7 ways of ensuring a great online interviewing
Article two out of three from Lise Sustmann Allen
- Structure the interview – Just as with face-to-face interviews you should structure the interview. This allows you to ask the candidate many of the same questions, which gives you a better basis for comparing the candidates afterwards.
- Ensure working cameras - Make sure that all participating in the interview have cameras that are working and connections that support the use of cameras in online meetings. Using cameras gives you a visual image of the candidate and helps the communication when you can read face and expressions of the other person.
- Use headset – Both the interviewer and the candidate should use headsets with microphones to facilitate the communication. Preferably already mention this together with a functioning camera in the invitation to the candidate.
- Longer breaks - Make sure you plan the interviews with room for breaks in between. If you normally conduct 45 minutes interviews with 15 minutes of breaks in between. You should now plan with 45 minutes breaks in between. This way you have more buffer time, if the connection is down, if the platform is giving problems etc.
- One interviewer - You can easily be more people present at the same interview. Many platforms such as Teams, Skype etc. allows for multiple participants to enter the same meeting. This can create some confusion if many people talk at the same time. You should therefor beforehand have chosen a single person to be the main interviewer. During the interview this person should address attention to the other participants, to hear if they have anything to add or ask the candidate.
- Using real time exercises – Being online you still have the opportunity to give the candidates tasks or cases to handle. It could be to ask the candidate to present a given matter or how she or he would handle a given task. Doing this online may even work better than in a meeting room, where PowerPoint presentations quickly becomes very formal. Maybe the online environment will ease the situation and make it even more realistic.
- Onboarding online! – Once you have found the right candidate and agreed upon a starting date, you should prepare an online onboarding process, just in case things have not changed globally before the first day of work. Ways of ensuring a good online onboarding will follow in the next update – so stay tuned!
Date:
01.04.2020
