Interviewing Techniques

Running Business

Interviewing Techniques

Get the Best Out of Your Interviews

Getting the best results from the interviews that you will be conducting depends on the kinds of questions that you will be asking. Interviews are a good source of information regarding the person that we wish to employ.

While the applicant’s curriculum vitae will cover all the basics, i.e. work experience, field of expertise, educational background and such; the interview can break or seal the deal for both the interviewer and the interviewee.

As a consequence, how we conduct the interview is tantamount to getting the kind of results that we are looking for and finding the right person for the job.

Basic Interview Questions

Typically, employers start-off the interview session with a few basic questions to get the interviewee to further expound on the things listed in their résumés. This will help the interviewer assess just how extensive the applicant’s job experience is with regards to the position being applied for.

This could include asking specific questions pertaining to certain scenarios that could be expected to occur from the position being considered. This will again give the interviewer a better picture of just how well the applicant, if hired for the job, can work under pressure or troubleshoot when necessary.

Inconsequential Questions

These are the types of questions that may only be regarded as inconsequential in relation to the specifics of the job itself. However, these kinds of questions can give us a better insight to the personality of the applicant. Personality is one major aspect that we should check out. We don’t want to hire someone who may not be a team player and who may have a few attitude problems that can damage the rapport among everyone in the workplace.

Trivial questions such as views on current events, movie characters, books, questions on lifestyle, handling finances and such are usually good things to ask an applicant about. Just seeing the applicant’s perspective on certain things will tell us if the person is well-rounded enough to be able to work with a lot of other people, including those in authority and even clients.

Another perspective that we can get out of asking questions of this sort is how well the applicant responds to surprises, since they surely won’t be expecting to be asked such trivial questions. The facial expressions that come with these surprise questions can pretty much tell us whether the interviewee has a sense of humor or not – again, something that you will need in the workplace if you want to keep working without a chip on your shoulders.

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