The First Impression
When candidates prep for a job interview they are often focused on the ever important, first impression. What will I wear? What should I say? However, they are not the only ones that should be thinking about putting their best foot forward.
Too often companies are so busy with day to day operations that they lose sight of the impression they are giving to candidates coming in for an interview. This is a competitive market where good employees are hard to find. How will you attract the people that are really going to take your company into the future? Here are a few tips…
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Try to keep scheduled phone interviews and be prompt with face to face interviews. Candidates start to get mixed messages when an interview has been rescheduled several times or they are left sitting in a lobby for a prolonged period of time.
- Take the time to review a person’s background before they arrive for an interview. Don’t spend the first 10 minutes of an interview digging for the individual’s resume and reading it to yourself. That does not put forth an impression of being organized and effective.
- During the interview, try hard to focus on the candidate. Avoid interruptions with phone calls, colleagues, etc. Let the candidate know that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say.
- Be specific, when possible, about what your plans are for the future. If you are interested in carrying out further interviews with a candidate, make that clear. If you are not sure about how you are going to progress at least try to provide a basic timeline for the individual interviewing. For example, we will be interviewing this week and meeting next week to make a decision. By the middle of the month we should have a new person in place. This reduces the stress for the candidate and lets them know what to expect in the future.
- Make sure that you can provide a clear explanation of what you’re looking for in the position that is available.
- Lastly, give the candidate an opportunity to ask questions. They sometimes can tell you a lot about their goals and talents through the questions that they choose to ask.
Why go to all of this trouble? Why try to impress an individual that you may not even want on your team? There are many reasons but the few most important include:
- If a candidate has a negative experience they may project a poor image of your company to colleagues.
- As mentioned before, hiring is getting more and more competitive. The really talented managers are hard to come by.
- A person’s first impression of a company can affect their entire career with that organization.
