Strategic Interviewing

Human resource consultant Joan Curtis provides a new, practical approach to conducting job interviews. Her strategic interviewing is a way to strip off the information you don't need and focus on what you do need when you and the job candidate meet face to face. Dr. Curtis helps you ask the crucial questions to get at the most useful, important answers. With her proprietary POINT process, an easily remembered step-by-step way to recall and apply the principles she describes, you will learn how to work within a framework of solid communication skills and how to ask the right questions, then listen for the right answers. She lays out the concept of strategic interviewing, its definition and applications, and provides the practical examples you need to operationalize it. The result is a complete view, from planning to the actual interview (including team interviewing), plus an important analysis of the entire hiring process. Her book is a major resource for HR managers — and the executives they work with as well. Curtis maintains that most books on interviewing do not address the communications skills necessary to conduct a successful, productive interview. Her POINT process does. At its core is INtentional Listening. It rests on the premise that quality interviewing requires skilled communicators, people who can both listen and question. The process begins with Planning and ends with Testing. To use the process you must plan, then demonstrate and encourage openness, then heighten your own communications skills by intentional listening, and constantly test yourself, the candidate, and the hiring process itself. With her practical examples and exercises, Dr. Curtis makes you able to understand that strategic interviewing is viewed from three distinct angles: the job, the candidate, and the actual interview.

JOAN C. CURTIS manages her own consulting firm, Executive Expertise, in Athens, Georgia./e She is a specialist in developing and presenting communication and motivation seminars throughout the country, and has held various positions in training and development capacities, including Director of Management Development at the University of Georgia. She also spends a great deal of time facilitating team building and goal setting retreats for elected, appointed, and volunteer boards as well as upper management teams.