Interviews are no child's play and acing it is very important because these interviews decide the future of your company as you are to hire employees that will work with you by these interviews. So, we bring you a few tips and tricks to conducting awesome interviews and select the employee most suited to your company and the job profile.
When conducting an interview, the interview questions are very important but for an interview to be smooth and successful a little preparation beforehand hurts no one. The different challenges that the recruiters usually face are spending too much time managing applications, not getting high-quality job applications, bad candidate relationship management, etc. So, before diving into conducting an interview, these are a few necessary things to be dealt with:
Awesome Job Description
While looking for candidates or posting a job vacancy, a company should prepare a proper job description template that covers what the job is about, what position would the employee be getting at the company, and what duties are to be covered by the employee. This draws a clear picture of the candidates as to what they are coming on board for.
Job Requirement
Another thing that one should be clear about while posting about a job position is, to very clearly and properly post about the requirements for the position. It may be the educational qualifications, experience, age group, known languages, the skills required, and the software know, location of the job, etc. These specifications help both the candidates and the recruiters as the applicants know if they are qualified for the job position or not and saves time for the recruiters.
Creating a Candidate Persona
A candidate Persona is a semi-fictional character or image formed by the employer about the type of person they would want to hire. It could include things like career paths, life goals, social media channels, vision, creativity level, and much more. This again sorts the applicants that are actually valid to apply for the post.
Customised Interview Email
Once the job is posted with all the details, as soon as the applications start flowing in, it is important to send customised emails to the selected candidates as to which position they are being interviewed for, where and when the interviews are being conducted, what documents need to carry with them, link to the company website for them to study so on and so forth. These emails could be the same for all the applicants if they are for the same post or they may be different for every other individual. This is important as these make the candidates come well prepared and well informed for the interview.
Application Status
Once the Interview mail has been sent to the candidates, sometimes the mail might not be received by the candied or mixed in other mail and forgotten. So, it is important to send an interview confirmation email and Interview reminder email to candidates prior to the interview. Another problem that can occur is when the date, time, or venue of the interview is changed or the requirement of the documents is changed, or any other changes needed to be taken care of after the confirmation of the interview. All these issues could be solved by using a Candidate Self Service Portal.
Candidate Self Service Portal is a system that includes functions like setting up and updating the profile or resume of a candidate, searching for matching jobs, submitting a job application, tracking application status, verifying interview status, etc. This Candidate Self Service Portal helps build a clear communication between the recruiters and the candidates and give a good experience for the candidate.
Researching About the Candidate
After the interviews are set up, it is not only important for the candidates to be prepared but also important for the recruiters to be well versed in the candidates who are appearing for the interview. This can be done by doing research about the candidates. But, when interviewing a huge number of candidates, it is very difficult and time-consuming to research every candidate.
This can be made easy by using knock out questions before the Interview. Knock out questions are those question that has absolute necessity to be correct. If the answers don't meet the requirement, the applicants can be informed that they are not eligible for the job position which saves a lot of time and capital for the company. This process can be conducted by Screening Interview Questions.
Create Safe Space
So, once all the pre-procedures are complete for the interview and the candidate sits in front of the panel, one should create a relaxed environment for the interview. The interviewers should start slowly with safe and light questions about the candidate's background, education, experience, hobbies, etc. This makes the candidate relaxed and makes the flow of communication smooth and comfortable.
Questions
The interviewer should be well prepared about the questions he/she needs to cover to know if the candidate is appropriate for the job or not. It is got to get a printed copy of all the questions that need to be covered during the interview. Also, including few open-ended questions in the interview can be beneficial as it gives a free floor for the candidate to express themselves and for the recruiter to understand the candidate better.
Change Pace
Once the interview is relaxed enough, one can pick up the pace but not by scaring away the candidate. Of course, slight grilling shows how the candidate operates under pressure but it should not be overdone. It is important to remember that while negotiating about the terms of salary for the position, persuasion is the key.
On-Boarding
Well, the completion of the interview does not complete the process of hiring an employee. There are things like documentation, explaining the employee about the company policies, etc are other procedures to be taken care of which can be done by On-Boarding. On-Boarding helps after the candidate is hired for the job. This helps the candidate to smoothly commence their work in the company from day one. On-Boarding is very important for creating a comfortable work environment in an organisation.
So, what are you waiting for? Now that you have all the secrets to conduct an awesome interview we hope you get the best-suited employees for your company. For more information, ask for a free demo today.