Interviewing Graduates
Transcript of Interviewing Graduates
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A Guide to
InterviewingGraduates
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Introduction
Interviewing is an essential part of the recruitment process; it is the simplest way
to see if a candidate is right for your business. Whilst CVs give a good guide to
somebody's skillset, an interview allows you to nd out if they will be the right tfor your company.
The interview process is key for your business because at the end of the day good
people, also known as 'A-players,' are vital to the success, sustainable growth and
future of your company.
It is thought that the average cost of a wrong hire is over 8000 ( ); aCIPD
signicant dent in any companies pot. This sum increases signicantly when the
person doing the searching, interviewing and recruiting is critical to your
business. As a consequence it is worth investing some time and thought into your
interviews.
If there is one thing that we have learnt over time it there is no time for messing
around, you need the best suited person for your vacancy. If a candidate does not
meet the requirements for your role, be clinical; don't waste your time or theirs.
To nd the right person you need your interviews to be well prepared and
executed, this guide aims to help you achieve this.
Types of Interview
As you know there are several options when determining the best ways to
interview people. We would never recommend eliminating the face to face
interview completely from your recruitment process. However, there are a couple
of options you can use in the stage before, to avoid wasting your time down the
line.
The Phone Interview
An increasingly popular option, phone interviews are quick, easy and simple to
set up.
Find yourself a quiet room and use a set of preliminary questions to access the
candidates for your role. We recommend setting aside 15 minutes for the
interview so if it's not right you can end it quickly. There is nothing stopping you
continuing the conversation if you like the person see this as a pre-interview to
narrow down your shortlist and nd those A-players.
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We recommend you arrange a time and then contact the candidate, this way you
are in control and there are no excuses for them; there is no cost and little
preparation or time needed at their end.
Skype Interviews
Skype is relatively new, free to use online video phoning software. It's very
popular amongst students and graduates and we are yet to nd a student that
does not have it. Even if they don't, it takes less than 5 minutes to create an
account and it's free.
This still falls in the pre-interview category. However it does give you a better feel
for a candidate than a telephone interview.
If you don't have Skype you can download the software from and quicklyhere
create an account.
Arrange a time as you would with an interview and ask them to add you as a
contact. You can ring them when you are ready; make sure you are in a quiet
room and have a webcam on your computer.
Caution: Skype interviews can often be interrupted with bad internet connections
making for a disjointed and slightly awkward interview.
Face to Face/Panel Interviews
All you need here is a quiet space where you can ask questions and discuss the
role with the candidate. We recommend bringing someone in with you to these
interviews; its good to have a second opinion and at the end of the day the other
sta will have to work with the candidate so you need to make sure they t in
your team.
We recommend that you do these on your terms in an environment that sums up
you and your company. The interviewee is going to be assessing whether they
want to work for you or not, try to make a positive and professional impression
without intimidating the candidate.
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Assessment Centres
You could conduct a panel interviews with 3 5 people interviewing. These
interviews can be intimidating for the candidate who will have 5 new faces staring
at them and interrogating them. On the plus side this mitigates some of the risk
of an interview by canvassing a wider opinion on the candidate. You can also see
how they handle high pressure situations. On the negative side, you could worry
an already nervous candidate or your interview panel may not all agree causingdisruption within the team.
Assessment centres are generally used by large employers who have high intakes
for the same position e.g. Tesco PLC and their store manager trainee roles. They
give you the opportunity to assess large groups of candidates in a range of
dierent aptitudes all at once.
They are however very resource heavy, you will need a large area to do them and
they take a lot of organisation. We would only recommend this if you are hiring a
lot of people for the same role.
What to Prepare Before your Interviews
Before the interview begins you need to know exactly the skills and attributesyour perfect candidate will possess. There is no point doing an interview if you
dont know who you are looking for as you will only come out with the wrong
candidate.
Give candidates plenty of notice regarding the location and time of your
interview. Graduates are likely to be applying for jobs all over the UK and could be
traveling a long way, as a consequence the more notice you give them the better.
Next you should consider the questions you are going to ask and, if there are
more than one of you in the room, who is going to ask what? Do your research
and prepare questions in advance. Also have a think about the kind of responses
you would like from candidates.
You will expect the candidate to do their research on you, you should do the
same. Make sure everyone going into the interview has seen the candidates CV,
covering letter and knows as much about the person as possible. It will save you
time in the interview and gives o a good impression to the candidate.
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During the interview
What to do after the interview
Give the candidate a chance to nd their feet and calm down before you get
down to the nitty-gritty. A few simple questions will put the candidate at ease,
giving them a chance to grow into the interview and answer your questions tothe best of their ability.
There is a technique called probing questions, also known sometimes as the 5
whys. This technique is all about delving deeper and extracting more knowledge
from the candidate. If you are not getting what you are after from the answers to
the questions ask them why they made a decision, how they did something or ask
them to tell you more about certain points. This will encourage them to go into
more detail and enable you to see the real decision making factors behind there
actions or answers.
Use the 80:20 rule in your interviews; you should only speak 20% of the time,giving the interviewee a chance to shine and the opportunity to talk about
themselves.
At the end of the interview invite them to ask you some questions if they haven't
already. If they really want to work for you they are going to have a few
questions. It's a fantastic way to see how much research they have done on
yourself your responses can also be an opportunity to sell your organisation.
As soon as the interview is nished you need to write up your notes. Don't talk to
anyone else as they could inuence you and cloud your own judgment.
You can take notes on everything from their appearance, your rst impression to
which comments made you smile, frown or perhaps change your opinion. You
can also look at the scores you have given your candidate (we will discuss the
scoring system later) relating to the skills you have identied needed for the role.
We don't recommend making a decision immediately, sleep on it, discuss it with a
colleague and then make a decision; there is no harm in having one more
interview if you aren't sure.
One thing that has a certain impact on your reputation is letting those who are
not right know that they will not be oered the job. You never know when you
will cross their path again so be honest with them and let them know. It will take
less than 10 minutes to email them all and say 'sorry, but on this occasion you
have not been successful in reaching the next round of interviewing for this
company.' If you are down to the last few candidates it is a nice gesture to givesome genuine feedback (lots of students have said this would be positive and
helpful).
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The science of interviewing
Creating the perfect interview is important to nd the right people for your
company, having a structured interview process is therefore important to ensure
scalability, repeatability and consistency of results it also helps you tweak it ifyou are not getting the right people. has suggested that by having aResearch
structured interview you are at least twice as likely to hire eective people for the
job.
There are several interview frameworks you can follow all over the internet, for
example: .ghSMART A Method for Hiring
The frameworks are all relatively similar. Here's one we've put together to help
you increase interview success rate in no time.
First identify who you are looking for. You should reduce the job to
pieces and identify the critical knowledge, abilities and skills that are
needed to fulll the role. Do this by looking at the roles KPIs, the
previous incumbent's strengths and weaknesses and what you want the
new person to achieve; ie their targets and goals. This information is
going to form the skeleton to your job advert and the person you are
searching for on Witlr or other recruitment sites.
Next you should advertise your role, search for applicants and ask for
recommendations from your sta and friends to gather your shortlist of
people for the role. They will all have to go through the same interview
process where you will whittle them down to nd that perfect person so
you can be quite broad at this stage.
Interview round one is the screening interview. For this you should pull
together 5 10 questions that show skills relating to the job
specication. We recommend that one person conducts this interview
over the phone with the original shortlist of applicants. This is the
opportunity to separate the best candidates from the average ones. If
they don't have any of the skills you identied earlier then it's a NO. Don't
waste either of your time; if they don't have the skills you have identied,
they will not t! Be quite clinical in this interview, if they are not right end
it quickly, if you are not sure introduce some probing questions to nd
out more, it's all about being ecient.
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Next you have your face to face interviews; these could take anything
from 45mins 1 and a half hours. You should take another member of
sta in with you and both score the applicant objectively and separately;
make sure that both interviewers are very clear on the interviewing
techniques and how they should be judging candidates; they shouldhave seen the original application, CV and notes from the phone
screening interview.
Again you should have a set number of questions for every candidate,
they must be chosen in advance and the desired skills displayed by the
candidate's answers should be discussed before the interview begins.
Scoring candidates is a good way to be consistent and it's highly
recommended. Take your time to delve deeper and 'interrogate' them on
the skills and knowledge you have identied as essential.
Questions can be a mix of the types that we will discuss below. It is good
to have a range as some students and graduates will be better at
presenting their skills in dierent ways. As well as asking questions that
relate to knowledge and skills the role requires it is important to ask
broader questions that relate to how the candidate will t within the
company culture. This is vital, you don't want someone who has all the
skills but is unable to work with the rest of your employees; it won't work
long term.
Types of Questioning
Everyone has their own preference when it comes to interview questionshowever if you need some inspiration you can base your questions on the
common types listed below.
Competency / Behavioural These are designed to establish if the
candidate has the skills required based on their previous experience.
Questions normally start with something along the lines of describe a
time when you have demonstrated. Do remember that they are
graduates and don't have hours of experience or multiple situations to
use as examples.
The key here is to score the candidates on a scale for their answers to the
questions, you should ask every candidate the same questions but score
them objectively do not compare them to anyone else. This is the best
way to get a shortlist of people who are highly likely to be good at your
role. The scoring scale should be something simple like 1 5. 5 being
outstanding, 3 average and 1 low, anyone that scores less than a 3 on anyof the answers should go. Of course for this to work you need to pick
your questions carefully and know what you want the answers to
include.
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Chronological Questions Use these questions as a way to get to know
people and gain an understanding of their motivations and why they've
made the decisions they have so far in their life.
Probing Questions If you are running out of questions or not getting
the answers you want you can always rely on probing questions. These
are designed as follow on questions and help you delve deeper into a
subject. You can pretty much use them at any time, for example; how didyou do that? Why did you do that? Please explain a little more.
Small Things to Remember
Everything you do reects on your company. Dress how you expect your
colleagues to dress, choose a nice location and be polite. You would
hate for the best candidate you've interviewed to go elsewhere because
they didn't like the interviewer's attitude.
Make sure you book a meeting room out and put the time in your diary.
We have discussed how important recruiting is so don't let interruptions
get in the way and ruin your reputation with the candidate.
If you're in a big oce make sure you let the receptionist know you areexpecting interviewees so they don't have a blank look on their face and
start interrogating the candidate when they arrive.
Abstract These questions are designed to establish if candidates can
think originally and also help to work out if the individual has a logical
way of thinking things through. An example could be: If you went to the
moon with the CEO tomorrow and could only take one item, what would
it be and why?
Technical Questions These are very industry specic. Of course if you
are
looking for people with specic skills you need to know they have the
abilities you require. Test them on the subject, if they know what they are
talking about they will answer quickly and condently.
Situational Questions These are back to front competency questions,
instead of asking for examples on how they handled a situation give
candidates a scenario and ask them how they would solve a problem.
Look for the process behind their decisions and see if it ts in with yourcompany's way of problem solving.
Hopefully we have equipped you with the basics you need to start interviewing;
there are a few last things to remember.
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How Witlr Can Help You
Witlr is the newest way to nd high quality students and graduates that have the
exact skills you are looking for.
Employers can personally search the fastest growing database of high quality job
seeking students and graduates quickly and easily for free. Find your perfectcandidate's from a pool of thousands and only pay to contact the ones you really
want to interview.
Businesses can search on anything from educational establishment, course and
grade right through to work experience, hobbies and interests increasing you nd
the right candidate for your role and company culture.
Witlr also oers a free where you can advertise your roles and lterJobs Board
the applications on a number of things to save you more and more time.
For more information feel free to register and try out, there is no obligationWitlr
to use us; however I am sure you won't be disappointed.
Alternatively you can contact the team on 01458 836555 or email Nick, the
Managing Director on [email protected]
Don't write them o if they are late! Students and Graduates are human
and at some point it has happened to everyone, so just consider the
circumstances. Yes ideally they should arrive early but don't jump to any
conclusions they could have good a reason and be an exceptional
candidate.
By no means do you have to, but it is often a nice gesture to pay your
candidates some money towards their expenses.
We hope this guide has given you a few helpful tips on preparing and conducting
interviews which will enable you to hire the right candidates for your business.
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Looking for more advice? Check out our other guides:
https://witlr.com/employer-advice/useful-resources-and-signpostinghttps://witlr.com/employer-advice/why-should-you-employ-students-and-graduateshttps://witlr.com/employer-advice/degree-abbreviations-and-gradinghttps://witlr.com/employer-advice/a-guide-to-witlr -
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