Interviewing – Conducting The Interview, Part II

As a new manager, you may be called on to interview prospective candidates for your department. This process can be stressful for both you and the candidate. You can eliminate most of this stress by following some simple guidelines. If you do this, you will not only find the right candidate, but will leave all parties with the feeling that it was a positive experience.

In the previous article we discussed the first two parts to conducting the interview. In this article we will discuss the last two parts, and how to close the interview in a way that leaves the candidate with a positive feeling about your company and his performance.

It is important to remember that the candidate is looking to you to set the tone of the interview. Your demeanor and approach can make or break the process before it even gets started. To ensure a positive experience, you must first prepare for the interview. That's right, the interview will fail to give you the information you need to make an informed decision if you do not prepare as much, or more, than the candidate. In part I of this series I discussed the preparation process. In this part I will discuss just how you should go about conducting the interview.

The third part of the interview is the time for the candidate to ask you any questions that he has thought of prior to coming to the interview. If this is the first interview, he should come to the interview with a list of questions that show that he knows something about the position and the company. The amount of preparation a candidate does, and the nature of the questions he asks will be a direct indicator of the level of interest he has in the position. If this is the second interview, he may not have any further questions. Do not be alarmed; this could mean that the previous interviewer was good at satisfying his curiosity. You should get a list of previously asked questions from that interviewer with the resume and interviewer notes prior to this interview.

Remember that the interview process goes two ways. You are interviewing him to find out if he is a good match for the position and the company, and he is interviewing you to find out if this is a company he wants to work for. Your response to his questions should be brutally honest, but should respect the company's policies about disclosure of information which you should research in advance of the interview.

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