If you’re reading this, you are probably spending your days working like me to find out effective ways in conducting interviews in modern days of remote, distance interviews, or more efficiently online interviews. So I will make it quick.
The process of hiring the right candidate begins seriously once one or a series of interview rounds take place even after pre-hiring assessments, shortlisting questionnaires, and intro calls. That is why getting the interview process right is necessary for the long-term benefits of any organization. An interview allows the hiring manager to measure the candidate's ability to describe work scenarios, the ability to think quickly and perform expected jobs efficiently. A job interview also allows the hiring manager to compare potential applicants against each other to choose the one that best fits the requirements of the job and company culture.
Hiring the right employee for the company is a bit challenging process. Finding the right person can result in a productive and successful employment relationship and a positive impact on your work environment. On the other hand, hiring the wrong employee not only will waste your time and resources, but also is toxic to the company environment.
Start with a smile and eye contact, but don't stare. Introduce yourself and ask the candidate to pronounce his/her own. Then find a shared topic to talk about before you get down to the hard questions.
I always start with asking the candidate what types of music s/he likes and whether s/he can stream the song or share the URL to let stream it and listen together. I mostly move forward by sharing mine too so we can find a shared sweet spot.
I mainly invest a little time to check the candidate profile in our ATS platform prior to the interview including checking assessments results, AI machine-led interview results, candidate scorecard, and the previous interview results so I don't waste a time asking the candidate to repeat it over, but definitely raise few questions around the experience, learning points, and the achievements.
Some behavioral challenges during the interview include body language, coming late, mismatching facts during the Q&A that may raise a red flag. Your mood, energy, and passion matter. The level of energy changes after conducting a lot of interviews in a row and it impacts the judgment calls directly while there is a high possibility to miss critical signals.
A complicated challenge during the hiring process is the ability to manage expectations, emotions, and their mixture with pure facts. That becomes even more challenging when you need to examine different aspects of the candidate's emotional stability such as the way the candidate can manage rejection, especially for the sales positions.
Here are some tips to raise the likelihood that you will select the right candidate for the job:
Formulate an interview question in a way that will provoke concrete evidence of how the applicant exhibited successful behavior in the past for the targeted job. A good interviewer makes their candidate comfortable. Ask open-ended, follow-up, and light-hearted questions instead of irrelevant questions. Focus on accomplishments instead of experience, skills, and knowledge. Evaluate how the candidate has achieved those goals. Look for evidence that applicants have taken on difficult challenges and overcome difficulties in the past. Avoid to charisma trap, because a charming candidate is not necessarily the best fit for the job.
You should not just depend on the interview to measure the capabilities of a candidate. Many things can't be measured precisely during the interview, including intelligence, team skills, technical skills, and management skills. Giving them a task or test is much more likely to provide a successful outcome. For example, for Web designers, you should give them the assignment to design a landing page for you. A Project manager can write a project plan based on project scope, and for a Customer service manager, you can give them a project to analyze customer service statistics and plan out the next steps. Provide relevant, real-life scenarios to reveal how candidates think to solve problems. Through the inspection, you'll verify both their skills as well as their mindset.
A successful interview should not necessarily take place as a 1-on-1 interview. You need someone who fits your environment and for that, you should observe your candidate behavior toward their potential colleagues. Give them a chance to spend some time with the team and see how they interact. Get feedback from the people they met outside the interview zone. It can help you a lot to determine candidates' behavior. Determine the action you want to observe and pay attention accordingly. How do they interact with staff members? Do they listen and notice when people speak? Are they taking an interest in learning about other team members or just talking about themselves? These factors influence your work environment and the company will benefit much more if you hire a candidate who has the instincts to adjust accordingly to the culture and atmosphere of the organization.
And for the final note, take some time to evaluate your previous hiring process and the decisions you made. Whether you hired a suitable person or faced a bad experience, you can learn a lot by looking back and reevaluating your decisions. These recruitment strategies will not only help you to conduct a successful interview but also determine the likelihood of the candidate staying with the company for a longer period.
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