How To Conduct An Interview Successfully

Interviews are a vital part of recruitment process as it enables the human resources personnel to have a first hand information about the prospective candidate. Interview also enables the interviewer to have access to detailed information of the prospective candidate. however, the interviewer needs professionalism in order to successfully conduct the interview, we provide the tips that will guide a successful interview below:

Make Research

This is a very important role, you should make research on the nature of the vacant job as well as the job description. you should also have a background knowledge about the candidate that is up for interview, you should have knowledge about the candidate’s experience, skills, as well as the overall past job performance. This will enable you to ascertain the correlation between what he/she tells you one-on-one and what the candidate has written down in the CV for your company.

Have an Agenda

It is important that you create an agenda for the interview, this will enable you to be more efficient and as well be time conscious about the interview ( you don’t want to spend all day talking and asking questions, t’will make the interview irrelevant). you have to create an agenda, abide by it very strictly, and you are on the right path!

Assess Appearance

They say ‘you don’t judge a book by its cover’, in this case you have to attribute a substantial amount of judgement to the appearance of the candidate. the appearance portrays how the employee wants to be addressed, as well as (to a certain proportion) the behavioral content of the candidate.

Behavioral content

You have to ascertain the behavioral content of the candidate, if he is going to abide by rules, anti-social, team player etc. remember, if you recruit a member with bad behavior, the member can as well influence your organisation, or simply, cost your organisation a lot (especially in terms of damages). you can conduct the candidates in a team unifying way, this could be as simple as just telling them to get to know each other as you intend to ask them about the other members, this could take up to 5 minutes. by the time they are through, you should ask question from each of them about the people they just met, this will enable you to know who is anti-social, bad team player, etc. or you could just take the candidate on a stroll and try to judge their character by engaging them on conversations.

Ask Questions

Yes you heard right, ask your candidates a lot of questions, this will enable you to to know if they are qualified for the job that is vacant. your questions should be aimed at fact finding, behavioral analysis as well as problem solving. don’t just ask questions, also evaluate their performance by noting down their performances.

Pay attention to details

You have to pay attention to necessary details of the candidates, this will be necessary and could be very vital as details can give you a clue on the behavior of the candidates. is the candidate itchy? not confident? fidgety or quite shy. you have to access the composure of the candidate as well as his warmth towards people.

Get a second opinion

Before you make your judgement, ensure you get the opinion of another interviewer (could be your assistant). this will ensure that you are not being too judgmental or sentimental about the candidate. ensure that you discourse about the candidate extensively. this will ensure that the judgement is accurate.

Have a performance measurement

It is quite important that you rate your candidates, this will enable you to know how the candidates perform, it will also enable you to access the overall performance of the candidate and enable you to choose the best candidate. before the inception of the interview, ensure that you have a performance measurement that you have designed, this will enable the interview process to be easier for you to conduct as you know the exact thing that you are looking for in the candidates.

Other tips

it is quite essential that you put into consideration the following tips during your interview:
Be nice: sometimes the candidate might be nervous and fidgety due to the way you have acted or your behavior towards him/her. ensure that you are quite nice to your candidates, ask him/her how their day is going, compliment them, and ensure that they are feel comfortable during the interview, this will bring out the best in their behavior and make them more confident.
Jot down points: it is essential that you note down some important points about the candidates that you are interviewing, this will ensure that you don’t mix up the traits of the candidates, it will also ensure that you have a thorough research about the candidate’s performances and ensure you give adequate judgement.
Don’t base your judgement on a failed question: just because your candidate was unable to answer one of your questions does not mean he might not be the best man for your job. access other factors that might be useful for the over all evaluation of the candidate.
Don’t be sentimental: don’t base your judgement of a candidates performance on sentiments, yeah, he might be from your home town, she might look beautiful, etc. don’t allow these to affect your judgement.
Don’t talk too much: it is essential that yo don’t talk too much to your candidates, this can actually make them bored and they might see it as a way you want to tap in more information from them, hence , they become stiff. be brief as possible.
Above all, focus on accessing the qualities of your candidates and align these qualities with the projected qualities of the vacant position of your organization. ensure that you are devoid of sentiments, and also create a good performance measurement so that you can be sure that you are recruiting the best candidate for the job.cheers!!!