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In the last two weeks, I covered searching for a job and 5 tips for interview success. In this post, I will cover best practices for interviewers.
Here are my 6 tips for conducting a professional interview:
1) Introduce yourself first
Have you gone to an interview where the interviewer has your resume in hand, but you know little about the person you are talking to? Extend the simple reciprocity of sharing information by giving your candidate your background information – what you do, how long you have been with the company, and where you came from, what your experiences are. If you are really professional you’d arrange for your recruiting coordinator to send a brief biographic sketch of the interview team to the candidate ahead of the interview, just as you were able to obtain a resume of the candidate before hand.
2) Time it right
Two things about time – a) Please show up on time. “I’m running late because I had another meeting” is a lame excuse. b) Lay out upfront how you are going to interview the candidate and how much time you have for the whole interview. Giving a structure to the interview helps the candidate understand how to present information to you and when the interview is going to be over. Here’s a bad example – A Director of Products at a famous startup (then, not anymore) showed up 15 mins late to the interview and cut off the candidate at 15 minutes into the interview and said that was all the time he had. Why bother interviewing when you are so unprofessional?
3) Test conceptual knowledge not tool familiarity
Lot of hiring managers get hung up on things like ‘do you have experience with Omniture?’, ‘do you have experience with Eloqua?’ and so on. In stead of testing the candidate on the understanding of underlying marketing concepts, they get tool specific. The result is poor use of the 60 minutes interview time on something that can be learned from a Youtube video versus understanding broad concepts in product management/marketing.
4) Test problem solving ability versus experiential knowledge
Instead of asking “what did you do in your previous job?”, make it interesting for both the candidate and you by setting up a problem solving scenario. Come up with interesting/real product management scenarios and ask how the candidate would go about solving that situation. Here’s an example – We are not doing well on our newly introduced product. What would you do to improve sales? This is a typical business problem. See how the candidate approaches this problem.
Is the candidate structuring his analysis by identifying drivers for sales, coming up with hypothesis on what could be wrong and testing those hypothesis against data? Is this how you solve problems or do you go about doing things mechanically? (the “been there, done that” attitude would be something like this – “oh, I’ll just come up with a creative marketing campaign, do more sales training and if possible give a price cut”). The problem with experiential knowledge is that it is always based on assumptions that may not necessarily be true anymore to the case you have at hand. Clear out the experience ego, and start picking apart the problem from scratch.
5) Hire for culture fit
You may have the brightest candidate, but if he is not a good fit for your organizational culture then that’s no good. There are candidates who are driven, will perform independently and need little managerial oversight and there are those that are process driven, will do exactly as they are told. One is not necessarily better than the other. The smartness is about figuring out if the candidate you are about to hire will fit into your organization not because of his abilities but because your culture will make the candidate happy in the long run. The job interview isn’t the place for under promising and over delivering. Be truthful and honest about what your culture really is – if it sucks, admit it and let the candidate make the decision to join or not.
6) Give room for questions
Definitely leave room for questions. Few interviewers really give time for the candidate to ask meaningful questions. Some are uncomfortable about answering questions because the information may be of an order of sensitivity not ready for sharing. In that case, get an NDA (non disclosure agreement) signed and let the candidate ask you detailed questions so he gets the benefit of understanding the business better or what situation he is going to get into. Some think it is a one way process where interviewer gets to ask all questions, and then there’s the customary “We are at the top of the hour, I have to run to another meeting. Do you have any questions for me?”. Open yourself to just as much as you would want the candidate to disclose. You’ll get to know the candidate better by letting the candidate ask you questions. When your candidate sends you a thank you note, offer to answer any questions they may have as follow up.
The job interview isn’t about the interviewer testing the candidate for a set of skills in a checklist. It is about the candidate finding a bigger purpose (mission and values of the company) than what he can do just as an individual, and to answer that the interviewers must prove they are worth working with, not working for. Treat the candidate like how you’d like to be treated. Stress tests are for endurance training drills in the gym. Not for professionally conducted interviews. Remember, you might end up working with this person very soon.
– Prabhakar
Tweet this: @PGopalan Improving the job interview experience http://wp.me/pXBON-2lS #prodmgmt #jobadvice #jobsearch #careers