Page 15 - Boost Your Hiring

Introduction

A Savvy Approach to More
Effective Interviewing

I’ve heard it said that the only thing more painful than going to an in-
terview is to have to conduct an interview. Most hiring managers dread
the experience.
One of the reasons that they dread the experience is that they have
had little or no training in how to effectively perform the task. There
have been studies that have found that many hiring decisions are actu-
ally made in the first two minutes of the interview. If that is the case,
these decisions are being made on a subjective basis, when the inter-
viewers’ inner prejudices are at work; they are judging the candidates by
the way they look, act, shake hands, and most of all by their demeanor.
Most candidates are nervous before the interview. In fact, some are
paralyzed at the thought of selling themselves. If the interviewer cannot
see beyond that behavior and work to bring out the best in the person,
the interviewer may be missing out on great people who are not great at
interviewing or selling themselves.
Your job in the interview is to ask the questions that will bring out the
skills, abilities, traits, and past behaviors of the candidate so that you can
get as clear a picture of that person as a possible in a short amount of
time.
Often hiring is done with little more than a passing thought to the
skills, abilities, and knowledge needed for a position. Inadequate evalua-
tion of critical skills costs companies millions of dollars each year be-
cause objective job data have not been collected.
As life has become more complicated, so has the interview-selection
process. It appears that there is a competition going on as to who can be
more effective at interviewing—the interviewer or the candidate.
Today’s candidates are better prepared for the interview than candi-
dates in the past, and they have practiced the difficult questions. Any
bookstore or online career advice site has an assortment of books and
help for the candidate to prepare for the encounter with the interviewer.

Copyright © 2007 by Carole Martin. Click here for terms of use.