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The key to conducting a first interview is creating the right impression of your organisation. An interview is a shop window for your organisation and dealing with interview candidates in a respectful manner communicates as much as what you say during the interview itself.

Before the Interview:

Keep Reception Staff Informed

There is nothing more unprofessional and off putting to a potential employee than arriving on the day of the interview to discover that the reception staff have not been informed that they are scheduled to attend. Ensure that simple communication occurs between the interviewer and reception staff.

Appropriate Environment

Ensure that the interview takes place in an environment that is conducive to an hour long discussion. This means ensuring that the temperature is regulated appropriately, to avoid it being too hot or too cold. If you know that there may be a problem in this area make alternative arrangements or get heating/air conditioning units repaired immediately.

Ensure that the interview room is free from odour, especially if a number of interviews have been taking place. There is nothing more off putting to an interviewee than being directed into a room that reeks of body odour or sweat.

In relation to seating arrangements ensure that there is sufficient seating available and that it is good quality, not just a stool or an old battered chair with torn fabric.

The room itself should be clean and tidy and it is advised that you briefly check that it is in good order before bringing the interviewee through in the first instance.

Good Planning

Conducting a professional interview takes time to master and only continued practice will hone your skills. Ensure that you plan a basic structure to the interview before it takes place, a suggested format is listed below to help you get started:

- Introduce Yourself
- State how long the interview will last
- Verify the interviewees name and address to check you are interviewing the right person!
- Verify the position you are interviewing for
- Commence the interview.

Take some time to think about five questions you want to ask during interview and have these written down ready.

During the Interview:

Greeting the Interviewee

When you meet the interviewee for the first time ensure that you give a firm handshake.

Don’t crush their fingers, it’s not a wrestling match! It is also important that they feel welcomed as this communicates something about the culture of your organisation, so smile and be positive, even if you don’t feel like it. Make the interviewee feel that they are the first person you’ve interviewed today, even if in reality you have seen many more. Remember the more you can put the interviewee at ease, the more they will open up to you in interview enabling you to obtain the information you need to make the right hiring decision.

Use of appropriate interview questions

A good interviewer will aim to enable the interviewee to talk for approximately 65% of the interview. This is important because you need to find out as much information from the interviewee in the short amount of time you have with them. To enable you to do this use open questions designed to give the interviewee plenty of scope to talk.

Example Open Questions

- Tell me about your current role
- Tell me about your team leading experience
- How did you go about dealing with difficult customers?

Closed Questions

Try to avoid closed questions, which are designed to ensure a specific response. Whilst these can be useful for verifying qualifications or checking exact experience levels, they will quickly stifle discussion if used to excess.

Example Closed Questions

- Are you James Turner?
- Do you have a degree?

Avoid Leading Questions

Leading questions rarely have a place in an interview because more often that not they are based upon imposing the interviewers stereotypes and values structure upon the interviewee. They are also confrontational and are demeaning to the interviewee and may quickly lead to a formal complaint being lodged or offer grounds for appeal under anti discrimination legislation.

Example Leading Questions

- I presume you applied for this position because you’re unhappy with your current employer
- You are not really experienced enough for this job are you?
- As a female I presume you will be taking time off to have a baby

Ask for Specific Examples.

The key skills that differentiates a good interviewer from a great one is the ability to encourage and extract specific examples that evidence the skills of the interviewee. Whilst it may be beneficial to ask an interviewee what they did in their last job it is much better to ask more specific questions that evidence skills required for doing the doing.

For example if you are looking for an IT project manager the key skills to do the job may include
the following:

- Ability to plan and co-ordinate
- Ability to delegate
- Line management skills
- Use of appropriate project management software

So why not ask specific questions around these core skills, for example

- Can you tell me about a time when you had to manage a project, what did you do?

- Can you tell me about a time when you were responsible for managing staff, what happened?

- Tell me about a time when you had to manage a complex project, what did you do?

Summary

Conducting a first interview can be a difficult process but this article has attempted to provide practical tips and examples to enable you to get off to the best possible start.

Visit the author’s site at http://www.friendsandmoney.co.uk

Tags: interview technique, interviewing, interviews

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