We read articles that prepare candidates for job interviews, but how many do we read that assist the staff within human resources departments to ask the right questions? Not as many, I suspect.
Drug testing in California is part of their pre-employment process. This means that interviews are not the only thing that those employing need to consider. There will be other tests for potential employees to complete. These will include drug and alcohol testing as well as checking on skills that are listed in a CV. Academic qualifications do not always give the full picture. Lab tests will ensure that employees are healthy, capable, and safe to work within your company, at whatever stage they are conducted.
Below are some tips to help with interviewing candidates.
Review the CV in Advance
As an interviewer, it is just as important for you to prepare for the interview as the candidate so that everyone gets the best out of the experience. This means reviewing the candidate’s CV ahead of the interview so that you can put their answers into context. Also, have an idea about what questions will fit all candidates. You cannot, of course, let one person’s CV distract you. All the candidates called to interview should, to a large degree, have a chance of securing the job.
Relatable Questions
Always ensure that the interview questions asked, apart from the first one, are directly relatable to the job. Any others may prove to be wasted questions when interviews need to be kept short to ensure that more candidates can be seen. If we have time to interview just one more candidate, then they might just be the one that we want.
We say that the first question does not need to be job-related because a non-related question can be a nice icebreaker to help the candidate relax. We want the candidate to perform well as much as they do themselves.
A good question to assess whether a candidate can think on their feet, so to speak, is a two-part question. It would be so easy for a candidate to miss answering the second part of the question when nervous. We sometimes need to evaluate in this way to see how someone would perform in a high-pressure situation. Also, in some jobs, we cannot afford to miss something.
The questions asked should not be personal ones but the same questions that are asked to all candidates, so that fairness is always maintained.
A scoring system should ideally be adopted that scores each question based on certain keywords existing in the potential candidate’s replies. Do not just go on the final score, though, as if it were a football match, because the personality and other attributes of the person need to fit the company image too for the new person to fit in and prosper.
Taking note of the above should help staff in a human resources department interview a prospective candidate for a job. It does not matter what industry you are in, the questions asked are likely to be similar. It is just the answers that may be different.
There will be no reason to ask about anything sensitive such as whether drugs or alcohol have been abused in the past or are still an issue for candidates. These can be evaluated away from the interview process. Your job as an interviewer is to ensure that the candidate satisfies everything else that your company is looking for.
Do Not Talk Too Much as the Interviewer
It can be a temptation for an interviewer to talk too much when they are keen to tell a candidate about their company, but enough time must be left for the candidate to speak. It is this part of the interview that they are being judged on. Although, the candidate’s ability to listen could be assessed when it comes to them asking a question at the end that has already been covered.
When it is a panel interview, that is one with several interviewers bombarding a single interviewee with questions, it will be more important the time is shared effectively and no one interviewer’s voice is allowed to dominate the whole interview process. Time, as always, is limited. A balance between conversations is always best maintained. Conversations are a two-way process when classed as effective and meaningful.
Pulling all these pre-employment interviews and tests together will mean that a client is suitable for a company in every way possible. We should not shortcut any of these processes and risk ending up with an employee that proves more of a nuisance than an asset to the company. We ultimately want someone responsible, dependable, and highly skilled. The latter can, of course, be managed with in-house training in many cases. The first two are essential to productivity moving forward.
