Designing Your Interview

Interview Questions

• What knowledge/skills/abilities do you need candidates to have in order to successfully perform this job?
• Are any of those knowledge/skills/abilities things that you can train for, or does the successful candidate need to have those knowledge/skills/abilities prior to starting in this role?
• Are there common situations or tasks performed in this job that you could design a scenario question around?

Interview Scoring

• How are you going to score or rate your candidates to determine who is the best fit for the position?
• Does everyone on your selection committee understand your rating system? If you are rating candidates on a scale of 1-5, does everyone have an idea of what type of answer would be scored as a 1 and what type of answer would get a score of 5?

Interview Structure

There are different ways to structure your interviews. Depending on the position and the information you are hoping to gather from your candidates, you might decide to hold or interview or multiple interviews. It is important to determine the structure of your interviews at the beginning of your selection process so you can plan out the questions you would like to ask and the timeframe for your interviews.

• Phone Interviews 
  Once an applicant pool is determined (the pool must be at least two), the hiring manager can contact the applicants for an interview. Preliminary phone interviews can be helpful in narrowing down a pool (of many candidates who may look good on paper) to a few top candidates. Prepare a list of job-related questions for the phone interviews and use these questions for all applicants. 
  • Phone Interview Tips
    • Short and direct questions help you assess qualifications.
    • Discuss salary/budget if this is a concern or issue.
    • Determine if the applicant can work during the times and days needed.
    • Stay sharp during the phone interview to determine how well the person listens and responds to your questions and if they seem excited about the job.
       
• Panel Interviews
  If the position you are hiring for will work closely with internal and external partners or if you want to get buy in from your team, then panel interviews might be helpful. Having multiple people participate on interview panels allows for you to gather a variety of perspective and feedback.
   
• Virtual Interviews
  Conducting interviews virtually may give your candidates more flexibility in scheduling because they do not have to travel anywhere for their interview. This option also allows for more people to participate on the interview committee and still practice social distancing. 

Scheduling Interviews 

Please give candidates 48 - 72 hours notice when scheduling interviews. This gives candidates a chance to make arrangements and prepare for the interview.

When scheduling interviews, make sure you inform candidates of where to go and who to ask for when they arrive for interviews. If you are conducting virtual interviews, tell them which platform you will be using for interviews and make sure a link to join the interview has been provided.

Conducting Interviews

• You need to ask the same questions to all candidates in the same order.
• At the end of the interview, please make sure you provide candidates with an overview of your next steps/timeline so they know what to expect after the interview.