Having been through what is often a time-consuming process to advertise for staff and sifted through the resulting applications, employers can then fall at the final hurdle by not asking the right questions in the interviews.
According to Suzanne Cameron, Senior Commercial Consultant of Carlton Resource Solutions, it is not just what is asked, but how it’s asked that is important.
“In an interview situation an employer only has a limited amount of time to find out as much as they can from candidates prior to using that information as part of their selection process,” she explains.
“Therefore in order to learn the optimum amount of quality information from a candidate at interview employers should ensure that the majority of questions they ask are open questions. This gives the candidate the opportunity to provide a full response rather than being guided in one specific direction by the interviewer.”
Open questions
The whole point of interviewing a candidate is to find out whether or not they are the right person for the job. The best way to determine this is by asking them open questions, which offers them the opportunity to provide expansive, comprehensive answers; closed questions are likely to elicit only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, so you learn nothing beyond the narrow parameters of your question.
Open questions also force candidates to think on their feet.
So, ask “Why do you think you suit this job?” rather than, “do you think you will suit this job?” Why would they even come to the interview if the answer to the latter variation was anything other than “yes”?
Closed questions
Suzanne suggests that although closed questions have a place in an interview, they should mainly be used to gather specific information.
“Employers might want to find out if a candidate has experience in a specific area, and so it would make sense to ask a closed question such as ‘do you have experience of preparing profit and loss accounts?’
“Employers should be wary of asking too many closed questions as this will prevent them from compiling as full a picture as possible in relation to the candidate.”
What to ask
Before entering the interview situation employers should have prepared a list of questions to ask candidates. These should have been put together in conjunction with the job description and person specification relating to the vacancy.
“In general employers should aim to find out what specific experience a candidate has in relation to the position they are applying for – whether they have the necessary skills and attributes and whether or not the candidate will fit within the existing team dynamic,” says Suzanne.
Remember to listen
Despite advising putting together a list of questions beforehand, however, “it is important to be flexible and remember that this does not have to be stuck to exclusively.
“Often in an interview situation a response that is given by a candidate can prompt the employer to ask additional questions. It is only by listening closely to the candidate’s answers that the interviewer will recognise the requirement to ask a supplementary question to either clarify an ambiguous answer or to request additional information.”
Consistency
According to Suzanne asking all the candidates the same set of questions will make comparing them a simpler task. So as much as you should let the interview evolve naturally, you should, before the interviewee leaves, make sure you have asked all these questions.
“Once the interviews have been completed it is far easier to compare and evaluate the candidate’s responses if they have all been asked a standard set of questions.”
So, concludes Suzanne, “by preparing for the interview and understanding the value of both closed and open questions, employers can ensure that they conduct effective interviews,” summarises Suzanne.
