Effective Interviewing

I had been taking interviews for my organisation for more than 2 yrs now and must have taken 80+ interviews. So when I was invited to attend an Effective Interviewing Skills workshop, it felt more like a waste of time. After all what more was there to learn I thought? Thankfully my bubble of overconfidence burst and in a pleasant way.

How i perceived interviewing earlier! I viewed interviewing as a non avoidable task but a hindrance in the way of completing my regular work. I used to approach the interviews with a very straight face and kept them to the point, sometimes even rushed through them.

However during this session I realised I had got it all wrong.

What I realised and learned: An interview is a candidate's first face to face interaction with the company, and first impressions are often hard to change. So it must be given its due importance and time.

• I learnt that we (as an interviewer) must make an effort to break the ice, make the candidate feel comfortable - introduce yourself, talk a brief about the organisation, what the job is about and set the expectations.
• One should read the candidate's resume in advance (rather than go through it in front of them) so that they are well aware of candidate's skills. When I implemented this, I found that many candidates were both amused and surprised that I had read their profile so deeply. Infact I ended up pointing a few mistakes in their resume as well :)
• You might be taking a technical interview but its important not to limit yourself to technical stuff only. One must evaluate attitude of the candidate as well and not leave it for the manager or HR. After all attitude plays an as important role as knowledge.
• While you can argue that attitude is not easy to judge, BEI or Behavioural Event Interviewing plays an important role here. This strategy stresses on questioning the candidate a behavioural question and asking them to supplement the answer with actual instances from the past. e,g Tell me about a recent situation where faced a very challenging situation. What was it and how did you deal with it? Or tell me about any two bottlenecks you faced in the project and how you solved it? Since the candidate needs to focus on past experience there is lesser scope for manipulation.
• Last but not the least dont try to cut an interview short. Evaluating a candidate can easily take upwards of 45 mins so be patient and keep pending work tasks off your mind :)

EDIT: I have been implementing this strategy for many years now and can certainly say it has helped me a lot. Hope if works for you as well.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to comment.