How to interview
Various interviewing techniques can be incorporated into the recruitment process to make sure you get all the information you need to make a value judgement on the suitability of your candidate however, there are three basic "traps" that interviewers can fall into:
Intuitive interviewing:
The most common trap to fall into, this leads to interviewers over-valuing attributes such as communication skills, intelligence and self-confidence.
Intuitive interviewers relate to candidates who are really good at presenting themselves but may not have the required attributes to perform the role. Often based on 'gut-feel' decisions, this can lead to the dismissing of a great candidate for superficial reasons.
Analytical interviewing:
This can can cause interviewers to get caught up in 'must haves' and not allow themselves to think outside the box.
You may over-value experience, education and skills, whilst underestimating motivation, ability to learn and grow and performance in comparable situations.
Relationship interviewing:
Heavily geared to style, personality and first impressions, relationship interviewing allows the interviewer to "over-talk and under-listen" and to ignore performance standards.
The interviewer can often seem more like a sales person which an make it very difficult for interviewers using this style to negotiate with candidates at offer stage.
How do you avoid these styles?
- Stay objective throughout the interview and recognise when you are forming biases
- Have a prioritised list of deliverables defining the real job
- Conduct a 20-minute performance-based phone interview before - meeting with the candidate (to minimise the impact of personality and first impressions)
- Have a pre-planned, structured interview guide with performance-oriented questions to keep you on track
- Get detailed examples of comparable accomplishments including the results achieved and the process used to achieve them
- Obtain an understanding of the candidate's personal accomplishments and the team and environment involved
- Talk about real work instead of hypothetical issues
- Look for six to eight traits to predict success to eliminate first impressions
- Gauge initiative, ability to learn and past comparable results to reduce emotional bias
- Listen more than you talk
