How to Conduct an Effective Interview by Rebecca Knight

Author: Rebecca Knight

The virtual stack of résumés in your inbox is winnowed, and certain candidates have passed the initial screen. Next step: interviews. How should you use the relatively brief time to get to know—and assess—a near stranger? How many people at your firm should be involved? How can you tell if a candidate will be a good fit? And finally, should you really ask questions like: “What’s your greatest weakness?”

What the Experts Say

Hiring the right person for a job has become increasingly difficult, regardless of shifting labor market conditions. “Pipelines are depleted and more companies are competing for top talent,” says Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a former partner and member of the executive committee of the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and author of It’s Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best. Applicants have more information about each company’s selection process than ever before. Career websites like Glassdoor have taken the “mystique and mystery” out of interviews, says John Sullivan, an HR expert, professor of management at San Francisco State University, and author of 1000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent. If your organization’s interview process turns candidates off, “they will roll their eyes and find other opportunities,” even in a tough labor market, he warns. Your job is to assess candidates but also to convince the best ones to stay. Here’s how to make the interview process work for you—and for them.

Prepare your questions

Before you meet candidates, you need to figure out exactly what you’re looking for in a new hire so that you’re asking the right questions during the interview. Begin this process by “compiling a list of required attributes” for the position and asking “In which ways do we want to change our culture?” suggests Fernández-Aráoz. For inspiration and guidance, Sullivan recommends ­looking at your top performers. What do they have in common? What skills are missing? How are they resourceful? What did they accomplish prior to working at your ­organization? What roles did they hold? Those answers will help you create criteria and enable you to construct relevant questions.

Reduce stress

Candidates find job interviews stressful because of the many unknowns: What will my interviewer be like? What kinds of questions will they ask? How can I squeeze this meeting into my workday? And of course: What should I wear? But “when people are stressed, they do not perform as well,” says Sullivan. He recommends taking preemptive steps to lower the candidate’s cortisol levels. Tell people in advance the topics you’d like to discuss so they can prepare. Be willing to meet the person at a time that’s convenient to them. And explain your organization’s dress code. Your goal is to “make them comfortable” so that you have a productive, professional conversation.

Involve (only a few) others

When making any big decision, it’s important to seek counsel from others so invite a few trusted colleagues to help you interview. “Monarchy doesn’t work. You want to have multiple checks” to make sure you hire the right person, Fernández-Aráoz explains. “But on the other hand, extreme democracy is also ineffective” and can result in a long-drawn-out process which increases the chances of rejecting or losing the right candidates for the wrong reasons. He recommends having three people interview the candidate: “the boss, the boss’s boss, and a senior HR person or recruiter.” Peer interviewers can also be “really important,” Sullivan observes, because they give your team members a say in who gets the job. He adds, “They will take more ownership of the hire and have reasons to help that person succeed.”

Assess potential

Budget 90 minutes for the first interview, says Fernández-Aráoz. That amount of time enables you to “really assess the person’s competency and potential.” Look for signs of the candidate’s “curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination.” Sullivan advises interviewers to “assume that the person will be promoted and that they will be a manager someday. The question then becomes not only ‘Can this person do the job today?’ but ‘Can they do the job a year from now when the world has changed?’” Ask the candidate how they learn and for their thoughts on where your industry is going. “No one can predict the future, but you want someone who is thinking about it every day,” he explains.

Ask for real solutions

Don’t waste your breath with absurd questions like: What are your weaknesses? “You might as well say, ‘Lie to me,’” says Sullivan. Instead try to discern how the candidate would handle real situations related to the job. Explain a problem your team struggles with and ask the candidate to walk you through how they would solve it. Or describe a process your company uses and ask the candidate to identify inefficiencies. Go back to your list of desired attributes, says Fernández-Aráoz. If you’re looking for an executive who will need to influence a large number of people over whom they won’t have ­formal power, ask: “Have you ever been in a situation where you had to persuade other people who were not your direct reports to do something? How did you do it? And what were the consequences?”

Consider “cultural fit,” but don’t obsess

Much has been made about the importance of “cultural fit” in successful hiring. And you should look for signs that “the candidate will be comfortable” at your organization, says Fernández-Aráoz. Think about your ­company’s work environment and compare it to the candidate’s orientation. Are they a long-term planner or a short-term thinker? Are they collaborative or do they prefer working independently? But, says Sullivan, your perception of a candidate’s disposition isn’t necessarily indicative of whether they can acclimate to a new culture. “People adapt,” he says. “What you really want to know is: Can they adjust?”

Sell the job

If the meeting is going well and you believe that the candidate is worth wooing, spend time during the second half of the interview selling the role and the organization. “If you focus too much on selling at the beginning, it’s hard to be objective,” says Fernández-Aráoz. But once you’re confident in the candidate, “tell the person why you think they are a good fit.” Bear in mind that the interview is a mutual screening process. “Make the process fun,” says Sullivan. Ask them if there’s anyone on the team they’d like to meet. The best people to sell the job are those who “live it,” he explains. “Peers give an honest picture of what the organization is like.”

Case Study: Provide Relevant, Real-Life Scenarios to Reveal How Candidates Think

The vast majority of hires at Four Kitchens, a web design firm in Austin, Texas, are through employee referrals. So when Todd Ross Nienkerk, the company’s cofounder and CEO, had an opening for an account manager, he had a hunch about who should get the job. “It was somebody who’d been a finalist for a position here years ago,” says Todd. (We’ll call her Deborah.) “We kept her in mind, and when this job opened, she was the first person we called.”

Even though Deborah was a favored candidate, she again went through the company’s three-step interview process. The first focused on skills. When Four Kitchens interviews designers or coders, it typically asks applicants to provide a portfolio of work. “We ask them to talk us through their process. We’re not grilling them, but we want to know how they think, and we want to see their personal communication style.” But for the account manager role, Todd took a slightly different tack. Before the interview, he and the company’s head of business development put together a job description and then came up with questions based on the relevant responsibilities. They started with questions like: What are things you look for in a good client? What are red flags in a client relationship? How do you deal with stress?

Then Todd presented Deborah with a series of redacted client emails that represented a cross-section of day-to-day communication: Some were standard ­requests for status updates; others involved serious contract disputes and pointed questions. “We said, ‘Pretend you work here. Talk us through how you’d handle this.’ It put her on the spot, but frankly, this is what the job entails.”

After a successful first round, Deborah moved on to the second phase, the team interview. In this instance, she met with a project manager, a designer, and two developers. “These are an opportunity for applicants to find out what it’s like to work here,” says Todd. “But the biggest reason we do it is to ensure that everyone is involved in the process and feels a sense of ownership over the hire.”

The final stage was the partner interview, during which Todd asked Deborah questions about career goals and the industry. “It was also an opportunity for her to ask us tough questions about where our company is headed,” he says.

Deborah got the job.

Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in the Boston Globe, Business Insider, the New York Times, BBC, and the Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.