As a hiring manager, you are familiar with the process of interviewing candidates. The interview is one of the several steps of a recruiting process , and probably one of the most important ones. Whether it be an introductory one-way video interview or a more detailed in-person interview, this is a crucial step when hiring a new employee, as it is the best opportunity to get to know the candidates more closely and analyse certain attributes, such as their body language, cultural fit and personality traits.
Nonetheless, a job interview can be very time-consuming for recruiting managers and nerve-wracking for candidates. Both sides have to be well prepared to take the most out of it in order to achieve their goals. Your goal, as a hiring manager, is to conduct an interview that will help you decide which of the candidates is the best fit for the job, which can sometimes be hard; you want to find someone with the right talent and experience, but who also meets your company's values and culture. So, you have to be well prepared to search for the candidate's best strengths, while also paying attention to potential red flags.
Conducting an effective interview can be a tricky task. So in today's blog post, I'm sharing with you some of the best tips to interview candidates more effectively, in order to make the best hiring decisions possible for your company.
Take Advantage of One-Way Video Interviews
The one-way video interview is an essential tool in the recruitment world. Even though it doesn't replace the traditional face-to-face interviews, the one-way video interview can be a great pre-assessment tool to help you select only the best candidates and, later on, prepare a more insightful in-person interview, adapted to each candidate.
Involve Other Colleagues in the Interview Process
You’ve probably heard this a few times: two heads are better than one. And if you apply this belief to the recruitment process, it still makes a lot of sense. By involving other colleagues in the interview process, whether it be in the analysis of the video interviews or participating in the in-person interview, you are promoting a more unbiased and efficient hiring decision, as you will take into consideration other opinions and insights about the candidates rather than just your own.
Adapt Your Questions to Each Candidate
Having a standardised set of questions to ask all the candidates is a good interviewing strategy, but it's not enough. Each candidate has its own personality and skills, so in order to get a more complete and personalised analysis of each individual, you should also adapt your questions accordingly. This will make the candidate feel more comfortable, as he will notice that you took the time to get to know him, but it will also help you get more familiar with your candidate, both on a technical and personal level.
Don't Overlook the Soft Skills
As a hiring manager, you probably tend to focus your interviews in your candidates' technical skills, to make sure they will be a good fit for the role you’re trying to fill. However, today's job market is filled with over-qualified candidates looking for an opportunity, so you should be paying a lot more attention to their soft skills. Just as important as making sure the candidate will make a good job with the tasks he is assigned, is making sure he will adapt to your company's culture and work environment. So, during an interview, make sure you are asking questions more directed to assessing soft skills to get a more complete overview of your candidate.
Make it a Conversation
It's often common that, during a job interview, you, as a recruiting manager, take the lead, as you are the one making the questions. This approach can make the candidate feel more nervous and not perform so well during the interview. Instead of adopting the question-answer-question-answer model that most interviewers follow, try to make it sound more like a conversation. By doing this, you are making your candidates' feel more comfortable and confident, allowing them to answer in a more complete and thoughtful way. This will make your interviewing process more efficient, as you won't be restricted to a rigid interview model, making it easier for you to conduct the interview.
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Your team here at skeeled
