Tips to conduct an effective job interview

Finding capable candidates all boils down to your ability to interview and vet them for the open position. No pressure. It’s important to interact with your best applicants to ensure they solve a critical business need. There are a few tips you can follow to conduct and effective job interview to find the best person for the job.

 

Before the candidate comes to the interview, it’s important to do a bit of legwork. Take a critical look at the resume and cover letter and generate a preliminary list of questions. LinkedIn Influencer Jeff Haden noted that if the applicant had more than one job, you might want to ask why that individual left, as well as what it says about their career goals and interests. Ask what he or she achieved in each position. The point will be to get to know as much as you can before the interview to deliver thoughtful questions and determine if the applicant is a good fit for your group.

 

Review the applicant’s resume to create questions.Review the applicant’s resume to create questions.

 

Interviews can make candidates nervous, so don’t come into the process with guns blazing. The questions should start out safe and personal, like where the applicant grew up or the first job out of college. Forbes contributor Shel Israel noted that this approach will help relax the subject and can glean more information. Interviewers should also simply coax answers rather than hammering the candidate with questions. This will help build rapport and result in useful, revealing answers. 

 

 

Conventional questions like a person’s weakness might not result in the best answers to evaluate a candidate. In a face-to-face interview, it’s necessary to prove an applicant’s mettle by questioning how he or she would act in certain situations. Harvard Business Review suggested explaining a problem your team struggled with and have the candidate detail how he or she would solve it. You might also dig into the applicant’s past situations and ask the how they overcame a challenge and the consequences of doing so.

 

Many employers might take this a step further by actually testing a candidate’s skills. For an IT role, for example, you might send them a number of routine tickets and have them work out how to address them. The point of this will be to ensure that the candidate has the skills they claim and that they will be a valuable asset to the team.

 

Interviewing can be a long and arduous process. By asking for real solutions, doing your homework and starting off slow, you will be able to glean useful answers and properly evaluate each candidate for their capabilities. ProSource IT has a proven methodology that identifies, evaluates and delivers qualified professionals to help support your critical initiatives. We focus on your position specifications, business objectives and use quality employment practices for expert execution. For more information on interviewing candidates effectively, contact us today.