Employee Selection: Build Your Team with Successful Interviews

You have a vacancy to fill. You’ve worked out just what experience and abilities are needed to handle the role – now you need to find the right person for the job. The interview is where most of the action takes place.

Interviews are never easy. In the space of an hour or so you have to learn enough about someone you’ve probably never previously met to commit to the time, effort and cost of putting them on the payroll. Their investment is mostly the time it takes to answer your questions; your investment is potentially thousands of dollars, pounds or euros. You need to get it right so the interview is a critical process.

Before you even get to the interview though you should have screened the applications you received to narrow the field to those applicants who really show promise. When you do this look in particular for:

• Gaps in the employment history
• Conflicts with starting and ending dates
• Insufficient information about duties performed
• Inconsistencies in details about education
• Spelling and language usage errors
• Incorrect following of instructions

When you have your list of applicants to be offered interviews you can concentrate on making the interview as effective as possible in choosing among them when the time comes. Good interviews require preparation. Develop a set of questions that relate to the job’s responsibilities and will probe the applicant’s strengths and weaknesses. Try to be open-ended so that candidates are encouraged to ‘sell themselves’ into the role.

If you ask other members of your team to join you in conducting the interviews, decide which questions each of you will address. Try to give candidates a sense of teamwork to leave them with a positive impression of the business.

Choose a comfortable setting conducive to conversation for the interview. Ensure the area is sufficiently private and do not allow any interruptions during the interview.

Consider the location’s accessibility for candidates with disabilities and any difficulties candidates might have in finding it. Avoid days of religious observance that might affect candidates’ availability.

Allow enough time with each candidate for a relaxed and unhurried interview. If it looks as if you are in a hurry to finish the interview it suggests that the applicant’s time has been wasted.

For your own benefit, avoid scheduling interviews during times you know are busy for you, and don’t schedule too many interviews for one day. Aim to complete all interviews within a week or less if possible.

A company usually telephones the candidate to invite him or her to an interview. The invitation should include the following information, or this information should be sent to the candidate as soon as possible after the invitation:
• Title of the position
• Time, location of the interview and directions on how to get there
• Name(s) and title(s) of the interviewer(s)
• Where the candidate should report before the interview
• The salary offered (expressed as a range)

Job interviews always involve some form of salary negotiation. You need to have a pretty good idea of the going rate for a particular type of role. It’s usually best to express the salary as a range in order to allow for some flexibility when it’s discussed at a later time.

Provide a written job description to the candidate that includes all the major job responsibilities. Describe the position and where it fits into the organization’s structure and the other positions he/she will be working with.

If you want applicants to bring anything with them, then tell them ahead of time. Don’t assume they will bring it with them.

Before the interviews begin prepare a checklist of essential job elements, responsibilities and requirements that you can go through with each candidate. It’s important that all candidates receive the same information about what the job is and what it requires.

At each interview introduce yourself and greet the candidate with a handshake and a smile. Most candidates will be nervous and it’s important that do all you can to put him or her at ease. Don’t proceed immediately to the job related questioning; use ‘small talk’ to start the conversation.

Encourage candidates to assess themselves against the requirements of the job. To obtain as much information as possible regarding the candidate in relation to the role, encourage responses by using open-ended questions such as, “How do you think you would perform in this job?”; “What contributions do you feel you would make to this business?”, or “How did you deal with this sort of issue in your last job?”

Encouraging an open-ended assessment like this will also provide you with feedback on whether you have adequately described the job and its requirements. If candidates obviously haven’t understood something important, be sure you raise it early in the interview.

The importance of paying attention and listening to the applicant’s responses cannot be stressed highly enough. You should also be aware that your body language may be revealing your immediate impression of the candidate, so don’t let negative reactions become obvious.

Be honest. If there are any aspects about the job that are especially difficult, including personality clashes with senior team members, let applicants know about them. If the salary is not negotiable this too should be pointed out.

It’s important to avoid stating any type of apparent commitment to an appointment at the interview, even if you feel certain this candidate is the one for the job. Background checks or other factors may arise later that could lead you to change your commitment and that would put you and the company in an embarrassing position.

Tell applicants what the next step will be and the timeline for decision-making. If you’re going to conduct second interviews tell the applicant when they will be notified if they’ve made the short list. The candidates are also interviewing you, and who wants to work for a place that can’t make a decision?

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Copyright 2004, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.