Lauren Milam
Vice President of West Coast
Hire Up Staffing
Most people can relate to the nerves often associated with an upcoming interview. However, not all have experienced the nerves that can come from being the one responsible for conducting one. If you are new to the process of interviewing or are interested in comparing your current skills with those of long-time experts, follow along for some helpful tips and tricks.
- Prepare. Review the resume and application, as well as the job description. Create meaningful questions by customizing them beforehand to fit the needs of the job AND the candidate. Ensure the job description is an accurate depiction of the position ,and then build some of your questions upon those requirements.
Review the candidate’s resume and create questions around their experience. See a project they worked on that intrigues you? Jot that down. Notice they have experience with a particular software that your company has been considering? Make a note to yourself to ask them about their experience. By preparing for your interview in this manner, you set yourself up for success, as well as show the candidate that you value them, their experience, and their time.
2. When creating your interview questions, be sure to understand the differences between the four types:
Close-ended Questions: These questions are such that require the candidate to answer in a limiting manner. They could be yes or no questions or other questions that require succinct answers, such as, “How many years have you been with your current job?”
Open-Ended Questions: These questions are great for interviews because they allow the person an opportunity to share more detail about themselves or their experience. For example, “Can you describe a challenging customer request and how you worked to make it happen?”
Hypothetical Question:A hypothetical question allows the candidate an opportunity to create their version of an ideal response. For example, “How would you deal with an irate customer?”
Off the Wall: The intent of asking an off-the-wall question is most often to lighten the mood, as well as provide insight into the candidate’s creativity and ability to think on the fly. However, use your best discretion when selecting one to ask and use these types of questions sparingly. An example of an off-the-wall question is, “If you could be any animal, which would you be and why?”
3. Ask colleagues for advice. If you are new to interviewing, it is important to get a second opinion on your prepared interview questions before you use them. You may find that a member of your Human Resources team is a good place to start.
Once your questions have been given the green light, ask a colleague or mentor to do a practice run with you. This will provide an opportunity to ask your questions as well as practice answering questions a candidate may ask you during the interview process.
If ,even after some practice, you are feeling uneasy about conducting an interview on your own, ask a colleague to interview with you for the first few.
4. Be personable. Set the tone for the interview early with a genuine, warm greeting and use of their name. This demonstrates that you are expecting them, and it can help the candidate feel welcome and more at ease.
5. Let the candidate do most of the talking. Ideally, 70% or more of the interview should involve the candidate sharing specific experiences to answer your questions. If you feel the candidate is not sharing enough, or you are doing too much of the talking during your interviews, consider a few things:
Strengthen your questions. As previously mentioned, question preparation is important. You are setting the candidate up for success when your questions are intentional and can pull from their prior experiences. You will get the most from the candidate when you put effort into your question preparation.
Challenge yourself to become comfortable with silence as the candidate gathers their thoughts. Do not feel the need to fill the silence with more words. Some people need time to think about an answer that best fits the question posed. When you fill the silence rather than await their response, you could potentially create an environment in which the candidate feels rushed or unable to properly process what is being asked of them.
Consider sharing interview questions with candidates beforehand. You may find that sharing even a few of the questions beforehand allows your candidates to provide you with stronger responses because they have been able to give the questions more thought.
6. Take good notes during the interview. Notes during an interview are particularly important because once the interview is over and other work-related activity occurs, it can be easy to forget some of the things mentioned during your time with that candidate.
7. Act quickly if you want to move forward. It would not be unusual for your candidate to be interviewing with other employers. If you feel good about the interview and are unable to make a hiring decision on the spot, set the expectation for follow-up contact with the candidate. Let them know your timeline, and be sure you stay on task with your internal post-interview processes so you can keep to those timelines.
Interviewing is a key skill for leaders. With practice and preparation, your interview skills can become second nature, and your ability to connect with candidates can begin to feel more natural. Improving your interviewing technique is not only important for your skillset, but it will also impact how candidates view the job and your company. As an interviewer, the candidates you meet see you as an extension of your organization. While an interview is most often thought of as an employer’s decision, it is important to remember that an interview is also an opportunity for the candidate to make a decision about the company as well.
While interviewing is an especially important skill, we have found that many of our best clients just do not have the time it takes to recruit in-house. That is where we come in. We have a team of highly experienced recruiters ready to support you with your every hiring need. If you are finding less and less time to interview, or if you have been frustrated recently by hiring decisions that have not worked out as planned, call us. We can assist you in creating a strong recruitment plan and find you qualified applicants as early as the same day. We have offices all over to serve you, yet in a virtual world, we are simply a click away!
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Lauren Milam Vice President of West Coast
Meet Lauren Milam, Regional Vice President for Hire Up Staffing Services. Lauren started in the staffing industry 7 years ago as a Recruiter. Finding success in her role quickly, she promoted through the ranks to outside sales, training and development, and then Regional Vice President. She joined Hire Up in November of 2019 as our first Regional Vice President hire for the California Market. Since starting at Hire Up, she has created and implemented new sales campaigns and initiatives to help the company grow. In her first quarter with Hire Up, she helped the recruiters increase their individual gross profit by an average of 28%. She does this by creating plans that focus on the individual needs of each office and person.