Interviewing could be the most important role of any manager, doing it well is how you can keep attracting and selecting the best candidates for your company. And yet, we are so bad at it! We have all been in a horrible interview, walking out the door feeling like you wasted your morning and will never see these people again. With a few tips and tricks we can improve our interview experience tenfold.
An interview is an uncomfortable place, for the interviewer and especially the candidate. As your company grows, interviewing is going to take up more of your time and you are going to hold interviews more frequently. One thing that will save you a ton of headache in the long run is being prepared.
We’re all busy, but coming into hiring an employee takes some thought on the front end before your schedule interviews. Being strategic in the way you plan your hire will make sure you find the right person.
- Think carefully about the person you’re going to hire and their job profile. Build a model of the ideal candidate. What characteristics is the perfect person going to have? If you have a model to compare candidates against, you will be able to find the best fit possible. Tip: You may find this model in a previous employee who has been promoted.
- Selecting resumes that meet the requirements of the job. The resume selection stage is the initial gate to screening candidates out that are not a good fit. At this stage you aren’t judging based on gut feelings but checking boxes from their resume to make sure they have the right work experience and education necessary for your open position.
- Once you are at the point of sitting down with these candidates you’re going to want to have some requirements to check off as they are sitting there talking to you. The difference between hiring a salesperson and a coder are going to be huge so prepare your questions for this person to showcase their skills. You need to set up your questions so that your candidate can clearly tell you what kind of person they are including their personality and the skillsets they have that are necessary for the position.
Have an interview roadmap that you want to follow. Maintaining control of the interview by leading down a path eventually ending in a place where you can make a decision on hiring this person or not. Be thoughtful on the way you want to communicate with your candidate.
Having a list of topics you want to hit on is valuable as you might get sidetracked with a story. Once this story is finished you can come back to your next topic to stay on track.
Ask questions about where they worked and what skills they used at those jobs. Getting specifics about what projects they worked on at previous jobs or during their schooling will be useful while looking at how they will fill this role at your company. Once you find a project that was similar to the position you’re hiring for you can ask more situation based questions about that project and judge how the candidate will fill voids in your company.
Questions like “Tell me about a time you had to make a decision on this project where there was not already a policy in place.” and “How did people around you react?” and “How did you react to others around you who did not agree with decisions you made?”
Based on the answers to these deep dive questions you can make conclusions on this persons personality and skills.
One major improvement we can make while interviewing is to avoid cognitive biases. These are going to be things like similar to me bias which is exactly what is sounds like. This is where many of the inequalities in the workplace come from such as gender or race. Instead of focusing on the job we focus on shared background or shared schooling, or the fact that we are from the same area. Focus on the position and not your personal preferences or ideas.
Another powerful bias is the overconfidence bias. This bias is proven through the simple fact that many of us think we are great interviewers. We don’t even realize our judgement are clouded. For example if you go into an interview believing that you are really good at reading people, you’re may not even look at the candidates resume which could show some major red flags.
Training and Practice
As we develop our hiring skills one of the best things we can do is practice interviews to see where our shortcomings show. Sitting down with coworkers and holding mock interviews can help as things come up that we didn’t think about during our planning phase. While it can sometimes be awkward to do this with a colleague but it gets much worse when you have a qualified candidate in front of you.
