Making The Most of Your Job Interviews
November 8, 2022
When interviewing job candidates, time is critical.
The time you spend talking to candidates adds up quickly, especially if you have a lot of great candidates. That has a cost—you’re not getting other important work done. That time also goes by incredibly fast. Within the span of a brief discussion, you have to gather the information you need to make an informed hiring decision and to sell the role to a potential hire. And don’t forget you’re competing with other employers eager to snatch up talent. Every minute counts.
Wasting time also amounts to a bad experience for candidates. Aside from the fact that they have other things going in their lives, you will be asking at least one of them to make a good decision too. A bad decision, on your part or theirs, will likely result in you both parting ways sooner rather than later, compounding the cost of filling the role.
Before you conduct any interviews, document what the job entails and what core competencies will be needed to do it.
Interviews are not the time to clarify what you want the job to be. If you go into interviews fuzzy about the functions of the job, you won’t be able to assess whether and how well candidates can perform.
Keep questions job related.
Okay, we said earlier that the last thing you want to do is to hire the wrong person, but that’s not necessarily the worst thing that can happen. A bigger mistake than a bad hire is a hiring decision that nets you a costly discrimination claim. For example, if the job has a legitimate age requirement (such as operating machinery or serving alcohol), asking “How old are you?” will likely give rise to an age discrimination claim. Instead, just ask if they’re at least 18 years old (or whatever the required minimum age is).