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Interviewing
If you don’t ask the right questions, how can you get the right answers? If you don’t get the right answers you will employ the wrong person. That costs time and money. Job interviews will help you decide whether a candidate has the skills and experience to do the job. The better prepared you are the more successful you will be. This section provides documents and tips to help you design an effective interview.

Interviews should:

  • Demonstrate the applicant’s ability to communicate.

  • Help you find out more about the person and their knowledge or experience levels.

  • Help you decide between equally qualified candidates.

  • Discover whether the person would fit in with a team or work well with others in your company.

  • Let the candidate ask you questions that may reveal more information to help you make a decision.

  • Be modified to suit the purpose.


Interviews can also be:

  • Subjective.

  • Open to the ”halo effect”. When the decision is made within the first few minutes of the interview with the rest of the time used to justify the original decision.

  • Open to stereotyping.

  • A forum where the negative aspects can carry more weight.

Tips

Use the job description to identify specific requirements for the position. This should help avoid stereotyping.

Prepare the interview questions and be sure to ask each candidate the same questions.

Prepare questions that are job related and encourage the candidate to give specific examples of their experience. Non job related questions have their place but should be restricted to questions that reveal personality traits or skills that relate to the environment.

Avoid
  • Making quick decisions about an applicant

  • Stereotyping applicants

  • Giving too much weight to a few characteristics


Ensure

  • You put the applicant at ease during the interview

  • You communicate clearly with the applicant

  • You maintain consistency in the questions asked

Types of interviews:

Unstructured Interview: Involves a procedure where different unprepared questions may be asked of different applicants.

Situational Interview: Candidates are interviewed about what actions they would take in various job-related situations.

Comprehensive Structured Interviews: Candidates are asked questions on how they would handle job-related situations, job knowledge, worker requirements, and how the candidate would perform various job simulations.

Structured Behavioral Interview: This technique involves asking all interviewees standardised questions about how they handled past situations that were similar to situations they may encounter on the job. You may also ask discretionary probing questions for details of the situations, the interviewee's behaviour in the situation and the outcome. The responses are then scored.

Oral Interview Boards: This technique entails the job candidate giving oral responses to job-related questions asked by a panel of interviewers. Each member of the panel then rates each interviewee on such dimensions as work history, motivation, creative thinking, and presentation. The scoring procedure for oral interview boards has typically been subjective; thus, it would be subject to personal biases of those individuals sitting on the board. This technique may not be feasible for jobs in which there are a large number of applicants that must be interviewed.

Questions you must always ask:

  • Current salary and salary expectations?

  • Career goals?

  • Current job responsibilities?

  • Projects and achievements?

  • How they handle stress and meet deadlines?

  • Type of management style that motivates them?

  • Why they applied for the position?

  • What expectations and reservations do you have about it?

  • What do you think is likely to make the difference between success and failure in the job?

  • What is your greatest personal achievement?

  • What are your goals and objectives and what steps have you taken to achieve them?

  • What are your strengths?

  • What are your weaknesses?

  • What types of people upset you most readily and what steps do you take to work harmoniously with them?

  • What kinds of situations cause you to feel tense or nervous?

  • What is the hardest thing you have ever done?

  • What aspects of your last/current job do you like least?

  • How would your present manager describe you as an employee?

  • What have you learned from your previous jobs that make you the ideal person for this position?

  • Describe an upsetting experience and what steps you took to resolve it?


Discrimination

Questions must relate only to the job and the candidate's ability to do it. You are not allowed to ask questions that may discriminate such as when someone plans to have a family, how old they are, what religious beliefs they have and so on. It would pay you to familiarise yourself with the Human Rights Act.

We would recommend that you use a competency or behavioural interview. For more information see
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