Download Our eGuide: Best Practices for Interviewing
Download this guide to learn best practices for interviewing and seven simple steps to improve your hiring process.
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There are countless articles and resources out there for prospective employees to read up on how to conduct themselves in an interview. But what about employers? Employers also need to behave appropriately in an interview if they want to give the best impression to top candidates.
So here are five things you should avoid doing when interviewing candidates.
Though it should go without saying, lying to a candidate is never a good idea. If you feel the need to lie about a particular question, then there are other issues to solve outside of your hiring practices. This also goes for not answering a question or lying by omission. Candidates will take that as a bad sign. Be honest about what the role entails — the good and the bad. This will give the candidate a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in your company.
While answering candidate questions will require you to talk some, avoid adding in your own experiences or anecdotes as you interview. Particularly, the first interview should be about the candidate. The candidate will be able to get to know you in follow-ups should they be qualified for your position.
Resumes are used for a reason! Anything that’s listed on a resume, you don’t need to ask about in an interview. The interview should be about qualifying the candidate to meet your needs outside of their skills and experience. The resume is purely intended to qualify candidates for the interview.
Interviews should be more conversational. Yes or no questions limit dialogue and make it difficult to understand a candidate’s thought process. For example, instead of asking something like “Can you use this platform?” Ask them how they’ve used the platform to solve a specific problem or need.
Asking about any of the following five aspects below could put your organization at risk. They create liability if a candidate ended up pursuing a discrimination lawsuit later on — but these aspects also have a tendency to create bias in an interview process. Whether we like to admit it or not, we generally gravitate towards people who share common interests or traits.
Questions and responses from an employer in an initial interview should serve to qualify the candidate for the job or inform the candidate about the role and company. Any question or response that doesn’t achieve one of these objectives should be reevaluated.
Knowing what NOT to do is step one in improving your interviewing and protecting yourself from the liabilities associated with the hiring process. But interviews are tools for both the employer and candidates. To learn more about how you can improve your interviewing skills download our eGuide below!
Download this guide to learn best practices for interviewing and seven simple steps to improve your hiring process.
