Job Interview Best Practices

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by Bridget Miller | BLR

Many of the items on this list are meant to keep the hiring team on the right side of the law and avoid situations in which an applicant could assume any type of discrimination or bias. Other tips are meant to ensure the hiring team is effective and consistent in order to find the best applicant for the role. Here are the tips:

• Be sure that anyone involved in the hiring process is trained in and fully understands the laws that relate to hiring and the implications for each step of the process.
• Avoid behaviors that could imply a discriminatory bias. For example:
  • Do not ask about disabilities. Focus on the ability to do the job.
  • Treat all applicants the same. in other words, don’t require some groups to meet higher criteria than others for consideration.
  • Don’t ask about medical issues or other personal information.
  • Don’t ask any questions that could serve to gather information about:
    • Marital status;
    • Whether the applicant has children; 
    • Race;
    • National origin;
    • Age (besides confirming the applicant is over 18, if necessary);
    • Religion;
    • Sexual orientation (in many states it is illegal to discriminate on this basis); or
    • Protected activities, such as past filings of workers’ compensation claims. 
  • Don’t imply there is any type of problem or bias related to the applicant (e.g., “Our customers may react negatively to a woman in charge”).
• Be consistent in how applicants are assessed. For example: 
  • If an applicant must prove his or her ability to perform the job (such as via a performance test), this should be required of all applicants, not just a few. Requiring it of some but not others can appear discriminatory.
  • Stick to enforcing minimum education and experience requirements that are truly consistent with job needs, and do not vary this assessment for certain individuals. If the minimums are realistic, it won’t be necessary to make exceptions.
  • Be consistent with the questions you ask to avoid the appearance of biases. It can seem biased if some interviewees are required to pass a higher threshold than others.
• Be well-prepared.Before interviewing a candidate, you should:
  • Have questions ready, and know what you’re trying to learn from each of the questions you choose to ask. The questions should be related to the job or the person’s ability to perform the job. 
  • Know what the next steps in the hiring process are and advise the applicant of such either during or at the conclusion of the interview.
  • Review all of the information available about the applicant, including the details of how previous interviews went (if applicable). 
  • Plan to be in a space that is appropriate for the interview, free from distractions, noise, and interruptions. 
• Be aware of subconscious biases. We all have biases that cloud our judgment, but it can help to simply be aware of this in order to take steps to ensure it doesn’t affect the interview process. For example, how an individual dresses or styles his or her hair may create an instant assumption, but it does not necessarily mean that person is not a good job candidate. 
• Allow silences. Sometimes interviewees need time to formulate an answer. By filling in silences too quickly, you may lose the opportunity to hear what the applicant has to say. Always give the applicant time to talk—in fact, he or she should do the majority of the talking—so that you can get a clear understanding about the applicant and how he or she will fit with the organization. 
• Ensure everyone involved in interviewing and hiring knows the next steps, knows who is authorized to make an offer to an applicant, and what processes must be completed before an offer is made (such as conducting background checks, reference checks, and so on). Know what applicable conditions the offer is subject to, such as passing drug screening. 
• Remain objective in your assessments.
• Remember to assess soft skills as well as specific skills required to perform the job tasks. The issue of cultural fit is often just as (or even more) important as skills that can be trained. 
• Be sure that the interviewing team, especially the person making the offer, knows to avoid making any kind of reference to a contract in terms that could be construed as an implied employment contract. (Unless, of course, you’re offering an actual employment contract, but this is the exception rather than the norm in the United States.) This might mean avoiding phrases like “permanent position” or “long-term role” or anything that implies that the applicant cannot be fired without cause. 
• Give the applicant the opportunity to ask questions.

What would you add to this list?

http://trendpersonnel.com/en/news/item/143-job-interview-best-practices

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Avoid These Errors in Hiring and Recruiting

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by Stephen Bruce, PhD, PHR 

Making Poor Selection Decisions

Especially if you have not done a good job of gathering information about candidates, it’s easy to rely on one of these misleading factors:

• Halo. This means being swayed by one factor that’s great while ignoring other important factors that are poor.
• Recency. This means being swayed by one recent triumph while ignoring past failures.
• Extraneous. This means being swayed by an unimportant factor like successes in areas not related to the job.
• Glibness. This happens when you have an inspiring and enjoyable chat but fail to get around to talking about business.
• Background. This means being swayed by an impressive degree or a list of impressive people and companies with whom the person has worked, while ignoring the fact that there is no evidence the person can do the job.

Failing to “Test” Key KSAs 

If there is a key knowledge, skill, or ability that you can test, don’t rely on the interview.

For example, if hiring a writer, have the person write something in your style. (By the way, such testing tends to reduce the importance of the interview—if the person can write, you want him or her, and if the person can’t write, you don’t, even if the person is entertaining, knowledgeable, bright, and sociable.)

Failure to Do a Reasonable Background Check

There are turkeys and eagles and you want to hire eagles. Unfortunately, many turkeys are skilled at looking like eagles during the interview. And that’s where the background check comes in.

Talk to former bosses, verify education and certification, and do other checks as appropriate. Make the attempt to talk to former employers even if they won’t tell you much; it’s important to show that you did what you could in case there is ever a claim of negligent hiring (“You should have known that this person had a history of violence.”).

Overeager on Social Media Research

Should you do a social media check? The pros are that you may obtain a seemingly truer look at the candidate. Unfortunately, there’s a tradeoff, and that is, you’re likely to find out information you don’t want, like race, disability, etc. As they say, you can’t unring that bell, and it opens you up to future charges of discrimination that wouldn’t have held water if you hadn’t done the check.

Overeager hiring managers are likely to fall into this trap without training. To avoid this if you are doing social media background checks, most experts recommend the following:

• Delay the check until late in the hiring process when you probably know most of the protected information.
• Have a third party (could be HR or an outside agency) and report only appropriate information.
• Avoid any deception in accessing sites.
• If you find something negative and deny employment on that basis, print the page out to document what you found.

http://trendpersonnel.com/en/news/item/117-avoid-these-errors-in-hiring-and-recruiting