Interview preparation tips for recruiters

You hardly need a recruitment agency like webrecruit (http://www.webrecruit.co.uk) to inform you of the importance of a job interview to the candidate, but if you are the one doing the recruiting, you’ll also have no shortage of thorough preparation of your own to do. After all, failing to properly assess the suitability of interviewed candidates and subsequently choosing the wrong person can have a great cost in the form of training, management and induction time and general disruption.

Some recruiters are of the belief that candidates should be put under significant stress during an interview situation so that their ability to perform under pressure can be assessed. However, such an approach is all too often counterproductive for those recruiting staff, simply hampering the effectiveness of communication in an interview. The best approach is to tailor the interview to getting the best out of a candidate rather than the worst, taking responsibility to reduce stress so that you and the candidate can exchange the maximum possible amount of information.

One way you can get the best results from an interview is by not reading the candidate’s CV in their presence, which will probably annoy them – especially if the questions that you ask create the impression that you have not even read it prior to interview. Bear in mind, after all, that the staff recruitment process is as much about the candidate finding the right employer, as it is the employer finding the right candidate. Reading the candidate’s CV before they arrive will allow you to prepare important questions on such aspects as employment gaps and travelling distances. It’s also worth considering writing down any extensive notes in advance, rather than during the interview, although some recruiters choose to check with the candidate beforehand if it is alright to take a lot of notes in the interview itself.

The right environment is also vital to getting the best results from your interview. To this end, we’d advise you to set up a low table with two chairs at right angles to it. If you pile lots of books and files on the desk in addition to sitting on a high chair that leaves you towering over the candidate, you are simply erecting useless psychological and physical communication barriers. It’s much better to have the interviewee sat at the side of the desk, to reduce that sense of an employer-to-candidate interrogation. You should not hold the interview in a distracting environment, and nor should you intimidate the candidate to such an extent that they will not give the real reason for their leaving their previous company – among other vital personal or past employment details.

These are all vital factors to consider for any company that is looking to recruit staff, even before they consider the structure of the interview itself, the questions that should and shouldn’t be asked and how to handle certain types of interviewee. With its extensive services and resources, the webrecruit (http://www.webrecruit.co.uk) recruitment advertising agency assists recruiters significantly right up to, and including the interview stage.

Editor’s Note: Webrecruit (http://www.webrecruit.co.uk) are represented by the search engine advertising and digital marketing specialists Jumping Spider Media. Email: info@jumpingspidermedia.co.uk or call: +44 (0)20 3070 1959 / +34 952 783 637.