This has two main purposes: firstly people still do business with people. Candidates often feedback to us that one of the reasons they choose one company over another is that the interviewer took an interest in them as a person. Secondly, the quality of your conversation will be greater if the interviewee is relaxed.

Most training courses will tell you to start with the candidate’s first job and then work through their CV to the current situation. However, experienced interviewers realise that context is important and therefore briefly understanding the candidate’s current situation is invaluable. It will help you probe specific areas later on.

Having given the conversation context, you can then run through the candidate’s work experience. Taking time to focus on certain skills, and listen hard to ensure their experience meets your requirements.

In possession of the full facts, and understanding the candidate’s work history you can now test for specific skills, experience, and competencies. Focus on asking “open questions”. These generally start with “What, How, Why, When, Who” and don’t be fearful of asking follow up questions, or asking a candidate the same thing in a slightly different way – really get to the bottom of a particular issue. Try and understand how much they contributed to a process vs. the team or business.

Often people don’t know what competencies to test for. If that’s the case, then you could do a lot worse than copying the extremely successful and respected Jack Welch, who was the former CEO of GE. Mr Welch would test interviewees using his Four E’s principle:

Energy – Hire Individuals with energy.
Energisers – These people know how to inspire others to perform. They outline a vision and get people to carry it out. Energizers know how to get people excited about a project. They give credit to others and accept responsibility when things go wrong.
Edge – Those with edge are competitive. They make difficult decisions, such as hiring, firing and promoting.
Execute – The key to the entire model. Executers recognise that activity and productivity are not the same.

Most businesses have a reputation and there are inaccurate perceptions (both good and bad) about all businesses. This is an opportunity to address these and to discuss the culture. If someone doesn’t share the same values as your business, then the relationship will never work. Also, you need to accurately describe the role to someone. Hiring is a great responsibility, as it affects someone’s life. It is also an opportunity to accurately set a candidate’s expectations about performance and progression. This is also an opportunity to sell yourself, a part many employers neglect – we will be discussing this point in more detail in part 2.

If you decide to progress with someone, explain the next stages and their manage their expectations regarding timescales. It they’ve failed the interview, you can either tell them there and then, or perhaps call them the next day. Regardless of what action you take, you should always provide constructive feedback.

Once this is done, it is time to close the interview. On the walk back to reception you can use this time to again build more rapport.

Established in 2010 by Simon Roderick, a recruiter with 20 years City recruitment experience, Fram Search is a specialist financial services recruitment consultancy. We focus on permanent and interim recruitment in the UK & internationally.

We provide high quality contingent and retained recruitment to boutiques and global brands. We have long established relationships and access to deep talent pools. Fram takes a highly consultative approach, and we have a quality over quantity ethos. We are proud that our contingent fill rate is nearly three the industry average and we augment our retained search methodology with rigorous psychometric testing. Champions of diversity & inclusion, all staff have undertaken unconscious bias training.

Please contact us on 01525 864 372 / [email protected] to learn more.