Tips for Human Resource Manager and Interviewers

Dr. Juniad Bilal and Rabab Ali

HR Managers

• Employees’ turnover carries negative impact on organizations. If high employees' turnover happens in an organization, Human Resource Department is partially responsible for it.

• HR Mangers must do their home work before inviting job applications, which means, job analysis must be done carefully and job description must be based on job analysis. Hurriedly done job analysis and written job description won’t help you much in selecting the right candidate.

• HR Managers must appreciate that it is not easy to find a candidate qualifying 100% job description. So you must know where you can compromise. The best way to overcome on this problem is that you rate each trait and skill from "most to least important" that is required to complete the job successfully.

• Job specifications must be written carefully. Do not demand unnecessary higher or lower education level and skills that are not required for the job. Jobs not matching with the qualifications will create stress in incumbents.

• If you intend to take any standard achievement/assessment/ability/personality test, you must ensure that you have experienced person to interpret the results. Halo-errors, leniency-error etc., can defeat the purpose. If you are using any standard test, you should follow the ethics guidelines of the test and provide quality feedback to the candidate.

• Carefully study CVs of the candidates before sending interview calls. Unnecessary interviews call will harm reputation of your organization.

• Make sure that interviewer (s) receive CVs of the shortlisted candidates well before the interview.

• If candidates ring you to enquire about the job prior to sending CV, must give satisfactory answer instead of just advising them to send CV. Even if the candidate asks about salary and other fringe benefits, don’t show hesitation in telling about it. Vague answers such as “salary will commensurate with your experience” can raise high expectations in the candidate.  All organizations , when they announce an open vacancy, have  some idea of  minimum and maximum that they can pay for the open position; so don't bluff the candidates..

• Being a HR manager, you must discuss salary with the management and set minimum-maximum range.

• Don’t invite all the candidates at the same time. Call the candidates at the specific time and respect it. Remember, Time is money for you as well as for the candidate.

• If it is a panel interview, communicate the candidates.

Interviewer (s)

• Must read candidate CV thoroughly before starting  the interview, so you know about the candidate before the interview.

• Create a friendly atmosphere during the interview. Shaking hands in a friendly manner helps a lot in easing the interviewee tension.

• Interviewers must introduce themselves to candidates - name and position in the company.

• You must calculate spending around 20 minutes with the candidate, so don’t rush with technical questions at the onset of the interview.

• Remember that you are not there to challenge skills of the candidates but only to judge whether or not he/she is a suitable candidate for your company.

• During interviews avoid talking on telephone, passing on instructions to employees of the company or/and receiving guests. It gives impression of non-seriousness of the process.

• Don’t ask irrelevant personal questions. It irritates.

• Must try when interviewee leave your premises, he/she carries good impression about you and your organization.

• Don't try to be over smart as you know everything. If you are evaluating the candidate so the candidate is doing the same as well. Of course, you are at giving end  but it does not mean that you portray yourself as a God of Knowledge - because nobody is.