Interviewing Staff

Purpose

Provide a basic guideline for interviewing job candidates.

Background

If you have just been inundated by application forms, letters and Curricula Vitae for a job vacancy within your company, you will now need to draw up an interview short list and arrange interviews for selection. As the interview process will probably be the most important job you will need to undertake for your company; choosing the wrong candidate can have a disastrous impact on the business.

Scope

Depending on the size of your company, you will need to decide who should attend the interviews. If you are the only person running the company, then you need not worry.

However, if you are a growing business, then you need to consider who the new employee would be working under or with. Then ask if these people would be able to help you make a final decision based on their opinion.

Procedure

Preparing for the interview

During the interview, you will need to adopt a system for taking notes, this will enable you to look back on all the candidate’s performances. You will be able to design an appropriate reference sheet by referring to your job specification and job description. For example, if the job requires a large amount of flexibility, then which candidate do you feel would be the most flexible.

Asking questions
Asking the right type of questions can help you to make the right decision, so you need to prepare yourself for this questioning process; not just your questions, but that of the candidate as well.

Make a note of the questions you feel you might be asked and prepare yourself to answer them.

Some common questions might be:

• Who will I be working with
• What are the promotional prospects for this position
• When is the start date for this job
• What benefits or bonuses does the company offer

The best way for you to ask questions is to ask open ended questions. Open ended questions cannot be answered with either YES or NO, these make the candidate think more about the question enabling you to get the know the candidate.

Base the questions around the job that you are offering.

For example, if the job vacancy entails working with the general public you might ask:

• How would you deal with an angry customer

If you wanted to delve into the personal characteristic of the candidate, you could ask:

• What do you consider to be your greatest achievements
• Who, in life, inspires you the most
• What makes you happy or sad

You may feel that these questions are quite probing and unnecessary, but if well thought out, will help you to make the best decision for your company.

What you will need before you begin

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