8 Tips to Conduct an Effective Interview
8 tips to conduct an effective interview
A successful interview requires employers’ ability to give suitable questions, listen to applicants’ answers and make them tell the truth about their competence and points of view. It is the background that helps you select the talented employees. These following techniques can help you improve interview skills.
1. Make a suitable appointment
As an interviewer, you should always be on time when having an appointment with candidates, especially the ones applying superior positions. Being chronological expresses recruiters’ professionalism and good images of companies. You should put the interview appointment into your working schedule and consider it an important meeting with customers. Be sure that you will give the best interview environment to candidates: a neat desk, telephone in vibration or off mode, quiet room and tell other people that you do not want to be disturbed.
2. Encourage candidates to answer interview questions
Ask open and friendly questions to help candidates feel free and well answer all questions in the interview. You can ask about their working experience; for example: “Please tell me about one of your current working days. What makes you like it? What makes you dislike it?” This question makes candidates feel free to share their information. That is the best beginning for an effective interview.
3. Listening more than speaking
If you spend more than 20 minutes of an interview to speak, candidates do not have much time to talk about them. The aim of an interview is to know clearly about candidates through listening to them. So you should spend time to listen as much as possible.
4. Ask open questions
Avoid asking Yes/No questions. Ask open questions to encourage candidates to talk more about their current job or themselves instead. Questions like “Why do you think it is right?” or “How did you do it?” will help you know more clearly about candidates.
5. Ask questions before describing the coming job
Avoid describing the coming job too much before the interview. An intelligent candidate can take full advantage of the description to outline answers that he thinks you want to hear. By asking a lot of questions before describing the job, you can know the most reliable information about candidates.
6. Avoid too popular questions
Everyone knows some questions like: “Which position do you think you will work in the next five years? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Tell about yourself.” For such questions, many candidates prepare the answers. And you will know nothing with such kind of questions. You should find challenging questions that require candidates to think and give truthful answers. Consequently, you will know clearly about candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. You can use situation analysis questions such as asking them to talk about what they will do in some typical situations. Basing on that, you take the clearest picture about candidates’ competence.
7. Consider the number of interview rounds
An interview process often consists of two main rounds: the first aims to select maximum 3 potential candidates and the second aims to choose the best one. The second round should be done by the people who will work with the candidate or the one who will have good relationship with him. Their evaluation and comments take a powerful role.
However, many companies have more than 2 interview rounds: they invite candidates to attend 3, 4 or even 5 rounds. But be careful: It may have opposite effects if there are too many interview rounds. Candidates will feel bored when being invited to more than 3 interviews. In some cases, they think that the employer is not professional.
8. You should know what you cannot ask
Some forbidden questions that employers should not ask candidates are related to employee discrimination. Such questions are usually not related with the jobs like age, race, marital status or physical disability.
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