As you prepare to conduct job interviews, it’s critical to focus on factors related specifically to the job. This will help you find the right candidate for the position and avoid discrimination charges from candidates you don’t select.
To do this, it’s important to first identify the essential job functions and the key capabilities required for the job. Then, you’ll need to structure the interview to help you determine whether an applicant has the knowledge, experience, education, intellectual abilities, interpersonal skills, and motivation it takes to perform the job successfully.
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Here are key steps you should take to get ready for interviewing:
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Reevaluate the position description and benchmark requirements.
It’s important to ensure that the current job description matches your needs now and in the near future. Also, make sure the benchmark requirements for the job—such as years of experience, education, and other credentials—are actually needed to perform the position’s essential functions. - Examine each candidate’s application/resume. Carefully note any gaps in information. Then, make a list of questions for the candidate to answer about any missing data, such as why he or she left one job for another, what the person did during gaps in employment, salary inconsistencies, and clarification of job title or duties. Make sure your list is on a separate piece of paper, and not on the application itself, so it doesn’t become part of the candidate’s personnel file if he or she is hired.
- Review test results. If you administer pre-employment skills and aptitude tests to applicants, be sure to examine the results to determine if they reveal the candidates’ possible weaknesses. Then, design some interview questions
to help evaluate whether these deficiencies are likely to cause inadequate job performance. - Select an interview type. In a semi-structured interview, basic questions are prepared in advance, and the interviewer asks additional and follow up questions to ensure enough information is obtained from the applicant to truly evaluate their answers. Another interview format is a patterned interview, in which the basic questions and a multiple choice list of supplemental questions are prepared in advance. Finally, in an unstructured interview, only a few very broad and general questions are prepared beforehand and the applicant is encouraged to discuss topics they think are relevant. A semi-structured interview is the most common type of interview because it allows you more flexibility than a patterned or unstructured interview in tailoring questions to both the position and candidate.
Additional Resources:
CEA Online Exclusive: Preliminary Job Description Questionnaire