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 you are making that 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 are down to your last few, it is time for you, the employer, to become involved. It is a good idea to first have a look at an excellent book about interviewing called Topgrading by Brad Smart. He offers some great advice about the way you should set up an interview, and the type of questions that should be asked.
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 web cam as well. You need to make sure that they are punctual, they have worked out any time differences between your two countries, see that they have a web cam which shows they have good internet connection and they 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 taking notes of what is being said. You can of course make occasional note of anything that you want to follow up or is of particular interest to you, but on the whole, you want to be available one hundred percent of the time to the person you are interviewing. You should also record the interview so that you can go back over it later and show it to some 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 try and discover the patterns of 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 place of work. 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 feeling about whether this person is going to be right for your company or not. If you start to get bad feelings, don’t prolong the interview. Go with you 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 feel sure they are 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. Just click here for more information.
Get that ‘A’ player on your team using smart interview strategies.
