Hiring Managers - Stop Making These Common Interview Mistakes

Candidates will often spend time preparing for an interview and following advice on how to make the best impression. However, it is equally important that the hiring manager prepare accordingly and not fall into some of these common interview mistakes.

Key Takeaways

1. There are common mistakes that many hiring managers make during the interview stage
2. These include lack of preparation or allowing bias to affect the outcome
3. There are steps you can take to cut out these mistakes and improve your interview experience

A typical job interview will see pressure on the candidate to impress the interviewer and provide the best possible answers to the questions. The hiring manager, or whoever is carrying out the interview, needs to be just as well prepared though as a bad interview experience could cost a company the best candidate.

The candidate should be leaving the interview excited about the position and the company so here are some of the common mistakes that you should avoid to help you deliver the best possible interviews.

Asking The Wrong Questions

The questions in your interview should be carefully crafted to help you get to know as much as possible about the candidate. Depending on the type of role, you will probably want to cover areas such as relevant skills and experience, motivations and ambition and strengths and weaknesses. You should try to include open-ended questions to allow the candidate the opportunity to provide more insight and should also give them time to ask any questions they might have.

You should also ensure you are listening carefully to the candidates’ responses and adjust the follow-up questions accordingly. If you are asking irrelevant questions then it will look like you are either not interested or just poorly prepared.

Lack of Preparation

Candidates will often spend hours preparing for an important interview and so if your hiring manager turns up without even glancing at the CV it is not going to look good. Without spending the time preparing your interview format and properly reviewing the candidate you are not going to get the most out of the interview. If you are not asking the right questions, then you might end up missing out on the right candidate simply because you did not ask the most relevant questions.

As well as researching the candidate, you should also know as much as possible about the role itself and the company so you can answer any questions the candidate might have. It will also help you match the candidate to the role if you have a full understanding of both.

Allowing Bias

Bias during the recruitment process can have a subconscious effect on hiring decisions with factors such as gender, age and other stereotypes playing a part. Avoiding this bias can help you hire the best candidate and ensure you build a diverse team. You could look at using a hiring panel to help reduce the impact of individual bias and utilise tools that strip away demographic information from the first stages of the recruitment process.

Forgetting to Smile

If you are giving off negative body language during the interview, then this could affect the likelihood of the candidate accepting an offer. A large amount of the way we communicate is non-verbal such as your body language. Consider how you are sitting during the interview and try to avoid folding your arms. You should maintain eye contact if possible (which can be difficult on remote interviews!) and try and make your tone of voice as engaging as possible.

Let Us Help

The interview process is the most important part of any recruitment campaign, so it is vital you take the steps to deliver the best possible interview. If you want to attract the best potential candidates to get to the interview stage, then ecruit can help!

Our fixed price recruitment service can help you hire the best while saving time and money through either our advertising service or our head-hunter package.

Book a 5 minute demo with our team to find out more.