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In our last newsletter, we continued our series on preparation and proven strategies to guide you through a well-planned interview and selection process. In this issue we explore best practices when conducting an interview and encouraging more depth in candidate responses. As always, let us know if you’d like to see us cover a specific topic or if you need help with your hiring needs.

Conducting the Interview & Getting the Candidate to Respond

From the beginning of this series, we stressed the importance of preparation. Being prepared will help your candidate feel more comfortable and allows you to focus on the outcome. Once the candidate walks out the door, you don’t get the opportunity to say, "You know I really wasn’t prepared. Can we try that again?" Using your preparation time wisely is critical. Take the time you allocated for the interview and divide it into three sections.

1. Use 20% of your time getting acquainted with the candidate including small talk and checking in on how the interviews are going. At the end of this segment, share with the candidate how you have focused what you are going to do during the interview and then follow through.
2. Use 60% of your time probing for the candidate’s actual experience using your behavioral interview questions you prepared ahead of time.
3. Use the last 20% of your time learning what the personal and professional goals are for this candidate. These are motivating factors for a candidate and can be revealing when you assess candidates and make hiring decisions.

Two tips to remember during any interview are first; take notes so that you remember your discussion and specific candidate attributes when comparing candidates at decision time. Second, learn to tolerate silence. Silence is okay and needed at times. Often interviewers feel they need to fill silence with conversation, but this can be distracting, sometimes confusing, and ultimately can take the interview off course.

Need more help developing interview questions for your next interview? Contact us at KL Kingsley and we would be happy to provide guidance.

In Our Next Issue . . .

Evaluating your candidates’ qualifications and making decisions? We’ll share with you some helpful tips to guide you through the assessment and selection process. All of the information you have gathered and the steps you have taken to best prepare for your interview come into play at this stage in the process.

What’s your Top Interviewing Challenge?

Tell us about your organization’s most difficult interviewing challenge – you could receive a complimentary coaching session with Kate Kingsley for you or someone on your team. Email your challenge to kate@klkingsley.com.

Additional Interview Questions

Communication
Provide examples on how you communicate up, down and across your organization.

Conflict Management & Teamwork
Describe a situation when you led a team to achieve a specific goal and there was discord or resistance among team members. What did you do to overcome this resistance? What was the outcome?

Decision Making & Problem Solving
Tell me about how you solved a problem using a systematic approach.

Leadership
Provide an example of how you helped develop and empower an individual or team of people to improve customer service.

Vision/Strategy
Look ahead 1-2 years and talk about emerging issues affecting the industry or your function. How would you begin to prepare an organization for those changes?

Need more help developing interview questions for your next interview? Contact us at KL Kingsley and we would be happy to provide guidance.