Interview Others
Book

Interview Others

How to spot the perfect candidate

Lorenza Clifford
A&C Black, 2006
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Editorial Rating

7

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  • Applicable

Recommendation

You might be a good judge of character, but when it comes to hiring, going by your “gut” is not always advisable, at least not according to career coach Lorenza Clifford. In fact, she warns that doing so could cost you time and money, and even worse, land you in a courtroom. In this handy little guidebook, Clifford breaks down the essentials of the interview, a pivotal aspect of the selection process. She succinctly details the process from composing the best set of questions and handling different types of interview conditions to making a job offer (or deciding not to). Clifford identifies common pitfalls, particularly lack of objectivity. She summarizes each chapter and provides links to related Web sites. However, for a book devoted to interviewing, it is strangely shy of a softer, human element. Still, it is, by and large, both practical and solid. getAbstract thinks you’ll find this quick, instructive manual very useful as a short course on the art of the interview.

Summary

Why Interview

Interviewing candidates to fill a job opening is time-consuming and expensive, but it is the best way to identify and recruit the right person for the position. To make the process worthwhile, it’s crucial to conduct interviews in the most effective, efficient way. Although you might want to follow your instincts, unstructured interviews will not help you identify the best candidate. If you ask different questions of several job applicants, some will shine more than others. In addition, if the evaluation criteria are not standardized, the process becomes subjective, not objective.

Equal opportunity legislation, enacted in the U.S. in the 1970s, corrected some glaring weaknesses in the typical selection process. Companies that are in compliance ask the same questions, often in the same order, of each candidate. Then the company’s human resources and management teams can evaluate each applicant according to the same criteria. This affords everyone an equal opportunity and substantially eliminates discrimination from the process.

The goal of the selection process is to identify which candidates have the ability, experience and motivation to fulfill...

About the Author

Lorenza Clifford is a career coach with more than a decade of experience. She is the founder of a coaching consultancy.

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