Most of the work has been done—all that’s left is to run the interview in a very professional way and stick exactly to the pre-written questions on your question sheets for each of the criteria.
Timing
The timing for the interview should be perfect—if not, it’s your fault and shows the organization in a bad light.
How many interviews in a day?
Six is about right, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. It’s all about quality, not quantity.
Dress Code
Be smart, you represent the company you need to look the part—make sure that the interviewing line manager is aware. Your aim is to be as sharp, professional, and smart at the end of the day as you were for the first interview.
Who Does What?
The interviewer should be responsible for collecting the candidate and seeing them to and from the room in a relaxed but professional manner.
The interviewer should then set the scene for how the interview is to run—this needs to be learnt by rote to avoid fumbling or bumbling at the start of the interview—a good crisp introduction that we use is as follows:
“Please let me explain how this interview will run—we will ask you a series of questions about your experience, please give short and concise answers. At the end of the interview, you will have the opportunity to ask us any questions you may have—is that OK?”
The interviewer should then start—our first series of questions is about team work (scene setter). Reading from the question paper, you ask the first question.
If the answer is perfect, then you would score 10 on your sheet. Always write the score immediately after the question and do so in a light blue pen (you don’t want the candidate to be too aware of the scoring).
If the answer requires clarification, then you can ask probing questions. The score will still be out of 10.
Tricks Some Candidates Might Use
C: Could you repeat the question?
I: The question would be read back exactly the same.
C: I don’t understand the question—can you explain it.
WARNING: If you do this, you will be giving this candidate an advantage over the others.
I: Let me repeat it again.
If the candidate still does not understand, simply and smoothly move on to the next question—the score would then be 0.
When interviewing with nontrained managers, they seem to think it’s their duty to help the candidate as much as they can. However, this can potentially cause chaos as it is highly possible that it gives rise to a significant amount of biases. Candidates who have been trained in interviewing skills will take maximum advantage of this.
Interviewing fresh college or university leavers requires a completely different approach and this is shown in Appendix 1.
A run-through of some questions, answers, and scoring follows:
For each series of questions, the pre-question sheet is completed with the appropriate knowledge-based questions written on it. This would be done at the time the advertisement is discussed.
Interviewer
Good Morning—this is Mr. Said—he is head of Finance and will be interviewing with me.
We will be asking you a number of questions about your past experience. Please give short and concise answers to the questions. When we have finished the questions at the end of the interview, you will have the opportunity to ask us any questions that you have—is that OK?
Scene setter—“we will now ask you a series of questions on working with teams”
What experience have you had at managing teams in the past 5 years?
A. Interviewee: I have run a department of 50 people for the last 5 years.
Interviewer probing question? • Were they split into teams?
A. Interviewee: Yes by function, when I first took on the job it was just one department, but dividing the department into teams worked really well.
Interviewer probing question? • Whose idea was it?
A. Interviewee: Mine.
Interviewer probing question? • What were the benefits?
A. Interviewee: We were better equipped to meet or deadlines, never missed any so far, and unauthorized absence stopped. Also, there is a much better working environment.
The Second Question on Team Working
Q. 2: Interviewer
Give me an example where you have dealt with conflict in a team.
A. Interviewee: We had one employee who was very disruptive—always talking on his mobile phone and texting.
Interviewer probing question? • How were you involved?
A. Interviewee: Some of the team complained about him to me, I then spoke to him on a one to one and pointed out this was not acceptable in our department.
Interviewer probing question? • Did that resolve the issue?
A. Interviewee: No, he took no notice so I had to give him a verbal warning in accordance with our procedures—that brought an immediate stop to the problem, he was not happy but understood why I had to pursue the matter.
Q.3: Interviewer
From your experience, what is the optimum size for an effective team?
A. Interviewee: I don’t understand the question.
Q. Interviewer: From your experience, what is the optimum size for an effective team?
A. Interviewee: Sorry, I don’t understand would you rephrase the question?
Q. Interviewer: Don’t worry—let’s move onto the next question.
Q. 4 Interviewer
Do you encourage competition between teams?
A. Interviewee: Yes, it’s a good thing providing it’s well-controlled. This is particularly the case when we do end of year accounts and we have a special payment system for the best teams. We get good results and the teams all like a bit of competition. Last year, the winning team brought cakes for all the rest, which was really appreciated; also the end-of-year accounts were completed 2 days ahead of schedule, so the CFO was very happy.
Interviewer:
Scene setter—the next series of questions are about current accounting processes
When each interview is finished, check that all the scoring has been completed—this is not a time to make up scores after the event. You should be able to tell the candidate when they will have the outcome of their interview. If you promise a date, make sure you keep to it, and don’t be vague with statements like “hopefully sometime next week.”
At the end of your interviewing day(s), the candidate who has the highest score gets the job. If you have all six candidates with exactly the same scores, then the tie-break is in the test results and the person with the highest test results gets the job.
Some Issues to Keep in Mind
There has been a lot of research regarding the validity and reliability of interviews. The two major aspects of these are the following two questions: whether interviewers agree with each other and also, whether the answers that candidates give during interviews do indeed predict future performance (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2010). In order to increase the reliability, interviewers need to be trained not only on what questions to ask and why to ask them, but also on how to interpret them. In this way, personal biases will be eliminated to a great degree. Moreover, as far as increasing the validity of interviews is concerned, it is crucial that interviewers make their decisions only based on salient facts and are very careful as to notice and ignore any impression-management techniques that the candidate might use.
The post-interview procedure is very important. The interviewer should ring up the successful candidate—be very upbeat—they have worked hard and spent a lot of time and effort to get a job with you.
Likewise, when you contact the unsuccessful candidates, ring up and speak to them. They deserve a BIG thank you for all their hard work; and remember, you have a key PR role here.
Although not strictly part of the interview, what is often poorly managed are the first few days of the successful candidate’s post. A VIP welcome should be the standard for every new person and this needs careful planning and executing. It has been shown that our initial reactions are the ones that stick, so it’s in everyone’s interest to do a good job. This point is very well made in the book “It’s our Ship” by Captain D Michael Abrashoff—the first chapter says it all.
Skype Interviews, Social Media, and References
Skype interviews are a very efficient way of interviewing particularly if the candidate is in another country. The same process applies and the same steps need to be in place. It is extremely important that you watch the person carefully during the interview (check with the photo you have that it’s the right person)—long pauses and looking away by the candidate could suggest someone else is feeding them the answers. A recent case of Manik Sharma highlighted this problem as the candidate was referring to a book for the answers. He was employed and later fired for being incompetent and unqualified—a very expensive mistake.
Finding out more about the candidate is just common sense—have a look at Facebook and Twitter and see what they are doing out of work.
The actual written reference is very unhelpful. Employers are reluctant to give any detailed information in case they are accused of spoiling someone’s job chances. An informal telephone call with their current employer will probably be more effective.
In the Ubarni case, it was found that both of the references furnished were given by people who hardly knew him at all. He was employed based on a very fabricated CV and references alone. On his first assignment as an out-of-hours GP, he administered a fatal drug overdose to a patient who later died. So much for his glowing references—it was later mooted that Dr. Ubarni was unqualified.
All of this reinforces the real need for testing as in stage five of our process, ignore it at your peril.
Probation Periods
See Appendix 3
Reference
Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2010). The Psychology of Personnel Selection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.