Mastering the Art of Interviewing: Best Practices for Successful Conversations

At a glance:

• The main takeaway: Interviews are high-stakes experiences for both employers and candidates — but implementing best practices can take the stress out of the process and improve your hiring success rate.
• Impact on your business: Before scheduling interviews, employers need to be extremely self-aware about the position they are hiring for, in addition to preparing thoughtful questions.
• Next steps: Aprio Talent Solutions can help you improve the interview experience to create win-win outcomes for your business and your candidates.

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The full story:

Interviews are arguably the most critical step of the hiring process. Not only are interviews a significant time and dollar investment, but they can help determine the future success of your team.

At the same time, interviews are notoriously nerve-wracking and can be emotionally fraught experiences for both parties. For the employer, the high stakes and fear of hiring the “wrong person” can trigger stress. And as a hiring manager, you’re probably already aware of candidates’ most common complaints about job interviews — including an excessive number of interviews and lengthy time-to-hire periods.

But what you may not know is that you have the power to improve the interview experience. In this article, we’ll explore how the format of the interview itself, your line of questioning, and your tone all play an equally important role in pinpointing the right person for the role.

Answer three key questions before starting the interview process

One of the best ways to improve the interview experience for both parties is to prepare proactively and narrow your focus. Before you start scheduling calls, ask yourself these three questions first:

• Will this position be hard to fill?
• How qualified do your candidates need to be?
• Do you need to sell the position to potential candidates?

Employers need to balance their evaluation of potential candidates with selling, depending on how hard the role is to fill and how qualified their candidate pool is.

For example, let’s say that you are hiring for a new chief financial officer (CFO). What is the primary action or change you want your new CFO to make? Will they be expected to “clean up” your finances and implement processes for greater efficiency? Or are you in growth mode and searching for a CFO who can provide the strategic vision you need to achieve your company’s financial goals?

Your expectations will drive the types of candidates you bring in for interviews and whether you will need to sell the opportunity. Some companies go overboard when evaluating candidates and they completely forget to sell the job. This can leave candidates disinterested, unengaged, and dissatisfied with your company and your interview experience.

Interviewing best practices to implement

Once you have clarified your focus and your expectations, it’s important to develop a structure for your interview process. There is nothing worse for a candidate than to walk into an interview with no clear format and an inconsistent line of questioning.

Not only do interviews help you vet candidates, but they also serve as branding opportunities for your organization. The quality of your interview process could either gain you a customer for life or a detractor. Plus, your interview process is a strong indicator to candidates of how you work internally.

So, how do you structure your interviews to garner the best-possible results? Generally, you should start by limiting the process to three interviews, consisting of a phone or virtual screen with the recruiter or HR team; an in-person interview with the lead hiring manager; and a group interview with key members of the team.

Companies should also try and target an hour to thoroughly conduct the interview process. This allows for healthy dialogue between both the interviewer(s) and the candidate(s). Here is a list of sample prompts to help you build your interview structure and question list:

• Why are you looking to leave your current employer? This question can help illuminate potential “red flags” that could come up if you hired the candidate.
• What are your greatest strengths? This is a solid skill-matching question that can help you determine whether the candidate’s expertise is aligned with the role you’re looking to fill.
• What are your greatest areas of growth? This is a more positive reframe of the age-old interview question, “What are your greatest weaknesses?” It also gives you a good entry point to follow up and ask what the candidate is doing to fill skills gaps.
• What career accomplishments are you most proud of? This question can give you more in-depth insight into the candidate’s previous successes and job motivations.
• What are your long-term career goals? This question will help you assess whether the candidate is the right cultural fit and if their future goals are aligned with where you want the position and your organization to go.
• Tell me about a difficult work situation you encountered in a previous position. How did you overcome it? This is a time-tested behavioral question that can help you evaluate your candidate’s problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
• Why are you interested in this role? Not only will this question help you understand their expectations, but it will also tell you how well the candidate researched the position and your organization.

Beyond this standard list of questions, you should also be sure to inquire about your candidate’s compensation expectations (if they have not disclosed them previously), as well as any gaps in their resume. If you are inviting multiple members of your team to participate in the interview process, it is important to assign them specific roles and questions so that the discussion is productive, efficient, and cohesive.

The bottom line 

If you prepare and structure your process appropriately, interviews don’t have to be a burden on your candidates and team. If you need help restructuring your interview process to attract high-quality candidates, reach out to Aprio Talent Solutions and connect with our accounting, finance, and IT staffing team.

Aprio’s advisors tap into a deep network of high-performing professionals to connect top candidates with top job opportunities across the U.S. and Canada.

Schedule a conversation with our team today.

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