Prewriting the Interview Questions
This is a great opportunity to save time and do a really good job. Often interviewers make up questions during the interview or give roughly the same question but sometimes with more of an explanation. This is a sign of consistency. It is not fair to all the candidates and introduces bias in various ways.
All the interview questions should be based on your key criteria and taken from your list of Essentials and Desirables. Working with the line manager gives you both the opportunity to examine the topic and write good experience-based questions to explore what your candidate has actually done in their previous jobs. Past experience is a good indicator of how they will actually fit into the vacant position in your organization.
So to recap, each key criterion will be a topic heading, and you will write four to six questions on each topic. During the interview, each of the topic questions will be scored out of 10, depending on how satisfying and suitable for the organization the answer is.
First, you need to decide how you are going to check each item on our Essentials list and Desirables list from your advertisement. These are going to be split between testing (T), questions (Q), and visual examination (V).
At this stage, we are only interested in the topics that we will ask questions on—the topic we shall select as an example is “Managing Teams.”
Key Criteria—Managing Teams
Q1. Please explain the techniques you use to motivate your team(s) in your current job.
Q2. When a dispute has arisen in your team—what actions need to be taken to resolve it?
Q3. What methodology have you used when selecting a member of your staff to work in a matrix or other department project?
Q4. How have you rewarded high-performing teams in your previous jobs?
Once you have four to six questions on the topic (above), then you can work through the rest from your advertisement.
• Minimum of 9 years’ experience in a similar industry Q
• Management of a similar-size function Q
• Use of any major database-driven accounting software system, such as Oracle, SAP, SAGE, Sun, or similar Q
• Full understanding of government financial regulations and IFRS Q
• Management of organization’s budget cycle Q
• Can demonstrate successful matrix management Q
In the workplace, writing the advertisement and carrying out this stage normally takes less than an hour. By writing the questions together, you are able to refine them and make them very clear. Every candidate will get exactly the same questions, and each of those questions will be scored out of 10—at the end of the interview, the person with the highest score gets the job. In this way, you can make sure that necessary questions are not omitted and the system scoring decreases the likelihood of interviewers’ biases to play a role in the final selection.
I am sure you must be thinking how we do this for people who have no experience—graduates or first-job entrants. We have prewritten questions specifically for such people and will explain that later in Appendix 1. Usually with graduates, interviews involve competency-based questions that can be answered by using examples from their academic lives.
Summary: Step 3
• This step is a massive time saver.
• You will be able to see from the criteria which criteria need questions to be asked.
• Your questions should be a blend of experience-based competency and behavioral aspects.
• Talking the questions through with the line manager will vastly enhance the quality of interview questions you will ask.