Being a recruiter is tough. With all the open positions and the run to close it in the defined turnaround time, ensuring interview effectiveness often takes a backseat. To avoid such situations and ensure an effective interview process, we must lay the foundation right. Let’s understand how to structure and prepare for interviews to ensure the right talent is chosen.
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How to structure an effective interview?
The major area that needs work and focus is structuring an interview. We’ll divide this part into two sections where the first section will focus on things you should keep in mind pre-interview and the second section will be about what to do during an interview.
Section-I: Pre-interview
- Take a brief on job analysis: Before conducting an interview, thoroughly analyze and research the job description. This will help you identify the qualities, skill set, experience and key competencies needed for choosing the right talent.
For example, if you have an open position in a content team, ask the hiring manager about the specific qualifications, skills, experience needed, and purpose of the hiring like is it for some specific project. Do they need a social media manager or a copywriter?
Create a decent question bank: Develop a justifiable question bank along with analyzing the job description including behavioral, technical, skill –based, and situational questions. Doing so will help you understand the candidate’s abilities better. Generate a set of commonly asked questions for the open position.
For example, if you are hiring a candidate for content team, you can google or use prompts on AI platforms such as “interview questions for content writer” or “Questions to ask a content writer with 2-year experience”.
Device a rating scale: Craft a rating scale such as 1: Excellent, 2: Good, 3: Average, to evaluate the candidate’s performance after every question. Doing so will help you to compute the result of the interview with utmost clarification.
For this purpose, HROne has a feedback feature where the interviewer can record the feedback during the interview. It helps the recruiter to analyze and shortlist the candidate for the next round to a great extent.
Interview panel: Always consider whether you need an interview panel or not before the interview. Pros of having an interview panel are diverse questions, you get to showcase the company’s culture, and assess the candidate better. Cons are difficulties in collaboration with interviewers on the panel, increased pressure on the interviewee, and clash in opinions. You may not always need an interview panel; it highly depends on the nature of the job.
For example, if you are hiring a candidate for an entry level job in the content team, you may not need an interview panel but if you are hiring for senior content strategist, you may want to schedule a panel round. Depending on the need for an interview panel, you must prepare an interview schedule to ensure all interviewers are involved and available.
- Decide the format of interview: Choose wisely as there are multiple formats in which you can conduct the interview such as remote interviews, traditional approach, panel interview, group interview, and presentation-based interview. Deciding and evaluating the interview format will help you compute the estimated cost and time and showcase the company culture to the interviewee.
Section-I: During the interview.
- Introduce an icebreaker: Don’t be the “rude” recruiter that nobody likes. Begin with a warm welcome, smile and ask some light questions such as “How are you doing today?”, “What do you do in your free time?” or “Tell me about your favorites”. This will relax the tensed nerves of the candidate and allow them to communicate better with you.
- Provide a background: Once it seems like you are good to go with the interviewee, provide a basic overview of the interview flow and your expectations from the interview. This will give the candidate a brief and better understanding of the process.
- Skill assessment: Uncover the candidate’s skills and knowledge through situational prompts. Since it’s spontaneous, you can evaluate the candidate’s extempore decision-making skills. For instance, you can ask a copywriter “Let’s consider a situation where you have been assigned a critical copywriting project with tight deadline. How do you approach time management to deliver high-quality work on time?”. Through this question, you can assess the time management and prioritization skills of the candidate.
- Company culture fit: Know the values required for a candidate to align with your company culture. Jot down the main cultural elements and draft questions accordingly. For instance, at HROne we put great focus on employee well-being and encourage healthy separation between work hours and personal hours. To assess the candidate on those grounds, we often ask, “How do you typically respond to requests or emails outside of regular work hours?”
- Reverse interviews: Always allow the candidate to ask any questions regarding the job role, team, compensation, and company culture. This will increase transparency and gauge suitability.
- Draft notes: Create notes for the interview including the content of the interview so that you don’t hesitate while interviewing the applicant and the interviewee’s replies to your questions. This will help you to keep a summary of the entire interview.
Top 3 ways to prepare for an interview.
Preparing for the interview is not just important for the applicant, but also for the recruiter. Let’s focus on interview preparation strategies together.
- Anticipate candidate questions: Recall your time as an interviewee, look back at the interviews you have taken for the same profile earlier. It’s time to make a list of those questions and prepare satisfactory answers to the questions commonly asked by the interviewees related to the company culture, role, team, training and learning, work environment.
- Practice active listening: Be respectful to the time when candidate speaks. Be a good listener so that you respond to the candidate and ask relevant follow-up questions.
- Prepare tailored questions: Personalize your questions according to each candidate to demonstrate attentiveness and to identify the specific skill and experience mentioned in their applications.
3 Interview Techniques You Should Know
Conducting successful interviews can be stressful at times. A deloitte report states that 60% of their respondents have already or are currently updating and revamping their talent sourcing strategy, and another 27% are considering changes. Here are some simple techniques-
- The “start-stop-start” technique: Begin on a lighter note asking the candidate about topics that are not related to the job. Once you feel that the candidate is now comfortable to openly share their thoughts, transition to the skill based, in-depth and challenging questions related to the position.
After the candidate is done answering, circle back to a lighter topic to leave a positive impact on the interviewee and release the tension in the air. - The “Pause-and-Prompt” Technique: After a candidate answers a question, take a pause for a few seconds. This might leave an awkward-silence situation, but it will also encourage the candidate to provide detailed explanation and insightful responses.
- The “What-If” Technique: Ask situation-based questions to the employee and allow them to respond with their actions to the situation. This will help you to understand their immediate responsive mechanism, creativity, problem-solving skills.
What to do after an interview?
Your job is not done once the interview is concluded. Your role as a recruiter requires some afterwork.
- Debrief with a diverse panel: In case of an interview panel, discuss and compute the candidate assessment with the panel members. Make sure you include everyone in the evaluation process.
- The “Thank You, But No Thanks” call: Instead of intimating the unsuccessful candidates through a generic mail, call them personally. Thank them for their time and provide brief feedback on their interview. This will leave a positive and lasting impact on the candidate.
Use words like, “did not make it”, “precious time”, “areas of improvement”, “we appreciate your efforts” instead of “you failed the interview”, “thanks for your time”, “areas you lack in”.By implementing these strategies, you can conduct the most effective and successful interview process. Always remember that your goal is not just to hire a candidate by assessing their skills and qualifications but also to demonstrate your company culture and work environment.
With this we will conclude this blog. Hope it helped. Keep Reading, Keep Thinking and Keep HRing!