Interview Preparation for Hiring Managers

Have you been unable to decide who the best candidate is? Hiring the wrong people? Or struggling to hire at all?

As a hiring manager, conducting effective interviews is essential to identify the right candidates for your team. Proper interview preparation not only enhances the efficiency of the hiring process but also improves the quality of candidate assessments.

Pre-Interview

1. Understand the Job Requirements: Before conducting interviews, ensure a clear understanding of the job requirements. Review the job description, including essential skills, qualifications, and experience. Identify the key competencies required for success in the role.
2. Tailor interview questions: You should come up with specific questions to assess requirements of the job. Many hiring managers just ask the same questions regardless of the position being hired for. Try to make your questions thought provoking and not simple “Yes/No” answers. If you ask too many closed questions, the interview can seem stop/start/interrogating and you don’t build up much of a flow/personal relationship with the candidate.
3. Read the Candidates' CV: Too many managers don’t read the CV and it means that the interview is less productive. You need to read the CV with an eye on two things:

If something basic like salary/location/onsite work etc… clarify it before wasting the time interviewing. “Hi xxx, I saw you’re based in Luzern and this job is in Zurich, I thought your CV was quite interesting and would like to invite you for an interview, but just wanted to clarify if you’re happy working 4 days onsite in Zurich? If so, would you be available on the following dates to meet?” or “Hi xxx, Thanks for the application. We’re still putting together the shortlist and I like the look of your experience. Can you confirm your salary expectations for when we’re making the shortlist of candidates to interview?” saves everyone so much time, yourself especially!

b) What can I drop into the interview/conversation to make the candidate more at ease and more valued?

It can be something as simple as “I saw you lived in xxx, I’m planning to visit near there next summer, any tips for whilst I’m there?”. This is especially great to do at the start for example if you’re walking together to the meeting room and can avoid the awkward small talk/silence.

4. What’s your selling point? Think about what’s good about working for your company, this position, the team, working with you, etc… remember it’s a two-way process so you should emphasise these positives with any strong candidate.

The interview itself

Plan Interview Structure: Don’t just let it flow. Plan out what you will ask (without being too scripted!).

Don’t be afraid to cut the interview short if at any point in time you have made your final decision. You can either a) be upfront with the candidate and say “I’m sorry it’s not going to work because of xxx, but all the best with your search” or b) Tie it up in a non-committal way: “Thanks for coming in today, unfortunately we’re going to have to cut it a little short as I have quite an important meeting that I have to move on to now, but I’ll come back to you in the next couple of days”. Then actually do get back to them of course.

In my opinion the best interview structure is:

1. Introduce yourself. Make it personal and fairly detailed (circa 5 minutes). This will put the candidate at ease, make yourself more relatable and set the tone for the interview
2. Ask the candidate to introduce themselves. See if they follow your format… if they do, it’s a good sign of “mirroring” and the ability to take on a process info and re-use it rapidly.
3. Specific Job related Questions: Run through your specific questions about the job to see if you think the person can do the tasks required of them job. Essentially “Can they do the job?”
4. Specific Personal related Questions: What qualities are important to you in the person your interviewing for. Don’t ask these in self-fulfilling ways. For example, don’t ask them questions like “Are you good at communicating with your manager?” Or “Are you organised?” OR “What are your weaknesses?”, instead ask them less obvious questions like: “Describe the best and the worst manager you’ve had in your career” OR “How did your average day/week look in your last job” OR “What’s the biggest mistake that you’ve learnt from in your career so far?”. Essentially “Do I think I could work well with this person?”
5. Motivations: Ask what’s important to the candidate in a new job for them.
6. Candidates questions: asking the candidate to ask you questions should help you get a better insight into them as a person. Do they ask questions to test if this opportunity is in line with their motivations? If they ask logistical/salary based questions are they more interested in these than the actual job/team/company?
7. Sell: if you like the person, tell them. Explain to them how this position could be the right option for them, most importantly in line with their motivations.
8. Next steps: Be open about next steps. If you have to wait until 2 weeks when a colleague is back from holiday, inform the candidate now, so they are not waiting and wondering (or worse, moved on to other things).

After the interview

1. Notes: Take 5 minutes to go through your notes or make notes about the pros and cons of the candidate, especially if it’s not a clear decision. This can be really important if you are interviewing many candidates as they can blur together after a while!
2. Communicate: Once a decision has been made communicate with the candidate (or agency) as soon as possible. Especially if it’s a no with an agency like us it’s important for us to know specifically why, because then we can adjust our efforts in a slightly different direction.

If you’d like some extra help on how to interview candidates best, get in touch with tom@summitag.ch