On A Scale of 1-10

I love asking people to rank things on a scale of 1 – 10. For instance, I may ask my daughter, “Honey, on a scale of 1 – 10, how much do you want to see a movie this weekend?” Or I may ask an associate, “On a scale of 1 – 10, how strong is your interest in this new project?” In the case of my daughter, she may say “5” and then I know it’s not super important. Her “5” tells me that it’s somewhat important but if she says “9 or 10” then, of course, I know her feelings are very strong on seeing a movie. With my business associate, having his answer fall somewhere on this scale instantly tells me where his interest is with the new project. I could ask him to go into great detail how he feels about the project, or he could just give me a number. Now, you may feel this is an overly simplified approach to understanding where people are at, but I disagree. With this graduated scale, I get a very quick sense where someone stands on a subject. Any subject. A ‘2’ is considerably different than an ‘8’ and, for me, each one of these numbers gives me a pretty clear statement of how the person feels. So how could this be applied to the hiring interview? Well, here are some examples of how you could use it: “Fred, I have two questions for you: “On a scale of 1 – 10, how important to you is working with us here, this company? And… “On a scale of 1 – 10, how important to you is having the paycheck we would provide?” You could ask Fred these two questions back-to-back so that he could consider the answer to both and then reply. Another example: “Sally, on a scale of 1 – 10, what is your view of a long term position here? Let’s define ’10’ as you’re interested in establishing yourself here for a number of years and ‘1’ as you’d jump ship in a few weeks if a potentially better offer came along.” One more example: “Alan, on a scale of 1 – 10, how important is it for you to believe in what our company produces and represents?” 1 – 10. It’s a graduated scale. Some of your prospects may give you a number that they feel you want to hear. But that’s true of any question in the hiring interview. Then there will be those who give you a number that is their genuine view of things. And that, my friend, is a nice dose of insight into your candidate.