Interviewing Preparation

The Blue Ocean brings you the "Employee Interviewing Series" where you learn the importance of providing proper interviews to potential employees.

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Speaker – Karen Thornton
Now that we have discussed why having good interviewing skills are important,

let’s talk about how to put these skills into action.
The stages of interview preparation are:

Setting the Process
Reviewing Candidates
Developing Candidate Questions,

and
Preparing the Setting

The first stage of preparation is “Setting the Process”.

Here you prepare your strategy for the interview.

This will make the entire interviewing process easier, more efficient, effective,

and enjoyable. First, begin your strategy by creating an outline of the job requirements.

This includes the job description and information about specific skills

that are required. It’s a good idea to then classify each skills

as either a “must have” or “would like to have” skill.

This list should be decided before you conduct your interview.

This will ensure that you keep focused during the ebb and flow of the interview.

For the second stage, you’ll review all of your information and documents

for each candidate in preparation for their interview.

Take some time to review the individual candidate’s application or resume

before he or she arrives. A great approach is to make a copy of the candidate’s

resume to make notes on any particular points of interest.

Be sure that you don’t mark on the candidate’s original resume or application.

Your notes should emphasize both positive and negative indicators of the candidate’s qualifications.

Don’t mark anything that could look discriminatory,

such as anything relating to race, gender, religion, marital status and family,

disabilities, ethnic background or country of origin, or a person’s age.

Preparing questions ahead of time is a critical interview strategy in order to ensure a fair

and successful hiring decision.

Your questions should begin by determining a candidate’s appropriate skills

and qualifications for the job. Use your “must have” and “would like to have”

job requirements for this step. Your application and resume

notes should also help you formulate some questions that target

some specific requirements. A couple of examples

might be an extended gap in employment or an unusual work or life experience.

When you are developing your questions, keep the following guidelines in mind.

Most questions should be open-ended as opposed to closed.

Closed questions can only be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” response and

generally don’t garner much information.

On the other hand, open-ended questions allow the candidate to

elaborate and be more detailed in his or her response.

This provides you with more information about candidate and also provides

you with more opportunity to listen to and observe the candidate.

An example of a closed question is “Do you have any experience with a computer system XYZ?”

The candidate can’t really go anywhere with this question and must resort to a “yes” or “no” response.

The same question open-ended is “What type of computer system experience do you have?”

This question allows the candidate to expand on his or her skills and you’re able to discover more information

about the candidate’s experience and skill set.

While most questions should be open-ended, not all questions can or should be.

There will be some questions that are job specific and need only a simple “yes” or “no” response.

For example, “Are you able to lift 35 pounds?”

For all interviews, most questions will cover the specific job qualifications, but don’t neglect questions

that uncover cultural and personality characteristics.

Asking a candidate to discuss his or her major accomplishments

and teamwork experience can reveal a great deal about the candidate.

Just make sure that all of your questions relate only to the job requirements and nothing personal in nature.

When preparing the interview location, find a setting that ensures minimal interruptions.

Often your office is not the best option.

Instead you might try to reserve a conference room. Make sure to schedule enough time interview.

Depending on the complexity, you might plan for 30 minutes, an hour, or even longer.

When scheduling multiple interviews back-to-back, make sure you plan enough

time between the interviews to prepare for your next candidate.

After the end of each interview, immediately jot down any post-interview thoughts while they are still fresh in your mind.

You want to have enough time to complete your notes on the previous candidate

before interviewing the next candidate. We’ll talk more about post-interview in another section.