How can I improve my interviewing skills to ensure that I’m making good decisions on a job candidate’s suitability?

Q.  I am in the tech industry and help interview prospective employees. While most of the interview is to gather technical knowledge, at the end a lot of questions may come up from the candidate and I don’t always feel qualified to answer them. I haven’t had interview training, but I have shadowed colleagues when they interviewed people. We are also asked to vote yes or no on the candidate, even though I’m not sure what we are voting on. Do I like them? Can they do some of the job? It’s usually okay if there are 3 of us meeting the candidate and voting as there may be 2 yeses and 1 no, but when it’s two of us, I feel too much responsibility. Is it reasonable to ask my company if there are internal workshops or training to make me a better interviewer?

A. It’s more than reasonable to ask for training; you are doing the candidate, the company and yourself a favor. You can start by asking your company why they chose you to interview a particular candidate and what it is that they want you to focus your interview questions on. It’s important that this question is asked. Otherwise, it can lead to a disorganized interview process where questions are repeated and the information that hiring managers need isn’t necessarily received.

Some of the ways to prepare for this are for Human Resources, or whoever is the organizer of the interview, to gather all the people who are participating in the interview so that they can discuss which roles people will play and which areas of expertise specific people should focus on. For example, the HR person might be asked to find out about their employment history and why they’ve moved on from specific jobs, looking at the strength of their retention. You might ask the candidate questions about their ability to be a strong colleague, their partnering style, and their ability to be part of a strong team. Another colleague may focus on the technical skills that this person brings.

If you are new to interviewing, your HR department ideally should put you through some kind of interview training, recognizing that developing the kinds of questions to ask can be very challenging. If they don’t offer training, you can suggest you and other new interviewers watch videos to help you prepare. LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) all have courses to help you with effective interviewing techniques and strategies. Your company may want you to use behavioral interview questions, and if you don’t have experience with those kinds of questions, it can become very difficult to create the questions on your own. You also need training in what is legal to ask, or not!  It is very easy to slide into illegal territory especially if you build rapport with the candidate. You don’t want to be part of a lawsuit or to put your company at risk.
 
To get the best results possible and to prepare, you should be provided with a rating system and scale. You should be provided with the job description along with information from the hiring manager or HR about the top five areas that they most need for success in this position. What that does is get all of you in agreement on what it is that you’re looking for in this position and makes calibration and voting much easier as everyone is working from the same information.

Again, to get the most from the candidate, and to give the candidate the best experience to showcase their experience, you’ll want to ensure that people aren’t asking the same questions repetitively, and that they’re giving the candidate the opportunity to highlight the information and experiences that the organization is looking for. As you get the tools and training you need to improve your interviewing skills, you will become a more effective and confident interviewer and help your company recruit the best candidates for the job.

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