As the employment market improves and candidates have more options, hiring the right person for the job has become increasingly difficult. After you have written a great job advert and shortlisted the applicants, schedule the formal interviews to get the best talent onboard.
The key to conducting a perfect job interview is in the preparation and approach. The few steps listed below will ensure both for best results.
Basics
Mobile to kept on silent or if expecting an urgent call then try to keep it in vibration mode. Avoid picking up calls or replying to messages in between the interview. Make the candidate comfortable by offering a glass of water.
Focus more on candidate qualities and try to figure out if he/she would fit into the requirement of your organisation or not. Conduct the entire interview in a simple and structured manner.
1: Develop job-related questions by talking to employees about their current role
.What are the candidate’s present responsibilities?
.What is the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics (KSAOs) required for their growth?
.Which of the above are you willing to train in a new employee?
2: Ask the right types of questions by sticking to behavioural and situational interview questions
For a situational interview question (“What would you do in…”), you can describe a major job requirement that the candidate will be doing on the job. And for a behavioural interview question (“Tell me about a time when you…”), ask the candidate how they handled situations that are likely to happen in the role you’re hiring for.
3: Include a job-related test
One of the best ways to predict a candidate’s future on-the-job performance is to give candidates a test of their on-the-job performance. For roles such as sales, job-related tests tend to be straightforward: get candidates to write you a mock cold prospecting email or conduct a mock sales call about your product or service.
4: Conduct Structured Interview
To conduct an interview that’s structured it is essential to have a template. Ask all the candidates the same questions, in the same order. If you don’t follow a structure, and instead conduct slightly different interviews for each candidate, you won’t be able to compare across candidates in a fair and objective way.
5: Create an interview scorecard using a rating scale
Create a simple rating scale (e.g., 1 = Bad, 2 = Average, 3 = Good, 4 = Great) and use it to rate your candidate’s answers during the interview. Record or take a few notes about candidate’s answers to justify the ratings you give. Using a rating scale ensures you can use candidate’s overall scores to compare them with each other instead of relying on gut instinct and first impressions.
Remember: our gut instincts can be very unreliable especially when it comes to candidates who are often masters at selling themselves. Use the data to hire instead.
6: All things being equal, hire the candidate with the highest interview score
Congratulations on your fantastic new hire!