Employers, are you ready for interviews?

Employers, are you ready for interviews? I spoke to Mike Clyne from Feman Consulting about  the perils of a bad interview for both parties. It is not always the candidate who is ill equipped for a good interview,  we know of many interviews that end up going south because of inexperienced interviewers !  Here at Ten2Two we work closely with the candidate counseling and preparing them. (Check out our hints and tips here). But we rarely get asked for advice from the interviewer. Mike spends lots of time with many organisations in his capacity as a specialist HR consultant and has given plenty of advice and suggestions on this topic. He has been kind enough to share his top ten tips with us.

Top ten interview preparation thoughts for interviewer

 

Have you really thought through what you are looking for?

Do you really want to hire someone?  Have you considered all of the skills / experience and maybe separated between those you MUST have, SHOULD have and COULD have?  Could you hire a part time employee instead of a full time person?

Are you ready to interview

In other words, is your interview process ready to move quickly and efficiently?  There is no point starting to recruit when one of the interviewers is about to go away on a business trip or holiday.

How many people do you want each candidate to see?

Have they all been fully briefed on what you are recruiting for?  Maybe consider each interviewer focusing on different aspects of the candidates or the role so you don’t end up with four almost identical interviews.

Have you outlined your recruitment process to the recruitment agency and the candidates?

Do they know who they will be seeing, over what time period, whether any tests or non-interview selection steps will be used?  When will candidates hear the outcome?

Are you ready to issue an offer to the successful candidate?

How will you do this?  Will it be face to face, on the phone etc?  Are you ready to send out the contract immediately?  How long do you want to give them to decide?

Is your business disciplined enough..

..to say to itself ‘we’ve seen a handful of candidates and none of them are suitable.  We need to consider whether our search for candidates may need to change if none of them came close’ and so on.  Don’t settle for the least bad candidate.

Will you just do interviews for candidates or maybe something else?

For example if you are hiring someone to do data analysis why not test their excel skills when they come in?  Don’t forget to tell candidates that they will be doing this.  If you are hiring for a position that will bring skills to the company that no-one else has, then maybe you need external help (eg if you are hiring a finance manager then ask your accountant to meet them to test their technical knowledge).

Are you ready to quickly communicate with unsuccessful candidates?

Don’t forget, it is a small world and they are a potential future hire / future customer / future contact.

How will you successfully integrate your new candidate into the business?

Have you prepared an onboarding plan prior to the recruitment phase?  If not you should do so and share this (excluding any sensitive data) with the candidates ahead of their interview.

Will you be undertaking pre-employment screening of your successful candidate?

If so then probably best to tell them at the start of the process.

Don’t miss out on finding the right talent make sure you are prepared!

If you’re thinking of recruiting, we are experts. Check out our employer hints and tips here, and get in touch with us!