Effective recruitment interviewing
It is essential in the first instance to outline our terms of reference. Specifically, what do we mean by effective recruitment interviewing? It can be posited that the effectiveness of an interview process lies in its ability to identify those candidates who most closely match the requirements of the post applied for. Innumerable recruitment decisions have been made on the basis of interpersonal chemistry between interviewer and candidate; some of these decisions will be successful, others will result in the failure of an unsuitable candidate. The aim of the recruitment interview should be to maximise the likelihood of a successful selection decision. In order to achieve this in a way that is repeatable across an organisation, a set of standards which constitute best practice should be enumerated and followed as closely as possible.
With the aim of objectivity in view, the process should start well before the candidates are even selected for interview. It is essential to have clear, precise, comprehensible job and person specifications agreed upon by the stakeholders in the interview process. Without this, interviewers may not agree on the makeup of the right candidate, and without this clear and implicit agreement of what elements are most important in an applicant, any selection process is bound to encounter difficulty at the interview stage, because different interviewers will view a candidate differently; what are important answers for one interviewer may be inconsequential to another. Once these specifications have been drafted and agreed, it is a much simpler process to produce a detailed, objective interview matrix which accurately reflects the key requirements of the job.
Once the prerequisites of the rol ...