Interview Guide for Employers

How to Become a Great Interviewer

Over the years, many of our clients have asked us for suggestions on the best way to interview job candidates. While effective interviewing is something of an art as well as a science, there are some easy-to-follow techniques and procedures you can use to improve your interviewing skills. Here are some of them, which we’ve culled from our experience and the questions our clients most frequently ask.

How to Use Your Time Most Effectively

Don’t you hate it when you have to hire someone? Interviews invariably interrupt your daily routine and throw you off schedule. Worse, if the process gets stretched out over a period of weeks, your recollections of the first people you interviewed are vague and the best candidate may have taken another job.

Try this: Block out time — an afternoon or whole day — to conduct initial screening interviews of several candidates.

Shut out all interruptions and limit your interviews to 45 minutes. That way you can make immediate comparisons and save the lengthy “Cook’s Tour” for the one or two finalists.

How to Tell Which is the Best Candidate

Interviewing is an inexact art because judging the talents and abilities of people is very subjective. And when you add personal chemistry and motivation to the formula for finding the right person, the selection process can become downright intimidating.

Approach the process without preconceived ideas of the “successful candidate.” There is no magic in “a minimum of 5 years experience” or a certain kind of degree. They are only artificial benchmarks that serve to complicate the process with criteria that may not be necessary or even relevant.

Try this: Focus on the job duties and then find someone who can perform them.

Sounds too easy? Follow these simple steps:

  1. Make a list of all the duties of the job
  2. Select the three duties with the highest priorities
  3. Ask questions to uncover the person who can perform those duties most effectively

Achieving Your Interview Objectives

You must accomplish three objectives in an interview within a limited time period (45 minutes to one hour at the most):

  1. Uncover the experience that qualifies the candidate who can do your job
  2. Evaluate the personal chemistry of the candidate to match your company’s values
  3. Sell the candidate on the opportunity with your company

That’s why it’s so important to know what you are going to ask in the first interview, and to be sure that you maintain consistency by covering the same ground with all of the candidates.

Try this: The patterned interview.

Before you meet any candidates, write down a series of questions about professional experience, technical knowledge and career accomplishments you wish to know about each person. Have them typed (leave room to write in answers) and duplicate the form. Click here to see a sample patterned interview.

Some Good Questions to Ask

You must accomplish three objectives in an interview within a limited time period (45 minutes to one hour at the most):

  1. Uncover the experience that qualifies the candidate who can do your job
  2. Evaluate the personal chemistry of the candidate to match your company’s values
  3. Sell the candidate on the opportunity with your company

With your patterned interview sheet in hand, you should be able to get the basic information you want from each candidate. When you want a candidate to clarify or elaborate on a response to reveal initiative, motivation, attitude or management/organizational skills, try these:

Initiative Questions

  1. What career accomplishments are you most proud of?
  2. How do you feel about being closely (or loosely) supervised?
  3. What did you dislike about your most recent job?
  4. What did you do to change it?

Motivation Questions

  1. What are your goals for the next two years? Next five years?
  2. What have you done to continue your education that is related to your career?
  3. What does “job security” mean to you?

Attitude Questions

  1. What job values are important to you?
  2. What do you think of your most recent boss?
  3. How do you feel about doing routine work?

Management/Organization Skills

  1. What is your supervisory style?
  2. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a marginal employee. How did you discipline him/her? What was the outcome?
  3. What positions have you held in trade, professional, civic or charitable organizations?

Selling Your Company and Job Opportunity

If you like what you’ve heard in an interview, be sure the candidate leaves enthusiastic about the opportunity with your company.

Whether you intend to make an offer immediately or will need to refer the candidate to others for additional interviews, don’t assume that candidates are eager to go to work for you!

If you like this person, chances are other employers will be favorably impressed also, so you need to highlight the benefits of working for you.

Try this: Emphasize positive points relating to your industry, company, position and job environment and values.

  1. Industry— What are the forecasts for growth in your industry? How about industry stability? Is it a cyclical industry?
  2. Company — How does your company compare with your competitors? What was your growth for the past 3-5 years? What are your projections for the next 3 years? Why should those goals be achieved?
  3. Position — If the position is available because of a recent promotion or company growth, that’s an important selling point. What will the candidate gain in career growth? What is the visibility of this position and its impact on the company?
  4. Job environment and values — What are your corporate values? What tangible evidence is there that your corporate values are being achieved? Describe your physical facilities.

Decision Time

There is no such thing as the perfect candidate. That’s why it’s so vital to remain focused on the critical job duties throughout the interviewing process. As soon as the interview is concluded, while the meeting is fresh in your mind, summarize your thoughts about the candidate.

Try this: Prepare a simple balance sheet to record your reactions. Headline the left side “Reasons for Hiring” and the right side “Reasons for Concern.” Don’t be surprised if the person you like best doesn’t seem to fit your original idea of what you wanted. In fact, that kind of conclusion may indicate that you successfully established your real needs and made the best use of the interviewing process.

A final word of caution. The best candidates have several options — only one of which is joining your company. When you find a person you like, cut the red tape to accelerate the hiring process. Unnecessary delays often send the wrong signal to a candidate. If your best prospect becomes disenchanted and loses interest, then your screening time and skilled interview techniques have been wasted. Then it’s back to “Become A Great Interviewer!”