Interviewing Young 'Uns

[donnydave]

I was made to feel old recently, by interviewing some people over 10 years younger than me for an apprenticeship at work. One of them was born in 1996! I mean, really!

Anyway, I've interviewed a couple of graduates before but that's as far as my experience goes. I was should point out I wasn't the main interviewer, I was helping out a colleague who is a little more experienced but we both found it tough going.

This batch were 16-19 and it was very difficult to get beyond just the basics on their CV's, which were all near identical. I know at 16 or 17 you haven't had too much chance yet to become a well rounded individual (unless you have spent 16 years eating pies of course).

So, my question is: Can anyone offer any tips on interviewing young people, how to get them to open up and start talking? We can't really differentiate them on academic or technical ability so its down to personality and attitude. How on earth do we get them to show that in a half hour interview?

thanks,

Dave

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Ask about hobbies and interests outside the schooling arena. See who has enthusiasm - can they transfer that enthusiasm to your requirement

 

[MisterStan]

I ask if they have any questions, hopefully they'll ask you some sensible questions, not just about money etc.

 

[Risex4]

Ask about hobbies and interests outside the schooling arena. See who has enthusiasm - can they transfer that enthusiasm to your requirement

This. It can be very hard with school leavers, especially if its their first interview and they are not the kind to naturally take to the interview environmentl. I've had fellow managers who used to relish in almost intimidating youngsters which I thought was shocking.
"They just sat there, they didn't say anything, couldn't answer my questions, they were useless". Well, no, actually, it was you who was useless as an interviewer as you were unable to deduce any worthwhile information other than your own pre-conceived assumptions... I digress.

You won't have a lot of "professional" shop-stuff to talk about, but then with the sub-20s I'd assume that most roles they would be in for wouldn't require a lot of competency demonstration. I used to just be quite informal with that age group, for the first 10 minutes or so I'd chat about anything I could find common ground on, sports, music, holidays, literally anything. The simplest way to do this I found was to ask if they'd been up to much (using the classic English conversation hook of the weather - its been too hot, cold, wet, blah blah blah.) If they weren't immediately forthcoming, I'd talk abit about myself first to hunt for clues, usually under the pretence of waiting for my interviewing partner to finish some admin paper work - Right To Work has been a godsend in this sense.

The hope was to try and relax them in and open them up. Once I got them going and found a bit of a handle, I'd explore it a bit more to see how they related to something they were passionate about; have they actively developed this interest further? (Behaviour and engagement) Have they taken on responsibility (If applicable) within the sphere of this interest? (Responsibility). Have they demonstrated an application or commitment to this interest? (Motivation). It can be all kind of daft things.

After about 10 minutes or so, I'd "start the interview" trying to lead it back into the job in question, and talk to them about what their understanding of the job is etc. Because I'd hopefully learned a little bit about them by then, you can start identifying strengths and weaknesses in their relation to the job. Sometimes they'll still mess this bit up, but hopefully they'll give it a better go once there is a bit of rapport there, and even if they do go wildly off the mark, sometimes they may have talked emotively enough about other things for you to overlook this.

 

[Sandra6]

Ask them if they ride a bike.
A lot of job application and interview questions now seem to be more about putting yourself in a situation or explaining how you've dealt with a certain type of event in the past.
Like "What would you do if a customer demanded a refund for a broken product?"
or "Tell me of a time when you had to take charge of a situation and how you did that"

 

[Markymark]

As Sandra above says, my best line of questioning is hypothetical scenarios...

What would you do if a customer asked for an order and nobody was availale to help you.
What would you do if a custopmer asked you to shw them this new prodcut and you've not seen it before

You can quickly work out those that have commen sense and can think for themselves.

 

[Cheddar George]

I have interviewed 16 year olds in the past ...... it's hard work. Trying to find something that they can talk about is really difficult, fortunately they were all boys and i soon discovered that cars seemed to be a popular theme. Most of them can talk about computers for a good length of time ...... unfortunately i can't.

 

[Risex4]

You see, I found that for the age group in question, those kind of questions alone as a foundation were pretty poor. The company I used to work for had a standard "script" for interviews like this, and thats pretty much what it was;

"Tell me about a time when you've done this"
"Can you explain an example of when you've done that"

All well and good for slightly older people who will have real (working) world experience. For those coming into the job market, I found just rattling off those kind of questions disruptive. Some "smart" types could understand the question in English happily enough and were quick enough to an answer. Fine, but get them out into the job role and their "intelligence" very quickly revealed itself to be academic only, and lacked the proverbial common sense. Similarly, when I started to "personality" probe people, I found that some (not all) of the guys who struggled with the adaptive experience questions could demonstrate the skills you were looking for, they just didn't yet know how to do it in an interview environment (what do they teach at school now-a-days?).

I once had a rather timid 17 year old lass who - I kid you not - I gave a job to off the back of being a shopaholic. She was nervous from the off, hadn't had great school results, wasn't initially forthcoming at the interview, and she simply just couldn't get the "what do you think great customer service is/give me an example" line of questioning (erm, err, great customer service is, erm... great customer service?). But when I got her talking about a weekend shopping trip she had recently had, she answered all of the skill sets and then some. She was highly motivated, hard-working, resourceful, patient, adaptive (something about missing the bus with arms full of shopping and having to get home IIRC) and possessed a fantastic understanding of the retail environment even though she just couldn't articulate it in a relative way. Last I heard - 7 years later - she was still one of the top sales performers.

 

[Fnaar]

Get them to tap dance, or sing a song

 

[annedonnelly]

It used to be that application forms had a space for hobbies and interests - in that case, you could ask them about their (alleged) interest in football/music/ballroom dancing... If they haven't lied about it they should be interested enough to hold a conversation about it.

I've worked in secondary schools for the last couple of years and it seems the majority of kids don't have outside interests about from computer games, watching TV & hanging about with their mates. Seems a shame to me - not least because it would make them stand out from the crowd a little in interview situations.

 

[donnydave]

Thanks all for the replies, we might get a little more out of the next batch, I'll try to be a little friendlier in case they are feeling a little intimidated.

.

I've worked in secondary schools for the last couple of years and it seems the majority of kids don't have outside interests about from computer games, watching TV & hanging about with their mates. Seems a shame to me - not least because it would make them stand out from the crowd a little in interview situations.

I noticed this too when looking through the CV's. One particular lad didn't have time for TV and computer games because he had done Air Cadets, Duke of Edinburgh and had done sponsored runs and bike rides all off his own back. Organised his own time and made sacrifices in other areas to support his interests.

This sounds bad and I don't want to put the other candidates down but it did make me think how much of the difficulty in the interviews was due to my lacking technique and how much was just because of the quality of the candidates as this one lad was miles and miles above the others.

 

[Brains]

I used to do interviews with kids.
the first process is on the CVs is the yes/no/maybe piles for the interview, I would concentrate on the hobbies.

Anyone that had DofE, Scouts, Cadets etc would go straight to the yes/maybe pile

On the interview I would concentrate on the hobbies and interests, anyone that had Silver or Gold DofE or the Scouting or Cadet equilivent was guaranteed an interview and probably a job