Job interview’s are just as much an opportunity for a business to impress, as they are for the candidate. But how do you do it?

In this video, Alex Handford, director of Blues Point Ltd, talks through his top tips for conducting a successful job interview.

Transcript

Hi, Alex Handford here, co-director at Blues Point IT Recruitment in Burton on Trent.

Today I wanted to talk to you about running a successful interview.

Point #1

There are a few points I want to cover, the first point being: have you looked at the candidate’s CV?

What I don’t mean is just skim reading, it’s about actually have you spent time looking at the person’s achievements, if they’re on there.

This is a good way to then construct a format for the interview, and ask some probing questions.

Point #2

Point two would be: are you selling your opportunity in the correct way?

Gone are the days where candidates were queuing up to come and work for you. Candidates are very hard to find, they’re going to be employed by your competitors; well looked after, well paid, so when you’re having an interview with them you really need to sell the opportunity. I.e, what are the benefits, the positives of working for your company?

Understand what the pleasure and pain is. So if there’s lots of pain where they currently are, there’s a good chance that they may want to come and work for you.

If they’re getting lots of pleasure, and you’re just offering more pleasure, i.e. more money then, potentially, a counter offer may stop them wanting to join you.

So an interview is a very good way of assessing that before you make an offer to them.

Point #3

The next point would be the interview format, so is it structured?

Somebody coming in and having a chat over a coffee is probably not the best way to make a decision about whether this person is going to be the best hire for you.

A structured interview process where you’re asking competency-based questions, so these are probing questions where you’re asking people to talk about their experience, maybe how they’ve delivered a project, challenges they’ve overcome, that’s the best format to use.

And remember, an interview is very much a branding exercise these days.

So if they’ve come in and had a positive interview with you, that’s great. Even if you don’t hire them, they’ll go out on to their social media platforms, Github, whatever it is, maybe talk to their colleagues in a positive light about you as an employer.

If they’ve had a negative experience, it’s quite easy these days for people to use things like Glassdoor to write a negative review about an interview.

So these things are definitely worth bearing in mind.

 Final Thoughts

So wrapping up, what I’d suggest was really do think about the interview process.

The more prepared you are, the more structured, the better outcome.

Take your time when hiring people, don’t hire people quickly, everyone’s a winner.

Thank you.