An interview is your chance to evaluate, in real-time, how strongly the on-paper credentials of a job applicant come across in a face-to-face interaction. But not every interview will be successful if you’re still using the same questions and processes that worked for the last ten years.
Like your business, your interview process needs to evolve, streamlining the work to be done and ensuring that you’re able to accurately identify the best candidates.
Use these tips to bring your interview process into the new decade so you can continue building your business with the best people.
Screen With Video
Meeting with candidates in-person is both time-intensive and resource-intensive. Before you decide if someone should come into the office for an interview, conduct a screening with them first with a video call.
Not only does this spare you the cost of flying out an applicant from across the country, but it can also save more than 50 percent of your time, estimates RecRight. What’s more, using video, instead of the phone, allows you to look for subtle cues that you’d miss otherwise, like whether they maintain eye contact, use open body language, or are dressed for the role.
Look for Culture Indicators
In today’s culture-centric workplace, candidates can no longer get by with a great resume alone—and it’s your job to spot those who jump out as a great cultural fit for the company. To judge culture fit, consider peppering some of the suggested questions from Rise People into your interviews, including:
- If you were going to start your own business, what would it be?
- What’s the biggest problem in most offices today?
- What did you like most/least about your last company?
- Where/when/how do you do your best work?
- When was the last time you made a big mistake at work?
Integrate Behavioral Questions
Another strategy to learn if an applicant will thrive in the unique culture of your workplace is to ask behavioral questions in the interview. This line of questioning allows you to predict a candidate’s ability to take on the role based on their behavior in previous positions. When you know how they behaved previously, you can predict how they’ll perform in your company now.
Some main areas of competency to test for with behavioral questions are teamwork, problem-solving, communication, leadership, time management, initiative, adaptability, negotiation and customer relationships. This might seem strenuous on the candidate, but a Glassdoor survey reports when a job interview is 10 percent more difficult on the frontend, it can result in a 2.6 percent higher employee satisfaction rate long-term.
Make the Decision Process Collaborative
When you offer current employees an active role in the recruitment process, like meeting with prospective hires, you reinforce team camaraderie. You can also observe firsthand if an applicant seems to connect with and fit into the established staff dynamics.
This is critical as you move into the next decade because 81 percent of Millennials, 51 percent of Gen Xers and 41 percent of Gen Zers who have entered the workforce in recent years said social interaction with current members of the team during their interview was a crucial part of the process.
Upgrade Your Interview Process
Today’s job seekers want to experience your culture and your business benefits from asking behavioral and cultural questions, making it important that you update your process for reviewing candidates. Use these ideas to take your interview process into the new decade so you can uncover the best employees for your evolving business needs.