Interview 101

Recently the venture capital firm that worked with as COO needed to hire a few new resources.


We had tapped out our network of contacts from meet ups and immediate network of past employees and colleagues of employees. As most people have found it is better to recruit from within your network or your employees network as they know who will fit the company culture you are trying to build.

Having decided we needed to advertise we went with http://www.linkedin.com. Overall the response was positiveand we got a significant number of responses. The process could have been improved with a better workflow within LINKEDIN as we did a lot of the setting up of interviews, polite rejection letters via email etc, whereas the process could be streamlined by using a better workflow within LINKEDIN itself. This feed back was provided to the ever-helpful local LINKEDIN account manager Elliott Walker http://www.linkedin.com/in/jelliottwalker
 
The interview process however was the spark for this blog post. It seems no matter how many articles and how to guides, candidates are still not getting the basics right.We had candidates who turned up late, never turned up, took phone calls during the interview, had done not done any basic research, did not bring their CV,did not have a list of questions ready and the list goes on.  
If this had been an isolated incident with only 1 or 2 potential candidates then that would not have driven this blog post. But the majority of the 64 candidates we interviewed had not got their head around the basics of being ready for an interview.

It can be very simple to make a good impression:

• Turn up on time
• Dress like you are attending an interview
• Do some investigation into the company before hand
• Bring your CV
  
• Bring a list of questions
• Don’t answer your phone during the interview

 The candidates that attended a face to face interview had been pre screened by their CV and LINKEDIN profile plus a phone interview before being invited in. They knewtheir stuff but some of the gloss was tarnished by shoddy interview technique.