Structured Interviews
Do you ever reflect on an interview, or interviews, and still have questions about whether a person can do a job?
Do you ever find yourself struggling to articulate to colleagues and seniors why you want to make a candidate an offer? Justifying it because you really like them, or “they’d be a great fit”.
Do you ever find you get to the final stage of an interview process, only to realise the candidate is not the right fit for a simple reason that you should have ruled them out for at the first interview stage and not wasted yours, or there’s, time?
Do you ever struggle to decide between two candidates, and often find yourself gravitating towards the person you would rather have at the team socials?
If you answered yes to the questions above, I can’t emphasise enough how you need to put a structured interview process in place. Not just compiling 20 questions from an internal interview bank that prevent you from measuring a candidate’s suitability for your role.
Below is a really simple structure but will have a big impact on your ability to measure and hire better talent.
· Make a list of the 4 or 5 most important competencies/strengths/aptitudes you are specifically looking for, once you have decided on your interview shortlist
· Write out in advance the questions you want to ask the candidates, make sure you have a couple of questions for each of the above. Also, write a couple of probing questions to dig deeper into candidates answers if you’re unsure about their initial responses.
· Know what a good and bad answer looks like to your questions. If you can’t articulate this clearly, it’s more than probably you will judge the candidate’s responses on how much you like them.
· Use a number rating system, such as 1 for a bad answer through to 5 for a good answer, to measure candidate responses
· Don’t overcomplicate it!
· During the interview, actively try to be fair and consistent in how you rate similar responses from candidates you like and those who didn’t make a great initial impression. If you really like a candidate but the person gave only a 2-calibre response to one of your questions, rate the candidate at 2, not a 3!
· Assign scores to each category and then combine these scores into a single candidate score at the end.