Employer's Interviewing Guide

Almost everything that makes a great job interview is what happens before the interview. Here are 7 things you should prepare before the interview.

Define the role requirements and write a job description

At this point you must be able to answer some important questions, like:

  • What qualities are you looking for in a candidate?
  • What hard and soft skills do other top performers in your company possess?
  • What gaps currently exist on your team?

The more accurately you can define the role and the qualities which you are looking for, the easier it be to find out what to ask during the interview.

Prepare specific questions for the role in advance

It is easy to get caught up in conversation during an interview if you haven’t prepared your questions in advance.

If you prepare a base set of questions, you can ask these same questions to each candidate. This routine allows you to compare candidates more objectively.

To make sure you get useful answers which might help you to decide, use a variety of close-ended questions, open-ended questions, hypothetical questions, and behavioural questions.

And while it’s good to be prepared, leave a space for questions that come up naturally. If there’s something that stands out (either positive or negative), don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions.

Screen all candidates with pre-employment assessments

The easiest way to have great job interviews is to have great candidates sitting in front of you. But it is hard to identify the best candidates from their resumes only. And you will spend a lot of time reviewing resumes if you do not take a more efficient approach.

Pre-employment assessments help you solve problems like:

  • you do not have to read all the resumes,
  • it filters faked abilities in resumes,
  • it gives you a more efficient alternative to resume evaluation.

A pre-employment assessment is a collection of tests given to a candidate as a part of the application. You can test candidates on:

  • Personality and culture fit
  • Cognitive ability
  • Languages
  • Situational judgment
  • Role-specific skills
  • Programming skills
  • Software skills

By delivering these assessments to each candidate, you will reduce bias in your hiring process by giving you a view of each candidate that doesn’t depend on a recruiter scanning thousands of resumes. That's because resumes include identifying information that can trigger unconscious bias.

Conduct a phone screen or a one-way-video interview before the in-person interview

It is good to make a call to candidates in advance to filter out any unqualified candidates that past the pre-screening phase. You can ask candidates to verify facts on their resumes to assess whether they are deserving of a full interview.

As an alternative, many companies also use video screening questions as a replacement or in addition to a screening call.

Schedule enough time for the interview

Depending on the role, you will have to decide between a face-to-face interview, over the phone, or over a video call. You will also have to decide how much time to allocate for an interview. Junior roles may only take 30 minutes, while more senior roles may take over an hour.

It is best to have more than one person interviewing the candidate, so it’s better if you invite a co-worker too.

Be transparent with the candidate before the interview

Interviewing for a job is stressful. Making sure your candidate comes to the interview as relaxed as possible makes it more likely you will get to know the best of them.

Remove any points of stress by letting them know as many details as possible about the interview. Let them know about the company dress code, who will be present in the interview, and a basic outline of the job interview process.

Study up on the candidate before the interview

Plan to spend at least half an hour reviewing the candidate in advance.

You only have a limited window to get to know each candidate. You do not want to spend too much of the interview making them repeat what is on their resume. Get to know their job history, check out their LinkedIn profile, review their assessment results, and review any other materials they may have provided before the interview.

If there are any gaps or confusing points in their resume, you can add them to your list of questions to ask the candidate.