Interview Skills
Are What Makes A Good
Interviewer
A good interviewer can be described in much the same way as Potter
Stewart’s definition of obscenity, “I know it, when I see it.” It is easy to identify
a good interviewer, but it can be much harder to describe what interview skills make them a good
one. Despite this challenge, we believe certain interview skills are more important than
others and that they can be learned and improved upon. We have included our
list below of what we believe are essential interview skills:
1. Social
Personality
a. Is the person warm and pleasant when
meeting new people?
b. Does he/she enjoy meeting new people
and does this come across to the candidates in the interviews?
2. Intelligence:
a. Are people impressed with his/her
ability to think on his/her feet?
b. Can he/she quickly adapt to
unforeseen circumstances?
c. Does he/she give off the appearance
of being smart?
3. Company
Experience:
a. Is he/she thoroughly familiar with
the inner-workings of his/her company so he/she can talk confidently about them?
b. Does he/she have the ability to
present this information to candidates in a way that is both conversational and interesting to
them?
4. Presence:
a. Does he/she look the part of a
powerful businessperson?
b. Can he/she invoke a strong
interest in the candidate to want to work with that specific interviewer on future
projects?
5. Professionalism:
a. Do people come away believing he/she
has his/her stuff together?
b. Do they think he/she makes few
mistakes?
6. Interviewing
Style:
a. Is his/her interviewing style
disarming and help put the candidates at ease?
b. Does he/she have the ability to ask
the tough questions without coming across as being cold and abrasive?
c. Is he/she able to sell the position
in a way that will appeal to the candidate’s needs and wants?
This
is a core list of the interview skills needed for how to conduct an
interview. For the time being, it is
a good idea to make an honest assessment of how you measure up in each of these areas. In later articles, we
will go into more detail regarding each of these specific interview skills and describe ways in which these
skills can be improved.
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