Interviewing tips for hiring managers
While it’s common to focus on the jobseeker nerves, interviewing for your own team can be just as stressful. Interviewing job seekers is often dreaded by hiring managers - It’s time consuming and can be a real challenge to find the right person for your role. It’s essential that there’s a good team and organisational fit and that each new team-member pulls their own weight and makes a meaningful contribution to the company.
With our tips on how to master the ideas behind ‘job competencies’ and ‘behavioural interviewing’ you will soon be conducting successful interviews.
Top interviewing tips for IT hiring managers
Plan ahead: be prepared
In today's busy world it's not easy to find the time to prepare for interviews, but a little bit of forethought can save you a lot of time down the track. Consider how much time it can take to manage behavior or even re-hire?
As the hiring manager, it is worth taking the time to understand the key competencies (skills) of the role you're interviewing for.
Careful planning of your questions will also improve the quality of your interview and enable you to effectively assess the candidate's true abilities.
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Use behavioural-based interview questions
Behavioral interview questions lead the candidate to relate specific scenarios in which they have demonstrated skills and experience.
The theory is that if a person can relate an instance in which they have demonstrated the competency in the past, it’s a pretty good bet that they can demonstrate that same competency again working for you.
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Identify true behavioural responses
As an interviewer, it takes some practice to quickly identify when you are hearing a true behavioural response. If your candidate is using words like “usually”, “we”, “always”, “sometimes” or “never”, then try deeper questioning to understand what they actually did in detail.
If they are relating a specific example that includes a situation or task, the actions taken, and the result of the action, then you are hearing a behavioral example.
Often, good candidates start their responses in a non-behavioral way. Don’t give up! It’s actually fairly easy to redirect a candidate to provide you with the kind of answers you need to hear.
EXAMPLE:
In this scenario between an interviewer and a candidate the competency upon which the question is based is the ability to set priorities.
Interviewer: I’d like to ask you now about your experience setting priorities. Can you tell me about a time when you have had to juggle several tasks at once and how you sorted out what to do first?
Candidate: Oh, I always make lists of what I have to do and when it’s do and I put it into my calendar. I usually don’t have any trouble with setting priorities.
At this point, you need to redirect this candidate because you don’t actually have any knowledge of how this person sets priorities. A redirect follow up question could be:
Interviewer: That sounds great. Think back to the last time you had to do that, maybe last week or last month. What were the tasks and how did you handle them?
If this candidate does really have some skills in this area, he or she should be able to give you some specific examples.
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Learn to speak ‘body language’
What does the candidate tell you though body language? How does their dress, speach, and self-confidence relate to the position you are interviewing them for?
Evaluate how this person relate to other team members, senior management and related stakeholders or customers?
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Sample IT interview questions
It’s important to ask candidates probing questions to get them talking and to understand them better. Here are some sample questions:
- What made you decide to apply for this role?
- When we call your previous employer or referees what are they likely to tell us about your performance there?
- Tell me about a time when you demonstrated your trustworthiness or integrity at work.
- Tell me about a time when you were working hard to complete a task and you were asked to leave that task before completing it and start a different job.
- Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty to get a job done.
- Give me an example of a time when you had set a goal for yourself and tell me how you went about accomplishing it.
- Give me a specific occasion on which you followed a policy with which you did not agree.
- Give me an example of a time when you were able to successfully communicate with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).
- Tell me about a time when you improved a task or job you were working on.
- In what kind of a work environment do you do your best work?
- What do you think of the upcoming trends in ……
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Comply with Anti-Discrimination & EEO
Employers should comply with Anti-Discrimination laws and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) guidelines.
In Australia it is unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin (Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975), Age (Age Discrimination Act 2004) and sex, marital status and pregnancy (Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act 1984).
In addition, in New South Wales, the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977, makes it unlawful to discriminate against a person, or any of their relatives, friends or associates, on the grounds of race, gender, pregnancy, marital status, disability, age, or sexuality.
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) is the creation of conditions that allow all workers to have an equal chance to seek and to obtain employment and to advance in their jobs. EEO requires that employees are chosen, advanced, and treated on the basis of their individual talents and capabilities. EEO aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination in recruitment, selection, training, personnel practices and conditions of employment. EEO does not assume that everyone has the same abilities, or that everyone will reach the same level. It requires that everyone have a fair chance to use their talents and abilities rather than to be blocked by barriers irrelevant to their capacity to achieve.
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