Interviewing is the time where most companies rely on ‘gut instinct’ assuming that the candidate is qualified for the position when what they should be doing is evaluating their qualifications during the interview. In addition to direct questions the interview will want to prepare specific behavioral questions, knowledge questions, and questions to assess a candidate’s interpersonal skills.

The best way to conduct an interview is to have a structure established before the candidate arrives. This enables you to maintain control of the interview and to extract all the necessary information that you need to make an appropriate and effective hiring decision.

An Interview Structure Might Look Like This:

Greeting and nonverbal assessment

Brief conversation to set candidate at ease

5-10 warm up questions.

10-20 Behavioral Questions

Confirmation questions. Clarify concerns.

Candidate question period

Closing questions/discussion. Ask for references.

Address the next steps in the process.

Handshake/Goodbye

Move on to next interviewer or process is complete

Decide in advance how long you have for the interview and make sure that the candidate is aware of that time frame when you make the appointment. Also decide how you want to document the interview for later reference and in the event that any legal concerns arise. The best way to conduct any interview is to prepare ahead of time. Let’s begin with questions to ask yourself to establish a structure.

1.Who is conducting the interview?

2.How many people are going to be interviewed?

3.What will the interview format be?

a.Series (will there be a series of interviews)

b.Face to face with one person

c.Sequential, (the interviewee will meet with several people one after the other)

d.Panel (the interviewee will meet with several people at once)

e.Group interview (Several candidates meet with interviewers in a group setting)

4.How much time will you allow for the interview?

5.Lastly, what questions will you ask the candidate?

Once you’ve established a general format for the interview and all parties involved know what to expect the next step is to identify key questions that you want the candidate to answer. There may be additional questions that you’ll need to ask based on the candidate’s answers and there may be fewer questions that need to be asked based on the candidate’s answers and performance during the interview. (If the candidate blows the interview in the first five minutes then there isn’t a need to prolong the agony simply cut the interview short, gracefully, and move on.)

Assessing Non-Verbal Cues

Assuming that your candidate’s have arrived in a timely manner and are groomed and dressed professionally. I’m also assuming that they have introduced themselves properly and have thanked your for meeting with them and have shaken your hand. Additionally, pay attention to how your candidate sits during the interview. If they’re attentive to what you’re saying with their posture or if they’re sitting back with their legs crossed and behaving in too casual a manner. Are they taking notes on the interview or doodling? Yes doodling. I’ve witnessed senior management drawing on their notepads one time too many! Not a good first impression unless they’re applying for an artist position.

Does the candidate make eye contact and have they been respectful of all members of your staff before, during, and after the interview. If they have failed to meet any of the above professional behaviors, then depending on the job position and requirements you may need to call the interview short.

Interview Questions.

A great place to begin any interview, after the initial handshake and visual assessment, is with a job description and some general rapport building questions to set the applicant at ease. General questions might include the weather, the drive in, the sports game last night.

Next, you’ll want to move in to the introductory questions. These questions serve to warm up the applicant and get them into ‘interview’ mode. Questions might resemble the following:

“Please describe your current job responsibilities.”

“What do you like most about your current job?” Least?

“Why do you want to leave your current position?”

Based on the candidate’s answers to your questions, you’ll likely have a few more questions to dig deeper or clarify their answers. Then it is time to move into the competency based questions. Competency based questions are designed to keep the interview in control of the interview and they cover measurable skills, knowledge, behavior, and interpersonal skills. They are the core of the interview and where you will derive the majority of your decision making information.

Competency based questions can address many behaviors, skills, and experience. For example:

“Tell me about an unpopular decision that you’ve had to make and how you handled it.” —This question assesses the candidate’s decision making skills.

“Describe a situation where you were overwhelmed by a problem at work and how you handled it.” — This would address the candidate’s problem solving skills.

“Tell me how you prioritize tasks and budget your time?” – Time management.

“Tell me about a time when your team or department did not meet expected goals. How did you handle that?” — Management or Team Building.

“Tell me about a time that you had to deal with a difficult employee/co-worker.”

“What do you do at work to relieve stress?”

“Describe what motivates you at your current job?”

A competency is a trait or quality that contributes to a candidate’s ability to meet the job requirements as established by you and your company prior to posting the position. The questions therefore focus on having the candidate explain past experiences to predict future behaviors. Questions will be designed to assess all behaviors, skills, and experiences necessary to perform the job’s responsibilities.

The next stage of a structured interview will be a clarification or confirmation stage where you briefly address questions about the candidate’s education, and work history making sure to inquire about any inconsistencies. If the competency portion of the interview has been comprehensive then this portion of the interview will be brief.

The last phase of the interview is the closing. This is where you turn the interview over to the candidate to ask any questions that they may have about the position and to establish a method of communication for the future. What is the next step? When will you have a decision made? How and when will the candidate contact you? This is also the time where salary requirements will be clarified.

Once you’ve completed the interview, if you haven’t documented or assessed the candidate’s answers to your questions then take a few moments to record your assessment. I recommend a formal interview format where assessing an answer to a question can be as simple as circling a number on a scale of 1-10 so that you don’t have to write down complete answers. This also enables reassessment of the interview to be an easier and more efficient process. Leave room at the bottom of the form for comments. Sign and date the form and make sure that the candidate’s name is on the top. This will keep them together.

Questions not to ask.

There are of course questions that you need to avoid asking for legal and moral reasons, including questions about the origin of a name, questions about a person’s residence, age, physical appearance, marital status, children, religion, and finances. Tread lightly when inquiring about education, military experience, organizations, disabilities, criminal offenses, citizenship, and a person’s name sticking only with the facts.

By: Jeremy A Gislason

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Banking interviews are meant to gauge the potential of the candidate to see if he/she has the skills to be placed in any suitable post in the bank. Banking interview questions are meant to measure the attitude, skill and adjustability of the candidate, to draw a conclusion on his/her suitability in the firm. The interviewers will ask as many questions they think is necessary before recruiting any candidate as they are concerned with the fact that the quality and skills of the employees will determines the future of the company.

To become successful in the banking interview process, you need to be well prepared to face the different sets of banking interview questions. Banking interview questions also starts with some general questions about the candidate such as his/her family background, education, and interests. The second and third set of banking interview questions will be meant to know the candidate’s work experience, nature, capacity, ideology, and ability to solve problems. Answering to the fist set of banking interview questions related to your family, qualification, or future planning will be quite easy.

Let us discuss some of the common but very effective banking interview questions.

The interviewer may typically begin with ‘tell me about yourself”. It is a common opener which is meant to set the ball rolling for the next few minutes ahead. Even though this is the common question which will be asked in most of the interviews you can score brownie points by answering the question a bit differently, but at the same time not deviating much from the context.

Other commonly asked banking interview questions include:

General Questions

Why did you choose banking as your profession?
Do you have any previous experience?
Why you left your previous job?
Why do you want to work for us?
How long will you stay with us?
Where you see yourself in another five years?

Finance related banking interview questions

If you could buy one stock today, what would it be and why?
Can you explain the effect of rising interest rates on the United States economy?
What are the main issues ABC Company has to face before entering a given industry (Porter framework)?
Explain the techniques you use to value firms?
What do you mean by cost of capital?
When do you use a WACC versus a cost of equity?

Behavioral Questions

Do you think you have leadership quality? Can you explain when did you show leadership?
Have you think you can perform well in a group?
What is your most noted accomplishment?
What are your positive traits or strengths?
What are your negative traits or weaknesses?
What you can do for the company others people can’t?
Explain an example when you had a personal conflict and how you resolved it?
Tell a time when you had an ethical dilemma and how you resolved it.
What type of person do you find difficult to get along with?

The above mentioned are some of the common questions that are used by most of the banking interviewers. Remember that for a banking job interviewer, there cannot be a dearth for questions. So be well prepared before attending the interview and answer all questions in a positive way. Remember if you have the material they are looking for, you’ll get it.

By: Sonali Sen

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Watch Don show you how to tell interviewers why they should hire you.

There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers, a college professor of mine used to say.

That certainly is true when you’re interviewing for a job. Some of the questions interviewers ask may seem weird. But they’re not stupid; they’re probably designed to uncover specific details. You must know the inside secrets to answer job interview questions with the response interviewers are looking for in their next employee.

If you want the job, think ahead about how you’ll answer the most likely queries. Here is some advice:

Know what interviewers want. Most are looking for knowledge, enthusiasm, confidence, energy, dependability, honesty and pride in work.

Know yourself. Do some soul searching on paper about your finest accomplishments and how they affect your career, your most significant failures and what you’ve learned from them, how well you work with authorities and others, how others would describe you.

Also know your strongest skills, areas of knowledge and personality traits, favorite job tasks and weaknesses.

Be ready for what The Killer Question. “Tell me a little about yourself.” Prepare an honest, 60 to 90 second speech, including a brief introduction to yourself, your key accomplishments, your strengths as demonstrated by your accomplishments, the importance of those strengths and accomplishments to the employer and how you could grow in the job.

Answer only what is asked for. Too much information can make you appear overqualified or boring. Give some details, then ask if more are needed.

When asked about your weaknesses, don’t reveal serious flaws. Talk about a fairly old weakness that has been fixed. Another tactic is to discuss a weakness positively (“I suppose that my standards are so high that I get impatient with people who don’t do their part.”) Explain what you’re doing to overcome the problem.

Answer questions about education and extracurricular activities by mentioning achievements, leadership and how your studies relate to this job.

Answer questions about past work experience, responsibilities and accomplishments in terms of results, growth and expanding duties.

Answer job interview questions about being out of work or job-hopping by revealing resilience and ability to handle adversity. You could say you were unlucky in some jobs, you’re taking time to find the right job, you’ve had difficulty clarifying career goals but are focused now or that you’ve moved around to broaden your experience.

Don’t mention interests or activities that could cause friction and have nothing to do with the job.

When asked situational questions (What would you do if) give answers that show a grasp of reality. Don’t try to appear a savior.

Never say “no” when asked if you have questions. Prepare a long list ahead of time about the job, co-workers, success factors, your predecessor, the company’s future and the interviewer’s background.

By: Lauren Warner

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Just the other day, I was at a networking event. As usual, I introduced myself as an employment testing expert and a human resources consultant. At the break, a couple of small company C.E.O.s both asked me the same question “When hiring, what knowledge do employers look for?” I was surprised at the question. I would have assumed that as C.E.O.s they would be well versed at summing up candidates quickly and efficiently. But, then again, if that were totally true, I’d be out of business!

Since then, I’ve been thinking about just what knowledge we should look for. Some of it is so obvious but other knowledge points are harder to identify. For the most part, as employers, we’re really looking for three factors when we hire someone for our organizations.

We want people who:

Can do the job (the candidate has the skills and education to mentally do the job Will do the job (the candidate wants to do the work) Will fit the culture (the candidate will fit the company culture)

For employees to be top performers, we need all three factors to come into alignment for a successful hire. For years, we’ve discussed and espoused the virtues of behavior based interviewing. In behavior based interviewing, we use past performance to predict future behavior. With that little bit of knowledge, a skilled interviewer can probe a candidate until they have evidence of how a person has handled situations in the past and we can extrapolate that it is probably a good indicator of how they will handle similar situation in the future.

Unfortunately, most interviewers are ill prepared to conduct a thorough behavior based interview. Most hiring managers fail to read the resume, think about the job competencies, and create the behavioral questions that will uncover the desired traits necessary to do the job. In sharp contrast to the interviewer’s ill preparedness, many candidates are prepared. They are prepared with rehearsed behavior based answers that will lead the interviewer down a primrose path to the hiring decision-only to find out two weeks after the new employee starts that they’ve made a terrible mistake.

So what is the answer? Clearly there has got to be a better way to get to the information that will lead to our desired trifecta. In my experience, the assessment is the missing link. Using a basic candidate assessment is the key to getting at what lies beneath the iceberg. And sometimes, it’s not pretty.

A solid assessment should evaluate the candidate’s thinking style, behavioral traits, and occupational interests. Assessments can take the form of a “job fit” analysis-that is, a benchmark against your top performers-or it can be in the form of a benchmark against standard competencies for a specific type of position-i.e., customer service or sales.

Why is it so many organizations are resistant to implementing employment testing? The U.S. Department of Labor has actually come out in favor of assessment testing and has gone so far as to issue guidelines for employers [http://www.talentinsightgroup.com/pdf/13_principles.htm] to use. The tests are well validated and have solid reliability. I think that often, organizations don’t want to implement testing because they think that they are already skilled interviewers.

Some other common objections include cost-they feel that employment tests are too expensive. In my experience, a typical robust assessment can be administered for less than $199.00 per applicant. Far less than the typical 2 or 3 times salary that most studies show it costs us to replace someone. Another common objection is that assessments cause applicants to drop out of the process. I recommend that the assessment come at the end of the process…when you’ve narrowed down the field to your top candidates. By then, they generally want to work for you and will generally be happy to take the assessment. You can let them know that the information from the assessment is used to help make sure that they will have a positive work experience. I think the final most common objection is that inexperienced HR professionals feel that candidates can fake the assessments to achieve a “passing” score. In reality, we do want to make sure that we clearly state our expectations that they complete the assessment without help and that, in the end, if they do get help it will be apparent on the first day that they start work. In addition, well constructed assessments have some type of scale to detect faking or socially desirable responding.

How do you get employment testing implemented in your organization? First, senior leadership must support the initiative and bring human resources on-board. The business case is so obvious-candidates who “fit” ultimately do a better job, stay longer, and motivate those around them. Secondly, you need to find a flexible tool that will allow you to assess multiple jobs not just one specific position. Think about the long term impact of your assessments in terms of competency modeling, job fit analysis, and coaching. A good assessment tool will allow you to measure both external candidates and coach internal ones. Finally, use a tool that will make your job easier. The assessment should create the interview guide for your external candidates and a coaching guide if you use the assessment internally. By creating guides for your hiring managers, you’ve solved the “ill prepared” problem. That alone is a huge accomplishment.

When hiring, what knowledge do employers look for? All you have to do is take a look around…what is it about your top performers that make them top performers. I’m guessing it is the fact that they can do the job, will do the job, and will fit the culture-ah! The trifecta.

By: Jay Hargis

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