Top 11 interview planning tips to upgrade your recruitment game

What is a Successful Interview Plan?

An interview plan defines how your hiring team will conduct interviews for a specific role with specific job applicants. And a Successful Interview Plan means how effectively and efficiently your interviewers conduct the interview, such that they hire the best fit for the open role. It includes the do's and don't to follow in order to recruit the most qualified candidate while optimizing the hiring process.

An efficient hiring process

The stronger the interview plan, the more efficient the hiring process. Planning for an interview, beforehand makes sure that all candidates for a particular job are evaluated thoroughly, which leads to better hiring decisions and ultimately to strong hires, saving the hiring costs and time.

3 Things to keep in mind before starting the interview process

Make sure these 3 key points are checked before jumping directly to planning the interview:

1 . Review each candidate's resume before the interview

It is difficult to read every candidate's resume before the interview, moreover, there are multiple resume frauds out there, but reading it would help you identify any issues with their experience or education history, you may write down some important points from the resume to ask the candidate afterward, during the interview.

2 . Know what you are expecting from a candidate

Review the job description and requirements carefully and know exactly what characteristics are you looking for in an ideal candidate. Also discuss with the hiring manager, that the candidate pool you are interviewing from is ideal for the open role.

3 . Study up on the candidate before the interview

Go thoroughly through all the data provided by the candidate to fully understand their skills, experience, abilities, education, and personality and deal with them in the interview, in accordance with that. You can gather their data from their resumes, social profiles, etc. It creates a positive impression on the candidate as they feel, the interviewer is interested in knowing them.

11 Key Tips for an Effective Interview Planning

Following are some basic but important tips to adopt while Interview Planning:

Attentively choose the interview questions

It is important to choose the right questions that align exactly with the job opening and the culture of the organization. The questions should successfully provide answers related to the skills, abilities, and personality of the applicant. You can gather different types of questions available online.

Include and ask open-ended questions

Including open-ended questions helps to bring out the personality of each applicant. They prevent the applicant from giving short and specific answers. Ask the same questions from each candidate, so that you can compare the answers later. Some common questions can be:

1. Tell us about yourself
2. Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?
3. How will you encourage a demotivated team member, if you are assigned the role of a leader?
4. What are the important factors required to be successful, in your point of view?
5. What one thing you would like to improve in the current processes of the health sector, if given the opportunity?

Include questions relevant to the job

Make sure you draft and plan questions that are relevant to the job, questions that provide specific information about whether the candidate is mentally and technically fit for the role or not. Moreover, avoid all unnecessary or personal questions that might include questions related to the candidate’s ethnicity, caste, or color. Stay focused on what’s expected for the open position.

Scenario or situational questions

Answers to situational questions help to give a better understanding of the thinking, and personality of the candidate, rather than the general and specific answers. Include questions that involve situations and ask them how they would follow up, act, react, or handle that situation and note their responses, imagination, and creativity.

Selecting the best format for the interviews

To interview candidates there are interview formats of various types, and which one to choose completely depends upon your open position and the organization's requirements. The known formats include:

• Group interview: In a group interview, multiple candidates are interviewed by a group of interviewers at the same time. It is effective when you have a large pool of candidates to choose from, within a limited time, or if you want to bring out the competitiveness and confidence of the candidates.

• Using a selection panel: With a selection panel, you can include your other co-workers in the interview planning, to help you make better hiring decisions.

• Online or telephone interview: Utilize the power of telephonic or video interviews, to cut down your selection, by filtering out some candidates before face-to-face interviews.

Clear objectives, roles, and responsibilities

Make sure the objectives, roles, and responsibilities associated with the job are transparent, to both the interviewer and the candidate. Other than the job responsibilities, ensure that the aims and values of the company are also clear to the applicants.

Being consistent with all candidates'

Be consistent with all the candidates, and don't change the nature of questions at the last moment, just to add style, for some candidates, as it might be unfair, leaving the gap of equal opportunity. Ensure a fair process and give an equal amount of time to answer to each applicant.

Answer applicants' questions

At the end of the interview, leave some spare time for the candidate to ask questions if they have any doubts. Provide them with all the information they need regarding the hiring process, the next stage, the company aims, values, etc.

Take notes

You might not remember every detail about the applicant during the interview, so it's good if you focus on writing essential data in bullet points in your notes. Notes can be written digitally or manually and it's completely up to your ease.

Remove all distractions

It is essential to remain focused and listen actively to the candidate's answers. Pay attention to their style of answering, their postures, alertness, and other non-verbal cues.

Arrange a suitable location

Choose an exact location that gives a positive impression of your organization. The interview room needs to look professional, and free of distractions. For the internal interviews, you might consider a location that may be off-site.

Make sure to arrange for someone within the organization, to offer them refreshments and guide the applicants.

FAQS

When does an interviewer start planning for an interview?

There is no hard and fast rule to start planning an interview at a specific time. It can be planned before or after various stages, in some cases it can occur right after screening the resumes, in other organizations, planning can start right after posting the opened position, it depends on the nature of the position to be filled and the preferences of a company.

When to conduct an interview?

Different types of interviews can be conducted at different stages of the hiring process, it completely depends on the open role and processes of the organization. But the key point is to make sure that the interview planning is done before conducting any type of interview, otherwise, it would result in high cost and more time, moreover, any mistake will leave a negative impression on the candidate.

Postface

In order to save hiring costs and time, interview planning is one strategy that helps to define the steps needed to take before conducting the interview. Keep in mind all the above-mentioned tips to help you conduct an efficient interview by getting more meaningful answers.