Do phone screenings

Your recruiter should do this. However, if you forgo a recruiter, this step is crucial to saving time later in the process.

“Before you can get to the main interviews, you should narrow down your candidate pool. Conduct phone screenings to get to know a little more about candidates and weed out the ones who would not be a good fit” (Rachel Blakely-Gray, Top Echelon).

Prepare your interview questions

From Workable.com: Interviewers who don’t prepare their questions beforehand are missing out on the chance to evaluate candidates effectively. To decide what you’re going to ask, first use the job description to determine which skills are most important and should be assessed during the interview (if you’re not the hiring manager, ask for help from the hiring manager or a recruiter). Then, build your questions around those skills. Here are two examples to evaluate communication skills and leadership ability:

• Communication: “How would you reply to a negative online review about our company?”
• Leadership: “In what specific ways do you motivate your team?”

Create an interview scorecard

Rachel Blakely-Gray at Top Echelon says “Interview scorecards help you structure the interview and keep it on track. Creating an interview scorecard can discourage you from going off on tangents or forgetting what candidates say. An interview scorecard is a way for you to rank candidates for the position. After you determine the skills your client eds, you can create an interview scorecard”.

Give candidates a chance to ask questions

As recruiters, we see this all the time; we ask how the interview went but then the candidate has a lot of questions they didn’t ask. It’s important to remember that the job and company must fit the candidate just as the candidate must fit into the positions and culture.

Go2hr says “Applicants should be given the chance both to answer your questions and to ask questions of their own to determine if the job and the company are right for them”.

Concluding the interview

Part of the conclusion usually consists of a plan of action—something to be done or achieved by either or both parties. A clear, concise summary of this plan, as mentioned earlier, is a most useful technique for achieving good results. The summary is helpful to both parties because it enables them to realize exactly what has been accomplished as well as to focus on a final concordance (Samuel G. Trull of the University of California).

Presenting an offer

If you are working with a recruiter, let them make the offer.  Why? Recruiters build trust and friendly relationships with candidates, therefore the candidates tend to be more honest with questions, concerns, and objections with the recruiter over their soon-to-be boss or an HR executive.  A good recruiter walks the candidate through how to resign with dignity, the perils of accepting a counteroffer, and provides them with a lock-tight resignation letter.