Interviewing skills

Flow of the session

Interview Statistics
• 40% of respondents had declined an offer because of a poor interview experience
• 69% has experienced no response or feedback after an interview
• 42% had experienced discrimination in an interview
• 30% had experienced rudeness in an interview
• 22% had been asked inappropriate questions with respect to such things as marital
status, weight, dating habits and sexual preferences
The report further reveals that of those people
who experienced a bad interview,
81% of them told up to 10 people about that experience
(same level as customers feedback)
Source: Chandler Macleod

Interviewing skills
• Skills which help you to conduct very well and smoothly interview with
candidate
• Skills which ensure satisfaction from interview to both side- recruiter &
candidate
• The most important 2 skills for interviewer : listening and ability to ask
good questions

Listening
• Good interviewer should listen very carefully – very often candidates are
giving important information between words - indirectly. Interviewer role is
to catch it ask another question if it’s important.
• If you are listening carefully you can smoothly move to another
competency/skill/attitude which you need to check in candidate and keep
the flow of interview (!)

5 levels of listening
Listening involves hearingListening involves hearing
what is being said, observingwhat is being said, observing
your intuition and noticingyour intuition and noticing
the non-verbal signalsthe non-verbal signals

Halos and horns
• Halos - factors which influence to our judgement during interview. It
influence in good way of our perception of candidate- candidate looks better
than reality and everything what she/he tell will be amazing
• Horns – Factors which influence in bad way of our perception and
judgement of candidate during review board. Candidate even if answer
properly and showing that has skills impression will be worse.

Halos and Horns Influences
Filter
Beliefs
Values
Generalisations
Deletions
Distortions
Attitudes
Sensory inputs:
Visual
Auditory
Kinaesthetic
Olfactory
Gustatory
Physiology/Physiology/
FeelingsFeelings
StateState BehaviourBehaviour

To consideration
• Consider what are your halos & horns influencers?
• What makes you see something or someone positively or negatively? Stereotypes? Past
experience? Information about this person which you got eralier? Appearence of this
person?
• How does this impact the way in which you interview?
• Example: person who we already know or have information about his/her
work. Halo because we know this person and we have emotional connection
with candidate. Horn because we heard something bad about this person,
about his/her past (we don’t think that this person can change).

Asking good questions
• Good question?- is a question for which answer will give interviewer truly
information about candidate and check what we wanted to check
• Open questions

How to ask questions?
• Strive to ask questions which will check candidate past experience
• Use:
• Give me an example of situation when you had to …
• Tell me about situation when …
• ….? Reply based on a situation from the past.
• When we are asking What will you do if .. we are receiving the ideal behaviour
and mostly things that we want to listen as a recruiter- but reality could be
different

Open and Closed Questions
Closed Questions
Used to confirm understanding and to clarify
details
• Use when, who, where
• Beware of using why
• Expect short answers
• Use for clarification or confirmation
Open Questions
Used to engage the imagination and focus the
mind
• Use what and how
• Beware of using why
• Keep them short
• Looking for a long answer, that may
require some thought
• Allow for silence for thinking time

Advanateges & Disadvantages
Open questions Closed questions
• The onus is on the
respondent rather than the
questioner to do the
talking,
• Questioner can focus
more on listening.
• Especially useful when
fact-finding, the open
question invites the
expression of ideas, views
and opinions and
encourages people to
speak.
• More difficult to
answer than closed
questions
• Result will require
more thinking-time
• Can be time
consuming.
• Useful to identify
common facts and
enable you to retain
control of the
conversation.
• Quick to ask and
answer and the
responses are easy to
analyse.
• Appropriate when
specific responses are
required.
• Difficult to create a
dialogue and can lead to
a feeling of interrogation
if there's a series of
closed questions with no
opportunity to expand
on opinions or views.

Effective questioning

Model STAR
• The most common model of answering the
question
• You can suggest this model to answer questions
(especially in recruitment for higher positions-
Leaders, EB)
• First candidate describe a situation he/she faced or
task that was given to him/her. Next, candidate
describe the actions he/she took. Finally, describe
the results he/she achieved.

Difference between situation & task
• In “situations” you have more power to solve problems and pursue
opportunities your own way. Part of the creativity involved may be
recognizing that there is a situation in the first place. - better for TLP
• “Tasks” are typically assigned to you to do in a predetermined way. Even
with tasks, however, there is plenty to talk about: you can describe how you
applied your skills effectively, invented new ways of performing the task, or
even discovered how to eliminate the task completely to improve efficiency. –
better for TMP

Example
• Q: Our salespeople are expected to find creative new ways to build their territories. Tell me about a
time you used your creativity to build sales.
• A: [Situation.] When I first joined the company, I was managing five in-house salespeople, whose
morale was very low. They did the bare minimum and went home for the day. But I saw a lot of
potential in them and knew we could do better.
• [Actions.] So I thought, “How can we make this fun?” I had a budget for incentives that we weren’t
using. I asked the team members what incentives they would find fun. Everyone was interested in
taking a trip to Cedar Point, and that fit the budget perfectly. So I said, “If we can double both the
team’s call volume and sales volume, we will all take a two-day trip to Cedar Point.” I put a big graph
out for everyone to fill in their number of calls each day.
• [Results.] The change in morale was instantaneous. Everyone got in the groove and started having
real fun with their work. Call volume went up 60%, and sales volume went up 75%. In addition, the
team started establishing their own incentives and sales goals. One small change made a big difference.

How to prepare to good review board?
1. Consider what kind of person do you need in organisation -> skills, attitude, abilities and write it
down to remember :)
2. Check needed JD and create/check personality/ profile member !!
3. Read carefully application and make notes what is already checked
4. Collect information about this person – what would be important to check during RB – especially
for higher positions
5. Choose 4-5 attitudes/skills/values that you want to check during interview - you can't ask for
everything during 45 minutes call
6. Prepare questions in reference to CV and selected factors

Questions in Interview
• Questions must be consistent for every candidate
• Ensures consistency and fairness
• Enables easy comparison between candidates
• Easier to structure feedback afterwards

Take care about details
• Don’t forget about priopriate room preparation
• For longer interviews (more than 1 hour) prepare water for interviewers and
candidate
• Smile, make eye contact,
• Remember about active listening

DO AND DON’T
DO
• Prepare thoroughly
• Screen candidates fairly – get a 2nd
opinion
• Interview with someone else
• Have breaks between interviews
• Write up notes immediately
• Give feedback to all candidates – written if
possible
DON’T
• Prepare less for an internal candidate
• Interview more than 4 people in a day
• Allow interruptions
• Offer the job “on the spot”
• Forget to have lunch or snacks
• Allow your Halos and Horns to interfere

Thank you for
your attention 

Presentation prepared based on
• Interview techniques by S. van der Burgh
•Key corporate services by Matt Rouge