How to prepare for an interview Half of what makes a great job interview is what happens before the interview. Here are 7 things to do so that you're prepared. 1. Define the role requirements and write a clear job description This point may seem obvious, but the nuances shouldn’t be overlooked. Hopefully, you did this before you posted the job description. If somehow you made it to this point without writing a great job description, then now is the time to answer some important questions, like: What qualities are you looking for in a candidate? What hard or soft skills do other top performers in your organization possess? What gaps currently exist on your team? What are your deal breakers? The more you can explicitly define the role and the qualities you’re looking for in a candidate, the easier it will be to know what to ask during the interview. 2. Prepare specific questions for the role in advance It’s easy to get caught up in conversation during an interview. Having interview questions prepared in advance ensures you cover all the bases you wanted to cover. Most companies have a base set of questions they ask every candidate and then specific questions for each role. Giving the same base questions to every candidate allows you to compare candidates more directly to each other. To make sure you elicit answers that help drive your decision-making, use a mix of question types. Use a variety of close-ended questions, open-ended questions, hypothetical questions, and behavioral questions. For example, asking a behavioral question like “tell me about a time you dealt with a challenging manager” is more likely to dig into how the candidate deals with conflict as opposed to asking them directly how they deal with conflict. And while it’s good to be prepared, leave room for organic questions that come up naturally. If there’s something in particular that stands out (either positive or negative), don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions. 3. Screen all candidates with pre-employment assessments The easiest way to have great job interviews is to have great candidates sitting in front of you. But it’s tough to identify the best candidates from their resumes alone. And you'll spend a lot of time reviewing resumes if you don't take a more efficient approach. Especially if you have a high volume of job applications, which makes it hard to give each resume the attention it deserves. An eye-tracking study showed recruiters spend only 7 seconds on average skimming a resume. But that’s not a winning strategy for identifying the best candidates. Even if you did have all the time in the world to read every resume from front to back, a resume doesn’t tell the full story. People can embellish their skills or even outright lie on a resume. Pre-employment assessments help solve that problem, giving you a more efficient alternative to resume evaluation. A pre-employment assessment is a collection of tests given to a candidate as part of the application. You can test candidates on: Personality and culture fit Cognitive ability Language Situational judgment Role-specific skills Programming skills Software skills By delivering these assessments to each candidate, you will reduce bias in your hiring process by giving you a view of each candidate that doesn’t depend on a recruiter scanning thousands of resumes. That's because resumes include identifying information that can trigger unconscious bias. 4. Conduct a phone screen or a one-way-video interview before the in-person interview It’s wise to conduct a screening phone call in advance to filter out any unqualified candidates that made it past the pre-screening phase. You can ask candidates deal-breaker questions about the role and verify facts on their resumes to assess whether they’re deserving of a full interview. As an alternative, many companies also use video screening questions as a replacement or in addition to a screening call. 5. Schedule enough time for the interview Once you’ve shortlisted your best candidates, it’s time to schedule the interview! Depending on the role, you’ll have to decide between an interview that’s in person, over the phone, or over a video call. You’ll also have to decide how much time to allocate for an interview. Junior roles may only take 30 minutes, while more senior roles may take over an hour. It’s best to have more than one person interviewing the candidate, so be sure to invite a co-worker too. Tip: Leave yourself enough of a gap in your schedule before and after each interview. You want to be in the right headspace to give your full attention to the interview, and you also don’t want to risk being late. Remember, you’re also trying to impress the candidate. 6. Be transparent with the candidate before the interview Interviewing for a job is stressful. Making sure your candidate comes to the interview as relaxed as possible makes it more likely you’ll get to know the real them. Remove any points of stress by letting them