How To Interview Potential Employees

Interviewing Potential Employees

The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process in most organizations. Hiring the ‘right’ employee will help your organization grow and succeed. Hiring the ‘wrong’ one will do the reverse. That's one reason it's so important that you're very thorough in your interview. Another reason is that your decision is an indication of your ability to manage. A good or bad choice will reflect on you. Your new hire will interact not only with you, but with your boss, your colleagues, your staff, and your customers.

Other background checking and work history references provide much less personalized and more factual information. You should have these checks added to your hiring decisions, too. But the job interview is the key to assessing the candidate's cultural fit. The job interview remains the tool you can use to get to know your candidate on a more personal basis.

While human resource professionals receive training in hiring practices, the department/line managers generally do not. These managers are often required to interview job candidates who will potentially become their subordinates. Many articles about job interviewing provide advice and tips for potential employees. Here, we will address the needs of those who must interview potential employees.

Is The Interview Important?

Typically, the HR department is responsible for screening candidates to verify the information on their resumes. Once that is done, qualified candidates are generally passed along to the department/line manager of the department in which they'll work. This department/line manager is likely to be working very closely with the job candidate hired. This is why it is so important that you're very thorough in your interview. Another reason is that your decision is an indication of your ability to manage, as mentioned above.

You'll be responsible for making sure the candidate:
• Can do the job well;
• Fits in well with other members of your department; and
• Will be able to work well with you.

How to Select Candidates to Interview

Before scheduling a job interview with a candidate, review each candidate's cover letter and resume. When faced with a large number of candidates, it's important to use tools (if available) that help to separate the good candidates from the average. These will help you select the candidates for the job interview. They will also help you prepare your list of questions to use to telephone screen candidates and ask during the job interviews.

You may also like to do the following:
• Form an interview team;
• Hold a recruiting planning meeting; and
• Devise a list of qualities, skills, and experience to use to screen resumes and job interview candidates,

One useful approach is to do a telephone screening of candidates. This will help to save your time as well as the candidate’s time (coming to your company).

Telephone Interview / Screen Candidates Prior to an Interview

The telephone interview or candidate screen allows the employer to determine if the candidate's qualifications, experience, workplace preferences and salary needs are congruent with the position and organization. The telephone job interview saves managerial and candidate time and eliminates unlikely candidates.

Your Should Prepare For The Interview

The interview team was selected at your earlier recruiting planning meeting, so the interviewers have had time to prepare. You should also prepare some general questions before interviewing any candidates. You will need to take some time to review each job candidate's cover letter and resume. This will give you the opportunity to prepare questions that are relevant to the candidate's work history.

You will want to use the list of qualities, skills, knowledge, and experience you developed for the resume screening process. Use this list to make sure each interviewer understands their role in the candidate assessment. Review each interviewer’s questions, too, to make sure the interview questions selected will obtain the needed information.

Ask open-ended interview questions that reveal the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses to determine job fit.

During the job interview, help the candidate demonstrate his or her best knowledge, skills, and experience. Start with small talk and ask several easy questions until the candidate seems relaxed. Then, hold a behavioral interview.

Behavioral interviews are the best tools you have to identify candidates who have the behavioral traits and characteristics that you have selected as necessary for success in a particular job. Additionally, behavioral interviews ask the candidate to pinpoint specific instances in which a particular behavior was exhibited in the past. In the best behaviorally-based interviews, the candidate is unaware of the behavior the interviewer is verifying.

In addition to the candidate's verbal responses during the job interview, observe all of the nonverbal interaction, too, as this is part of the non-verbal communication.

Assess Candidates Following the Job Interview

After the interview, you need to do a post-interview assessment of the candidates. Have a standard format for each interviewer to use to assess each candidate following the job interview. After the assessment, you should have several candidates who you'll want to ask back for a second or even third job interview.

Conduct Yourself Well During The Interview

You should conduct yourself well during the interview as the candidate will be assessing you as much as you are assessing the candidate. You represent the image of your organisation.

You should try to put the interviewee at ease since that will help insure that you get more honest answers. However, you shouldn't give the impression that you are relaxed type of manager if you aren't one. It's as much about the potential employee deciding if this place is right for him or her as it is about you deciding if the candidate is right for the job. If this isn't a good match, from either party's perspective, it's best to find out during the interview.

Be polite and considerate. Making the candidate waiting, or taking phone calls in the middle of an interview reflects poorly on you and your company. This person you are interviewing may some day work for you, or, in this fast moving world, you may someday work for him or her.