Interviews are an essential part of any search process, whether you’re searching for the right person to fill a particular job in your organisation or looking for a credible partner to represent you in your legal or business pursuits. Any interviewer worth his salt knows that they can no longer rely on traditional methods of interviewing whereby the soft skills of a particular candidate are not assessed and the individual’s weaknesses are not fully understood. Add to these the tendency of interviewers to become biased such that the entire process of objectively qualifying a candidate becomes marred with subjectivity. That’s why, if you want to prepare for the 21stcentury of interviewing, then you’ve got to check these 5 techniques that every interviewer simply needs to know about.
Soft Skills Assessment
Most interviewers only deal with the hard facts that a candidate brings to the table. They look at the educational attainment and work experiences of the person instead of his flexibility, sense of teamwork, and even grit. Ask the great business leadersand they can readily tell you that focusing on the individual’s soft skills can give you an idea of his or her personality. He may have excellent grades but if he clearly doesn’t have the qualities of a leader that your organisation is looking for, he would still be a liability in case you decide to hire him.
The good news is that there are now a variety of tools that can help interviewers assess the soft skills of candidates. These can help predict job performance by giving them highly-individualised insights into the personalities of different candidates. This also begets greater diversification of the organisation’s talent pool, allowing for better fit into different roles in the organisation.
Job Auditions
Interviewees typically come prepared for an interview. They can memorize the lines for the answers to many of the questions of interviewers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering there are now a lot of online resources that also teach interviewees what questions interviewers will be asking from them and how they should answer those questions.
As such, interviewers must also adapt. They must learn to distance themselves from the more traditional way of assessing an individual’s skills. Rather than simply asking an interviewee to describe what he would do in a particular situation, why not get him to demonstrate his skills instead? This is where job auditions can be greatly beneficial. Candidates are placed in the workplace where they get to showcase their skills. Through job auditions, you may realise that the generally-shy candidate who can only manage to answer a few of your interview questions satisfactorily might actually be the person you’re looking for as he may be 10 times more technically-competent than the one who breezed through the traditional interview.
Meeting in Casual and Less Formal Settings
Did you know that the interview environment can be a really scary venue for interviewees? It’s like being led to the slaughterhouse where they will be demeaned by interviewers. That is why many of those who are really confident but lack the skill necessary for the job always make it through the interview process. The nervous wreck who happens to be more skilful than any other eventually doesn’t make the cut simply because of the jittering effects of a formal office interview environment.
This has to change. Conducting interviews in casual settings should help ease the tension and allow the candidate to be in his best. This also lets the person really show his or her personality.
Virtual and Augmented Reality Assessments
If you’re interviewing Baby Boomers for a particular position, you definitely won’t have any luck using newer, more integrative VR assessments. But if your talent pool is mostly made up of youngsters or at least young adults, then there’s no better way to do it than with virtual and augmented reality assessments.
Many of these newer technologies can now be used to assess a candidate’s problem-solving and decision-making skills while engaging candidates in a more fun environment. Plus, there’s no way candidates can lie about their skills.
Video Interviews
While video interviews are not necessarily new anymore, there’s one way interviewers can improve the technique. There is now such a thing as on-demand video interviews whereby candidates are given a few questions that they need to answer within a given time frame. The good news is that they don’t need to answer right away. They can frame their answers and prepare for it by recording a video of them answering the questions.
This technique is especially useful in account management, sales, and even business development where communication and presentation skills are very important.
These 5 interviewing techniques help you to easily identify the best candidate for the role that your organisation seeks. You can also use the same techniques for other purposes where you simply need to choose the right individual.
About the author:
Courtney Lockett, a practicing lawyer, business owner and the principal of Lockett Mccullough Lawyers. Her practice provides legal assistance to a wide range of clients both locally and internationally and specialises in assisting defence force personnel with private legal issues. Visit their website https://lockettmccullough.com.au/ to learn more.
