Job Interviews Are A 2-Way Process

For those who are relatively new to team management and the often unenviable task of interviewing for your team, try and remember back to when you were looking to join the business. Whether that was 2 months ago or 2 decades ago, you wanted to know more than just what was on the job spec and the name of the company.

Ensure that you spend time selling yourself, the team, the role and the company.

For businesses that are leaders in their industry or that have strong consumer branding, an assumption can often be made by hiring managers that the candidate is fully aware of this or, even worse, that this is enough to ensure yours is the only role they will want. Any candidate that is strong enough and meets your CV criteria will almost certainly be a sought after candidate in the market so you will need to sell yourself ahead of your competition.

• What is your background and why did you choose to join?
• What career development opportunities are there for this role - can you show any examples of career paths previous incumbents have taken?
• What is the onboarding process and what training will be given to start with
• Are there any qualifications or development courses that the business will support for this role?
• What are the team like and what are there backgrounds
• What are you like to work for as a manager - what is your management style?

The mistake often made is that any "selling" to a candidate is left until the final interview once you have made your decision that a candidate is good enough to join you and your prestigious business. However, those organisations that have ensured their interviews are structured to incorporate a mixture of competency based questions; job and company explanation; cultural fit; as well as "selling", with these being done at each round (in more progressive detail each time), will get most buy-in from their candidates as well as being a more enjoyable and less intense process for the interviewer(s).

Remember, as an interviewer, you have also been an interviewee (and will probably be one again). What was important for you to know when choosing a new manager and ensure you provide that info to your interviewees.

Finally, give interviewees plenty of time to ask you questions. Each person is different and will have slightly different priorities so given them a chance to learn about you which will in-turn inform you of their priorities!