Interview Techniques

This is a post about the side of the interviewer. First, it’s not an inquisition, it’s a conversation. There should not be attempts at “gotcha” exercises, though you do want to keep them on their feet, so to speak. It should be friendly, conversational and a “get to know you” type two-way dialogue. In terms of questions and themes, obviously you want to get to the themes of the positions and key competencies and goals/actions/initiatives and tease those out throughout the set of questions. But it’s important to focus on specificity. What did the candidate themselves do? Specifically, individually and with cited examples. Save the hypotheticals for philosophy class. Get down to the nitty gritty and pry open the candidate’s resume and work experience in real-time.