Infinite Ideas - Interviewing: Simple Ideas for Selecting the Best

Interviewing

Simple ideas for selecting the best

Infinite Ideas

Copyright information

First published in 1997 by David Grant Publishing; revised and updated edition published 2012 by

Infinite Ideas Limited
36 St Giles
Oxford
OX1 3LD
United Kingdom
www.infideas.com

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of small passages for the purposes of criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the publisher. Requests to the publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, Infinite Ideas Limited, 36 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LD, UK, or faxed to +44 (0) 1865 514777.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781908864970

Brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Welcome!

About Interviewing

Can a short book help you learn interviewing skills?

The answer is a resounding Yes.

Interviewing is written for people with neither the time or patience to trawl through acres of jargon, management-speak and page-filling nonsense to be found in most business books. Like all the books in the series, it has been written in the belief that you can learn all you really need to know quickly and without hassle. The series aims to provide essential, practical advice you can use straight away.

Lets get to work.

Is this book for you?

Successful Interviewing is packed full of useful and practical advice for the would-be ace recruiter. In todays competitive labour markets, it is vital to make sure you appoint the right person for the right job. The crux of any recruitment procedure, is the face-to-face interview. It can be a nerve-wracking time for both parties. How can you be sure youve made the best choice of person? Have you been fair and given all interviewees an equal opportunity?

Interviewing is all about technique. You have to ask the right questions and then judge a persons character from their replies . If you want to improve your interviewing skills, this book is definitely for you.

If your interviewing skills need a quick pep-me-up then this quick, no-bull guide is just what you need. Read on.

How to use this book

The message here is Its OK to skim. Feel free to flick through to find the help you most need. This book is a collection of hands-on tips which will hlp you to identify any shortcomings you might have in your interviewing technique and help you to turn them into strengths. Youll quickly become the slick interviewer youve always wanted to be.

Successful Interviewing has been written to dip into. You dont have to read it all at one go or follow every tip to the letter. If youre really pushed for time, you could skip through the book following the boxed features. These summarize each of the points covered by prompting you to think about an issue, and then giving you action points which are backed up with lists of handy tips to keep you on the right track.

GOOD LUCK!

1. Why are you interviewing?

• Whats in this chapter for you
• The importance of getting it right
• The nightmare interview
• Why use the interview?
• The perfect Interviewer

All the jobs in our company are subject to an interview. Its the way its always been done! I couldnt appoint anyone without an interview, however good they look on paper its the human touch that counts. Is there any other way?

Don Cole, personnel officer

The importance of getting it right

Does Dons attitude sound familiar? It should: Almost every new job in the country is filled as the result of a successful interview.

You?

When was the last time you conducted an interview? Did you get the right person for the job? When was the last time you were interviewed? Did they get the correct impression of you?

Im terrible at giving interviews. I get as flustered as the candidates and only think of the best questions after theyve gone.

Jon Wagstaff, wine warehouse manager

Interviewing has become the most common method of recruitment selection. However, there is a question mark over the usefulness of interviews. It is not certain how good they are at predicting the eventual performance of a candidate. We have all experienced interviews that have gone really badly, where we might say, They really didnt get to know me or They seemed to have decided before the interview even began. These are all signs not of the weakness of the interview process itself, but of a poorly planned and executed session. Interviews can be very powerful predictors but they need to be done properly. Done badly they can be worse than useless a waste of peoples time and money.

We spend all day interviewing candidates for a job. It involves the principal, the head of studies, the senior teacher and a governor. When you add up what it costs in staff time, not to mention the work lost for that day, it doesnt bear thinking about. We are actively looking for a better way to recruit new staff.

Pam Henderson, primary head teacher

Pams experience is not untypical. Interviews are costly and not always guaranteed to work. As predictors of likely job competence, they have proved to be poor (often ranking only slightly higher than pure guesswork, reading tea leaves and astrology!).

The nightmare interview

Interviews can and do go wrong. Bad interviews can leave interviewees feeling embittered and damage their self-esteem. For an organization its just as damaging to have a good interview which picks the wrong person.

Its quite common here for people to do really well at interview, only to prove that they dont come up to scratch in the job. One guy we employed as a department manager, who had interviewed really well, turned out to have dire people management skills. It cost us two of our best junior account managers and morale has still not been restored.

Lisa Perrot, financial services company

You?

Think about the consequences of a nightmare interview for you or your organization. It goes deeper than just the loss of time and money in the short term theres also your reputation at stake. This is why its vital to get it right every time.

Here are some reasons why interviews go wrong.

• The wrong type of interview has been used. Theres more than one way to interview a candidate. One person, face-to-face may be the least effective (see the next chapter).
• The interview has been badly planned. The secret of good interviews lies in the planning: knowing what to ask and why; knowing how to interpret the responses.
• An inexperienced (or incompetent) interviewer.

The skills of the interviewer are key to getting it right so ensure you assess whoever is conducting any interviews in your organization and look at possible training needs.

Act!

Here are seven sure-fire signs of interviewer incompetence. If you spot these in yourself or others, do your best to put them right. They are all to be avoided. The interviewer:

• wants to do all the talking
• is a very poor listener (and shows it)
• is very disorganized (cant find the application form, doesnt know who the interviewee is, hasnt arranged a venue for the interview)
• has his or her mind made up before a word is spoken