A Guide to being an Excellent Interviewer: The Dos and Don’ts

Unlock your ability to Interview Candidates!

An excellent interviewer is a crucial and integral employee to any organisation, you are “the face of your employer’s brand”, as you’re responsible for attracting and recruiting the finest talent for your positions.

Having a good conversation with a candidate helps you understand who they are, assess their skillset, and what they’d bring your team. Being able to decisive, positive decisions will take time so to be fully prepared is fundamental so there are many actions to install and establish before going out to interview and considerations to allot before speaking with a candidate.

These dos and don’ts will help you achieve the ability to be an excellent interviewer! The importance of implementing the dos will be essential to your interview process while avoiding the don’ts as a negative experience with someone can result in drastic reputational damages.

Here are the Dos and Don’ts to unlock your potential to be an exceptional interviewer!

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The Do’s: What can I do to be an Excellent Interviewer?

Do: Be Prepared

We ask candidates in the process to come prepared and to be ready for what will be presented in front of them for an interview. We make the ultimate judgement/assessment afterwards on how well it went based on their preparation and abilities shown in the interview. Therefore, it’s the same from the interviewer's perspective.

Judgements are made in two ways. When sitting across the desk in person (or virtually) YOU, as an interviewee, should be comprehensively prepared for the candidate to provide a positive interview experience. Your job is to make a true and fair assessment of how the interview went.

A lack of adequate planning for an interview can be fatal from the candidate’s point of view. This is turn can cause your company reputational damage and also hinder your future as an interviewee.

To be fully prepared and planned for your interview with a candidate, follow these tips:

- Do your homework: make sure you are ready for the candidate. Have their resume, cover letter, references (if required) and details of the interview at hand. Any documents provided need to be thoroughly read and checked before entering any discussion.

- Have the job description in front of you and have your criteria ready for a true assessment.

- Be prepared and plan time for the candidate to ask questions. Think about what questions would frequently come up. What would you ask if you were the opposite? For examples read my previous article "A Guide to being Fully Prepared for a Job Interview and How to be Successful".

- Ensure the candidate is familiar with the interview/hiring process. Being blindsided regarding what is involved in the interview may knock the candidate’s confidence and stop them from performing to their potential.

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Do: Be Clear, Be Methodical and Take Notes (Create a Guideline for Measuring a Successful Candidate)

At the beginning of the process, establish two areas for recruiting. Decide what your essential requirements are and create a methodical set of questions, criteria or testing scoresheet to rate a successful candidate. These will enable you to successfully make a clear judgement and provide a positive outcome to the interview process. It will also allow you to make an honest and true assessment of the person’s capabilities and experience.

Having an outlined interview criteria will reduce the Halo Effect (see more details in Do: Be Unbiased – Avoid the Halo Effect) happening in an interview. This can be achieved by creating an assessment, answer sheet or scoring system that you’re measuring against your job description/requirements. This will allow you to make a methodical evaluation of all the candidates you’ve interviewed.

Throughout the interview itself, you should be taking notes regarding the candidate’s answers and scoring their responses. This is critical to be able to cross reference and decipher when deciding on the interview outcome.

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Do: Create a Comfortable Environment, Show You Care and Build Rapport

Creating a comfortable interview environment can set you far apart from the competition. Think about how you can set the environment to create to make the candidate will confident and open towards you and be able to best perform. For example, small rooms can feel claustrophobic and feel like an interrogation room while overly large rooms can make it difficult for people to connect and build a rapport with you. These vital details will help them feel confident before the start of the interview.

As an interviewer, simple gestures like politely introducing yourself, offering a drink, smiling, or breaking the ice at the start of the interview can settle a candidate’s nerves. Be hospitable, thoughtful, and considerate at all times.

Building rapport throughout your conversation shows that you care about the person rather than seeing them as a future employee, try and build a connection by establishing what they might be interested in. For example, seeing extraciliary activities on their resume which you could ask about.

Finally, an essential factor to implement as an excellent interviewer is to be able to adjust your hiring process to accommodate those with a disability under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. Checking before the interview if the candidate requires any adjustments to be made will allow you as the Interviewer to meet their requirements. Common examples include providing a sign language interpreter, assistance in testing the computer, speaking slowly for clarity or wheelchair access to the premises.

Do: Be Unbiased – Avoid the Halo Effect

What is the Halo Effect?

The Nielsen Norman Group define the halo effect as a “social-psychology phenomenon that causes people to be biased in their judgments by transferring their feelings about one attribute of something to other, unrelated, attributes”. Subconsciously, people tend to lean towards people who are similar to them and who believe they will likely cooperate with them right or wrongly. Most people are generally routed and programmed to value similarities and fear differences or unfamiliarity which can break your unconscious biases. To remain inclusive and unbiased in the selection process, involve different people to handle different levels of the selection process. For example, have different team members reviewing profiles and another conducting interviews or engaging with different people outside the project to make an assessment. Conduct several interviews in the process and follow a hiring checklist as highlighted in

To remain inclusive and unbiased in the selection process, involve different people to handle different levels of the selection process. For example, have different team members reviewing profiles and another conducting interviews or engaging with different people outside the project to make an assessment. Conduct several interviews in the process and follow a hiring checklist as highlighted in the Do: Be Clear, Be Methodical and Take Notes (Create a Guideline for Measuring a Successful Candidate) article.

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Do: Mix the Type of Questions

The overall objective of an interview is to determine if the candidate is capable of performing to the standard that you’re looking for in the core job responsibilities.

You are also assessing their skillset and deciding whether they could be a great team member. To accomplish this, you need to create a mix of questions that will measure all these aspects!

Create a checklist that incorporates a mix of open and closed questions relating to:

? Soft skills

? Role-related core skills and experience

? Situational

? Behavioural

? Career Goals/Aspirations

? Adaptability

? Team Fit

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Do: Sell the Position and your Company

As an interviewer, think about why you joined the position you are in, why you like working in your team, what made you choose this company to work for, and how would I sell this role to someone. A candidate may have lots of options at hand so make sure you know how to promote and sell your position for the candidate to walk away from the interview and want to join you.

If you select an interview panel, ensure that collectively the message remains consistent throughout i.e. the same message as you are putting across at your individual “face to face“ interview with a candidate. This can relate to how you are promoting: the role, team, project, training, future aspirations of the company and its values. This will ensure the applicant will have a clear sense of direction when making their decision as you will have provided realistic expectations of the role. The result of not having a clear message can be a major mistake as this can lead to a candidate feeling misled, confused or angered. The outcome would be a loss of future potential talent.

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Do: Make a Decisive Decision

A good interviewer understands that filling a role is essential to fulfilling a gap in their team that needs hiring for or replacing as a missing cog in the machine can cause fatal ramifications. When you have finalised the process, following the Do’s above, you now have an identified candidate to offer, make a final decision to offer the role to the future employee and don’t delay.

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The Don’ts: What to Avoid!

Don’t Overpromise

“Honesty is the best policy”, this common expression is the best advice to be an excellent interviewer. Being dishonest and making false promises during the hiring process will result in ramifications resulting in a disappointment and negative interview process or lead to an angry employee joining with false pretences. Avoid overpromising when it comes to job details, salaries, career prospects, career pathways, benefits, or company values.

As mentioned previously in Do: Sell the Position and your Company, establish a clear and consistent message from the recruiter, HR and interview panels regarding the hiring process on how to promote the position.

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Don’t Talk Too Much

An interview should be a back-and-forth tennis match where each side is taking turns speaking and expressing their opinions, questions and answers, and insights and shouldn’t be one-sided either way. An outstanding interviewer understands that communication is not only the ability to speak, but to crucially, listen. Keep the conversation balanced.

The consequence of speaking too much will directly impact the person interviewing and will make them feel uncomfortable, disengaged, and distracted. As a result of this, they may judge you in a negative projection.

To make the interviewee feel comfortable, it’s important to be clear when you speak and allow the candidate to talk and answer your questions leaving them respectful and plenty of time by not interrupting.

Think you talk too much: here are some helpful tips and advice: https://www.healthline.com/health/talking-too-much#how-to-talk-less / https://www.scienceofpeople.com/how-to-stop-talking-so-much/

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Don’t Ask Personal or Discriminatory Questions

As a hiring representative, you should be aware of all relevant employment law guidelines and ensure that all the interview questions comply. Avoid red flag topics related to personality characteristics including race, religion, age, ethnic background, gender and marital status.

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Don’t Believe everything you read in a CV

Be wary that the CV submitted may contain false, inaccurate, or misleading information and is your primary responsibility to make the judgement and investigate during the interview.

To reduce the risk of this, probe into the candidate’s resume following the checklist you’ve created in the Do’s to accurately assess their knowledge and expertise.

Areas to be highlighted and investigated for example: explore big gaps in the resume as big gaps may be due to not wanting to flag up a previously negative job, and examining the achievements that the candidate has written by asking specific detailed questions in that role or project.

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Don’t Ask Personal or Discriminatory Questions

As an interviewer, you have to be aware of all the relevant employment law guidelines to ensure that all interview questions comply. Avoid red flag topics related to personality characteristics such as race, religion, age, ethnicity, gender, and marital status for example but not limited to.

For more details about this area read more here:

Law Donut: https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/employment-law/recruitment-and-employment-contracts/how-to-keep-your-recruitment-interviews-legal

Monster: https://www.monster.co.uk/advertise-a-job/resources/recruiting-strategies/how-to-interview/how-can-i-ensure-my-job-interviews-meet-legal-requirements/

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Don’t Let Past Rejections Influence Your Judgement – Value Boomerang Applications

Finding a new job can be taxing, pressurising and stressful, consequently, the candidate may perform badly during their time interviewing with you. However, though the interview may result in a negative outcome, an exceptional interview will value the importance of being empathetic and critically envisage the need to leave candidates on a positive note as this person can potentially apply again and boomerang back to work for the company in later life.

To achieve this, provide the candidate with honest feedback on why you have declined them and thank them for their time and express that they’re always welcome to apply in the future and interview.

I hope that you unlock the power and become an excellent interviewer! I hope you found these insightful and helpful! Good luck!