Interviewing People for Positions in Your Organization

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses how ministry leaders can conduct more effective job interviews that go beyond basic hiring to assess communication, relational skills, cultural fit, and actual competence for the role. He outlines common mistakes to avoid, key preparation steps, and practical interviewing techniques so churches and ministries build stronger, healthier staff and volunteer teams.

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Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:54

Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Now most of the time on the podcast, I try to pick topics or subjects that appeal to large numbers of you that are listening. But today, I wanna talk about something that I think is really important for ministry leaders, but I'm not sure that hundreds or thousands of you necessarily need to do this every week, but many of you are involved in doing this on a fairly regular basis. I want to talk with you today about interviewing practices, interviewing people for positions.

Jeff Iorg: 01:37

Now, of course, this means interviewing people for paid positions, but it could also have application for interviewing people for volunteer positions in your organization. So you've been tasked with responsibility of interviewing someone and helping to decide or maybe making the final decision about whether or not they get a job. So let's talk about some interviewing practices that lead to better results of building the workforce or the team that we need. First of

Jeff Iorg: 02:09

all, what is the purpose of a job interview? Well, I've got at least

Jeff Iorg: 02:14

five things. Number one, of course, to gather information about a candidate. They have already submitted to you perhaps a resume or a letter of interest or some background information about themselves, but by interviewing them, you're able to get gather much more information about the candidate. A second purpose, especially in a ministry context, is to test a candidate's communication skills, to see how well they can express themselves, how comfortable they are talking with other people, and even perhaps how they may represent your organization in terms of how they conduct themselves in that interview. Another purpose of an interview is to observe a person's relational skills, to watch how they relate or interact with you, perhaps how they relate or interact with people who are, in in the office or in the area or who are somehow involved in them coming in to talk with you and observing how they relate to other people.

Jeff Iorg: 03:21

And then number four, another purpose of an interview is to measure cultural fit. Seeing if the person fits the organization and fits well, in the team or the department where you're expecting them to work. And then the final purpose of an interview, and this is the one that's typically at the first of everyone's list, but the final one is to measure the skill set fit to the position. In other words, does the person have the skills necessary to do the job? So when you sit down to interview someone, you're trying to gather information about the candidate, test their communication skills and their capacity to represent themselves and in a sense represent your organization in the future to others.

Jeff Iorg: 04:08

You're observing their relational skills, how they relate not only to you, but perhaps with other people they've encountered in the process of coming in for the interview. And then you're working to measure their cultural fit, how well will they fit in this organization, and also measure their skill set fit, do they have the skills necessary to do this particular job. So that's a summary of the purpose of an interview. Now, what are some mistakes to avoid during an interview? Well, the first mistake is failing to prepare

Jeff Iorg: 04:41

thoroughly. Now the most important part of the preparation is

Jeff Iorg: 04:50

twofold. Number one, reading the material the person has provided about themselves. But beyond that, preparation involves writing a list of questions or issues that you want to raise with the candidate.

Jeff Iorg: 05:07

Now for me, when I'm interviewing, let's say, someone to be my executive assistant, I

Jeff Iorg: 05:14

looked back at the interview questions for that position. The last time I had to do that process, I think I had about 40 questions that I wanted to work through with the candidate. The last time I interviewed a person to be a vice president, it was more like 60 questions. Now let me rush to say that I'm not asking these questions necessarily. One, two, three, four, five.

Jeff Iorg: 05:40

I'm I'm asking these questions, and I might have four or five questions in each section of questions that I'm going to ask. And as I ask the question, they may answer more than one question with their response. And so I look down and I see they've kind of answered that one, they've kind of answered that one, and I move on. So when I write out this list of questions, it's not that I'm going to necessarily demand an answer on every one of them. It's what that I wanna make sure that all these issues get covered in the interview process.

Jeff Iorg: 06:10

So the first mistake to avoid is failing to prepare, and the two main ways of preparing are to read the materials that have been submitted by the candidate, and then secondarily, to develop a a very thorough list of questions that you're going to use for the position. And some of those questions may be candidate specific, but lots of them might be just generic questions that relate to the job itself so that you can discern if the person really has the capacity to do the work itself. So first mistake to avoid is failing to prepare. The second mistake to avoid is talking too much about yourself. A job interview is not a time for you to say too much about your family or about your schooling or about your background or anything like that.

Jeff Iorg: 06:57

The person who's coming in to talk to you is probably somewhat anxious. They they're somewhat nervous. They they also perhaps are very eager. They they want the job. They wanna impress you with what they're gonna say, at least put their best foot forward, so to speak.

Jeff Iorg: 07:14

And then you're sitting there talking about what you had for lunch or how your car broke down or where you went to school, or or you noticed on their resume that, that they had a connection to some community that you once had a third cousin's brother-in-law who went through their own vacation. You know what I'm talking about. Mistake to avoid, talking too much about yourself. You are there primarily to facilitate getting the other person that you're interviewing to talk about themselves and keeping the focus off you. A third mistake to avoid is asking illegal questions.

Jeff Iorg: 07:50

Now this is a delicate issue. I'm

Jeff Iorg: 07:54

not an attorney, and I certain would not propose to give a legal advice, especially not in something as generic as this podcast. So hear me say clearly that if you're going to interview people for jobs on a regular basis, you need to talk with someone in your state where you live about the questions that are either legal or illegal in your particular context. But generally speaking, there are some things that in every situation are just off limits. For example, one of the most common mistakes that interviewers make is asking, how old are you? You can't ask that.

Jeff Iorg: 08:30

You can't ask how old are you, when were you born, what year did you graduate from high school? You you can't ask questions that might lead to age discrimination. Another question you can ask is, do you have any disabilities or medical conditions? You can ask, are you able to perform this job that you're interviewing for with or without reasonable accommodation? Do you have any conditions that might keep you from performing this job, especially if it involves physical labor or lifting items or things like that?

Jeff Iorg: 09:03

Another question you can ask is, you know, are you married? Do you have children? You can ask, are you willing to put in the time that it takes to do this job well? Can you work overtime? Are you able to travel for this job?

Jeff Iorg: 09:15

Those are questions you can ask. Now, again, this is not a comprehensive list. I'm just simply saying that a common mistake that people make in interviewing is asking illegal questions. Now, you're mostly listening to this podcast going to

Jeff Iorg: 09:30

be interviewing people in the context of religious employment. There's

Jeff Iorg: 09:35

more latitude there. You have both, federal and state protections typically about asking people about their religious convictions. You you can't ask about those in a secular setting, but you can ask them about them in a religious setting. For example, if you're coming to work for a Baptist organization, I can ask you questions about what you believe and whether those beliefs line up with what we believe and whether you can represent our beliefs adequately, including I can ask you if the job requires it that you sign a doctrinal statement or that you affirm a doctrinal position that we might hold that you'd be asked to represent as a part of our organization. That's why it's important for you to talk to someone locally so that you get it sorted out, what are the illegal questions to avoid, and what are the fair questions that I can ask so that you don't make a mistake in the interviewing process.

Jeff Iorg: 10:24

Another mistake to avoid is discussing irrelevant issues. Chasing rabbits about things that really don't matter to the job or to the, situation at hand. So for example, something might be happening in current events related to the to politics or to community activists or to, things going on in sports. These things are irrelevant, especially in a job interview context when they don't have anything to do with a person's work. And then finally, another mistake to avoid is avoid inside jokes or humor about your organization.

Jeff Iorg: 11:02

The person sitting across from you doesn't understand the internal culture of your organization and has no clue what you're talking about when you make some joke about a person or a department or a kind of work that you do. They don't know what that's about. So mistakes to avoid, failing to prepare, talking too much about yourself, asking illegal questions, discussing irrelevant issues, or using inside jokes or humor about your organization that have no meaning whatsoever to the person being interviewed. Well, now let's talk about preparing to interview a person well. I already mentioned a little bit of this, but let's go into it in more detail.

Jeff Iorg: 11:40

When you're preparing for the interview, the first thing is to read all the materials submitted by the

Jeff Iorg: 11:45

candidate. Most of the time, you're going

Jeff Iorg: 11:48

to have a cover letter, maybe a resume. Depending on the position, you may have sent a questionnaire and asked them to respond to three or four or five or 10 questions about the position or something like that. Whatever you ask to be submitted, read it all and read it all carefully so that, the candidate has a sense when you arrive that you're taking seriously the time they're investing in the process. So first, read all the materials submitted by the candidate. Second, review the job description for the position and a list so that you can write a list of task specific questions.

Jeff Iorg: 12:29

Now, I mentioned earlier in the podcast that I had like 40 to 60 questions for these jobs that I've interviewed for people in recent past. Where did those come from? Well, they came from the materials submitted by the candidates, candidate specific questions, I call them, and those can change from candidate to candidate. But then second set of questions are job specific questions or task specific questions, and those don't change from candidate to candidate because they're more about the job than about the person. So if you have a job description that has 10 items listed on it that the person is expected to do, there's gonna be at least 10 questions you're gonna wanna ask them related to the job description.

Jeff Iorg: 13:10

And not just questions like, you know, have you ever done accounts receivable? That that's that's not the question. The question is, describe your experience with managing accounts receivable. What's the difference between accounts receivable and accounts payable? And do you have experience on both sides of that of that responsibility?

Jeff Iorg: 13:31

And down the line you go basing your questions, task specific questions based on the job description at hand. So now in preparation, we're gonna read the materials, including that they've been some that have been submitted by the candidate, and then review the job description and write a list of task specific questions. So those first, you'll have some person specific questions, and then second, some task specific questions. And then third, in preparation, decide the format for the interview. Now two or three different ideas on this.

Jeff Iorg: 14:03

First, it it may be a single interview. You're bringing the person in, you're going to talk with them one on one, and you're gonna make the decision about their hiring. It may also be a series of interviews where you bring them in, you meet with them one on one, you said, I'm gonna have you come back next week. I wanna meet with you again, or wanna have you come back next week and meet with another person in the organization. So there could be a series of interviews.

Jeff Iorg: 14:27

Third, there could be, interviews conducted, live in person or by video video conference. I also could add to this, a phone call interview, but if possible, because of body language, because of so much more being able to be learned from a visual impression that a person creates, for all kinds of reasons, If you're going to interview the person electronically, try to make it a video call where you can actually see them, interact with them, get more information from them by by actually seeing them while they're speaking to you. And then in terms of deciding the format, single interview, series of interviews, live, video, another aspect to consider is does this need to be a group interview, or did there need does there need to be a group of people involved in the process in making this decision? Now I'm gonna come back to that in a few minutes and talk about how to do a group interview well because quite frankly, I'm finding this to be, I think, more and more common. As more and more ministry organizations and more and more companies move to team environments where people are expected to work well on a team, there is a sense that the team needs to have some consideration or participation in the hiring practices themselves.

Jeff Iorg: 15:44

So I'm gonna come back and talk about that, in just a few minutes. So purpose of an interview, mistakes to avoid, preparation to make. Now, next area, conducting the interview. Number one, be your professional best. Be your professional best.

Jeff Iorg: 16:05

So this means that you give some attention to how you dress, to the overall demeanor that you communicate during the interview process. The location of the interview. Do you have it in a private office? Do you have it in a public setting? Do you do it over lunch in a restaurant?

Jeff Iorg: 16:24

You wanna think about your dress, your demeanor, your location, and other factors that may enter into the process so that you put forward your best professional perspective. Now, this is so important because while you're interviewing the other person, don't forget they're also interviewing you. Meaning that they're looking at you as a representative of the organization And by how you treat them, they realize how people are treated in an organization. And they're making an evaluation of whether they want to work with you or even for you based on how you're presenting themselves, yourself to them. So be your professional best.

Jeff Iorg: 17:08

Make it a day where you're focused and intent on doing a good job in that interview moment. Second, while you're conducting the interview, keep the focus on the candidate. Now this means that you want the candidate, to do most of the talking, that you want the candidate's information to be the centerpiece of the conversation, that you want to allow the candidate to express himself or herself in the fullest and best way possible so that you can have the maximum amount of information at hand to make the decisions about their hiring. Focus on the candidate. Now in doing that, remember what it was like when you were interviewed for your last job.

Jeff Iorg: 17:53

Interviewing is stressful. And when a person comes in for an interview, they may be stressed not only by the circumstances of the interview, but by the outside conditions that they're they're dealing with. They may need the job. They they may have grocery money or grocery bills and rent bills and utility bills and car payments and all those things that are bearing down on them, they they need the job. They also may be stressed because they want the job so badly.

Jeff Iorg: 18:23

They they they wanna work in a ministry organization or they wanna work for your church, and they want that so much because they just feel like it's part of who they are and who they wanna express themselves as spiritually. Another thing that causes stress is, you know, they there's a spiritual dimension to this. They may feel like God wants them to do it, they don't wanna disappoint God or blow it in the interview, if you wanna say it that way. So interviewing can be stressful.

Jeff Iorg: 18:47

But it's also important in focusing on the candidate to recognize that in the context of the interview, you may move from interviewing to recruiting. This has happened to

Jeff Iorg: 19:00

me on a number of occasions where I'm interviewing someone, and during the interview, I realize this is a person we really need working for us. Wow. And now I still wanna keep the focus on the person, but now I wanna keep the focus on the person in the sense that I'm trying to draw out of them everything possible that's favorable toward being in this position and being in this context. A third thing to remember in conducting the interview is to set the culture and work style from the very beginning. How you treat people during an interview tells them something about how they're gonna be treated after they come to work for the organization.

Jeff Iorg: 19:41

And if you're disorganized and haphazard and don't seem to be very focused or interested, they're gonna think, well, that's

Jeff Iorg: 19:46

the way this organization works. But if you walk into that interview dressed for your best with a thorough preparation, with good notes down in front

Jeff Iorg: 19:56

of you about how you wanna walk this person through the interview so that you understand everything you can about them, and then they have the opportunity to express themselves clearly about everything related to the job performance itself. They see this kind of professionalism, this kind of organization, this kind of intentionality. Man, that sets the culture and the work style from the very beginning, and they recognize I'm going to need to work in the same way that this interviewer has worked in bringing me into this moment. So set the culture set the culture and the work style from the very beginning and do that by how you interview. And I've already said this, but I want to reiterate it.

Jeff Iorg: 20:34

Let the candidate do most of the talking. This is not the time for you to ramble on or tell personal stories. It's also not the time for you to help the candidate. Now I wanna talk about this for just a second. Don't help the candidate, meaning your role is to facilitate the candidate explaining themselves, describing themselves, communicating their skill set and their experiences.

Jeff Iorg: 21:06

Now, when I say don't help the candidate, what

Jeff Iorg: 21:10

I mean is some of this may be stressful for them, may be difficult, but part of the interview process is seeing how they handle those situations. Now I don't wanna throw my sweet wife under the bus, but, she and I have talked about this many times, and I think she'd be okay with me laying it out for you as well. My wife is one of the kindest, most compassionate people that I have ever met. And so there's been some occasions over the years when she and I would be interviewing someone together. This was usually because we were interviewing the person to be her assistant at the seminary.

Jeff Iorg: 21:50

That's an awkward kind of a situation. My wife was never paid by the seminary, so she was never an employee of the seminary. But because of the significant level of expectations they had for my wife to be my partner in working ministry at the seminary, the seminary provided her a part time assistant to handle all the administrative detail and travel detail and speaking detail related to her work as a president's wife. So because of that, my wife did not have the authority to hire anyone because she didn't work for the seminary. So we would interview the people together, and then I'd make the decision based on my wife's, of course, counsel and input, and I'd make the final official call as an employee of the seminary to offer a person a job.

Jeff Iorg: 22:31

So with that bit of background, my wife and I would interview people together. And I would have this preparation laid out like I've described here today, and I would start asking these rather direct probing hard questions about job performance, past experience, and how they handle certain different situations they might be addressing on our team. And while I was not trying to be mean or necessarily to create stress, I was trying to create an opportunity where the person was challenged in the interview. And if I could see how they rose to that challenge, I could see how much they could

Jeff Iorg: 23:07

do the job even more effectively. And so in

Jeff Iorg: 23:10

the context of asking these kind of probing, sometimes difficult questions, they would be the person would pause or they'd be, like, reflective or sometimes even maybe stumped a little bit. And my dear sweet wife would say, you know, let me help you with that. And she would start suggesting some possible and it wasn't anything bad. There wasn't anything illegal or inappropriate or unethical about it. It was just that it was short circuiting the process that I was trying to introduce, which was to create a little bit of stress, if you will.

Jeff Iorg: 23:41

Not not to hurt the person, but to simply give them the opportunity to demonstrate how they handle, being asked a hard question or being given a a challenging situation to think through. Getting comfortable with that kind of stress in an interview is a part of the process. And, and, of course, after she did it a couple of times, she got to be pretty good at it where she would sit there and all that compassion well welling up within her, but she wouldn't say anything. She'd let the person think it through and stress a little bit about it and maybe even grapple a little bit with this challenge of it and then give a good answer or give an answer that would be appropriate in the moment. When you let the candidate do the talking, don't help them.

Jeff Iorg: 24:25

If they don't understand the question, explain it more clearly, but be comfortable with a little bit of silence to let the person stew a little bit, if you will, and think about what they're trying to say and communicate what they need to in that moment. Now, again, I'm not saying that you intentionally try to stress a candidate or harm a candidate or create a make a candidate uncomfortable.

Jeff Iorg: 24:49

I'm not talking about that. But I'm talking about asking questions like this one.

Jeff Iorg: 24:55

Tell me about a time when you had some significant conflict in your work setting and how you resolved it. Well, that may cause for a little silence, and the person may need to reflect on that for a moment and then think about how they're going to tell you about this.

Jeff Iorg: 25:10

Give them the moment they need. That's what I mean when I

Jeff Iorg: 25:13

say don't help them. Don't try to make it softer or make it easier. Let the difficulty of it hang there, and

Jeff Iorg: 25:20

let them give an honest response as best they can. And then when you're conducting the interview, finally, ask open ended questions, not yes, no questions.

Jeff Iorg: 25:31

And so as you're working through the job description, it's not, as I said earlier, the the a question, do you have experience with accounts payable? Do you have experience with accounts receivable? Do you have experience managing a ledger? Yes. Yes.

Jeff Iorg: 25:45

Yes. Those are not good interview questions. Better interview question is, a significant part of this job is managing the accounts payable for our organization. Describe your experience with accounts payable in the past. Another part of this job is managing accounts receivable.

Jeff Iorg: 26:01

Describe your experience with managing accounts receivable and tell me how those differ in terms of how you approach managing them from accounts payable. A bad question. Have you ever participated in an audit? That that's not a yes, no. A better question.

Jeff Iorg: 26:17

Our financial team is audited every year by outside auditors. What's been your experience with working with outside auditors? These are better questions. These are open ended questions giving people the opportunity to fully describe their experiences in the context of the job for which they're being interviewed. Now let me end with conducting an interview in a group context.

Jeff Iorg: 26:39

Perhaps you work on a team, and you are on a staff, and your leader says, we're gonna hire a new person, bring a new person on our team, and I want everyone to participate in the interview process. Well, I did it this way at the seminary for years. Every time I interviewed a new vice president, I did a team interview where all the vice presidents participated in interviewing the person who was going to come on the team. Now, to be clear, I was president. I had to make the final decision about who was gonna be on the team.

Jeff Iorg: 27:10

But I wanted everyone's input because I wanted to make a good decision to find someone who was compatible that could work with all of us together. So here's a couple of things to keep in mind. First, to save time and to keep from repeating the same things over and over again, if you're going to have a group interview process, start with a one on one interview with you and the candidate. Supervisor to candidate or ultimate decision maker to candidate, and do a one on one interview with that with the person. Second, then move to a group interview.

Jeff Iorg: 27:46

And in that group interview, ask questions, some of the same ones you've asked in the one on one in front of the group, and ask what I call the general or generic questions there. In other words, the questions that everyone wants to hear, ask them in that group interview. Then third, allow the group to ask general questions of the candidate in front of everyone. So you're gonna start with one on one, then move to a group. And then in that group interview, you are going to ask a series of the same questions you asked in the one on one interview so you can get the general information out to everyone in the most efficient way possible.

Jeff Iorg: 28:25

And allow then, third, some feedback questions to come from the group back to the candidate. Then number four, divide everyone up into one on one interviews again. So you got three or four people on your team. You've had the one on one interview. You've had the group interview.

Jeff Iorg: 28:39

Now for the next forty five minutes, each person's going to get one on one time with the candidate. So you start with an hour of a one on one. You move into a thirty minute group, and then you've got thirty to forty five minutes with them meeting one on one with every person. Pretty soon, you've had about a four hour interview where you've had an opportunity for everyone to have general information shared with them and then everyone to have one on one time to talk about the specific issues they wanna talk about as this new team member is being considered for the team. Now when I've done it this way, the results have always been very clear.

Jeff Iorg: 29:16

Once the interviewing process is over, we send the person home. Next morning, we meet together as a team. What did you guys all think about yesterday's interview? In every case that I did this, it was really clear, really quickly what we should do. Because if the team wasn't enthusiastic, they typically said something like this, well, know, Doctor.

Jeff Iorg: 29:38

Orge, if you really want this person, you know, I think we can make this work, but And then they would give me their concerns. But if it was the person that was really the right person, it was very clear that people say, Hire this person today. Wow. That's the guy we really wanna work with. And so I found that in this group interview process that having this one on one followed by the group, followed by a series of one on ones really led us to have the kind of interaction we needed to where we could come together the following day and say, this is either a person we really want or a person we could work with but we're not really enthusiastic about.

Jeff Iorg: 30:13

And in a case or two, I actually had some people say, I I just can't see it. I found that process to be very productive and very helpful for me in making decisions, particularly when a person is coming onto a true team ministry environment. Now if I'm just hiring a person for a one on one job, you're looking for a custodian, you're looking for an administrative assistant for one person, you're looking for a person to work on your landscaping team, just hire them. Just interview them one on one and make the decision. But if they're coming into a team or a staff a group environment where there really is this kind of team dynamic going on, then this kind of group interview process can also be helpful.

Jeff Iorg: 30:54

Well, I realize some of you have listened to this podcast today and you thought, well, don't really interview people, but you know what? You may get interviewed someday and you may also find yourself in a position someday where you are the interviewer. So I hope these insights today will help you to do a better job of interviewing people and making better selections to bring people into your organization, onto your team, or to in your employment so that we can have the most effective ministry organizations possible. Interview skills can be developed, and doing it well is essential as you lead on.