Interviewing Techniques

"10 tips To Help You Hire Great Employees"

The interviewing techniques used can be the difference between hiring a star and making a terrible mistake. With great information, great hiring decisions are made. Hiring new employees doesn't have to be a mystery when a solid interview process is used.

This article presents 10 critical steps to help put a winning process in place.

Interviewing Problems to Avoid

There are numerous things to avoid to effectively hire new employees. The most important is BEING UNPREPARED. Without a process, a profile and a plan, the odds of hiring good employees aren't great. Too many people just "wing it" when it comes to hiring. This never works well.

ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS is the next problem. Most of the data obtained in the hiring process comes from the interview. Good data is gotten when good questions are asked. The opposite is true as well. See the best interview questions article for a full discussion.

Another problem area is JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS. Too often decisions our made within minutes of meeting the person. The decision is made with very little data. To be effective, withhold making the decision until as much information as possible is gathered.

No matter which interviewing technique is chosen, these problems need to be avoided.

Define Success

What does the person need to accomplish to satisfy the business need? How does the person need to behave to deliver the results the right way? These are two questions that have to be answered before interviewing. This information helps to build a profile of the successful person.

Think of the profile as the road map. It is a template of the successful person. Armed with this information, work through the rest of the process confident you are moving in the right direction.

Know The Purpose

This sounds strange but most people go into the hiring process without a clear purpose. Of course you want to hire a person but that is not specific enough.

The real goal is to hire a person who will be successful in the job. To be successful they need to satisfy a specific business need and accomplish the results in the right way.

The best way to achieve this result is to have the focus interviewing to be predicting success. At the end of the process, if you can answer whether or not the person will be successful, then you have met your goal.

Use A Structured Process

The only way to develop skills at hiring is to adopt a proven interview process and implement it consistently.

Following a proven, consistent interviewing process increases your odds of making good hiring decisions. Implementing a process in your organization is the fastest way to improve hiring.

Screen To Save Time

Screening candidates saves time. The effort put into reading resumes and conducting a phone interview saves a tremendous amount of wasted time. There is nothing worse than investing interview time in a candidate who has no chance of getting the job.

A good screening process helps filter through the candidates and saves time in long run.

Ask Effective Questions

No list of interviewing techniques is complete without a discussion of interview questions. The single biggest barrier to hiring great employees is not asking the right questions. There is a lot of misinformation on the subject that gets in the way.

The two most important types of questions to ask are factual questions and action questions. Interview questions should require a factual answer. "How many people worked on that project? What software did you use to manage your finances?" These are examples of factual questions.

Action questions require the person to share what they did. They have to describe behavior. "How did you overcome the price objection at ABC? How did you troubleshoot the machine?" These are examples of action questions.

For a complete discussion of effective questions, see the best questions article . Also, to learn how to create effective questions, see the creating questions article.

Control The Interview

Controlling the interview means getting the information needed in the time allotted. It is important to get the information needed as opposed to the information the candidate wants to share.

The best way to control the interview is to ask effective questions. The better the questions, the better data gathered.

Ask specific questions that require the person to give factual, behavioral answers and you will control the interview.

Validate Your Data

The better the data, the better the hiring decisions made. Apply many techniques to add and validate the data. Multiple or group interviews help get additional data. Second interviews refine the data collected. Finally reference and background checks further validate the data.

Base Hiring Decision On Facts

Too often, a discussion of interviewing techniques skips over the decision-making process. It is very easy to let impressions and biases influence hiring decision. This is a recipe for disaster. The more factual and behavioral the data, the better the hiring decision.

Asking effective questions and using all the validation steps provide you with a wealth of DATA. The more good data, the easier the hiring decision.

Keep It Legal

Hiring employees is an area that can get you in all kinds of trouble. All interviewing techniques need to meet legal requirements. The subject is far too complex to cover in this article but there is one basic concept to keep in mind.

Keep inquiries job related. Stay out of people's private life. Focus on work related behaviors. Explore how the person handled the same or similar situations to those they will face on your job.

This is a good guideline to help keep the interviews on legal ground.

These 10 interviewing techniques and tips are a good place to start. It is to your benefit to be constantly expanding your interviewing techniques toolbox.

One of the best investments a company can make is in interview training.  You can get more information on the Selecting Winners programs on our resources page.