PEOPLE MATTERS
Top tips for effective interviewing Worknest helps business owners proactively solve staffing issues – and making sure you recruit the right people is a skill in itself. What’s the optimal approach for conducting interviews? How do you ensure a fair and impartial process? And how do you extract the required information from candidates to make well-informed hiring decisions? Mastering the art of effective interviewing is a fundamental skill for any manager. It enables you to get to know a candidate, assess suitability against the specific requirements of the role and evaluate their compatibility with company culture. As well as ensuring you appoint the right person, a rigorous interview process serves to pre-empt potential future issues and sets the foundation for a positive working relationship. Achieving interview success requires meticulous preparation, time investment and a solid grasp of best practice. Here are our top tips:
1. Preparation is key Employers often make the mistake of going into the interview process ill-prepared. Before conducting interviews, be sure to familiarise yourself with the role and its specific requirements well in advance. Take time to understand the key responsibilities, identify the relevant
"As well as ensuring you appoint the right person, a rigorous interview pre-empts potential future issues."
experiences that would benefit the role and outline the essential skills the ideal candidate should possess – then use this to formulate questions. 2. Take steps to eliminate bias Objectivity and impartiality are essential to a fair process. To uphold these principles, interviewers must undergo training in techniques and unconscious bias awareness. We all have unconscious biases which can influence decision-making. It is important to recognise these, to avoid making unfair judgments about candidates. One way to do this is through ‘name-blind recruitment’. Also known as blind recruitment or anonymised recruitment, this involves removing personally identifiable information – such as names – from job applications and CVs. This ensures
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