The “How are you doing?” interview for private equity partnered firms has about a 50 percent chance of success. That kind of interview is just a social call, right? You’re not actually seeking to find out anything about somebody’s performance. All you’re talking about is vague generalities, some task ability and whether there is cultural "fit".
In the Loewen & Partners' Talent method, the structure is more, “What have you done in the past relative to what this job needs?” So if I’m hiring a CFO, we’ll have the CEO and the family business owner and two more in the interview committee, usually Board members. We’ll sit down first and say, there are 51 different areas that could be important that we’re looking for in somebody — a good coach, analyst, public speaker, all these different areas that could be important.
We have to pick six, and it’s really interesting to have these discussions with your colleagues. In some cases it turns out that everybody’s got a different six, and that’s a problem.
Once you decide on the six characteristics that are most important for the particular job you’re trying to fill, then there’s a series of questions for each one, always focused on past performance. It’s no guarantee of future performance, but it’s the best predictor. What are the tasks to get done and has the person exposure to that work before.
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