Before the Interview: Best Practices

02/26/07

When you conduct interviews "on the fly," it’s a lot easier to make bad hiring decisions. Plan well for each set of interviews, and you’ll get better results. That’s the word from Hardy Caldwell, the author of The Agile Manager’s Guide to Hiring Excellence. The following pre-interview tips, says Caldwell, will help you get better information by putting both you and the candidate at ease.

Create a form listing the six or eight factors upon which you will base your hiring decision. These will be a combination of skills, experience, and personality characteristics. Having a form for notes allows you to rate all candidates on exactly the same criteria, which helps remove bias or accusations of bias from the hiring process.

Don’t plan to interview all day. You may be tempted to see all candidates for a position in one day to get the task over with. If you do, you’ll exhaust yourself by the end of the day and shortchange the candidates with the misfortune of seeing you late in the afternoon.

Keep interviews to an hour or less. (Exception: second or third interviews for important jobs.) Again, this is an issue of your own stamina. The more time you spend in an interview, often a nerve wracking atmosphere, the less energy you have to stay focused. Besides, you can always choose to see a candidate again.

Arrange seating to relax people. If you sit behind a desk with the candidate on the other side, you’ll send a message: “I’m more powerful than you, and you better not forget it.” Sometimes, though rarely, this is the message you want to send.

Move away from desks and sit face to face or side by side with nothing in between. Doing so puts people at ease. If more than two people are present, arrange chairs in a circle.

Consider doing the interview “backwards.”Most interviewers describe the job first and then ask questions. Sometimes you can get better information by doing the reverse. Why? Because candidates can’t tailor responses to make their skills seem to fit the job perfectly.

Remind yourself not to be influenced by personality or credentials. If you must, repeat this mantra before each interview: “Accomplishment, accomplishment, accomplishment.” If you find yourself liking a person in advance based on a resumé or phone interview, become your own devil’s advocate. Tell yourself: “There must be something wrong with this person. I’ll find out what it is in the interview.”

Assume the person is legally permitted to work in the U.S. Though it may be technically legal to ask a question like, “Are you legally permitted to work here?”, it’s best not to because it may raise the idea of national origin discrimination in the mind of the interviewee. Most employment lawyers agree that it’s better to wait for a tentative new hire to fill out the W-2 and a Form I-9 to make sure the person has the proper authorization to work.

Plan to fill out forms immediately after each interview. Keep facts fresh in your mind. If you interview more than five people or so, you’ll have trouble remembering what the first person looks like, let alone what her best qualities are. (Be careful, though, that you don’t scribble notes that refer to characteristics like age, color, religion, or nationality. If you do, those notes may become evidence in a discrimination suit.)

Hiring and Recruiting Solutions

February, 2005