Interviewing skills

Flow of the session

Interview Statistics• 40% of respondents had declined an offer because of a poor interview

experience• 69% has experienced no response or feedback after an interview• 42% had experienced discrimination in an interview• 30% had experienced rudeness in an interview• 22% had been asked inappropriate questions with respect to such

things as marital status, weight, dating habits and sexual preferences

The report further reveals that of those people

who experienced a bad interview,

81% of them told up to 10 people about that experience (same level as customers feedback)

Source: Chandler Macleod

Interviewing skills

• Skills which help you to conduct very well and smoothly interview with candidate

• Skills which ensure satisfaction from interview to both side- recruiter & candidate

• The most important 2 skills for interviewer : listening and ability to ask good questions

Listening

• Good interviewer should listen very carefully – very often candidates are giving important information between words - indirectly. Interviewer role is to catch it ask another question if it’s important.

• If you are listening carefully you can smoothly move to another competency/skill/attitude which you need to check in candidate and keep the flow of interview (!)

5 levels of listening

Listening involves hearing Listening involves hearing what is being said, observing what is being said, observing your intuition and noticing your intuition and noticing

the non-verbal signals the non-verbal signals

Halos and horns

• Halos - factors which influence to our judgement during interview. It influence in good way of our perception of candidate- candidate looks better than reality and everything what she/he tell will be amazing

• Horns – Factors which influence in bad way of our perception and judgement of candidate during review board. Candidate even if answer properly and showing that has skills impression will be worse.

Halos and Horns Influences

Filter

Beliefs

Values

Generalisations

Deletions

Distortions

Attitudes

Sensory inputs:VisualAuditoryKinaestheticOlfactoryGustatory

Physiology/Physiology/FeelingsFeelings StateState BehaviourBehaviour

To consideration

• Consider what are your halos & horns influencers?

• What makes you see something or someone positively or negatively? Stereotypes? Past experience? Information about this person which you got eralier? Appearence of this person?

• How does this impact the way in which you interview?

• Example: person who we already know or have information about his/her work. Halo because we know this person and we have emotional connection with candidate. Horn because we heard something bad about this person, about his/her past (we don’t think that this person can change).

Asking good questions

• Good question?- is a question for which answer will give interviewer truly information about candidate and check what we wanted to check

• Open questions

How to ask questions?

• Strive to ask questions which will check candidate past experience

• Use:

• Give me an example of situation when you had to …

• Tell me about situation when …

• ….? Reply based on a situation from the past.

• When we are asking What will you do if .. we are receiving the ideal behaviour and mostly things that we want to listen as a recruiter- but reality could be different

Open and Closed Questions

Closed Questions

Used to confirm understanding and to clarify details

• Use when, who, where• Beware of using why• Expect short answers • Use for clarification or

confirmation

Open Questions

Used to engage the imagination and focus the mind

• Use what and how• Beware of using why• Keep them short • Looking for a long answer, that may require some thought

• Allow for silence for thinking time

Advanateges & DisadvantagesOpen questions Closed questions

• The onus is on the respondent rather than the questioner to do the talking,

• Questioner can focus more on listening.

• Especially useful when fact-finding, the open question invites the expression of ideas, views and opinions and encourages people to speak.

• More difficult to answer than closed questions

• Result will require more thinking-time

• Can be time consuming.

• Useful to identify common facts and enable you to retain control of the conversation. • Quick to ask and answer and the responses are easy to analyse. • Appropriate when specific responses are required.

• Difficult to create a dialogue and can lead to a feeling of interrogation if there's a series of closed questions with no opportunity to expand on opinions or views.

Effective questioning

Model STAR

• The most common model of answering the question

• You can suggest this model to answer questions (especially in recruitment for higher positions- Leaders, EB)

• First candidate describe a situation he/she faced or task that was given to him/her. Next, candidate describe the actions he/she took. Finally, describe the results he/she achieved.

Difference between situation & task

• In “situations” you have more power to solve problems and pursue opportunities your own way. Part of the creativity involved may be recognizing that there is a situation in the first place. - better for TLP

• “Tasks” are typically assigned to you to do in a predetermined way. Even with tasks, however, there is plenty to talk about: you can describe how you applied your skills effectively, invented new ways of performing the task, or even discovered how to eliminate the task completely to improve efficiency. – better for TMP

Example

• Q: Our salespeople are expected to find creative new ways to build their territories. Tell me about a time you used your creativity to build sales.

• A: [Situation.] When I first joined the company, I was managing five in-house salespeople, whose morale was very low. They did the bare minimum and went home for the day. But I saw a lot of potential in them and knew we could do better.

• [Actions.] So I thought, “How can we make this fun?” I had a budget for incentives that we weren’t using. I asked the team members what incentives they would find fun. Everyone was interested in taking a trip to Cedar Point, and that fit the budget perfectly. So I said, “If we can double both the team’s call volume and sales volume, we will all take a two-day trip to Cedar Point.” I put a big graph out for everyone to fill in their number of calls each day.

• [Results.] The change in morale was instantaneous. Everyone got in the groove and started having real fun with their work. Call volume went up 60%, and sales volume went up 75%. In addition, the team started establishing their own incentives and sales goals. One small change made a big difference.

How to prepare to good review board?

1. Consider what kind of person do you need in organisation -> skills, attitude, abilities and write it down to remember :)

2. Check needed JD and create/check personality/ profile member !!

3. Read carefully application and make notes what is already checked

4. Collect information about this person – what would be important to check during RB – especially for higher positions

5. Choose 4-5 attitudes/skills/values that you want to check during interview - you can't ask for everything during 45 minutes call

6. Prepare questions in reference to CV and selected factors

Questions in Interview

• Questions must be consistent for every candidate• Ensures consistency and fairness

• Enables easy comparison between candidates

• Easier to structure feedback afterwards

Take care about details

• Don’t forget about priopriate room preparation

• For longer interviews (more than 1 hour) prepare water for interviewers and candidate

• Smile, make eye contact,

• Remember about active listening

DO AND DON’T

DO• Prepare thoroughly

• Screen candidates fairly – get a 2nd opinion

• Interview with someone else

• Have breaks between interviews

• Write up notes immediately

• Give feedback to all candidates – written if possible

DON’T• Prepare less for an internal candidate

• Interview more than 4 people in a day

• Allow interruptions

• Offer the job “on the spot”

• Forget to have lunch or snacks

• Allow your Halos and Horns to interfere

Thank you for your attention

Presentation prepared based on

• Interview techniques by S. van der Burgh

•Key corporate services by Matt Rouge