P M – Personnel Manager, I – Interviewer

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 471.

Unit 3 Recruitment

P M – The most important thing when interviewing a candidate is his character, his

ability to react, his intelligence and his suitability for the position that … which

… for which he is being interviewed.

I – And uh, to what extent does the person's appearance influence your decision?

P M – It does influence the decision, uh, but it does some bearing on the decision, if

you can take the difference between the two. It is important that the guy, the

person, is well presented, is neat and tidy, and that he has a good manner, uh,

because that shows a lot about his personality.

I – Do you expect the candidate to be prepared in any way for the interview, or how

should he prepare himself for the interview?

P M – Well , it's not a question of preparing himself. In the position in which I am, uh,

normally the candidate's had at least one or maybe two interviews with other

members, more junior member or staff before he gets to my level, unless the

particular candidate is going to report to me, and in which case I expect the

person concerned to have a fairly good knowledge of: (1) what the company

does, (2) what he's going to be expected to do, and (3) who he's going to report

to. Those things, those three items are very, very important, and if the

candidate doesn't give the impression of either understanding one of those

three items, then obviously he gets marked down accordingly.

I – How does a candidate go wrong?

P M – The major way a candidate goes wrong is by basically becoming a yes-man or

yes-woman and agreeing with everything you say. What is most important …

One of the most important things about interviewing a candidate is the

chemistry between somebody, between the two people in the interview, it's

very, very important – he has to have a spark, you have to feel as though that

guy is going to contribute, that guy's going to be good and you are going to get

something out of that person and he has to show himself to be not just ‘Yes sir,

thank you very much. Yes I agree with that, I agree with that.' Sometimes I lay

dummy questions in which I want a ‘no' answer and if he continues to say ‘yea'

then he goes down.

I – What would your advice to be a candidate, going to an interview. How would you

advise him?

P M – The firs thing I would say to him is first of all to listen, secondly, to ask the

right questions, and thirdly, perhaps the most important, is to create the right

relationship which is, I guess, an adult-to-adult relationship with the

interviewee or the interviewer. It is very important and that's what I said before,

is when you get a yes-man in front of you, or a yes-woman, then that person is

obviously not creating an adult-to-adult conversation. He's creating an adult-to

child conversation and in most cases, managers are not, if they are good and

they know what they want, they're not going to be interested in employing a

child.