Every few years, I share the same interview question.
Not because I ran out of ideas. Though some days, that would be a fair accusation.
I keep coming back to it because after 35 years in recruiting, I still believe it is the best interview question I know.
The question comes from Lou Adler, author of Hire With Your Head and one of the best-known voices in performance-based hiring:
“Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now, could you tell me all about it?”
The question sounds simple. What makes it useful is where the conversation goes from there.
Candidates can describe themselves as strategic, driven, technical, collaborative, entrepreneurial, customer-focused, or good with people. Those words are easy to put on a résumé and just as easy to repeat during an interview.
An accomplishment gives the interviewer something to examine.
When candidates describe work they actually did, you can ask about the problem, why it mattered, what responsibility they personally carried, who else was involved, what decisions they made, what resources were available, where they ran into trouble, and what happened as a result.
That is considerably more useful than asking someone to describe their strengths.
Listen for the Details
Ask a fisherman about the biggest fish he ever caught and you are likely to hear where he was, what bait he used, what the weather was doing, how long the fight lasted, and who was there.
You may also discover that the fish has grown two inches every year since.
Ask an athlete about the best game, match, race, or event of their life and the details come back there too. They remember the opponent, the score, the mistake, the turning point, and the moment when the outcome changed.
People remember experiences they lived.
The same principle applies when someone describes an important career accomplishment. A person who was deeply involved can usually explain the context surrounding the work. They remember the difficult customer, the production problem, the decision that did not work, the conversation that changed the direction of the project, or the point when they realized they needed a different approach.
Details give an interviewer something to work with.
A vague answer deserves more questions.
The First Answer Is Only the Beginning
The accomplishment question becomes much more valuable when the interviewer follows the answer instead of immediately moving to the next prepared question.
I want to know what the situation looked like before the candidate became involved. I want to understand why the work mattered and what responsibility belonged specifically to that person.
From there, the conversation can go in several directions:
- Why were you chosen?
- Who else was involved?
- What were the biggest challenges?
- What did you do first?
- What went wrong?
- How did you adjust?
- What were the measurable results?
- What would you do differently today?
Those questions help uncover how someone thinks, solves problems, works with other people, handles pressure, responds when something goes wrong, and accepts responsibility for the outcome.
The interview also becomes harder to bluff.
A rehearsed statement about being a strong leader can survive for a minute or two. A detailed discussion about rebuilding a struggling team gives the interviewer much more information.
This Matters in Animal Sciences
This approach works across industries, but I find it especially useful in animal health, nutrition, feed, live production, and agribusiness.
Many of the strongest people in these fields are not professional interviewers. They are professionals who have spent their careers solving problems, supporting producers, building territories, improving performance, managing people, and working through complicated situations.
Give them room to talk about that work.
A sales representative might describe how they grew a territory, won back an important account, launched a product, opened a market, or improved distributor performance.
A nutritionist may be able to walk through a production challenge, an improvement in feed efficiency, work with a key customer, or the process of helping bring a product into the field.
A live production leader may have improved mortality rates, rebuilt a team, worked through a labor issue, improved performance metrics, or managed a difficult operational problem.
The title of the accomplishment matters less than the evidence behind it.
What condition existed before the person became involved? What did they personally do? What changed because of their work? How did the company, customer, team, or producer benefit?
Those details help an employer understand what the candidate may be prepared to do next.
Candidates Should Know Their Accomplishments
Candidates can prepare for this question without memorizing an interview script.
Before the interview, think through several meaningful accomplishments from your career. Know enough about each one to discuss what happened, what your responsibility was, what decisions you made, and what result followed.
Specific numbers help when they are available. So do mistakes.
If something went wrong, explain it. Tell the interviewer what you changed and what you learned.
Good careers include difficult situations. Trying to make every accomplishment sound flawless can make a strong candidate less believable.
An interviewer is trying to understand how you work. Give them enough information to do that.
A Better Business Conversation
The best interviews become honest business conversations about whether someone has done work that prepares them for the work ahead.
Lou Adler’s question helps get past résumé polish, charm, nervousness, and canned answers. It gives candidates an opportunity to talk about work they know well and gives interviewers a way to examine the evidence behind that work.
One question will not make every hiring decision easy. Nothing will.
This one gets us closer to the truth than almost anything else I have seen in 35 years of recruiting.
A résumé tells you what someone was around. This question helps you understand what they actually did.
There is a difference.
Sometimes it is the difference between a good hire and hope with a calendar invite.
Credit: Lou Adler’s accomplishment question and performance-based interviewing approach are credited to Lou Adler, author of Hire With Your Head.
For help hiring leaders and individual contributors in animal health, nutrition, feed, live production, and agribusiness, contact Dan Simmons at Continental Search.
Daniel C. Simmons, CPC
President | Continental Search
Dan@ContinentalSearch.com
(302) 405-7091
