Interview Questions to Screen for Toxic Behavior

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Anonymous

01/15/21 at 12:08AM UTC

Management

Interview Questions to Screen for Toxic Behavior

Hi All! So my team just let go of a colleague with very toxic behavior that greatly affected our team and our customers (HR got involved, there was an investigation, that was the conclusion). We're still recovering from the awful experience, but we want to also learn how to prevent it from happening again while we hire for their backfill. How do you screen for arrogant or generally toxic behavior in job candidates? How do you screen for appropriate behavior in a highly collaborative environment? Are there any targeted questions to screen this out? Are there red flags that are subtle and often go unnoticed? Thanks so much for your help. So many questions, hehe.

14 Comments

Brittany

Passionate about food & sustainability

01/15/21 at 1:09AM UTC

Great questions! To be honest, I don't know if this is even possible. Many times you hire based on a resume and an interview, and I doubt anyone will openly admit to their toxic behavior that will cost them an opportunity to join your team. If they do, hire them for their honesty because that's hard to come by, too. I recommend you do more digging into references. Perhaps require at least 1 reference from their most recent employer and ask them questions that might be the root of concern: - how did they handle difficult conversations with clients? - what was their communication style in collaborative projects? - what areas do they need to improve upon (could be elaborated with: in their communication style)? Separately, you may want to explore a temp-to-hire process so you can vet the candidate out in your standard interview process, but also put them in the role for 30/60/90 days and see if they exhibit any of the behaviors you're concerned about. I find great talent for companies and I'm happy to speak with you more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyrowles/

2 Replies

Daniel

01/15/21 at 3:43AM UTC

The problem doesn't always exist with the nature of possible candidates for selected positions, but often exists with the limited knowledge of the human resources person doing the interviewing. Most HR people have a very basic knowledge of what each job within a company requires of potential candidates. Take, for example, if a company is looking for individuals with a good engineering background who can function well with contracting customers, then they need to include individuals that have great overall credentials covering all aspects of contracts rather than individuals with the nuts and bolts design experience. That's where a company needs to call in an engineering manager but also include at least one design engineer to ferrate out those candidates that don't have the specific engineering experience the company needs for a specific contract. But so often, decisions are made at the HR level without an adequate interview process that includes those needing new hires. In my own experience, especially where companies sent HR people to some distant city, decisions were made based on HR's opinion and the text on a resume, without the engineering department having a face to face interview. Bad policy. That's kind of the shotgun approach to hiring. HR will hire them and 6 months later the engineering department head will fire them. The way it should work is to have the department that needs specific talents do the interviewing and hiring and let HR is just be the facilitator of the process.

1 Reply

Anonymous

01/15/21 at 6:24AM UTC

Good points. Maybe align on expectations with our HR rep in terms of how much weight each department carries in the screening process?

User edited comment on 01/15/21 at 6:24AM UTC

Anonymous

01/15/21 at 6:13AM UTC

Thanks for the suggestion on diving into more references. The temp to hire option sounds interesting as well. Thank you!

Amandac215

01/15/21 at 1:29AM UTC

I would say anyone that would speak in a non constructive negative way about past bosses or past coworkers is raising a red flag about there toxic tendencies. Where it is fine to express why you want to leave or left a previous employer being comfortable dragging people in a professional setting shows that the person being interviewed may be a gossip or unable to problem solve without pointing fingers.

1 Reply

Anonymous

01/15/21 at 6:12AM UTC

Great suggestions, thanks so much!

Anonymous

01/15/21 at 4:38AM UTC

I really like the Temp to Hire suggestion. Put the person in as many scenarios as possible and watch them closely. Give them opportunities to show their nature. It's weird, you hear people complain all day long about toxicity and Bully everywhere but more often than not I find these people create horrible work situations and then play victim when the so called bully calls them out and shuts down their behavior.

1 Reply

Anonymous

01/15/21 at 6:11AM UTC

Thanks for the suggestion! I wanted to ask a follow-up about the comment re: people complaining about toxicity when they are the toxic ones (I'm not sure if I interpreted that correctly). Did this mean we should also screen for folks who are quick to call out toxic behavior, say if we were to do a temp-to-hire process? I may have misunderstood, wanted to check. :) Thanks!

User edited comment on 01/15/21 at 6:13AM UTC

Jodie Johnson

217

Integrity Matters!

01/16/21 at 3:40PM UTC

Hi! This is great to be part of this hiring process for a new candidate. Apart from what they say, take notice of their body language. Do they seem rigid & closed off? Does their smile seem "forced"? Do their responses match their body, in other words? If they're being open with you, their face & body will convey it. Good Luck! :)

User edited comment on 01/16/21 at 3:41PM UTC

1 Reply

Anonymous

01/19/21 at 12:22AM UTC

Great suggestion, thanks so much!

Anonymous

01/17/21 at 6:10PM UTC

I would suggest taking a good look at the team members and which type of personality would clash with them. Great candidates in one environment can be toxic in another. Ask questions of the candidates about real daily scenarios rather than hypothetical, generalized questions to gauge response. Two people who have very different personalities interviewing candidates can also be helpful since they will see different aspects of the candidate based on their own perspective.

1 Reply

Anonymous

01/19/21 at 12:22AM UTC

Thanks so much for the suggestions!

G. Susie Smith

Experienced Software Professional

01/29/21 at 8:12PM UTC

I'd like to recommend a book for creating interview questions specifically for screening for bad attitudes. It's called Hiring for Attitude by Mark Murphy. It's rather inexpensive, less than $20 paperback from Amazon and $10 download in Kindle format. It's not a long read but it provides an approach to developing interview questions that target a candidate's personality. Probably the best approach to discovering problem behaviors than any other book or paper I have ever come across. One part of the book that I found particularly helpful and insightful was the section of Coach-ability and how the questions for determining this were written. To give an example, here are 5 questions from the book that you ask a candidate and you can't change the wording of the questions even though they may come across of very direct or even rude: 1. What was your boss’s name? Please spell the full name for me. 2. Tell me about <boss name> as a boss. 3. What’s something that you could have done (or done differently) to enhance your working relationship with <boss name>? 4. When I talk to <boss name>, what will he or she tell me your strengths are? 5. Now all people have areas where they can improve, so when I talk to <boss name>, what will they tell me your weaknesses are? These questions are designed to determine, among other things, how well a candidate takes to coaching from a manager, supervisor of project head. As the author will explain and as I have experienced, candidates that don't answer these questions honestly or just refuse to answer are raising red flags for you.

User edited comment on 01/29/21 at 8:16PM UTC

1 Reply