This course on "Interview skills", describes what you need to achieve success when being interviewed for a job.

Here we look at the skills you need to be an effective interviewer, it's an important skill-set when attempting, to find the best possible candidate for a job.

This page provides a framework for the recruiting process, from preparation, interviewing, reviewing, and decision making.

Preparing for the Interview

Good preparation for an interview is absolutely key. Exactly what you need to do will vary depending on your role in the interview.

You may be:

• The recruiting manager, the person who is going to be managing the person recruited on a day-to-day basis, and therefore probably has the best understanding of the job requirements;

• There to give a second opinion of the candidate. Such interviewers usually, but not always, have some knowledge of the job requirements.

• An independent assessor or HR representative, there to manage the process and ensure that it is fair for all candidates. They are unlikely to have detailed knowledge of the job.

Perhaps the most important aspect of successful interviewing is knowing what you’re looking for in a candidate.

Make sure that you have a detailed job description and person specification that sets out what you really want from the person. Try to avoid jargon. If you haven’t written the particulars yourself, speak to the person who did and make sure you understand exactly what they meant.

Read the applications for all the candidates that you will be interviewing.

Ideally, you should score each candidate against the criteria in the person specification. Scores out of five are usual, where five is excellent and one is ‘does not show this at all.

If you’re holding a panel interview, the panel needs to meet beforehand and discuss interview tactics.

Ideally, the interviewers (or panel) should carry out the shortlisting for the interview, comparing the individual members’ scores for each candidate and agreeing on a panel score.

The panel then needs to agree on what questions should be asked and who is going to ask which questions, or cover which areas. It’s also helpful to discuss which areas are most important in case some areas have to be left unexamined.

Finally, the panel needs to agree on what a ‘good’ answer to any particular question will look like, and how far they are prepared to probe to try to obtain one.

Selecting and recruiting the right person to fill a vacancy is not an easy task. It is, however, very important, because making the wrong decision can have serious consequences for your team and your organization.

Recruitment is also a time-consuming and expensive business, so it pays to get it right the first time.

There are a number of activities that can really help to improve the success of your recruitment efforts. This page attempts to demystify the process and explain how you can improve what you do to help your organization to find the right candidate every time.