Thank you for attending the W-Z Interviewing Tip, presented by the International Association of Interviewers. I’m Wayne Hoover, CFI, executive director of IAI and senior partner with Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates. This week what I want to talk about is: after the interview.
If you think about after the interview, you have to worry about termination hearings, unemployment hearings. You have to worry about the defense if you’re doing a criminal case. You have to worry about any other area where they may try to attack the investigation. So let’s think about that for a second. They want to attack the investigation process more than the facts because, if you think about the facts, the facts show the person did it so they don’t want to discuss that. It’s really what I call the Ryan Braun.
For those who don’t know, Ryan Braun was a baseball player who was accused of using steroids, and they had his tainted blood and it was held from the investigation in the investigator’s personal refrigerator, which by the union agreement was allowed, but because it wasn’t taped up properly, when they went to the hearing, all they attacked was the process, never mentioning that the blood was actually, in fact, tainted, and he was reinstated to baseball. And then, of course, a year later, he was so arrogant he went and got busted again for steroids and they made sure the investigation was complete.
So if you think about attacking the facts, they don’t want to do that. They want to attack you, the investigation, the process of the investigation. So what’s important here is preparation. If you go in knowing that, that’s the concern, you have a much better chance of getting everything that you need. But more importantly, at the end of the conversation, after you obtain the truth, you want to make sure that the documentation is all put together, you want to investigate the admission that this individual gave you, or their version of their truth, and validate that information.
So remember, after the interview is a very important part that we got to continue before we get called into a situation where we have to testify. Now, with that, I want to thank you for attending the W-Z Interviewing Tip presented by IAI. Hope to see you again soon.