Job interview is the first step towards hiring and retaining good employees/Human Capital. If you can ask the right and relevant questions, you’re more likely to select a candidate who’s right for the job. Without good interviewing, you may end up extending an offer to someone who may not be a right fit for your company.
There will always be competition for qualified and talented employees. Hiring right employees is an art, but it also requires certain expertise into interviewing the job candidates . You must be a good listener; you need to know how to drive an interview and you should be able to identify a candidate who is best right fit from the probable list of candidates.
Even with the dynamics in the current marketplace, knowing how to conduct a successful interview can help you find the best employees.
Points to remember for screening and interviewing process:
- Prepare. This may seem obvious, but many hiring managers neglect to review a candidate’s resume prior to the interview. Reviewing a résumé in front of the interviewee is not only rude but smacks of disorganization and poor preparation.
- Set the tone. Let your candidates know that you’re glad to meet them. Also, express your appreciation for the time they’ve taken to come in. Explain how the interview will proceed and then try to follow that format as closely as possible.
- Prepare a script. Don’t underestimate the value of preparing several questions beforehand. Your human resources department may even have a set of prepared questions to use as a guide. Too often, busy managers (is there any other kind?) forget until it’s too late what they wanted to ask. Ask open-ended questions as well as ones that might elicit a more detailed response. For example, you may say, “Tell me what led you to apply for this position.” Later, you could ask, “We’re very deadline oriented here; could you tell me about experiences during which a deadline might have been difficult to meet?” And then listen carefully to the responses. Try to ask a good mix of questions — those that give insight into behavior, elicit opinion, demonstrate experience, and reveal background. When the interview is over you should have a fairly good sense of the person’s likes and dislikes, along with their strengths and weaknesses.
- Listen to your instincts. If a candidate seems too good to be true or seems to lack the skills you need, be honest with yourself as you assess the meeting. In some cases, you may need to pose more pointed questions. On the other hand, no amount of questioning can change a person’s ability to do a job.
- Know what you are looking for in candidate. If you don’t know the skill set required for the open position, chances are you might not ask the right questions, which may confuse the candidate. Make a list of what you’re looking for and then ask pointed questions so that when the candidate walks out the door you know whether or not he or she is a viable choice.
- Manage your time. If you’ve set aside an hour for an interview, do your best to stick with that schedule. But be prepared, too, to cut the meeting short and jump to the more concluding questions. Don’t waste your time or the candidate’s by stretching the meeting out. If there’s no match, no amount of conversation is going to change that.
- Write it down. Forget about remembering everything that transpires during an interview. You’ll want to take notes so that you can review the meeting at a later time. This will be especially important if you’re interviewing many people for the same position.
Conducting a proper interview is one of the tasks in hiring process. To make it more efficient and shorter is still a problem. To overcome careerbuddyonline.com has came up with ProSki analytics which will let employers know about the capability based benchmarking of job candidate before taking interview.
Every job is benchmarked based on all selection criteria and then candidates are evaluated using ProSki to compare with benchmarking. That way, you are interviewing the right candidates and do not waste time with misfit candidates.
Point to remember:
Remember that the candidate is interviewing you as well. You must be aware of the impressions you are making in addition to being proficient at asking suitable questions that will elicit a candidate’s strengths and talents. You’re essentially trying to achieve the same goal as the applicant is selling himself or herself to you and your firm.