Interviewing is less about talking & more about listening
The most important job I had as a recruiter is interviewing. As we started this week’s class I didn’t have any insecurities about asking people questions over video or audio so I do consider that skill as an advantage, as I interview candidates every day.
However as we began to learn more about user interviews, I realized one difference. When I speak to a candidate, I’m trying to get as much information from them as possible, and often, because I am not a technical Subject Matter Expert (SME), I will paraphrase what a candidate has told me and then ask additional questions.
This can lend itself to asking leading questions which you don’t want to do in UX/UI user interviews because it introduces interview bias.
“Three really positive attributes gained from talking to people all day are: listening, improvisation, and re-focusing a conversation“
I was extremely aware of this when I was writing my discussion questions. I ask leading questions every day that start with phrases like “based on what you have told me, would you say that” or “is it safe to assume that“.
The wave of doubt started to wash over me because the topic I chose for my problem statement (and final project) is an issue I, and the peer communities I’m involved with, are victims of, which I detail in a another post. I have spent many years being a passive and active observer of this problem and I don’t want the outcome to solely be comprised of my own assumptions.
Three really positive attributes gained from talking to people all day are: listening, improvisation, and re-focusing a conversation. When I start the conversation with a candidate, I try to give them a layout of how the conversation will be structured after we go over the basic logistic/fit questions.
Doing so, lets the candidate know when it’s my time to talk and when it’s their time to talk thus reducing the likelihood of interruption. It gives me the ability to say “here’s what I want you to highlight” and when it’s their time to talk I can sit back and listen. I will also preface the candidate’s summary by saying, “If I don’t respond, it’s because I’m taking notes, but I’m still here.”
I do try to give short verbal cues to let them know I’m hearing everything they are saying.
Listening involves a tactic I frequently use: being comfortable with silence or long pauses. During an interview, candidates will stop talking when they feel they have hit all points of the question adequately.
During my first UX UI user interview, this specific skill became extremely handy as I needed to carefully listen to the person I was interviewing to capture relevant UX data.
In my opinion, improvising is the quickest way to learn something new or focus on ideas you may not have thought of. Improvisation is important in my day-to-day job as a recruiter, but I found that creating succinct questions for a UX/UI user interview was far more important than trying to improvise questions on the fly.
However, I do believe there are benefits to quick improvisations as they can lead to opening additional information that may be relevant to collecting UX / UI data.
Re-focusing the conversation is another critical skill I’ve honed over the years as a recruiter. However, some people can’t stand pauses, and this can lead to a conversation going off the rails. As I learned during my UX UI interviews, focusing the topic on the relevant question(s) was already a skill set that I knew how to implement.
Re-focusing the conversation all comes back to listening. The easiest phrase I’ve used is, “I want to interrupt you real quick because you said _______ earlier, and that is really interesting. Can you tell me more about that?” I don’t ever want the candidate to think they have done something wrong by indicating that they have veered way off topic.
I learned in my UX/UI interviews, this might lead them to withhold valuable or appropriate information.
After 7 years as a technical recruiter, I’ve encountered just about every scenario in verbal discussion.
I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to basically find the quickest way off of the phone that I can, and had to terminate the conversation because it went sideways.
I don’t expect any reaction to be like that in an environment where subjects are willingly there to answer questions but it has given me the ability to right the ship.
I’d love to know how these tactics I use in candidate interviewing work for others in user interviews. What do you think?