Conducting an effective Interview

It has been almost three years now, that I have been a part of Technical Hiring team at Nuclei. In the journey I have done a lot of mistakes while interviewing yet learned many things. Every interview that I conduct now, there is always something to retrospect on how to grow as an interviewer.

Hiring is a core skill that an ideal employee should have and is not just another responsibility of the HR team. It’s your job to hire the best teammate both in terms of culture and skills, so that you can ensure productive results as a team and grow.

Interviewing someone is a real skill, and this skill can never be learned in one night. This skill is not something that you can memorise. You can only grow with practice.

Before knowing, how to interview effectively, it’s very necessary to understand what an interview actually means.

“An Interview is a formal meeting at which someone is asked questions to see if they are suitable for a particular job, or for a course of study at a college, university, etc.” — Lord Oxford

An interview is just a formal meeting on common grounds, and nothing more. However, there have been a lot of myths about interviews. Let’s bust few of them with few guidelines.

Guidelines on conducting an effective interview

1. The interviewer does not have to be feel superior to the interviewee — or has to perceive as if the interviewee knows less than him — one of the most common myths. No matter, how much you know, there is always something to learn from someone you are interviewing irrespective of his experience, or age, or qualification, etc.
2. The interview is not always about asking asking hard questions — You need to see what type of role you are hiring her for, and align your questions accordingly.
3. Judge them on their ability to solve real world problems — Judging them on their memory, or asking standard definitions or keywords which requires memorisation — is totally an illogical way to do it. See, if they are able to solve the problem relating to the real world.
4. Ask yourself questions like — can I work with this person as a teammate ? Can I mentor her ? Does she carry fast learning skills ? Will she stick to the company for long term? Can I have some trade off between her solid culture and technical skills or vice versa.
5. Never forget that the person in front of you is a human being too — she is trying to make your job easier by giving you her time and energy. Help her do that, loosen up a bit, and create a positive approachable environment.

The Most Important

Before executing any task or job you always need be sure about the end goal and stick to it. This drives all your baby steps involved in the task only and only towards your goal. But when the goal is not clear, we mostly beat around the bush, thereby wasting time and energy in areas where its not needed.

End goal of an interview

Pretty obvious isn’t it ? The goal is nothing but “Hiring the best candidate suited for your job role”.

But why do I need to bring such an obvious thing in the spotlight ?

It might happen that we know the end goal subconsciously, but might get misled in terms of our personal interests like ego, status, etc. or limited understanding about interviewing someone. This is bound to happen, if we are not aware or have not reminded ourselves about our goal.

So, its very necessary that you remind yourself about the end goal of the interview. This one moment of awareness before you start, drives all your actions and decisions just towards getting the best out of the candidate you are interviewing — throughout the whole interview process.

Breaking the ice

Once you have reminded yourself about the end goal of the interview, you can start with the interview.

Now your end goal is clear. So aligning to that, you can only get the best candidate from the lot, if you help them unlock the best out of them. Some people take time to open up, as they are nervous mostly. You can only ensure to witness the best shot from the interviewee — if you create a positive and approachable environment. If you are not making sure about this aspect in your interview, then this is a red flag!

No one can guarantee you that you will get the best candidate if you do not make efforts for the same.

Start with the interview by making the interviewee comfortable enough. You can ask her questions which helps her to open up fully. Some examples are like — “How was her day?”, “Had your lunch?”, “What do you like the most about the college?”, “Are you liking the weather?”, “Where are you from, and what do you like the most about that place?”, “Are you comfortable with English or Hindi? Speak in whichever language you are comfortable..”

Ask her for some water if she looks nervous.

When you feel that she is comfortable enough or at least better than she looked when you started with the conversation, you can move ahead.

Getting to the specifics

1. Now you can start asking questions, that suits to the job roles and responsibilities.
2. Always ask the candidate to think out-loud, while she is attempting the questions. Walk through her thought process to mark whether she is thinking in the right direction or not.
3. Give her hints and see if she is able to proceed with the hints.
4. Be patient to listen to her answers. Its best to not interrupt if you are not exactly sure that she is thinking in the wrong direction. It can be different from your expected answer.
5. Always see, if she understands the real world implementation of the same.
6. Check her energy — is she asking you enough questions, clearing out the requirements well in terms of the problem or catching onto to the edge cases ?
7. Be kind and humble if she is not able to answer as expected.
8. See whether the learnings from the books she has read(if any) — shows up in her behaviour.
9. Ensure her Ability to handle ambiguity — how patiently she handles the ambiguity through the process of solving her question.
10. Observe how systematically she answers the question — so that its easy to understand and build on the top of the same. Given a question, is she directly jumping into the implementation, or asking follow up questions to clear the requirements first, then explaining her solution in layman terms and then jumping into implementation.
11. Always ask if she has any questions to ask in the end? If yes, answer them patiently — clearing all her doubts.
12. Always give a gentle valuable feedback on how she can improve even if you are not planning to select her, so that the candidate has something to take away from the interview and leaves the room with a smile. Doing this, not only help the candidate to grow, but also drives your growth as a mentor and leaves a remarkable impression on the candidate about you and the company.

This article is just an effort to assist someone — who is a beginner in conducting interviews or someone who is experienced but still wants to retrospect if she is doing it right. Nevertheless, I would have missed few aspects too. I would highly appreciate if you share your thoughts or inputs on the same.