How to be a good interviewer. Guidelines for Conducting and Analyzing Interviews.

October 19th, 2009 | by kutenk |

Guidelines for Conducting and Analyzing Interviews

To be a good interviewer, you need good self-awareness. If you are self-aware, you will be able to read in others what you have learned to read in yourself. Here are a few principles for conducting and analyzing interviews:



  1. Observe contact reaction as the candidate walks into your office or the interviewing space. Remember that 70 percent of all communication is nonverbal.
  2. Do not hasten to put the candidate at ease. The mental and emotional state of candidates as they enter into the interviewing process is important information. It can tell you a great deal about how they relate to new people and what their self-concept is. If the candidate continues to be nervous, then you can use some techniques to put the person at ease.
  3. Develop a set of questions and ask the same questions of each candidate. If you want to distinguish one person from another, you have to get a range of responses. The way to do this is to ask the exact same questions of each candidate, and then compare their answers.



  4. Start with stereotypical interview questions, but be aware that your purpose in doing so is to make the subject comfortable. Then take off from there and go deeper. Your objective is to get the subject talking, in as much of a discursive, narrative fashion as possible.
  5. Sample all relevant areas of the candidate’s life, such as work, education, competencies, and personality. In each category, however, start the candidate talking about something they are totally familiar with. Proceed from the impersonal to the personal, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and from the intellect to the emotions.
  6. Take notes on, or tape record (with their permission), the interview.
  7. Maintain a steady presence from one interview to the next. Do not behave one way toward one candidate, and in an entirely different way toward another. If you unduly influence one candidate toward a negative, or defensive, reaction and another candidate toward a positive reaction you, again, compromise your interview data.
  8. Consider the interview as a real-life or on-the-job process. In effect, the ideal way to look upon an interview is as a laboratory to sample projected workplace behavior by the candidates. Within the bounds of necessary time limits, you as the interviewer should set up interactions and experiments that will represent possible scenarios on the job.
  9. Note the emotional flavor of the interview. If you keep yourself steady as a measuring instrument, you will observe that different candidates will bring into the interview a type of emotional atmosphere. Some interviews will feel warm and open to you; others might feel cold and closed. This should be an indication of the kind of atmosphere a subject will help generate in the workplace.

10.  Do not err on the side of being afraid to ask penetrating questions. Be professional, be courteous, and demonstrate a genuine interest in the person you are interviewing. This is the way to build trust, and trust is critical to success in gaining insight into each candidate.

11.  Be aware that the toughest challenge in the interview process is interpreting the data. Many interviewers see the discussion process as the most important aspect of interviewing. In reality, the true meaning of the interview will only emerge with skillful interpretation of the data you have gathered. Proper interpretation of data involves matching a given candidate with a given job in such a way that the organization is assured that the tasks assigned to that job will be carried out well, and that the person will mesh well with others in the organizational culture.

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