Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
give the applicant every opportunity to demonstrate his or her potential. Good icebreaker
topics include the last job or the applicant's aspirations. Then the manager should ask lead-
ing questions and be a good listener. A good interviewer does not monopolize the conversa-
tion. The applicant should be given an accurate description of the background of the fi rm and
the job in question. The position should not be either undersold or oversold. When inter-
viewing, it is useful for the manager to give applicants a copy of the job specifi cations and
the job description, so that they can refer to this information.
With today's abundance of information (much via the internet), there are many tools for
job seekers, so that interviewers may need to “evolve” their skills when interviewing. One
way to do this is to use probing questions. For example, the interviewer may have ten struc-
tured questions, but also have an additional ten probing questions based on the job appli-
cant's responses. For example: “What was your most frustrating day at work?” Applicant:
“The day I went out and my pickup truck would not start and I had the wrong chemicals.”
Some interviewers might take this response and just move on. But the better prepared inter-
viewer will use probing questions to dig deeper. Probing questions might be: “Why did the
truck not start? Why were the chemicals wrong?” Did the applicant make a mistake and
learn from it, were they defi ant about something, were they careless, and was it someone
else's truck? Thus, probing further may help the interviewer truly see the applicant's behav-
ior, and the best predictor of future performance is past performance or behavior.
References can be helpful and should be checked out—after securing permission from the
applicant to do so. The manager should check to see whether the information given by the
applicant is correct as well as whether the reference is a positive one. Checking by phone has
an advantage over checking by letter. People may talk more over the telephone than they will
write on paper, and the tone of voice, along with the things that are not said, can be signifi -
cant. Judgment must be used in interpreting references, and good references from former
employers are the manager's best criteria. In today's business environment, references may
be very cautious to do anything except for validating employment. It may take some persist-
ent effort to learn more about a job candidate in these situations, but again, getting some
feedback from references is a very important step in the hiring process.
As mentioned, testing can also be helpful in screening applicants for some jobs, but the
manager must make sure that the test really measures the factors important to the job. In any
event, tests should not be the only criteria for hiring. Testing is most often done in fi ve gen-
eral areas: intelligence, aptitude, personality, manual dexterity, and physical condition.
Some testing programs are more accurate than others. For example, manual dexterity and
physical fi tness tests are usually quite accurate in predicting a person's physical performance
capabilities, while attitude or personality tests have less accuracy. If the test provides useful
insights into areas that are required by the job, the manager's success in matching jobs with
people can be improved signifi cantly.
Once the HR manager has reduced the list of candidates to two or three qualifi ed indi-
viduals, the immediate supervisor for the vacant position (and perhaps other employees
interacting with the candidate) should interview them and make the fi nal selection. This
important step builds the relationship between the position supervisor and the new employee
in two ways:
1.
A new employee tends to have a positive feeling toward the supervisor who personally
selected them.
2.
The supervisor who has taken part in the selection process tends to have a special feel-
ing of responsibility for helping the new person succeed on the job.
