HR managers advise to draw attention to stress interview when looking for an audit firm’s heads. First it was used as a method during the selection of executives in New York. It was believed that interview, based on a series of humiliating questions, helps to reveal the nature of any person.
In fact, stress causes each of us to forget about conditionality, revealing real reactions. It does not matter what the person will answer, the main thing - how he/she will do it. The set of reactions that was able to fix during the interview to be the basis for the formation of the psychological portrait of the individual. The more accurate it is, the easier it is to project the role and position of a person in a particular organization.
As practice shows, the stress interview helps to quickly find not only the heads of audit firms, but also sales managers, advertising and insurance agents, secretaries or office managers. Such a method justifies itself in the search for specialists, whose work is complicated by a significant number of stressful situations.
Also HR specialists use the stress interview to identify professionally weak candidates, who, however, are able to make a positive impression. Such people are well prepared to talk, so their answers are always expected. A stressful method of work can break the thoughtful scheme of behavior that is impossible during a traditional interview.
Stress test should be started from the plan. The recruiter must clearly understand the purpose and understand the sequence of one or another action. Business coaches specializing in such interviews, recommend to make a list of questions and scroll interview script with the candidate in the head. It is very important to predict and visualize the human response to each of the scheduled questions. It should be remembered: any question should be put only to find out the specifics of the professional qualities of the candidate. Nothing personal.
There are many ways to conduct stress-interviewing in the practice of modern recruiting. The most common one is the simulation of conflict situations and the candidate should find a way out of them. In essence, it is a role-playing game where the recruiter acts as the initiator of the conflict, that is, the client of the company, and the applicant performs the role of an employee whose functional responsibilities are precisely the resolution of problem issues.
Provocative questions are part of any stress interview. Thus, when selecting staff for an audit firm, a financial institution, a bank or a large industrial holding, the recruiters ask the applicants about the previous work. Especially they like to ask questions answering to which may disclose commercial secrets. Which way will be chosen by the candidate? Will he/she tell everything that knows trying to please a potential employer, or to the contrary keep mouth shut? It is not difficult to guess that the latter will be invited to work, for example to the bank.