Talking about getting a job

What’s the first thing you’re looking for in a candidate for a job?

The first thing you’re looking for with a job candidate is enthusiasm for the role.

You’re also looking for them to demonstrate experience relevant to the position.

How do you get candidates to relax in the interview?

It’s important to engage with the candidate straight away, so when you collect them from reception or from the front of the building –

whatever it may be – you want to kind of greet them in a friendly manner.

You want to ask them some general questions – just talking about their journey into the interview or the weather, or have they been to the city before.

And during the interview?

During an interview, once it has commenced, I will always try to start the interview with some general questions, just to allow the candidate to talk about themselves, to talk about their CV, their background.

And often when a candidate is talking about something they know, which is themselves and what they’ve been doing, they’re able to settle down much more quickly and have an element of confidence around what they’re talking.

Is it important for candidates to ask the interviewer questions, and if so, what kind of questions should candidates ask?

Questions can be related to anything, so I personally would encourage candidates to ask questions rated to any aspect of employment, and most recruiters would welcome that sort of interaction as an opportunity to actually give a little bit more information about the company.

Is it OK for candidates to ask about the money or the salary at the interview?

Of course, and candidates should be honest and realistic about their expectations, too.

An interview is an appropriate environment to ask such a question, especially if salary, or salary banding, was not identified in the job advert.

How important are CVs and covering letters?

CVs are very important to a recruiter because it actually provides an overview of a candidate’s background, their employment, what they’ve been doing to date.

But a cover letter can actually be more important, because that’s where a candidate will actually list and identify how they meet the criteria for the post, so it allows a candidate to be very specific about demonstrating what skills and experience they have that would be relevant – and often, that skill and experience may be missed on a CV when you’re looking at a wider career history.

What’s the worst thing a job candidate can do when they’re applying for a job?

First thing is, obviously, to make mistakes on their application – that’s always viewed negatively, depending on the role that they’re applying for.

Also coming to an interview late, coming to an interview unprepared.

I’ve been in interviews where candidates haven’t been prepared and have not been able to, from the start, answer some of the questions.

One particular situation was when a candidate actually thought they were being interviewed for something completely different. 

So again, you have to actually think how do you deal with that situation – do you stop the interview or do you carry on?

Anything else that has surprised you during an interview?

There was another situation where a candidate actually produced food during the interview.

In the middle of answering a question, they stopped and rummaged in their bag to pull out a KitKat, which took both myself and the interviewing manager by surprise.

We did ask and enquire as to what she was doing at which point she actually advised she was a diabetic and just felt at that particular moment, that she just needed a little something to eat to calm things – which was absolutely fine, but again, during the interview, when she hadn’t announced that’s why she was doing it, it was a bit of a surprise.

How important is the way a candidate dresses for an interview?

A candidate’s dress for interview is important because it shows how serious they take the situation. 

However, I would always recommend that candidates would come to

interview, in a dress that is appropriate for the role they’re applying for.

In today’s modern recruitment environment, it’s not always necessary for a guy to wear a suit to an interview.

However, you would expect to see a shirt, you would expect to see a blazer, you would expect to see appropriate footwear.

And the same for a lady as well – certain clothes, certain types of footwear, would be inappropriate to come into an interview and may set a perception of that candidate which is perhaps incorrect.

Have you ever had an interview with someone who was dressed very inappropriately?

I had an interview on one occasion where a candidate actually arrived in tennis gear – a white T-shirt and shorts.

They’d literally come straight from the tennis court and they had simply

forgotten the interview was on that day, had suddenly had the reminder that actually they were due to be at the interview, so they thought they

would come anyway as they were.

I did see the candidate and they were actually very impressive; we just had to move past the clothing aspect, but actually it was quite funny and allowed a real opportunity to engage with that particular candidate from the start.

Did that person get the job?

No, they didn’t.

Extreme interviewing is a technique used by recruiters to put the candidate in a situation that they may not have been in before, or to put them give them a scenario where they have to think quickly, where they have to digest information, where they perhaps have to problem-

solve before giving an answer.

Have you used it yourself?

It’s not something that I have direct experience of, but I am aware of some of the techniques that are used and some of the questions that could be used.

I was reading recently about, extreme interviewing techniques used for an insurance company.

They asked candidates to describe if...they asked candidates during the

interview how they would describe Facebook to their grandmother. 

What the recruiter was looking for was for that candidate to display an element of technical skills and technical awareness, also to display communication skills and how they would explain Facebook to an audience or to somebody who doesn’t understand modern technology or modern social media.

Do you have any others?

One I was reading about recently was posed to candidates during an interview where they were looking to assess a candidate’s ability to multitask.

The candidates were asked whether they would want to fight a horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses.

Depending on the answer – one or a hundred – that would potentially dictate whether that candidate was most comfortable multitasking or dealing with one situation or one objective at a time.

What would your answer to that question have been?

When I read it, I had to re-read it four times, and that’s just me reading it.

In an interview, I would have had to have asked for that question to

be repeated, and I’m not even sure if I would have been able to give an immediate response, because I would still be trying to understand what

exactly they were asking of me.

I guess for me personally, when I’d thought about it, I would have said one horse-sized duck, but that would potentially mean that I’m not able to multitask, so...!