Managers tend to be excellent at handling diverse teams, getting projects in under budget and administering performance reviews, yet they often have not mastered the art of interviewing.
Managers can provide their company with success in today’s competitive economic climate by building strong, effective work teams. The ability to interview and hire top candidates will enable you to accomplish this important goal.
Interview Tips
Here are five criteria to success:
1. Be as Prepared as the Interviewee
We’ve all heard this one, right? But while being prepared usually refers to how the job seeker gets ready for an interview, your role as a manager also requires preparation. Become familiar with how an applicant’s skills and background are a fit for the position by reading their resume before the interview. Writing down job-related questions ahead of time will help create a specific direction for the interview.
2. Encourage Questions
Make the interview a conversation between two people by encouraging questions from the interviewee. The best interviews are dynamic discussions and gives both people an opportunity to gather valuable information. A savvy job candidate should be prepared to ask pertinent questions about the company and the position.
3. Keep Questions Job-related
Keep the interview on track and reduce time spent on non-related chat by staying on-topic with your questions. There’s another reason this is important – asking questions that are not job-related can potentially make your company vulnerable to legal action. As a manager, if you’re unsure if an interview question is legal, don’t ask it.
4. Use a Consistent Interview Process
It’s important to stay consistent in your interview process, because in today’s competitive job market managers will often interview several people for the same position. A recruiter can meet with managers beforehand to identify the key questions that will be asked during the interview process, allowing a fair evaluation of all candidates and a consistent comparison of information.
5. Use behavioral Interview Questions
For several reasons, Behavioral interviews are becoming increasingly common. First, the theory behind behavioral interviewing is that a person’s past behavior is a good indicator of their future behavior in a particular job.
Secondly, behavioral interviews give the interviewee an opportunity to speak about specific, relevant achievements, making them excellent assessment tools.
When conducting a behavioral interview, be sure to ask for specifics, such as:
- How did you keep a project under budget?
- How did you bring about change in a group that was resistant to change?
- How did you implement a new system to a team that had used the same system for years?
A Google search can help you discover more examples of behavioral interview questions.
Be sure to look for the following in the interviewee:
- Was the situation brought to a successful conclusion?
- Did he or she make sense and communicate the story in a logical, articulate manner?
- Did the candidate make eye contact while speaking?
Building the Best Team
Training yourself and your team to prep, stay focused, ask consistent questions, and relate candidates’ past behaviors and successes to your business needs will allow you to locate and hire the top people for your work team.
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