Interviews are a crucial opportunity to move past a simple list of accomplishments or competencies with a candidate and better understand how they make decisions, overcome obstacles and whether they’re right for your company (and vice versa).
The issue, though, is that interviewers are usually short on time, have other business priorities on their mind, and fail to ask the most effective questions to make the proper use of their time. Or, they have never been taught how to properly conduct an interview.
The key to a great interview is to get the candidate talking about specific situations and sharing details of their past experiences, not just regurgitating information available on a candidate’s resume, cover letter or LinkedIn.
To help, we’ve created this checklist with 17 talking points to choose from to conduct a better interview. This document is easy to print and share with your team, and is intended to be something they can easily bring into any interview. Assign each interviewer to ask address a specific subset of these questions with a candidate, so that you’re getting a consistent, full-scope look at the candidate once the multiple interviewers convene to share feedback from the interview.
Our solutions related to unconscious bias (UB)—in particular, our recommendations on how to keep UB out of the interviewing and hiring process—calls for setting a structure that will decrease the chances that UB will creep into decision-making. This list of questions can be easily adapted into such a process and an interview panel can select the set of questions they believe are the best for a particular job and then ask those same questions during the process, and also set up a consistent and even-handed way to “grade” answers so that UB also stays out of the process of deciding to who to hire.
Download this checklist to make the most of your interviews by equipping your interviewers with the resources they need to find the best talent for your company.
