The Importance of the Interview Process

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After the assessment and pre-screening process, the interview is your last chance to evaluate and gain critical information from a potential employee. The question is what questions will you ask and what type of answers do you desire. Beyond the experience and technical skill of the position, what are you looking for? How do you determine attitude, leadership skills, and the ability to work with your current team? How do you determine that a candidate has the personality skills and habits that you require?

The interview is an art form and here are 5 responses that may help you determine whether your candidate is a Monet or a mistake.

1. Your questions surprise the candidate consistently – A quality candidate should anticipate roughly 80% of the questions a recruiter asks. A candidate without answers is a candidate not willing to prepare.

2. Short answers – Interviewees should be speaking roughly 80% of the time in an interview and every answer should be backed up by a reason or example. Short answers can potentially be a problem with work history or someone with poor people skills.

3. The candidate without a weakness – Everyone has flaws and the nature of the question is designed to see what the candidate is doing to improve his/her skills. The candidate with no self-awareness may even be an excellent worker, but a nightmare to work within a team environment.

4. The enthusiastic candidate with no company knowledge – Again, a prepared candidate will know some of the corporate history and how she/he fits into the scope of that history. Unbridled enthusiasm backed without reason indicates a lack of preparation, initiative, or intelligence.

5. The candidate can’t articulate the job and their company role – A potential candidate should know the details of their job and an excellent candidate can discuss how his/her performance affects the company and what their job is to improve the company in the marketplace.

The interview process is not an exact science and the perfect candidate wanders into the office as often as a unicorn grazes in the open field. The greatest tool at your disposal is information and the more open-ended questions and detailed responses you gather, the greater the potential for making the best hiring decision for the company.