Whether you are an interviewing beginner or a seasoned pro, it’s important to continuously enhance your interviewing skills to ensure you identify the best candidate for the job - and ultimately save time and money too.
Generate interview questions in minutes with our interview question generator.
According to a LinkedIn survey, 83% of professionals say a negative interview experience can change their mind about a role. So, to help you conduct successful interviews, here are five common mistakes I see interviewers make too often – and how you can avoid them.
1. Being too quick to judge
It is easy to form preconceived views about a candidate’s suitability for a role based on their body language, tone of voice or even after reading their CV before the interview – try to avoid falling into this trap.
Although you may be concerned about a career decision, or some possible skill gaps a candidate might have, be mindful to not rule anyone out or make any snap judgements before the end of the interview so you can get the full picture and give the candidate a fair chance.
2. Appearing uninterested or distracted
Often interviewers forget that interviews are a two-way process, where the candidates are also assessing whether they like the hiring manager and the company.
As a result, it is important to behave how you would expect an interviewee to, for example maintaining eye contact, seeming interested in what they are saying by smiling and nodding as they respond and giving them your undivided attention. By simply listening intently and being present, you will ensure candidates feel at ease, which in turn makes them more enthusiastic and ultimately makes the company and job role more desirable.
3. Failing to read a candidate’s CV
While you may have read the candidate’s CV before you invited them to an interview, it is equally crucial to familiarise yourself with it again before the day. By reviewing any projects or examples of their work or even taking a look at their LinkedIn profile to see any topics they post about, it can help you feel more prepared and easily able to build a rapport with the candidate, which can later help you figure out if they are suitable for the team and role.
4. Being robotic
Asking all your interviewees the same questions is a great way of ensuring you are objectively evaluating if they are hitting your criteria, sometimes this method can come across robotic and over-rehearsed.
Too often we see hiring managers relying on pre-prepared questions they read off a piece of paper rather than talking freely, in a conversational way. By doing this, you allow yourself to put the candidate at ease by making sure the interview doesn’t feel like a tick-box exercise, as well as really getting to know them by asking follow-up questions or finding out more about themselves.
5. Not being prepared to answer the candidate’s questions
Though it is common practice to ask the interviewee if they have any questions at the end of an interview, it can be easy to forget to prepare in advance for this if you are too focused on getting your own questions right.
It is a good idea to review some of the common questions candidates ask as a starting point to make sure you can confidently answer these well if needed.
To get more tips from Scott and our other recruitment specialists, get in touch today.
