A successful interview means the interviewer asks the right questions, listens to the candidates and makes them tell the truth about their capability. This is the basis to help them select the right people.
The tips below will help you improve your interviewing skills.
Plan a smart interview
To be a professional interviewer, you should always respect the punctuality rule. This is more important to higher positions. Your punctuality is a manifestation of your professionalism and a reflection of your company’s corporate image. You should put the interviewing schedule into your calendar and consider it as an important company meeting.
Ensure that you’ll give the candidate every possible good condition: cleanliness of desk and chairs, mobile phone on silent mode or turn off, undisturbed space. You should inform other people in advance of the interview time.
Encourage candidates to give answers
In a friendly manner, ask candidates questions that encourage them to talk during the interview. Such ice-breaking questions may be “Tell us about your typical day at work. Why do you like it? What makes you dislike it?” This will make your candidates feel relaxed to share their information with you, making a good start for your smooth interview process.
Listen more than talk
If you use more than 20% of the interview time to talk, then you won’t give your candidates any chances to talk about themselves. The purpose of the interview is to help you understand your candidate’s skills and qualifications via listening to their answers. Thus, you definitely need to listen to your candidates talk about them, as much as possible.
Ask open-ended questions
Avoid all “Yes” “No” types of questions by which the candidates only answer simply either Yes or No. Instead you should use open-ended questions to encourage your candidates talk about their work, their experience and capability. Such questions like “Why do you think this is right? Or “How did you do this work?” will help you understand better your candidate.
Ask questions before giving detailed job descriptions
By all means avoid describing the job to the candidates before the interview goes into details. An intelligent candidate will know how to utilize your “early” job descriptions to give answers that he guesses you would love to hear. So you should ask your candidate as much as possible before giving him/her detailed job description to get the “truth” of their stories.
Avoid too “standard” questions
Almost any candidates know these typical interview questions “Where would you like to be in the next 5 years? Or “What are your strengths/weaknesses?” Or “Tell us about yourself”. The fact is that so many candidates know these standard questions and they have spent their time for preparing them so well. You don’t want to hear prepared answers, don’t you?
Instead, you should invest time to ask challenging questions to force out the truth about the candidates’ capability, knowledge and skills. You will know their strengths or weaknesses by that way. You can use situational questions to challenge the candidates, such as “What will you do in this situation, that situation…?” Then you will have the best picture about the candidate’s capability.
Consider the number of interview rounds
An interviewing process often has two main rounds. In the first round, the interviewer will screen all applicants to keep about 3 best candidates maximum. In the second round, you will select the best one. The second interview should involve those people who will work directly with the candidates. These people have the most important evaluation about the candidates.
However, many companies still have more than two interview rounds. Candidates come to the interview three, four or even five times. However, you should take into consideration of this truth: lengthy interview process will discourage the interviewees who may even think that the employer is not professional.
Know what you should not ask
Taboo questions that employers should by all means avoid are those that are considered as discriminating against the candidates. These questions are often not related to work such as age, race, marital status or disability of candidates. You can ask these questions if the work really require that, but these questions should be re-phrased so that they are not discriminative.
