How to be a better Interviewer

There are only a few types of interviews out there: The good, the bad, and the mediocre. The interviewer has many responsibilities during this critical first—or second—meeting. Here’s a list of what separates a great interview from a not-so-great one

Interviewer Tactics

1. Open ended questions: If you ask these kinds of questions, the person being interviewed is forced to answer in complete sentences and

will often give a more honest answer. It’s easier to lie about skills when asked: “Can you do this?” rather than “What skills do you have that would help you be successful in this role?”

2. Single-task: We would all like to believe that we are great at multi-tasking. We often check our emails when we are writing a report as we are brewing a coffee. During an interview, set your other tasks aside. Really focus on the person in front of you. This will ensure that you are absorbing the essence of the person across the table.

3.Know your candidate: You should get to know this person through phone screens, social media accounts, resumes, references, or previous work. While, knowing too much could lead to an unprofessional conversation, just find enough information to get a feel for who your

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interviewee is. A great professional place to look is on their LinkedIn profile. If you do your research, you may be able to ask more questions that are relative to the person you are interviewing. There’s nothing worse than a canned interview. If there is no personalization to the interview,

4. Be empathetic: Odds are, you’ve had to go through a series of interviews in order to get where you are today. Try to look back on how you felt during the process. Remember what you liked and didn’t like during your experiences and try to tailor the interview to the individual sitting in front of you. Maybe even ask for their input, so you can continue to tweak your process. If you act uninterested or blasé during an interview, that’s how the candidate is going to react. If you don’t care about how the interview goes, you can’t expect anyone else to.

5. Be clear: For an interview to be successful, you and the interviewee should feel like something was gained from the conversation. You need to be honest about the expectations, what the job entails, and what will be expected from the candidate. An interview based in open honesty will translate into a candidate who is honest. Being dishonest will break the trust between employee and supervisor before there was even any to break. This almost ensures their departure from your organization.