Happy’s Essential Skills: Recruiting and Interviewing

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Once you have a short-list of candidates, how do you select the right individual for your job opening? Interviewing is much more than reviewing their resumé. You have to read that document. What you need to discover is if this individual can think, can solve problems in production, can work on new ideas, is innovating and can work in your team. Is this individual the kind of engineer that can replace you? But before you start interviewing, there are seven steps to be aware of (Figure 1):

Figure 1: A comprehensive end-to-end process for hiring top talent. (Source: Harvard Business Review [1]) 

Advice on interviewing style and questions include:  

• Be prepared with the right questions.
• Ask open-ended questions that require a thoughtful, complete answer and not just a yes or no
• From the resumé, select an accomplishment noted and ask open-ended questions about specifics, processes and results
• Have a group of questions already prepared that gets to the body of experiences and skills needed for the job
• Have questions prepared that gets you a clearer idea of how this candidate’s mind works
• Be prepared with other questions that look for specific examples of their skills in leadership, communication, adaptability, organization, innovativeness, and so on
• Finally, I like to ask a fundamental question that dates back to a person’s schooling. If a it is a chemical engineer, then a question like, “explain your understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” is a good example. A good chemical engineer will always remember the fundamentals of their profession. 

Just remember, the skills you demonstrate in recruiting and interviewing will be good when you want to find a new job, or be considered for promotion. The better your network, the more opportunities that may find you. 

References

1. Groysberg, B., and Fernandez-Araoz, C. “The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad,” Harvard Business Review, May 2009.

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