When it’s time to interview the shortlist of candidates for your vacancy, you need all the help you can get to ensure you eventually make the ‘right’ hire.

Interviewing is a skill, and just because you are in a managerial position, that doesn’t mean that interviewing comes naturally to you.

Likewise, just because you’ve been interviewing for years, this doesn’t mean that your technique doesn’t need honing.

Today, we share 6 clever tips for interviewers to help you make the best possible hire from your shortlist of IT applicants.

1. Review Your Company Mission and Vision

Companies with the strongest culture attract the best candidates; it’s a fact.

Reviewing your company vision and mission might be a case of refreshing your memory of the values and attributes that your business aspires to, but it could also be a case of rewriting them entirely.

Since the pandemic and the shake-up to businesses that this caused, many companies are finding that their mission and vision has changed – is this true in your business?

For example, in some technology teams, communication between employees in the form of weekly in-person meetings might have once been an essential part of their business strategy. But since the role of remote working, this is no longer the case.

Does your department recognise and appreciate the need for flexibility to allow for remote working, which is more vital than ever?

The first thing to do before the interview process starts is to review your company vision and mission statement for our post-pandemic world.

2. Get Familiar with the Job description

In an ideal world, you will have written the job description yourself and inherently understand what you need from your new hire, but this is not always the case.

In larger companies, there can be several people involved in the recruitment process, so it is essential that everyone involved is aware of what you are looking for in your new Tech role and that this is communicated to candidates at every stage.

Especially now in our ever-changing world, the position that you are hiring for might be an entirely new role for the company – do you know the exact skills and attributes that you are looking for?

3. Work to a Method

Interviewing candidates can be an emotionally-charged experience for both the employee and the employer.

Many interviewers by-pass red flags in the interview and go with their ‘gut feeling’ – but this is not the best way to hire the right talent for your business.

For every interview to have the best outcome, you must work to a method and stick to it. This means:

Choose your questions carefully and don’t deviate. You can ask extra questions that might crop up in your mind at the end of the planned questions – this gives all candidates a fair interview.

Practice your note-taking – taking accurate notes is an essential quality for all interviewers to have.

Use a scale to rate candidate answers – you can give a score out of 10, or use ‘excellent’ to ‘poor’ at the end of each answer to remind you when you are looking back over your notes.

4. Be Compassionate

Interviews can be daunting, and this is something that interviewers and hiring managers can become desensitised to, especially if they have a lot of experience conducting interviews.

Showing compassion and consideration instead of the stony managerial tone some interviewers adopt will benefit both the employee and yourself.

Candidates perform much better in interviews when they feel at ease, and so making sure they feel relaxed is a great way of seeing the real candidate and allowing their best self to shine through.

So, don’t be continually testing the candidate or focusing on negativity and flaws to try and ‘catch them out’. Keep it positive, even if you plan on asking the dreaded ‘what’s your greatest weakness?’ question (we will look at interview questions in the next section).

Take your time, and allow the candidate to take theirs – allow enough time for a good conversation, don’t aim to get them in and out in 20 minutes.

And finally – smile!

5. Get Your Questions Right

There are certain interview question stereotypes, which it is best to avoid if you want better interview outcomes.

There are standard questions that many interviewers ask, such as ‘what will you bring to the role’, ‘tell us what you know about our company’ and of course, ‘what is your greatest weakness’.

But for an outstanding interview, there are some questions to introduce, which can give impressive results.

Try asking the candidate to explain a passion of theirs to you – it can be work-related or not. As this will allow them to demonstrate their communication skills and their passion – it brings them out of their shell and shows you how effective they are at communicating ideas to a layperson.

Another great question right now is to ask how they coped with the Covid-19 crisis, either at home or at work. We all had to make changes to our lives and routines – did they take it in their stride or did they find it hard to adjust quickly to new ways of living and working?

Additionally, aim to curate an interview environment which feels like a conversation rather than an interrogation – this will put candidates at ease and makes the interview experience more pleasant and productive for everyone involved.

6. Candidate Aftercare

Ensure that you treat each candidate, even unsuccessful ones, as you would treat a customer, even after the interview process is over.

This is a great way of looking after your talent pipeline – candidates who are suitable but unsuccessful on this occasion will be inclined to apply again if they come out of the experience with a positive view of your company.

Respond to candidates in a timely manner – this goes for successful and unsuccessful candidates both during and after the interview process.

Encourage unsuccessful candidates to apply again, and you can even keep in touch on LinkedIn, where you can share industry information and updates about your business.

As for the successful candidate – congratulations on your new hire; now it’s time to get them onboarded successfully.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email hello@inspirepeople.net

Running a successful business is all about recruiting the right people.

Your employees are the people who drive innovation, ensure customer satisfaction, and serve your industry. The costs of a bad hire are significant in terms of the money you waste on recruitment and onboarding. However, the repercussions don't stop there. Bringing the wrong person into your team can have an impact on workplace productivity too, by disrupting your company culture.

Once your specialist recruitment agency or in house recruitment team has delivered a selection of skilled professionals to your door, it's up to your hiring manager to get to know each applicant, before choosing the one that best fits.

The question is, how can you equip your hiring expert with the tools they need to make the right choice for your organisation?

1. Encourage Plenty of Research

Businesses expect their candidates to come to interviews prepared, and brimming with information about the role at hand. However, if your hiring manager hasn't done enough research to understand what they're looking for in a recruit, then it's impossible to make an informed decision.

A hiring manager's research begins with the job description, where they'll list the key skills and abilities required for the role in question. From there, they can also be thinking about the answers to the following questions:

• Which soft skills will work well in this role, and fit with company culture?
• Why does this position exist, and why is it essential to fill it?
• Who will be responsible for this new hire, and what kind of person would work well with them?
• Which talents are "essential", and which can be trained at a later stage?

2. Create a Standardised Process

Hiring managers don't always get a lot of opportunities to "practice" their interviewing techniques. Without a solid strategy in place, it's easy to get distracted by things like personal preference, or an increasing urgency to fill a gap in the company.

Your hiring manager can simplify the process of finding the right recruit, by working with a specialist agency to design a checklist for scoring and evaluating each possible employee. On the other hand, you can always give your hiring manager a list of questions to ask, and features to look for based on the essential elements of the job description.

For instance, if you're searching for a Linux expert, your onboarding expert might ask how many years of experience they have with the program, and what accomplishments they have achieved in previous roles.

3. Invest in Some Interview Training

Perhaps the easiest way to make sure that a hiring manager is prepared to make the most out of the interviewing experience is to invest in some specialist interview training. Specialist recruitment agencies and hiring experts spend years cultivating their skills, so it's easy to see why some professionals don't instantly get the hang of evaluating job applicants.

After some training sessions, you can encourage your hiring manager to write out a list of questions for the candidates you want to consider, and practice going through them in advance. Though the details of an interview might change according to the position in question, the main answers any hiring manager needs to get from an applicant include:

• How can you fit in with the company culture?
• How passionate are you about the role?
• How well can you do the job?

4. Make Every Question Count

An interview isn't just about finding the right staff member for your team. In today's competitive marketplace, it's also about selling your company and the opportunities it can offer to everyone who shows an interest in your available position.

With that in mind, every question your hiring manager asks must be tailored to both showcase your value, and unlock useful information about the individual they're talking to. For instance, instead of saying "So, tell me more about yourself", the first question in an interview might be: "You know we're one of the most innovative DevOps companies in the marketplace. From what you know about this role, tell us how you'd be a good investment."

5. Inspire Active Listening

Finally, make sure that your hiring manager goes into each conversation with the resources they need to actively take notes and absorb information about a candidate. While a template of pre-set questions can give hiring experts the guidance, they need to move through the interview experience, provide them with the freedom to respond to answers to their own pre-agreed questions too.

Remember, it's a good idea to finish each interview on a positive note too, as this can leave your potential hire feeling confident, respected, and excited to hear from you. The last thing you want is to choose the right employee, then lose them to a competing company.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email  hello@inspirepeople.net