Once you have chosen the final three or four candidates for a job, it is time to bring in some smart interview strategies to find the best person for your vacancy. Here are five things to consider when making your final selection.
Bring the Boss to the Table
In the initial stages of looking for a suitable candidate, you will probably rely on other assistants to read through resumes, set selection tasks and so on. When you’re down to your last few, it’s time for you, the employer, to get involved. It’s a good idea to first look at an excellent book about interviewing called “Topgrading” by Brad Smart. He offers some great advice on how to set up an interview and the type of questions to ask.
Pick a Time and a Chat Program
Set a convenient time to interview your candidate using typical job interview questions. This could be over Skype. Ask them to have a webcam as well. You need to make sure that they are punctual, have worked out any time differences between your two countries, and have a webcam that shows they have a good internet connection. Also, they should understand at least something about computers.
Do a Tandem Interview
So that you can concentrate fully on what the interviewee is saying, have another person take notes of what is being said. You can, of course, make occasional notes of anything that you want to follow up on or that is of particular interest to you, but on the whole, you want to be available one hundred per cent of the time to the person you are interviewing. You should also record the interview so you can review it later and show it to other team members to see what their impression of the candidate is.
Look at Their Work History
The primary focus of these interview strategies should be to discover the patterns in the prospective employee’s work history. ‘A’ players will love to talk about their past successes, but ‘B’ players tend not to want to dwell on the past. Ask them questions like Why did you leave each job and Tell me about your boss. If they complain that their bosses were autocratic and unfair at every workplace, it is unlikely that the problem lies with the boss. It is far more likely that they are bringing the same set of problems to each workplace. Be wary of people who say these sorts of things when you start outsourcing, as people do not change.
If It Doesn’t Feel Right, Don’t Waste Time
You will soon get a sense of whether this person is a good fit for your company or not. If you start to get bad feelings, don’t prolong the interview. Go with your gut feeling, and without being rude, hasten to the end of the interview. You don’t want to waste your time or theirs if you’re sure they’re not right for you.
Use these five interview strategies to make interviewing easier and find your ideal candidate more quickly.
You can find more techniques on how to refine your interview techniques and write a series of good interview questions in the Outsource Profit Machine Workshop DVDS.
Get that ‘A’ player on your team using smart interview strategies.
