Creating an engaging job interview process to impress candidates

Ensuring your job interview process is engaging is so important. It’s not only vital for impressing candidates but also for the interviewing managers too. As the interviewing staff need to be comfortable and relaxed when interviewing job candidates. Furthermore, it’s even more imperative when interviewing several candidates, as you don’t want to come across as bored and put off future employees. 

Here are a few ways to make interviewing more engaging: 

Ask open-ended questions

These will spark meaningful conversations that give you a better, more accurate understanding of the candidate. When the conversation flows, both the interviewing staff and job candidates will feel at ease; helping the candidate’s performance and ensuring your company comes across well to the candidate. 

Allow the candidate to ask their own questions

This gives them an opportunity to show their enthusiasm and engage more deeply with the role and firm. Also, it shows to them that you’ve shown an interest in them. 

Create an interview environment which enables interaction

A casual, relaxed atmosphere can help candidates feel more comfortable and open–up, enabling them to communicate more effectively. If you have several stages to the interview, you could conduct the final stage somewhere away from your office. Maybe invite them out for a coffee or lunch.

If your interview is competency based, create tasks which involve your employees

For example, you could ask an employee or another manager to role play and pretend to be a client. This will allow you to see how candidates interact with clients.

Involve your employees in the interview process

For example, we will let candidates have one-to-one time with an employee they will be working closely with. This gives the candidate the opportunity to get to know them and ask them any questions they have informally.

Give them a tour of your working environment

Show them where they will be working and introduce them to people within your team.

Provide feedback

Providing feedback throughout the process can help to keep the candidate engaged and motivated. Even if it’s a no, giving them constructive feedback will help them improve their performance in their next job interview and they are likely to recommend your firm if you provide feedback.

Psychometric testing

This is a great tool to complement your interview strategy. Put simply, psychometric testing in recruitment is an aptitude test that uses a variety of different questions and tasks to measure a candidate’s suitability for the role. The questions can be set by the employer. In recruitment, psychometric testing is useful for finding out how job candidates work, perform in the workplace and interact with their colleagues. We use it internally here at the Eventus Recruitment Group.

Through employing these strategies, you can create an engaging and informative interview process. By taking the time to carefully plan your interview process, you can ensure you make the best recruitment decisions and find the perfect candidates for your job vacancies.  

If you would like tailored advice on your interview process and recruitment process then please get in touch with us at [email protected] or call 01524 34400. At the Eventus Recruitment Group we are happy to help our candidates and clients have the smoothest interview journey possible and our consultants are here to support you every step of the way.