As someone who has been the Interviewer and the Interviewee (both multiple times) during their lifetime, and has experienced both solo and group interviews, and interview tips tend to be helpful. In this article, I thought I’d dish out some of my advice for both the Interviewer and the Interviewee when it comes to group interviews.
The Interviewer:
I’m going to start with the Interviewer, so Interviewees feel free to skip ahead to your section below.
Whether it is your first interview or your thousandth, your assessment of the candidates in front of you needs to change for every job you interview for. This is obvious, as you’re not going to look for the same type of candidate for a Bartender position as you will for a Nurse, and if you have a good enough understanding of the role at hand you should know pretty much what your perfect candidate will be like.
With this in mind, however, you need to be prepared to be flexible with your expectations of the candidate, as the people you have in for interview may not meet every single criteria you want them to, but could still be great for the position. This is important especially in roles which require little or no experience, as your perfect candidate could have zero experience, but your company could mould them into the perfect employee – so keep an open mind!
One more tip for these interviews, especially when it is more of a junior position, it might be a good idea to get a Team Member who will work alongside the successful candidate to help out with the interviews, as they can give you a different perspective on whether or not they would be suitable for the role. I’ve been this selected Team Member before, and I could really tell that my expectations of the candidate were different to the expectations of the Managers, so the “perfect” candidates covered both of our expectations.
Talk about YOU
Candidates want to know what kind of company they will be working for, so give them a brief overview of your business; when you were established, what industry they will be working in; where they will be based.
This will give them an idea of whether or not they are attracted to your position from the start, and if they read further they can learn all about the position they will be applying for.
Talk about the ROLE
Next you’re going to want to outline what the position entails. This doesn’t need to be an essay, or a lengthy list of every task they will ever have to complete, but 5-10 snappy bullet points about the main responsibilities of the position can give the candidate an idea of whether or not they would want to work in that kind of position.
Talk about your perfect CANDIDATE
In this section you need to describe exactly the kind of candidate you want to hire (but keep in mind that not everyone is going to have every one of your desired skills/qualifications/level of experience, but may still be great at the job).
As with the Role, a list of 5-10 bullet points detailing these qualities allow your perfect candidate to gain an understanding of if they could potentially fill your role.
Talk about the BENEFITS
Including a short list of benefits that will be provided to the successful candidate make your advert so much more attractive. Here you are going to want to disclose a bonus scheme, company pensions, free health care; and your perfect candidate is going to be jumping for joy at the thought of working for such a generous company.
Round off your advert
To finish your advert, you want to hit your candidates with the perfect, punchy closing line. This is going to be the final opportunity to attract them to apply for your role instead of the roles of companies X, Y & Z.
Make this line inviting and friendly, a simple “If you feel you have the skills for our *insert job title here* role, please apply now!” tends to do the job, and then you can watch the applications pour in.
If you have found our quick and simple guide to writing a great job advert helpful, you can download a great, FREE job advert template below, so you really do only have to fill in the blanks!