Interview Guide for Recruiters to Find and Hire top Talent

Interview Guide for Recruiters to Find and Hire top Talent

A company is only as exceptional as the people in it, and to get exceptional people, a strong recruitment process is a must.

Before you even think about interviewing potential candidates, there is some invaluable pre-interview prep that should be completed first. Whether you’re building a recruitment process for the first time or want to optimize a current one, here are some guidelines and additional resources. Much of this prep could reasonably be accomplished at the job crafting and posting stages.

Understand your needs

Before you even think about putting metaphorical pen to paper, the first step in any recruitment process is to figure out what exactly you need… Which candidate skills and qualities are a must? Nice-to-haves?

Write a differentiated job description that gets the right talent engaged and excited , Proactively source qualified candidates, Set realistic expectations with your hiring manager, Sell candidates at every touch point , Pass appropriate candidates to on sites and save your entire team valuable time, and all in all, reduce your time to hire while increasing your quality of hire

When you are writing your job description, you should already have the answers to questions about the finer points of the role and the future hire’s day to day perhaps even their potential career path moving forward in the company.

Determine what technical and soft skills you want them to bring to the job and what experience and education levels are preferred. You should also already know how this person will fit into the company structure as well as the ideal logistics and timeline for your new employee’s start date and recruitment process.

Consolidating this information early on may also help you establish any screening or filter questions that can be part of the application process, from location to salary expectations to minimum years of experience.

The average job description is an undifferentiated bucket list of skills. Effective impact descriptions, on the other hand, should be unique to your company and highlight results and impact, rather than requirements, so you get the right talent excited to jump in to the challenges of the role.

Trust Your Intuition

Though first impressions aren’t always the best indicator, there is something about those first few seconds of any interview that are telling. Often, experienced professionals “know within the first three seconds if they want to hire a person or not,” says Loop. No pressure!

There are many ways to build your trust. Traditionally, recruiters attract applicants via their company careers page or through job boards. As the market for talent has intensified, companies have dedicated more and more resources to employee referral programs and proactive candidate sourcing.

What are you doing to make sure your process is continually improving? Increasingly, recruiters are turning to data and analytics to find out where and how they can do better.

Many recruiters often gather a lot of information from body language, something that has become more challenging in these more virtual pandemic times. However, from tone of voice and general eye contact you can still read whether or not a candidate is nervous. Even without much body language to go on, you can intuit if candidates have an open attitude or something other in those first moments of an interview.

By understanding past data, you’ll get a sense for how many candidates you need in your pipeline to fill the position at hand.

There are two things all recruitment professionals should be acutely aware of, however. The first is of keeping your own personal biases and prejudices in check so they do not impact the interview process.

Having constant self-awareness with your own image in view, plus the extra effort required to read non-verbal cues in a video call can take a toll. Perhaps before each interview step away from your screen to refresh yourself a little first!

To place the best candidate in the right role, recruiters rely on insights and information gained from the interview process, so a positive experience should be top priority.

Explain Your Part and Hear Their Story

You want to hear a great story from your candidates, right? Well, they want the same. Tell your company’s story in an engaging way. You’re not just looking for someone who can complete the required tasks of a job, you’re looking for someone to fit into, complement, or even improve your company culture.

What are the expectations for someone who steps into this role? What does this job mean to your organization and what makes a candidate ideal for this position? These points should all be part of your narration and help turn the interview into a dynamic conversation.

For many candidates, a recruiter may be their first interaction with a company, so it’s crucial to foster a positive experience for the candidate. Recruiters should be passionate about their company, the role they are hiring for, and the interview process. Demonstrating a professional and enthusiastic attitude will calm nervous candidates and allow for a more meaningful exchange.

Actively listening to a candidate’s responses and asking thoughtful follow-up questions demonstrate a recruiter’s attentiveness, and reflect positively on the company. As an ambassador, it falls on the recruiter to convey the company’s principles, employer brand, Employee Value Proposition, and other unique values.

Now it’s the candidate’s turn to share about themselves. This is a great way to check their presentation skills and see if they’ve been listening and are able to understand and summarize their experience, perhaps in a way that fits with the company story they’ve just experienced.

As tempted as you may be, try not to interrupt with questions. It’s better to jot them down so you can ask later to better understand parts of their story. Take note of any skills that you’d like to test, which are echoed in the job description and in the candidate’s story.

Fill the Gaps, Be Engaged and Have a Positive Attitude

As any good interviewer knows, it’s always best to avoid yes/no questions and instead use open-ended questions that may lead you to unexpected places and information. Plus, though you may have your list to follow, don’t forget to listen carefully as a brand new and exciting follow up question might be more valuable than one from your list!

Once the main story and details are clear, the real, more creative interview work begins. Turn those standard interview questions on their head! Instead of asking about strengths and weaknesses, try asking the candidate how their friends, family or even enemies would describe their good and bad points. Not only will the candidate have to make a quick shift in thinking, the answers you get will be very different from the usual run-of-the-mill responses you hear every day.

If a candidate has trouble answering questions, try the perspective shift again. For example, if they can’t think of points they may need to improve upon, ask them what aspects their teacher or friend would bring up as things to work on or what have been their biggest successes or failures and how they grew from those experiences.

And of course, those hypothetical situation questions can always lead to interesting and valuable information. Make sure to give enough of a detailed scenario so you can see how candidates think on their feet and manage to solve the “problem.”

Understand their Real Motivation

Throughout the interview you should be able to pick up on the real motivation the candidate has for applying to and wanting this job. “It is important to be able to sell back the job and the company to the candidate,” says Natalie Loop. “It’s the same as in sales, if you don't know the need to get a job, you cannot sell back the benefits and what your company can do or mean for them in the future.”

Some tips to motives usually driving job seekers to keep in mind.

Motivation is a key component to unlocking and achieving true potential, but motivational triggers vary from person to person. So how do you create a work environment where all employees feel motivated and energized? At Thomson Reuters, we encourage our employees to be curious and challenge the status quo. We also focus on ensuring we have an environment of trust and openness, where our employees can feel safe to take interpersonal and ideational risks.

Quality. Maybe this candidate is looking for better work-life balance or gaining more satisfaction from their work than in previous occupations. You may find clues to this motivation in their reasons for leaving their previous job or applying to the new one. If they don’t tell you outright, you may need to dig deeper.

Cost. Though few will tell you directly they’re looking for a better salary, you can always find out by asking better questions. Perhaps in discussing their life outside of work you may discover they have a big project or hobby that may require more funds, such as buying or renovating a house, returning to their studies or a growing family.

Time. Another motivating factor for job seekers is seeking better use of their time. Perhaps their previous commute was too long or difficult, or the work schedule was not ideal for their life. Perhaps their job does not allow them the freedom to regularly work from home in pandemic times. Find out so you can know in advance what may tip the scales in your favor, what company points you can sell, or what may be a red flag.

Even though the recruitment process is changing every day as we speak, there are still some aspects and interactions that will always remain relevant and useful to recruitment professionals. Virtual interviews are still conversations and there are still plenty of insights and cues to pick up on even though the in-person aspect is missing. Discovering skills and competencies is still more than achievable in our new virtual reality whether or not you can see if a person is sweating from nerves.

Stay positive, Stay focused and Stay relevant. Essentially, asking “what motivates you” is another way to assess whether candidates passionate and excited about the position and how you ensure that always doing good work.

Right Candidates, Right Now, Right Here with Inspire Global Solutions!