Job interviews, either in-person (a “face to face” job interview), remotely via video (Zoom, Teams, Skype, other), or via phone (becoming more and more rare) are still a central part of the job application and interviewing process. While job interviews have definitely changed, they are here to stay.
Since employers should always strive to find the best employees, the employer and interviewers should maximize the job interview’s accuracy and effectiveness of finding the next best employee to hire. Thus, the interview’s structure and content and the interviewers’ skill in interviewing should all lead to the best outcome possible.
While there are several different job interview models that can be used to interview job candidates, the most common model is one of questions and answers, going back and forth between the interviewers and the candidate for the job. Since we have described the common structure of a job interview in a previous article, we shall not repeat it here.
Instead, let us focus on how the employer and its interviewers can plan and implement a job interview that aims at truly finding the best person for the job offered. The process starts with setting S.M.A.R.T. goals for the interview (see separate article about S.M.A.R.T. goals). The job interview planning process starts by identifying what is the purpose of the interviews. While most people would think it is trivial, there are several goals that an interview can have, thus it is important to A) Identify and acknowledge the purposes relevant to you B) identify the purposes in order of importance.
Steps A and B above have an important role to play, since they will direct your efforts and focus while choosing the interviewing model implemented and also the actual content of the job interview. For example, if one of the purposes of the interview is also have the job candidate learn that you are a person first oriented employer, then an interview structured as a laid-back and friendly conversation should be considered rather than a frontal, “behind the desk” type of job interview. This decision that seems simple, demands a series of actions and preparations such as choosing a more personable location to interview, perhaps more intimate on a relative scale to an office or conference room. The location can be colorful, full of images of people being happy, plants, soft music, etc. Anything is possible if it serves your ultimate goal.
It is important to identify the formal and informal messages you wish to convey. The following process would be to identify how to convey these messages and when exactly during the job interviewing process (before the interview?; during the interview?; after the interview?). For example, showing by example what the employer’s values are, is a way to convey such a message. For example, if it is important to the employer to make their employees shine, then by allowing the candidate to answer in full, freely express themselves, and sell themselves is a way of sending such a message.
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The next step will be to formulate the email or letter that you will use to inform the candidates for the job of your initial interest in their candidacy. Once more, this is an opportunity to convey messages regarding more than just your interest in them moving forward in the search process. You could share your vision, mission, values and requirements for the job, then indicated that they meet most if not all of them and for that reason are moving forward in the process.
Continue the process by making a list of messages that you wish to convey and a list of skills, values and more that are important that the person chosen for the job will have. Write down 2-3 time more questions than what the actual time allocated for the job interview will allow. Assign to each question as many relevant messages, values, skills etc. that the specific question deals with or relates to. After doing so for all questions on the list, choose the questions that help you touch as many of what is important to you as an employer as possible.
Create a score sheet for each interviewer to use with the job candidate’s information and room to score them on each question and/or write notes during the job interview. This will serve as future reference for making the decision, and also allows to compare between interviewers and job candidates. It is important to also have room on the form to indicate what is the overall decision regarding the candidate in relation to more advanced stages of the search process or the final decision. If you choose to be a teacher and not just an interviewer, you could choose to use the form to give feedback to the candidates. While this is not common, it can serve to see the candidate’s ability to improve upon feedback given from stage to stage.
Of course, the questions do not have to be questions at all. You may choose to use scenarios with accompanying questions as follow ups, dilemmas, and other times exercises. Your interview can be a mix of several options. Whichever path you chose, make sure that all interviewers are familiar with the tools and models used, the forms, and the entire process. On the form itself, make sure to clearly indicate what are the goals/objectives of each question, exercise, etc. to make sure that the evaluation process of each candidate is as similar as possible.
During the interview, choose if you wish to give each interviewer an equal share of the load, and equal importance of questions, the right to follow up on a candidate’s answer, etc. How the interview is conducted, which language is used (terms, phrases, tone, attitude), body language and eye contact make a difference. In order to have as many possible willing candidates, it is advised to take an approach where the interviewer understands that the candidate needs to also chose the employer after the job interview.
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