A Guide to

Interviewing Graduates

Introduction
Interviewing is an essential part of the recruitment process; it is the simplest way to see if a candidate is right for your business. Whilst CVs give a good guide to somebody's skillset, an interview allows you to nd out if they will be the right t for your company. The interview process is key for your business because at the end of the day good people, also known as 'A-players,' are vital to the success, sustainable growth and future of your company. It is thought that the average cost of a wrong hire is over 8000 (CIPD); a signi cant dent in any companies pot. This sum increases signi cantly when the person doing the searching, interviewing and recruiting is critical to your business. As a consequence it is worth investing some time and thought into your interviews. If there is one thing that we have learnt over time it there is no time for messing around, you need the best suited person for your vacancy. If a candidate does not meet the requirements for your role, be clinical; don't waste your time or theirs. To nd the right person you need your interviews to be well prepared and executed, this guide aims to help you achieve this.

Types of Interview
As you know there are several options when determining the best ways to interview people. We would never recommend eliminating the face to face interview completely from your recruitment process. However, there are a couple of options you can use in the stage before, to avoid wasting your time down the line. The Phone Interview An increasingly popular option, phone interviews are quick, easy and simple to set up. Find yourself a quiet room and use a set of preliminary questions to access the candidates for your role. We recommend setting aside 15 minutes for the interview so if it's not right you can end it quickly. There is nothing stopping you continuing the conversation if you like the person see this as a pre-interview to narrow down your shortlist and nd those A-players.

We recommend you arrange a time and then contact the candidate, this way you are in control and there are no excuses for them; there is no cost and little preparation or time needed at their end.

Skype Interviews Skype is relatively new, free to use online video phoning software. It's very popular amongst students and graduates and we are yet to nd a student that does not have it. Even if they don't, it takes less than 5 minutes to create an account and it's free. This still falls in the pre-interview category. However it does give you a better feel for a candidate than a telephone interview. If you don't have Skype you can download the software from here and quickly create an account. Arrange a time as you would with an interview and ask them to add you as a contact. You can ring them when you are ready; make sure you are in a quiet room and have a webcam on your computer. Caution: Skype interviews can often be interrupted with bad internet connections making for a disjointed and slightly awkward interview.

Face to Face/Panel Interviews All you need here is a quiet space where you can ask questions and discuss the role with the candidate. We recommend bringing someone in with you to these interviews; its good to have a second opinion and at the end of the day the other sta will have to work with the candidate so you need to make sure they t in your team. We recommend that you do these on your terms in an environment that sums up you and your company. The interviewee is going to be assessing whether they want to work for you or not, try to make a positive and professional impression without intimidating the candidate.

You could conduct a panel interviews with 3 5 people interviewing. These interviews can be intimidating for the candidate who will have 5 new faces staring at them and interrogating them. On the plus side this mitigates some of the risk of an interview by canvassing a wider opinion on the candidate. You can also see how they handle high pressure situations. On the negative side, you could worry an already nervous candidate or your interview panel may not all agree causing disruption within the team.

Assessment Centres Assessment centres are generally used by large employers who have high intakes for the same position e.g. Tesco PLC and their store manager trainee roles. They give you the opportunity to assess large groups of candidates in a range of di erent aptitudes all at once. They are however very resource heavy, you will need a large area to do them and they take a lot of organisation. We would only recommend this if you are hiring a lot of people for the same role.

What to Prepare Before your Interviews

Before the interview begins you need to know exactly the skills and attributes your perfect candidate will possess. There is no point doing an interview if you don t know who you are looking for as you will only come out with the wrong candidate. Give candidates plenty of notice regarding the location and time of your interview. Graduates are likely to be applying for jobs all over the UK and could be traveling a long way, as a consequence the more notice you give them the better. Next you should consider the questions you are going to ask and, if there are more than one of you in the room, who is going to ask what? Do your research and prepare questions in advance. Also have a think about the kind of responses you would like from candidates. You will expect the candidate to do their research on you, you should do the same. Make sure everyone going into the interview has seen the candidates CV, covering letter and knows as much about the person as possible. It will save you time in the interview and gives o a good impression to the candidate.

During the interview

Give the candidate a chance to nd their feet and calm down before you get down to the nitty-gritty. A few simple questions will put the candidate at ease, giving them a chance to grow into the interview and answer your questions to the best of their ability. There is a technique called probing questions, also known sometimes as the 5 whys. This technique is all about delving deeper and extracting more knowledge from the candidate. If you are not getting what you are after from the answers to the questions ask them why they made a decision, how they did something or ask them to tell you more about certain points. This will encourage them to go into more detail and enable you to see the real decision making factors behind there actions or answers. Use the 80:20 rule in your interviews; you should only speak 20% of the time, giving the interviewee a chance to shine and the opportunity to talk about themselves. At the end of the interview invite them to ask you some questions if they haven't already. If they really want to work for you they are going to have a few questions. It's a fantastic way to see how much research they have done on yourself your responses can also be an opportunity to sell your organisation.

What to do after the interview

As soon as the interview is nished you need to write up your notes. Don't talk to anyone else as they could in uence you and cloud your own judgment. You can take notes on everything from their appearance, your rst impression to which comments made you smile, frown or perhaps change your opinion. You can also look at the scores you have given your candidate (we will discuss the scoring system later) relating to the skills you have identi ed needed for the role. We don't recommend making a decision immediately, sleep on it, discuss it with a colleague and then make a decision; there is no harm in having one more interview if you aren't sure. One thing that has a certain impact on your reputation is letting those who are not right know that they will not be o ered the job. You never know when you will cross their path again so be honest with them and let them know. It will take less than 10 minutes to email them all and say 'sorry, but on this occasion you have not been successful in reaching the next round of interviewing for this company.' If you are down to the last few candidates it is a nice gesture to give some genuine feedback (lots of students have said this would be positive and helpful).

The science of interviewing

Creating the perfect interview is important to nd the right people for your company, having a structured interview process is therefore important to ensure scalability, repeatability and consistency of results it also helps you tweak it if you are not getting the right people. Research has suggested that by having a structured interview you are at least twice as likely to hire e ective people for the job. There are several interview frameworks you can follow all over the internet, for example: ghSMART A Method for Hiring. The frameworks are all relatively similar. Here's one we've put together to help you increase interview success rate in no time.

First identify who you are looking for. You should reduce the job to pieces and identify the critical knowledge, abilities and skills that are needed to ful ll the role. Do this by looking at the roles KPIs, the previous incumbent's strengths and weaknesses and what you want the new person to achieve; ie their targets and goals. This information is going to form the skeleton to your job advert and the person you are searching for on Witlr or other recruitment sites. Next you should advertise your role, search for applicants and ask for recommendations from your sta and friends to gather your shortlist of people for the role. They will all have to go through the same interview process where you will whittle them down to nd that perfect person so you can be quite broad at this stage. Interview round one is the screening interview. For this you should pull together 5 10 questions that show skills relating to the job speci cation. We recommend that one person conducts this interview over the phone with the original shortlist of applicants. This is the opportunity to separate the best candidates from the average ones. If they don't have any of the skills you identi ed earlier then it's a NO. Don't waste either of your time; if they don't have the skills you have identi ed, they will not t! Be quite clinical in this interview, if they are not right end it quickly, if you are not sure introduce some probing questions to nd out more, it's all about being e cient.

The key here is to score the candidates on a scale for their answers to the questions, you should ask every candidate the same questions but score them objectively do not compare them to anyone else. This is the best way to get a shortlist of people who are highly likely to be good at your role. The scoring scale should be something simple like 1 5. 5 being outstanding, 3 average and 1 low, anyone that scores less than a 3 on any of the answers should go. Of course for this to work you need to pick your questions carefully and know what you want the answers to include. Next you have your face to face interviews; these could take anything from 45mins 1 and a half hours. You should take another member of sta in with you and both score the applicant objectively and separately; make sure that both interviewers are very clear on the interviewing techniques and how they should be judging candidates; they should have seen the original application, CV and notes from the phone screening interview. Again you should have a set number of questions for every candidate, they must be chosen in advance and the desired skills displayed by the candidate's answers should be discussed before the interview begins. Scoring candidates is a good way to be consistent and it's highly recommended. Take your time to delve deeper and 'interrogate' them on the skills and knowledge you have identi ed as essential. Questions can be a mix of the types that we will discuss below. It is good to have a range as some students and graduates will be better at presenting their skills in di erent ways. As well as asking questions that relate to knowledge and skills the role requires it is important to ask broader questions that relate to how the candidate will t within the company culture. This is vital, you don't want someone who has all the skills but is unable to work with the rest of your employees; it won't work long term.

Types of Questioning
Everyone has their own preference when it comes to interview questions however if you need some inspiration you can base your questions on the common types listed below. Competency / Behavioural These are designed to establish if the candidate has the skills required based on their previous experience. Questions normally start with something along the lines of describe a time when you have demonstrated. Do remember that they are graduates and don't have hours of experience or multiple situations to use as examples.

Abstract These questions are designed to establish if candidates can think originally and also help to work out if the individual has a logical way of thinking things through. An example could be: If you went to the moon with the CEO tomorrow and could only take one item, what would it be and why? Technical Questions These are very industry speci c. Of course if you are looking for people with speci c skills you need to know they have the abilities you require. Test them on the subject, if they know what they are talking about they will answer quickly and con dently. Situational Questions These are back to front competency questions, instead of asking for examples on how they handled a situation give candidates a scenario and ask them how they would solve a problem. Look for the process behind their decisions and see if it ts in with your company's way of problem solving. Chronological Questions Use these questions as a way to get to know people and gain an understanding of their motivations and why they've made the decisions they have so far in their life. Probing Questions If you are running out of questions or not getting the answers you want you can always rely on probing questions. These are designed as follow on questions and help you delve deeper into a subject. You can pretty much use them at any time, for example; how did you do that? Why did you do that? Please explain a little more.

Small Things to Remember

Hopefully we have equipped you with the basics you need to start interviewing; there are a few last things to remember. Everything you do re ects on your company. Dress how you expect your colleagues to dress, choose a nice location and be polite. You would hate for the best candidate you've interviewed to go elsewhere because they didn't like the interviewer's attitude. Make sure you book a meeting room out and put the time in your diary. We have discussed how important recruiting is so don't let interruptions get in the way and ruin your reputation with the candidate. If you're in a big o ce make sure you let the receptionist know you are expecting interviewees so they don't have a blank look on their face and start interrogating the candidate when they arrive.

Don't write them o if they are late! Students and Graduates are human and at some point it has happened to everyone, so just consider the circumstances. Yes ideally they should arrive early but don't jump to any conclusions they could have good a reason and be an exceptional candidate. By no means do you have to, but it is often a nice gesture to pay your candidates some money towards their expenses.

We hope this guide has given you a few helpful tips on preparing and conducting interviews which will enable you to hire the right candidates for your business.

How Witlr Can Help You

Witlr is the newest way to nd high quality students and graduates that have the exact skills you are looking for. Employers can personally search the fastest growing database of high quality job seeking students and graduates quickly and easily for free. Find your perfect candidate's from a pool of thousands and only pay to contact the ones you really want to interview. Businesses can search on anything from educational establishment, course and grade right through to work experience, hobbies and interests increasing you nd the right candidate for your role and company culture. Witlr also o ers a free Jobs Board where you can advertise your roles and lter the applications on a number of things to save you more and more time. For more information feel free to register and try Witlr out, there is no obligation to use us; however I am sure you won't be disappointed. Alternatively you can contact the team on 01458 836555 or email Nick, the Managing Director on Nick.Guy@Witlr.com

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