Before implementing the interview process for a given position, the HR professional who will be asking the questions should complete the following preparations: Determine the critical success factors of the job. Rank—according to the job specifications—the most important qualities, experiences, education and characteristics that a successful candidate would possess.
Make a list of qualities, skills and types of experience to use to screen resumes and job interview candidates. Select specific questions to determine whether an applicant possesses the critical success factors. Decide the type of interview process that will be used. Review beforehand the job description and the resume of each candidate to be interviewed. Schedule a planning meeting with the appropriate attendees, such as co-workers, an indirect but interested manager or internal customers of the position.
Determine who will interview the candidates. Plan the interview and the follow-up process. Decide on the applicant screening questions for the telephone screens. Identify the appropriate questions for the post-interview assessment of candidates by each interviewer. Framing the Questions For both the employer and the candidate to get the most out of an interview, it is essential to carefully consider the type of questions to ask. Following are some examples of open-ended questions: Tell me about your past work experience.
What are you looking to gain from your next position? Why do you want to work for our company? Why did you leave your last job? Tell me about your relationship with your previous manager: How was it productive? How could it have been improved? Why was math your most difficult subject in school?
Please describe your management style. But such questions can have drawbacks: They do not encourage candidates to elaborate on their feelings or preferences toward particular topics.
They limit candidates' ability to discuss their competencies. They can leave situations unanswered or unclear. They can be frustrating for candidates who may want to explain or state relevant information. Following are some examples of closed-ended questions: How many years of experience do you have as a team leader? Have you ever worked from home? When did you leave your last job? Did you have a productive relationship with your previous manager?
What was your best subject in school? What was your most difficult subject? What was your GPA? Legal Issues Along with choosing an interview approach and shaping the questions ahead of time, the interviewer should become familiar with the types of questions and statements that must be avoided in any interview. Following are examples of questions not to ask during an employment interview: Are you a U. Were you born here? Where are you from? What is your ethnic heritage? What is that accent you have?
How old are you? When were you born? Are you married? Do you have any children? What are your child care arrangements? Questions about family status are not job-related and should not be asked. When did you graduate from high school? What church do you go to? What clubs or organizations do you belong to? Have you ever filed a worker's compensation claim?
You may not ask this question or any related question during the pre-offer stage. What disabilities do you have? There is no acceptable way to inquire about this or any other medical condition.
See : Interview training presentation Guidelines on Interview and Employment Application Questions Federal Laws Prohibiting Job Discrimination Conducting the Interview The manner in which human resource professionals and hiring managers interview applicants can be pivotal in identifying the top candidates for a job. Controlling the interview For an interview to be as useful as possible in the employment-decision process, the interviewer must maintain complete control over the interview at all times.
Here are some tips for listening effectively: Minimize internal and external distractions; focus only on what the applicant is saying. Listen to the full answer before asking the next question. Clarify the candidate's answers if necessary and ask if more information is needed.
Occasionally it may be useful for interviewers to restate an applicant's reply in their own words. Watch the interviewee's facial expressions and body language. Encouraging communication To gain as much information as possible from an applicant, the interviewer should create an atmosphere that promotes communication.
Following are suggestions for building rapport and fostering discussion: Set aside a quiet place for the interview. Schedule enough time so that the interview will not be rushed. Inform the candidate well in advance about the location and time of the interview.
Greet the candidate with a pleasant smile and a firm handshake. Introduce yourself and anyone else who will be involved in the interview. Ask for permission to record the interview or take notes. Begin in a manner that provides a comfortable atmosphere for the candidate. Outline the interview objectives and structure. Try to ask questions that will facilitate discussion. Avoid questions requiring only a yes or no answer.
Keep the questions open-ended so that the applicant has the opportunity to speak freely. Ask only job-related questions. Steer clear of personal, private and discriminatory questions. Start with easier questions and gradually build to more difficult or searching questions.
Ask only one question at a time. If necessary, repeat the question, but try not to rephrase it. Do not lead, prompt, interrupt or help the candidate find an answer. Avoid facial expressions that could lead to an answer. Listen carefully to the candidate's answers. Probe for the applicant's ability to manage and work in teams. Assess whether the candidate would fit with the organization's culture.
Follow-up questions Asking follow-up questions—also called probing—can be necessary when the interviewer does not fully understand a response, when answers are vague or ambiguous, or when the interviewer require more specific information from the applicant.
It is helpful to be familiar with some techniques of probing. Here are a few examples: Could you please tell me more about. I'm not quite sure I understood. Could you tell me more about that? I'm not certain what you mean by.
Could you give me some examples? Could you tell me more about your thinking on that? You mentioned. What stands out in your mind about that? This is what I thought I heard. Did I understand you correctly? What I hear you saying is. Can you give me an example of. What makes you feel that way? You just told me about. I'd also like to know about. Reflection questions Reflection questions are designed to help the interviewer achieve a deeper understanding of the applicant's responses.
Reflection questions might begin with phrases such as: Let me say back to you what I thought I heard you say. That made you think or feel. You mean that. The potential pluses of reflection questions are varied. They can: Demonstrate to the applicant that his or her responses are understood. Rephrase the applicant's response in clearer or more articulate language.
Let the applicant know the interviewer is paying attention. Provide the applicant with an additional opportunity to elaborate on his or her responses. Closing the interview A popular method of closing the interview is to say the interview is ending and to offer the candidate the opportunity to ask questions. In closing an interview, the interviewer may want to: Ask if the candidate is interested in the job based on the information provided during the interview. Ask about availability.
Ask for a list of people who can be contacted for references. Explain the time frame for the rest of the interviews, the subsequent steps in the process and when a decision is likely to be made. Explain how to get in touch with the interviewer and when to expect to hear from him or her. Walk the candidate to the door and thank the person for the interview. Additional Considerations In addition to the general aspects of preparing for and conducting employment interviews already discussed, a few other issues bear consideration.
Over-preparedness The overly prepared applicant can be a puzzle for hiring managers who are trying to determine if the applicant would be a good fit for the position and the organization. There are, however, several techniques that may be useful: Do some research to determine if the questions you are asking are on popular interview preparation websites. If they are, but the interviewer still feel it is important to ask those questions, he or she can consider how to push applicants beyond their prepared responses.
Ask follow up-questions. Keep asking questions until the applicant gives a response that sounds genuine and thoughtful rather than studied and coached. Do not go astray and ask irrelevant questions when trying to generate questions that do not elicit rehearsed responses. Consider that the rehearsed responses may be legitimate and informative. Usually fear of silence is felt most by the inexperienced interviewer. All too often he tends to put forth another question while the respondent is meekly attempting to formulate his own thoughts into a logical reply—all just to keep the air filled with words.
The tendency to hurry questions and answers is compounded by the distorted sense of time that people get during an interview. To understand the amount of distortion, one research group carried out such simple tests as stopping a conversation for a short period.
Consequently, the interviewer in particular should be cautious of pushing forward too quickly. Not only may the words fall far short of the desired goal, but also they may convey misunderstandings. Allowances for the ever-present failures in semantics must constantly be made, and further interrogation conducted, in order that a clear approximation of the true meaning be obtained.
The often posed maxim to the effect that we hear what we wish to hear does not appear at first glance to be a profound statement. Yet it summarizes the mechanics that lie behind poor listening techniques.
Individual biases and attitudes as well as role perceptions and stereotyping all contribute to the phenomenon of selective perception. Thus, in order to obtain the best possible information, it is necessary that one be aware of his own particular filters that tend to impede if not prevent clear and relatively undistorted reception of information.
It is possible to hear at the rate of from to words per minute over sustained periods. The result is a surplus of thinking time over listening time. The manner in which this surplus time is utilized varies, of course, with the individual. One result is that he makes assumptions about the respondent and his information that are compatible not so much with the interviewee as with what the interviewer has already concluded about the interviewee.
Suffice it to say that it is altogether more rewarding to spend this extra time in formulating hypotheses, which later can be confirmed or denied as more information is revealed, or in constructing a frame of reference for the on-going interview, which allows acquired information to be categorized easily as it is given. The information that is gathered should be approached and analyzed from two points of reference: the objective and the subjective. Content —This term refers, of course, to the factual presentation—what is actually being said and whether or not it is reliable.
The overview of the interview or the pattern of the total situation must be firmly grasped and then noted. In addition, it would seem that the following items are valuable in evaluating information—. Words take on different meanings when differentiated along these lines.
Form can be subdivided into verbal what is heard and into nonverbal what is observed content. Nonverbal expressions are perhaps the purest kind of information transmitted, since they are the most difficult to mask or disguise. By developing an awareness of and a sensitivity to such signals as when a certain fact was mentioned, what prompted the mention, how it was presented, and so forth, the skilled interviewer takes a most useful if not an essential step.
Indeed, this awareness might well be extended to include the nonverbal transmissions of the interviewer himself. In evaluating information from a subjective point of view, the interviewer is attempting primarily to assess feelings and attitudes. It is often argued that these intangibles have no obvious place in an interview that takes place in a business environment.
Yet, even though it is impossible to determine exactly how feelings and attitudes do influence the information transmitted, it is nonetheless crucially necessary that one be fully aware of the fact that these intangibles are powerful, active agents in creating opinions. In a series of taped interviews involving appliance sales and sales in which travel arrangements were a factor, it was found that the sales person often did not hear vital information offered toward the end of the interview or after the sale.
This overlooked information brought about frequent misinterpretations, which, in turn, accounted for many later cancellations and unsettled complaints. All of this could have been avoided if a moderate amount of attention had been exercised so as to prevent a premature termination of the interview.
Part of the conclusion usually consists of a plan of action—something to be done or achieved by either or both parties. A clear, concise summary of this plan, as mentioned earlier, is a most useful technique for achieving good results.
The summary is helpful to both parties because it enables them to realize exactly what has been accomplished as well as to focus on a final concordance. I have observed in my studies that a general failing of interviewers is their inability to document just what occurred in a talk. In their usual—often premeditated—hurry to get to the next interview, they neglect valuable notes. This impatience in many cases is merely behavior resulting from a self-satisfying need to prove to themselves that they are busy.
Adequate notation of significant events, impressions, and agreed-on information are of great value in reconstructing the interview at a later date and in providing a framework for planning the next session. By documenting a series of events, one is able to see things which, if merely left to the fragile human memory, may fuse into meaningless, disconnected scenes in a panorama of many human happenings.
To be sure, too much recorded information may well lead to a surfeit of data, a situation I have also observed in several interviewing offices, but this extreme is easily prevented if good judgment is exercised. Another benefit of effective documentation is that it offers the opportunity to reflect on a previous event. By reviewing and considering this information, one can oftentimes discover errors and flaws in technique and improve his approach. But of all types of learning, self-learning is the most valuable.
There is a moral in the story of the professor who lost his key by the front door, but was discovered on all fours under the lamppost. He rationalized to the police officer as follows:. Here, there is light. Actually, however, the real key to effective interviewing lies closer to his own front door. Once discovered, it can help him attain truly effective results of a professional nature.
Best and N. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. If you don't feel comfortable interviewing candidates by yourself, you can have a co-worker assist you in the process. This way, you can divide the interview into parts and share questions.
This will give both of you the opportunity to pause and listen while someone else is speaking. Having a list of questions to follow is great, but try to be conversational during the interview so that the candidate is able to share more about their past experiences and the skills that they have developed. Sometimes this just means asking follow-up or exploratory questions to draw out more information.
You should have strong active listening and conversational skills, as well as a sound knowledge of the job and experience in managing people. Aside from the preparation that goes into interviewing potential employees, keep in mind that you should also make the interviewee feel as relaxed as possible to elicit the best response from them.
A good interviewer is welcoming, conversational, and considerate. To break the ice, tell the candidate a little about yourself or talk about a light-hearted topic before you get down to business. Holding interviews allows you to get a full sense of what the candidate is actually like.
In face-to-face interviews, you can get a better impression of the candidate's personality, behavior, and poise in the context of discussing business and the type of work the candidate needs to be able to perform.
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