by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting
Sometimes small changes produce big results. Active listening is one of those changes.
If you want to increase the percentage of your interviews resulting in hires, this is the most important change you can make to your personal recruiting methodology.
Perhaps you’ve started to (1) control your mental presence, (2) resist the temptation to speak, and (3) pay attention to your listening posture. If so, your interactions with others are already improving. People love to be on the receiving end of this type of attention.
Some of you sent me stories last week on what you’ve learned about listening better during interviews. Keep them coming—they’re fun and interesting to read!
Today, we’ll finish up this topic. And, I’ve saved the best techniques for last.
What is Active Listening? (Continued)
Eye Contact. As you might expect, eye contact relates to listening posture. However, it gets its own mention because it’s so powerful. Researchers consistently demonstrate that simply “holding someone’s gaze” increases feelings of warmth, respect, and cooperation.
Don’t overdo it (you’re not on a romantic date), but regularly looking into your candidate’s eyes during the interview will result in a better connection.
Restating. Up until now, we’ve just considered silent listening techniques. At some point in the conversation, you’re going to have to say something (otherwise, it’s just passive listening).
Active listening involves some back and forth. But what do you say, and how do you say it? Dr. Friedman encourages us to use the same tools therapists utilize when listening to a patient.
Repeating another person’s words doesn’t just help ensure you’ve heard correctly—it allows the speaker to get a better sense of how he or she is coming across.
It’s why therapists use this method so often; simply hearing our sentiments reflected back at us gives us a sense of clarity we would not otherwise have.
During the interview, frequently use the phrase: “So, what you’re saying is…”
For example, if someone is telling you about his commuting frustrations, you might say, “so, what you’re saying is you don’t like spending two hours a day in the car just getting to and from work.”
Validation. The final component of active listening is the trickiest to implement. Validation means to actively connect to a person’s feelings by sharing a little bit of your own perspective.
For example, if a candidate is expressing frustration concerning the relationship she has with her boss, you might say, “I had a supervisor like that once. It drove me crazy to be around that person.”
This simple and quick validation (don’t go into a long story of your own) assures the candidate that what she’s feeling is not wrong or inappropriate.
What’s likely to happen [next] is your [candidate] will reflect on her words and clarify what she meant, without you having devalued her perspective.
The risk in using this technique is that you might be tempted to over share. Remember, active listening is about listening—not talking.
Applying Active Listening in Your Interviews
So, you now have six active listening techniques you can apply during your interviews.
Make a list of these skills and review them during or before you start to engage a candidate.
Grade yourself after the interview to see how you did. Better yet, invite someone to sit in on a few interviews and grade you on these factors. Holding yourself accountable is the only way you’ll improve.
If you master this way of communicating, there is a huge payoff. The number of your interviews resulting in hires will increase significantly. This stuff works every time it’s tried.