Top Tips
Interviewing Tips
- Interview formats
- Interview questions
- Preparing for interviews
- Legal considerations
Some different types of questioning styles are given below, but not all questions fit neatly
into a category. It can be helpful to ask some more chatty questions at the beginning of the
interview to help put the candidate at their ease.
Hypothetical questions
Hypothetical questions involve asking candidates how they would react or behave in specific
situations, for example those that might be encountered in the job in question. For example,
‘How would you deal with a customer who is complaining loudly about sloppy service?’
With this type of question there is a danger that candidates will think quickly about the ‘best’
or expected answer: the interviewer has to decide how closely this might match with reality.
Behavioural questions
Behavioural questions focus on past events in a candidate’s life and are designed to focus
on ‘critical incidents’. The interviewer is hoping to hear of occasions when the candidate has
demonstrated the abilities or behaviours most relevant to the job for which they are applying.
For example, ‘Tell me about a time when you had to take a particularly difficult decision’.
The interviewer can then ask more probing supplementary questions to establish, for
instance, the circumstances, the candidate’s reaction and what action they personally took.
In posing the question above, the interviewer is looking for evidence that candidates have
acted decisively in the past. The assumption is then made that, put in a similar situation,
they would display the same behaviour in the future.
It is important that questions of this kind are based on person specifications for the job which
have been agreed – and ideally discussions with the current holder of the job.
Preparing for interviews
Some of the basic steps that need to be taken in preparing to interview candidates are listed
below. While many of the points may seem obvious, they are frequently handled poorly or
forgotten altogether. The key points are the need to prepare questions that are clearly
relevant to the job for which the candidate is applying, and the need, at all times, to be
concerned about the image of the organisation in the potential recruit’s mind.
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