Conducting an interview is very important step in hiring an employee. This is one of the best ways to know the person’s skills and abilities. A round of decision making is done after interviewing the candidate, whether he is really fit for the job or not. It’s a gateway to understand the candidate’s interpersonal and communication abilities. It is a time to show the liveliness to his personality. It is also an opportunity to verify his qualifications and resume. Goal is to hire a best employee you can. This can be only done through conducting the best interview.
Following are the few steps to help in conducting an effective interview.
- Set your needs and purposes
Qualifications and experiences are just a part of evaluating the person. But first before you check that, you should be clear about the particular business need you want to hire an employee. Every person will excel in one or the other field. Our primary job is to check if he can perfectly solve our business do. Include all the attributes that a candidate should have to perform in that job.
- Identify the critical need.
- Measure the success in that field.
- Set the attributes to be fulfilled.
- What parameter defines the word ‘perfect’ in a perfect candidate?
Suppose you need an excellent developer. Which parameter makes you define the word ‘excellent’? It can be certificates, a written test, his work experience, accomplishments or even the references. Choose the parameter first. Apart from these, there are other things which are important. His attitude and interpersonal skills and personality matters a lot too.
Go in that direction and choose the best person.
- Make sure interviewee is aware of the whole process.
Candidates selected for the interview should be aware of all the details like when is the interview, where is the interview, persons who will interview etc. They should have a clear idea about everything. Make sure that there are no surprises. If not, the best candidate might think your company is not right fit for him/her.
- Pre interview home work
You should study the candidates resume before -hand. This will let you know what kind of questions to ask a particular candidate. The best way to do this homework is to imagine you as a candidate. It’ll make you create questions like: What did I accomplish? What projects did I work on? What does that say about my interests? Take a quick survey of the candidate on the social media.
- More like a conversation, less like an interrogation.
Most of the best interviews are like conversations. But it is hard to have a normal regular conversation with a person you barely know. The more research you do on a candidate, it will be pretty easy to have a normal conversation with the person. Be a good listener when he is answering. Maintain a good eye contact and be aware of your body language. Make the interviewee as comfortable as possible. If both of you have common interests, then discuss about it. This will help like an icebreaker technique which makes both the interviewee and interviewer relax.
- Question upon a question
Ask follow-up questions. When a person answers a question, ask a follow up questions like Why? When? How? Who?
- Reference check
The candidate will provide a contact reference list. Don’t just contact this list. You might know someone who knows this candidate. Use your network in knowing more about the candidate. This will let you know his skills, abilities and experiences better.
- Conduct one more interview
Even if you are sure of the candidate’s skills and abilities, always take another chance to make it absolutely positive. This is necessary to not let your intuition and belief ruin everything. In fact, great candidates will not mind attending another interview. This will give a chance for them to make sure that they are taking a right decision too.
- Enthusiastic offer
Show that you are excited when you found a right candidate. Here right candidate implies the best one among everyone. So, let that excitement out and make them feel like your company is lucky to have them as an employee.
Mistakes Interviewers make:
- Talking too much: If the interviewer talks too much, then the required information that should be collected will be lost in the conversation. It’ll make the applicants feel like the interviewer may not be that interested in them.
- Accepting general answers: Ask them to describe the information in detail, so that it’ll offer you a gateway to know about his skills and abilities. If possible, ask them to provide examples of where and how they used those skills.
- Depending on the memory instead of notes: When you are really interviewing many candidates, then it becomes very confusing and difficult to remember every candidate’s skills, abilities and the way he performed in the interview. In such cases, making notes will help a lot. This will present a clear idea of a particular candidate.
- Include more than one interviewer :
Including more than one interviewer increases the reliability because even if you miss testing a skill, the other interviewer might do it. It’ll help us in deciding the acceptable best candidate by more than one person.
- Interview should not be too short or too long :
It is best to limit the number of questions to be asked. Ask not more than four to six questions in a thirty minute interview and not more than eight to twelve questions in a one hour interview. This is the optimal duration which will let us gather as much information as possible.
- Here are some common interview questions :
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- What are your great accomplishments in your last jobs? And why?
- Where do you want to be in the next five years?
- Describe some situation where your work is criticized?
- What kind of the supervisor gets the best work out of you?
- How far do you think you can go in this company? Why?
- What do you do in your leisure time? What are your hobbies?
- Salary expectations
- What part of your job do you enjoy the most?