Why You Should Share Your Interviewing Expertise
Companies often struggle to hire highly skilled workers. The problem is, if a hiring manager is not skilled in the area for which they are hiring, how can they expect to find the best candidate?
Therein lies a key struggle in the world of recruiting. It’s easy to talk a good game, use a lot of buzzwords, and allude to a history of achievement. But it takes an expert to separate the wheat from the chaff, and many hiring managers are not experts in every role.
That’s where interview scripts written by experts like you can be a huge help. If you’re an expert in hiring for a specific field — whether engineering, marketing, or sales — you can actually share your expertise with the hiring managers who need it most. The right interview script can help business leaders hire the best possible people and build better teams.
If you’ve already written a script for hiring within your own company, or think you easily could do so, it may be useful for hiring managers everywhere without your specific knowledge. Learn how you can take your personal expertise and share it with others.
Why You Should Write Interview Scripts
If you’re not the hiring manager, you might wonder why you should write an interview script at all. After all, hiring is someone else’s job, not yours, and you have plenty of other tasks on your plate. However, there are a number of benefits to sharing your expertise in your field. By writing an interview script, you can practice your own interviewing skills, solidify your expertise, and practice your skills, all while helping others build better businesses.
In addition, a hiring platform like Vervoe will actually pay you for your interview scripts. The more businesses that use your script for their hiring, the more money you will make on your script. With more and more experience in hiring, you can then add it to your resume, build up your interviewing skills, and eventually become well-known in your industry. While it may take some up-front investment, it will always be fairly easy for you to write a script focused on your personal area of expertise.
How to Write a Good Interview Script
If you’re interested in giving it a shot, before you start writing a script, you should think about the value it’s providing to another hiring manager. They are your target market, and interview scripts offer a way around many of the biases and preferences in the usual hiring process. Rather than fixating on who has the prettiest resume, the best smile, or the friendliest personality, interview scripts help hiring managers hone in on what’s necessary to do the job right.
If the job requires a specialized set of skills, for example, an interview script can assess whether an applicant possesses those exact skills. If it demands quick reflexes or problem solving, you can devise scripts for this, too. You can even ensure good people skills by creating scenarios employees commonly encounter, and devising scripts for dealing with them.
To write an interview script, try the following:
- Write a detailed job description. Rather than writing for a job listing, though, focus on the specific skills the job requires. For example, a lawyer will need extensive knowledge of a specific practice area, writing skills, an ability to research case law, and clear communication.
- Narrow down the meaning of the skills you’ve outlined. For example, what does “good” communication mean? Does it mean excellent grammar? The ability to communicate succinctly? To respond promptly? To write quickly? All of the above? None of the above? Remove subjective terms like “good” and focus on the actual meaning of the skill you’ve listed.
- List specific measures of each skill. The more objectively each skill can be measured, the better. Then devise questions around these measures. For example, you might construct a complex legal question demanding case law research for a lawyer, then ensure there is a clear correct answer — not a variety of possible solutions.
There’s no single interview script that works for every job. Indeed, a one-size-fits-all approach is precisely what an interview script is not. The goal is to devise a list of questions that meet the demands of the position — not to cater to a mythical idea of what an interview should be about.
The Role of Personality and “Fit”
Organizations also wants an employee who’s a good fit with their workplace culture, and that can be tough to incorporate into an interview script. The problem is that “fit” can sometimes be a proxy for bias. A hiring manager might think an employee is a bad fit, when really, they’re just a bit introverted, or maybe they’re significantly younger than the average applicant.
Interview scripts help hiring managers work around these issues by winnowing down the number of candidates to a list of completely qualified applicants. From there, they can look at who fits in within the organization, reducing the risk of bias and ensuring that a winning applicant’s personality doesn’t blind them to other serious shortcomings. You can write questions that address these problems, allowing hiring managers to look at an applicant’s’ skills, rather than focusing on personality. Consider common scenarios, how you want an employee to react to them, and how to incorporate those scenarios into your interview scripts.
If you’re an expert in hiring for your field, there’s no reason to think that you can’t write a fantastic interview script. By simply thinking hard about how you would ask yourself about your skills, you can help others hire someone just as talented as you for their company.
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Originally published in Vervoe’s blog
