How to Nail the Candidate Interview

I have spoken about the mindset of a successful recruiter and the concept of building up a community of people within which you are recognised as a valued member. I now want to move on to what is the most important aspect of the recruiter’s role. It’s the one you get paid for and it comes down to having the skills to be able to satisfy the needs of two equally important parties: your clients and the people that you present for interview. The needs of your clients will be addressed in a later post but what about candidates?

Candidates want to work with recruiters they can trust and who have their best interests at heart. Building this trust takes time and it starts with the candidate interview. Consider for a moment how you would feel if a recruiter who hardly knew you started making suggestions about what you should consider doing for your next job? Worse still that the recruiter knew very little about the very thing they consider to be in your best interest…. It’s not a relationship that is going to last or carry much value.

Now consider how you would feel if this recruiter, before offering any career advice, displayed a deep empathy and took the time to dig deep into you, your experience and your career ambitions before presenting options that matched perfectly your thinking, or indeed things you hadn’t previously thought about. What about if the recruiter said that based on what you have discussed, the role they are recruiting for is not a good match but that you should stay in touch for when the right thing does come along. How would this affect the relationship of the candidate towards the recruiter and the level of trust it would bring?

Before addressing the process of how to achieve this when interviewing a candidate, it is important at this point to speak about the concept of needs-based selling as compared to transactional selling. These two sales approaches determine the type of service that a recruitment consultant can deliver and it is what, in my opinion, differentiates good practice from bad when it comes to recruitment.

Needs-based selling

Mastering the art of needs-based selling is essential if a recruiter wants to deliver an exceptional service, build up customer trust and establish a sustainable career. Sometimes called consultative selling, needs-based selling provides a recruiter with the tools to be able to understand your candidate and client needs to such a depth that you can confidently make introductions, safe in the knowledge that there is high potential of a positive outcome for all as you are addressing both parties’ specific needs.

This approach is in contrast to a transactional selling approach in which the recruiter merely acts as a conduit and connects two parties together without having taken the time to understand how or why the capabilities of one party will resonate with the other. At its most basic level, this type of service provides little value as no match up of needs has taken place to any level of depth and so the risk of a mismatch and wasted time is increased. It’s a volume based, “Mud against the wall” approach.

Needs-based selling is a large topic in its own right. Suffice to say, a key element involves developing an understanding of when and how to use open and closed questions in order to direct conversations and gather information to the depth required to make informed decisions. To extract information from candidates and build up a clear understanding of their experience, open questions should be used that start off with words such as How, What, Where, When, Which, Why. This type of question will press the candidate to give you a detailed answer . Continue to use open questions to dig deeper into the initial approach and in order to gain a full understanding.

Q. “What type of customers do you sell to?”

A. “Enterprise customers mainly”

Q “When you say Enterprise customers, what do you mean?”

A. “I mainly focus on enterprise customers that employ greater than 1,000 users”

Q. “What type of industries do these enterprises fit into?”

Note how the continual use of open questions helps you to extract exactly what a candidate means by the word enterprise and hence gives you a much deeper understanding of their experience.

Use closed questions throughout the interview to direct a conversation into areas that you want to explore. Closed questions don’t start with the Who, What, Where, etc and usually illicit a YES or NO answer:

Q. “Have you ever won a piece of New Business with a brand new customer?”

A. “Yes”

Q. “How did you manage to do this?”

The Candidate interview

When using the needs-based approach for a candidate interview, my advice is to never divulge the details of the position and company you are recruiting for without first spending a good deal of time finding out about the individual. If you allow a candidate the opportunity to understand in advance what it is you are looking for, then you run the risk of them presenting themselves to you as just that person wanting just that job which can make decisions on shortlisting more difficult . The other risk you run by leading with the job is that the candidate decides on if they are interested or not, and you finish the interview having found out little about the person or where they see their future. Remember the concept behind building your community.

If the candidate is forceful and demands that you share some information in advance, then you need to exhibit some candidate control and handle this as an objection.

“I’m happy to share all of the details later but what I can tell you is that it is a VC backed pre-IPO opportunity with a leading Cybersecurity vendor. For me to be able to position this role and the company correctly, it will help if I first know more about you and what you are looking to do moving forward “

Time is precious for you and the candidate and so my next advice is that you must lead the interview and the direction that you want it to go in. You don’t want to listen whilst a person spends an hour outlining their career since leaving university only for you both to find out at the end that what they are doing now and where they see themselves going is not aligned. To do this, set expectations upfront :

“I will need about 30–45 minutes to thoroughly understand you and what you are looking to do in the future. To get the most value, it will help if you kick off by giving me a thumbnail sketch of what you have been doing most recently and then we can work backwards into your previous roles. After this we can go into more detail around the specifics of each position”

Getting a quick thumbnail sketch allows you to quickly build up a picture of the person you are speaking to and their suitability for the role you are recruiting. Armed with this information, you can then decide which way to take the conversation for the good of all.

If the experience appears to be well suited to the position you are recruiting, then continue with more detailed probing using open questions to assess the persons suitability.

If the experience is not relevant, then interview until you find a valid reason to reject the person and then handle them as a person to know for the future. Spend time understanding what they do and where they see themselves so that they can be part of your community.

“If I can just ask, it seems from what you have said that all your experience lies in account management rather than new business sales, is that correct?

“Yes”

“The role that I am recruiting requires someone with a strong track record of success in new business and so for that reason this won’t be a fit. What I would like to do is focus more on what you are doing now and where you see yourself in the future”

Using this approach and spending quality time with them even though they are not suitable will provide a good platform for future conversations.

The aim is to spend most of your time with those candidates who appear most suitable for the position you are hiring. Once you have qualified that their experience is appropriate, an equal if not greater amount of time must then be spent understanding where they see their next move to check alignment with the opportunity you are recruiting for. The other element that must be explored and qualified in detail at this initial stage is the appetite of the person to make a move if offered and their salary expectations. Use check questions and listen carefully to the answers to gauge the persons commitment to making a move should the right opportunity present. The aim here is to qualify to such a level that you are confident that , if offered, the candidate will not change their mind or be turned around once offered.

“If you stay with your current company, what would be your next move?”

“How feasible is it for you to make this move?”

“What would you do if you were offered a new job and your current company came back and offered to match the salary?”

“What if your current company came back and offered you a similar job to the one we are speaking about?”

“You said you are happy at the moment. Why would this role interest you?”

“Have you spoken to your company about being unsettled and looking for a next move?”

If a candidate answers any of these check questions in a way that raises a concern, then again use open questions to explore deeper what they are saying and handle the objection accordingly and as you feel it appropriate.

“If you were bought back, other than being on the same money as the role I am offering, what skills will you build up in the next year by staying where you are compared to moving to the role we are discussing?”

I hope that the approach I have described resonates and demonstrates how the job of a recruitment consultant can differ from person to person and company to company. Strive to be a consultant who asks questions and listens rather than trying to sell and you will find that the job becomes much more satisfying and rewarding. If you aren’t being given the sales training and personal development to learn the skills required to adopt a consultative approach, then my final advice is not to give up on recruitment but to make demands of your employer as it’s in their interests and your clients and candidates’ interest as well as your own. Alternatively spend time yourself understanding the concept of needs based selling or seek out external support. I guarantee that the return on investment will make it well worthwhile.

Next week I would like to take time to expand on this approach when it comes to dealing with your clients

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