From Engineering to HR: How Can I Improve My Candidate Interview Skills?

Hi All, I'm a B.Tech graduate, but now I'm working as an HR Recruiter. I wanted some help from you on how I can judge the candidates and interview them. It's been 8 months that I've been trying to find suitable candidates and recruit them, but I feel like I'm making mistakes somewhere. I have reviewed the soft skills presentations available here. Can anyone guide me? Appreciate your response.

Regards,
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

Dear Mr. Syed Nawaz Hussain, your posting lacks clarity.

Clarification on Candidate Evaluation

“Where I can judge the candidates and interview them” — Are you referring to the place? In that case, you are your best judge. Do you mean the areas of interest or expertise of the candidates? Are the candidates fresh or experienced?

Interview Process Insights

In eight months, how many candidates have you interviewed? You mentioned you have reviewed the soft skills presentations on Cite HR. What are your learnings in brief?

If you find the answers to the above queries, you will slowly start identifying where you might be going wrong and then take suitable action.

Regards,
V. Raghunathan

Thank you for the response. I would like to first answer your questions. I need to interview them based on Technical Skills, Communication Skills, Maturity level, and their interest in this job. Yes, I will be interviewing fresh graduates more often, though I do come across experienced people, but very few. I have interviewed more than 100 candidates, and many were not qualified. Hardly 5-6 were able to join.

• Effective Communication
• Documentation
• Work Ethics
• Mannerisms & Attitude

I would like to know more as I'm new to this field.

Regards,
Syed Nawaz Uddin
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

Dear Syed, Raghunathan has already mentioned that your query lacks clarity and has raised some questions. Kindly, could you please provide information on your experience/training as a recruiter, the positions you interview people for, and the organization you work for? The more background information you provide, the more precise the help you will receive.

As an HR Recruiter, I need to interview candidates and evaluate their communication skills and their ability to think critically when faced with different situations. I have conducted interviews with more than 100 candidates, most of whom are freshers. I have been analyzing effective communication patterns and body language cues during these interactions.

If you could provide me with additional information, I would greatly appreciate it.

Regards,
Syed Nawaz Uddin
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

I work for an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) Company. Apart from interviewing the candidates, my responsibility is to ensure the candidates join the organization and train them thoroughly on the recruitment process. I will be interviewing the candidates based on technical questions, assessing their communication skills, and helping them understand the job requirements. Our organization specializes in e-recruitment processes.

Regards

I work for an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) Company. Apart from interviewing the candidates, my responsibility is to ensure the candidates join the organization and train them thoroughly on the recruitment process. I will be conducting interviews based on technical questions, assessing their communication skills, and helping them understand the job requirements. Our organization specializes in e-recruitment processes.

Thank you.

Regards.

Key Factors in Recruitment

In recruitment, several factors are very important:

1. Communication
2. Knowledge about the job or the subject
3. More than the experience of a candidate, we should know how much they are aware of the tasks they perform (Technical). If they are a fresher, they should at least have basic knowledge about the subject/industry.

Note: Before interviewing any candidate, we should be familiar with the specific job description.

Regards,
Geetha

In recruitment, several factors are very important:

1. Communication
2. Knowledge about his/her job or the subject
3. More than the experience of a candidate, we should know how much they are aware of the task they do (Technical). If they are a fresher, at least they should have basic knowledge about the subject/industry.

Note: Before we interview any candidate, we should know the particular job description.

Regards,
Geetha

My views are as follows:

Technical Skills

This should form the core competence. As a recruiter, create your question bank with the correct answers. You should be able to understand if the responses are correct. It would be ideal to prepare an objective-type question paper that could be easily checked. Tests can be conducted under your supervision to ensure fairness. Follow up the test with an oral exam.

Communication Skills

This could be the second core competence area. The pattern of examination could be similar to the above.

Maturity Level

Since you have less experience yourself and you would mostly be interviewing freshers, this could be tricky to assess. Only with experience can you become better.

Interest for the Job

Check with the candidates whether they have applied elsewhere. Ask if they would leave or continue to make a career in your referred company if selected.

Cite HR has abundant information in its archives. It offers many articles on communication alone. In my opinion, it may take several months to exhaust even one topic like communication.

Browse the different topics like language improvement, spoken language, interviewing skills, and assertiveness, etc., one by one and improve your own skills.

Regards,
V.Raghunathan

Without delving into the suggestions and remarks of other members, I would like to make a few points.

1. You mentioned, "make them understand the Job Requirement." How certain are you that you are very clear about it yourself? I may be wrong, but based on your various responses, I am not entirely convinced that you have a complete understanding of the job description. When you yourself have not received any training in recruitment (as has been repeatedly queried by Simhan), how can you expect to train another person?

2. You mentioned that 'most' of the candidates are freshers. On what basis do you (or your boss or company) consider a 5-6% joining rate for approximately 100 freshers to be low? What qualification profile are you looking at? MBAs or BTechs? Or any other? And what hit rate do you consider to be reasonably good?

We recently handled a Campus Recruitment Drive for BTechs for a client in January 2015. The hit rate was 7 selections out of 155 students after online technical and aptitude tests, group discussions, and personal interviews. Our client viewed this as a significant improvement compared to their previous experience of only 1 selection out of 120 students.

As a rule of thumb, when lacking the skills to evaluate candidates, consider relying on alternatives. In your case, online tests, group discussions, etc., could be viable options (there may be other alternatives as well) that convert various aspects/attributes into measurable parameters. This approach eliminates the need to make judgment calls as you have both absolute and relative ratings in front of you.

Evaluating freshers has both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, they don't carry any prior experience baggage (a 'clean slate,' so to speak) and are easier to assess using methods other than face-to-face interviews. However, the downside is that their inexperience often leads to immaturity, affecting their interview performance, which can be challenging to evaluate.

If you have any further queries, please also provide the following information:

1. What is the size of your company and the recruitment team?
2. Have you discussed the situation with your boss? What was the response?
3. Please respond to Simhan's query regarding whether you received training or not.
4. Please provide details of the exact process you are currently following. Only then can members offer actionable suggestions or solutions. Otherwise, this discussion is likely to become another debate with no meaningful outcomes.

All the best.

Regards,
TS

Hello Everyone, I have read all the replies that I have received. Thank you for leaving me replies and suggesting some important information that I need to follow in the recruitment process.

Answers to Your Questions

1. I was a recruiter first, where I was trained and handled a few clients. As new candidates have to do the same, I have to train them carefully so that they can meet the company's expectations. The job description is quite simple—candidates need to have some basic IT knowledge and good communication skills.

2. It is observed that many freshers lack communication skills. However, as a company, we need to focus on both IT and communication skills. We are open to any graduate who wishes to pursue a career in the recruitment industry. We provide training to these candidates on technical knowledge.

3. The tough part comes here; as this is the end of the year, most of the candidates are already filtered out. There are MTI candidates available. MTI stands for Mother Tongue Influence. These candidates may not be able to communicate fluently, as USA clients require a certain level of communication skills. We are a small company with 20-25 recruiters working. I have discussed this with management, and they advised me that I need to analyze the maturity level of the candidate and check if they are able to meet our expectations. Our company is solely focused on the recruitment process.

Please let me know if you need any further information.

Sincerely,
Syed