How Interviews Are Evaluated

In this section you will learn
What happens during the recruitment process
About scorecards and rating systems
About interviewer mentality
How interviews are evaluated

The day has finally arrived

All the preparation you’ve done, and all the anxiety you’ve felt, have led you to this point here. Acing the interview and landing the job could not only be the first step toward a long and successful career, but in a more immediate sense, it could realistically change your life forever. In this section, interview professional will give you an exclusive look into how your interview gets evaluated and the steps you should take to maximise your chances in the interview itself

We’ll start first by introducing you to the most important part aspects of the recruitment process

When you apply for a job, most medium and large companies nowadays will use a contact management system to store your application information and resume. This also enables them to your track application process, and to establish a candidate profile for you during the recruitment process itself. This is a practice that not only allows businesses to build up a much better picture of their candidate’s overall skills and eligibility, but also enables them to track your progress, and if they need to, members of that organization involved in the recruitment process can also go back and review notes on things like past assessments you’ve completed, or see any previous interview notes as and when they need to, allowing them to build up a much more comprehensive picture of you as a candidate overall

The first place any employer or HR consultancy firm starts when looking to make a hire is to compose a list of skills and qualities they expect from their qualified candidate, and this will vary greatly depending on the role and on the company in question. From there, they will create a job description. (The good thing about many job descriptions today is that they will include both hard and soft skills, so if you really like a job but are lacking the requisite experience in regards to the relevant hard skills they are looking for, if you make it through to the interview stages you can always employ the tactic of placing a greater emphasis on the soft skills you possess). Next, they will structure a candidate selection framework, this is important because it includes all the stages involved in the candidate selection process, this will vary greatly from job to job and from company to company and will include things like assessments, decisions on interview types, (with telephone interviews and structured interviews will be among some of the most common ones you’ll encounter) along with any other stages they want to include, such as job presentations or informal meet and greets. Once they have decided on all the stages they wish to include in the selection process, they will next look at how they want the interview to be assessed. This will include a decision on whether or not to use scorecards, along with general guidance on how the interviews and any other stages in this process should be scored. The final stages in the recruitment journey are to select or train the recruitment personnel themselves, and from there, these people will be given the responsibility for conducting the interviews, evaluating the candidates, and finally extending the job offers themselves

Of the entire candidate selection process, the interviewing stage is always the most important part. Many larger companies nowadays decide to compose their own interviewing frameworks, and while is a more costly method of candidate acquisition, it gives them a greater degree of control over the candidate selection process itself, and tends to give these organisations increased credibility as it shows investors and other external institutions how seriously they take the calibre of candidates they let into their organisation. That’s why they have dedicated specialists who work closely with their HR departments to compose and implement their own interviewing frameworks so as to ensure only the best applicants are ever selected. On the other hand, many medium and smaller businesses often turn to HR consultancy firms to do their hiring for them. With pre-established frameworks already in place, this makes it easy for these companies to utilize their expertise and infrastructure, allowing those consultancy firms to tailor bespoke solutions for these organisations based on the industry and role, ensuring their hiring needs are also met by delivering the best calibre of candidates possible

Recruitment costs companies time and money, therefore, when the decision is made to bring on new hires, if possible, companies try and hire in batches, and will try and complete this process as quickly as possible, usually making their hiring decisions over the course of a 4 – 5 week period.

When we look at how a standard candidate selection process is implemented today, there are numerous things it’s important to consider

Many candidate selection processes nowadays are comprised of multiple stages. This is especially true with larger companies, irrespective of the vocation and pay grade of the role in question. Where an organisation has decided to include multiple stages in their recruitment process, after the initial resume and application screening performed by the HR team, often times they proceed with a telephone interview, then depending on how in-depth the company wants to go, might next include assessments in the form of personality and aptitude testing which will evaluate you on the skills or qualities necessary for that role – (for higher end roles, additional steps such as job presentations or informal meet and greets may also be included). After this will normally come the main interview stage itself, this is always the most important part of the candidate selection process, and these can be conducted in numerous types of formats, see the interview process, all interview types, for more information on the types of interviews you might encounter. After the first interview, sometimes a second interview will be required, after which point, the final candidate selections will be made

As a candidate seeking employment, interviews can be daunting, that’s because there’s usually a lot riding on them, which is why it’s normal for people to feel nervous before they go for one. However, something that might help to give us the perspective we need to approach them with more confidence is a very simple thing that most candidates don’t often consider, and that is the fact that although it might seem unbelievable, interviewers sometimes experience nervousness too! While this normally isn’t to the extent that you as an aspiring job candidate might, the thing to remember about your interviewer is that they are there to do a job, and this comes with a prescribed set of obligations and duties they have to perform, and as such, it’s something that requires work on their part

Interviewers will be given a set of parameters with which to conduct the interview under. These will include things like:

Maintaining neutral body language
Noting the candidate’s appearance and demeanour. (Is the candidate suitably and professionally dressed? Are their nails and hair appropriately groomed)? Additionally, how does the candidate seem. Do they have a nervous, agitated, enthusiastic, serious, confident, demeanour)?
Ensuring questions are open-ended and don’t contain excessive detail
Being concise and avoiding jargon
Ensuring questions follow the pre-arranged sequence
Avoiding wording questions in ways that point to a specific answer
Basing questions around real-life situations
Being able to effectively explain the role and the company
Ensuring they are doing their best not to assess you on areas that are not job-related
Ensuring the interview is held in a relaxed setting
Keeping the format the same for each candidate by allowing each candidate an equal amount of time to respond to questions
Letting the candidate (you) do the talking

Interviewers will often practice before an interview in much the same way that applicants do. That’s because your interviewer not only needs to come across as confident and in control – but on top of asking you questions in a straightforward manner and in the correct pre-arranged sequence, they also need to make sure they understand the role and its requirements implicitly, that way they can evaluate you accordingly. To do so they need to have completely familiarised themselves with what areas the employer is looking for in their ideal candidate, that way they will know what areas they need to prioritise when evaluating your responses

The interviewer is responsible for ensuring they are knowledgeable about all aspects of your job role, this will include knowing what your job entails, and will also include knowing exactly what areas they have to evaluate, and equally as important, knowing the exact phrasing and sequence of questions they need to ask you during the interview itself. To aid them, they will often review materials like your resume and application forms beforehand, and much like yourself, will also review the job description so they are familiar with it before their first round of interviews commences. Oftentimes interviewers will informally take notes or use a scorecard during the interview itself. If using a scorecard, this is a more formal way of evaluation and the exact nature of this will always be determined by the employer or hiring manager beforehand. But where taking notes or using a questions sheet to remember the exact sequence and phrasing of questions, this is a more informal type of evaluation aid and will sometimes be at the interviewer’s own discretion

Each interviewer will be given a certain amount of latitude when it comes to the hiring decisions they make. This pertains not only to how they choose to conduct the interview, but more importantly, to the freedom they are given to score and assess you on. For instance, while some interviewers will be given the freedom to assess you as and how they see fit, others will have to follow the scorecards or evaluating criteria they are given more rigidly, it simply depends on their role within the organisation, and on the instructions their employer or hiring manager has set out for them

For more advice on interviewing mentality refer to Assessing Interviewer Mentality

These are the titles of the different persons within an organisation who might conduct your interview

Recruiter – A recruiter’s job is to hire people. As such, interviewing is a role they specifically train for, therefore when it comes to making hiring decisions recruiters are normally quite savvy because interviewing is considered to be a part of their dedicated job duties

Hiring manager – A hiring manager is a person who is responsible for deciding who to hire within an organisation. To this extent, while a hiring manager can also conduct interviewers, being a hiring manager means that they get the final say on who to hire. Therefore, depending on how the recruitment process is structured within that organisation, instead of interviewing you, the hiring manager could also easily instead be the person who consults with your interviewer after your interview has finished and gives the final sign off on whether or not to hire you based on your interviewer’s recommendation

Interviewer – This is a generalized term for any person whose job it is to interview you. When such a term is applied, it could mean any member within an organisation assigned to that role, even if it’s not part of that person’s dedicated job duties. As such, interviewing is sometimes a duty assigned to managers or other senior members of staff, which tends to happen in some smaller to medium sized organisations, especially in hospitality or seasonal lines of work

Employer – Employers, especially in small sized businesses with a dozen employees or less, will many times elect to interview the hires they make directly. This saves on time and money, and in such tight knit organisations gives the employer the greatest amount of assurance that they are hiring the best possible candidate for their business

Although these terms tend to be used interchangeably when describing an interviewer, they are in fact all different roles within an organisation that confer different levels of authority to the people in question. Of the list above, only 2 positions, the hiring manager and the employer, will only normally ever be able to approve hiring recommendations made during the interview stages. (Although in recruitment or temporary staffing agencies that involve a high influx and turnover of staff recruiters will sometimes also have the latitude to make their own hiring decisions too)

When we consider the interview process itself though, for ourselves as candidates, these titles are largely formalities, and for all intents and purposes, no matter what the person’s role – your interviewer’s recommendation will normally always hold final sway when it comes to any hiring decisions made