One of the questions we often get from hiring managers is:
“Are one-on-one interviews really necessary in the real estate hiring process?”
What’s implied in this question (and usually comes out later in the discussion) is that it might be more efficient to conduct group interviews with several candidates at once rather than one-on-one interviews.
The line of reason is that interviews take a lot of time, and many early stage candidates are not serious about making a career change. The group interview is a great way to “weed-out” those who are not truly interested or unqualified.
In a real estate company, this “group interview” usually
takes the form of a career seminar. It typically
is an informational meeting where the company describes the benefits of
changing careers and becoming a real estate agent. At the end of the meeting, there’s typically
some call to action (sign-up for licensing school, schedule a follow-up meeting
with a hiring manager, etc.) that encourages the candidate to move forward in
the process.
For years, we’ve recommended not using this methodology for interfacing with the majority of candidates. There is nothing wrong with running an occasional career seminar for those who truly want information about a real estate career. However, using this tool as a replacement or precursor to one-on-one interviews has not proven to be a best practice for recruiting high quality individuals.
Outside of the empirical data that we collected on this topic (ie. most real estate companies consistently hire 40% to 60% “D” performers using traditional hiring techniques such as career seminars), I could not put my finger on the psychology of why the “group interview concept” was inferior until last week. I found this insight in an odd place—a coaching article written by Ed Batista.
I’ve read Ed Batista’s blog for several years, but I usually
gain insight from a coaching perspective, not a recruiting perspective. Ed is a successful executive coach and an
instructor and leadership coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His business is coaching, but in the process
of explaining coaching concepts he reveals a lot about the psychology of
people.
The particular blog that peaked my interest was titled: Spending Attention. In this discussion, Ed makes the point that focused attention is one of the most powerful forces made available to human beings—both from a giving and receiving perspective.
“Focused attention is our most precious resource, because 1) it's extremely taxing on our intellectual and emotional capabilities, 2) it can have a amazingly powerful effect on its object, and 3) it can't be subdivided. (We can pay continuous partial attention to multiple objects simultaneously, but we can truly focus on only one object at any given moment.)
Much of what I do as a coach and as an experiential educator at Stanford involves nothing more than devoting my full attention to another person. This is somewhat easier in a one-on-one coaching session with a client or student, and it's somewhat harder in a group setting, but under any circumstances it's a challenging task that's almost always worth the effort.”
So, what does this have to do with interviewing? There’s something powerful that happens to an individual when they receive another person’s full attention. Ed puts it this way:
“… devoting our full attention to someone can be a novel experience for both of us that in and of itself stimulates something useful in the interaction. The other person feels seen, heard, recognized, validated, appreciated or challenged in ways that partial attention never generates. And as we momentarily quiet our inner voice, we suddenly become aware of so many things that we missed before--not only about the other person and our environment, but also about ourselves. The subtler, more elusive thoughts and feelings that are usually drowned out by the louder currents can now be heard.”
It’s obvious that humans crave focused attention. In the hiring process, the best chance of making this happen is in a one-on-one interview.
By the way, just because a person is sitting across the desk from you, doesn’t mean focused attention will happen (read the rest of Ed’s blog to learn more about how you can become effective at giving focused attention).
But, focused attention is almost guaranteed NOT to happen in a group interview/career seminar setting.
A high quality candidate wants and deserves the focused attention of the hiring manager during the hiring process. If this element is missing, the high quality candidates will exit the hiring process.
When the high quality candidates leave the hiring process, all you’re left with are desperate candidates who believe they deserve no better than a career information session.
Of course there are exceptions to this rule (I’m sure some of you will write me about how you hired your best agent ever through a career information session), but you won’t win the hiring game by betting on the exceptions. In the long run, the time and effort you put into one-on-one interviews will pay off.
Question: What techniques have you found effective in making candidates feel they have your focused attention during an interview?
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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.
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