THE SCIENCE OR THE ART OF INTERVIEWING

Due to the lack of adequate candidates, it is necessary to be a really good interviewer in order to detect them. Our task can be defined with the phrase: “separating the straw from the wheat”. Many of them shine as gold when they are not so and other don’t shine at all but hide very interesting personalities.

Our challenge is to see beyond appearances. The good selections are filled with good candidates and good recruiters. In order to be one of them, one should know and fulfill all the steps. The biggest mistakes are produced when:

• The profile is inadequately revealed. If you are the interviewee’s future boss, you certainly know what you want, but you haven’t meditated about all of the necessary aspects.
• The previous trajectory of the candidate is not analyzed.
• You don’t make deep interviews.
• You don’t prove the adequate techniques (this is not necessarily an exam like the one at the university, but an evaluation of technical knowledge).
• You select in only one instance. The safest methods are interactive, meaning, the ones that are made in several stages.
• You don’t ask for references.
• You accept people that don’t correspond to the level of the position, by defect or by excess.

Success requires time, dedication, trained people in interviews, a process of various selection steps (at least three: first interview, evaluation and definitive interview) and a deep confrontation of the preselected candidate with the profile of the search.

Along this book, we will guide you in the use of different tools to help you identify the appropriate candidate.

Those who have experience in interviews, many times fall into the temptation of using their feeling –which I don’t rule out as an additional element-; however, in order to confirm or not that first impression it is necessary to resort, besides, to technique.

There are people with an intuitive ability to interview and who have developed their own technique without being trained for that. It is also possible that reading the following chapters you will find ideas you already use. Remember that many questions come out of common sense.

One of the main standards that you have to respect is the asymmetric relation that should exist between the interviewer and the interviewee. What are we trying to say with this? The difficult balance between the creating a good climate and keeping the place should be maintained. The interviewer is who directs the interview, not the interviewee.

This doesn’t mean to assume an authoritarian attitude, but not the contrary either. A selector with many years of experience used to say in class that she used to assume a protection role during the interviews and then –if the candidates joins the company- she used to make him/her a follow up not as a professional, but as a mother.

The most common parameters applied by nonprofessional interviewers and the potential future bosses of the interviewee, is the rivalry. Conscious or not about that, they act as if they were saying: let’s see if you really are as good as you say.

[Interview] [Content Map - PART I] [PART II] [Science & Art] [CONCEPT OF INTERVIEW] [DIFFERENT TYPES OF QUESTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW] [HOW TO INTERVIEW THE CANDIDATES WHO HAVE PROBLEMS] [THINGS YOU HAVE TO AVOID DURING THE INTERVIEW] [Preparation] [1st 60 Sec] [40 Education ?] [72 Work Goals ?] [57 Adaptability/?] [30 Adaptability ?] [80 Personality ?] [192 Capacities ?] [24  Common Sense ?] [32 Money & Goals ?] [10 Final?] [50 Must Answers...] [40 Personnal?] [Take Notes] [Competency Interview] [Job Interview ?] [Job Interview ?] [COMPETENCIES] [Other Great Sites] [Site Map]