The Question

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

I don't know why we spend so much time trying to figure out what questions employers will ask on interviews. We ought to be picking headhunters' brains, the folks who either find the bodies or do the actual hiring.

Serious recruiters have practically elevated interviewing to a science. They stay up nights pondering questions that will elicit responses upon which a hire-or-reject decision can be accurately made.

Rummaging through some old issues of ER Daily, a daily column about recruiting issues and trends written by experts in the field, I stumbled on a neat story, titled "The Best Interview Question of All Time." It was written by Lou Adler, president of consulting company The Adler Group in Irvine, Calif. Adler also authored Hire With Your Head: Using Power Hiring to Build Great Teams ($19.77 at Amazon).

In the story, Adler said he had been searching for one powerhouse question to on an interview that would provide the most significant information about a candidate. It took him two decades, but he found it.

Ready? Here is Adler's killer, most revealing single interview question: "Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now, could you tell me all about it?"

Simple question, yes? Wrong.

I confess that I've been a little hard on recruiters, even a tad nasty at times. Take it from this …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.