Just the Truth
And nothing but the truth
It’s tried and true advice that a job applicant should prepare questions – good questions – as part of thoroughly preparing for a job interview. Asking good questions demonstrates to the interviewer that you’ve done your homework and are prepared.
Most interviewees prepare questions covering areas such as job responsibilities, reporting personnel, company culture, why the position is open, etc. They are all good questions but recent research says that there is more here than what might meet the eye.
Getting to the truth
In addition to showing preparedness, the main goal in asking questions is to learn something about the job, the organization and even the interviewer. So, it would follow that you want the most honest straightforward answers possible.
In our age where “fake news” appears more often than anyone would like, where truth can be an elusive goal at best, and absent or obscured at worst, science may have come to the rescue.
According to Time magazine, research done through the University of Utah has shown that how you ask a question determines how truthful you can expect the respondent to be. One of the test scenarios dealt directly with job interviews.
When asked a direct, specific question (e.g. Why did the last job holder leave this position?) nearly 90 percent of the respondents answered truthfully and completely. However, when the applicant asked the same question in a suggestive or indirect manner (e.g. “The last person who held this job left under good conditions, didn’t he?”), the truthfulness of the answer dropped to just over 61 percent.
When the question was more vague (e.g. “What can you tell me about the last person who held this position?”), the accuracy of the response fell to a mere eight percent.
As part of your interview preparation, developing good questions may be essential, but how you ask them may be even more telling.
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