I'm going to be involved with conducting interviews next week (initially telephone, then hopefully face to face). Anyone got any suggestions on resources for good practice (e.g. don't ask "What's your greatest weakness").
1) Remember they are more nervous than you. 2) Have a cheat sheet of questions prepared to refer to 3) Check the job description and prepare questions that relate to that BUT if there are elements to the work that are not covered there be sure to bring them up 4) Read the CV's beforehand, make some notes about points you want to follow up on. If something looks iffy, dig a bit and see the reaction 5) For face to face interviews, can someone from HR also attend who is trained in interviewing and can do some personality style stuff? Having 2 interviewers also helps a lot, as one can ask and the other can observe
For telephone interviews especially, a long list of questions helps a lot. Get other people to look it over as well and see what they think. Make sure you have a quiet room with a good phone as well.
As to resources, does your HR department have any books? They sometimes have a mini library of stuff in there.
One thing I do remember is how he was very keen on doing phone interviews first which I thought was actually a good idea. However, he was also going through about 5 times as many applications as I've ever seen anywhere I've worked.
I also love to talk a bit about current affairs or news to see whether they're reasonably well-informed and if they have opinions about stuff. It's not a hardcore technical thing but it does often give you an idea of how someone thinks and maybe how well they'd fit into an existing team.
Ratehr than asking directly about a weakness, askign them what areas they'd like to improve or grow about themselves can be a good one, it immediately prompts the followup question of 'how', as well.
I've heard your interview stories, and you're a psychopath. What does "well-informed" mean, exactly? Since the news reports outlier events, assuming that nothing happened at all (apart from a lot of people nobody knows or cares about dying) is a proportional view of current affairs
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1) Remember they are more nervous than you.
2) Have a cheat sheet of questions prepared to refer to
3) Check the job description and prepare questions that relate to that BUT if there are elements to the work that are not covered there be sure to bring them up
4) Read the CV's beforehand, make some notes about points you want to follow up on. If something looks iffy, dig a bit and see the reaction
5) For face to face interviews, can someone from HR also attend who is trained in interviewing and can do some personality style stuff? Having 2 interviewers also helps a lot, as one can ask and the other can observe
For telephone interviews especially, a long list of questions helps a lot. Get other people to look it over as well and see what they think. Make sure you have a quiet room with a good phone as well.
As to resources, does your HR department have any books? They sometimes have a mini library of stuff in there.
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http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html
One thing I do remember is how he was very keen on doing phone interviews first which I thought was actually a good idea. However, he was also going through about 5 times as many applications as I've ever seen anywhere I've worked.
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Ratehr than asking directly about a weakness, askign them what areas they'd like to improve or grow about themselves can be a good one, it immediately prompts the followup question of 'how', as well.
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