given that you have such a small team, and that you routinely meet with your team members, I’m going to assume that each one of them has heard some variation of “I know it’s a bit absurd for me to …” by now.
They get it. You get it. And at this point, I think it’s time to move on.
Anna Holmes is the Work Friend columnist for The Times. She is a writer and editor and the founder of the website Jezebel.
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