Dear Mr BN Nagaraj,
Many things are covered in your presentation and many things yet to be covered also. Following are my observations on your presentation:
1. Punctuality of the Interviewer: - Your presentation does not mention this important quality that interviewer must demonstrate. While interviewee is expected to report for interview in time it is the duty of interviewer to start the interview on time. Many interviewers fail on this count. Being "busy" is no excuse for not starting interview late. There is a difference between needy and confident candidate. I have seen a cases of candidates leaving the venue of the interview after waiting for an hour.
2. Questioning & Listening Skills: - Interviewer should talk for 20% of the time and candidate should talk for 80% of the time. Your presentation does not give reference of probing, leading and clarifying questions used in the interview.
3.Quality of the questions: - Vendell has said that "never judge a person by his answers but by his questions". The quote is truly applicable to the interviewer. Intelligent candidates will never like if they are dealt with kid's gloves.
3. Pre-interview preparation: - As a part of pre-interview preparation, interviewer should do the following:
a) Keeping his/her own subordinates informed of the interview schedule (at times HR staffs feign ignorance about the interview schedule of the HR Manager).
b) Keeping front office and security informed of the interview schedule
c) Matching the CV of the candidate with that of JD of the position
d) Calling the candidates in staggered manner rather calling everybody at a time (GM of one prominent construction company had called about 10 candidates at the same time. The last candidate could be interviewed only after 2 hours).
4. Know your company very well: - Candidates do their own market research before attending the interview. Therefore, interviewer must know his/her company very well. Interviewer must know about what information is given on the company's website. I have seen managers not knowing what information is uploaded on their company's website!
5. General Errors made while Interviewing: - Your presentation does not make any mention of the following errors that interviewer may make:
a) The Halo Effect
b) Leniency
c) Projection and
d) Stereotyping
Adequate information about above errors is available on the internet and other management books.
6. Knowledge-gain Exercise: - Interviewer should ask only those questions whose answers he knows very well. Interview is neither an opportunity to gain market intelligence nor an exercise to assess the current market trend.
7. Your Presentation: - You have loaded your slides with whole lot of information. This is against the principles of "Presentation Skills". You should give few bullet points and explain the topic. If a training professional were to use this presentation, he/she will end up in reading the text from the slides. The information that you have given in the slides should to into the notes.
Final Note: - When a training professional prepares a presentation, he/she should consider all the possibilities of what may happen and what may not happen and come up with presentation. What that person has done or not done in his/her career is not important. When we read the newspaper, we read it for editorial. Editorial content has to be head and shoulder above the "Letters to the editor" and not vice versa.
Ok...
Dinesh V Divekar