Interviewing people who apply for a job at your company isn’t a task to be taken lightly.  Ineffective interviewing practices can cause you to hire the wrong people. They can also expose you to the risk of being sued. Here’s what you need to avoid these risks and become a better interviewer.

Planning the Interviewing Process

Interviewing requires preparation on the part of both interviewer and interviewee. Implementing a standard interviewing process and ensuring that everybody at your organization who conducts an interview follows it can go a long way toward improving results.

Start by writing a complete job description. Ask the appropriate managers for input so you form an accurate picture of the position’s responsibilities and importance to the organization. Identify the job's key requirements in terms of education, experience and essential behaviors required, e.g., working in teams, in isolation, without direction, etc. Make a list of job- and experience-related questions to ask during the interview.

One way to save time and money is to use phone interviews as a screening device. This enables you to eliminate unqualified candidates without the time and expense of a live interview. Don’t palm off the task of phone interviewing to just anyone. Make sure the phone interviewer has the skills to do the job properly.

When and if you invite applicants for a live interview, tell them what formal tests or panel interviews you use. Also notify them of the people they’ll be meeting and their roles in the organization. Be professional in your conduct and presentation. You want applicants to tell other people about the great interviews they had at your company and why they want to work there.

How the Pros Conduct Interviews

The interviewer’s job is not simply to ask questions but to form judgments about the candidate’s skills, knowledge and personality. Some interviewers divide the interview into two sections: personal history and work history.

Evaluate not simply job-related knowledge but how well candidates understand the company's business and their ability to contribute to its goals. Can they handle the stress and challenges of the position? What are their personal goals? Do they have a realistic chance of achieving these goals at your company? Are they better suited to work independently or in a team? Do they mesh with your company’s culture?

The interview is—or at least should be—an exchange that flows in both directions. The interviewer must not only evaluate the candidate but empower the candidate to evaluate the organization. To do that you must give candidates an accurate picture of what’s going on at your company.

Always give candidates the chance to ask questions at the end of the interview. If a candidate doesn’t ask a question, it should send up a red flag because it signals either: a. the candidate isn’t interested in working here; and/or b. the candidate didn’t listen and think about what you said during the interview.

When you wrap up the interview, say something like: “Thank you for your time. We have several applicants and when we complete our interviewing process, we'll let you know if you've made it to the next round.”

Using Interview Results to Make Good Hiring Decisions

After all the candidates have been interviewed, the managers involved in the hiring process must get together and evaluate the results. Again, it’s a good idea to use a standard format to rank candidates. Ask managers to explain why they’re excited about a particular applicant.

If nobody emerges from the process as a strong candidate, the problem might be not the quality of the applicant pool but the effectiveness of your interviewing program. Take a good hard look at things. Are your job and salary expectations realistic? Are you using the right people to conduct interviews? Do you need to rethink the job’s education or experience requirements? Are you losing candidates because of some unrecognized factor such as work environment, work hours or location of your workplace? Could the problem be something as simple as lack of courtesy such as failing to offer interviewees a cup of coffee or water?

Conclusion

Effective interviewing requires preparation, planning and practice. The time, money and energy involved is not insignificant. Ultimately, though, doing a good job of interviewing is much less expensive than hiring the wrong people.

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