Interviewer skills
These days, I am getting involved in hiring process and interviewing candidates for our company. On those lines, we had "Interviewer skills" training session. This was a session about how we should interview a candidate.
The session reminded me of all my job interviews I have attended till now. Some of them were very easy going and few net cracking. We talked on wide range of topics ranging from dress code to what to answer the candidate if asked about recession.
At the end of the session, we were split into groups and were asked to do mock interviews. This was to test 'interviewer' and not interviewee. Here are some basic rules for interviewer:
1) Start off with a welcome note and thank him/her for sparing his/her time to come for the interview. Also mention about job roles and responsibilities.
2) Please be a good host. Offer a beverage.
3) Do pre-screening of resume before entering the interview session.
4) Talk only 25% during the interview.
5) Do not interrogate.
6) Ask questions in brief.
7) No personal questions please.
8) Always close the session by mentioning the next step of interview processing.
Talking about our interviews in life, I am sure everybody will have their own stories. My experiences are good for most parts. I always try to be positive and never bother about the outcome. Those were the times when everything went smoothly. On occasions when I was not in a mood for an interview, it was sure that I would come before the tea break - either the interviewer turned me off or the company's response made me uncomfortable there.
The session reminded me of all my job interviews I have attended till now. Some of them were very easy going and few net cracking. We talked on wide range of topics ranging from dress code to what to answer the candidate if asked about recession.
At the end of the session, we were split into groups and were asked to do mock interviews. This was to test 'interviewer' and not interviewee. Here are some basic rules for interviewer:
1) Start off with a welcome note and thank him/her for sparing his/her time to come for the interview. Also mention about job roles and responsibilities.
2) Please be a good host. Offer a beverage.
3) Do pre-screening of resume before entering the interview session.
4) Talk only 25% during the interview.
5) Do not interrogate.
6) Ask questions in brief.
7) No personal questions please.
8) Always close the session by mentioning the next step of interview processing.
Talking about our interviews in life, I am sure everybody will have their own stories. My experiences are good for most parts. I always try to be positive and never bother about the outcome. Those were the times when everything went smoothly. On occasions when I was not in a mood for an interview, it was sure that I would come before the tea break - either the interviewer turned me off or the company's response made me uncomfortable there.
Comments
Now that I have gone through nasty experiences, I go to interviews armed with some serious questions. For example, I ask, "Why don't you use SVN instead of CVS? Is it because your team finds it hard to use it?" or, "What's your server performance on 20,000 request per minute?... Oh! you haven't done any scale testing? Do you have a testing team, or plan to have one?", etc., etc. I won't leave the interview until I am convinced that the interviewer greatly frustrated :-)
On a different note, if you are interviewing, you may want to look at Myers-Briggs Personality Test.