Are you looking to improve your ability to conduct a quality interview? Here are 5 tips to help you make your interviews more productive:
Understand Your Needs
When going through the interview process it’s important to view each candidate as a solution to one or more of your company’s needs. You’re not hiring someone to simply fill a role, you’re hiring someone to produce the results you need for your company’s well being.
Determine what it truly looks like for someone to successfully meet the needs of your company and hire based on that clear vision. Go as far as to consider the culture of your company and hand craft the interview to coincide directly with it. It will be pretty obvious if the candidate isn’t able to mesh with the ecosystem of your company culture by the feedback they give to directed questions.
Ensure that Your Candidate Can Come Prepared
Regardless of how comfortable a candidate typically is in the interview process, there are always going to be some nerves on their end. The last thing they need on interview day is uncertainty, confusion or surprises. Make sure that they know exactly what to expect. Let them know precisely when and where the interview will take place in addition to who is going to be conducting the interview. When there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion, probability high that the chaos will hinder their ability to give you the best sense of who they are.
Do Research on Your Candidate
When reviewing a candidate’s resume as you prepare for the interview, it’s important to read between the lines and infer as much as you possibly can about them. Take a look a what they were able to accomplish at previous places of employment. Look at how often they changed jobs or positions within a given company and what those changes tell you about their performance and career goals. This will help you to better identify with them and give you a better indication about their strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures.
Conduct Your Interview in a Conversational Fashion
Learning about your candidate is also of great benefit in terms of being able to conduct your interview in a relaxed and conversational fashion. It’s really best to create this vibe during your interview because it helps to lighten the atmosphere and allows you to get to know your candidate on a deeper level. It allows them the ability to open up and allows you the ability to ask probing questions that are more specific to the individual.
Allow the Interviewee Plenty of Opportunity to Speak
Typically the interviewee will feel nervous to interrupt or speak too much in the interview process. If you’re not conscious of it, it can be easy for you to take over and now allow enough time for the candidate to give appropriate feedback. This doesn’t allow for you get to know more about your candidate and make the best possible hiring decision. Let them speak and listen to what they have to say. They will tell you if they are a good fit by the things that they say. What they verbalize during the interview is a more reliable indicator of who they are than what is written on they resume.