HR: Affording every candidate maximum opportunity

When you start a skills matching exercise we usually refer to as a job interview, whether that screening is for a position that is technical in nature or lies in the large pool of vacancies open to jobseekers with competences in business and the liberal arts, there is that chance, remote though, that you will come across candidates with varying degrees of aptitudes and skills.

Even where the list of prospects that you expect later in the day for interview comprise mainly of candidates with identical skills-set, there is still that possibility to meet jobseekers who are early warmers, later warmers, the talk-talk, the quiet, the expert and the ones who know only a little about everything.  

No matter what the requirements of a vacancy are, interviews start with general questions about the weather, economy, sports, recent political debates, or a scandal of recent memory. These themes, unrelated as they may be to the core competencies of the occupant of the vacancy, tend to play an enormous role in the impression we make of a candidate, which impression in turn largely determines whether we fall for a candidate from the onset  or think of them as awkward and unsuitable.  

Some interviewers commence a job interview by requesting the candidates to tell them about themselves. Irrespective of what your introduction of the exercise is, a lot of the factors that are going to go into your evaluation of the jobseekers’ suitability are going to be based on this first few minutes’ interaction. 

Politically alive jobseekers with enormous interest in the day-to-day running of the country have a better chance of impressing the job-givers from the onset, especially if they are also gifted with analytical minds. 

Candidates like these have a cunny smartness of taking a seat very early in the heart of the interviewer and in the process potentially getting set to set to obscure the real talent audit which is the principal rationale for the assessment. 

As much as being politically literate and possessing an analytical mind may be an asset, the core set of assets that are foremost in the ideal candidate may not include any in the above list that the jobseeker is exuding in their introduction. 

Except where the interviewer is experienced, the tendency for this jobseeker to be confusedly listed as a great asset is high.

Then there are the jobseeker whose interests are only limited to what they chose as a lifelong career. They are often experts in their own areas and may suffer political inertia and be largely uninterested in a lot of the themes that set the tone for a modern job interview. 

They may not be sports fans and may not be able to tell you which world class team last won the European league. 

Even if you ask them the headline stories that have set the agenda for excitingly animating radio debate, they may miss the mark you assign this question.  But given up on them from the onset or allowing this initial setback to cloud your judgment as an interviewer is meting out injustice to this talent. 

Candidates whose interests are largely, and in some case entirely concentrated on their career areas tend to have enormous knowledge of the subject matter but little or no knowledge in other areas of human endeavours. 

Unless the screening is maneuvered out of the introductory trivialities into the main subject matter, the average interviewer may give up on this initially unexciting jobseeker. But when the job interview is steered out of this set irreverence, a truly useful discussion and proper evaluation may be obtained. 

For instance if you are evaluating a computer program writer for a position that has vast use for the jobseeker’s talents, it will be unreasonable to expect this computer wizard to be interested in the above topics that set the pace for a lot of today’s job interviews.  It may be possible to find one (out of 10) with the abilities to combine his concentration-demanding career with issues that have less bearing on the jobseeker’s chosen profession but the bulk of them will think of you as a visitor from Mars if you ask them which tennis champion last beat Serena Williams.  

In the same way, if you were prospecting a lab technician or an expert that you want to put in your research and development department, questions related to the latest high profile sex scandals may have swung past their ears but if you want a useful discussion for even 120 seconds, you can be sure these tech wizards will assume you are not serious about offering them the job opportunity.

Jobseekers who naturally lack the gift for getting warmed up early in the interaction may suffer unjustifiably under the current vetting criteria where initial unrelated questions set the tone for further discussions. 

A very gifted candidate may be slow at warming up because by nature, they are like that. But once they find their bearings and get into the real mood, they can be surprisingly exciting to talk to. 

Jobseekers such as these often are traded for the less qualified (but) who have mastered the art of getting quickly into the mood. 

Interviewers with reasonable experience often have the patience to afford these later warmers the chance to get warmed up; but the job interview being what it is, beyond a certain time lag, when a jobseeker is unable to get into the proper interview mood, hope can and may be given up on them.  

Candidates who know a little about everything are like mocking birds; they are usually very exciting from the onset, tend to make a job-giver mistake them for intelligent ones. 

They often have the skill to reset the tone and direction of the job interview and have their way with a less experienced interviewer. 

Unless the interviewer sets the agenda right, goes by the planned scheme and is able to distinguish an exciting, everyday life discussion from a skills matching exercise, there is that unfortunate chance to assume that this jobseeker is great, when in actual fact, they only have mastered a little about everything. 

When you steer e them into the details of the subject matter, you are likely to find how much they deviate from the set of competences you had listed ahead of the interview.

When evaluating jobseekers, take the pain to afford every shortlisted candidate the maximum opportunity to demonstrate what talents their various trainings have equipped them with. In allowing every one of them the maximum opportunity possible, you can be sure that, given the numbers you have to screen from, a good job has been done and the chosen candidate is the most perfect match for the vacancy. GB