7 Interviewing Habits That Make it Hard for Candidates to Trust You

Written By Kaylen Miller

Anyone looking for a job can study up on the best way to answer interview questions. On the flip side, however, it’s harder for interviewers to find advice. To remedy that, here are 7 interviewing habits to avoid if you want your candidates to trust you and your company. 

It’s hard to believe, but even managers whose job it is to hire good people regularly make terrible interview mistakes. Very often it’s because of too little preparation or lack of knowledge about updated protocol and the law. Unfortunately, they end up asking questions that erode trust. That, of course, is a huge problem not only because it drives away perfectly good candidates, but because it could cause them to hire the wrong candidate.

So you can avoid that situation, here are seven of the worst interviewing habits that erode trust:

1. Asking Hypothetical Questions

When you ask a question that’s not based on a candidate’s experience, or which involves pure speculation, a funny thing happens: candidates will of course give you the answer you want to hear. For example, asking “Do you think you can do this job?” is an open invitation to hear some bloated gibberish that doesn’t serve any purpose except to make the candidate think you’re silly for asking such a questions.

2. Asking Silly Questions

Speaking of silliness, there’s another type of interview question that makes candidates question your credibility: the silly question. Asking what animal the candidate would be, or asking what’s in the trunk of their car right now just makes them feel uncomfortable and ridiculous: in other words, alienated.

3. Asking Brainteaser Questions

Google became famous for their brainteaser interview questions. Candidates were asked questions such as “how many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?”. These questions supposedly served to assess high-level analytical skills or “thinking on your feet” skills. Alas, according to Google’s Vice President of People Operations at Google, these questions turned out to be a complete waste of time.

They only served to make the interviewer feel smart, he admitted, and they didn’t predict a thing. Talk about ineffective and trust-eroding! Candidates hate these questions, of course.

4. Asking About Their Greatest Weakness

If there’s one way to ensure your candidate offers up a string of senseless dribble, it’s to ask about their greatest weakness. They’ll probably offer up an actual strength disguised as a weakness, which won’t help you at all.

5. Asking About Their Work History

This is a really good way to break any bonds of trust you may have managed to build up at this point during the interview. It basically tells the candidate you don’t respect them enough to prepare for the interview. A quick glance at a resume will tell you everything you need to know about work history because: that’s what it’s for!

6. Asking If They Can Work Overtime or Weekends or Nights

Here, you’re not only wasting everyone’s time with an ineffectual question, but you’re also treading into very sensitive and potentially illegal territory by asking for this information.

And yes, even though managers are warned not to ask this type of question, they still do.

7. Asking Personal Questions

And let’s conclude with the biggest trust-eroding question: the personal question. This ranges from asking about family to wondering which holidays the candidate celebrates. Of course stay away from religion, politics, health, and marital status. But don’t ask whether the candidate is willing to put work before personal self-interests, either.

Conclusion

By asking any of these types of questions, you’ll never gain any trust during a job interview. That in turn means you won’t make any connection at all. And without a connection during the interview, you’ll never know for sure whether you’re speaking to a good or bad candidate.

References

Kaylen Miller
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