Interview bugbears
February 12, 2009
This week I spent the whole of one day interviewing candidates for a new position. The structured interview is still one of the most common methods used by organisations in recruitment and selection, and having experienced a range of different responses from interviewees, I thought I would put together my top three interview bugbears:
- When the candidate hasn’t bothered to do any research at all on the company. My first question is usually ‘what do you know about the company?’ and one of the candidates this week said that she had not been able to find out anything because the link to our website that was sent in her invitation email did not work. She had apparently not thought to find another way to get onto the site such as typing the url into the address bar, or Googling the company name. After the interview myself and the other panel members all agreed that it was pretty much game over at that point, but of course we gave the candidate a full and proper interview, which felt like a waste of time!
- When the candidate cannot answer succinctly. Have you ever been in an interview where the candidate tells gives you a sufficient, and sometimes event brilliant answer to a question in a few minutes, yet they continue to ramble on and on for a long time, with no additional benefit to the interview. I know it’s easy to ramble when you’re nervous, but it’s good skill to be able to give a full and relevant answer without having to talk for ten minutes, and it puts me off if the candidate cannot realise when they have talked too much. Also, I feel that the best interviews are more like two way conversations, so it’s good for the interviewer to be able to speak occasionally, but with ramblers you can’t often get a word in edgeways.
- When a candidate is late but doesn’t apologise. There’s nothing worse than rudeness, and whilst I understand that there are sometimes uncontrollable circumstances that lead to lateness, if you don’t even acknowledge this then you’re on a path to rejection with immediate effect. If a candidate is going to be late then they should call and ensure the interviewer is aware of this and the reason as soon as possible. If the role is a client facing job, then this is especially important because their behaviour in attending the interview is indicative of their potential behaviour with a client.
So if you’re going to an interview in the near future, the above points are general no-no’s if you want to have a chance at getting the job. If you’ve recently been interviewing, let me know what your biggest bugbears are.
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