Some find interviewing a doddle, others face sleepless nights for days beforehand. Whatever your confidence levels are, remember – the general idea of job interviews is to give candidates a great chance to show how good they could be in the job; your role in that is to make sure candidates have ample opportunity to shine.
Being unprepared, nervous or a gibbering wreck isn’t going to look good to your candidates (especially if they are displaying any of those too!) or help them feel at ease. So, our first tip is to make sure you find some training to help you understand and manage the process. If you don’t have time or money for training, then practice with someone who knows how it’s done.
Some useful pointers we should then follow ahead of interviewing include:
- Meet in advance with the colleagues you’ll be interviewing alongside, discuss and agree how the interviews will run, who’ll cover which skills and what questions will be asked. This will give you a better feel for the format of the interviews and help to settle your nerves.
- Read the CVs or application forms of all those you’ll be interviewing and pick out those areas / examples you want to cover with specific questions. Then, write out those questions so you won’t forget them.
Once it’s interview time:
- Take steps to make the candidate feel at ease at the start of the interview. Shake hands, smile, introduce everyone, and set out the interview process so they are aware of what’s about to happen. If you think that you are nervous, put yourself in the shoes of the candidate. If they get this job it will be a big change in their life, so they are obviously nervous. For you as the interviewer, tomorrow is just another work day.
- Remember to use the right type of questions:
- Open questions – the ideal ones to get a conversation going. These can include asking for opinion, examples of work or achievements. They can start with phrases like ‘Can you talk me through a time when’ or ‘Could you explain for me how…’
- Closed questions – only to be used when you are looking for brief answer, e.g. Yes / No, and very useful when you want to bring an aspect of the interview to a close
- Probing questions – to be used when you want a candidate to expand further on something they’ve already said.
- Make sure you give the candidate the opportunity at the end to ask any questions they might have as this is an important opportunity to allow them to show the knowledge they have accrued about the company in advance of the interview, and finally:
Let them know what the next steps are, so they are clear when they will hear from you about the next steps in the process and whether they have been successful.
It's key to remember that the job interview will help form the candidate's first impression of you and your company. On that basis, it's vital you get it right the first time.
