Keep Interviews Timely and Focused

• 00:04 Another important ground rule to set for job interviews is a length of time.
• 00:09 I don't mean you have to be there with a stopwatch, it's 29 minutes and 52 seconds.
• 00:14 It's not that specific, but it's helpful to you, and
• 00:18 it's helpful to the applicant to know in advance roughly how long it would be.
• 00:23 If it's a first interview and there's a chance there will be second interviews or
• 00:28 more, then I would recommend allocating a half an hour,
• 00:31 especially if you're interviewing a lot of people.
• 00:34 You need to have some set time limit.
• 00:36 You also need to give a sense of fairness of give this person a half an hour and
• 00:41 the next person half an hour, not this person ten minutes and
• 00:45 this person three hours.
• 00:47 This is also important if you work for very large organizations,
• 00:51 government entities, and you are worried about potential lawsuits,
• 00:56 fairness questions, discrimination.
• 00:58 Obviously, I'm not advocating that you discriminate in any way.
• 01:02 One way of showing fairness is giving all applicants roughly
• 01:07 the same amount of time in the job interview process.
• 01:12 Now if you think you've found someone who's really the perfect fit and
• 01:16 really distinguishes themselves above all other applicants,
• 01:20 it is natural to have the conversation go deeper and deeper because
• 01:24 this person's throwing out ideas of what they will do to help your organization.
• 01:29 You're asking questions and all of a sudden a real dialogue is going.
• 01:34 I'm not trying to discourage that, but in general, let the job applicant
• 01:39 know too because they may be coming on their lunch hour from another job.
• 01:43 It's not fair to them to take more time than allotted.
• 01:48 And it's basically showing good manners.
• 01:50 You're letting someone know, hey, I'm not paying you, but
• 01:54 I need you for this 30-minute increment.
• 01:57 Rather than, well, it could be ten minutes, it could be two and
• 02:01 a half hours, we'll just see.
• 02:03 Have something that's fairly specific and let the job applicant know in advance.
• 02:09 It's setting a precedent that your organization is well run,
• 02:14 that it does things on time, and that you respect other people's time.
• 02:19 When you're conducting the interview, you need to listen, actively listen, and
• 02:24 really, really pay close attention.
• 02:26 You can't be thinking about, what's my next question?
• 02:28 When is the next person going to be here?
• 02:29 You have to be in the moment listening.
• 02:32 But there's one other thing I would highly, highly recommend.
• 02:35 I don't care how good your memory is, take notes.
• 02:38 Actually, good old-fashioned handwritten notes I think are best.
• 02:43 The problem with making your notes on your cell phone is the person may interpret
• 02:47 that as your busy checking email and texting friends.
• 02:50 So I would write out your notes as you're listening to someone.
• 02:56 because here's the problem, you can be listening to someone, think they're great,
• 03:00 but next thing you know, you've interviewed eight people over a two and
• 03:04 a half week period.
• 03:05 You just can't remember that fourth person you interviewed a week and a half ago.
• 03:12 And quite often there's a problem of we remember the first person we interviewed,
• 03:15 we remember the last person.
• 03:17 And those in between may be as good or better, but
• 03:20 the way our memory works, it just doesn't stick.
• 03:23 So please take detailed notes in real time during the middle of every interview.
• 03:30 And also immediately after the interview, make any final notes, so
• 03:35 you don't have to depend on your memory later when you're sifting through all
• 03:40 the resumes of people you've met with.

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