Great Questions=Great Answers! The Pieces to the Puzzle are revealed!

Newbies in workforce development sometimes ask me how to work with a customer or how do you know why someone cannot get a job.  The answer is really simple. Ask the right questions, and then listen for the answer.   It’s not a secret. You can’t just look at person or their job seeking documents and just know. You need the person to open his mouth and speak.  You need the narrative.

 

Why narrative? First, you will get the information to help you help the customer.  That is if you ask the right question.  Secondly, it helps you establish rapport and trust with your customer. Someone is not going to open up if he does not trust you. This is very important.  Remember digging a hole to China as a child.  Quickly you found out that you could not find China with one shovel full of dirt.  The digger must unearth many layers to get to China! A child will quickly find out that he can’t shovel his way to China, but may find neat stuff (rocks, artifacts, gas lines, etc…) just for being persistent.

 

Before I give you a list of questions to ask, I am going to start with the basics of questions.

 

WHO  

 WHAT

               WHEN         

WHERE

WHY

HOW

 

Once you have all that information, YOU can then help the person with the HOW!

 

To sum that up- in order to figure out “how” to get a person a job, you will need to ask every job seeker questions that ask the above.  I have provided a list of questions to get you started.  This is not an exhaustive list, but definitely a good place to start.

 

§  Where do you see yourself in 1 year/ 3 years/ 5 years?

The goal is to figure out the hopes and dreams of the individual in order to establish goals and a plan to get there. Some people have a hard time with this, so I recommend that you ask the one year first, so that you can get a handle on the immediate need.  Once the person is in a place where he can feel safe, you can then move on to three years and five years.

 

§  Why do you want to do/enter _________  job/career/ industry?

I have watched enough Law and Order re-runs to know that establishing motive is extremely important in an investigation.  This is great to find out if a person has a firm understanding of his skills, abilities, or the labor market.  Answers like “because I heard from a friend it’s a good job” or “I heard about it on TV” should set your red flag up the pole.  Answers like that are not wrong, but the job seeker that gives that answer needs to be more introspective about his true interests and abilities in addition to doing research.

 

§  What do you think are the reasons you are not employed currently? (for unemployed job seekers)

This is a good question to learn what is going on in someone’s head.  You may hear about things like perceived discrimination on things like age/race/gender/sexual orientation/ disability (I say perceived as at it has not been proven in most cases), or if the person had an issue at the last employer that you may want to discuss further.  Sometimes a person may blurt out “I am always fired because the company said they don’t need me.”  In many cases if you delve deeper, you will start to uncover the employability issues.

 

§  Tell me about why you left your job at _________________________.

This is not formed as a question, but it is. This will help you get the story of a job seekers’ employment history. For people that leave on their own, you can see what frustrated a person or what was lacking that he needed for career satisfaction that he was not getting. For people that left involuntarily, you can determine things that may be barriers for a job seeker- such as getting along with people issues, policy violations, labor market/economic issues, unearth skills deficiencies, and ultimately, anything that may need to be further discussed.

 

§  What did you like best about ___________job/career/industry/company?

Learning about what makes people happy is a good way to get information that can be projected to the future, but it also keeps the appointment positive.  Job seekers that are unemployed or underemployed can be in a depressed state of mind, so reminding them when they were happy at a job can help get them moving to the right emotional state of mind.

 

§  What are your expectations for this appointment?

Everyone needs to be on the same page.  You can’t satisfy someone unless you know what will do the trick.  Also, if the job seeker’s expectations are different than yours, finding a commonality works best.

 

§  When did you decide to get professional assistance with finding employment?

This will help you see what event triggered the need for assistance. Was it because he was going at it on his own without success? If so, what strategies did not bring success to the job seeker?  With every piece, you get a more complete puzzle picture.

 

§  Why did you decide to attend __________ college/training/technical school?

   How did you pick your major?

This is another question where you can learn how much research a person did before attending school, or the thought process for connecting interest/aptitude to a career.

 

§  Who has been the most influential person in your career? Why?

Learning the qualities that your job seeker admires always helps establish rapport. This question can help to keep the discussion positive. It also asks the job seeker to think more deeply about his career up to this point. In what he is stating, there may be some useful information for the future.  Even if someone states he does not have a good story, but the person was an influence to him, then hearing about this is another key puzzle piece.

 

There are so many great questions you can ask a job seeker. Again this is not an exhaustive list of questions.  Every time you get an answer to a question, you have unlocked a clue to that person’s being and true self. Finding this will help you get your job seeker employed.

 

Pondering Point:

 

§  What is one great question that you can ask a job seeker to get a great answer?

 

 

I am open to questions and comments. Feel free to email me at kcirincione@gmail.com.  Also, feel free to leave a comment below.  Share with the world a great question.  I am looking forward to hear some great questions from some great people. ~ Karen Cirincione