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- Ensure that candidates are professionally greeted. After all you want to walk your talk, and you’re under assessment here, too.
- Start the interview before the interview! Consider having an apparently junior team member tell the candidate that the person who will do the interview is running late, apologise, and invite them to a cup of coffee and a chat. Let the conversation flow to personal aspirations, activities, experience, etc. The interview has begun!
- Tell your candidates that you will be asking for their impressions of your company – that should send them to Google with a purpose! The brighter ones may call into your premises to see if they can obtain additional information about your company. The brightest may “secret shop” your team.
- Start your interview with a focus on the candidate – create a list of open questions (questions that can’t be answered in one word) about their experience, capabilities, aspirations, strengths, dislikes, etc. Ask follow on questions “how do you mean?”, or “Tell me a bit more.” Be aware of their body language as they respond.
- Take notes, otherwise various candidates’ answers will blur into one another and you’ll forget who’s who.
- Write a brief impression of each candidate as you finish their session, otherwise candidates will blur into one another and you’ll forget who’s who.
- Create a friendly and relaxed atmosphere – encourage candidates to relax and unroll. You’ll learn more with defences low.
- Control interruptions and distractions, and ensure your candidate is physically comfortable during their interview.
- Sit with candidates in an informal setting. Rather than sitting opposite each other with a desk in between, perhaps sit on a lounge or on the same side of a desk or meeting room table.
- As a sign of respect and focus, clear the scene of any work-related matters other than materials relevant to your interview. You’ll demonstrate that you are organised, that this task has a high priority, and that you respect your candidate.
- Create rapport – discover things in each candidate that you genuinely like an open yourself to them. Create an atmosphere in which they can be themselves. When you are in rapport your reading of their state will be much more accurate.
- Begin the interview by asking the candidate of their impressions of your business and plumb their knowledge of you – you’ll gain a measure of just how important they see this interview by the degree of their investigations.
- Structure the situation and your questions so that your candidate does 90% of the talking. The old saying, “Give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself” has a basis in fact.
- Ask questions that will help you understand their values (the things that are most important to them in the context of their career, role, job, occupation, etc). If you understand values, you can understanding their motives, so ensure that their answers to “Why” questions align with their values.
- Calm relaxed, almost casual questions generally cause people to relax and reveal more of themselves. Hard, direct questions often result in answers that are well-thought through to meet what the candidate thinks you want to hear; they are trying to “pass a test” by giving you the “right” answers.
- Where possible, use some form of psychometric test (DiSC, Meyers Briggs, etc). A good resource in this area is www.psychpress.com.au.
- Create the expectation that candidates will ask their own questions (you can cue them beforehand), as questions sometimes reveal more than answers.
Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.
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