The interview is likely when you'll get to meet candidates face to face for the first time, so it's important to get it right and make the best impression of yourself and your business.
Following this guide will help ensure you and your team have everything you need to conduct fair interviews that align with your company’s goals and values, as well as choosing the best candidates.
Interview techniques
There are two techniques you can use to get the most out of the interview process.
Behavioural interview
This type of interview aims to provide details about the candidate’s experience and behaviours. Information about their past is valuable because it gives you an idea of their abilities and future performance. This is where you can use questions such as “can you describe a time when you…”.
Skills-based interview
This interview assesses the candidate's technical skills and knowledge. Prepare tests that reflect real tasks related to the role, for example, a coding challenge for a software developer.
Use the STARL method for questions
STARL is an acronym to help you remember a useful way to structure interview questions:
- Situation: Ask the candidate to describe a specific challenge or situation. For example, “can you describe a time when you worked successfully as a team to meet a tight deadline?”.
- Task: Ask a question that explains the candidate’s specific role in a situation. For example, “what was your role when managing the project?”.
- Action: Go into more detail about the steps the candidate took. For example, ask “what actions did you take to ensure the project was delivered on time?”.
- Result: Ask the candidate to detail the results to gain a better view of the impact of their effort and how effective they were in reaching the outcome. You can use a question such as “what was the result of your efforts?”.
- Learning: Ask the candidate about the lessons learned from the situation described.
Questions to avoid
When preparing to interview candidates, it’s important to know which questions to avoid so you are legally compliant and keep the interview relevant to the role.
For legal compliance, avoid questions that have to do with candidates’ age, religion, health or marital status.
To stay focused on job relevance, keep everything directly related to the role and avoid asking questions about personal topics or things that don’t directly impact the role, such as hobbies.
Preventing bias
There are two steps you can take to prevent bias during the recruitment and interview process:
- Acknowledging unconscious bias: It’s important to be aware that everyone has unconscious biases, but you can mitigate how they influence the interviews by providing training to the interviewing panel members. This can cover the most common forms of bias, such as affinity bias, where people favour those similar to themselves, and confirmation bias, where people look for information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs.
- Structuring interviews: A structured interview is one of the most helpful ways to mitigate bias, because you are asking the same questions to all candidates, keeping the process fair and focused on the candidates’ answers instead of personal aspects.
Effective scorecarding
Scorecards are a valuable tool for hiring because they help you narrow down candidates. You can create effective scorecards by trying the following tips:
- Standardised scorecards: Scorecards should reflect the skills and competencies needed for the role. Define clear criteria for each skill and what each of the scores means: excellent, satisfactory and poor. Use both qualitative and quantitative measures, for example a scale from one to five for each skill.
- Be objective: Ensure all interview panel members are using scorecards objectively by using only evidence from the candidates’ answers to ensure consistency and fairness.
Rejecting the right way
Follow these steps to reject candidates appropriately:
- Communicate in a respectful and timely manner: Delays can reflect poorly on your business and cause unnecessary anxiety. As soon as you’ve made the decision, inform the candidates by phone call.
- Offer constructive feedback: Ask the candidate if they’d like feedback on why they weren’t chosen. If they do, make sure it’s constructive. For example, if the rejection was because they lacked experience in one area, let them know, but also highlight any aspects that you were impressed with.
- Always be professional: When rejecting candidates, always be professional and sympathetic. Remember that every interaction with candidates contributes to your company’s reputation. Being respectful and considerate can leave a good lasting impression and leave room for future possibilities.
Learn more about creating a positive experience for candidates.
Post-interview discussions
After all the interviews are done, meet with the panel to discuss each candidate’s performance. To keep discussions objective, use all the data you gathered during the process, such as scorecards, test results and feedback from any practical tasks.
Before you choose the successful candidate, make sure everyone in the panel is on the same page regarding the key skills and competencies for the role. If any inconsistencies in scoring arise at this stage, refer to the data collected to resolve them.
Your goal is to reach a consensus that includes a fair and balanced opinion from each panel member. Take everyone’s insights into account, but make sure the decision is made based on the evidence and data.
Use frameworks to assess competence
The frameworks you created to assess competencies can be used to evaluate candidates in a structured way. Compare candidates’ responses against the criteria in your framework.
For consistency, make sure interviewers agree on evaluating competencies. You can support this by providing training before the recruitment process begins. Aim to give consistent assessment for each candidate. At this stage, think about how you can evaluate people who are able to raise the bar, this is particularly important in the competitive startup/scaleup scene.
Cultural add and adaptability
When thinking about how new team members can fit into the culture of your company, consider also how they can add to the culture. Ask questions that will give you insights into their work style, values and how they work with others.
Adaptability is key in today’s work environment. You can assess candidates on this by asking about specific examples of how they’ve had to adapt to significant changes, for example, a change in company structure or strategy.
After you've finished interviewing candidates, it's time to secure the best candidate by making a solid offer.