"Just before that Interview" (I)

Why do companies conduct interviews?

The 21^st Century company has a lot to deal with- increasing marketing competition, rising shareholder-expectations, customer satisfaction etc. This is why there is an increase in the hunt for talents (i.e. individuals who can help a company increase its productivity); companies seek for people who have the knowledge, skills, attitudes and competence required to add value and guarantee company-growth.

Interview sessions are a part of the selection process that company managers (or their consultants) conduct to find the right individual(s) who can help their teams to be successful. It could be physical or virtual. Physical interviews could be oral or written face-to-face interviews whilst virtual interviews are conducted via electronic means- telephones, instant messaging, voice conferencing etc.

To understand why companies conduct interviews after making a short-list of individuals whose résumés they’ve assessed, one need to understand a bit more about the entire process of recruiting a new employee.

The Selection Process

After a company identifies the need to have a new employee or set of employees, a job request form is filled ideally by the recruiting manger. The job request form elaborates on why the department or business unit needs a new employee (a summary of how it fits into the organisation’s overall strategic plan), the role of the new employee, the tasks of the new employee, who the new employee will work with and report to, and most importantly (to you) the skills, knowledge and competences required for the job.

The job request form is then forwarded to the Human Resources Department, to a Recruitment Consultant or the Department could decide to handle the selection process in-house. When an HR professional receives the job request form, his/her main responsibility and intent is to find that (or those) right individual(s) who fits the job as well as the role. The receipt of the job request form is followed-up by an internal and/or external advertisement of the job-vacancy, résumés are received and the Pre-selection process starts.

Pre-Selection:

It is important to state here that your résumé is your first selling point to your desired employer.  It could be compared with a Sales Brochure that a car manufacturing company produces to show and explain the special features of their product to an intending buyer. There is an obvious need for this sale brochure to be attractive, explicit on the unique features of the car all in order to ensure that it catches the attraction of the intending buyer. A good sales brochure makes an intending buyer willing to test-run the car just like a good résumé gives the recruiter the willingness to test-run the candidate’s knowledge, skills and competences through interview sessions.

Once you have been invited for a job-interview, you can be sure that the recruiter already has a feeling that you possess the requirements needed to fill the job. The interview session(s) is your one-and-only opportunity to convince the recruiter that the “unique-features of the car” (i.e. the competences you possess as reflected on your résumé) actually exist.  At the interview, the intent of the recruiter is to select the best candidates from the pool of candidates who have been shortlisted to fill the job opening.

Interviews:

As explained by Mike Deblieux in his article- A Conversation With A Purpose, “an interview is a special conversation. In a sense, it is part of a research project to find an individual with specific knowledge, skills and abilities. A successful research project requires a carefully defined hypothesis and an objective researcher”. Ideally, interviewers seek to use job-related interviewing techniques to find people who can help their teams to be successful and “job-related techniques involve collecting and using specific information to predict whether or not a candidate will be successful on the job”. 

NEXT: I'll be talking about "the Interviewers"--what do they do to prepare for the interview and what will they be looking out for?