How to decide who to interview and select
Before the curriculum vitae arrive you need to decide what process you want the candidates to go through, including who they will need to meet, at what stage, and in what time frame. For junior roles this may be one interview with you or the line manager but the more complex the role you are recruiting, the more complex the process is likely to have to be.
Plan this now. It’s always difficult to co-ordinate diaries so the more notice you can give the interviewers and interviewees the better, you will be able to let the candidates know the process and ensure any recruitment consultants or advertising agencies involved are working to your schedule.
Plan your recruitment timetable up to and including the proposed start date for the new employee, allowing for their notice period, which can be six months or even longer for senior executives. You will then know how long you will need to cover the role until the new person starts, and can also begin considering what sort of induction you will need to organise and whether the relevant staff are in the business at that time.
Book interview times in your diary and the diaries of any others involved at this point so that there is not a problem with availability later. You may also need to book interview rooms. This will also avoid interviewers trying to squeeze interviews in because of a shortage of diary time.
Consider the following when planning your recruitment process:
- The process of selection must be the same for all candidates to ensure they are all treated equally. This will help you assess them in a uniform way and will ensure that none of them can think they have been discriminated against because they were put through a different process. (For example, if you consider that one of your candidates may not have an adequate level of written English you may decide to ask them to complete a written test. If you do not ask all of the others to complete the same test it could be construed as discriminatory. If written English is important then you will be better giving all the candidates the same test and treating them all equally.)
- It is also good practice to have more than one person involved in each stage if possible, to ensure that no individual biases are prevalent.
- Who needs to meet the candidates? The obvious ones will be their line manager and a member of the Human Resources team if you have one. You may also want to include other managers who will be working closely with them or someone from their peer group.
The recruitment or selection process can include some or all of the following, and there may be other parts in the process unique to your company:
- Shortlisting from application form or curriculum vitae.
- Shortlisting from telephone response.
- Telephone interview.
- First interview.
- Second interview.
- Subsequent interview(s).
- Practical task(s).
- Psychometric and other tests.
- Trial.
- Assessment centres.
- Right to work.
- References.
- Police check.
- Medical.
- Offer.
You need to decide which of these stages you need to enable you to identify the candidate that most closely matches your criteria and will fit best into your organisation. If you are using a recruitment consultancy then you should be able to go straight to the first interview stage as they will have pre-selected the candidates for you.
Decide on the ideal numbers of candidates you are aiming to have at each stage. This may change, depending on the number of responses you receive. The optimum number you want to include for first interview may be six but only four met your criteria, or you could have more than you need but can’t select down further.
Shortlisting from the CVs or application forms
The CVs have now arrived in your in-box or on your desk so the next stage of your recruitment is to select who to interview.
If you are using several different kinds of sources or more than one of any kind, internet advertising, recruitment consultants and so on, logging where the largest and best response came from will help you evaluate these sources next time you recruit.
The first thing to do is to create a log in order to record who has applied. Include:
- Name.
- Contact number.
- Source.
- Each stage of your process.
- Outcome.
- Keep on file.
At every stage of your process make a note of whether or not you are including each candidate and then the outcome of that stage, including rejections and when they are sent. Not only will this help you keep tabs on what is happening to each candidate: it will enable you to deal with any queries quickly and easily.
Some candidates may not be appropriate for your current recruitment needs but you may want to keep them on file for other opportunities that may be coming up. Let them know this and make sure they are filed where they can be easily contacted when you need them.
If you have asked for response via email but you have also received hard copies, or vice versa, it is worth asking the candidate to re-submit so that all the responses are filed in the same format; it is also worth noting those who can’t follow simple instructions.
The following guidelines will help you select who to take to the next stage:
- Read through the job specification and then the candidate profile.
- Make a note of the essential criteria.
- Read through the covering note – does it include any information that you asked for?
- Read through the CVs to establish which have the ‘essential’ qualifications, skills, and experience.
- How many of the desirable and useful criteria do they have?
- Highlight any CVs that you are not sure about because the information is ambiguous or you are uncertain about what they have been doing, etc. These may be worth calling to clarify these points.
- Have you got the optimum number for your next stage? If you have too many, then you need to screen further by establishing which have some or all of the ‘desirable’ criteria.
- If you still need to screen further, then use the ‘useful’ criteria.
Using a points system for marking or grading CVs can be helpful, especially if more than one person is involved in the screening. For example, allocate five points for each essential criterion, two for every desirable one and one for each useful one.
If you have a poor response, either too few or not the right calibre, do not be tempted to compromise as you will end up hiring someone who will need a lot more training than you originally planned for or who is just not capable of doing the job. Review your sources and then try another route. It will save time in the long run – hiring the wrong candidate is even more time-consuming.
Shortlisting from telephone response
If you are recruiting junior level staff then you may have asked for your initial response to an advert to be by telephone. This can work particularly well if you are short of time and need to start interviews immediately, or you can use it as a way to test telephone communication skills.
Decide on some brief selection questions you can ask that will help you assess if you should call that person for interview.
What are the most important criteria these candidates need to have?
If you are recruiting temporary staff it may be the dates of availability that are crucial or the ability to do a night shift.
Make sure that the person who is taking the response is fully briefed, has a list of questions and is aware of how to decide who to book in. Remember to give them interview times too.
You will need to book interviews for the next day if possible. Applicants responding in this way have a very high ‘no show’ rate if the interviews are more than a couple of days away.
Telephone interview
Your first interview could be a telephone interview rather than face to face, as this can prove useful especially if:
- You have a large response and it is difficult to cut the numbers down on the information you have.
- You have candidates in other countries/locations.
- You are not on the premises so by telephone interviewing you can keep up the momentum rather than having to wait for your return.
- Telephone communication skills are an essential part of the job.
Telephone interviews can be more focussed and therefore much shorter than first face-to-face interviews and therefore save time.
Plan what you want to ask. You may want them to talk through their current or last job, or you may have specific questions to ask related to your candidate profile and you can use some of the questions in Part Two for this.
Call the candidate and introduce yourself and explain that you want to set up a telephone interview. Bear in mind that they may be at work when you speak to them. Outline the points you want to cover and give them an idea of how long this will take. Arrange a suitable time when they will be able to speak to you freely and try and have a landline number to call them on.
Telephone interviewing – the pros and cons
- Saves time – the actual interview will be shorter than a face-to-face one.
- Can speed up the process – putting interview schedules together can be difficult especially at short notice, whereas it will be much easier to set up telephone interviews in the evening or weekend.
- Other countries – if the candidates are a long way away or in a different country this will be much easier to organise and you will not have the issue of travelling costs to consider.
- Observe how they come across on the phone – this is now such an important part of so many jobs but it is often not tested during the interview process.
- You do not get visual response.
- You can’t read their body language.
Telephone interviews can be an effective screening tool but they cannot replace the face-to-face interview.
First interview
After going through one or more of the above, you should now have your shortlist for first interview.
The first interview should be to find out more general information about the candidate so that you can assess them alongside your criteria in your candidate specification. The aim is to have enough information to assess the candidate and decide who to take to the next stage, and should cover:
- What type of company they work in .
- More details about their current and previous jobs.
- Reasons for leaving.
- Reasons for applying.
- Practicalities such as travelling or re-location.
It is worth covering some of the more practical issues such as travelling to work for more junior candidates and re-location where appropriate. These issues can often be the cause of offers not being accepted.
If you are aiming to attract candidates from across the country or internationally, you will need to offer them a re-location package. This should be included in your recruitment budget, and details are given in Chapter 15, The Offer.
Second and subsequent interviews
Second and further interviews are not always necessary, so consider carefully what the purpose of these will be. If they are not planned they can all too easily end up with a repeat of the first interview. Reasons for second interviews can include:
- You need to ask more in-depth questions that you didn’t cover in the first interview.
- The candidates need to meet other people in your organisation.
- There is a practical task or some form of testing for them to complete.
- The candidates, even junior ones, need to have a sense of achievement if you offer them the job.
- You simply cannot decide between two or more candidates.
If they are meeting other individuals who were not present at the first interview make sure the other interviewers know what areas you have covered so they are not repeating your line of questions. Highlight to them points that they need to probe, and explain why.
If there are several people involved in the interview process it may be quicker to interview together either in pairs or as a selection panel. You need to make sure that you have assessed the candidate well in order to invite them to this stage, otherwise you could be wasting not just your time but several other people’s.
Working in pairs can work well, for example a line manager and a representative from human resources.
If you are the line manager and you are interviewing with someone from HR, the obvious division of questions will be that you could be the one asking questions about their company and job while HR delve into reasons for leaving, future plans, re-location, etc.
Panel interviews only work at senior levels as they are too daunting for junior candidates. The difficulty is usually making sure the people you need are all available.
If you decide on either of these make sure that interviewers and panellists are fully briefed on what you are looking for and find a way to divide the questioning. Agree on who will take the lead in the meeting.
These joint interviews or panels can work very well if they are planned but are disastrous if they are not, with no-one being clear who is asking what.
Practical task(s)
As part of the recruitment process you may want to include a practical task. They can often show you much more clearly what a candidate is capable of, how they cope under pressure and how they handle different situations. They can be used for all levels and can be as simple or as complex as the job role demands.
- Practical tasks should be based around your ‘essential needs’ and should be designed to allow the candidate to demonstrate their skills in a particular area.
- They should not include technology that the candidate is unfamiliar with, unless the task is designed to evaluate their grasp of new technology.
- The format and content must be clear.
- Length of time the task will take should be given if appropriate.
- Tell the candidate what’s available / what they need to bring, e.g. laptop.
- Explain what points you are looking for and how they will be assessed.
- Give details of who will be at the meeting.
- The same information should be passed in the same way to each candidate, including any ‘tips’ that you may want them to use. For example you may want them to understand that you are an informal company and they should be aware of this when doing the task.
The types of task will vary for each job and each company and should be included only if they are going to help identify if the candidate has a particular skill and at what level.
Practical tasks work brilliantly providing they have an obvious link to the role you are recruiting. If you can’t think of an immediately obvious practical task it probably means that it is not appropriate to include in this recruitment process.
The possible tasks for interview range from numeracy and finance through to manual dexterity.
Numeracy and finance
Earlier we looked at a situation where you are recruiting for a role in which a major part involves signing off expenses, some of which can be complex. The successful candidate will therefore need to be numerate and have an eye for detail but they do not necessarily need to have a qualification such as ‘A’ Level maths. Try asking them to check through several genuine expenses forms to identify any mistakes in a set time. This will demonstrate if they have an eye for detail, ability to spot numeric discrepancies, and speed.
For senior employees use actual budgets, P&L accounts or similar appropriate documents and ask relevant questions about them.
Written English
Replying to customers via email is a large part of this role, so good written business English is essential.
The task could be to give the candidates several emails to reply to, but remember they do not know how your company operates so you will need to give them an outline of what should be included in their reply. You are testing their written English, not their knowledge of your company procedures. If time is an important factor in this role then give them a set time to complete the task.
Here you are looking for common sense, courtesy, the right tone, a clear answer, a timeline and an acceptable level of English.
Presentation skills
Interview tests for sales managers, for example, have different priorities, so design your task to reflect the skills you are trying to assess. In this instance it is presentation skills that are key to the role. You will need to brief these candidates beforehand, including details on the product and the customer they will be meeting.
Set the scene by telling them that you have made an appointment with an existing customer that you have sold into for some time but you now want to sell product at a higher price point. ‘Prepare and present a sales presentation. Please indicate what assumptions you have made before you start your presentation. You may use any form you wish but please let us know in advance if you need any equipment. Ashley Standish, our general manager and Kirsty Massoud, sales director, will be at the presentation.’
From this you will be able to assess their presentation skills and you will also have an indication of their ability to understand and interpret instructions, influencing skills, capacity to think on their feet, and how they react under pressure.
Make sure those at the meeting are prepared to ask questions.
Selling skills
The above does not specifically test sales skills, so to assess this you will need a different task.
You need to forewarn your candidates that they will be asked to do a role-play of a selling situation. Decide if you need to brief them beforehand or on the day. What would happen in your company?
Brief the candidate on the product and the customer and then ask them to sell the product to the customer. Explain that they need to close the deal and get an order.
Sales skills are about finding out the customer needs and then matching what you have, product or services, to those requirements. You are looking for someone who is not afraid to ask questions and who can then identify the unique features of the product and match them to what the customer is looking for. Negotiation is also key to sales so in this role-play you can gauge how well they negotiate and whether they can put together a deal that both parties are happy with. If they have bowed on price perhaps they have gained by agreeing a quick payment period.
If the role is more negotiating than sales, then put them straight into the end negotiation situation.
Visual or creative skills
These skills lend themselves to practical tasks. Some are obvious. The portfolio of work presented by a fashion designer might be very interesting, but you are not sure if they can adapt their ideas to your company style. Ask them to complete a short project designing a limited collection for one part of your company to present at second interview.
Another example could be a visual merchandiser or display assistant being given an area to dress.
Anyone who has to have any form of visual skill should be given a test as these qualities are impossible to assess by interview alone.
Manual dexterity (physical ability)
If you are recruiting someone who needs to do manual or practical work such as carpentry, machine operating, food preparation and so on, then the best way to assess this is to have the person do a trial day – see below. This is not always possible, so design a task that will test their manual dexterity that closely matches what they will be asked to do.
Psychometric and other testing
Psychometric or personality testing is designed to give an insight into the personality of the interviewee rather than their skills or experience. They can indicate if a person has the right personality traits for a specific job or company and can show, for example, if someone has the drive and ambition to be a manager but will also show if they may be too sociable and therefore may take decisions based on being liked rather than what is right for the business.
Psychometric tests are a useful tool when used as a small part of the recruitment process and should be introduced early enough so that candidates can have feedback and so you can use the results to target your questions in the next meeting.
Ideally your other staff will have gone through your chosen test so that you can identify what an ideal profile will be.
There are usually a battery of questions asking the candidate to express opinions or make statements about their attitude. There are no right or wrong answers and they are encouraged to answer quickly rather than analysing the options.
Psychometric tests can only be analysed by qualified consultants. This means that you have one of three options.
- Brief the psychometric testing company on what exactly you need. They will use the brief together with your job and candidate definition to select the appropriate tests or battery of tests. They will give feedback to each candidate and present you with the report. This will give the most detailed information but will be the most costly. It is also difficult to arrange for candidates to get to another location and this will be time-consuming.
- Someone in your organisation can be trained and then licensed to use the tests in-house, give feedback and compile the report. Cost-effectiveness will depend on how many candidates you will need to screen per year, as you will have to pay for the training and the license will be due annually. The other down side is that if your practitioner leaves the company, you will have to pay again for someone else to be trained.
- Source a supplier who will provide the tests and then analyse them for you, usually online. This will be the most cost-effective and convenient way of conducting tests but they will be more basic than the reports in the other two options and there may not be any feedback for the candidates.
These psychometric tests are most appropriate for senior level roles or where you are looking for a specific trait across a large department where you are constantly recruiting so that the numbers involved make it more viable. If you use recruitment consultants they should also be able to advise and in some cases will conduct these for you.
Other tests can include spatial awareness, numeracy, lateral thinking, etc.
Make sure the candidates are aware that they are going to be asked to go through this procedure. Most senior people will have been through something similar before but others may not have, and you should ensure that they are comfortable with what is going to happen, how long it will take, that there are no right or wrong answers so they can’t pass or fail, etc.
Trial day or afternoon
If you are recruiting for a practical job then a half-day’s trial is a good way to test someone’s skills. You may be hiring someone for your joinery shop who has the right qualifications and experience, but until you see them in action you cannot tell how skilled they are or at what speed they work.
If you are organising a trial, do make sure it’s planned and you know what you want them to do. Let the candidate know what they are going to be doing and explain what you are looking for. This may mean that some candidates de-select themselves by deciding they are not capable of performing that task at the level you need!
Assessment centres
If you are recruiting several candidates for the same or similar roles, or where there is a repeated recruitment need, for example to hire trainees, you may want to consider setting up an assessment centre.
Assessment centres can include whichever elements of the recruitment process you choose but typically will cover psychometric testing, other tests such as numeracy, a practical task, and an interview. They should be structured in such a way that you can put several candidates through the procedure at the same time.
The difficult part is setting up the first one, so decide on a format that you can use again and again. Decide:
- which elements of the recruitment process you want to include
- who else in your company is going to be involved
- what their role will be
- how you are going to ‘mark’ the candidates
- at what stage candidates are going to be asked to go through the assessment, i.e. whether they will have a first interview.
You can use the assessment centre instead of first or second interview stage.
The most time and cost effective way is to use it at first interview stage, and you make a decision on who to hire from there.
In some instances you may want to conduct first interviews and introduce this at second interview stage. If you are using a recruiter, remember they will do first interview so they can shortlist for your assessment centre.
Assessment centres – pros and cons
- Tests need to be planned well in advance to ensure that the relevant people are available.
- You will need to have other staff on hand to administer the tasks, etc.
- If they continue for more than two hours then you should provide refreshments.
- You need to ensure that all the people involved in the decision-making process are fully briefed on what their role is in this process and how to assess the candidates.
- The organisation and administration involved make them useful for repeat or mass recruitment needs but not for individual jobs.
- You can compare candidates when they are literally alongside each other.
Right to work
It is a legal requirement to ensure that anyone you employ has the right to work in the United Kingdom, and employing anyone who does not have this can lead to prosecution.
The United Kingdom has an ethnically diverse population and many people from ethnic minorities are British citizens, and many non-British citizens are also entitled to work here.
You need to see proof of right to work but in order not to discriminate on racial grounds you must ask all of your prospective employees to provide this. Asking only those who appear not to be British may constitute unlawful discrimination.
Decide at which point in the recruitment process you are going to ask for this documentary proof, and make sure candidates are all asked to bring this with them. You must do this before they start work. Ask them to bring their passports or any other documentation that will verify their right to work in the UK. Make sure you use the same request to all the candidates.
You must see the original documents and you must check the photograph so you need to include this at one of the interview stages when you are face-to-face. It is easiest to do so at the first meeting. If you have an HR department they will advise on this and also check the documentation.
If you don’t have this luxury then refer to www.ukba.homeoffice. gov.uk and study prevention of illegal working – current guidelines and codes. This will give you the up-to-date information on what documentation you need to see, together with a list of the European Economic Area members who have the right to work here and those that are members but still need other authorisation to work.
You need to see documents that show the holder is not subject to immigration control such as:
- Passport showing they are a British citizen or a citizen of the UK and Colonies having the right to abode in the UK.
- Passport or ID card from one of the members of the European Economic Area or Switzerland.
- A Residency permit, Registration Certificate or document indicating permanent residency issued by the Home Office or Border and Immigration Agency to an EEA or Swiss citizen.
- Passport or travel document endorsed to show that the holder is exempt from immigration control, is allowed to stay indefinitely in the UK, has the right to abode in the UK or has no time limit on their stay in the UK.
If your candidate cannot work in the UK then their passport will be endorsed with a stamp clearly stating that employment is prohibited or that they cannot enter or change employment, paid or unpaid, without the consent of the Secretary of State.
Verify the documents.
- Check the photograph – see the individual in person.
- Check the document dates are valid.
- If you have more than one document, do the details match? – if the names are different you will need to see documentary evidence to verify this.
- Check any stamps or visas.
- Check that they are genuine – not tampered with or altered in any way.
Take a copy of the relevant pages and keep these while the person is employed by you and for two years after they leave your employment. Relevant pages include those covering:
- Front cover of the document or the one that has the holder’s personal details.
- Nationality.
- Photograph.
- Signature.
- Date of birth.
- Date of expiry.
- Biometric details (if applicable).
- UK government endorsements – i.e. giving them the right to work.
Some individuals may be granted the right to enter or remain in the UK for a limited period. You need to ensure that they can work during this time and if you hire them you will need to check their status every twelve months or until they have one of the documents listed above. Check what other documentation you need at the above website.
Never assume that because an applicant has a valid National Insurance number they have the right to work. This is not the case.
References
It is good practice to take up references, although increasingly these are becoming more basic. It is a way of validating the details the candidate has given you and they are often essential in certain job categories or as a requirement for insurance policy cover.
Follow-up of references is usually in the form of written requests, as most companies will not respond to verbal enquiries, and includes asking for confirmation of the dates of employment, job role and reason for leaving.
Ensure the candidate knows that you are taking up references and who from. References from their present employer would usually be taken up once they have resigned.
Another or an additional option may be to take up a verbal trade reference from someone that the candidate knows within the industry.
If you are recruiting a buyer then it may be helpful to speak to the salespeople who have sold product to them to obtain a trade reference.
Police check
If you are hiring staff to work with children or to work in an area where children will be, then you must have a police check completed. This will include people who do not regularly work under these circumstances but who have a requirement to do so, perhaps for a set period.
A building site manager, who is responsible for managing construction sites, in normal circumstances will not be working with or near children. However, the next site you need him to supervise is in a school.
If you are in this situation you should take professional legal advice on what you need to do and when you should include it in your selection process.
Medical
A pre-employment medical may be company policy, a pre-requisite for private health insurance cover, or the candidate’s role may involve operating machinery, driving, flying, etc. Medicals are expensive and time-consuming, so confine these, if possible, to your final shortlisted candidates.
Offer
The final part of your process will be the offer. Make sure you know what the successful candidate is currently earning, including their full package, so that your offer is going to be interesting to them – see Chapter 15, The Offer.
- Include enough elements to ensure you have sufficient information about your candidate to enable you to make a valid judgement.
- Make certain that everyone involved understands the job role and the candidate requirements.
- Develop a marking structure that everyone in the process can use.
- Ensure that you are being fair and putting each through the same process and giving them identical information.
- If you use a practical task make sure the candidates are fully briefed on what to expect and what you are looking for.
- Decide if psychometric or other testing is appropriate for your situation.