Hi, my name is Candice Elliot, and I am a Human Resources Strategist. I work with small businesses on hiring, keeping employees, and all the things that have to do with humans in a workplace. Today, I'm going to be talking about four common types of interviews that there are and what they're good for.
The first one that we'll talk about is the one-on-one interview. This is where you have an interviewer and interviewee, and you're just talking with the person one-on-one. This is the most common form of initial interview. The most common form of just interview in general. The good things about it are that it provides for a really personal environment. You can really get to know the candidate in depth. You can ask them all kinds of questions that are related to their particular experience, you can delve off into different areas if you want to, and it provides a lot of flexibility.
One-on-one interviews do take a lot of time though. Sometimes companies will shift from one-on-one interviews to group interviews. They'll have their first interview for a position be a group interview. I've done group interviews of up to 25 people. I don't recommend doing that many people in a group interview. I think the sweet spot is 6 to 10 people, because then you have the chance to ask them four to five questions and get really good in-depth answers to provide them with information that they need to know about next steps, and then to have time for them to ask you [00:02:00] some questions as well.
Good things about group interviews are that you cover more ground in less time, but it does take a bit of organization. It takes on the interviewer's side a lot of quick thinking on your feet. You have to be able to read what's happening in the room. You have to be able to direct from one person to the next very quickly. It definitely takes a little bit more skill on the interviewer's side to do a good group interview.
The next kind of interview that there is is a panel interview. In a panel interview you have a number of people interviewing one person. You could have three or four people interviewing a candidate for a job. Typically, panel interviews will happen for a person's second or third interview. Panel interviews work really well when you have people at different levels of the organization interviewing the candidates. Maybe you have a director level person, a manager level person, and then someone who would be their co-worker. All of those people are interviewing this one candidate.
Or maybe you have a position that you're hiring for, let's say, an office assistant, and they'll have to be working across different departments. Then you have the different department heads or managers of these different areas of the company interview the person so that you make sure that they work well with all of the people that you have involved in their work. Panel interviews are really good when you are trying to gather information from a candidate on how they would react to questions from different levels of an organization, or how they would react to questions from different [00:04:00] kinds of departments within an organization.
Then the last type of interview that I'm going go over today, that's an official kind of interview, is the working interview. In a working interview, you have the person come into the workplace and work. Generally working interviews will be between one and four hours, not typically a whole day of work, but a half day or less than half day. You would provide your candidate with specific goals, specific duties to perform during their interview.
Encouraging them to ask questions, seeing how they interact with your clients and with your other employees, how they learn, and whether or not they ask questions. Working interviews can be really helpful in visualizing that person in the workplace, if they're the right fit for your work environment or not, and if they get along well with your current staff or not.
One thing to remember about working interviews is that you have to pay people for them. You have to pay people at least minimum wage for all of the time that they're at work for a working interview. It's very good to do waivers for people who are doing working interviews. You have to be sure to pay them at the end of their shifts. Right at the end. If you don't pay them, then you can get into issues with the labor board. Administering this kind of an interview is a bit more complicated than doing other kinds of interviews, but it really helps you to understand how a person is in the workplace.
Then the last interview that's not really an interview, I call it an informal interview, [00:06:00] but these are really appropriate when you know someone in the community, or you've worked with them before, and you have a position that's open in your company and you really want them for the position. In that instance you're taking them out to lunch, or taking them to dinner. You're really wooing into the company and explaining how awesome the company is, the job, their background, and how their background is the right fit for the job. Just explaining all of the exciting things that are going on.
That is a little bit less of a, "Tell me about your qualifications and how you fit," and a little bit more of a, "We have this awesome job, and we know you would be great for it. What do you think about trying it out?" I hope that gives you a frame of reference for the main kinds of interviews that there are. I'm really, really a proponent for having multiple levels of interviews. You would maybe do a group interview, then a one-on-one interview, or a one-on-one interview and then a panel interview.
That helps keep you from making really quick decisions about whether a person is or isn't the candidate it. It helps you to be more fair, and to not be swayed by your emotions through interviews. It can be a pretty emotional thing to be interviewing people, especially for your company and welcoming people into your company. By having multiple layers, that gives you time to really think about the candidates, which ones should move forward, and which ones are just not the right fit.
Thank you for joining me today. If you need any help with interviewing, please reach out, [00:08:00] we're happy to help.
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