Goochie

Just been informed that in my boss's abscence I have to interview a guy this morning who's coming to work for us. Having only ever been to 4 interviews in my life I can hardly say I'm confident!

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

However nervous you may be, the interviewee will be worse. (Odd how that sounds like what people say about spiders, isn't it )

Read through the CV first, and ask open-ended questions that keep the candidate talking. Start with things like "Tell me about yourself", "Describe your most relevant experience", "What can you bring to this job and what do you hope to get out of it" and go on from there. You'll soon settle down.

ajm

Write yourself out a load points you need to cover to satisfy yourself that they are good for the job, a tick list basically. Then from those points devise some questions that will allow you to either put a tick against each point or not as the case may be.

Good preparation not only makes the interview flow smoothly, but it makes sure you are consistent between all the applicants (for comparisons sake) and that you take away a record after the interview to refresh your memory about a candidate.

OllyK

Fair points Andy....but....

First you need to know what role you are interviewing them for and the skills experience you are looking for to fill that position. Ideally you should have some kind of job description for the position. This will help you devise the sorts of questions you need to ask to see if the person is suitable.

Yes you do need to ask open questions to get the basic information from them, you then need to drill down on some of the keys points to find out more, this is where you start to use some closed questions as well so that you get Yes / No answers to confirm that you are understanding them correctly.

If it is a technical role of some description I would be inclined to see if it is possible to give them some kind of practical test or a gice them a typical scenario and ask them to talk you through how they would handle the situation.

See if they are eager to offer supporting information to show the depth of their knowledge or if you have to drag everything out of them.

eClaire

Business Link website includes info about preparing for the interview and carrying it out

47 NAT

Just make sure they have "Common Sense" as well as "Qualifications" and then you'll have the ideal candidate. Or at the best common sense! I've interviewed people in the past who have all the right credentials on paperwork, but lack common sense. Needless to say really, which ones got my vote and the job ............

OllyK

I wasn't suggesting sitting them down and asking them to develop something . Talking more about general technical stuff here, ask them to explain how they would approach a given problem / scenario that you encounter regularly. That kind of stuff

MrShades

I've conducted LOADS of interviews - in the IT world......

One of my favourite initial questions, which helps break down barriers and get's things running was "Tell me a good joke....". Ignore the joke, laugh at it out of politeness, but once that is out of the way it should become easier to communicate fluidly.

My parting, daft, question was typically "Can you tell me why a man-hole cover is round?" (If they say, they're not all round, then ask for the advtantage of them being round).

Fill the bit in the middle with open ended questions....... "Tell me about...", "How did you...", "What did you learn from...", "How would your boss describe you?", "What would your boss say were your strengths and weaknesses?", blah, blah...

ajm

Were you interviewing on behalf of an agency by any chance? The reason I ask is that it all sounds a bit waffly to me and nothing whatsoever to do with the job in hand!!!

oh, and its so the covers don't fall through the hole

MrShades

No, I was IT Manager - and this was usually a second interview. My HR team would do initial interviews, and put them through a written technical test covering a great deal of general areas of IT knowledge.

Based on their CV, the results of the technical tests and feedback from HR, I would short list a handful of candidates and get them in for a face-to-face with me.

Very often, a good candidate is one that (a) knows the technical stuff (but that's the easy bit), (b) can communicate (written and verbal), (c) has a degree of common sense and (d) will fit with the other team members.

An interview is therefore often just an information exchange - and I try to get it on as informal a footing as possible, and thus see the "real" person and not the interview persona.

Once selected, the last stage of the interview process was to pyschometrically test. This, however, was only used to pick out the psychos or complete nutcases that could obviously hide some worrying traits at interview. The basis of the selection criteria had nothing to do with these results, they were just a final sanity check...

Shades

Hanslow

Other things to take careful note of are how they act under the pressure of the interview and/or how they are if they are struggling to answer a question...do they ask you to clarify it or do they try and muddle their way through it.

Also think about how this person might fit in to the department as a whole, as you and the team will have to work with them day in day out.