Page 139 - Boost Your Hiring

The Surefire Way to Boost Your Score 125

Discrimination can be categorized under the following categories:
• Race and color discrimination
• Religious discrimination

• Sex (gender) discrimination
• Sexual orientation discrimination
• Age discrimination

• Discrimination of disabled persons

The Seven Most Common
Mistakes Interviewers Make

Following are the seven mistakes most commonly made by interviewers:
1. Judging a book by its cover: First impressions can be very deceiving.
Impressions made in the first five minutes of an interview can cloud
your judgment if you don’t keep an open mind. This type of snap
decision about a person can work for or against the candidate—with
the same disastrous results.
2. “Winging” the interview: When you have not done your prep work
before the interview and have not studied the résumé or at least
skimmed the résumé, you are shortchanging the candidate as well
as your employer. Preparing the questions and determining in ad-
vance the factors that are key to the job will make a significant dif-
ference in the outcome of your selection process.
3. Talking too much: A good rule of thumb is to let the candidate talk
80 percent of the time while you talk only 20 percent of the time. A
talkative interviewer does not get the information necessary to de-
termine whether this candidate is the right candidate for the job.
The process done properly is a two-way communication of ques-
tions and answers.

4. Telegraphing the desired response: Beware of giving the candidate
the answer that you are looking for.An example would be,“You don’t
mind working extra hours, do you?” It’s pretty obvious that the an-
swer to that question is, or should be, no. When you lead candidates,
you make it convenient for them to try to please you with the an-
swers they think you are looking for instead of the real answer.