Carol Quinn - Motivation-based Interviewing: A Revolutionary Approach to Hiring the Best

Copyright 2018 Carol Quinn. All rights reserved.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information regarding the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering legal or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent, licensed professional should be sought. The federal and state laws discussed in this book are subject to frequent revision and interpretation by amendments or judicial revisions that may significantly affect employer or employee rights and obligations. Readers are encouraged to seek legal counsel regarding specific policies and practices in their organizations.

Disclaimer: No promise, expressed or implied, of any specific results is made by the publisher or the author with regard to the use of motivation-based interviewing. The quality of employee selection and hiring is dependent upon numerous factors including but not limited to how well MBI is implemented, the quality of interview questions, and the interviewers skill level, knowledge, openness to learn, attitude, and objectivity. Interviewers are solely responsible for their own hiring results.

This book is published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the publisher.

MBI, the interviewing methodology, is the intellectual property of Hire Authority, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and is on file with the Library of Congress.

ISBN (pbk): 978-1-586-44547-8; ISBN (PDF): 978-1-586-44548-5; ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-586-44549-2; ISBN (Mobi): 978-1-586-44550-8

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

PB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 61.14518

Special thanks to Gene Quinn.

P ART I
U NDERSTANDING H IGH P ERFORMERS

P ART II
I DENTIFYING H IGH P ERFORMERS

P ART III
H IRING H IGH P ERFORMERS

C arol Quinn is the creator of motivation-based interviewing (MBI). She has a lifetime of interviewing experience and is the expert of experts on hiring. I thought I was great at selecting the right people in my long career at Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, and The Walt Disney Company until I learned about the methods in MBI. There is nothing more important than the people you bring into your organization. Nothing! If you have been to Disney you know we have the best Cast Members in the world and that is not by accident. We look for passion, attitude, and skill. Skill is trainable, while passion and attitude are not.

As someone who currently works with organizations all around the world, I have found that most people with interviewing and hiring responsibility have had no formal training on a consistent, effective method for making their hiring decisions. The other problem is the Internet. Most applicants have learned to go online and learn all of the answers to the typical behavior-based interview questions that youre likely to ask. There are no questions allowing for a yes-or-no answer in MBI. It does not allow applicants to deliver soft answers to any of the interviewers questions. Instead, it challenges applicants to share specific details and explain how they dealt with the obstacles they have encountered in past positions. Interviewers who have learned MBI know how to recognize when an applicant is trying to mask the lack of details with a good-sounding answer. Interviewers wont be fooled by these responses anymore. MBI is about asking effective interview questions and using effective interviewing techniques to get the applicant information needed to make great hiring decisions.

When it comes to an organizations success, the most important thing is hiring. If you dont get hiring right, nothing else matters. Carols first book on MBI titled Dont Hire Anyone Without Me! was excellent, but her updated version (with a new title) is the best book ever written on the topic of interviewing and hiring. This newly titled second edition, Motivation-Based Interviewing: Anniversary Edition, is a must-read! I guarantee you that after studying and putting into practice Carols MBI method you will experience a dramatic increased success rate in your selection of team members, and that is a win for you, your customers, your team, and the bottom line.

Make sure you train everyone in your organization who has any responsibility for interviewing and hiring. You will be glad you did. The formula for excellence in any organization is to hire them right, train them right and treat them right!

Lee Cockerell, former executive vice president of Disney World and the author of four best-selling books, including The Customer Rules, Creating Magic, Time Management Magic, and Career Magic.

F or most people in the corporate world, hiring is just one responsibility of many. For me, its different. Hiring is my passion, without a doubt. I knew it in college when I had that monotone professor for Personnel Management 101. You know the type; all we saw was the back of his head because the entire class time consisted of him writing on the whiteboard. To make matters worse, the textbook was dry and it had no pictures. All the students complained to each other that this class was a snoozefest. But yours truly aced that class. I found the material absolutely fascinating.

From there I went to work for an employment agency. A year later, I opened my own agency. Over the years, I attended every workshop and seminar I could to learn more about hiring. I became familiar with behavior-based interviewing, competency-based selection, targeted selection, and other techniques. The workshops and seminars all promised that if I followed the prescribed process, I would hire great employees. But you know what? Sometimes I did and sometimes I didnt. Those bad hires still seemed to slip throughtoo much for my liking. Something was still lacking in the process. After all, if you could hire someone great one time, why couldnt you repeat this result more often?