The feedback session is your opportunity to assess the candidate, and it is important that the interview creates a structure that is fair, gives the candidate a good experience, and offers you both an opportunity to learn more.
A good interview starts with a thorough job analysis. Job analysis is the very foundation for finding the right candidate and thus an important part of the preparation for a good interview.
In the job analysis, the key individuals who have the greatest insight into what the job requires – both today and in the future – need to define the competences that matter the most for job success. Competence prioritisation is an essential part of the interview with the candidate.
It can be difficult to find the time to do a good job analysis with a busy schedule. That is why we have created three steps that ensure a good job analysis, prepared in a short time.
As the interviewer, the competences serve as a clear indicator of what has been prioritised the most in order to succeed in the job. Our latest expansion of the Match score concept has made it possible to generate a standardised question guide based on the competences selected in the job profile.
Treat candidates equally by asking them the same questions
We know from research that so-called confirmation bias can unconsciously make us seek out information that confirms our prejudices and assumptions. During the feedback, this can result in you asking fewer critical questions of a candidate for whom you have high expectations, for example. You can avoid this by using a structured interview in which everyone is asked the same questions.
To make the recruitment process as fair as possible, we recommend that you use our latest development, the Structured Interview. This guide is based on the competences selected, and can be printed directly from the job profile. From here, you can select – as early as the first interview – the most relevant questions to ask each candidate.
Another advantage of using the structured interview is that research indicates that a structured interview provides a better predictive power in relation to job success than an unstructured interview.
Deviate from the structure to provide the best feedback
During feedback, you scrutinise another person in great detail. For some people, being subjected to thorough analysis like this can make them feel that their boundaries are overstepped.
Therefore, it is important that you always allow the candidate to ask clarifying questions, and that you yourself can ask follow-up questions or provide in-depth explanations – even though this does not fall within the structured interview.
In addition to the basic questions, we believe that you have the best opportunity to assess the candidates if you supplement these with questions that are specifically designed to provide insights about the individual candidate.
The specific questions can be designed, for instance, on the basis of the Match score for the individual competences or obtained from the User report, which gives you a number of suggestions for questions based on the specific analysis result.
At the same time, it is important to make room for a dialogue where the candidate does not simply answer questions mechanically, but is given the opportunity to consider them, learn more through the dialogue and reflect more deeply than is possible in a test situation or a rigidly structured interview.
In addition, the individually adapted questions can also provide information about the candidate that will prove absolutely crucial for the subsequent onboarding and management of the person.
